It was all perfect except for one thing. Recently, she’d found out not only that she’d been adopted—but also that she had a twin brother. Now that she knew, she couldn’t imagine getting married without him at the wedding. She had this image of him giving her away. Her heart ached for the two of them to be united and brought into the family that she’d only recently discovered.

  Unfortunately, she had no idea where he was, even who he was. Like her, he’d been sold or given away right after birth by a woman who’d told their biological mother that they both had died. Ansley’s adoptive mother had only wanted a baby girl and swore that she never even knew there had been another baby.

  No one knew what had happened to her twin brother, since the woman who’d sold the babies was now dead. Ansley’s fear was that like her, her twin might not even know he’d been adopted. She just hoped he’d gone to a good family and had a better childhood than hers. While she’d lived on an estate, never been deprived of anything money could buy, she’d been lonely and wished desperately for a family. All her childhood, she’d seen more of her nannies and the household staff than her parents.

  When Ansley had learned that she was adopted, she’d gone in search of her biological mother. It had been like taking a stick to a hornet’s nest. But she’d found her birth mother and the happy ending she’d hoped for. She wanted the same for her brother. Unfortunately, all leads had gone cold.

  Her only hope was that the PIs at Colt Brothers Investigation would find him before it was too late. One of those PIs was her fiancé, Buck Crawford, who’d been working tirelessly for weeks searching for her missing twin. All they had to go on was the tiny bracelet his birth mother said she’d had made for him with the initials DJ on it for Del Junior. They couldn’t even be sure that he’d ever gotten the bracelet.

  “Maybe we should postpone the wedding,” Buck had said, but she hadn’t had the heart to do that. They both wanted to be married soon. She told herself she was being too sentimental. A Christmas wedding was her dream and Buck was everything she’d ever wanted in a husband.

  “No,” she’d told him. “We’re getting married. Anyway, I still have hope that we’ll find DJ before the wedding.”

  Now the wedding was looming and still no leads on her twin.

  “Ansley?” a female voice called. “Or should I call you DelRae?”

  She hadn’t heard a vehicle in the deep snow, but now she heard the front door close. Footfalls headed her way. She had to smile, wondering at twenty-nine years old if she would ever answer to the name her birth mother had given her. Or if she should even bother trying.

  “In here,” she called back to Bella Colt, a sister-in-law. Along with finding her birth mother, she’d also found her biological father’s family—the Colt brothers of Colt Brothers Investigation and their wives. She now had four half brothers, Tommy, Davy, James and Willie, and their wives, Bella, Carla, Lori and Ellie. She’d instantly felt a part of the family.

  On top of that, she’d also fallen in love with the brothers’ best friend, Buck Crawford, a fellow PI at the agency.

  Bella came into the living room where Ansley had been wrapping Christmas presents. “What in the world! Did you buy out all the stores in Missoula?”

  She shook her head sheepishly. “I’ve never had a family to buy for before. My adoptive mother bought her own Christmas presents for me to wrap. My adoptive father had his secretary pick up something for each of us. He usually also had the secretary return anything Maribelle or I got for him, saying he didn’t need anything. So shopping for all of you has been so much fun. Don’t tell anyone, but I started shopping even before Thanksgiving. I couldn’t wait.”

  “You really are too much.” Bella hugged her awkwardly around the baby. James’s wife Lori had given birth to two identical baby boys a few months ago.

  Ansley motioned her friend into the kitchen. “Coffee?”

  “I shouldn’t.” Bella lumbered in, both hands over her protruding stomach. “Water tastes so...watery,” she groaned.

  “Eggnog?”

  “Don’t tempt me,” her friend said, and held her side for a moment. “They’ve been kicking like crazy. I suspect they’ve got my and Tommy’s worst traits,” she said with a laugh as she took a chair and the glass of eggnog. “It would be just like them to decide to be born in the middle of your wedding.” All four Colt wives were her bridesmaids, with their husbands the groomsmen.

