Page 3 of Dead Man's Hand

He started the truck. Tonight he’d made thousands of dollars. But it was money he couldn’t touch. He tried to look at it as work—the same way Sadie did. Some nights, though, he’d enjoyed it more than he should have. He felt only a little guilty since the men who’d gotten fleeced tonight had all been handpicked by a man they either owed or had crossed. The boss was a man who always collected debts—one way or another. Even though Uncle Charley was dead, DJ, now twenty-nine, was still paying off his uncle’s last debts. It was the way it worked in this world. Some inherited wealth, others inherited debt. A man paid that debt.

Shifting into gear, DJ headed to his apartment to pack for the first flight he could get to Bozeman, Montana. From there Keira would pick him up. He had no idea what he would find when he got there, but that was nothing new. He’d spent his childhood expecting the worst.

Chapter Three

On her fiancé’s ranch outside of Lonesome, Montana, Ansley Brookshire felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Time was running out. Her longed-for Christmas wedding was days away. She was about to marry the man of her dreams. Just the thought stole her breath and made her heart pound with both excitement and anxiety.

It was all perfect except for one thing. Recently, she’d found out not only that she’d been adopted—but also that she had a twin brother. Now that she knew, she couldn’t imagine getting married without him at the wedding. She had this image of him giving her away. Her heart ached for the two of them to be united and brought into the family that she’d only recently discovered.

Unfortunately, she had no idea where he was, even who he was. Like her, he’d been sold or given away right after birth by a woman who’d told their biological mother that they both had died. Ansley’s adoptive mother had only wanted a baby girl and swore that she never even knew there had been another baby.

No one knew what had happened to her twin brother, since the woman who’d sold the babies was now dead. Ansley’s fear was that like her, her twin might not even know he’d been adopted. She just hoped he’d gone to a good family and had a better childhood than hers. While she’d lived on an estate, never been deprived of anything money could buy, she’d been lonely and wished desperately for a family. All her childhood, she’d seen more of her nannies and the household staff than her parents.

When Ansley had learned that she was adopted, she’d gone in search of her biological mother. It had been like taking a stick to a hornet’s nest. But she’d found her birth mother and the happy ending she’d hoped for. She wanted the same for her brother. Unfortunately, all leads had gone cold.

Her only hope was that the PIs at Colt Brothers Investigation would find him before it was too late. One of those PIs was her fiancé, Buck Crawford, who’d been working tirelessly for weeks searching for her missing twin. All they had to go on was the tiny bracelet his birth mother said she’d had made for him with the initials DJ on it for Del Junior. They couldn’t even be sure that he’d ever gotten the bracelet.

“Maybe we should postpone the wedding,” Buck had said, but she hadn’t had the heart to do that. They both wanted to be married soon. She told herself she was being too sentimental. A Christmas wedding was her dream and Buck was everything she’d ever wanted in a husband.

“No,” she’d told him. “We’re getting married. Anyway, I still have hope that we’ll find DJ before the wedding.”

Now the wedding was looming and still no leads on her twin.

“Ansley?” a female voice called. “Or should I call you DelRae?”

She hadn’t heard a vehicle in the deep snow, but now she heard the front door close. Footfalls headed her way. She had to smile, wondering at twenty-nine years old if she would ever answer to the name her birth mother had given her. Or if she should even bother trying.

“In here,” she called back to Bella Colt, a sister-in-law. Along with finding her birth mother, she’d also found her biological father’s family—the Colt brothers of Colt Brothers Investigation and their wives. She now had four half brothers, Tommy, Davy, James and Willie, and their wives, Bella, Carla, Lori and Ellie. She’d instantly felt a part of the family.

On top of that, she’d also fallen in love with the brothers’ best friend, Buck Crawford, a fellow PI at the agency.

Bella came into the living room where Ansley had been wrapping Christmas presents. “What in the world! Did you buy out all the stores in Missoula?”

She shook her head sheepishly. “I’ve never had a family to buy for before. My adoptive mother bought her own Christmas presents for me to wrap. My adoptive father had his secretary pick up something for each of us. He usually also had the secretary return anything Maribelle or I got for him, saying he didn’t need anything. So shopping for all of you has been so much fun. Don’t tell anyone, but I started shopping even before Thanksgiving. I couldn’t wait.”

“You really are too much.” Bella hugged her awkwardly around the baby. James’s wife Lori had given birth to two identical baby boys a few months ago.

Ansley motioned her friend into the kitchen. “Coffee?”

“I shouldn’t.” Bella lumbered in, both hands over her protruding stomach. “Water tastes so...watery,” she groaned.

“Eggnog?”

“Don’t tempt me,” her friend said, and held her side for a moment. “They’ve been kicking like crazy. I suspect they’ve got my and Tommy’s worst traits,” she said with a laugh as she took a chair and the glass of eggnog. “It would be just like them to decide to be born in the middle of your wedding.” All four Colt wives were her bridesmaids, with their husbands the groomsmen.

A silence fell between them as Ansley poured herself a cup of coffee and joined Bella at the table.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait?” Bella asked. “Even if Buck manages to find him, he’ll be a complete stranger. Do you really want a stranger standing up with you at your wedding?”

Ansley laughed. “He won’t be a stranger. I know him—that is, I feel like I do. He’s mytwin. He won’t be a stranger.”

Bella looked skeptical but let it go. “What if Buck doesn’t find him before the wedding?”

“Then we go ahead anyway,” she said, knowing how disappointed she would be.

“You could just postpone it,” Bella suggested.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about postponing the wedding. “Wait for how long, though? What if DJ’s never found? Buck and I can’t wait. We love each other. We want to get married.” She sighed. “But at the same time, how can I start my life not knowing where my twin is, how he is or even if he’s still alive? I’ve always felt as if there was a missing piece of me. Then I found you and the Colt brothers and Buck.”

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