“Your new ... ?” Her throat went dry and she licked her lips as she realized where he was going to live. At the Sorenson ranch. Dear Lord, no. Her heart turned to stone and she had trouble breathing for a second. “Don’t tell me you bought out Ralph Sorenson.” She could barely say the name. A sick sensation curled in her stomach.

“That’s it.”

Oh, God. Her fingers clenched into tight fists. Slowly she straightened them. This was no time to fall apart. “You know Ralph Sorenson?”

“Sure do.” He slowed as they passed the sign indicating they’d entered Bittersweet’s city limits. A few streetlights had begun to glow as the first shades of evening slipped through the narrow streets and boulevards of Bittersweet. “Ralph helped me out of a jam a long time ago, gave me a job and treated me like a son ever since.”

“Did he?” She felt the color drain from her face and her heartbeat thudded through her brain. “I suppose you met his son,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted when deep inside she ached.

“Dave?” His smile faded and something dark and dangerous skated through his gaze as he glanced in her direction.

“Y-yes. Dave.”

“I knew him,” he admitted, his voice suddenly flat. Was it her imagination or did he suddenly grip the steering wheel more tightly? “Helluva guy.”

“Is he?” she asked, her own question sounding far away when she thought of the one boy she had loved, the one to whom she’d eagerly given her virginity, the father of her only son.

“Was,” Luke said, flipping on his turn signal and wheeling into the gravel lot beside the high school.

Her heart turned to ice at the implication. Luke rubbed his chin as he pulled into a parking spot. He cut the engine and looked at her with troubled blue eyes.

“I thought the news would have gotten back here by now.” She felt a chill as cold as Alaska in January and braced herself for words she’d never expected to hear.

“Dave Sorenson died six months ago.”

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Katie’s world tilted, the underpinnings giving way. All that she’d held true for years shattered, bursting through her brain in painful, heart-slicing shards. No! It couldn’t be. Dave Sorenson was alive.

But the look Luke Gates sent her convinced her that he was telling the truth, that this wasn’t some sort of cruel, hateful joke.

Josh’s father was dead.