Desperate father Ian McKinley moves his delinquent teenage son to the small Virginia town of Keeling Creek, a place very unlike the New York City life he has been leading. Love takes him by surprise when he falls for Colby Williams, a woman unlike anyone he has ever been drawn to, a small town vet with a heart for animals and a fierce love for a teenage daughter she is also struggling to raise.

But Colby has a secret in her past, a secret she’s not sure her daughter will ever forgive her for. And as for Ian McKinley, he seems too good to be true. If she had learned anything from the one time she had thrown her heart fully into love, it was that it didn’t last.

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

Prologue

Ian McKinley had finally made it. Reached the pinnacle. The top rung of the ladder. Tonight represented the crown jewel in the career he’d spent seventeen years of his life building. Thirty-nine, and by most definitions, he had everything. Money. Success. A teenage son. A beautiful fiancée.

Not to mention, having just brought on board the biggest client ever for CCI Investments of Manhattan, he was a hero to his partners. This party at the Waldorf-Astoria had been thrown for him, the invitation list a who’s who of New York City high rollers.

Standing here now among trays of champagne and tables loaded with exotic-looking foods, he should have been nothing but exhilarated. Somehow, he merely felt tired. Bone weary with the routine of his life, the predictability of it.

Every morning he bought his breakfast at the same bagel shop on Sixtieth Street, ate it at his desk with exactly two cups of coffee, no cream, no sugar. Every day he ran six miles at noon. He couldn’t remember when he’d done anything remotely spontaneous.

But this was the life he had wanted. This was what he’d worked so hard for—to prove a poor boy from the wrong side of Manhattan could make it to Park and Sixty-first. He only regretted that neither Sherry nor his mother had lived to see his success. He’d promised them both he would make something of himself one day. He wondered if they would have been proud of him. But then, if Sherry had lived, maybe he wouldn’t have been quite so driven. Wouldn’t have buried himself in his work. Life would have been more about family. More normal for him and for Luke.

Did he even know what normal was anymore?

For the past three weeks, he’d gotten no more than five hours of sleep a night. That might explain his fatigue, except that part of him felt as if he’d been tired for years. He needed a vacation. Away from the city. When was the last time he’d taken one? The last time he’d spent more than an hour alone with his son? Guilt gnawed at him. He would plan something for them to do together. Soon. And he would make sure he kept his word.

“Why is it you look like a man headed for the gas chamber instead of the man of the hour?”

Ian swung around to find Rachel looking up at him with inquisitive eyes and a smile on her lips. “Hey,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a soft squeeze. “A pillow and a bed sound pretty good about now.”

“I could go for that. Especially since I’ve been getting just a little jealous of the stares half the women in the room have been sending you all night.” She leaned in to kiss thecorner of his mouth, her right breast pressing into his chest. He waited for the surge of attraction that should have followed her deliberate provocation and decided, when it did not come, that he was more tired than he’d realized.

“Hey, we can’t have any of that.” Curtis Morgan clapped a hand on Ian’s shoulder. A short man with a receding hairline and an expanding waistline, Curtis was one of Ian’s partners at CCI. “Not until after the wedding, at least. Ms. Montgomery, you’ll have our guest of honor ducking out before I’ve had a chance to make my toast to him.”

“I suggest you hurry up and do it,” Rachel said with a raised brow. “I’m afraid he’s nearly dead on his feet.”

“No wonder. You really gave this one everything, Ian,” Curtis said. “Our firm will see the benefit of it. We’re all very appreciative.”

“Yes. I’m so proud of him,” Rachel said. “Now, if I could just get him to agree on a wedding date. . . .”

She looked up at Ian with wide eyes that attempted to convey innocence, but Ian suspected Rachel knew exactly what she was doing.

As methodical about her personal life as she was about attaining senior partnership status at the law firm of Brown, Brown and Fitzgerald, Rachel made no secret of the fact that she thought a marriage between them would be mutually beneficial. She’d continued pressing her case for the past couple of years until she’d finally convinced him she was right.

