Adam did just what Kelly said he shouldn’t. The horse, retired from a racetrack, needed only a nudge to take off fast. Gravel and dirt spewed.

Vera’s heart leaped to her throat, pounding in anticipation.

Kelly ran down the porch steps and stood to the side of the path Adam was taking. He and the horse stopped less than a foot from the porch railing.

Kelly ran forward. “If you hurt his mouth I’ll murder you!” she shouted.

Adam’s eyes never left Vera’s as he tossed the reins to Kelly. “He’s fine, kiddo. Give him a bath. My truck is here.” He held out his hand to Vera. She took it and the two of them walked down the drive to where his pickup was parked.

Adam held the door to his truck open as Vera got in, then went to the other side and got behind the wheel. In the distance, Kelly was still yelling that he was a pompous ass and if Xander was harmed she would report Adam to the ASPCA.

“Your baby sister hasn’t changed,” Adam said as he started the truck. “Was that a lizard on the porch?”

“Yes. And a bird and three dogs.”

He glanced at her so hotly that even her ears turned red.

“Miss me?” he asked.

“Madly,” she said.

Smiling, they rode in silence. She knew exactly where they were going. Burke Hatten’s widowed mother had refused to leave the ranch that she and her husband had built. No amount of enticements of travel or city life interested her. But she’d been a quiet woman and she’d needed to get away from her bigger-than-life son and her two energetic grandsons. Burke had built her a cabin about a mile from their main house.

One room and a bath was all she wanted. The windows looked out over the fields with their grazing cattle. After her death, Burke had locked the door and no one used the cabin. Until, as teenagers, Adam and Vera had claimed the place as their own. They’d cleared it of mice and spiders, repaired the leaky roof and used it whenever they could escape their families. If Burke Hatten knew where the teenagers were spending their afternoons, he never let on.

Adam parked to the side of the house. It was a plain little place, with a porch along the front.

They got out, stepped onto the porch, and Adam swept Vera up into his arms. Like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold.

She snuggled her head into his shoulder. So familiar, yet it had been so long that it was almost new.

When he tossed her onto the bed, she gasped, expecting dust to encase her. But it was clean. She raised herself on her arms. The familiar place practically sparkled. The bedsheets felt new. “Is this—?” That was all she said before he fell on top of her.