On his thirty-sixth birthday, Wade Dalton's mother ran away.

She left him a German chocolate cake on the kitchen counter, two new paperback mysteries by a couple of his favorite authors and a short but succinct note in her loopy handwriting.

Honey,

Happy birthday. I'm sorry I couldn't be there to celebrate with you but by the time you read this we'll be in Reno and I'll be the new Mrs. Quinn Montgomery. I know you'll think I should have told you but my huggy bear thought it would be better this way. More romantic. Isn't that sweet? You'll love him, I promise! He's handsome, funny, and makes me feel like I can touch my dreams again. Tell the children I love them and I'll see them soon.

P.S. Nat's book report is due today. Don't let her forget it!

P.P.S. Sorry to leave you in the lurch like this but I figured you, Seth and Nat could handle things without me for a week. Especially you. You can handle anything.

Don't take this wrong, son, but it doesn't hurt for you to remember your children are more important than your blasted cattle.

Be back after the honeymoon.

Wade stared at the note for a full five minutes, the only sound in the Cold Creek Ranch kitchen the ticking of the pig-shaped clock Andi had loved above the stove and the refrigerator compressor kicking to life.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

His mother and this huggy bear creature couldn't have chosen a worse time to pull their little disappearing act. Marjorie knew it, too, blast her hide. He needed her help! He had six hundred head of cattle to get to market before the snow flew, a horse show and auction in Cheyenne in a few weeks, and a national TV news crew coming in less than a week to film a feature on the future of the American cattle ranch.

He was supposed to be showing off the groundbreaking innovations he'd made to the ranch in the last few years, showing the Cold Creek in the best possible light.

How was he supposed to make sure everything was ready and running smoothly while he changed Cody's diapers and chased after Tanner and packed Nat's lunch?

He read the note again, anger beginning to filter through the dismayed shock. Something about what she had written seemed to thrum through his consciousness like a distant, familiar guitar chord. He was trying to figure out what when he heard the back-porch door creak and a moment later his youngest brother stumbled into the kitchen, bleary- eyed and in need of a shave.

"Coffee. I need it hot and black and I just realized I'm out down at my place."

Wade glared at him, seizing on the most readily available target for his frustration and anger. "You look like hell."

Seth shrugged. "Got in late. It was ladies'night down at the Bandito and I couldn't leave all those sweet girls shooting pool by themselves. Where's the coffee?"

"There isn't any coffee. Or breakfast, either. I don't suppose you happened to see Mom sneaking out at two in the morning when you were dragging yourself and, no doubt, one or two of those sweet girls back to the guesthouse?"

His brother blinked a couple of times to clear the remaining cobwebs from his brain. "What?"

Wade tossed the note at him and Seth scrubbed his bleary eyes before picking it up. A range of emotions flickered across his entirely too charming features — shock and confusion, then an odd pensiveness that raised Wade's hackles.

"Did you know about this?" he asked.

Seth slumped into a kitchen chair, avoiding his gaze.

"Not this, precisely."

"What precisely did you know about what our dear mother's been up to?" Wade bit out. "I knew she was e-mailing some guy she met through that life coach she's been talking to. I didn't realize it was serious. At least not run-off-to- Reno serious."

Suddenly this whole fiasco made a grim kind of sense and Wade realized what about Marjorie's note had struck that odd, familiar chord. By the time you read this I'll be the new Mrs. Quinn Montgomery, she had written.

Montgomery was the surname of the crackpot his mother had shelled out a small fortune to in the last six months, all in some crazy effort to better her life.

Caroline Montgomery.

He knew the name well since he'd chewed Marjorie out plenty the last time he'd balanced her checkbook for her and had found the name written on several hefty checks.

This was all this Caroline Montgomery's fault. It had to be. She must have planted ideas in Marjorie's head about how she wasn't happy, about how she needed more out of life. Fun, excitement. Romance. Then she introduced some slick older man — a brother? An uncle? — to bring a little spice into a lonely widow's world.

What had been so wrong with Marjorie's life, anyway, that she'd needed to find some stranger to fix it?

Okay, his mother had a few odd quirks. Today was not only his birthday, it was exactly the eighteen-year anniversary of his father's death and in those years, his mother had pursued one wacky thing after another. She did yoga, she balanced her chakras instead of her checkbook, she sponsored inflammatory little book-club meetings at the Pine Gulch library where she and her cronies read every controversial feminist, male-bashing self-help book they could find.

He had tried to be understanding about it all. Marjorie's marriage to Hank Dalton hadn't exactly been a happy one. His father had treated his mother with the same cold condescension he'd wielded like a club against his children. Once his father's death had freed Marjorie from that oppressive influence, Wade couldn't blame her for taking things a little too far in the opposite direction.