Two weeks ago, when Ian asked her to marry him, it had been with the understanding that there was no rush. Both their lives were full, and a piece of paper wouldn’t change things drastically. Or so he had told himself.

When Sherry died right after Luke was born, he said he would never marry again. Unexpectedly losing his wife at the age of twenty-three was the most painful, life-altering thing he’d ever known. Something inside him simply shut down. For the first five years after her death, he didn’t date at all. When he did start seeing someone, he made sure it never lasted for any length of time, never long enough to let things get serious.

With Luke almost grown now, he didn’t relish the idea of spending the rest of his life alone. His relationship with Rachel was a comfortable one. It made no demands or even hinted at happily-ever-after and white picket fences. At one point, he’d believed in destiny and people who were meant for each other. A young man’s dreams. He no longer believed in any of that. If what he had with Rachel met the definition of compatibility more than love, he still appreciated her. Smart and beautiful, he personally knew of a dozen men who envied him.

“So what’s the holdup, Ian?” Curtis asked with a punch to his left shoulder. “You need a reason to leave the office before midnight.”

A waiter approached them and handed Ian a cordless phone. “There’s a call for you, Mr. McKinley.”

“Now, who could that be?” Curtis joked. “We’re the only ones who ever bother you at this hour, and we’re all here.”

Ian shrugged and moved to the window, away from the noise of the party. “Hello.”

“Mr. McKinley?”

“Yes?”

“This is Detective O’Neill with the New York City Police Department. Is Luke McKinley your son?”

Alarm shot through Ian. “Yes, he is.”

“He was arrested tonight for possession of marijuana, Mr. McKinley.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. One by one, they finally did, even as disbelief washed over him. “Is he all right?”

“Yes.”

“There must be some mistake. Luke has never—”

“No mistake, Mr. McKinley.”

The detective gave him the address of the station and told him where to find Luke. Ian hung up, feeling as if someone had just punched him in the gut. He found Rachel and told her everything he knew. When she offered to go with him, he asked her to stay and explain to the others that he’d had an emergency.

He caught a cab outside the building, imagining, during the drive, a hundred different scenarios involving Luke and jail.

When the driver pulled over at the police station, Ian handed him a fifty and sprinted for the door, his stomach churning. Inside, he took the elevator to the third floor. Even at this hour, the place vibrated with purpose. Still dressed in his tuxedo, he got his fair share of stares as he wound his way through a maze of desks littered with coffee cups and mounds of paper.

From the far corner of the room, a thin man with graying hair and skin that could use a little sunshine waved at him and called out, “You Mr. McKinley?”

“Yes.”

“Your son is in the room across the hall. Go on in. I’ll be right with you.”

“Thank you,” Ian said, while the detective went back to his call.

At the door, Ian stopped and drew in a deep breath before quickly turning the knob. Relief flooded him at the sight of Luke standing by the window with his hands jammed in his pockets.

His hair, long in front and short at the sides, halfway covered his eyes. His stance screamed defensive, his mouth set in a straight line. “Guess I messed up your party, huh?” he asked, his tone belligerent.

If Luke felt any fear, he wasn’t showing it.

“Is that what you meant to do?” Ian asked quietly, not at all sure where to go with this.

“I didn’t mean to do anything.” Luke shrugged, clearly a rebel with a cause, the origins of which Ian couldn’t begin to guess.

“They said you were arrested for drug possession.”

Another shrug. “Big deal.”

“Big deal?” Ian repeated. “Do you have any idea how serious this is?”

“It must be if you left your party to come down here.”

The verbal slap achieved its intended sting. “I know things have been busy lately, but. . . .”

“Lately?” Luke interrupted with a short laugh. “You’ve been saying ‘lately’ since I was six years old. Probably before then, I just can’t remember so far back. You only have time for work. And Rachel, of course, now that she’s going to be your wife.”

