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Colby Richardson—Cole to his friends and family—pushed his wide-brimmed Resistol back on his head and muttered a word he normally reserved for dire circumstances and locker room banter as he stood in the feedlot of the Double R Ranch and surveyed the daaze strayed to the eo, the main barn had stood The debris had been cleared away, but it did little to erase thethe barn he and his brother used to play in reduced to a pile of broken boards and splintered beams The deadly twister that had leveled parts of don Royal, Texas, and several other small communities close by had skipped its way across the west Texas landscape, laying waste to everything in its path—including part of his family’s ranch

Glancing over his shoulder at the ranch house, he shook his head as he a to his family anymore When their father passed away a few years back, the ranch had gone to Cole’s twin brother, Craig Now it belonged to Craig’s , Paige

He sighed heavily as guilt and regret settled over hied tould be able to put the anger and resentment aside and, at the very least, establish a semblance of a relationship After all, they were only thirty-two There should have been plenty of tih the area, his brother’s ti any possibility of reconciliation between theht to an end

The devastation and loss of property were one thing, but the death of Craig—along with six other souls at the Royal town hall that day—was another Cole and his business partner, Aaron Nichols, had used their Dallas-based construction coed property But there wasn’t a da back the lives that had been lost He wished with everything that was in him that there was

Taking a deep breath, Cole unclipped the cell phone on his belt He had put off h The construction crew he had assigned to rebuild the Lone Star Bar and Grill would complete that job by the end of the day and could start on the repairs to the Double R first thing in the

As he relayed the work order to the crew foreman and clipped the phone back onto his belt, he watched his sister-in-law leave the house and start across the yard toward hiut The ’s death, he had rushed back to his hometown to do whatever he could to help Royal recover and to help Paige get through ht away it had become apparent that he’d have to keep his interaction with her brief and he knew she had to be confused by the strained encounters But he hadn’t anticipated the effect she still had on him

The first tih school, Cole had been fascinated with her Tall and y, she raceful dancer, and as he watched her walk toward him now, he found hiht breeze played with her long auburn hair and he couldn’t help but wonder how the soft wavy strands would feel as he ran his fingers through them

“I didn’t realize you were co as she walked up to him She used the name his family called him and it suddenly occurred to him, she was the only family he had left

Shaking his head to dispel the last traces of his ridiculous introspection, Cole forced himself to concentrate on the reason for his visit to the Double R “I’ve scheduled one of the R&N work crews to start rebuilding your barn andin the ”

“Have the construction crews you brought with you from Dallas finished all of the work on the other projects first?” she asked She had been adamant that the repairs the Double R needed could wait until per for the displaced fa the storm had been taken care of Her selflessness hadn’t surprised him in the least

He nodded “Aaron is in charge of overseeing those crews, but he assured me the last of the houses R&N Builders are contracted to rebuild will be finished by the end of the month”

“Good” She shaded her pretty gray eyes from the midafternoon sun with one delicate hand “Stella and I were talking the other day about how iet the families back into homes of their own and reestablish a sense of per to Stella Daniels, the town’s acting mayor and his business partner’s neife “Children need that sense of belonging after what they’ve been through and all they’ve lost”