Chapter 1
(One Year Later)
As the crisp winter air slipped beneath her wool coat and prickled her skin, Sierra stood on the front porch of her family’s ranch house and watched her brother painstakingly climb out of the Jeep and hobble across the expansive front lawn.
Behind Mav, the hills of Santa Barbara County rose up out of the valley, verdant and lush from the rain. One mile down from the sprawling family home, nestled in the valley, Hunt Ranch and Resort thrived.
Mav had built the luxury dude ranch after their parents had died in a car accident a decade earlier.
Unexpectedly in charge of thousands of acres and faced with increasingly stringent government regulations on ranching, her brother had decided to diversify.
With Sierra’s blessing, he had sold off pockets of valuable land to fund the resort’s construction, and although it had taken them almost five years to become solvent, now, the resort was an award-winning vacation destination.
The few cattle they still kept as an homage to Hunt Ranch’s cowboy history dotted the same hills. But where the resort thrived, Maverick, typically so large and looming, was gaunt and pale, his body almost lanky after his hospital stay.
He’d been shot.
Sierra still struggled to reconcile that simple fact in her mind.
It didn’t matter that she had spent the long hours waiting for him to come out of surgery or visited him in the hospital every day.
It didn’t matter that she had heard Mav’s fiancée, Nina, recount the events leading up to the shooting a dozen times or that she’d stepped in to look after her niece, Poppy, while Mav had been in the hospital and Nina had been looking after him.
Sierra couldn’t think of it. Of Mav, so strong and vital, almost dying at the hand of a deranged narcissist who’d followed Nina to Hunt Ranch.
Though Mav walked by himself, Nina hovered on one side.
On the other, Benji strolled casually, but they all knew he stayed close in case Mav needed him.
Even Mav’s dog, Shadow – a mutt he’d rescued years before – looked ready to catch him, her belly to the ground, her body scooting backwards with every step that he took towards the ranch house.
Sierra didn’t rush him, didn’t hurry to his side and help him up the stairs as she so desperately wanted to, knowing that he wouldn’t appreciate it.
Instead, she planted her feet to the spot, leaned against the porch rail in her best attempt at nonchalance, and when he stopped in front of her, said, ‘I dropped Poppy with Jenna so you could get settled. Seems like it was a good call; you look like shit, Mav.’
He released a winded laugh, raised one unsteady hand to swipe at the sweat coating his brow from the short walk across the lawn.
‘Feel like it too,’ he replied tiredly. ‘Benji had to help me get into the Jeep at the hospital,’ he added, his tone thick with the self-disgust of a man who was used to being infallible.
Sierra’s gaze flickered to Benji. He stood a little out of their circle, his hands tucked into his pockets.
She couldn’t figure out why he didn’t look juvenile in the jeans, sneakers, and black Tom Waits T-shirt, but thought that, maybe, it was because he wore the skin underneath the clothes so confidently. So honestly.
He had come home the same day she’d told him Mav had been hurt.
Despite their past and the fact that they could no longer stand to be in the same room as one another, he had wordlessly joined forces with her to bully Nina into leaving the hospital to sleep each night.
He had stepped seamlessly into Mav’s shoes at Hunt Ranch, overseeing the hundred and twenty horses and various other animals in her brother’s stead, so that Sierra could focus on her job managing the front end of the business and mitigating the fallout from the shooting.
Benji had done everything right – again.
And, still, every time she looked at him, all she felt was deep, black anger.
Used to Sierra’s coldness, Benji ignored her. He winked at Nina and stretched his back exaggeratedly. ‘Almost put my back out too. He may have lost weight but he’s still a heavy fucker.’
Mav laughed tiredly, but the sound was music to Sierra’s ears. She’d lost her parents, Baby Girl, and – though it was her own fault – Benji, too, so Maverick was all she had left, and she didn’t think she could survive anything happening to him.
‘Let’s get you inside.’ Nina stepped forward, her hands outstretched to help Mav up the stairs. ‘It’s chilly out here.’
‘Actually …’ Mav visibly winced as he lowered himself down onto the porch step. ‘I just want to sit outside for a while.’ He tilted his head back and sighed deeply. ‘Christ, it feels so good to be home.’
Nina hovered. ‘Mav, what if you catch a chill? It’s cold and you’re still—’
‘I’m okay. Just tired.’ He tapped the spot next to him. ‘Come here.’ When Nina only raised her eyebrows, clearly planning her counterargument, Mav added, ‘I might catch a chill. We need to cuddle for warmth.’
