He was barely on the road before his phone rang.

  “You got a new dog, man?” Devin asked as he picked up the phone.

  “He was running loose on my land. You recognize him?”

  “No. He’s a cutie, though.”

  “You want to take him?”

  “I would, but I’m fostering a huge Great Dane at the moment, and believe me, you wouldn’t want a little one around here right now. Chumley’s all I can manage...”

  Sharing an understanding chuckle with the man, Asa told him about the flyers he’d be putting up and Devin said he’d keep his ear to the ground.

  Asa’s first stop was at the community bulletin board. The note he’d seen put up the other night was still there. Seeming to glare at him with unanswered questions.

  He tacked his dog flyer on the opposite end of the board.

  And spent the next forty-five minutes on Main Street, going from place to place to ask permission to hang his lost dog missives.

  The task itself wasn’t such a time suck—it was all the chatting, backslaps, and well-wishes he got every place along the way—congratulating him on his wedding.

  Asking him how married life was treating him.

  All reminders of the very things he’d needed to escape.

  He’d left his sister’s place on Main Street for last—wanting to get a look at the progress she was making. And also to see if there were problems, if she needed help, if anyone was giving her a hard time in the final stages of creating her down-home Western-style restaurant.

  In other words, his usual MO.

  Cowgirl Café was slated to open the following month and if there were any snags, he’d be there to help her through them. Bea had always loved to cook. But that didn’t mean she was on top of every aspect of opening her own business.

  “Wow, this is impressive,” he heard himself saying once inside, giving her a hug as he looked around. The post and beam interior and Western flavor looked far better than he’d envisioned them when she’d first told him about the place.

  “You want to see the menu?” she asked, pushing one beneath his nose. “They just came today.”

  Taking it, he read the list of solid cowboy/cowgirl favorites, from five kinds of chili and corn breads and poboys to mac and cheese in crocks.

  “Now you’ve made me hungry,” he grumbled, handing it back to her. “I don’t suppose you have any samples back there.” He pointed to the opening that led to the kitchen.

  “Go home to your wife, little brother. She just called to say she over made the rice and is doing up a chicken and rice casserole for dinner. She wanted my mushroom sauce recipe...”

  There’d been a bounce in Bea’s step from the second he’d walked in the door and caught sight of her. The smile that was on her face as she sassed him went far beyond her mouth, too. Her eyes seemed to glow in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he retorted, as she took one of his fliers from him before he’d even offered it to her.

  “She told me about the dog, too, now git. Knowing you, you still have to stop at the store and the casserole will be coming out of the oven in less than an hour...”

  “You know, bossy bosses aren’t all that popular...” he told Bea with a grin as he grabbed her for a quick kiss to her head, and left.

  Feeling better than he had since he’d pulled his pants back on after being with Lily in the woods.

  His sister hadn’t looked so excited about anything since her divorce, and her happiness made him happy.

  Turned out, buying dog stuff wasn’t such a bad gig, either.

  Figuring it was best to overbuy rather than end up not having something Lily wanted, Asa bought up two grocery bags worth of food, treats, and toys, and grabbed a dog bed, too, on his way out of the aisle. The stuff could all go with the dog when he went home.

  Or be donated to the shelter if the dog’s owner didn’t want them.

  He had a feeling the supplies would make Lily happy.

  And that lifted his mood, too.

  * * *

  The dog—Max, she was thinking of him in her mind—occupied Lily before dinner, through it, and afterward, too.

  Turned out, he was a chewer.

  And a clinger. He didn’t like to be alone in a room for long.

  He was also house-trained, she discovered just as the buzzer was going off, indicating it was time for her to get Bea’s casserole recipe out of the oven, and Max went to the door and whined.

  She didn’t have a leash or collar yet, so she grabbed the rope Asa had fashioned to serve as both holster and lead when they’d first found him. Slipping it on Max, she took him out. He did his business so fast it was like he’d held it to the last minute.

  And she made a note to self to offer him outdoor opportunities more often.

  She wasn’t calling him by any name. Wasn’t letting herself start to think of him as her own. But having been a foster, she wanted to be a good foster parent, even if only for the night.

  The dog’s presence made Asa’s return much easier to take in stride. Not only did the little guy wiggle and wag and demand attention, but he was like a third in the room. Allowing them to avoid talk of what had happened between them in the woods.

  “I think he’s still young,” Asa said as they finished up dishes together, and he asked her if she wanted to have a beer on the porch. “The chewing, and the overexuberance seem to point that way.”

  He had a lot more experience with dogs. Was probably right.

  “I choose to think that he’s just thrilled to not be running scared in the woods.” After all, fosters had to stick together.

  “That, too.” Asa chuckled, tipping his bottle to her as they each took one of the two big white wooden chairs, with a holstered dog lying down between them.

  As though he’d accepted that he had a place for the night and exhaustion had finally hit him.

