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Prologue

Peyton Patrick had never seen the allure of settling down in one place, but Cowboy Point was growing on her.

Spring helped.

So did the fact that Peyton was living in the little cabin her daughter Helena had been renting for a while now. Ever since Helena had come here and decided to stay in Cowboy Point when she had originally planned only to come and sniff around the place a bit.

It had drawn them all in, one by one.

Peyton had not exactly encouraged Helena’s plan to learn more about her father’s murky past. Because once she’d learned the truth about her husband, the depth of the lies and the shocking levels of deception, she would have done anything to walk away from all things Patrick Lisle forever.

And had tried, for that matter.

The man Peyton had known as Lyle Patrick was pretty worthless. There was no getting around that. Yet somehow he had managed to produce six pretty spectacular kids. Not that any of them were kids anymore. Three of them were Peyton’s and they were well and truly grown up now. Even Helena, her passionate youngest.

The idea of all six of the Lisle-Patrick siblings converging upon each other had kept Peyton up at night, imagining all the ways that could go wrong. She’d felt she had no choice but to call up Jenny Lisle and give her a heads-up.

And then had felt she had to come to this tiny little Montana town herself, too.

It was never going to cease to surprise her that Patrick Lisle’s secret second family coming here to Cowboy Point and meeting up with his original, out-in-the-open family, was not the disaster Peyton had expected.

On the contrary.

It had been months now, and it was pretty great.

Peyton and Jenny Lisle, Patrick’s actual, lawful wife despite the ceremony he’d gone through with Peyton, had taken one look at each other and fallen into peals of helpless laughter in a coffee shop up in Livingston.

Because they looked more alike than they didn’t. And that, after so many tears and too many dark days, was pretty funny, in the end.

These days, Peyton thought as she walked down the road that functioned as the main thoroughfare in the tiny little valley hidden away on the backside of one of the mountains that loomed up over Montana’s Paradise Valley, she considered Jenny a friend.

A good friend.

It was the beginning of June, and while there was still snow on the peaks, the sun was out. The air was warmer than it had been in months and there were hints of buds and growing things in the most unlikely places.

When Jenny had gotten here in February, the place had been packed with snow, frigid and cold. It had been a full-on Montana winter, but she had weathered it.

Not only that, she had something here that she’d thought she would never have again now that they were grown: all of her babies in one place.

At first, they’d all stayed together in Helena’s cabin—Raleigh liked to remind everyone that he had stayed and continued to stay in his trailer—and that had been more fun for Peyton than any of them, she was fairly sure. She hadn’t been at all surprised when Finn, her oldest, had declared that he was going to stick around for the time being, but would be finding his own place to live.

Sometimes, when they gathered in the cabin together again for a meal, she liked to call them her babies to their faces so she could watch all three of her adult children wince.

A mother did have her priorities.

This particular morning, she’d gotten up before dawn with Helena. Then she’d driven down the hill with her daughter to get the coffee cart up and running, so it could be ready to serve the steady stream of workmen and other early risers who expected Helena there, no matter the weather, no later than five AM.

When Peyton had been Helena’s age, she had not been nearly so responsible. Though this was something she kept to herself, as she’d also been prone to making far more mistakes than her daughter had.

The biggest one being the man she’d so foolishly fallen in love with.

Not that she could really beat herself up for those mistakes these days, because it had all led her here. It had brought her these children of hers, who she adored beyond reason. And because of them, it had brought her here, too.

Helena’s coffee cart was parked in the little lot to the side of the General Store that had been in the Lisle family forever, as far as Peyton could tell. On the other side of the store was the diner run by the oldest of Patrick’s sons, Tennessee Lisle. He was not that much older than Finn. In fact, the two of them—a lot like their mothers—had more in common than they didn’t.

That had been another gift of coming to Cowboy Point. Getting to witness her children get to know their half siblings, and the six of them somehow coming together like they’d always known about each other, and more, were best friends anyway.

She and Jenny couldn’t get over it.