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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Carolyn Brown

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Stephanie Gafron/Sourcebooks

  Cover image © TwentySeven/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Excerpt from Secrets in the Sand

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Becca scolded herself for leaving the door open.

  Now Dalton’s pesky dog had snuck into the watermelon wine shed. If he scratched off a hair and it landed in one of the containers of juice, she intended to strangle the shaggy critter and hang him out on the barbed-wire fence to show all the other ugly mutts in southern Oklahoma what happens when a dog hair got into her wine.

  She crammed the air lock down on the bottle, wiped the outside, and hurried over to the door. “Get out of here!” she yelled as she pointed outside. Austin had trusted her with the wine shed for a whole week, and she was not going to let her boss and best friend down.

  Tuff rolled over on his back and looked up at her with big, brown eyes. “I said, go!” She stomped her foot, but the dog just wagged his tail. “Who names a raggedy-ass mutt, Tuff, anyway?” She grabbed a broom, and his tail flipped back and forth so fast that it was a blur.

  “He ain’t afraid of a broom.” Dalton’s deep Texas drawl startled her. “I use one just like that to scratch his tummy out in the barn, and he’s named after Tuff Hydeman who is a world champion professional bull rider.” He gave a shrill whistle and Tuff jumped up from the floor and stood at attention. “Come on, boy. We won’t stay where we’re not wanted.”

  “Shaggy from the old Scooby-Doo shows fits him better,” Becca said.

  “Now, you’re just hurting the poor little fella’s feelings,” Dalton said. “Don’t pay no attention to what she says, Tuff. She don’t know jack squat about a good rodeo dog like you.”

  Becca popped her hands on her hips. “I’ve been to rodeos, and I grew up on a ranch. Don’t tell me that I don’t know nothing about cattle dogs.”

  Dalton Wilson’s confidence oozed out of him, but then there wasn’t a woman in the whole universe who wouldn’t jump at the chance to walk down the aisle with him. Sweet Lord, the cowboy looked like sex on a stick.

  Dalton flashed a brilliant smile that softened his square jaw. “You should never judge a book by its cover.” He gave another shrill whistle and Tuff pranced toward the door, head and tail held high as if he was marching up to the judge’s stand to receive the biggest trophy in a prestigious dog show.

  In Becca’s opinion, he was still as ugly as sin on Sunday morning.

  Together, Dalton and Tuff strutted out of the shed. One sexy cowboy that Becca was determined not to let get under her skin or in her heart, and a wiry dog that shared DNA with steel wool.

  “Dammit!” Becca swore under her breath. “I’ve probably joined all the women in the universe in admiring him, but the difference is that I’m stronger than they are, and I can damn well fight off his charms.”

  Becca McKay lived up to her Irish heritage with her flaming-red hair and mossy-green eyes. She loved Irish coffee and Irish food and had a little of the Irish accent, just like her daddy who’d been born in County Cork. When it came to music and the southern accent in her voice, she was her mama’s daughter, and she was country through and through.

  Becca had covered songs by Tanya Tucker, Reba McIntire, Dolly Parton, and a whole host of other female country artists from the time she could hold a microphone at county fairs, family reunions, or anywhere anyone would let her sing. With stars in her eyes, she’d gone to Nashville right out of high school, intent on making a career as a country music recording artist. By Christmas, she figured she would have a contract, and all the folks back home in Ringgold, Texas, would be listening to her sing on the radio.

  Yeah, right.

  At Christmas, she was working for one of the dinner theaters in the evenings and singing on street corners just to make rent for the one-bedroom apartment she shared with four other girls. Ten years later, she was working at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge as a bartender at night, in a winery during the day, and living in the same walk-up apartment. At least by that time, she was sharing the place with only one other girl, who was just as desperate as she was to get a toe in the door as a country singer.

  The previous December, she had been on her way home from Tootsie’s sometime after two in the morning when the high heel of her boot stabbed a piece of paper. No matter how hard she shook her foot, it wouldn’t let go. Finally, she leaned against the brick wall of a building and removed it with her fingers.

  The streetlight illuminated
the paper enough that she could identify it as the last page of a contract that had no signature. The next morning, her grandmother, who lived just over the Red River from Texas in Terral, Oklahoma, called to tell her that she had fallen and twisted her ankle. Could Becca come home for a few weeks to help her out? Everything seemed like an omen—the contract with no name on it suggested that she would never sign with a record company, and her grandmother, who never asked for help from anyone, seemed to say that Nashville would never really be her home.

