by J. B. Havens
Wannabe in Wyoming
Antelope Rock Book 1
J.B. Havens
Samantha A. Cole
Wannabe in Wyoming
Copyright ©2021 J.B. Havens and Samantha A. Cole
All Rights Reserved.
Wannabe in Wyoming is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Designed by Samantha A. Cole
Edited by Aurora Dewater
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Afterword
Other Books by J.B. Havens
About J.B. Havens
Other Books by Samantha A. Cole
About Samantha A. Cole
Authors’ Note
Any information regarding persons or places has been used with creative literary license so there may be discrepancies between fiction and reality. The missions and personal qualities of members of the military and law enforcement within have been created to enhance the story and, again, may be exaggerated and not coincide with reality.
The authors have full respect for the members of the United States military and the varied members of law enforcement and thank them for their continuing service to making this country as safe and free as possible.
Prologue
The hard plastic edges of Willow’s cell phone dug into her palm painfully, and the sharp sting brought her back to reality in a rush. She couldn’t believe it. After thirty long years, she finally knew who her father was. The blank spot next to that title on her birth certificate was no longer a mystery.
Jason Hillcrest.
He’d been a little older than she’d imagined. For some reason, she’d always figured he’d been her mother’s age, and that they’d been a pair of young lovers unable to handle the burden of an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. Everything had been assumptions on Willow’s part since her mother had never given her any information about her father, other than he couldn’t be a part of their lives. No further explanation had ever been offered and Willow had long ago accepted it, albeit reluctantly.
In reality, Jason Hillcrest had been six years her mother’s senior. He’d died alone of an aggressive pancreatic cancer at the age of fifty-six—unwed, and for all intents and purposes, childless.
Mr. Howard Smith, Esq. had called Willow a little over an hour ago to inform her that not only was her biological father deceased, but as his only living relative, she was his sole heir. Without warning, she was now the owner of a small cattle ranch in Antelope Rock, Wyoming—wherever the hell that was. Her heart pounded in a mixture of shock, fear, and pure excitement. There was also a heap of disappointment in there—her father had obviously known about her but had never reached out to her. She would’ve given anything to have been able to meet him and have a chance to get to know him.
Her own life was empty and hollow. Her mother had died three years ago from complications due to diabetes. And now, two years after her divorce, Willow had no boyfriend or close friends or relatives to spend time with. She worked, read, watched TV, and slept—not an exciting life at all.
Her tiny, one-bedroom, rented apartment had come fully furnished. All her worldly possessions would easily fit in her ten-year-old Chevy Colorado, with room to spare. As for employment, she stocked shelves at a local grocery store during the day and cleaned houses a few nights a week for extra money. She could quit both jobs at that very second and not be missed. Not to mention she’d be getting further away from her smarmy ex-husband, who couldn’t seem to let her go even after being divorced for several years. Maybe putting half the country between them would finally beat it into his thick skull that she no longer wanted anything to do with him. It wasn’t that he wanted to get back together with her. He only called or came by when he needed something—which, ninety-nine percent of the time, was money.
Could she do this? Drop everything, pack her stuff, drive to Wyoming, and start over with a clean slate? The lawyer had explained a lot in a short period of time, but one thing had stuck with her. She needed to go there to sign papers and make a decision on the property. Fix it up and sell it, or sell it as-is, had been his question. But another possibility had occurred to her. Up to that moment, her life had been boring, something she’d been regretting more and more as she got older. Maybe it was time to take a chance. Glancing around the apartment that’d never felt like a home, something sparked within her. If she had to put a name to it, the only two that came to mind were courage and…hope.
Chapter One
Driving from Pennsylvania to Wyoming was no joke. Thanks to scattered bouts of traffic, it’d taken a little over four days, more tanks of gas than Willow wanted to think about, and the last of her nerves. She’d left Nebraska and entered Wyoming late last night. After catching up on some sleep at a cheap but clean motel off the main highway, she was now on the final leg of the journey. Over 1,600 miles and countless hours in her beat-up truck, she was downright gleeful to see the GPS marking her destination as less than twenty minutes away. She’d remembered to get her Chevy a tune-up before leaving the City of Brotherly Love, and thankfully, it hadn’t given her so much as a hiccup on the long trek.
