to keep his focus on them. Add to that the fact that the family was now growing, with wives and children, and he had more responsibility than ever.
Matters were fine just the way they were.
And yet, when Mimi floated down the aisle on Sheriff Cannady’s arm, passing by Mason with the sweetest, happiest smile on her face—she smiled right at him—her expression all glowing, it seemed heated pitchforks speared his heart. Pierced it to pieces.
God, she was lovely. More beautiful than he’d ever realized.
Maybe all his brothers were right. Maybe he did have his head lodged firmly in an unmentionable part of his anatomy. He meditated on this as the ceremony progressed, not hearing any of the words being spoken until the minister’s voice rose dramatically, perhaps even pointedly.
“If any person can show just cause that Mimi Cannady should not wed Brian O’Flannigan, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
The chapel was deathly silent, so eerily still that Mason could hear his own heartbeat thud, thud, thud in his ears. His suit went from merely hotter-than-hell to a prison of boiling fire as every eye in the church seemed to pin itself on him. Even Reverend Kendall glanced his way, though surely not with any meaning behind it.
Speak now or forever hold your peace.
He tapped his fingers on his knee.
Say it or forever keep a doofus, Uncle-Mason smile on his face every time he saw Mimi, which would be often, since she’d be living right next door, like always. He’d smile when she became pregnant. Smile when she proudly watched her children take their first steps. Smile when she taught them to ride their ponies. When she had birthday parties for them. When she grew gray and contented with her husband, forty years from today.
Speak now or forever hold your peace!
Mason cleared his throat.
Chapter One
Ranger Jefferson had never seen such a case of pigheadedness in all his life, but Mason won the prize, if there was such a thing. How could Mason have let Mimi get away the way he had?
Too much was happening too fast around the Union Junction Ranch. Even too much for Ranger. Moreover, if he didn’t get away from his twin’s silly e-mail romance with a woman in Australia, he was going to go as cuckoo as a Swiss clock himself.
He couldn’t stand it another moment. Without telling any of his brothers, Ranger had made a decision: It was time to join the military.
Okay, so he was no spring pup at thirty-two. But there were wars being fought all over the world, and the least he could do was volunteer for the National Guard. Maybe more.
He aimed to find out. Throwing his duffel over his shoulder, he headed out the door toward his truck.
“Where are you going?” Helga asked him.
“Shh,” he told her. “It’s a secret.”
“Helga doesn’t like secrets.” She frowned at him, and he smiled back, eager to keep on her good side before she roused Mason. Mason believed Helga was the perfect housekeeper, hired by Mimi Cannady not too long ago, though nothing could be further from the truth. Helga was horrible, and Mimi had enjoyed knowing there was no cute young thing keeping house for Mason.
Of course, Mimi was married now, and that meant the Jefferson brothers could ditch Helga!
Helga’s eyes narrowed on him. “I am making sauerkraut and sausage for dinner. Will you be back?”
Ugh. That decided him. His brothers would have to figure out a way to send the housekeeper packing on their own, if they weren’t all still too stunned that Mason hadn’t managed to belly up some bravery, to throw himself down on his hands and knees and marry the only woman who could ever love the pigheaded man. “I won’t be back, Helga,” he said. “Shh,” he cautioned her again. “Mason needs his rest.”
Well, that was the deciding factor. Helga adored Mason. If Mason needed his sleep, sleep was what he would get.
And Ranger would be long gone, his goodbye note of military aspirations beside Mason’s breakfast dish. Mason wouldn’t like it; he hated the fact that one by one, his brothers were leaving the family ranch, something he’d always feared.
But life had to move on, and no way was Ranger going to end up like his twin, Archer, e-mailing some dopey girl in Australia. Or like Frisco Joe, whose leg had to be broken to get him to marry a wonderful woman. Frisco Joe and Annabelle were expecting a child, a sibling for Emmie. Of course, Annabelle looked real sweet pregnant, but…Ranger certainly didn’t want to end up like Laredo, either, who had to get himself concussed by a bull to make him see the light about Katy Goodnight.
If body parts were going to get busted when it came to women, he darn sure wasn’t going to let it happen to him.
The military would be a whole lot safer.
He hopped in his truck, quietly pulling down the drive and away from the only home he’d ever known. Just a couple hours away from Union Junction was Lonely Hearts Station, and the women of Lonely Hearts Salon. When his older brother, Laredo, had left Union Junction back in March, he’d made the mistake of stopping into the Lonely Hearts Salon to say hello to the women who’d helped the Jefferson brothers and most of Union Junction through a terrible February storm.
Laredo had gotten roped into a rodeo, and then marriage. The concussion had come in between.
Ranger was smarter than that. On his way to the nearest military base, he was going to drive straight through Lonely Hearts Station, Texas, without stopping.
No waving. No hello shouted through the window. Last month, when he’d been helping Laredo learn how to ride the Lonely Hearts Salon’s champion bull, Bloodthirsty Black, he’d met Hannah Hotchkiss, and she’d just about made him think twice about his narrowly divided world. He’d also met Cissy Kisserton, an employee of a rival beauty shop, who’d also made him think twice about life as he knew it. The two women had just about come to blows over him, and he’d liked it!
But…not enough to sacrifice a bone or a body part.
“There’s bad luck in that town,” he said to no one in particular as he sped down the highway, happy to be heading east and away from the ranch. “I’m too cagey to get caught in that heart trap. All that love business is a mess! Lonely Hearts ladies, Never Lonely Cut-n-Gurls—it’s a soap-opera city. I’m passing through there at top speed!”
RANGER’S PLAN WORKED—until he saw the tall blonde waving at him in front of the Never Lonely Cut-n-Gurls Salon. “Dang it!” he muttered. “I almost made it.”
Cissy Kisserton pulled open the truck door and tossed a silver-foil suitcase inside. “Thought I recognized your vehicle, Ranger. How fortunate for me, because I was about to hitch to the nearest highway.”
Ranger couldn’t imagine Cissy having trouble finding a ride. Yet he still didn’t want to be the one to give it to her. She looked devastatingly gorgeous in skin-tight jeans and a cutoff T-shirt—dressed down for traveling and yet still packing dynamite.
“Shew!” he said under his breath. “I don’t know where I’m going,” he told
