“Thank you so very much.”

“But you’ll also need to find time for me. Five other breweries are waiting to press the go button on spring orders. If I can’t confirm Craig Mountain, I’m going to have a way bigger problem than a useless hole in the ground.”

She hesitated, and her teeth came down on her bottom lip.

“I’ll spring for your plane ticket.” He sweetened the pot. “Hell, for your hotel, your meals, anything you need.” He didn’t give a damn about the cost.

“My sister Mandy’s fiancé has a jet.”

“He coming with us?”

“There is no us.”

“I need you, Abby.”

He realized the words were true on far too many levels.

“We can bring Ozzy,” he offered. “He can stay in my penthouse.”

She cracked a smile at that. “You’re bribing me with a dog?”

“I am.”

“You’re going to spoil him,” she accused. “And then he’s going to hate me when I make him live at the ranch.”

Zach bent and picked up the pup, scratching under his chin. “He really doesn’t strike me as the ranch-dog type.”

There was total sympathy in her eyes when she gazed at Ozzy.

“Fine.” She capitulated. “You take the dog, and I’ll see you in Houston. But I’m not promising anything. I’m going to be busy.”

“Thank you,” Zach offered sincerely.

“Are you ever going to be out of my life?”

He hesitated over his answer. What an intriguing question. He didn’t really want to be out of her life. And he sure didn’t want her out of his. Not yet, anyway, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with any water license.

Six

Abigail was happy to see her father looking so well. He’d been in rehab in Houston for several months following a stroke in the early summer. Luckily, her sister Mandy’s fiancé had been in the valley with his jet plane that night, and they were able to whisk everyone to Lyndon and then Denver for his treatment. Ultimately, they moved him to a state-of-the-art facility in Houston. After months of therapy, he was nearly ready to come home to walk Mandy and Katrina down the aisle at their double wedding, coming up in a few weeks.

Now Abigail and her mother, Maureen, moved to a shady table in the lush garden of a restaurant a few miles from the facility. The scents of roses, asters and sage mingled beneath the oak trees in the September afternoon. They ordered iced tea and spinach, raspberry salads, settling comfortably into padded rattan chairs.

“And how’s Travis doing with the ranch?” asked Maureen, stirring some sugar into her glass.

“He seems good,” Abigail answered. “Though I’ve actually seen more of Seth lately than Travis.”

“But you are back on the ranch.”

“I was for a few days. But I’m back in Lyndon.” Abigail drew a breath. “Speaking of which, your sister Nicole’s name came up the other day.”

A look of obvious shock contorted her mother’s face. “Nicole?”

“You never talk much about her.”

Her mother’s fingers trembled ever so slightly as she rested them on the table. “Even after all these years, it’s hard for me to think about her. She was so young and beautiful and full of life. It hurt a lot to lose her.”

“Seth said she ran away from home?”

“Sadly, she did. All she could talk about back then was the bright lights and the big city. I tried to convince her to pick out a college.” Maureen squared her slim shoulders. “But I couldn’t. She thought she was going to become a model or an actress or some such craziness. Seven months later, she was in that accident.”

“Seven months?” Abigail’s stomach flip-flopped.

Maureen’s eyes shimmered. “I can only guess what happened. I adored her. But she always partied too much, was constantly finding excuses to stay in town on weekends. She smoked and drank with her friends. There was no holding her back.”

While her mother spoke, Abigail’s brain did the math. The nuns had told Lisa she was two weeks old when her mother dropped her anonymously into their care. Nicole had died a week later. That made her ten or twelve weeks pregnant when she left town.

Lisa’s father was from Lyndon. But that would have to wait until later.

“We were told the pair of them were leaving a bar,” Maureen continued, a faraway look on her face. “We later found out his family didn’t know Nicole, had never met her. They were estranged from their son, too.” Maureen absently restirred the iced tea.

“Mom.” Abigail reached forward and took her mother’s hand.

“Yes, dear?”

“I have something to tell you. It’s surprising, maybe even shocking.”

Maureen frowned. “Are you ill, honey? Is something wrong?”

Abigail quickly shook her head. “No, no. Nothing like that. It’s good news. At least I think it’s good news.”

Her mother waited.

“It’s Nicole, Mom. She had a daughter.”

Maureen blinked, her expression frozen in the dappled sunlight.

“A daughter,” Abigail repeated. “She was adopted out to a very nice family. She started looking for us a couple of years ago. And now she’s found us.”

