by Liz Isaacson
He looked ready to drop, so Sterling got out, locked up his truck, and strode toward the cabin. At least his new cowboy boots didn’t pinch anymore. Owen had spoken true—it had only taken a few days to break them in.
A few days on your feet twelve hours a day, Sterling thought as he spied Owen loitering in the chair next to the door of the barn, his guitar resting across his lap, the last chords he’d played still reverberating in the chilled morning air. Sterling raised his hand in greeting, but continued toward the cabin.
“Mornin’, Wade.” Sterling tucked his cowboy hat on his head, feeling very much like the wrangler he was pretending to be. Eventually, he thought maybe he’d really be a horseman, instead of just wearing the clothes and faking the accent.
“Sterling.” Wade wiped a hand over his face, a clear sign of his exhaustion.
“Harvey,” Sterling said, turning to the boy sweeping. “You pull dawn duty?”
The dark-haired boy met his eye, and Sterling couldn’t believe he’d used a pair of scissors against a classmate. “Volunteered, Mister Maughan. Owen said if I swept every morning, I could saddle all the horses.”
Sterling leaned against the railing of the cabin and looked toward the barn again. Owen had disappeared. “And that’s something you want to do?”
Harvey shrugged. “I like being with the horses.”
“Me too,” Sterling murmured, recognizing the feeling for the first time. “How long ’till you’re down there?”
Harvey bent and swept up his pile. “Done now, sir.”
“I’ll stay here and get the other boys up,” Wade offered. “Not supposed to be off for another half hour anyway.”
Sterling nodded at him, knowing that part of Wade’s shift was to get the eight boys up and ready for the day before Sterling arrived.
He wandered over to the barn with Harvey, the sense of silence and stillness surrounding them speaking to Sterling’s soul. In Denver, he’d surrounded himself with people, and noise, and lights. Here, none of that existed. No one cared what he’d eaten for breakfast, or which horse he preferred.
“Mornin’.” Owen stepped out of the tack room, his white cowboy hat perched low over his eyes. “You ready, Harvey?”
“Yes, sir.” The boy stood a little straighter.
“All right, then.” The cowboy thumbed behind him. “Everything we need’s in here. You have to be calm around the horses. No temper when things don’t go right. No sudden movements. Think you can do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Owen’s eyes ran from Harvey’s face to his feet and back as if appraising him, judging him. “All right, then. Let’s get started. Sterling, ole Red is down at the end. She’s already waitin’ for ya.”
Sterling waited until Harvey stepped into the tack room with Owen, then he continued down the aisle to the tall, burnished red horse waiting for him in the last stall.
“Hey, Red.” He stroked both hands down the side of her face, comforted simply by touching the horse. “Did you have a good night?” He brushed back her hair. “Who’s gonna ride you today, huh? One of the girls, I bet.”
The horse didn’t answer, of course. Horses never did. But Sterling felt someone speaking to him, infusing him with peace. He bowed his head and prayed for strength to endure this weekend, his agent, his sponsors, and being so close to snowboarding without losing what he’d found these past several weeks.
Without losing himself—again.
The plane touched down just before midnight, the flight having been delayed for an hour on the runway in Montana due to high winds. Sterling’s stomach felt so tight, he hadn’t been able to even enjoy his peanuts. In fact, the salty snack now swirled in his gut like poison.
Gordon waited near the baggage claim, but Sterling carried everything he’d brought. “You made it.” Gordon grinned like Sterling had just won another gold medal. “And you’re barely limping. Though, I can tell you are. We’ll need to make sure you’re in the room before the reps arrive. Then it’s just legal talk and a few questions, and you can stay seated until they go.”
Sterling managed to grunt a passable response, suddenly aware of every traveler in the airport. At least none of them were reporters that he could see. But he didn’t like the unsettled feeling that now people would be judging how he walked. He longed to return to Gold Valley and forget about snowboarding completely.
At the same time, his signature on the paperwork Gordon had faxed earlier that week meant he could buy a house in Montana—for cash. And a certain level of expectation came with that much money.
He took a deep breath as a cab pulled up to the curb and Gordon ushered him into it. Sterling could shoulder this. He had before.
With a text on its way to Norah—who wouldn’t get it until morning—Sterling admired the bright lights of the city he used to love. He still loved Denver. Maybe not everything that had happened here, but the metropolis possessed a pulse he could feel even this late at night.
Once at his downtown apartment, sealed behind a locked door, Sterling finally relaxed. His meeting with the brand reps wasn’t until late morning, and he walked his apartment, remembering his life in Denver.
Not all of it was bad.
But none of it included Norah, and Sterling wondered if his connection to her could overcome the call of returning to snowboarding, to Denver.
He settled at the kitchen counter and pulled out his laptop. He confirmed with his realtor that he wanted to meet at nine a.m. the next morning, but the thought of listing this apartment—of selling it and never being able to come home to it again—introduced a nest of snakes to his already swirling gut.
He sighed and stood up, leaving his laptop on the counter as he went into his bedroom. “It’s Norah or Denver,” he muttered as he pulled off his shirt and pants and slipped into his gym shorts. “Can’t have both, Sterling.” He fell into bed, still oscillating between which one called to him the loudest.
