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Speak now or forever hold your peace!
Mason cleared his throat.
Chapter One
Ranger Jefferson had never seen such a case of pigheadedness in all his life, but Mason won the prize, if there was such a thing. How could Mason have let Mimi get away the way he had?
Too much was happening too fast around the Union Junction Ranch. Even too much for Ranger. Moreover, if he didn’t get away from his twin’s silly e-mail romance with a woman in Australia, he was going to go as cuckoo as a Swiss clock himself.
He couldn’t stand it another moment. Without telling any of his brothers, Ranger had made a decision: It was time to join the military.
Okay, so he was no spring pup at thirty-two. But there were wars being fought all over the world, and the least he could do was volunteer for the National Guard. Maybe more.
He aimed to find out. Throwing his duffel over his shoulder, he headed out the door toward his truck.
“Where are you going?” Helga asked him.
“Shh,” he told her. “It’s a secret.”
“Helga doesn’t like secrets.” She frowned at him, and he smiled back, eager to keep on her good side before she roused Mason. Mason believed Helga was the perfect housekeeper, hired by Mimi Ca
Of course, Mimi was married now, and that meant the Jefferson brothers could ditch Helga!
Helga’s eyes narrowed on him. “I am making sauerkraut and sausage for di
Ugh. That decided him. His brothers would have to figure out a way to send the housekeeper packing on their own, if they weren’t all still too stu
Well, that was the deciding factor. Helga adored Mason. If Mason needed his sleep, sleep was what he would get.
And Ranger would be long gone, his goodbye note of military aspirations beside Mason’s breakfast dish. Mason wouldn’t like it; he hated the fact that one by one, his brothers were leaving the family ranch, something he’d always feared.
But life had to move on, and no way was Ranger going to end up like his twin, Archer, e-mailing some dopey girl in Australia. Or like Frisco Joe, whose leg had to be broken to get him to marry a wonderful woman. Frisco Joe and A
If body parts were going to get busted when it came to women, he darn sure wasn’t going to let it happen to him.
The military would be a whole lot safer.
He hopped in his truck, quietly pulling down the drive and away from the only home he’d ever known. Just a couple hours away from Union Junction was Lonely Hearts Station, and the women of Lonely Hearts Salon. When his older brother, Laredo, had left Union Junction back in March, he’d made the mistake of stopping into the Lonely Hearts Salon to say hello to the women who’d helped the Jefferson brothers and most of Union Junction through a terrible February storm.
Laredo had gotten roped into a rodeo, and then marriage. The concussion had come in between.
Ranger was smarter than that. On his way to the nearest military base, he was going to drive straight through Lonely Hearts Station, Texas, without stopping.
No waving. No hello shouted through the window. Last month, when he’d been helping Laredo learn how to ride the Lonely Hearts Salon’s champion bull, Bloodthirsty Black, he’d met Ha
But…not enough to sacrifice a bone or a body part.
“There’s bad luck in that town,” he said to no one in particular as he sped down the highway, happy to be heading east and away from the ranch. “I’m too cagey to get caught in that heart trap. All that love business is a mess! Lonely Hearts ladies, Never Lonely Cut-n-Gurls—it’s a soap-opera city. I’m passing through there at top speed!”
RANGER’S PLAN WORKED—until he saw the tall blonde waving at him in front of the Never Lonely Cut-n-Gurls Salon. “Dang it!” he muttered. “I almost made it.”
Cissy Kisserton pulled open the truck door and tossed a silver-foil suitcase inside. “Thought I recognized your vehicle, Ranger. How fortunate for me, because I was about to hitch to the nearest highway.”
Ranger couldn’t imagine Cissy having trouble finding a ride. Yet he still didn’t want to be the one to give it to her. She looked devastatingly gorgeous in skin-tight jeans and a cutoff T-shirt—dressed down for traveling and yet still packing dynamite.
“Shew!” he said under his breath. “I don’t know where I’m going,” he told Cissy.
“Neither do I. We’ll get wherever together.”
“But I may be stopping at the military base east of here!”
“Cool,” she said. “I love a man in uniform.”
He frowned at that. “I was pla
“Lonely is bad, Ranger. We’ve learned our lesson about anyplace with the word Lonely in it. And we simply can’t let you travel alone.” Cissy tossed another suitcase into the truckbed, this one leopard-printed.
“We?”
“Hey, Ranger,” Ha
Cissy crawled in the front seat, ignoring his frown. Ha
“Well, I was.”
“Well, you weren’t,” she said, mimicking his tone. “There’s a man in your back seat.”
He whirled around, his jaw dropping when he saw his twin gri
“Heretofore, I’ve been listening to you cuss all the way to Lonely Hearts Station,” Archer said with a grin. “But now that we’ve got seatmates, I’d say this trip is going to be a whole lot sweeter!”
Which just showed how little his twin knew.
THEREIN LAY THE RUB, Mason told himself, which was a pretty stupid expression. What rub? he asked himself sourly. What fool had time to sit around and think up such stupid sayings?
The fact was, he was feeling testy, and he knew it, and his brothers knew it, though they hadn’t complained as yet. Actually, they had complained—to each other when they thought he couldn’t hear them. But they had spared him their grousing, and he knew why. Pity. Plain and simple pity, which was worse than if they’d just come right out and chewed his butt.
Mason sighed, pulled his hat down lower, and stared into his coffee cup. At this moment, he was only fit company for his horse, and so the barn was where he sat. And the word of the day was moping. He was moping—couldn’t call it anything else—something he’d always told his brothers they weren’t allowed to do. So he was hiding out here with Samson, because the horse wouldn’t tattle on him and didn’t care anyway as long as his hay was fresh.