EXCERPT

“Mother, I just got…” Sawyer Stratton began, only to have Olivia Stratton’s enthusiastic response cut him off.

“You got the Grand Opening announcement? Wonderful. You’ll come, of course.”

“We really need to…” he tried to enter the conversation again, and failed once more.

“I’m sorry, dear, but I simply don’t have time to chit-chat right now. Raini is waiting for me. We’ve got to run into Wichita and get a few things.”

The line crackled and he knew she’d juggled the receiver around for whatever reason. Before he could jump into the basically one-sided discussion, she yelled, “Be right there, Raini! I just need to put the phone down.”

To his astonishment, the line went dead. His mother had turned her portable phone off and abandoned him for Raini. Raini. He couldn’t believe she was back in the outskirts of his life. How the hell had this happened? And when?

Releasing his death grip on the phone, he placed the receiver back in the cradle with a satisfying thunk. His gaze shifted to the framed picture he’d just received along with the announcement. The photograph alone set off more than one alarm in his system. His mind whirled with question after question, worry after worry. Simultaneously, his blood heated and not in anger. Anger he could have dealt with. Desire for Raini after all this time stunned him.

Sawyer focused on the photo. Raini didn’t appear to have aged one day in the three years since he’d last seen her. With her long, blonde hair swept up into the familiar ponytail, she looked as young as ever. Her eyes the color of a worn copper penny still held that sparkle of amusement he remembered so well. Life simply wasn’t to be taken seriously by Raini. Which was one of their biggest differences.

Emptiness swelled up inside him, like a balloon of loneliness being inflated. He’d tried damn hard to forget everything about her. Especially those eyes. And her lips: full, inviting, and always curved at the corners in an impish smile. Oh, yeah, he’d tried hard to forget her, but it had been impossible. She’d always lurked in the back of his thoughts, starred in way too many of his dreams.

In the photograph, his mother stood in front of a brightly painted Victorian house that he barely recognized as the family home. She stood beside the woman who’d been in his life for only a little over a year, but whose absence after their divorce had left him feeling restless and empty.

He’d buried himself eyebrow-deep in work to deal with the restlessness. He’d tried a series of half-hearted affairs to fill the emptiness. But, he now realized, he’d never found real satisfaction in any of it.

He glanced at the announcement of the Stratton Bed-and-Breakfast Inn and ground his teeth. He’d already put a sizable down payment on a condo in a very safe, very active retirement community near his home here in Dallas. It was perfect for his mother. He’d been sure once he told her about it, considering how she was always after him to come visit her back in Kansas, that she would be thrilled. Chances of that now looked slim.

“Raini,” he muttered. She was behind this, he was sure of it. She had a special knack for messing up his plans.