Maybe she should decamp to some exotic island far away, take up a new identity and sit on a beach watching sunsets. With the trust fund from her mother, she could afford to do it. But she would be bored out of her mind in about a week. And then what? She would go totally stir-crazy. She was a project kind of girl. She needed to stay busy and have something to do.
In the past, she had put her energy into knowing the best restaurants, finding the most on-trend clubs, spotting the latest fashion craze just before it hit. Her it-girl blog and YouTube channel had amassed a substantial following over the past few years. She’d parlayed that popularity into an interior design business that had been growing quickly before she’d fled Washington.
But Sunny Creek, Montana, couldn’t have more than a handful of houses in need of redecorating. And it wasn’t like the locals would hire her after Wes got done trashing her reputation. Which she probably deserved. Still, it would leave her at loose ends with nothing to do.
The sound of a tractor engine fractured the deep silence, and she listened glumly as Wes attacked Mother Nature with a vengeance, all in the name of getting rid of her.
She moved over by the living room window to watch him on the tractor. For a man who professed to hate this life, he seemed pretty good at it. He handled the tractor like a pro, dragging aside snow with an angled blade on the back of the tractor and shoveling away the big drifts with a bucket on the front of it. Gradually a path emerged, heading across the pasture toward the main road.
Panic began to set in. He hadn’t listened to her. Maybe he wasn’t in danger, as isolated as he was and with all his neighbors looking out for him. But she—she had no such protections. All of a sudden, the isolation of this decrepit little homestead began to look a lot less terrible. In a place like this, no one would ever find her. She could hunker down and be safe from the world. Too bad Wes despised her with a burning passion.
She heard the tractor drive back up toward the house and, a moment later, the sound of her car starting. Taking one last, wistful look around Wes’s sanctuary, she stepped outside onto the porch.
Wes was just unfolding his tall, athletic frame from her little car, and she was riveted by the sight of his broad shoulders and long, muscular legs encased in denim. From the first moment she’d ever laid eyes on her father’s new aide, she’d wanted him. There was something so magnetic about him—she just couldn’t look away. Even now, with that awful beard and shaggy hair, he was still one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen.
If everyone in the world had their own personal kryptonite, he was hers.
Too bad she’d completely alienated him and would never get to be with him again. She didn’t relish the long years ahead, knowing he was out in the world somewhere, hating her.
She strode across the porch, head held high, determined not to cry in front of him again. That was probably why she didn’t see the missing porch step and stepped down into thin air. She pitched forward as her foot went down between the slats of wood. Her ankle wrenched violently, and she fell hard to the frozen ground. Only the thick layer of snow prevented her from racking up further injuries.
Wes rushed forward and was by her side in an instant. “Don’t move,” he ordered sharply.
Dammit, she felt tears squeezing out of the corners of her eyes. “I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she mumbled.
“Did you hit your head?” Wes demanded.
“No. I’m fine. No need to make a big deal out of me being a klutz.” She sat up and Wes put an arm behind her shoulders, raising her the rest of the way upright. Lord, she’d forgotten how strong he was. Apparently, life on a farm did nothing to diminish the toned power of a Marine.
She tried to stand up and her right ankle gave a mighty shout of protest. She went right back down to the ground, and Wes immediately reached for her ankle.
“Cripes. I can feel the swelling through your boot,” he muttered. “You’ve sprained your ankle, at a minimum. You might even have broken it. A doctor’s going to have to look at it.”
She closed her eyes in mortification. Of course, she would choose this exact moment to lose her natural grace entirely. Wes helped her to her feet again, and this time she held her right foot off the ground, making no effort to put any weight on it. “If you’ll tell me where I can find a doctor, I’ll be on my way—”
Wes interrupted briskly, “You can’t drive with that foot injured. You won’t be able to operate the gas pedal and brakes safely.”
“I’ll drive with my left foot.”
“On these roads? Just after a snowstorm? I think not,” he snapped. “I’ll drive you to Hillsdale. There’s an urgent care clinic there. Doc Cooper will take care of you.”
And now she was an even greater pain in the butt than she’d already been to him. Great. She was undoubtedly upgrading from hated to pariah in the man’s mind. “Just call me a cab or something.”
“This is Montana, not Manhattan.”
She rolled her eyes at him. Without further words, he grabbed her right hand, pulled it across his shoulders and hoisted her over to the front porch. “Sit,” he ordered. “I’ll pull the truck up to the porch. Back in a minute.”
She followed orders and sat glumly. If it was possible to make a bigger hash of seeing Wes again, she didn’t think she could have done much better than this. A big pickup truck plowed through the snow from the barn onto the cleared path he’d made for her car. Wes parked and jumped out to fetch her. She hopped on one foot to the truck with his help and then awkwardly climbed into the vehicle.
Wes climbed onto the driver’s seat, jaw clenched, and headed off his property.
As they clattered over the metal grate under the entry arch, she asked, “What’s the grate for?”
“It’s called a cattle grate. Cows won’t walk over it, so it acts like a fence to keep them on the property. But vehicles can still get through without having to open and close gates behind them.”
“That’s so clever!”
