The Ultimate Revenge?

Like a haunted gunslinger intent on avenging old wrongs, bitter but now filthy-rich Nick Cassidy was back in Kane’s Crossing, seeking retribution from the conniving golden boy who’d once framed him and drove him from town. And why not serve justice on a silver platter—by wedding his enemy’s pregnant conquest and giving her baby his notorious name?

But Nick’s “convenient” marriage to Meggie Thornton, his angelic childhood chum, brought out dangerously heart-melting emotions in him. And the cold comfort of wreaking revenge, then clearing out of Kane’s Crossing, soon vied with this rebel’s ruge to warm himself at Meggie’s home fires…with his future family!

Meg tried her best to stop shivering, but she couldn’t.

Nick Cassidy, here again. She hadn’t seen him since she was twelve, running around exploring abandoned houses with him, hiking along the length of train tracks to see where they led.

She pushed through the swinging door that went to the back of the bakery. There, she started to gather ingredients for some of her infamous chocolate cakes. Anything to keep her mind off Nick’s return to Kane’s Crossing.

She looked through the steam-shrouded window, catching a shape just outside.

Nick. Her gaze took a leisurely stroll over him—one she’d been too stunned to enjoy earlier.

He cast a long shadow over the dusty, autumn-leaf-strewn street, his black sunglasses barricading a gaze that seemed to be trained on the sign above her bakery’s rear entrance. Under the dark brown leather jacket that matched his scuffed cowboy boots, a flannel shirt flapped in the breeze, covering broad shoulders and a wide chest. In spite of all this darkness, he had hair the color of shaded wheat—earthy, begging for a hand to skim through its bounty. The ends curled up, as if in need of a good trim.

Most acutely of all, Meg again noticed his faded blue jeans, how he wore them like a badge of apathy, obviously not concerned that the raggedy hole allowed her a taunting peek of one tanned knee. The patch of skin against the threadbare denim nudged at Meg’s imagination. It was a chink in the rest of his armor—a heart-tugging flaw. She pictured herself sliding a hand into the frayed hole, running her thumb over his kneecap, skimming her fingers over the skin behind his knee.

He lowered his shaded gaze to meet hers, seemingly sensing her scrutiny. The black-ice mask of his sunglasses revealed no emotion. Meg pulled back from the window, her blood pounding so hard it crashed in her ears.

Nick backed up a step, then ambled down Main Street to disappear behind a red-white-and-blue Welcome Home, Chad banner that hung with a lopsided sneer between the side of the Mercantile Department Store and Darla’s Beauty Shop. He moved with the purpose of a gunslinger, slow and easy, with the sleekness of a knife’s edge.

Gone from her life again, just like that.

She wondered what he wanted in a dinky one-horse town like Kane’s Crossing, what he wanted with Chad Spencer. If she didn’t have so much at stake here, she would’ve tipped her own hat to the place months ago. Before all the trouble.

Before she’d made a complete and utter disaster of her life.