n December third, 1996, Mercedes Johanna Hollowell committed fashion suicide. For years, Sadie had teetered on the brink—mixing patterns and plaids while wearing white sandals after Labor Day. But the final nail in her fashion coffin, worse than the faux pas of white sandals, happened the night she showed up at the Texas Star Christmas Cotillion with hair as flat as roadkill.

Everyone knew the higher the hair, the closer to God. If God had intended women to have flat hair, He wouldn’t have inspired man to invent styling mousse, teasing combs, and Aqua Net Extra Super Hold. Just as everyone knew that flat hair was a fashion abomination, they also knew it was practically a sin. Like drinking before Sunday service or hating football.

Sadie had always been a little... off. Different. Not bat-shit crazy different. Not like Mrs. London who collected cats and magazines and cut her grass with scissors. Sadie was more notional. Like the time she got the notion in her six-year-old head that if she dug deep enough, she’d strike gold. As if her family needed the money. Or when she’d dyed her blond hair a shocking pink and wore black lipstick. That was about the time she’d quit volleyball, too. Everyone knew that if a family was blessed with a male child, he naturally played football. Girls played volleyball. It was a rule. Like an eleventh commandment: Female child shalt play volleyball or face Texas scorn.

Then there was the time she decided that the uniforms for the Lovett High dance team were somehow sexist and petitioned the school to lower the fringe on the Beaverettes’ unitards. As if short fringe was a bigger scandal than flat hair.

But if Sadie was notional and contrary, no one could really blame her. She’d been a “late-in-life baby.” Born to a hard-nosed rancher, Clive, and his sweetheart of a wife, Johanna Mae. Johanna Mae had been a Southern lady. Kind and giving, and when she’d set her cap for Clive, her family, as well as the town of Lovett, had been a little shocked. Clive was five years older than she and as stubborn as an old mule. He was from an old, respected family, but truth be told, he’d been born cantankerous and his manners were a bit rough. Not like Johanna Mae. Johanna Mae had been a beauty queen, winning everything from Little Miss Peanut to Miss Texas. She’d come in second place in the Miss America pageant the year she’d competed. She would have won if judge number three hadn’t been a feminist sympathizer.

But Johanna Mae had been as shrewd as she’d been pretty. She believed it didn’t matter if your man didn’t know the difference between a soup bowl and a finger bowl. A good woman could always teach a man the difference. It just mattered that he could afford to buy both, and Clive Hollowell certainly had the money to keep her in Wedgwood and Waterford.

After her wedding, Johanna Mae had settled into the big house at the JH Ranch to await the arrival of children, but after fifteen years of trying everything from the rhythm method to in vitro fertilization, Johanna Mae was unable to conceive. The two resigned themselves to their childless marriage, and Johanna Mae threw herself into her volunteer work. Everyone agreed that she was practically a saint, and finally at the age of forty, she was rewarded with her “miracle” baby. The baby had been born a month early because, as her mother always put it, “Sadie couldn’t wait to spring from the womb and boss people around.”

Johanna Mae indulged her only child’s every whim. She entered Sadie into her first beauty pageant at six months, and for the next five years, Sadie racked up a pile of crowns and sashes. But due to Sadie’s propensity to spin a little too much, sing a little too loud, and fall off the stage at the end of a step ball change, she never quite fulfilled her mother’s dream of an overall grand supreme title. At forty-five, Johanna Mae died of unexpected heart failure, and her beauty queen dreams for her baby died with her. Sadie’s care was left to Clive, who was much more comfortable around Herefords and ranch hands than a little girl who had rhinestones on her boots rather than cow dung.

Clive had done the best he could to raise Sadie up a lady. He’d sent her to Ms. Naomi’s Charm School to learn the things he didn’t have the time or ability to teach her, but charm school could not take the place of a woman in the home. While other girls went home and practiced their etiquette lessons, Sadie shucked her dress and ran wild. As a result of her mashed education, Sadie knew how to waltz, set a table, and converse with governors. She could also swear like a cowboy and spit like a ranch hand.

Shortly after graduating from Lovett High, she’d packed up her Chevy and headed out for some fancy university in California, leaving her father and soiled cotillion gloves far behind. No one saw much of Sadie after that. Not even her poor daddy, and as far as anyone knew, she’d never married. Which was just plain sad and incomprehensible because really, how hard was it to get a man? Even Sarah Louise Baynard-Conseco, who had the misfortune to be born built like her daddy, Big Buddy Baynard, had managed to find a husband. Of course, Sarah Louise had met her man through prisoner.com. Mr. Conseco currently resided fourteen hundred miles away in San Quentin, but Sarah Louise was convinced he was totally innocent of the offenses for which he’d been unjustly incarcerated, and planned to start her family with him after his hoped-for parole in ten years.