Nina’s smile broke free even as her eyes glossed. Without a word, she went inside – and came back out almost immediately carrying the throw blanket from the sofa. She draped it over Mav, sat beside him and rested her head on his shoulder.
Sierra thought they made quite the picture, the gorgeous Hollywood starlet with her hip-length, black hair and the rugged, denim-clad cowboy sitting on the steps together, looking out at the rolling hills.
It was odd to think that they had only met that summer, barely six months prior, when Nina had come to Hunt Ranch to recuperate after she’d been attacked in her LA home.
When Sierra looked at Nina and Mav, she didn’t see a new, shallow love.
She saw an achingly beautiful connection that most people would have recognized as ‘fated’.
They were all quiet for a long moment, Mav and Nina in their own little world, Sierra and Benji hovering, both too concerned for Mav to avoid each other as they’d have preferred.
Nina was the one who broke the silence. ‘I wanna get married here, Mav.’
Mav angled his head to look down at her. ‘Not at the resort?’
‘No. Here. Home.’ She pointed to the huge oak tree. ‘Under the tree. Markus as my man of honour – and photographer, of course. Benji as your best man. Sierra as officiant. Poppy as the flower girl.’ Nina looked back at Sierra, her eyes twinkling. ‘You wouldn’t mind, right?’
Sierra shook her head even as that suffocating weight rose in her chest. There had been a time when she and Benji had made the exact same decision – to get married beneath the oak tree.
She didn’t dare look at him, but she wondered if it even crossed his mind after all this time.
‘Of course not. I’ll get ordained online and then add it to our list of services for the resort,’ she teased.
Mav nodded slowly, thinking it through. ‘If you’re sure that’s what you want.’
‘I’m sure. I want simple. And I want to be yours. As soon as possible,’ Nina replied. ‘Time shouldn’t be wasted, Mav. I …’ Nina trailed off as she fought to compose herself. ‘I keep seeing you lying there, your blood everywhere …’
‘Hey, hey, what’s this?’ Mav crooned when Nina’s tears began to fall. ‘I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I know.’ Nina waved away his concern. ‘I know. I’m just emotional. Having you home again …’
Didn’t Sierra understand that? Didn’t she feel that same anxiety burning in her chest, even though her brother was alive and sitting right in front of her?
‘How about Christmas Day?’ Mav suggested. ‘That way you’ll be mine by the new year.’
Nina, laughing through her tears, replied, ‘Perfect.’
But Sierra blanched. Her heart, built stoically on control and perfection, stuttered.
Her panic reared. Not only was sixteen days an unreasonable amount of time to plan a wedding, but the resort had taken a huge financial hit when they’d had to close to the public as news of Nina’s stay there had spread through the media.
News vans and Nina Keller fans had swamped the resort, exposing Nina’s location to her stalker and giving Sierra and Mav no choice but to close the gates to everyone who didn’t have a pre-existing reservation.
Sierra didn’t begrudge the choice they’d made.
Nina was family. So, the decision to close the resort had been an easy one.
But the reality of the situation was that it would take them a full quarter to recover financially.
To take the pressure off and avoid having to lay off any of her staff, Sierra had cut her own salary and was living off her savings.
But, unwilling to bring up that particular worry to Mav in his current state, she said, ‘Let’s just take a moment to think this through, guys. Christmas is sixteen days away.’
‘It is.’ Nina gnawed on her lip. ‘Do you think that’s enough time?’
‘Yes,’ Mav replied.
At the same time that Sierra said, ‘No!’
‘As long as you’re truly fine with simple?’ Mav asked Nina, completely ignoring Sierra.
Nina nodded vigorously. ‘It’ll be small and intimate. Just the family and our close friends. If that’s okay with you?’
‘Nina, I don’t need anything but you,’ Mav affirmed.
Sierra rolled her eyes even though her panic was very real. ‘You guys, as adorable as you are, the weeks before Christmas are our busiest time of year at the resort—’
‘But Christmas Day is our quietest,’ Mav countered, still looking only at Nina. ‘And the next few weeks are going to be the only time in my entire life I can’t physically work. Hell, I can help you plan the entire thing.’
‘We can use the horses in our photos,’ Nina gushed, undeterred. ‘And we can get Poppy a dress that matches mine!’