  Becca gave notice at both her jobs, handed her set of apartment keys to her roommate, and drove west, watching her hopes and dreams fade away in the rearview mirror. Grammie McKay, Irish to the bone and with a thick Irish accent, got her the job with Austin O’Donnell’s wine business. Grammie’s ankle healed, and she was getting around really well these days. Becca enjoyed her work, but Terral, population less than four hundred, sure didn’t provide many opportunities for her to sing.

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” she muttered as she closed the door to the wine shed and went back to squeezing the juice from the first watermelons of the season.

  The door hinges squeaked, and Becca flipped around, ready to yell at Tuff if he’d figured out a way to get inside again. She might not like Dalton’s dog, but her pulse jacked up a few notches at the thought of seeing Dalton a second time that morning. She was already visualizing him in those faded tight-fitting jeans, scuffed-up cowboy boots, and his dusty old straw hat as she turned away from the watermelon she was cutting into chunks. In her mind’s eye, she could see his dark hair curling on his chambray shirt collar, and his bright blue eyes twinkling as he teased her about his worthless dog.

  “Rodeo dog, my butt,” she muttered.

  “You callin’ me a dog, darlin’ girl, or have you given up singin’ and gone to ridin’ bulls?” Grammie McKay’s accent jerked the picture of Dalton right out of Becca’s head.

  “No, ma’am,” she answered. “I was fussin’ to myself about that mutt of Dalton Wilson’s. Seems like every time it gets a chance, it comes lookin’ for me.”

  Grammie sat down in a lawn chair. This morning she wore a bright-green sweat suit that brought out the glimmer in eyes that were almost the same color as Becca’s. Her red hair, now sprinkled with gray, was twisted up in a knot on the top of her head. “There’d be something wrong with a lassie who doesn’t like a dog, so maybe you better examine yourself instead of poor old Tuff. Pooch can’t help the way God made him anymore than you can help the way the good Lord made you. What’s really eatin’ on your heart this mornin’? Are you afraid you can’t run this wine-makin’ business for a spell all by yourself?”

  “Nothing like that, and Lord knows Austin and Rye and those precious children of theirs need a vacation. I’m glad Austin trusted me enough to leave me to do the job for a week.” Becca admitted that much, but she sure didn’t want to talk about the way the cowboy who lived across the dirt road affected her. Dalton Wilson was known all over southern Oklahoma and north Texas for his bad boy reputation, and Becca sure didn’t need that in her life.

  “Then is it Dalton and not his poor, old ugly dog that’s gotten your knickers in a twist?” Grammie asked.

  Becca dragged a lawn chair across the room and sat down beside her grandmother. “I don’t have time for a one-night-stand kind of guy. Dalton is a love-’em-and-leave-’em cowboy, and I refuse to be just another notch on his bedpost.”

  “Ahhh, darlin’ girl.” Grammie smiled. “That does bring back memories. That’s exactly what my mama told me about your grandpapa. She said, ‘Greta, that boy will break your heart, and you’ll be nothing but a notch on his bedpost.’ It takes a brave and determined woman to tame a wild boy, but once you get the job done, they make mighty fine husbands, fathers, and lovers,” she said with a sly wink. “And I’d be living testimony of that. I tamed Seamus McKay. Not to say it didn’t take a while, but by the time we had your daddy, he had come through the fire and was pure gold until the day he died.”

  “Fire?” Becca asked.

  “Do you think that tamin’ him was easy? I had to light a few blazes under him before the job was finished. Dalton might be wild as a March hare right now, but maybe he hasn’t met the right Irish woman, someone willin’ to strike the match like I was with my Seamus.”

  “Well, I hope he meets her soon and quits crossing the road to this part of the O’Donnell property,” Becca smarted off.

  “Better think hard about what you ask for, Miss Greta Rebecca McKay.” Grammie used her full name, which meant she was dead serious.

  * * *

  Dalton gave his best cowboy boots one more swipe with the brush, settled his good straw hat on his head, and headed for the door that Saturday evening. Tuff whined and thumped his tail against the wooden floor. Dalton stooped down to scratch the dog’s ears and whisper, “If I get lucky, I’ll be back right after breakfast. If I don’t, I’ll see you before dawn. Hold down the fort. I left the cartoon channel on for you.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And thanks for this morning, ole boy. You done good, sneaking into the wine shed so I could see Becca. That woman has gotten under my skin, and I’m running out of excuses to go over there and talk to her.” He patted the dog on the head one more time. “You’re a good wingman, Tuff, but the Broken Bit don’t let us cowboys bring our four-legged buddies with us.”