  A silence fell between them as Ansley poured herself a cup of coffee and joined Bella at the table.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wait?” Bella asked. “Even if Buck manages to find him, he’ll be a complete stranger. Do you really want a stranger standing up with you at your wedding?”

  Ansley laughed. “He won’t be a stranger. I know him—that is, I feel like I do. He’s my twin. He won’t be a stranger.”

  Bella looked skeptical but let it go. “What if Buck doesn’t find him before the wedding?”

  “Then we go ahead anyway,” she said, knowing how disappointed she would be.

  “You could just postpone it,” Bella suggested.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about postponing the wedding. “Wait for how long, though? What if DJ’s never found? Buck and I can’t wait. We love each other. We want to get married.” She sighed. “But at the same time, how can I start my life not knowing where my twin is, how he is or even if he’s still alive? I’ve always felt as if there was a missing piece of me. Then I found you and the Colt brothers and Buck.”

  “And still something was missing,” Bella said.

  She nodded. “Once I found out that I had a twin who my mother called DJ for Del Junior, I knew I had to find him.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Even if he can’t be found by the wedding, we will find him. Buck won’t stop looking for him.”

  “Neither will the Colt brothers. They were shocked to find they had a half sister. Imagine their reaction to meeting a half brother. If he is anything like you, we are going to love him. We’ll love him anyway,” she said with a laugh and took a sip of her eggnog. “So, is it going to be Ansley or DelRae? Or are you going to answer to both?”

  “I have no sentimental ties to the Ansley name or the Brookshire name. I love DelRae, I’m just not sure I’ll ever remember to answer to it.”

  “I can understand that you might want to ditch your first name and last with both Maribelle and Harrison Brookshire headed for prison. But you also can’t erase your past,” Bella said. “You know my father almost went to prison at one point.” She shook her head. “A long story for another time,” she said, awkwardly getting to her feet. “I have some last-minute Christmas shopping to do, but I wanted to check on you.”

  She rose to show her out. She couldn’t believe how close she’d gotten to her new family and in record time. She hoped the same would be true for her twin when he was found.

  At the door, Bella turned to take her hand and squeeze it. “Don’t give up hope. There’s still time.”

  All she could do was nod and smile her thanks even as she felt sick with worry that time was running out. Worse, the news might not be good. Her twin might not have survived. Or he might want nothing to do with her and the rest of the family.

  * * *

  BUCK CRAWFORD DISCONNECTED and leaned back, feeling more positive than he had in weeks. “I think I might have found a lead,” he said, leaving his office to walk out into the main reception area of Colt Brothers Investigation.

  James looked up from his father’s old desk expectantly. The brothers had all done their best to find Ansley’s twin brother before hitting a brick wall and being forced to move on to other clients. Buck was determined to continue looking for the missing twin right up until the wedding.

  “It’s an old friend of Judy Ramsey’s who moved away after her house burned down.” Buck remembered the vacant lot next to Judy’s house. “Luella Lindley lived there and knew Judy during the time frame when Ansley and her brother were born. I’m hoping she’s going to be able to help.”

  “For Ansley’s sake, I hope so.” He smiled. “Yours, too, since I know how badly you want to marry my sister. But what if you don’t find him? Would you postpone the wedding?”

  Buck shook his head. “I hope not, but Ansley has her heart set on her twin giving her away. Not that I blame her. I can’t imagine what it’s like to find out you have a twin brother you never knew existed. I’d want to find him, too.”

  “Let’s hope she gets her happy ending. I just worry. Ansley lucked out. Even though the Brookshires weren’t the family she’d hoped for, she had what most people would consider a good life. Then she got all of us.” He grinned. “But it could have turned out a lot worse for her brother.”

  Admittedly, Buck worried about that as well. Ansley needed a happy ending and that meant finding her twin. Hopefully before the wedding. He didn’t want to think about postponing the wedding. He wanted Ansley for his wife now. The waiting was killing him. He was anxious to start their lives together.

