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when he was young and stupid and just starting out in professional rodeo. Melanie Sutton had danced into his life one night bright as a candle, incandescent.
    And he’d failed her.
    After that, Jake knew that family life and the kind of love Rafe had with Sophie, and Travis had with Mia, wasn’t in the cards for him. Not ever. Maybe if he’d stayed with Melanie that night, things could have been different….
    But he hadn’t stayed. And Melanie…
    Jake had met a lot of smart, cool, sexy women in subsequent years, and he’d liked them all—enjoyed them all. All shapes, all sizes, blond, redhead, brunette.
    But if he hadn’t been there for Melanie, how could he promise to be there for anyone else?
    “Let me know what time to show up for supper—” he began abruptly, deliberately cutting off the painful memories, but suddenly, with a burst of energy, the mutt tried to spring up onto the front seat of the truck, then almost didn’t make it and would have slid backward, except Jake grabbed him swiftly before he hit the ground. He lifted him up into the driver’s seat.
    “Who invited you, fella?” His tone was gruff. But somehow he didn’t have the heart to set the scrawny creature down on the driveway again.
    “I think you’ve got yourself a dog there, bro. Whether you want one or not.”
    “Naw. He just knows me better than he knows you. He’ll be happy to hang with you guys once he meets the kids. Tell Ivy and Aiden they should start brainstorming names for him.”
    But glancing over his shoulder, he caught an amused—and skeptical—grin spreading across his brother’s face.
    Jake shook his head and turned back to the mutt crouched behind the wheel of his truck. “You want to drive this thing, pardner, or you going to move over?”
    As if he understood, the dog lumbered over to the passenger seat and sat staring out the window as if he hadn’t a care in the world and was studying the sweeping view of the lavender mountains in the distance.
    Behind Jake, Rafe laughed.
    “You think this is funny?” But Jake was fighting a smile, too.
    “You’ve been adopted, bro. Hold on while I grab your new dog a few days’ worth of pet food.” His brother was already striding back toward the ranch house. “Just to tide him over until you bring him back.”
    Jake swore he could hear Rafe chuckling just before the screen door slammed.

    Twenty minutes later, Jake turned off of Squirrel Road and onto Wild Mule Pass. He drove another two miles through lonely, beautifully wild country until he reached the bumpy gravel path leading to his cabin.
    His grandfather had willed him nearly seven hundred acres of lush rolling grassland practically within spitting distance of mountains and lakes ripe with wildlife and fish. This gorgeous spot was only a ten-mile hike from Blackbird Lake and surrounded by jagged mountains, magnificent sky, and wildflower meadows that seemed to roll on forever into the hazy distance.
    In addition to his own renovated cabin, there were three older, smaller cabins scattered across the property. He sometimes rented them out to fishermen, hikers, or tourists. But he’d never rented out his grandparents’ original cabin on Blackbird Lake.
    Five years ago, Jake had hired the father and son construction team of Sam and Denny McDonald to transform his personal fifteen-hundred-square-foot cabin into a two-story, six-thousand-square-foot house. That was right after he nabbed his biggest championship purse ever and won a fat commercial endorsement contract for a premium beer. Now, after investing the bulk of that money, Jake had big plans for those other three cabins.
    “Don’t get lost, buddy,” he told the mutt softly as he unlocked the massive solid oak front door and the dog brushed past him into the hall, his feet pattering across wide dusty hardwood floors.
    The living room and dining room furniture had been draped in drop cloths while he was gone and the place hada big, lonesome feel to it,