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Chapter One

If he was going to die, Tobias Hamilton was going to be upright. The damn twinge in his chest had been present for the last few days and it was beginning to worry him. He slid from the bed and flexed in the mirror. He was in amazing shape. He lifted weights almost daily and then there was all the work around the ranch.

So, yeah, maybe his eating habits were not the best and he did like a cold beer or two at night. But, hell, didn’t everyone? As if able to see his heart, he leaned into the mirror and stared at his chest. It looked normal.

“What are you doing?” Mimi, his fiancée, lifted to her elbow and looked at him with sleepy eyes.

“Got up cause my chests hurts.” He waited for the hysteria. Three. Two. One.

“Oh my God!” Mimi shrieked. Her voice was so high-pitched his labs came running and began scratching and barking on the other side of his bedroom door.

After a long struggle to free herself from the sheets, she hurried to him. “Let’s get you to the hospital. At your age, you could be about to die of a massive heart attack.”

“My age?” Tobias glared at her. “I’m not that damned old.”

“Oh, I know…” Mimi said, turning in a circle. She kicked some clothes aside. “I need to find that bag with my new jeans. I’ll go return them while you’re at the hospital.”

True she was ten years younger than him, he guessed about thirty-five or so, but that didn’t make him “heart attack old”.

“How old are you anyway?” he asked, shrugging on a t-shirt. “Can’t believe we’re engaged and I never asked.”

She ignored the question and began dressing. “Is there even a hospital in Laurel Creek?” There was disdain in her voice. She hated his hometown and never pretended otherwise. “A reputable clinic maybe?” She shuffled to the bathroom. “I better get my makeup on. You should go call and make sure the clinic or hospital or whatever you have in this town is open.”

If he were really dying, he’d be stiff as a board by the time she finished putting on makeup and doing her hair.

When he opened the bedroom door, the dogs jumped up and down, both seeming more worried about him than the woman in the bathroom.

He made sure to pet each of them. “I’m okay, boys. How about a snack?”

Both studied him for a moment as if gauging the truth in his words. However, they couldn’t ignore the fact he was about to feed them.

“Snack,” he repeated. They hesitated until he took one step out of the bedroom and then raced to the kitchen, tails wagging.

When Mimi finally appeared, Tobias was on his second cup of coffee and prepared to head to town. The pang in his chest had gone and not returned. Probably just heartburn or something, he thought to himself. In town, he’d run a few errands that needed to get done before coming back to work.

“Ready?” she asked while sliding her purse strap onto her shoulder. “Did you call the clinic?”

He grunted as a reply and dangled the keys from his finger. “Let’s go. I have errands to run. You should take the day and familiarize yourself with the local shops. There are a couple dress shops you might like.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I thought you were having a heart attack. Don’t you think you should get looked at?”

“Come on.” He walked to the door with the dogs on his heels. Mimi gave them a wide berth. Tobias wondered if she and his pets would ever bond. Usually his tan labs, Scamp and Duke, loved everybody, but they seemed to sense Mimi wasn’t fond of their kind, so they pretty much ignored her.

“I’ll stop and see the doctor, just to be sure,” he mumbled at the dogs that studied him intently.

Tori Romano stoodwith her mouth agape as tomatoes and onions rolled across the sidewalk and onto the street. This was the last thing she needed. The farmer’s market was seriously lacking in vegetables that morning. It had taken forever to find the best of what they did have.

“You’d be passably pretty if you didn’t scowl so much,” Tobias, the bane of her existence, drawled. He stepped over a tomato and continued on past her.

“And people would think you’re less of an idiot if you didn’t open your mouth,” she snapped, glaring at his wide back. Why she’d ever dated him and considered that man the love of her life was never clear.

“Looks like this one is still in pretty good shape,” Eric Hamilton, Tobias’ cousin, said, picking up a tomato and holding it up like a trophy. “That one over there is a lost cause,” he continued pointing at one with the toe of his square-toed boot.

A few moments later, she’d recovered all but the one squished tomato.

“Your cousin could’ve helped.” She looked down the street to where Tobias now stood, staring up at a building. “What is that dimwit doing?”

Eric cleared his throat. His gaze swept past her to his cousin and then back to her. “Um, well, he can’t find her.”