Bitterness layered the declaration. The vehemence behind it shocked Ian. Luke wasn’t a big talker. For the past few years, getting information out of him took the finesse of a secret service agent. Ian chalked it up to teenage rebellion. The boy had been even less communicative since he’d told him about his engagement to Rachel. He looked at his son now and felt as though he were seeing him for the first time in a very long while. “I think we need to talk.”

“So pencil me in before your nine-thirty, and I’ll tell you all about how I know you wish I’d never been born.”

The anger in the boy’s voice hit Ian like a brick in the face. “Why would you say a thing like that, Luke?”

“Because it’s the truth.”

“No. It’s not. Son—”

“If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have died,” Luke yelled. “Don’t you think I know that?”

Ian grappled for composure. “Nobody could have prevented what happened to your mother. She had a stroke. How could you possibly think I would—”

“I don’t know,” he interrupted. “Maybe because you work all the time just so you don’t have to be around me.”

“Luke!” Ian stopped, at a complete loss for a response. Somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, something had gone terribly wrong between the two of them. Staring across at his son, part boy, part man, Ian wondered how Luke had felt this way without his knowing. How long had Luke been trying to get his attention? “Does this have something to do with my marrying Rachel?”

“I don’t care who you marry. I’m sure you’ll make all the time in the world for her.”

Ian felt as if someone had just held a mirror in front of him. He didn’t like what he saw. He thought about the party given in his honor tonight and realized the price. He’d spent the past seventeen years trying to make sure Luke had the things he himself never had as a kid. He’d sent the boy off to a camp in Wyoming every summer and to Austria in the winter with his ski team. In fact, he’d given him everything possible except one thing.

Time.

Maybe if he had, none of this would be happening.

Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have needed this kind of wake-up call to see what a mess he’d made of things.

Ian sank down on the chair behind him. He raked a hand through his hair and wondered how he’d gone from such heights to such depths in the span of one night. Luke was in trouble. Ian could blame no one but himself.

1

Monday morning started like every other Monday morning of this past month. Heaven help her, Colby Williams did not understand the adolescent mind-set.

She shot a glance at her watch. “Baby, why can’t you just wear the first outfit you put on? We’re late. I’ve got to get to the clinic.”

“Don’t call me that, Mom.” Lena frowned. “I’m not a baby. And the first outfit looked like dogsh—”

“Lena!” Surprised, Colby stared at her daughter. Lena didn’t talk that way. At least not until recently.

Lena rolled her eyes and stomped up the steps to change for the third time. “Dog poop,” she called out. “The first outfit looked like dog poop.”

Critter, Lena’s one-eared cat, pounced up the stairs behind her. From the Oriental rug on the living room floor, Petey and Lulu, reigning house dogs, eyed Lena’s ascent as if they knew it wouldn’t be her last.

“You’re probably right,” Colby said to the pedigree-free duo, then dropped onto the oversize sage green chair next to the fireplace. She surveyed the small but cozy room with some measure of satisfaction. At least order prevailed in this part of her life. Bookcases lined the wall to the right of the couch, shelves filled with hardbacks collected since her childhood, everything from Beezus and Ramona, which she’d read in the fourth grade, to Gone With The Wind, which she still pulled out on rainy days.

The home she and Lena furnished and decorated together with casual, country touches could be called more than comfortable, but someday, Colby hoped to buy them a house big enough to have a room for her books and a bigger bedroom for Lena. She’d hoped that house would be Oak Hill, an old farm outside of town. But it had sold recently, and that hope was no longer a realistic one.

From the radio on the kitchen counter, a singer twanged an appropriate tune about not dwelling on stuff you couldn’t change. Following her advice, Colby got up and began putting things away, her thoughts turning to Lena. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry these days where her daughter was concerned. She was a thirty-four-year-old woman. A mother. A veterinarian with a thriving practice. And she was losing control of her fifteen-year-old.

