Last Surrender

Chapter 1-2

He saw the spot where the BMW had ended up and pulled over. Shutting the truck down, he waited for a semi hauling cattle to pass by before he stepped outside and let his dog out. Walking around to the front of his truck, he propped his foot on the bumper and patted his leg. Murph leapt up to his thigh and then onto the wide hood of the old truck. Jeremiah joined him, leaning against the windshield.

The storm that had dumped six inches of wet snow in Northstar hadn’t been cold enough to bring snow to the broad valley around Devyn, and a distinct snowline ringed the valley. Everything above six thousand feet was blanketed in white while everything below gleamed emerald.

It was gorgeous. He was lucky to be alive to appreciate it and the turn his life had taken.

He reached over to ruffle Murph’s ears and was rewarded with enthusiastic kisses.

“Yeah, you’re part of all the good things, too,” he said, laughing. “One of the best, in fact. We’re both pretty lucky, aren’t we?”

He didn’t give voice to the thought, but he couldn’t stop it from resounding in his head.

How much longer would his luck last?

Because, no matter how much he hoped he was wrong, he knew in his gut Zach wasn’t going to let him off the hook for ratting him out.

* * *

Heather adjusted her grip on the steering wheel and scowled. She’d done it again—ruined her parents dreams of her marrying the perfect man and giving them three more perfect grandchildren. On her birthday, no less. And not just any birthday. Her thirtieth. The one that was supposed to be the transition into full, no-more-excuses, time-to-get-serious adulthood. Somehow, breaking up with her boyfriend seconds before he proposed because some stupid, childish voice in the back of her mind balked at the idea of being tied down—the same voice that nagged her about how temporary everything in her life felt even if it wasn’t—didn’t seem like a very adult thing to do.

Dinner with her family tonight was going to be oh-so-fun.

She flipped on her blinker as she reached the exit for the highway out to Northstar and swiped at the tears leaking down her cheeks. Why was she crying—or almost crying—anyhow? It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d broken up with a great guy.

Oh, no.

She had quite the track record, stretching all the way back to Shane McGuire, her first serious boyfriend in high school. And every single one of the boys and men she’d dated—or, in the case of Luke Conner, had wanted to date—were now happily married to incredible, loving wives. Of them all, Shane was the only one not married, and that would change next summer when he and Becky Epperson finally tied the knot.

She didn’t begrudge them their happily-ever-afters; they all deserved nothing less.

The fault wasn’t with the men. It was with her.

Why did she keep doing s**t like this? Giving up on a good thing because she was…. What? Stubborn? Overly picky? Afraid?

Dustin was a good man, like all the rest, if a little too set on the whole white-picket-fence dream for her tastes. He was kind and generous, tall, and good-looking, and he had a good job and a loving family who had accepted and adored her from the get go. He was—as far as she and the many, many women she’d caught eying him could tell—absolutely perfect.

That was the problem, and it was the same one she’d had with Ty Evans. And a dozen other men. He was too perfect, and she’d known from their first date that she would never be entirely comfortable with him. And the reason why had nothing to do with him. She couldn’t imagine letting him see the cracks in her. Because, in his wonderful, compassionate perfection, he would try to help her heal them and only end up cracking himself.

Sure. She was going to go with that explanation. That way she sounded noble and selfless and not totally insane.

Of course, her mother’s first words after Heather broke the devastating news were likely to agree with the latter explanation. Heather could almost hear the practiced balance of exasperation and disappointment in her mother’s voice. Are you crazy?

“Plenty of evidence pointing in that direction,” she murmured, glancing at the leather wrist band on her left arm.

Maybe Dustin wasn’t so perfect after all. He’d never once asked why she always wore it, assuming, as everyone else did, that the band with its elegant Western tooling was a fashion statement. And she’d never felt the desire to explain it to him.

Tired of that depressing line of thought, she skipped through her playlist until she landed on Eminem’s The Way I am and cranked the volume up.

Halfway between the interstate and the top of Badger Pass, she spotted a familiar 1978 Ford F-250 parked on an approach to a pasture on the other side of the highway. Its owner and his ever-present four-legged companion sat on the hood. At first glance, they looked rather comfortable, like they were taking in the scenery, but maybe the old truck had broken down and they were waiting for someone to stop. As far as she knew, the man didn’t own a cell phone. She slowed and pulled over onto the approach across the highway from them. Leaving her truck running, she climbed out and waited for a car to pass.

“Need a ride, cowboy?” Heather called as she jogged across the road.

Jeremiah turned his head toward her, and she expected him to grin that shy, adorable grin he usually gave her, but his lips barely twitched, and his eyes remained distant.

Guess I’m not the only one having a shitty day. She rested her hand on the hood near his leg. “The ol’ girl finally give up on you?”

“Not yet.”

“Then… what are you doing here?”

“Retracing steps and pondering the quirks of life and fate.”