  But until Del Jr. was found, dead or alive, he knew Ansley would be heartbroken. That was something Buck couldn’t stand. He’d do anything to make her happy.

  Buck couldn’t help but think about all that Ansley had gone through to find her birth mother. It had been dangerous. People had died, others had gone to prison. Both Buck and Ansley were lucky to be alive. He really hoped that wouldn’t be the case finding her twin.

  “Let’s hope Luella Lindley has the answers we need,” he told James. “I’m driving down to Casper, Wyoming, to talk to her in person. Don’t mention this to Ansley. I don’t want to get her hopes up.”

  Buck knew it was more than that. He didn’t want to give her bad news with their wedding and first Christmas together just over a week away.

  * * *

  “CAN YOU TURN that off?” DJ asked after he and Keira were headed north away from the busiest airport in the state, Yellowstone International just outside of Bozeman, Montana. He wanted to put all this progress in the rearview mirror as they headed toward the mountains.

  She reached over and turned off the radio and the Christmas music. DJ realized he’d lost track of not just weeks, but months. How could it already be this close to Christmas? It wasn’t as if he celebrated the holiday. He had no warm and fuzzy family holiday memories. In fact, he was always glad once the season was over—not that it wasn’t a good time financially for him and Sadie. The kind of people they dealt with were more reckless with their money this time of year, some out of Christmas cheer, most out of greed or desperation.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” he said once they were on the open highway.

  Keira’s hands gripped the wheel seemingly tighter, her eyes galvanized on the road ahead as she chewed nervously at her lower lip. “I don’t want you to get mad.” Too late for that. “It was a mistake. He didn’t know.”

  DJ swore. Of course Luca knew. No one gambled without knowing they might lose—and they might lose big if they didn’t stop. “How much?”

  “Seventy-five large originally,” she said without looking at him. “I didn’t know that he’d borrowed more to keep up with the interest payments.”

  He never lost his temper. It was bad for business. But right now...

  “I wouldn’t have called you, but...”

  But there was no one else.

  She concentrated on the road.

  He chose his words carefully, determined not to take his frustration and anger out on her. “When you’re involved with these kinds of people you don’t go to another one and borrow more. That’s a good way to end up in a ditch dead. Or in your case sold to the highest bidder. Who are these men your husband got involved with?”

  “Do you remember Titus Grandville? He’s an investment banker in the same building as his father’s bank.”

  Is that what he was calling himself? “Crooks wear suits, too, baby sister,” he said, and turned to stare out at the passing countryside while he tamped down his anger and tried to concentrate on the beauty. It had been so long since he’d been back here. He’d forgotten how breathtaking the snowcapped mountains were. The pines were so dark green against the cobalt blue of the big sky. He felt an old childhood ache for a place that he’d once thought of as paradise.

  “Who’s his muscle?” he finally asked.

  She mugged a distasteful face. “Butch Lamar. He’s the one you talked to on the phone. He’s new in town. Hangs out on the Turner Ranch. He’s friends with Rafe Westfall, the son of one of the men who used to live out at our old ranch.” She shot him a look. “They’re serious, DJ. The first time Luca couldn’t pay, they beat him up real bad. This last time...”

  “He still alive?” DJ asked, hoping so for selfish reasons.

  “Barely. He’s hiding out. That’s why they grabbed me.”

  “Did you know?” he had to ask. Her silence said it all. He swore and turned on her. “You grew up with this. How could you let him?”

  “I didn’t let him. He thought he was—”

  “Smarter, right?” DJ cursed under his breath. “And he thought he was going to surprise you, make you happy. How do I know this is the last time he’s going to have to be bailed out?” He saw her jaw tighten.

  “I’m divorcing him. I’m done. He’s on his own after this.”

