Page 1 of A Marriage Pact for the Cowboy

Chapter

One

Maxwell Sullivan hung back in his class reunion’s meet-and-greet and scanned the crowd. Who were all these people who seemed to know each other, and why had he come? He hadn’t been back to Kansas all that often since graduating from high school ten years ago, much to his mother’s dismay.

He shouldn’t have come now, either. No one in the teeming gymnasium of Gilead High School would have spared a thought if he wasn’t here. Oh, his name might have cropped up in an occasional ‘remember when’ story, but quite possibly not even that.

“Sullivan? Is that you?” A man with a toddler on his arm stopped in front of him.

“Yes, and you…?” Maxwell scraped his memory down to the bone and couldn’t come up with the guy’s name. Why hadn’t they handed out name tags? Probably because everyone else still knew each other.

“Brandt. Stuart Brandt. Hey, man. It’s good to see you. Remember Joanie Thompson? She’s around here somewhere. I married her, and we have four kids now.”

“Oh, yeah? Congrats, Stuart. Good to see you.” Not that they’d hung out in the same crowd back then. He remembered Joanie, though. Flirty cheerleader. She’d actually settled down?

Maxwell felt old. And very, very single.

Stuart turned. “Reeder! Get over here. Remember Sullivan?”

In minutes, half a dozen guys stood around him. Seemed most of them still lived in Gilead and had married their high school sweethearts.

Stuart turned to Maxwell “What have you been up to?”

Maxwell shrugged. “I spent a few years flipping houses, but I’m living in Montana now, renovating and building cottages at my grandfather’s guest ranch.”

Garth Reeder blinked. “Your grandfather is a rancher? I thought he was a rich hotel mogul in the Windy City.”

The dude didn’t have to sound so snarky about it. The other guys didn’t need to chuckle. “A guest ranch is a lot like a hotel. Just another business venture in hospitality.”

“Montana, huh?” Stuart laughed. “That’s a long way from Gilead, Kansas.”

In more ways than these guys could ever imagine. Maxwell had wiped the dust of the Plains off his feet and jetted off to Chicago before the ink on his diploma had dried.

There was only one reason he was back in town now. Okay, two.

His mother had begged, cajoled, and coerced him. Maybe Mom was three reasons all by herself.

And he was mildly curious about the Ralston twins: Amelia, in particular. He’d kind of had a thing for her back in the day, not that he’d made a single effort to keep in touch. Too focused. Too busy.

“There’s Eryn Ralston now.” Stuart jutted his chin toward the door. “Remember her?”

The other twin. The quiet one.

She stood chatting with the person behind the registration table, but she constantly glanced around. How many times had she tucked her long blond hair behind her ear by now? Three? Four? Man, she looked nervous.

Maxwell could relate. He felt as at home in the boardroom as in the midst of a rubble-filled house, but neither was daunting compared to facing the kids he’d known the first 18 years of his life.

“Yeah, I remember Eryn. Is Amelia around somewhere?”

“Oh, man. Didn’t you hear?” Stuart’s voice lowered ominously.

“Hear what?”

“You know Mrs. Ralston was killed in that accident when we were kids — eighth grade, I think?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, the same thing happened to Amelia in exactly the same intersection.”

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