  “This is nice,” Asa said after a few minutes of relaxing night air filled only with the sounds of an occasional breeze. The birds that chirped and called their various melodies during the day had settled in for the night as well.

  And all Lily could think about was the sex she and Asa had had earlier.

  It had been different. Not just sex between a hungry man and woman, but between her and Asa. Best friends with an understanding of the other’s needs, insecurities, and motivations.

  Where she got that notion, she didn’t know. She acknowledged to herself that he might not have experienced anything of the sort. But the way he’d reacted to that photo of her mom and sisters and her...it was as though he’d been right inside her heart. He’d felt her.

  She’d felt him in there. Sharing her anguish.

  Right before they’d ripped one another’s clothes off.

  “This is paradise,” Asa murmured. “This right here...it’s what I longed for as a kid but never had.”

  “You don’t remember a time at all when your parents got along?”

  He sipped from his beer, staring out into the night, and shook his head. “Nope. I think my dad’s affairs started early in the marriage. Mom’s came later.”

  “And you guys knew about them?”

  “It was kind of hard not to. They threw them in each other’s faces. And then threw my aunt’s and uncle’s liasons in each other’s faces, too, as though that justified their behaviors.” He shook his head.

  And she hurt for him.

  She thought of what Esme had told her about Asa’s lack of belief in a true love that lasted. His sister thought Lily had cured him.

  If only that were possible...

  “I love that you called Bea for recipe suggestions tonight,” he said then, sliding a glance her way.

  Lily smiled. “It’s nice, having a group of people with various skills who are happy to hear from you and help out.”

  “It’s called family, Lil,” he said, laconically, but kindly, too. As though he was pleased.

  The word got her. Family.

  His sisters would only be her family for a short time and then...

  She’d stood on the exact spot where her mother had stood with a heart full of love for her.

  She still couldn’t wrap her mind around that one. To the point that, other than Asa, no one else knew. She’d thought she’d call her sisters, but with the dog, and well...everything, she hadn’t done so.

  Silence fell between them, and he sat forward. Turned to her. “You and I, we’re family now,” he told her. “You married me. Took my name. And even after the divorce, we’ll be family. We promised each other forever.”

  Her throat clogged to the point that she couldn’t speak. She wouldn’t let tears fall. Not in front of him again. Not in the same day.

  So she nodded. Sipped from her beer.

  He knew that having grown up without a family to call her own, family meant everything to her. Being a part of one was her heart’s biggest desire. The only dream she cared to reach for.

  She thought about the two of them. Her past...and his. How it affected them both. Envisoned the future, what it would probably look like. What it could look like.

  What she most needed it to look like.

  And when she could speak calmly, normally, she found herself saying, “The Hensens were married almost fifty years, worked together every day, and the way Val talks about her husband, their love holds true ever after death,” she said. And then she talked about one of her high school teachers who’d opened her home to Lily for a graduation celebration because Lily had been living alone in her one room apartment by the time that June had come around. The woman Had been near retirement. Had been married for over forty years. Had grown children of their own. And they’d worked together to give Lily a special day of her own.

  “I didn’t know they’d done that,” Asa remarked, glancing her way. “That’s such a cool thing. Why didn’t you ever mention it before?”

  For the same reason she hadn’t told anyone except him about the picture she’d received that morning. The things that meant the most to her were cherished inside where they couldn’t get crushed.

  Just as the things that hurt the most weren’t talked about, either. She wouldn’t shine a light on them. It would only give them the power to hurt more.

  “It just never came up,” she answered. “The point is, Asa, there are happy marriages. A lot of them. You must at least hope that Esme and Ryder will be happy together for the rest of their lives...”

  She wasn’t sure if he shook his head, or just gestured with it. He’d stopped midmovement to take a long swig of beer. “Of course, I hope it,” he told her. “But I don’t feel certain that will be the case. When you watch relationships erode, one day at a time, you see what happens... I don’t know how some do it. I just know that I can’t take that chance.”

  He glanced at her, and though they were sitting with only the light from the front window, she could see the steely resolve in his gaze. “How could I gamble like that? On the possibility that we might come out okay? Because if we’re wrong, I lose you.”

  She smiled as best she could. Nodded. Then looked out into the night.

  “I can’t lose you, Lil.”

  At the sincere emotion in his tone, she glanced over at him. Smiled for real, and said, “I can’t lose you, either, Asa.”

  And told herself, as they took the dog and went upstairs that night—and Asa veered off to his own room without any hesitation at all, asking her if she wanted to keep the dog, or have Asa take him—that she had to give up on the idea that she and Asa would ever have a real marriage.

  Or children to share it with them.

  He cared about her deeply.

  Loved her even. As a best friend.

  And that was far better than anything she’d ever had.

  It was just that she’d just begun believing in the possibility that she could have whatever her heart desired. Or that she could at least keep trying for it, keep reaching, until the day she died.