  He studied her, trying to decide if she was telling the truth or just saying what he wanted to hear. He made a living reading people, but his little sister was a mystery to him because he loved her so much. “Does he know that?”

  “Yes. He says he was trying to make money to save our marriage.”

  “Bull,” DJ snapped.

  She swung her head in his direction. “Don’t you think I know that?” She quickly turned back to her driving as the SUV swerved. “It’s not the first time. We had to sell everything last time.”

  He found himself grinding his teeth and had to look out the side window again. In his line of work, temper was a real weakness and one he couldn’t afford. But this wasn’t business. This was personal.

  Ahead, he saw the turnoff to Whitehall. “Take this exit. We’ll get a couple of rooms here and go into Butte in the morning.” What he didn’t say was that he wasn’t ready to go back. Not yet. The city brought back too many memories.

  “By the way, where is Luca hiding out?” He asked it casually, but Keira knew him too well.

  “I don’t want you to do anything to him.”

  He waited, counting off the seconds until she finally spoke as if she knew he’d find out even if she refused to tell him.

  “Lonesome. It’s a small town up by—”

  “I know where it is,” DJ said. “Why’d he choose it?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “He’s staying at Uncle Charley’s cabin up there.”

  Charley had a cabin? This was news. He thought that his uncle had lost everything back when he lost the ranch. And why outside of Lonesome, one of only a few small Montana towns that he noticed his uncle had avoided? When asked, Charley had been surprised that he’d noticed. “Some towns aren’t worth the trouble.” But he’d looked at him strangely, as if he wanted to say more but had changed his mind.

  DJ had guessed that Charley had unfinished business in Lonesome. Those last few years of his uncle’s life, he hadn’t seen much of him. When he did see him, he worried that Charley was in more trouble than he could dig himself out of. As it turned out, that was true.

  Charley always had his secrets. Now he knew that his uncle had a cabin that he’d somehow managed to keep—and Keira knew about it.

  He glanced over at her, wondering what other secrets they’d both kept from him.

  Chapter Four

  Leaving Keira in Whitehall, DJ rented an SUV and drove to Butte alone. He found the investment banker’s office on the top floor of the Grandville Building. He’d checked it out online last night as he prepared for this. A four-story brick edifice from the late eighteen hundreds that housed the Grandville Bank started by Titus’s great-grandfather. The bank was still on the ground floor with two upper floors converted into condos and the top floor office space.

  He found Titus Grandville in his corner office overlooking the historical section of downtown Butte. “Nice digs,” DJ said as the banker motioned for him to take one of the leather club chairs. He declined and approached the man in the large office chair behind the massive desk.

  Like all the Grandvilles, Titus was short and squat with a cowlick at the crown of his brown hair. While dressed like a respectable investment banker, he still looked like the thug he was.

  “Let me understand the problem here,” DJ said quietly, calmly. “You came after my sister to threaten her over debts run up by the deadbeat husband she is divorcing. Is that right?”

  Titus narrowed dark eyes that were a little too close together. He dropped his hand below the desk. To buzz for security if needed? Or reach for a weapon? “I hope we can settle this like respectable gentlemen.”

  DJ laughed. “We’d have to be respectable gentlemen.” He lowered his voice. “You need to leave Keira alone. What is it going to take?”

  The banker smiled and leaned back in his large office chair, steepling his fingers on his round middle. Apparently, mentioning money made Titus less nervous. “Someone has to pay what’s owed.”

  Grandville was enjoying this a little too much. He remembered him as a kid. To say there was bad blood between them was putting it mildly. Titus had always lorded it over him. Not that everyone in Butte hadn’t known that Titus was a Grandville. Who knew what DJ was?

  Just the sight of his smug face was enough to make him want to leap over the massive desk and take the man by the throat. But it wouldn’t solve the problem. DJ had known the moment he heard Keira crying on the phone that he was going to have to come up here and pay them off. The very idea stuck in his craw because of his dislike for the Grandvilles.