He threw her a vaguely scornful look as if she was a hopeless city slicker. Which would not be wrong. He drove for a solid half hour, which made her feel worse than she already did about inconveniencing him.
Hillsdale looked a lot like Sunny Creek without the charming old-fashioned Main Street. She waited in the truck while he went inside the urgent care clinic. A tall, handsome man with coffee-colored skin pushing a wheelchair came back out with Wes.
“Hi. I’m Dr. Cooper. I hear you tried to fly and it didn’t go so well.”
She grinned ruefully at him. “I’ll get it right next time.”
“I like your optimism, ma’am,” the doctor replied.
“Oh, Lord. Don’t ma’am me. I grew up in a military family and I despise the whole sir and ma’am thing.”
Dr. Cooper shrugged. “Gonna be mighty hard to break folks of that habit in these parts... Miss.”
She smiled warmly. “You can call me Jessica.”
“Only if you’ll call me Ben. Or Doc.”
She happened to glance over at Wes and was startled to see his jaw as hard as a rock. He didn’t like her flirting with the hot doctor, huh? Too bad. Ben was good-looking, and had a great smile and a winning personality. She continued to banter with the doctor as he wheeled her inside and took a quick X-ray of her ankle.
He pushed her into a hospital-style room to wait while he read the X-ray.
Wes poked his head in the door. “You okay?” he asked reluctantly.
“Look, Wes, I know you hate my guts, and that being polite to me is the last thing you want to do. You don’t have to keep up appearances for my sake. If you want to go on home, I’ll figure out some way to get back to my car and pick it up. And then I’ll be on my way.”
The look of indecision that entered his eyes would have been funny if it weren’t for the cause—his hatred of her warring with his innate good manners
.
“Go home, Wes,” she said firmly. “I’ll take care of myself. You’ve made it crystal clear you want nothing to do with me. I’m sorry I bothered you by warning you that you’re in danger. I won’t make that mistake again.”
He frowned and backed out of the room. She immediately felt bad. She shouldn’t have snapped at him. After all, it wasn’t his fault she’d taken a header off his porch.
“Well, Jessica, I have good news and bad news for you,” Dr. Cooper announced, coming around the corner into her room.
“Do tell.”
“The good news is your ankle isn’t broken. The bad news is you’ve sprained it pretty badly. I’m going to tape it up, and I’ll need you to elevate and ice it, and stay off it for a couple weeks.”
“Weeks?” she squawked.
“Like I said, it’s a bad sprain. If you don’t let it heal properly before you start gallivanting around on it, you’ll have lingering problems with the joint forever and will risk repeat sprains down the road.”
“Great,” she huffed.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Nowhere at the moment.”
A momentary frown puckered Cooper’s brow. “You’re not with Wes, then?”
“Emphatically not.”
He studied her thoughtfully. “There’s a story behind that answer, but I won’t pry. There’s a nice bed-and-breakfast in Sunny Creek I can recommend. My mother runs the place, actually.”
“Well, then, clearly that’s where I have to stay to recuperate.”
“Will Wes give you a ride over there, or can you hang on for an hour till I’m off shift here? I can drive ov—”
“I’ll take her,” Wes interrupted from the doorway.
Cooper looked up, startled, along with Jessica. “Um, okay, then.” The doctor turned back to her. “I’m going to prescribe you a painkiller and some anti-inflammatories for the next week. Take the pain pills only as needed and stop taking them as soon as you can tolerate the pain.”
She nodded, half listening to the remaining instructions about propping up the foot and icing it for twenty minutes every hour while she was awake. She stood and got fitted for a pair of crutches—which were total overkill, by the way—bemused over why Wes had insisted on taking her back to Sunny Creek. Surely he wasn’t jealous of Ben, was he? Jealousy would connote him giving a damn about her and wanting her not to have feelings for other men.
The ride back to Sunny Creek was silent. Wes seemed distracted and irritated, and her ankle throbbed enough that she didn’t have the stomach for a fight with him.
The truck turned onto the street of dilapidated Victorian mansions, and she roused herself enough to ask, “Where did all these big homes come from?”
“Copper barons built them at the turn of the century. But the mines are all played out, and the copper boom busted decades ago.”
“They’re beautiful. Too bad someone’s not restoring them.”
Wes looked at her askance. He pulled up at the end of the street in front of one of the few restored Victorians. A small, wrought iron sign in the front yard announced it to be the Brock House and a historic bed-and-breakfast.
Wes hovered as she tried out the crutches and hop-stepped up the sidewalk. She was careful not to slip on the steps and made it to the front door all by herself. “I’ll take it from here,” she murmured to Wes. “Thanks for your help. Again.”
He scowled darkly and all but ran back to his truck, obviously eager to get away from her.
The front door opened, and a tall, attractive woman from whom Ben Cooper obviously got his good looks stood there. “You must be Jessica. I’m Annabelle Cooper. Ben called and told me to expect you. I’ve made up a room for you, and we’ve got an elevator, so you won’t have to use the stairs.”