She was in a bit of landscape shock. She’d been born and raised in Philadelphia, surrounded by the concrete, steel, and glass buildings and paved roadways that’d been erected in the city that still harbored some of the country’s most historical sites. It’d always amazed her how quaint buildings from the 1700s sat peacefully among the monstrosities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Between the traffic, construction, trains, and local residents coming and going at all hours of the day and night, her section of the city had never been quiet. The walls of her apartment had been ultra-thin, so she’d constantly known what her neighbors had been up to. The ones above her apartment often sounded like Bigfoot and his family dancing to loud music even when they weren’t throwing wild parties. The ones below her would have loud arguments about the stupidest things just so they could have wild makeup sex that’d left little to the imagination. And the kid who’d lived in the apartment next to her smoked weed and bounced a ball off the other side of her bedroom wall whenever his parents weren’t there. Philadelphia was definitely a huge difference from the open air of the upper Midwest with its flat landscape shadowed by buttes and snow-covered mountains in the distance.
When t
he GPS indicated she had to get off at the next exit, Willow changed lanes and slowed down to take the offramp. The rest stop looked like just about every other one she’d taken a break at along the way. Gas and air pumps, a few parked cars, and a store where you could buy cigarettes, lottery tickets, beer, condoms, coffee, soda, chips, and a hot dog in one two-minute shopping spree. According to the Google Maps directions she’d printed out at the start of her trip, she was in Butterfield, Wyoming—10 miles east of Antelope Rock, her new hometown, temporary as it might be. Maybe she was showing her age a bit, printing the directions out, but she’d been paranoid her GPS would break and she’d get lost.
After parking the truck, she climbed out and stretched her legs. Two vehicles were at the pumps, and she noticed the drivers gaping at her as they got their gas. One was a tall, lanky kid in his late teens who smirked at her with untamed lust in his eyes, while the other was a lady in her fifties whose eyes widened in horror as she took in the younger woman’s appearance. Willow glanced down, wondering what might be wrong. She had on a loose pair of jeans, her favorite pair of pink Converse high-tops, and a black tank top that showed off the sleeve of tattoos on her right arm and the ones covering her shoulders. A peek at her reflection in the rear passenger window showed there was nothing on her face other than the tiny crystal stud on her nose. Her short, brown hair was perfectly spiked in its usual fauxhawk with hot pink tips a near exact match to the color of her shoes. Nope, nothing was out of place.
It wasn’t the first time Willow had been on the receiving end of both of those looks, and as usual, she chose to ignore them. Hurrying inside, she located the restrooms and took care of business. Before leaving the store, she grabbed a Pepsi from one of the refrigerators and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. The stoned clerk at the register didn’t give Willow a second look after he took her money. It was just after one p.m., and although she wasn’t starving yet, she knew she would be if her meeting with Mr. Smith went longer than she anticipated. The last thing she’d eaten was a ham, egg, and cheese burrito and coffee at seven a.m., after checking out of the motel.
Thankfully, when she exited the store, the two vehicles and their drivers had disappeared. Before leaving the lot, Willow double checked the gas gauge on the dashboard—it showed two-thirds full. That was more than enough to bypass the pumps.
Climbing back into her truck, she followed the GPS, eventually turning down a long dirt road, dust kicking up behind her in a long trail. That was one way to announce her presence, she supposed. She passed under a wooden and metal arch that read “Skyview Ranch” in letters that had rivulets of rust running off them like blood. Way to be morbid Willow, she thought to herself. The lane cut through fields surrounded by leaning barbed wire fences. The disrepair was obvious to even her inexperienced eye. She didn’t have a good feeling about this. Her sinking stomach dropped further as she pulled up to the ranch style house. Several barns and outbuildings were scattered around the property, but her eyes remained glued to the sagging front porch and peeling paint of the house she’d be calling home for the foreseeable future. She parked her truck between a white F-350 and a dark blue sedan. A man dressed in jeans, a navy-blue polo shirt, and a sport coat waited near the porch steps. She was unsurprised to see he wasn’t on the porch itself, considering she was nervous about walking across it herself.
She climbed down from her truck, deciding to leave her bags for the moment. Who knew if it was even safe to stay there for the night?
“Mr. Smith, I presume?”
“Yes. Are you Ms. Crawford?” His furrowed brow, and his suspicious gaze sweeping her from head to toe and back up again told her she looked like a far cry from the woman he’d expected. When she nodded, he quickly recovered and smiled. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Welcome to Antelope Rock.”
“Thanks, and Willow is fine.” Her gaze moved past Mr. Smith and strayed across the front of the house. The old-fashioned wooden screen door hung slightly askew, with its mesh ripped along the bottom.
“Then I’ll have to insist you call me Howard.” He put his hand out for her to shake, which she did firmly— just as her mother had taught her. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they shook your hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“While I appreciate that, it doesn’t feel like a loss when you never had it to begin with. I never met my father or even knew his name until you contacted me. Curiosity, more than anything else, brought me here.”