Bless her heart.

Sure, sometimes in a small town it was slim pickings, but that’s why a girl went away to college. Everyone knew that a single girl’s number one reason for college wasn’t higher education, although that was important, too. Knowing how to calculate the price of great-grandmother’s silver on any given day was always crucial, but a single gal’s first priority was to find herself a husband.

And Tally Lynn Cooper, Sadie Jo’s twenty-year-old cousin on her mama’s side, had done just that. Tally Lynn had met her intended at Texas A&M and was set to walk down the aisle in a few short days. Tally Lynn’s mama had insisted that Sadie Jo be a bridesmaid, which in hindsight turned out to be a mistake. More than the choice of Tally Lynn’s gown, or the size of her diamond, or whether Uncle Frasier would lay off the sauce and behave himself, the burning question on everyone’s mind was if Sadie Jo had managed to snag herself a man yet because really, how hard could it be? Even for a contrary and notional girl with flat hair?

Sadie Hollowell hit the button on the door panel of her Saab and the window slid down an inch. Warm air whistled through the crack, and she pushed the button again and lowered the window a bit more. The breeze caught several strands of her straight blond hair and blew them about her face.

“Check that Scottsdale listing for me.” She spoke into the BlackBerry pressed to her cheek. “The San Salvador three-bedroom.” As her assistant, Renee, looked up the property, Sadie glanced out the window at the flat plains of the Texas panhandle. “Is it listed as pending yet?” Sometimes a broker waited a few days to list a pending sale with the hopes another agent would show a property and get a bit more. Sneaky bastards.

“It is.”

She let out a breath. “Good.” In the current market, every sale counted. Even the small commissions. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hung up and tossed the phone in the cup holder.

Outside the window, smears of brown, brown, and more brown slid past, broken only by rows of wind turbines in the distance, their propellers slowly turning in the warm Texas winds. Childhood memories and old emotions slid through her head one languid spin at a time. She felt the old mixed bag of emotions. Old emotions that always lay dormant until she crossed the Texas border. A confusion of love and longing, disappointment and missed opportunity.

Some of her earliest memories were of her mother dressing her up for a pageant. The memories had blurred with age, the over-the-top pageant dresses and the piles of fake hair clipped to her head were just faded recollections. She remembered the feelings, though. She remembered the fun and excitement and the comforting touch of her mother’s hand. She remembered the anxiety and fear. Wanting to do well. Wanting to please, but never quite pulling it off. She remembered the disappointment her mother tried and failed to hide each time her daughter won best “pet photo” or “best dress” but failed to win the big crown. And with each pageant, Sadie tried harder. She sang a little louder, shook her hips a little faster, or put an extra kick into her routine, and the more she tried, the more she went off key, off step, or off the stage. Her pageant teacher always told her to stick to the routine they’d practice. Go with the script, but of course she never did. She’d always had a hard time doing and saying what she’d been told.

She had a wispy memory of her mother’s funeral. The organ music bouncing off the wooden church walls, the hard white pews. The gathering after the funeral at the JH, and the lavender-scented bosoms of her aunts. “Poor orphaned child,” they’d cooed between bites of cheese biscuits. “What’s going to happen to my sister’s poor orphaned baby?” She hadn’t been a baby or an orphan.

The memories of her father were more vivid and defined. His harsh profile against the endless blue of the summer sky. His big hands throwing her into a saddle and her hanging on as she raced to keep up with him. The weight of his palm on top of her head, his rough skin catching in her hair as she stood in front of her mother’s white casket. His footsteps walking past her bedroom door as she cried herself to sleep.

Her relationship with her father had always been confusing and difficult. A push and pull. An emotional tug of war that she always lost. The more emotion she showed, the more she tried to cling to him, and the more he pushed her away until she gave up.

For years she’d tried to live up to anyone’s expectations of her. Her mother’s. Her father’s. Those of a town filled with people who had always expected her to be a nice, well-behaved girl with charm. A beauty queen. Someone to make them proud like her mother or someone to look up to like her father, but by middle school she’d tired of that heavy task. She’d laid down that burden, and just started being Sadie. Looking back, she could admit that she was sometimes outrageous. Sometimes on purpose. Like the pink hair and black lipstick. It wasn’t a fashion statement. She hadn’t been trying to find herself. It was a desperate bid for attention from the one person on the planet who looked at her across the dinner table night after night but never seemed to notice her.