The next morning, a knock had him hurrying from his bedroom. He slowed and evened his gait before opening the door. He didn’t even want his realtor to see him limping. No one could know, because then everyone would know.
He pulled open the door, ready to gesture the woman into his apartment. But the woman standing in the hall wasn’t Irene Goodsell, the realtor that had sold him this downtown gem.
Instead, a blonde twenty-something stood there, wearing skin-tight jeans and a fluffy white vest over a long-sleeved red T-shirt.
“Amber.” The word scraped against Sterling’s throat, searing his tongue. He didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.
“Gordon said you’d be back last night.” She pouted at him. “You didn’t call.”
Confusion and frustration puckered his eyebrows. “Why would I call?”
“I left you about a dozen messages.” She folded her arms. “Can I come in?”
“No—”
She stepped past him despite his protest and headed into the living room. “This place hasn’t changed a bit.”
Sterling left the front door open, not wanting to be trapped in a closed space with this woman. “Neither have you. You need to go.” He’d never felt something so strongly before.
“I have changed.” She dropped onto the couch. “Which you would know if you’d answered my calls.”
He leaned against the wall near the door, unwilling to get any closer. “I blocked your number, Amber. I heard everything I needed to hear.” And so much more. Leaning against the doorway, watching her with lasers shooting through his eyes, Sterling didn’t want to waste any more time on Amber. He hadn’t six months ago, and he certainly didn’t now.
“You should go,” he said again as she opened her mouth to say something. “I don’t have anything to say to you.” Behind him, the elevator chimed, and he prayed with everything in him that it would be Irene.
“Knock, knock,” the realtor said, and relief sang through Sterling.
“Come in,” he said to her. “Amber was just leaving.”
Irene spotted Amber as she stood from the couch, and surprise lifted the real estate agent’s brows. “Am I interrupting?”
“More like saving me,” Sterling hissed as Amber came closer. “Good-bye, Amber.” He spoke with such finality, she couldn’t misunderstand him. And Irene was here to corroborate.
The blonde he’d once found so alluring, so sexy, so sincere, flounced to the elevator and practically punched the call button. The doors slid open, she stepped onto the car, turned and glared at him, before the elevator closed and removed her from his life. Hopefully for good.
Sterling exhaled. “Hello, Irene.”
“So, you want to put this apartment on the market?” Irene breezed past the kitchen and into the living area. “It’s an amazing place,” she continued. “We shouldn’t have a problem getting a good price for it.”
Sterling felt like a door in his life was closing and wouldn’t be opened ever again. At the same time, God had opened other doors for him, and he needed to choose the right one.
“Make it happen,” he told Irene. “And I need you to connect me with someone good in Gold Valley. I’m going to need a place there.”
She nodded, though the set of her mouth and the angle of her eyebrows suggested she had many questions for him.
He had a lot too, but moving to Montana wasn’t one of them. With that burden lifted, he made it through the walk-through with Irene, the intent to list paperwork, and over to his agent’s office on time to meet the brand reps.
14
Norah dusted and swept and mopped and cleaned toilets for Gold Valley’s wealthy. The winter was definitely not the busiest time, but now that April flirted with May, several families had started to come back up to the mountains. And summer would be insane, when they’d come back to escape the oppressive heat of their regular homes.
She thought of Sterling constantly, disdainful that even her loudest music couldn’t drive him away while she worked. She wondered if the meeting with his real estate agent had gone well, if his sponsors had squeezed the information they wanted from him, if his late-night text was really true.
Missing you so much. See you soon.
He’d sent the message just after midnight, and she hadn’t gotten it until that morning, when she’d woken. The fact that she wouldn’t be able to see him that evening ate a hole through her, and she hadn’t known how to answer his message. So she hadn’t.
She stewed over what he might think of her silence. She considered bringing him home to meet her mama, of seeing where she came from. The idea didn’t strike as much fear in her as it once had, but then she arrived at Six Sons to do her weekly cleaning. Thoughts of the differences between his house and hers had her tongue back in knots.
You can’t tell him, she lectured herself as she straightened the kitchen upstairs. She noticed a flashing light on the phone system, and she pressed the button without thinking. Of course it would be Nancy, who called the cabin when she had something to say to Norah.
“Norah, hello.” The woman’s voice oozed with warmth and money. “I’m sending a client up to the cabin next weekend, so please make sure the master is stocked by Friday night. I’ll transfer funds to your account for toiletries and groceries and I’ll email you a list. Please confirm when you get these items.” A pause followed Nancy’s carefully recited message. “I’ll let my son know he needs to find somewhere else to be next weekend. This is an important client. Well, okay, thank you, Norah.”
Norah’s first thought was where Nancy thought Sterling would stay. Maybe a hotel. They certainly were the family that could pay for endless nights in a hotel. Then she wondered how long it would take to erase his presence from the cabin by Friday night. True, the top two floors barely showed someone lived there, but the basement spoke a different story.
She finished her work and flipped on the TV in the master bedroom, as she’d done many times before. She made a list of what the bedroom needed to be ready for a guest as the television provided background noise.