He didn’t look the least bit surprised at her admission. “I can understand that. Would you like to go inside? I have a few papers for you to sign, transferring ownership of the property to you.”
“Is it safe? Frankly, this place looks like it’s about to fall down.”
“Safe enough. I wouldn’t worry about the roof caving in on your head, but it definitely needs some TLC, huh?”
She let out an unladylike snort. “More than that, I think. I’m assuming you have the keys?”
“Yes, but it’s not locked. Most folks around here don’t bother to lock their doors.”
Shocked, she looked sideways at him as he carefully strode up the porch stairs. They creaked ominously like something straight out of a horror movie but held his weight. “I’m from Philly. We have multiple locks on our doors and windows. What if someone breaks in?”
“There are more guns than people in Wyoming. You break into a person’s home, and you can be expected to be greeted by buck shot. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a twelve-gauge leaning in the corner just inside this door.” The words she thought were a joke had been delivered with such deadpanned straightforwardness that she couldn’t help but realize he was absolutely serious. She came from a city where, for the most part, the only people with guns were cops, gang members, and criminals. This was going to be a bigger adjustment than she’d thought.
Howard opened the screen door and pushed open the, in fact, unlocked front door. Stale air wafted out into her face in an unpleasant rush, and she turned her head to get one last breath of fresh air before entering. “If there is, I wouldn’t know the first thing about using it. I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”
Stepping inside, Howard peeked behind the door, and sure enough, he lifted up and showed her a shotgun, painted a garish camo. “This is decent enough for home defense and has the bonus of being useful for the occasional critter.”
Willow froze and gaped at him. “Critter? Um, could you, maybe, be more specific?”
“Raccoons, coyotes, and the like. If they wander too close to the house or barn, you can chase them off with this. You can also use it to kill a rattler if need be.” He set the shotgun back where he’d gotten it from. “But until you learn how to properly and safely use a firearm, I’d strongly suggest banging loudly on a pot with a spoon for the ’coons and coyotes and using a shovel to take care of the rattlers. We wouldn’t want any accidents, especially not all the way out here. The clinic in town isn’t exactly equipped to handle gunshot wounds.”
Horrified at the thought of doing battle with a rattlesnake, or any other animal for that matter, she blinked several times before simply saying, “Noted.”
She followed the lawyer into the house, ignoring the stagnant smell of the place. Dust coated every surface in a thick grey blanket. Some of the furniture had been covered with sheets, but she wasn’t about to lift them off until she got some windows opened. The living room was typical, about what she’d expected from a life-long bachelor. Her upper lip twitched when she spotted two deer heads hanging on one wall. A very old grandfather clock, that’d apparently stopped working at some point, and a creepy painting of some old dude, whose eyes seemed to follow Willow as she moved about the room, completed the simple and unappealing décor. The portrait hanging above the fireplace mantle couldn’t be her father, since he’d only been fifty-six when he passed away, and the gray-haired person looked to be around seventy-five or eighty.
She’d keep the clock, if it could be repaired, but the rest of that stuff had to go
. “I think I’ll need to rent a dumpster or something, if I’m going to stay here for any length of time.”
Howard nodded as if he agreed with her. “I can recommend someone for that, and if you need help hauling stuff, there are always a few guys around town looking to pick up some extra work on the side.”
“Can you leave me a list of numbers or something?”
“Sure. Let’s go into the kitchen and get those papers signed too, and then I can get out of your hair.”
The kitchen was in a similar state of filth and disarray. Dated appliances and stained countertops greeted them. She’d never seen a fridge in that shade of puke green in real life before, having only seen ones like it in the movies. She shuddered at the thought of what it might contain. When Howard flipped a switch on the wall and an overhead light illuminated the room that was shaded from the mid-day sun, she was grateful to realize the electricity was on. Hopefully, that meant cleaning out the refrigerator wouldn’t require a HazMat suit.
Howard pulled the sheet off the table, and a cloud of dust flew into the air around them. “Whoops. Sorry about that.”
Coughing and waving a hand in front of her face, Willow crossed the kitchen, pulled open a sliding door that was also unlocked, and peeked out. There was a small deck that looked newer than its front counterpart and in decent shape at least. With a gentle breeze wafting in, the air in the kitchen soon began to clear, and they took a seat at the small rickety table. As Howard opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder, thick with papers, the mental list Willow had started of things she would need to replace was getting longer by the minute. A lot of it would need to be taken care of whether she sold the house or not, especially if she wanted to get a decent price for it. The only things she had going for her were that she lived alone and was used to not having much. The living room and kitchen of this house alone was bigger than her apartment in Philly.