Since high school, Kyle had given his family problems. Girls, cigarettes, fast cars and bets placed on anything were what he liked and indulged in lavishly. Adam had tried everything to make him control himself but nothing had worked.

It was Coop who stepped in. “I think the boy just needs to find his passion.”

“Passion is what he has too much of,” Adam said.

“Let me try him with animals. Maybe he inherited Kelly’s genes.”

Adam had started to protest that with Kelly as a mother, Kyle had always been surrounded by wildlife. But Adam was too frustrated to turn down any offer of help.

At seventeen, Kyle had happily packed a bag and moved into the big Fredericks house with Coop, Cait and young Mike. Kyle hadn’t been the least interested in sewing up animal wounds, but he did enjoy hanging around Cait’s office at Heritage Harvests. One afternoon, he talked a man from Wisconsin into doubling his order for his chain of groceries.

Kyle’s easy charm, his likability and his good looks made him a born salesman. Everyone was relieved that Kyle had at last found something he liked to do. However, it hadn’t been easy to get Kyle to go to college two days a week. He just wanted to sell things. It was six years before he graduated, but by then he was Heritage Harvests’ top salesman. He was a big part of why it had become a massive company. Whereas once organic had been an unknown word, it was now used by everyone for everything.

Everyone would have sighed in relief if it weren’t for Kyle’s flitting from one girl to the next.

Every time he brought home a beautiful, intelligent, interesting young woman for Sunday dinner, they all had their fingers crossed. Maybe he’d settle down with this one.

But Kyle always broke it off.

“What was wrong with her?” his mother would demand.

Unperturbed, Kyle would say, “Nothing. She was perfect.”

“Perfect” seemed to be his condemnation of a person.

When Kyle turned thirty, everyone quit trying. It looked like he was never going to be a family man.

By then, Kelly had grandkids from her other two sons, so she was content.

Then, when Kyle was thirty-three, he brought Rebecca “Becks” Newcombe home to meet the family. She wasn’t like the others. She was two years older than Kyle, widowed and had two well-mannered daughters, aged two and four. Becks had placed second in a Miss Kansas pageant and she carried herself elegantly. And she was a lawyer. She worked at a busy, prestigious firm in Kansas City.

All in all, Becks was a bit intimidating. Beauty, brains, accomplishment. She wasn’t like Kyle’s other girlfriends, who were just starting out in life. Becks was already there.