“Sterling Maughan,” caught her ears. She turned from the bathroom, where she was folding towels and checking the levels of shampoo.
The television showed a picture of Sterling, pre-fall. Suntanned and stunning, his smiling face took up the whole screen.
“The snowboarder who suffered a serious fall only six months ago has emerged from hiding. He was spotted in downtown Denver today, reportedly on a way to a meeting with several of his sponsors. And Dave, that has everyone on the slopes talking.”
“It sure does, Marty.” The camera switched to the male sportscaster, who continued to speculate on when Sterling would announce either his retirement or his return to the sport he so clearly had loved.
Norah’s legs gave out and she sat on the bed. Sterling did love snowboarding. He’d been really, really good at it. Her mind tumbled back to the first time they’d met: the unwashed quality of his hair, how he hadn’t shaved in days, the nest of blankets on the couch downstairs.
“He’s a snowboarder,” she whispered to herself. A sense of forgiveness washed over her, though she couldn’t quite make sense of the emotion. But she suddenly knew she couldn’t change him—didn’t want to change him.
But she also knew with absolute certainty that she’d fallen in love with a snowboarder—not the handsome cowboy-counselor he’d started to become. But a snowboarder. Because Sterling Maughan would always and forever be a snowboarder first.
Norah stopped by the barn on Wednesday after dropping her girls off at dinner. Sterling rode late on Wednesdays, it being his night for a private riding lesson with Owen.
He was already atop a beautiful reddish-brown horse Norah had seen on occasion. Red, she thought the horse was named, and appropriately so. With a friendly wave, she put one foot on the bottom rung of the fence and watched as he trotted the horse in a figure-eight pattern.
Owen spoke in soothing tones, the same as always. Norah had seen Sterling in his jeans, boots, and cowboy hat on several other instances. But something about him now, sitting in the saddle and maneuvering the horse around the arena with barely a twitch of his fingers ignited something inside her.
He’d become a cowboy. A smile twitched against her lips. She’d always fancied herself with a cowboy, if she was going to be with someone at all. And since Sterling had called her as he boarded his flight, and as she’d kissed him hello after two days apart, Norah knew now she did want to share her life with someone.
Not just someone. Sterling Maughan.
She hadn’t told him any of that, though. She hadn’t invited him to meet her mother, or to see her house, nor had she confessed about her teen drug addiction.
It could all wait, she’d reasoned. Sterling, after all, wasn’t going anywhere.
“Norah?” Dr. Richards’ voice startled her away from the fence. She quickly attempted to wipe away the admiration surely showing on her face.
“Doctor Richards,” she said.
“I don’t normally see you hanging around after work,” he said, his gaze moving from her to where Sterling rode in the arena. A frown pulled at the corners of his mouth.
“I was just heading out,” Norah said, thinking quickly. She didn’t want to lie. “I saw Owen in here, and I thought I’d see why. I didn’t know he gave private lessons.”
Fine, that was pretty much a lie. Norah knew Owen helped the new counselors become horse-worthy, especially the at-risk counselor.
“He’s coming along, isn’t he?” Norah turned back to watch Sterling for another moment. “How’s he doing with the boys?”
“Really well, actually.” Dr. Richards joined her at the fence. “I was just going to check in with him after his lesson. Do you think he’s enjoying the work?”
“I don’t know,” Norah said, and at least that was the truth. Sterling had spoken of his boys a little bit at the beginning of last week, but not much since then. It seemed as both of them experienced enough of the stress and sadness surrounding their patients at work that neit
her of them wanted to hash it over afterward.
“Well, I should go,” Norah said with a glance to Dr. Richards. “Good-night, Doctor Richards.”
“’Night, Norah.” He didn’t look away from Sterling this time, and Norah escaped from the barn without having to answer another question. Feeling as if she’d dodged a speeding bullet, Norah hurried to her car, knowing with every step that she needed to confess her relationship to Dr. Richards.
Soon.
Sterling, however, didn’t agree when she brought it up to him on Friday after work.
“It’s a dumb policy,” he said as he threw things into an overnight bag. “Let’s just wait a little longer.”
“Wait for what?” Norah stacked new boxes of soap and bottles of shampoo and washcloths she’d carefully folded into triangles. He’d accompanied her to the grocery store, and together, they’d unloaded the groceries and stocked the refrigerator upstairs for his mother’s guest.
And he was leaving for Denver that night. Again. His apartment had sold after only twelve hours on the market, and his realtor needed him to sign papers. He wanted to hire a moving company, and he needed to be out of the apartment by the end of June.
“You’re still good to help me look at a place on Monday night, right?” He glanced up from his phone, which rang and chimed a lot more than it used to.
“Yes.” She watched him thumb out a response and hit send. “Okay, I told Miles to expect us.”
“What are you looking at?” She made sure not to say the word we. She wasn’t looking for a place to live with him. She wasn’t even sure why he wanted her to come.
“A couple of houses on the north end of town.”
“Up near the canyon?”
“Yeah, you know the area?”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said, trying not to let any sarcasm enter her voice. She didn’t entirely succeed. “There’re new developments going in.”