Jessica smiled gratefully. The elevator turned out not to be much larger than a phone booth, and it was a cozy fit for her and Ben’s mother together. Her room was a lovely space with great light from a big bay window with a cushioned window seat in it. But Jessica made her way directly to the bed, exhausted by, frankly, the whole past several months.
“I brought in some extra pillows for you to use to prop up your ankle. And there’s an ice bucket beside the bed with an ice bag in it. Here’s a pitcher of water and a glass for your pills, and that’s a buzzer for you to call downstairs if you need anything.”
“Good grief. You’ve thought of everything! I can’t thank you enough,” Jessica said warmly.
“We’ll have you up and around in no time. You look tired, honey. Why don’t you just go on and take a little nap. I’ll wake you in time for supper.”
Without further ado, Jessica collapsed, staying awake only long enough to stick her foot on some pillows and swath her ankle in ice packs. And then she passed out. For the first time since her drugging, she fell asleep and really slept, deeply and dreamlessly.
The next few days passed in a painkiller-induced blur. She slept constantly and followed the doctor’s orders in caring for her ankle. By day five, her ankle felt much better, and she was so housebound she could scream in spite of the steady stream of books and movies her hostess supplied to her.
Annabelle, who took being a perfect hostess to a whole new level of greatness, suggested that Jessica ride along with her on a trip to a new antiques store in Hillsdale, and offered to swing by the clinic first to let Ben have a look at her ankle.
Ben declared her to be mending nicely, took off the tape around her ankle and replaced it with a thick sports bandage. He said that she could drive a little and put some weight on it if she was careful. But she was to continue using the crutches for another week.
The antiques store had apparently just been purchased by a newcomer to the area, a pretty young woman named Charlotte Adams. Jessica hop-stepped inside and smiled in delight. Whoever had bought the inventory for this place had taste extremely similar to hers. The furnishings and decorations were authentic, elegant and occasionally just quirky enough to be fun and young.
The proprietor, a pretty brunette, welcomed them to the store and apologized for being thin in selection. She had apparently bought an existing antiques store and culled the old inventory but was still in the process of finding new suppliers.
Annabelle was shopping for a new sofa for the downstairs sitting room, and Jessica gently steered the woman away from a piece that would have overpowered the room, instead suggesting a smaller sofa that was slightly less opulent in its carved decorations. Jessica and Charlotte agreed the piece needed reupholstering, and all three women put their heads together over fabric books in search of the perfect fabric. The other two deferred to Jessica’s trained design taste and went with the rich burgundy fabric she suggested.
The bell rang at the front of the store just as Charlotte was starting to write up the sale with Annabelle, and Jessica murmured, “I’ll go say hello. You two finish up here.”
She made her way on her crutches to the front of the store and spied a tall, striking woman with snow-white hair and patrician features. “Hi. I’m Jessica. Charlotte will be with you in a minute.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Miranda Morgan.”
Whoa. The formidable Morgan matriarch in the flesh. Wes had told her stories about this woman. She trained horses when she was younger and apparently could shoot the eye out of a squirrel at fifty paces. The way Wes told it, even his tough-as-shoe-leather father was intimidated by her, and she ran the Morgan clan with an iron fist.
Jessica blurted, “Wes’s mother?”
“You know my son?”
“Um, yes. We’ve met.” In an effort to avoid the inevitable question of how she knew Wes and from where, Jessica added quickly, “Can I help you find something while Charlotte finishes up with another customer?”
Of course, Jessica didn’t work here and had no idea what the inventory was, but she was franti
c to avoid awkward questions about herself and Wes.
“I need to redecorate a cabin on my ranch. It’s tiny, but big men use it, so I don’t know what to do for furniture in the space.”
Jessica spied a drawing pad on the counter with graph paper ideal for sketching out a room. She opened the pad and picked up the pencil conveniently beside it. “Tell me about the layout of the cabin.”
Miranda described the space, estimating its size, and Jessica quickly drew it out. “Like that?” she asked when she was done.
Miranda nodded. “I’m not sure on the dimensions, honestly. It has been a while since I spent any time there.”
“It will be necessary to measure the space because a foot or two either way will make a big difference in what will fit in the space. For example...” She trailed off as she sketched out two possible layouts for the cabin’s main room, one for a larger space and one for a smaller space.
“I gather you’re an interior designer?” Miranda asked.
Jessica nodded modestly. “I specialize in restoring old properties to the historically correct plans and decorations.”
“Really? That’s fascinating. Did I mention that this cabin is the original homestead of the first Morgans to settle on Runaway Ranch?”
“No! That’s so cool! I confess, Old West isn’t my forte, but I could certainly research the period and give you some suggestions if you’d like. The trick, of course, is to blend modern comfort with authentic period feel.”
“Exactly!” Miranda smiled broadly at her. “I’m not fond of dealing with this design stuff. I like my house to look nice and be comfortable, but I leave making that happen to professionals.”
“Is there another designer in the area who’s already up to speed on Western decor?”
Miranda shook her head. “I paid a fortune to bring in a designer from Denver when we built the new main house. He did a fine job, but it seems silly to fly in some fancy designer for a tiny hunting cabin. Would you be willing to do it?”
Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021 Page 52