Still, had they parted ways amicably, it would have all been all right. According to the will, Carlos had the right to continue working on the land where he was already established-he just couldn’t go any further or put up any new logging camps or mines without his brother’s permission. There was plenty of money to be made still, and if there was one thing Carlos knew how to do it was making his money make money.

And Silas, who had never valued money and possessions in the same way his brother had, would have been happy protecting his land and the wildlife living on it. So maybe the old man had anticipated their split, had known the brothers would never see eye-to-eye, and had done the only thing he could think of to avoid trouble between them.

And it might have worked. If it hadn’t been for Isabelle, maybe it would have turned out the way his father had imagined. Instead, his world had ended in fire and pain and death, while his brother…

“Silas?”

He stood upright, hearing the screen door creak on the side of the house. It was Jolee. His brother had gone on with his life, continuing with the business-even if it involved using Silas’s land and making illegal deals and if someone got in the way, well, everyone in Carlos’s world was expendable, after all…

And Silas had known all of those things, but the ultimate betrayal, the thing that made Silas’s gut twist into knots, was the fact that his brother had gone on to marry a woman so like Isabelle it made him both wistfully nostalgic and furious every time he looked at her.

“I came out here to help.” Jolee stepped around the shed and Silas quickly grabbed his shirt, buttoning it up, his back to her. “What can I do?” When he glanced over at her, wearing jeans and her boots and one of his t-shirts-she still had a penchant for wearing them in spite of the fact he’d gotten her some that actually fit-