Maureen’s voice was paper dry. “Nicole had a baby?”

Abigail smiled, squeezing her mother’s hand. “My cousin. Your niece.”

Maureen’s eyes welled up with tears, and her hand went to her chest.

“Her name’s Lisa,” said Abigail, speaking more quickly. “I’ve met her. In fact, I know her. She helped with Seth’s campaign.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Maureen, but a smile was forming on her face. “Okay. I do believe it.” The smile turned into a shaky laugh. “Nicole was never a careful or cautious person.”

“So, you’re okay? You’ll like her. She’s a wonderful woman.”

“You said she helped on Seth’s campaign? Is she in Lyndon?”

“She came to town a few months ago. But right now…” Abigail paused. “Right now, she’s in Houston.”

“She’s here?”

“She wants to meet you. And she wants to meet Mandy and Katrina and everyone. But we wanted to start with you.”

“Oh, well in that case.” Maureen promptly stood up, dropping her napkin onto the table. “Let’s go.”

Abigail laughed. “Hold on.”

Her mother paused, waiting.

“We don’t have to go anywhere.” Abigail nodded across the garden to a far table. “She’s over there.”

As Maureen turned to stare, Lisa caught the gist of the body language and came gracefully to her feet. She was wearing a white, sleeveless tank dress, her blond hair loose and framing her face. She looked nervous but brave as she walked forward on delicate, white, strapless sandals.

Abigail rose and moved to stand next to her mother as Maureen approached them.

“Nicole,” Maureen whispered, groping blindly to grasp Abigail’s hand. “She looks just like Nicole.”

Abigail found her own eyes filling with tears.

Maureen let go of her hand, rushing forward to pull Lisa into her arms.

Lisa’s eyes fluttered closed as Maureen rocked her back and forth and stroked her hair.

“Oh, my darling.” Maureen spoke in a choked voice. “I’m so glad you’ve come home.”


* * *

It didn’t take Abigail long to realize Zach’s employees were like a family. Thirty people worked in the executive offices, with another hundred and fifty or so between the sales, marketing, accounting and human resources offices on various floors in the office tower in downtown Houston. All of them greeted Zach by his first name. They all seemed to know he’d been in Colorado, and they were all anxious to hear how things were going with Craig Mountain.

She’d been in Houston for three days, and between visiting her father and watching her mother and Lisa get to know each other, she’d managed to power through the application for Zach. Now she sat in a corner boardroom on the thirty-second floor, gazing out the bank of windows at the lights of the surrounding buildings and the clear, night sky. The water-license variance application form 731-800(e) was on the table in front of her, neatly printed out, supported by charts and graphs, and a letter of intent, complete with the company background, prospectus and all the technical data she’d been able to pull together from her previous water-table research. It was a great report, probably the best she’d ever done.

Half the double doors opened, and Zach entered with his partner, Alex Cable. She’d met Alex earlier and really liked him. He seemed smart and motivated, with a wry sense of humor. She knew he’d just broken up with his girlfriend. She also knew he was staying with Zach. Though Alex was fairer than Zach, with blue eyes, light brown hair and a lankier build, the two had a lot of gestures, expressions and speech patterns in common. If she hadn’t known better, she would have taken them for brothers.

Zach glanced at the cover page of the report, then looked to Abigail. “That it?”

“That’s it,” she confirmed. She was done, officially free from his blackmail, ready to go back to her old life.

“It’s really nice of you to help us out,” Alex put in.

Abigail shrugged. “It was no problem.” Then she caught Zach’s ironic brow lift, and she amended the statement. “Uh, not much of a problem. I am glad to be finished, though.”

Zach lifted the report and thumbed through it.

“We should celebrate,” said Alex.

“You don’t have a variance yet,” Abigail pointed out, taking her clutch purse from the table and tucking it under her arm. She should be rushing from the room, but, for some reason, she found herself hesitating.

Her mother was resting at her rented condo right now, tired from her emotional few days with Lisa. She’d taken a shine to Ozzy, and the puppy was keeping her company. It was nearly eight o’clock, and Lisa had asked Abigail to meet for a late dinner or maybe hit a club before they flew back to Colorado in the morning.

It was a strange feeling of déjà vu. Abigail was having a final night on the town before heading back to the ranch. She was trying hard not to rehash the Lucky and Doll-Face evening in her mind, but it was proving impossible. She was also trying hard not to think about leaving Zach forever, but that was causing her trouble, as well. Despite everything that had happened, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from liking him.