Carter Christensen had never been s

Carter Christensen had never been so grateful for the off-season. He stared out from the back porch of his vacation cabin at Lake Nacogdoches and the play of late afternoon sunlight that glinted off of the glassy surface of the water.
“Dad! Can we go swimming?” Jane bounced on the balls of her tiny five-year old feet, practically vibrating with excitement. Her bright brown eyes widened with her smile.
“It’s way too cold for swimming,” Carter said. The bite of the early spring air had him wishing he’d worn at least a sweatshirt on the drive down from Dallas but as far as his daughter was concerned, the weather was practically balmy.
“Aw, come on, Daddy! I wanna swim, too. It’s not cold. The sun’s out!” Jenny turned on the puppy dog eyes as she sidled up next to her twin and clutched her little fists together as though her entire life’s happiness hinged on jumping into the freezing lake.
His girls were spitting images of their mama with their expressive, deep brown eyes and dark gold hair. They even had Stephanie’s cute upturned nose. His chest ached every time he looked at his daughters. He hurt just as deeply today as he had when they’d first heard the diagnosis. The cancer had shown his wife no mercy. It had hit her hard and fast, and took her away from them far too soon.
The past year and half had been hard on all of them. After Steph’s funeral, Carter had given himself over to the grief. He drowned his sorrows in a bottle and stayed drunk for a solid week before his twin, Travis, had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and demanded he get his shit together for his girls. Carter had always been the responsible one. The levelheaded one. And yet it was his reckless, party-mongering brother who’d talked some sense into him. Not one of Carter’s finest moments for sure.
“Hot tub, then!” Jane turned to Jenny with a grin.
“Yeah! Hot tub, hot tub!”
They’d only been at the cabin for half an hour, and already Carter was exhausted. If only he could bottle their seemingly limitless energy, he’d be a beast on the field. When preseason camp started, Carter needed to make an impression. He still couldn’t understand how he’d snagged the starting quarterback position for the Dallas Cowboys. Especially with the epically shitty year he’d just endured. Either way, he was determined to earn his teammates’ trust. It was important that he stay in Dallas. Carter wanted to be close to his family and he wanted stability for his girls. At least as much stability as they could have as motherless kids with a busy pro-footballer for a father.
All right, enough with the morose bullshit. This was supposed to be a vacation. “Dinner first,” Carter said to the girls’ mutual disappointment. “I’ll turn on the heater now and by the time we’re done eating the hot tub will be warm enough for you two monkeys to dive in.”
“Yay!”
The girls ran through the sliding patio doors and back into the house, a whirlwind of motion that made Carter tired just watching them. Lord, he was exhausted. He didn’t know the first thing about raising girls. They were easy now. They liked to roughhouse, play in the dirt. They didn’t mind the fact that their dad didn’t serve anything that didn’t come out of a box. It was later that Carter worried about. When they wanted their hair to look pretty or when they got their first crush. Boys. Jesus. He worried about all of those moments when his girls wouldn’t be so little anymore and would need their mama. It weighed on Carter more than he wanted to admit. And it made him miss Steph all the more.
He never realized it was possible to feel so damned lonely.
A flash of silver caught his eye, and Carter turned his attention to the cabin next door. The place had been abandoned for years as far as he knew. He watched as a woman stepped off of the rickety back steps and onto the lawn. The tails of her long sweater fanned out in the breeze and she tugged the two halves of it together before she folded her arms across her chest. Another twinkle of sunlight bounced off something she wore on her wrist, and Carter shielded his eyes from the sudden brightness. Strands of her long strawberry blonde hair drifted in front of her face, but she seemed not to notice as she stared at some faraway point.
“Daaaaad!” Jane called from the patio. “We’re staaaaarving!”
Carter cast one last furtive glance in the woman’s direction before heading into the house. It had been a long time since they’d had neighbors out here. Especially ones with hair that caught fire under the light of the sun.
*   *   *

Tess Adams stepped out onto the yellowed lawn and tried not to think about the hard work that lay ahead of her. The little cabin on Lake Nacogdoches left to her by her great-aunt Millie might be a bit of a fixer-upper, but it was already better than her crappy studio apartment that she’d barely been able to afford. On the plus side, Texas was thousands of miles from Jared,