  As long as she kept believing.

  With that picture of her own mother looking so gloriously happy with her babies firmly in mind, alongside Asa’s support and lovemaking that afternoon, she felt like she was at a crossroads.

  And wasn’t sure which path to take.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lily was already down in the kitchen, feeding the dog, when Asa came downstairs after his shower the next morning. They’d agreed not to call their new companion by a name since they didn’t know what his actual name was.

  They’d both already figured the dog had had an owner, even as young as he was, because he’d been neutered.

  Listening to Lily talk to the four-legged bit of happy energy as he headed toward the kitchen, he hated to think about her giving the dog away again.

  But when it happened, he knew she’d take it all in stride. With a smile on her face.

  Lily was used to losing what she cared about.

  Which was why he had to get his ass in better gear for her. Keep his hands off her. Get divorced, and settle in for the forever part of their vows.

  He couldn’t let himself think about happy marriages.

  He would not be one of her losses.

  “I had an idea for the ranch last night,” she told him as he came into the kitchen to prepare his usual bowl of cereal and toast, while she munched on her granola bar and a banana.

  The words, the easy tone in her voice, settled some of the tension inside him. He knew he hadn’t given her the answer she’d wanted the night before. And had been half prepared to deal with a new distance between them.

  Instead, so Lily-like, she was forging into her future at the ranch.

  Breathing a silent sigh of relief, he said, “What’s that?”

  “I’m thinking maybe we look into a horse therapy program...”

  She paused just as his toast popped. Reaching around her to grab it from the toaster, he met her gaze.

  And smiled. “I think it’s a great idea,” he informed her, moving quickly away. “The ranch I was on before I moved here had a program, and while I was skeptical at first, it was really kind of cool. They worked mostly with displaced teenagers. Horses have a natural ability to sense human emotions and even just the nonverbal support was a thing to see...”

  “I read about a place once, when I was having to leave another home. It was a boarding school that offered equine therapy outside of Corpus Christi, and I wanted to go, but...” She tilted her head back and forth. “Clearly I didn’t have the money.”

  “Did you ever mention the idea to anyone? Or try to find out more?”

  He wasn’t surprised when she shook head. “What was the point? My monthly foster care amount wasn’t nearly enough. It wasn’t like I knew anyone with money, and I saw no point in getting my hopes up, or wasting anyone else’s time, when I knew it wasn’t going to happen.”

  Because she didn’t reach for what she wanted.

  Or she hadn’t. Until she married him.

  And now she was thinking about other teens like herself, wanting to provide for them.

  If it was possible, Asa’s pool of love for his best friend grew even deeper.

  * * *

  Leaving the dog, with his new holster collar and lead, at the barn with Asa later that morning, Lily went into town to meet her sisters for lunch.

  She’d thought she’d tell them about the picture Val Hensen had given her, but wasn’t quite ready to share yet. For so long, her sisters had had family, while she hadn’t.

  For a minute or two, she wanted to savor seeing who she’d been, all on her own.

  Tabitha had the adoptive mother she’d grown up with. Haley, the mother who’d fostered her, and was her mother still.

  Their mother was all Lily had. She wasn’t ready to share. Her sisters would get their copies of the photo. It was theirs as much as hers.

  She wasn’t trying to be selfish, or in any way slight them. But the photo was just such a huge thing for Lily, representing so many things. She needed some private time to process.

  They’d have questions...suppositions...especially Haley, whose journalist brain couldn’t stop digging. And Lily wasn’t ready to start wondering yet.

  She’d grown up knowing her parents had been killed in a car accident. But had never wanted to know more. Because doing so would make it bigger, more painful, within her.

  Yet seeing her mother’s smiling face...she kind of did want to know...as though, her mother deserved for Lily and the others to find out, to have her daughters know her as completely as they possibly could.

  But not that day. Lily was already riding on crests too high to sustain her, over undertows strong enough to take her down.

  Which was why, as soon as Asa had left the house that morning, she’d called Tabitha and Haley to request a get-together. They were the only ones who knew the truth about her marriage.

  She’d told them both she’d needed to speak with them before her wedding celebration the next night.

  Who she was, what her marriage was, where she was going...she couldn’t seem to get straight in her own mind and heart about it. She’d spent much of the night lying in bed with her heart and head fighting each other. Another first for her.

  In the past her heart had just shut up.

  She’d eventually invited the dog up on the mattress with her, and, with his warmth pressing her through the covers, had finally fallen asleep.

  Only to wake with the same battle raging inside of her.

  There was no rush to figure it all out. She was under no time constraint except her own emotional one. She needed to have something right within her before she went to that party with Asa.

  As soon as she’d opened her eyes that morning, she’d known she had to talk to her sisters. Haley was practical—she’d take the mind part of the war. And Tabitha...was a mother. She’d be the heart.