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prom.
    Mac , he’d thought, as he’d lowered his head and kissed her.
    She’d tasted like cinnamon candy and paradise. Sweet, burning heaven.
    He and Brett had gone a round or two about the change in circumstances until Mac herself waded in and made clear—with a fist to her big brother’s gut—that being with Zan was her choice. And no one was fiercer about getting what she wanted than Mackenzie Marie Walker.
    They’d been together as a couple for two years while he finished up his college degree. After fulfilling that promise to his grandfather, he’d left town, hell-bent on quenching his wanderlust.
    A decade had passed since he’d held her in his arms...until the night of the wedding reception. Impulse had directed him to slip behind her and pull her against him. He’d breathed in her scent and enjoyed the slight weight of her against the frame of his bigger body.
    But he’d resisted allowing her to look at him then.
    And now, as if she sensed his presence and his thoughts, her head shifted slightly and her gaze left her brother’s face for his.
    He went dizzy and for a moment she wavered in his line of sight like a mirage.
    When his vision cleared, his pulse was going too fast and there was a clammy sweat on the back of his neck. He hauled in a steadying breath and reminded himself that this beautiful woman was the same old Mac of his youth.
    At the wedding, she’d naturally looked different in her bridesmaid getup and her hair in a fancy twist. But he hadn’t taken the opportunity to notice other changes. Now they were all he could see.
    Without thinking, he walked slowly toward her, drawn to the fine-boned elegance of a face that, in the past decade, had lost all remnants of childhood. Her cheekbones were etched, her nose straight and small, her lashes and her mouth lush. Her blue eyes, he saw, were the icy shade of water beneath the thin frozen surface of a mountain lake.
    And he didn’t remember them ever looking so cold.
    Brett must have noticed his sister’s switch in attention, because he glanced over his shoulder as Zan approached their table. When Zan put his cup on the table, the other man didn’t say anything, but he did slide along the bench to allow Zan space beside him.
    The movement was begrudging and Mac’s stare still so very chilly.
    â€œIs this any way to greet the guy who knows your deepest, darkest secret?” he joked, settling into place.
    When they didn’t answer, he tried out a smile. “The hollowed-out log near the cabins? The secret compartment to keep hidden treasures?”
    Brett’s mouth twitched. “God, what must be in there? Mac, didn’t you stash that unicorn Beanie Baby in the hole, sure it would be worth a mint in a few years?”
    She made a face.
    Brett pointed at Zan. “And it’s where you hid your Molotov-cocktail supplies, so they’d escape your grandfather’s detection.” His expression turned serious. “Hey, about that. Condolences on his passing.”
    â€œYeah. Thanks.” Zan stared into his cup of dark brew. “And the same to you for the loss of your mother.” Though Dell Walker had passed about two years before Zan left, his wife hadn’t died until after Zan had been gone from the mountains. It was the Walker parents who had provided the warm influence an orphan needed in the earliest years, though to be fair, his grandfather had never complained about the kid foisted on him late in life.
    When he’d left the mountains he hadn’t parted harshly from the elderly man, but they’d kept in touch only on a semiregular basis. While they’d actually met up a few times, twice in London, and then in Prague and Lisbon as well, Zan hadn’t been at his side when he’d died.
    Nor had he returned directly upon the man’s passing, when he might have managed to stop his cousin from running amok. “You heard about