The shocking hair hadn’t worked, nor the string of bad boyfriends. Mostly, her father had just ignored her.

It had been fifteen years since she’d packed her car and left her hometown of Lovett far behind. She’d been back as often as she could. Christmases here and there. A few Thanksgivings, and once for her aunt Ginger’s funeral. That had been five years ago.

Her finger pushed the button and the window slid all the way down. Guilt pressed the back of her neck and wind whipped her hair as she recalled the last time she’d seen her father. It had been about three years ago, when she’d lived in Denver. He’d driven up for the National Western Stock Show.

She pushed the button again and the window slid up. It didn’t seem like that long since she’d seen him, but it had to have been because she’d moved to Phoenix shortly after that visit.

It might seem to some as if she was a rolling stone. She’d lived in seven different cities in the past fifteen years. Her father liked to say she never stayed in one place long because she tried to put down roots in hard soil. What he didn’t know was that she never tried to put down roots at all. She liked not having roots. She liked the freedom of packing up and moving whenever she felt like it. Her latest career allowed her to do that. After years of higher education, moving from one university to another and never earning a degree in anything, she’d stumbled into real estate on a whim. Now she had her license in three states and loved every minute of selling homes. Well, not every moment. Dealing with lending institutions sometimes drove her nutty.

A sign on the side of the road ticked down the miles to Lovett and she pushed the window button. There was just something about being home that made her feel restless and antsy and anxious to leave before she even arrived. It wasn’t her father. She’d come to terms with their relationship a few years ago. He was never going to be the daddy she needed, and she was never going to be the son he always wanted.

It wasn’t even necessarily the town itself that made her antsy, but the last time she’d been home, she’d been in Lovett for less than ten minutes before she’d felt like a loser. She’d stopped at the Gas and Go for some fuel and a Diet Coke. From behind the counter, the owner, Mrs. Luraleen Jinks, had taken one look at her ringless finger and practically gasped in what might have been horror if not for Luraleen’s fifty-year, pack-a-day wheeze.

“Aren’t you married, dear?”

She’d smiled. “Not yet, Mrs. Jinks.”

Luraleen had owned the Gas and Go for as long as Sadie could recall. Cheap booze and nicotine had tanned her wrinkly hide like an old leather coat. “You’ll find someone. There’s still time.”

Meaning she’d better hurry up. “I’m twenty-eight.” Twenty-eight was young. She’d still been getting her life together.

Luraleen had reached out and patted Sadie’s ringless hand. “Well, bless your heart.”

She had things more figured out these days. She felt calmer, until a few months ago when she’d taken a call from her aunt Bess, on her mother’s side, informing her that she was to be in the wedding of her young cousin Tally Lynn. It was such short notice she had to wonder if someone else had dropped out and she was a last-minute substitute. She didn’t even know Tally Lynn, but Tally Lynn was family, and as much as Sadie tried to pretend she had no roots, and as much as she hated the idea of being in her young cousin’s wedding, she hadn’t been able to say no. Not even when the hot-pink bridesmaid’s dress had arrived at her house to be fitted. It was strapless and corseted, and the short taffeta pickup skirt was so gathered and bubbled that her hands disappeared into the fabric when she put them to her sides. It wouldn’t be so bad if she was eighteen and going to her prom, but her high school years were a distant memory. She was thirty-three and looked a little ridiculous in her prom/bridesmaid’s dress.

Always a bridesmaid. Never a bride. That’s how everyone would see her. Everyone in her family and everyone in town. They’d pity her, and she hated that. Hated that she still gave a damn. Hated that she didn’t currently have a boyfriend to take her. Hated it so much she’d actually given some thought to renting a date. The biggest, best-looking stud she could find. Just to shut everyone up. Just so she wouldn’t have to hear the whispers and see the sideway glances, or have to explain her current manless life, but the logistics of renting a man in one state and transporting him to another hadn’t been real feasible. The ethics didn’t trouble Sadie. Men rented women all the time.

Ten miles outside Lovett, a weather vane and a part of an old fence broke up the brown-on-brown scenery. A barbed wire fence ran along the highway to the rough log-and-wrought-iron entry to the JH Ranch. Everything was as familiar as if she’d never left. Everything but the black truck on the side of the road. A man leaned one hip into the rear fender, his black clothing blending into the black paint, a ball cap shading his face beneath the bright Texas sunlight.