Heather’s first instinct was to laugh at the turn of phrase, but his somber expression quieted the urge. “Want some company?”

He eyed her, and for a moment, she thought he was going to turn her down. Then he scooted over and patted the hood in invitation. She climbed up beside him without considering for even half a second why she hadn’t just turned around and left him to his pondering. She might not have given him much thought, but that didn’t mean she was oblivious to the way he’d always looked at her. And right now, with her heart and mind twisted into knots about Dustin, his quiet but obvious attraction to her was soothing.

“So, what quirks of life and fate are you pondering?” she asked, redirecting her thoughts before they spilled out her mouth and got her in trouble. She reached across him to let his dog sniff her hand, gauging his expression from the corner of her vision. When the Australian shepherd nudged her hand with his nose, she ruffled his ears.

Jeremiah didn’t seem to notice. Man, he was caught up in his own thoughts.

“My cousin’ll be out of prison in a couple weeks,” he said quietly. “He got the early parole.”

His cousin? Right. Zach Neely—sentenced to twenty years in prison for masterminding the biggest d**g ring this county had ever seen. It had been all over the news when she and her family had first moved out here, but she’d been too young and having too much fun much exploring her new home to pay much attention to it. “Ah, I’d forgotten about him.”

“Most days, I do, too. But not today.” He leaned forward with his forearms braced on his thighs and stared unseeing across the valley at the mountains. “I wish Aaron had waited to tell me.”

“What’s so special about today?”

“Today marks sixteen years since he arrested me. And Zach getting out early makes it difficult to celebrate that.”

“You want to celebrate getting arrested?”

“That arrest started me on the right path even if it took me a few more years to see it.” He shook his head. “I need to go back and remember it all today. To remember how far I’ve come.”

Heather stared at him. This was way deeper than anything she’d expected. “Ah,” was all she could say in response. Suddenly, agonizing over her breakup seemed pathetic.

Abruptly, he looked at her with a thoughtful frown. “Funny you of all people should pull over.” Then his expression shifted into a glimmer of the smile she was most familiar with. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

“How’d you…?” She held up her hands. “Never mind. Thank you. Some birthday it’s turned out to be, but thank you.”

She glanced over him. He was dressed in a plain gray long-sleeved T-shirt and straight-legged jeans rather than the button-up shirt and classic Wrangler jeans many of their Northstar neighbors preferred, and with his hair shaggier than he usually kept it, he didn’t look much like a cowboy, but the stubble darkening his jaw added a hint of ruggedness to his otherwise boyish face.

A memory flashed across her mind—of the first time she’d met him, shortly after the Hammonds had hired him. It wasn’t a clear memory, but she recalled that he’d been even shaggier and a whole lot skinnier. Sometime between then and now, he’d added weight and muscle, and even that boring T-shirt of his couldn’t hide it.

She c****d her head. Why hadn’t she ever noticed what a cutie he was? Or that he was so sweet?

“Not having a good day?” he asked.

“Not particularly. And I’m on my way home to have dinner with my family, which is bound to make it worse.”

He looked at her like a man teetering on the edge of indecision, working up the courage to speak. It took a while, but finally, he did.

“If you need a backup plan, I’d be happy to buy you a couple of drinks.”

“Thank you. I mean that. And I will probably take you up on that.” She offered her hand and he shook it. “I’ll let you get back to pondering the quirks of life and fate. See you later.”

“Sure,” he replied in a way that said he didn’t expect she’d be knocking on his door tonight.

Giving his dog another pat, she slid off the hood and crossed the highway. She climbed in behind the wheel of her truck and rolled the window down to wave as she drove away. He lifted his hand in farewell. As she watched his truck shrink in her rearview mirror, an idea blossomed with delightful brilliance.

In addition to being generally perfect, all the men she’d dated had one more thing in common—they all fit within her family’s narrow definition of a “good man”. With his criminal background, Jeremiah definitely would not. Since she’d made a habit of bucking against her family’s wishes most of her life, maybe it was time to apply that tradition to her love life as well.

By the time she reached Northstar, it was already after three. Everyone was supposed to gather at her parents’ house at five, so she detoured to her cabin in the same subdivision where the Hammonds had their vacation rental just long enough to drop her overnight bag inside and run a brush through her hair. It probably wasn’t a smart idea to head down early, but if things were going to go the way she was certain they would, she might as well get it over with and give herself more evening to enjoy with Jeremiah.

She wasn’t entirely surprised that her mother, sister, and both sisters-in-law were in the kitchen when she arrived, decorating her cake at the island. Her father, brothers, and brother-in-law were certainly still out working somewhere on their small ranch. She leaned against the wall beside the kitchen door and watched as her mother’s skilled hands turned white icing into delicate lace against a smooth chocolate backdrop. The cake would undoubtedly be a feminine work of art when she was done… and absolutely the opposite of what Heather liked.