The worst part? She had no idea why.

In the past several weeks, Lena’s grades dropped from almost straight A’s to nearly all C’s. Lena was smart. Colby knew that wasn’t the problem. Lena had always been a good child. Maybe too good. Colby had been spoiled by that. Her relationship with her daughter had been the most fulfilling aspect of her life for so long that she couldn’t imagine it any other way.

The difference in Lena seemingly happened overnight, as if aliens had swooped down and stolen her beautiful, fun-loving daughter, replacing her with a surlier version of herself. The kid who lived with her looked just like Lena, sounded like Lena. But she wasn’t Lena.

More than once, Colby started to drive over to her parents’ house and plead for their advice on how to deal with this new side to her. She’d stopped herself each time. Samuel and Emma Williams had always been there for Lena and her. They’d helped put Colby through college and then vet school, lending a hand when Lena was a baby and Colby had been determined to stay in school. They’d been the best of parents, and she’d called on them far too often. She’d find a way to work this out on her own.

The phone rang. Tucking her shoulder-length hair behind one ear, she picked it up with a distracted, “Hello.”

“I know you’re headed out the door, but I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Does it involve convincing whoever stole my daughter to bring her back?”

Phoebe Walker laughed. “Hormones raging, huh?”

“I don’t know what it is. Isn’t there some kind of pill I can give her until it goes away?” Colby stretched the cord across the kitchen and picked up Lena’s plate of uneaten French toast.

“You’re the doctor,” Phoebe said. “You ought to know.”

Colby dumped the toast in the disposal and stuck the plate under the faucet, watching the syrup slide down the sink. “My expertise is in cows. They don’t turn on their mothers.”

Phoebe chuckled. “If it’s any consolation, I think this is normal.”

“It’s not,” Colby muttered, swiping at a water spot on her blue cotton shirt, and then wanting to change the subject, “So what’s the proposition?”

“An invitation, actually. To dinner.”

Colby tucked the phone under her chin and grabbed a paper towel to dab at her shirt. “What kind of dinner?”

“The kind where you put on a dress, a spritz or two of perfume and leave your calf-birthing clothes at home in the closet.”

“You want me to do all that just for you and Frank?” she asked, deliberately misunderstanding.

“Well—”

“That’s what I thought. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Colby—”

“Don’t Colby me.” She slipped the plate into the dishwasher. “Have you forgotten what I told you the last time you tried to fix me up?”

“Are you going to hold that against me forever?” Phoebe asked, a whine in her voice.

“I should. You certainly deserve it.”

“He wasn’t that bad.”

“Yeah, if your idea of a hot date is an octopus pickled in Brut.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Colby, you’re too picky!”

“And you’ve got too much time on your hands.” As Colby’s best friend, Phoebe refused to stay out of her love life, saying she’d known her since the beginning of the world and therefore had a vested interest in her happiness. Personally, Colby thought she should join the garden club or take up knitting, anything to relieve Phoebe’s self-appointed burden of finding Colby a husband.

No matter how often they went over it, Phoebe just didn’t get it. She refused to believe a woman could be happy living her life without a man—maybe because she happened to be married to one of the last good men on earth. But Colby qualified as walking proof she was wrong. She’d tried the dating scene off and on over the years, thinking Lena needed a father figure. Once in a while, she’d even dated out of a true desire for companionship. But at some point, it stopped seeming worth the trouble. The only men she ever met were either newly divorced and neurotic or looking for a housekeeper instead of a wife.

She’d long ago decided love rarely turned out to be the way Hollywood depicted it. But then, she’d learned that when she’d been eighteen and too green to know better than to fall for a great-looking guy with a great-looking car who came from a different world than the one she knew.

“Exactly who are you going to meet,” Phoebe continued, “tromping around in dairy barns in waist-high rubber boots?”

“The bulls I run into are a lot more interesting than most of the men I know.”

Phoebe let out an inelegant snort.

