LITMIR.BIZ

       Prologue

      Standing at the front door to his grandmother’s Denver home on that sizzling August afternoon, Beau Camden heard a car pull up the drive behind him.

      He spun around so fast he might as well have still been in the caves of Afghanistan with a rifle in his hands.

      Then he recognized his older brother Cade at the wheel of a blue sedan and relaxed.

      Beau watched as Cade parked behind his own black SUV, thinking that maybe Cade would have better luck getting someone to answer the door.

      “Beau! Hey!” Cade called as he got out of his car and headed for the landing. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

      “GiGi asked me to come over. But I rang the bell and knocked, and no one seems to be here.”

      Cade raised his chin knowingly. “Oh, that’s right, GiGi said you’d been doing that—knocking and ringing the bell instead of just coming in. Acting like you don’t belong here—that’s what she calls it. She doesn’t like it. This is home, pal. Our home—we grew up here, remember? I know you’ve been gone a long time, but nothing’s changed. We don’t stand on ceremony.”

      But standing on ceremony had been ingrained in him in the Marines.

      And he had been gone a long time. Thirteen years. The first four of them in college at Annapolis with summers and holidays spent on the Camden ranch in Northbridge, Montana, to toughen up. The last nine years a marine.

      Once a marine, always a marine...

      “Hard to get back to things,” he muttered.

      An understatement.

      Beau was having a lot of trouble fitting in again. The few occasions over the years when he’d been home on leave had been vacations from reality. Every waking hour had been filled with activities and seeing family and friends who all wanted to spoil him and show him a good time before he left again.

      Being back for good was something else.

      When Cade joined him at the oversize front door with its arched top and the stained glass in the upper half he reached in front of Beau, punched in the code that unlocked the door and unceremoniously turned the handle.

      “Finally! It’s about time, Beaumont Anthony Camden!” came a victorious call from inside before the door was open all the way. “I thought I was going to have to stand here till dark before you got the idea!”

      Georgianna Camden, matriarch of the Camden family and the woman who had raised all ten of her grandchildren—the grandmother they called GiGi—stood several feet inside the entry, facing the door as if she’d been there all along.

      Spotting Cade, she deflated slightly, her shoulders drooping into her dumpling-like shape, her head shaking enough for her salt-and-pepper curls to shimmy and her frustration showing on the lined face that still bore evidence of beauty.

      “Oh, Cade...” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming—you opened the door, didn’t you?”

      “Well, it’s open, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Cade asked.

      Beau knew his older brother was covering for him.

      So did GiGi, if her disapproving frown meant anything.

      Cade ignored it and said, “I left my sunglasses when we were here Sunday. Just came to pick them up on my way home.”

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