Sadie slowed and prepared to turn up the road to her father’s ranch. She supposed she should stop and ask if he needed help. The raised hood on the truck was a big clue that he did, but she was a lone woman on a deserted highway and he looked really big.

He straightened and pushed away from the truck. A black T-shirt fit tight across his chest and around his big biceps. Someone else would come along.

Eventually.

She turned onto the dirt road and drove through the gate. Or he could walk to town. Lovett was ten miles down the highway. She glanced in her rearview mirror as he shoved his hands on his hips and looked after her taillights.

“Damn.” She stepped on the brake. In the state only a couple of hours and already the Texas in her reared its hospitable head. It was after six. Most people would be home from work by now, and it could be minutes or hours before someone else drove by.

But... people had cell phones. Right? He’d probably already called someone. Through the mirror, he raised one hand from his hip and held it palm up. Maybe he was in a dead zone. She checked to make sure her doors were locked and put the car into reverse. The early evening sunlight poured through the back window as she reversed out onto the highway, then drove up alongside the road toward the big truck.

The warm light bathed the side of his face as the man moved toward her. He was the kind of guy who made Sadie a little uncomfortable. The kind who wore leather and drank beer and crushed empties on their foreheads. The kind who made her stand a little straighter. The kind she avoided like a hot fudge brownie because both were bad news for her thighs.

She stopped and hit the power button on her door handle. The window slowly lowered halfway, and she looked up. Way up past the hard muscle beneath his tight black T-shirt, his wide shoulders and thick neck. It was an hour past his five o’clock shadow, and dark whiskers shaded the bottom half of his face and his square jaw. “Trouble?”

“Yeah.” His voice came from someplace deep. Like it was dragged up from his soul.

“How long have you been stuck out here?”

“About an hour.”

“Run out of gas?”

“No,” he answered, sounding annoyed that he might be confused for the kind of guy who’d run out of gas. Like that somehow insulted his masculinity. “It’s either the alternator or timing belt.”

“Could be your fuel pump.”

One corner of his mouth twitched up. “It’s getting fuel. No power.”

“Where you headed?”

“Lovett.”

She’d figured that since there wasn’t much else down the road. Not that Lovett was much. “I’ll call you a tow truck.”

He raised his gaze and looked down the highway. “I’d appreciate it.”

She punched the number to information and got connected with B.J. Henderson’s garage. She’d gone to school with B.J.’s son, B.J. Junior, who everyone called Boner. Yeah, Boner. The last she’d heard, Boner worked for his dad. The answering machine picked up and she glanced at the clock in her dash. It was five minutes after six. She hung up and didn’t bother to call another garage. It was an hour and five minutes past Lone Star time, and Boner and the other mechanics in town were either at home or holding down a barstool.

She looked up at the man, past that amazing chest, and figured she had two choices. She could take the stranger to her daddy’s ranch and have one of her father’s men take him into town, or take him herself. Driving to the ranch would take ten minutes up the dirt road. It would take twenty to twenty-five to take him into town.

She stared into the shadow cast over his profile. She’d rather a stranger didn’t know where she lived. “I have a stun gun.” It was a lie, but she’d always wanted one.

He looked back down at her. “Excuse me?”

“I have a stun gun and I’ve been trained to use it.” He took a step back from the car and she smiled. “I’m deadly.”

“A stun gun isn’t a deadly weapon.”

“What if I set it really high?”

“Can’t set it high enough to kill unless there is a preexisting condition. I don’t have a preexisting condition.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I used to be in security.”

Oh. “Well, it will hurt like hell if I have to zap your ass.”

“I don’t want my ass zapped, lady. I just need a tow into town.”

“Garages are all closed.” She tossed her phone in the cup holder. “I’ll drive you into Lovett, but you have to show me some identification first.”

Annoyance pulled one corner of his mouth as he reached into the back pocket of his Levi’s, and for the first time, her gaze dropped to his five-button fly.

Good Lord.

Without a word, he pulled out a driver’s license and passed it through the window.