Besides, when he'd needed her in those terrible, wrenching days after Andrea's death, Marjorie had come through. Without him even having to ask, she'd packed up her crystals and her yoga mat and had moved back to the ranch to help him with the kids. He would have been lost without her, a single dad with three kids under the age of six, one of them only a week old.

He knew she wasn't completely happy with her life but he'd never thought she would go this far. She wouldn't have, he thought, if it hadn't been for this scheming Caroline Montgomery and whatever male relative she was in cahoots with.

He heard a belligerent yell coming from upstairs and wanted to pound his head on the table a few times. Six- thirty in the morning and it was already starting. How the hell was he going to do this?

"Want me to get Cody?" Seth asked as the cries rose in volume. Gramma, Gramma, Gramma.

Wade had to admit, the offer was a tempting one, but he forced himself to refuse. They were his children and he was the one who would have to deal with them.

He took off his denim jacket and hung his Stetson on the hook by the door.

"I'm on it. Just go take care of the stock and then we've all got to bring in the last hay crop we cut yesterday. The weather report says rain by afternoon so we've got to get it in fast. I'll figure something out with the kids and get out there to help as soon as I can."

Seth opened his mouth to say something then must have thought better of it. He nodded. "Right. Good luck."

You're going to need it. His brother left the words unspoken but Wade heard them anyway.

He couldn't agree more.

Two hours later, Wade was rapidly coming to the grim realization that he was going to need a hell of a lot more than luck.

"Hold still," he ordered a squirmy, giggling Cody as he tried to stick on a diaper. Through the open doorway into the kitchen, he could hear Tanner and Natalie bickering.

"Daaaad," his eight-year-old daughter called out,

"Tanner's flicking Cheerios at me. Make him stop! He's getting the new shirt Grandma bought me all wet and blotchy!"

"Tanner, cut it out," he hollered. "Nat, if you don't quit stalling over your breakfast, you're going to miss the bus and I don't have time to drive you today."

"You never have time for anything," he thought he heard her mutter but just then he felt an ominous warmth hit his chest. He looked down to the changing table to find Cody grinning up at him.

"Cody pee pee."

Wade ground his back teeth, looking down at the wet stain spreading across his shirt. "Yeah, kid, I kind of figured that out."

He quickly fastened the diaper and threw on the overalls and Spider-Man shirt Cody insisted on wearing, all the while aware of a gnawing sense of inadequacy in his gut.

He wasn't any good at this. He loved his kids but it had been a whole lot easier being their father when Andrea was alive.

She'd been the one keeping their family together. The one who'd scheduled immunizations and fixed Nat's hair into cute little ponytails and played Chutes and Ladders for hours at a time. His role had been the benevolent dad who showed up at bedtime and sometimes broke away from ranch chores for Sunday brunch.

The two years since her death had only reinforced how inept he was at the whole parenting gig. If it hadn't been for Marjorie coming to his rescue, he didn't know what he would have done.

Probably flounder around cluelessly, just like he was doing now, he thought.

He started to carry Cody back to the kitchen to finish his breakfast but the toddler was having none of it. "Down, Daddy. Down," he ordered, bucking and wriggling worse than a calf on his way to an appointment with the castrator.

Wade set his feet on the ground and Cody raced toward the kitchen. "Nat, can you watch Cody for a minute?" he called. "I've got to go change my shirt."

"Can't," she hollered back. "The bus is here."

"Don't forget your book report," he remembered at the last minute, but the door slammed on his last word and he was pretty sure she hadn't heard him.

With a quick order to Tanner to please behave himself for five minutes, he carried Cody upstairs with him and grabbed his last clean shirt out of the closet. The least his mother could have done was wait until after laundry day to pull her disappearing act, he thought wryly. Now he was going to have to do that, too.

He grabbed Cody and headed back down the stairs. They had nearly reached the bottom when the doorbell pealed.

"I'll get it," Tanner yelled and headed for the front door, still in his pajamas.

"No, me! Me!" Not to be outdone, Cody squirmed out of Wade's arms and slid down the last few steps. Wade wasn't sure how they did it, but both boys beat him to the door, even though he'd been closer.

Tanner opened it, then turned shy at the strange woman standing before him. Wade couldn't blame him. Their visitor was lovely, he observed as he reached the door behind his sons, with warm, streaky brown hair pulled back into a smooth twisty thing, eyes the color of hot chocolate on a cold winter day and graceful, delicate features.

She wore a tailored russet jacket, tan slacks and a crisp white shirt, with a chunky bronze necklace and matching earrings, a charm bracelet on one arm and a slim gold watch on the other.

Wade had no idea who she was and she didn't seem in any hurry to introduce herself. Probably some tourist who'd taken the wrong road out of Jackson, he thought, and needed help finding her way.

Finally he spoke. "Can I help you?"

"Oh. Yes." Color flared on those high cheekbones and she blinked a few times as if trying to compose herself. "The sign out front said the Cold Creek Ranch. Is this the right place?"