Just then, Lena tromped down the stairs in black military boots, her purple bombshell replaced by a tie-dyed explosion of orange, red and green that made the first outfit look tame by comparison. The streaks of purple hair, in tribute to the discarded ensemble, remained. “It looks as if Lena’s finally decided on the look of the day,” Colby said, lowering her voice. “I’ve got to get going. We’re already late.”

“Wait! You didn’t answer my question. Dinner this Friday. My house. Be here.”

“Phoebe—”

“I promise you won’t regret it.” Phoebe added a hasty goodbye and hung up before Colby could argue further. If she’d had the time, she would have called her back and given her a definite no on the spot, but Lena would be late for school and Colby had an early appointment. Turning down Phoebe’s invitation would have to wait.

2

Ten minutes later, Colby parked in front of Jefferson County High School. It sat on a small rise, and built of brick with classic lines, it was the kind of building that would never look outdated. A football stadium—impressive for a town the size of Keeling Creek—sat to the right of it.

The engine of her old Ford truck shook a bit as she put it into park. Out of habit, she leaned across to give Lena a goodbye kiss on the forehead.

“Mom!” Lena strained against her door as if Colby had just come after her with a hot branding iron.

Colby sat back in her seat, her hands resting on the steering wheel. The kiss had been a reflex action, one of those things that seemed impossible to stop when she’d been doing it for so many years. It had only been in the past several weeks that Lena started rebuffing her affection. A lump of emotion lodged in Colby’s throat. She hated to see Lena grow up. If this was how the young made themselves independent from their parents, then she only wished the process over. Watching her daughter pull away from her day by day hurt too much. “Are you coming by the clinic after school?” she asked, keeping her voice light.

“No. A bunch of us are going to the Dairy Queen.”

Lena hadn’t come by the office in weeks. Ever since she’d started kindergarten, she hightailed it to the practice as soon as the bell rang, helping out with dog baths and feedings, anything to be around the animals. Now, she seemed to have lost interest. Colby forced herself not to respond, but it hurt, nonetheless. “What time will you be home, then?”

“The usual.”

Colby refrained from mentioning that “the usual” recently stretched its boundaries to anywhere between four and six o’clock. “Just be back by dinner.”

A black Mercedes sedan rolled into the spot in front of them, its bumper barely missing the hood of Colby’s truck.

“Oh, no!” Lena slid down in her seat.

“What is it?” Colby asked, startled.

“The new guy. Luke McKinley. Oh, my gosh, he’s so awesome!”

Not once in fifteen-plus years had Colby ever heard such words from Lena. She’d always been a tomboy. As a child, she’d have chosen playing in the dirt over playing with dolls any day of the week. Not so long ago, boys rated the same level as fish bait. Colby wished they’d stayed there. Nonetheless, she strained her neck for a glimpse of the boy.

“I gotta go, Mom,” Lena said, reserve creeping into her voice as she slid out of the truck.

From the back seat, Petey and Lulu barked in protest when Lena forgot to say goodbye.

Colby glanced at the wounded-looking pair. “So you’ve noticed, too, huh?” She put the truck in gear, stretching for another glimpse of the vehicle in front of her. The boy hadn’t gotten out yet, and she could hardly sit here all day. She wheeled around the Mercedes, watching Lena linger at the door, no doubt waiting for Awesome Luke.

3

Colby headed up Main Street toward the clinic, frustrated by the twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Joe Dooley tooled along in front of her in his farm-use pickup, an old Chevy that had seen its fortieth birthday and then some. A firm believer that laws were laws, Joe kept the needle of his speedometer safely on twenty-four.

Telling herself to stop fretting and enjoy the early September morning, Colby waved at Ruby Lynch who was sweeping the sidewalk at Thurman’s Hardware. Keeling Creek had become known as one of the few towns that, so far, had been bypassed by the fast-food chains and super shopping stores. Small family-run businesses still flourished, and Colby liked it that way.

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