Sadie might have cause to feel a little pervy about staring at his impressive package if it hadn’t been sort of framed in her window. “Great.” She punched up a few numbers on her cell and waited for Renee to pick up. “Hi, Renee. It’s Sadie again. Gotta pen?” She looked at the hunk of man junk in front of her and waited. “I’m giving a stranded guy a ride into town. So, write this down.” She gave her friend the Washington driver’s license number and added, “Vincent James Haven. 4389 North Central Avenue, Kent, Washington. Hair: brown. Eyes: green. Six foot and a hundred and ninety pounds. Got it? Great. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, call the Potter County sheriff’s office in Texas and tell them I’ve been abducted and you fear for my life. Give them the information that I just gave you.” She shut the phone and handed the ID through the window. “Get in. I’ll drop you off in Lovett.” She looked up into the shadow of his hat. “And don’t make me use my stun gun on you.”

“No ma’am.” One corner of his mouth slid up as he took his driver’s license and slid it back into his wallet. “I’ll just get a duffel.”

Her gaze dropped to the back pockets of his jeans as he turned and shoved his wallet inside. Nice chest. Great butt, handsome face. If there was one thing she knew about men, one thing she’d learned from being single all these years, it was that there were several different types of men. Gentlemen, regular guys, charming dogs, and dirty dogs. The only true gentlemen in the world were purebred nerds who were gentlemen in the hopes of someday getting laid. The man grabbing a duffel from the cab of his truck was too good-looking to be a purebred anything. He was likely one of those tricky hybrids.

She hit the door locks, then he tossed a green military duffel into the backseat. He got in the front, and set off the seat belt alarm, filling up the Saab with his broad shoulders and the annoying bong bong bong of the belt alarm.

She put the car into drive, then pulled a U-turn out onto the highway. “Ever been to Lovett, Vincent?”

“No.”

“You’re in for a treat.” She pulled on a pair of sunglasses and stepped on the gas. “Put on your seat belt, please.”

“Are you going to zap me with your stun gun if I don’t?”

“Possibly. Depends on how annoyed I get by the seat belt alarm between here and town.” She adjusted the gold aviators on the bridge of her nose. “And I should warn you in advance, I’ve been driving all day, so I’m already annoyed.”

He chuckled and belted himself in. “You headed to Lovett yourself?”

“Unfortunately.” She glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes. “I was born and raised here but I escaped when I was eighteen.”

He pushed up the bill of his hat and looked across his shoulder at her. His driver’s license had stated that his eyes were green and they were. A light green that wasn’t quite spooky. More unsettling, as he stared back at her from that very masculine face. “What brings you back?” he asked.

“Wedding.” Unsettling in a way that made a girl want to twist her hair and put on some red lip gloss. “My cousin’s getting married.” Her younger cousin. “I’m a bridesmaid.” No doubt the other bridesmaids were younger, too. They’d probably arrive with a date. She’d be the only single one. Old and single. A “Welcome to Lovett, Texas, Y’all” sign marked the city limits. It had been painted a bright blue since the last time she’d been home.

“You don’t look happy about it.”

She’d been out of Texas too long if her “uglies” were showing. According to her mother, “uglies” were any emotions that weren’t pretty. A girl could have them. Just not show them. “The dress is meant for someone ten years younger than me and is the color of Bubble Yum.” She glanced out the driver’s side window. “What brings you to Lovett?”

“Pardon?”

She glanced at him as they passed a used car lot and a Mucho Taco. “What brings you to Lovett?”

“Family.”

“Who’re your people?”

“Person.” He pointed to the Gas and Go across the street. “You can drop me off there.”

She cut across two lanes and pulled into the parking lot. “Girlfriend? Wife?”

“Neither.” He squinted and looked out the windshield at the convenience store. “Why don’t you go ahead and call your friend Renee, and tell her you’re still in one piece.”

She pulled to a stop in an empty slot next to a white pickup and reached into the cup holder. “Don’t want the sheriff knocking on your door?”

“Not on my first night.” He unbuckled the belt and opened the passenger door. His feet hit the pavement and he stood.

She could practically smell the popcorn from the Gas and Go as she punched in Renee’s number. Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” played in her ear until her assistant answered. “I’m not dead.” Sadie pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”

The rear door opened and he pulled out his duffel. He dumped it on the curb, then closed the door. He placed his hands on the roof of the car, then leaned down and looked through the car at her. “Thanks for the ride. I appreciate it. If there’s any way I can repay you, let me know.”

It was the kind of thing people said and never meant. Like asking, “How are you?” when no one really gave a crap. She looked across at him, into his light green eyes and dark masculine face. Everyone in town had always said she had more nerve than sense. “Well, there is one thing.”