CHAPTER ONE
JAKE DANIELS HAD grown up knowing that life was short. When he was in high school, he’d lost his parents, and along with them, the sense that anything in this world was guaranteed.
That kind of thing changed a man.
It could make him afraid of his own shadow, worried about taking risks and filled with a sense of self-preservation.
It was either that, or he realized since there were no guarantees, he might as well go all in. Push those chips out to the center of the table and see if the gamble paid off.
He’d done some admittedly dumb stuff as a kid. Not gambling so much as acting out. But the rodeo had changed him. It had saved him.
He’d spent the last eighteen years gambling and doing pretty damn well for himself, it had to be said. Years spent in the rodeo, flinging himself around on the back of enraged bulls, had netted him a decent amount of money, and now that he was more or less ready to get out of the game, those winnings, and the amount of money his parents’ life insurance had left behind, had gotten him a big spread in Gold Valley.
He was going to be a rancher.
Not cattle, like his cousin Ryder. No. He was getting into horses. High-value breeds. Another gamble. It would either pay off, or ruin him.
That was the kind of life he liked. That was the kind of thing that made him feel alive.
And if this was retirement, hell, he was pretty damn into it. Thirty-two years old, and wealthy enough to figure out a way to live his dream. Not bad at all.
Of course, there were things he would miss about the rodeo. The people on the circuit were practically family now. So many years traveling around the same venues, getting busted up together, competing fiercely and going out for a beer after.
But it had been time to leave, and all it had taken was one fierce accident to teach him that.
And Gold Valley was his home, so this had been the place to go to when his time in the rodeo was done.
The day his parents had died, his aunt and uncle had also died, along with the mother of one of his closest friends. That had left a passel of orphaned children, a big old ranch that had once been run by their parents and a whole lot of chaos.
But it had been a good life. Other than all the crushingly sad parts.
His cousin Ryder had taken care of all of them, since he was the only one who’d been eighteen when the tragedy had happened.
He often wondered how they’d made it through without Ryder punching them all in the damn face.
He was sure that Ryder had wanted to from time to time.
Hell. Jake and Colt had been absolute assholes. Neither of them had handled losing their parents well. Well, was there a good way to handle that? He didn’t know. But at seventeen and fifteen, he and his brother had been mad at the world, and kicking against the one person who had been doing his best to help them.
They’d both left home and joined the rodeo, the Western take on running away and joining the circus.
It had taken some years and some maturity for him to fully appreciate what he’d had.
Because what Ryder had given to them had been bound up in his loss, and until he’d been in his midtwenties probably, he hadn’t fully been able to separate those two things and think of home, and his cousin, without a measure of pain and anger.
Even now, when he pulled into Hope Springs Ranch, a strange sensation took hold of him.
Nostalgia, grief and home, all rolled into one.
He’d been contending with it a lot lately, because his—for lack of a better word—retirement was still fairly new, and being in one place and not on the road was unusual for him.
But that was a choice he’d made, and one that was taking a bit of time for him to settle into. It had been just over three months, and it still felt...wrong in some ways.
It was easier to pretend that all your demons were dealt with when you just spent a good portion of the time running from them. Made things simple. At least as simple as they could be.
The problem was his demons had done a decent job of catching up to him on the circuit, and that was when he’d decided it was time to move on.
When Cal had fallen...
How could he live with something happening to his mentee? Cal was his best friend and with his guidance had gotten hurt.
No, that had brought him back to a dark, raw place. One he didn’t want to visit again.
That calm before the storm. That bright ray of sunshine revealed to be the headlights of a Mack truck bearing down on him.
He’d read that poem that said nothing gold could stay.
In his experience, it turned out gold was fleeting. And revealed to be fool’s gold on top of it.
Good never lasted.
And it was rarely real, anyway.
He’d been... Well, he hadn’t been thrilled about Cal wanting to come for Thanksgiving, but he felt responsible for the accident so in the end he hadn’t been able to say no.
He pulled his truck up to the front of the farmhouse, and the door opened, three dogs spilling out the front and down the front steps.
“Back, mutts,” he muttered when he got out of the truck, smiling affectionately at the creatures as he bent down and scratched them behind the ears.
He looked up and saw Sammy standing on the top step of the porch, her baby on her hip. Sammy was married to his cousin Ryder now, but she was another member of their ragtag family. She hadn’t lost her parents, but her situation at home, as he understood it, had been unacceptable, and when she was sixteen she’d come to live with them. She’d never left, and she and Ryder had gotten married a year earlier.
Finally, in his opinion.
The two of them had spent way too long dancing around the truth. Not that he could blame them. Nothing in his life had ever made marriage look particularly appealing. His parents...
His parents had been unhappy, slaves to a ranch and their children, to marriage vows they’d said to each other and had always seemed like they might regret.
For just a moment it had seemed like it might all be fixed. For just a moment it had seemed like they’d be okay.
Then it had all been destroyed.
That bright spot of hope swallowed by reality.
After years of unhappiness, his parents had just died.
Jake couldn’t imagine that kind of life.
“How you doing?” he asked.
Sammy shifted the baby from one hip to the other, the little girl reaching out and grabbing her mom’s blond hair. Sammy laughed and unwrapped the chubby fist from her curls. She looked happier than he’d ever seen her before.
He supposed for some people there was something to be said for this life.
God knew Ryder seemed happier.