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He stamped off the cold from his feet in the back room and took a breath, like that could somehow center him. Ground him. Do something to reshape the earthquake that was going off inside of him. Or maybe it was an aftershock from the moment he’d first seen her. One big, long, seismic event that seemed to have no end in sight.

Dallas knew how to control his body. He’d spent years mastering the art of it, in fact. He tried to draw on that now, feeling more shaky than he ever had when it was only adrenaline talking. He slowly found his way, gradually feeling that urge to shake himself apart cool down.

And only when he felt that he was in control of himself again did he walk through the door that led him directly behind the counter of the General Store. Off to the left, he could hear the usual clatter and conversation from the side of the building that housed Tennessee’s diner. He knew his brother would be in there, with his rescue dog Ace never far from his side.

But when he made it behind the counter, having completely forgotten what the schedule for working the General Store was today since his entire world was askew, no big deal, he saw his sister sitting there.

For the life of him, he couldn’t remember where she was in her nursing school journey at the moment or why she wasn’t over at her job in Dr. Ramona Taylor’s clinic down the road, but he was glad that she was here today. Not that he intended to tell her that, of course. She was his younger sister.

“What’s the matter with you?” Cat asked from where she lounged on the stool pulled up behind the register, a textbook open before her and a notepad next to it that was covered with her writing. She frowned, letting her eyes rake over him from head to toe. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Because Cat was always a little spooky like that. It was irritating.

Dallas walked past the counter without answering her. He headed down the nearest aisle toward the front of the building and Cat followed him, which he assumed had to be because he was giving off some sense of urgency.

So much for all that self-control he was supposed to have.

“About that,” he muttered.

He peered out the front window, and he could admit that part of him wondered if there wouldn’t be anyone there. If everything that had happened last night had been some kind of extended dream—and Lord knew he’d had those dreams before—and the street would be empty. The earthquakes inside of him would be nothing more than the same old painful memories. And Ruthie would be as far away as she ever was.

But beside him, his sister sucked in a shocked sort of breath as her gaze landed on the figure bundled up out there in the cold. “Is that…?”

“It is.”

“Dallas.” Cat sounded delighted. Too delighted.

He frowned down at her, not knowing how to explain. Fuck it, he thought, and just dove in. “This is going to sound completely insane, but she doesn’t know who I am.”

His little sister gazed up at him for a long moment. Maybe too long a moment. “You’re right. That does sound completely insane.”

She probably thought he was the insane thing here, and he could understand that. So he told her about last night. How Ruthie had showed up out of the blue and how he’d thought she was deliberately being cold to him. Until she’d introduced herself.

“Maybe she’s messing with you,” Cat theorized.

“I’m not going to pretend that I’m the best judge of character, or anything,” Dallas said, though he was. And Cat knew he was. He cleared his throat. “Especially not when it comes to someone who has every reason to hate me.”

And he had to shake his head at that, because it was harder to talk about how she hated him when she was here. Not that he’d talked about it much before now. Or really at all.

But Cat was frowning up at him, so he kept going. “But I did know her. For a long time. And I didn’t see a single spark of recognition. Not the faintest indication that she’d ever heard of me, Cat.” He rubbed at his jaw. “If anything, she was acting as if I was not only a stranger, but one who was acting a little weird.”

His sister took that in, and said nothing.

And that was actually more alarming than anything else Cat could have said, because what Cat should have said—if any of this was normal, or he was having some kind of episode—was something insulting. Something to slap him around a little bit and remind him who he was.

Instead, Cat turned and looked out that window again, so he did too.

It was still Ruthie. Ruthie wrapped up in a scarf of his with an Army hat tugged low on her head. Ruthie with those pretty eyes, that perfect, oval face, and that sweet mouth of hers that was curved now as she looked all around like she was soaking in all the buildings on the main road on this bright, snowy day, from the snowman outside Mountain Mama Pizza to the twinkling lights strung up over the entrance to the Crowded Table restaurant and the Christmas tree the new owners had decorated the day after Thanksgiving. Ruthie, with her hands in mittens that were too large and a parka that he personally thought was too light, actually standing there.

Here. In Cowboy Point.

“She does not look like someone who’s been here before,” Cat said, after they spent a moment or two watching her look around wide-eyed, like she’d never seen the Feed Store before. “When you and I both know that she has been here. Just that one time, and in summer, but still.”

“But still,” Dallas agreed.

They stayed where they were, huddled in the window and staring. Just staring, and there was something about it that Dallas actually found kind of soothing. Because Ruthie couldn’t see him staring right now. He didn’t have to try to control whatever was happening on his face. He could just…soak it in, the fact that she was right here, right in front of him. In his town, and sleeping in his lighthouse.

It was almost too much, really.