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to go. Chase and Caden are digging in my flower bed again.”
    All of them. That meant the soldier, too. Of course—where else would he go? Hollywood? Maybe someone would want to make a movie of his captivity and have him star in it.
    Wyatt gritted his teeth and waved as he passed Dotty Givens out walking her dogs. He honestly didn’t have anything against Lockhart, but he could not seem to shake the feeling of having been kicked in the teeth. A week ago, on a breezy summer night, he and Macy had made love on board their boat and he’d been the happiest man in all of Texas. Afterward, they’d lain looking up at the stars, her head pillowed on his arm, her leg draped over his, and Wyatt had tried to sing. The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.
    Macy had squealed with laughter. “You sound like a coyote howling at the moon!”
    “Is that your compassionate social worker training talking?” he’d asked.
    “I haven’t been a social worker in a long time. I’m rusty.”
    “Well, now you hurt my feelings. You better start working to make it up,” he’d warned her.
    She’d laughed. “Or what?”
    “Or this,” he’d said, tickling her as he sang.
    They’d made love again, and Wyatt remembered thinking he’d never believed he could be so crazy in love as he was with Macy.
    The very next day, his world had exploded into tiny little bits and had scattered between Amarillo and Mexico. He couldn’t seem to find his bearings. And it didn’t help that he couldn’t talk to his wife.
    Wyatt pulled up to the front of his office. He was glad to see the reporters had finally given up and gone away. He strode to the glass front door with CLARK RANCH PROPERTIES emblazoned across it and shoved it open so hard that it hit the stack of boxes behind it. His one and indispensable employee, Linda Gail Graeber, cried out with surprise, then gave him a withering look. She was on the phone, which was how she spent about ninety-five percent of her day.
    “Sorry, Sandi,” she said pertly. “Wyatt just kicked the door down. As I was saying, I said to the guy, it says three nights and the fourth one is free. Nowhere on that sign, or in this store, does it say those nights must be consecutive.”
    Wyatt stalked to her desk. “Linda Gail.”
    Linda Gail glared at Wyatt. “Sandi, will you hold on a minute? Apparently Wyatt needs to speak to me right this very minute.” She turned the receiver to her ample bosom and pressed it there at the same moment she picked up the mail. “I am on the phone, Wyatt,” she said, thrusting the mail at him. “Here’s what you need. The mail is in the same place I leave it every single day.”
    Wyatt glanced at the mail she’d just shoved into his hand. “No personal phone calls,” he warned her, which earned him a dismissive roll of her eyes.
    He walked into his office, clutching the mail he would not read, could not read since everything had come undone. He heard a sound and turned his head to the right—the little television he kept in the office to watch an occasional professional golf match was on, even though it was only a little past nine in the morning.
    He scowled at the screen.
    It was tuned to one of the morning news shows. The journalist—a national face whose name Wyatt could not recall at that moment—was talking to Finn Lockhart, the nation’s newest and brightest hero.
    Finn was in uniform, sitting with his big hands on his knees. Frankly, he didn’t look too bad for a guy held by the Taliban for three years. He looked strong. Finn was a couple of inches taller than Wyatt, but those ranch boys were always tall and broad-shouldered. Finn’s hair was more gold than brown. Wyatt’s hair was black. Finn had light brown eyes, while Wyatt’s were blue. There was nothing similar between him and Finn, and Wyatt couldn’t help but wonder what Macy thought when she looked at the two of them. Did she find him as attractive as the farm boy in uniform?
    Macy