  Dalton was whistling as he got into his truck and drove west through the tiny town of Terral. He’d grown up in Bowie, Texas. Strangely enough, Becca had lived in Ringgold, just twenty minutes up Highway 81, and he’d never met her until she came to work for Austin last December.

  Dalton had known from the time he could take his first steps that he wanted to be a rancher. By the time he was a freshman in high school, he was on the payroll at his grandfather’s ranch a few miles south of Bowie in Fruitland. When he graduated, he went to work full time for his grandfather, and then two years ago, he met Rye at a rodeo. Rye was looking for a foreman. Dalton was wanting to spread his wings, so he took the job in Terral, Oklahoma, when Rye offered it to him. The only bad thing about jumping over the Red River to live in Terral was that Dalton sure had to endure a lot of teasing during the Texas-Oklahoma football weekend. Dalton was a die-hard Texas fan, and there was no way he’d ever turn his back on the Longhorns.

  He had turned on the radio even before he adjusted the air conditioner. Good country music would get him in the mood for some two-stepping and beer drinking that evening, and maybe, like he’d told Tuff, he would even get lucky and not be home until after breakfast.

  There’s not a woman in the world who can satisfy that itch you’ve got for Becca. His father’s voice popped into his head just as Blake Shelton began to sing “Honey Bee” on the radio.

  He ignored his late father’s advice and sang along with Blake. Dalton had always thought love at first sight was a bunch of overfried bologna. Rye had told him all about how he’d been downright love drunk when he first met Austin, and Dalton had thought he was crazy. Now, he wasn’t so sure, because he was feeling what Rye described for Becca.

  “And she’s not even my type,” he muttered when he turned south. “She’s too tall. She’s a redhead and everyone knows they’ve got a temper. To top it all off, she’s got those green eyes that I could drown in.”

  A mile down the highway, he glanced over at the new casino that had gone up three years ago. Sitting right on the edge of the Red River, it drew people in from all over north Texas and provided a few jobs for the folks around the little town of Terral. He almost stopped there to have a drink or two and blow a twenty-dollar bill at the slots, but that would put him late getting to the Broken Bit, which would mean all the ladies would already be taken. Besides, he wanted to flirt with a cute little brunette and maybe get lucky enough to get Becca off his mind.

  He crossed the river bridge into Texas and drove another five miles to Ringgold. There he made a right-han
d turn on Highway 82 and headed toward Henrietta. In another ten minutes, he pulled into the Broken Bit’s dimly lit parking lot. Judging by all the pickups and cars and the loud music that seemed to be raising the roof a few inches, the place was booming—just the way he liked it. He got out of the truck, locked it, and shoved the keys into his pocket.

  “Hey, Dalton,” a feminine voice called out behind him.

  He turned around to see Lacy Ruiz not ten feet away. “Hey, girl. You just now getting here?”

  “Yep,” she answered. “You want to save me the last dance?”

  A broad grin covered his face. Lacy was his kind of woman—short, brunette, a good dancer, and he had spent enough nights with her to know that she made a mean western omelet the next morning.

  “We’ll have to see about that,” he said as he pulled a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to the man at the door for both their cover charges. “Never know what might happen between now and closin’ time.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, but we could be each other’s backup plan,” she suggested.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  She disappeared into the crowd of folks doing a line dance. The female vocalist was doing a credible job of the band’s rendition of “Any Man of Mine,” by Shania Twain. Dalton followed Lacy inside, slid onto the last empty barstool, and ordered a longneck Coors.

  “How about you, Dalton?” Tessa, the bartender, grinned. “You goin’ to ever walk the line like the song says, or are you going to go to your grave still chasin’ women?”

  “Haven’t decided,” Dalton answered. “All the good ones like you are done taken.”

  “Honey, I’m old enough to be your mama,” Tessa told him. “And there’s plenty of good ones still out there. I just doubt you’ll ever find the one for you in a place like this.”

  “You’re here,” he said.

  “Yeah, but my husband and I met at a church social. It wasn’t until we’d been married twenty years that we bought this place, and for your information, we’ll both be in church tomorrow morning,” she told him.