by Aria Ford
“Mm?” he asked, seeing a question in my eyes. I laughed.
“I was just thinking you’re stunning,” I said innocently.
“Mm.” He sighed and closed his eyes again. I thought he was asleep, but then he kissed my forehead.
“Same to you.”
I thought my heart would melt.
I closed my eyes and snuggled close to I and thought about that day, that felt so long ago now, when I had received that letter that had caused us to meet and had changed everything.
CHAPTER ONE
Kelly
I put my notepad with the spreadsheets aside, put my head on the table and did the silent scream. It didn’t make anything any easier, but it did make me feel better.
“Kelly Gowan, you’re crazy, you know that?” Telling myself also didn’t make my job easier, but then, it wasn’t really going to get any easier. One of my duties, in my job as secretary at Friedman and Barne law firm, is keeping a current list of the year’s clients. And I had kind of forgotten about that bit until the week before the AGM. Which meant I had to do it all now. This weekend. Agh.
It was two P.M. on Saturday and I’d been at it since eight in the morning. I ran a hand through my tousled red hair and sighed. My head hurt. My eyes crossed. I was hungry and fed up and I felt mad at myself for my oversight during the year. I was only a quarter of the way done too. How was I going to keep at it?
“Coffee.”
I stood up and went to the kitchen, grumbling under my breath about everything and nothing.
“If only I’d kept track of it all year.”
That was just part of my list of “if only.” If only I had decided to stay in Florida, where I had my distracted and frazzled mom, my circle of friends, and quite possibly a job writing for a sports magazine. That would have suited me way better than all this tedious number crunching. If only I had some company in this city. If only I wasn’t so terribly forgetful.
“Damn it!”
The doorbell rang just as I had just discovered I’d forgotten to buy detergent. Now all my cups were dirty too. I stormed to the door in a foul mood.
“Hello?” I snarled.
The neighbor grinned at me. He lived across the hallway and I had half a mind to seduce him except that I don’t know if he’d have been up for it. He was cute in a boyish way and I had to admit he set my heart racing a bit. Now, he looked a bit ruffled.
“Sorry, Nic.” I sighed. “What’s up?”
“A letter for you,” he said. He held it out, looking nervously at me as if he expected I might take out his throat. I sighed.
“Thanks. Have a good day.”
“You too.”
“Thanks.”
I closed the door and leaned against it, sighing. Have a good day. I’ll do that—and I might also fly out the window and circle over the seafront. Both things had the same level of unlikely.
I ran my hand through my untamed, frazzled auburn curls, sat down at the table and looked at the letter.
Where’s this from?
The envelope looked beaten up. The rain had soaked it once at least, and then it had dried crinkled, the ink blurred here and there. It was a miracle it had gotten here at all.
I tore it open—it had no return address on the back, so where it came from was a mystery. I held it up to the light.
“Dear Kelly,” I read aloud. “I am writing this letter because I haven’t heard from you for years and I wonder, sometimes, what’s going on.”
I frowned. Who could it be from? I scanned on through the large, rambling writing.
I am still on the farm. I have a sore chest and I can’t sleep at night. I think I’m getting sick. Your mom doesn’t answer my phone calls, and I haven’t heard from her in years. The farm is a mess. Can you come and visit sometime? Grandpa H.
“Oh, for goodness…” I sighed. It was from my grandfather.
My grandfather, Josh Hayley, was my mom’s dad. He still lived on a farm in Wyoming, somewhere on the far end of the civilized world. He was a textbook eccentric and my mom had always despaired of him somewhat. I loved him. I recalled a big, friendly face, round glasses and a permanent grin. Grandpa was always content. He never got mad about anything. During the hard times when my mom was going through the divorce he had visited us. I had loved him. I wondered how he was now.
I have a sore chest and I can’t sleep at night.
I felt a stab of sorrow, reading that. Poor Grandpa. That sounded bad.
Your mom doesn’t answer my phone calls. I haven’t heard from her in years.
I wondered if he even had Mom’s new phone details. Probably not. My mom probably forgot to update him. That would be typical. Incapable of malice, Mom was entirely capable of forgetting about her entire family in the middle of a big project. A landscape designer, she was always getting swept off her feet by her latest inspirations and forgetting to make her own dinner, never mind forgetting other basic things like sleep. Her dad was probably the last thing in her thoughts.
“Someone has to help,” I said aloud.
I sighed. Why that someone had to be me, I wasn’t sure. Here I was, thousands of miles away, probably about as equipped to get stuff done in the back of Beyond as I was to man a hovercraft. But then I thought, as I dug out a sponge and some good old-fashioned Dawn dishwashing liquid, if I didn’t, who would?
Mom was Grandpa’s only living relative. And if she wasn’t doing something, it would have to be me.
I scrubbed the dishes and planned. As I worked, a crazy idea came into my mind. Why not just go? I had some leave left over, so why not just take a week off? Go to Wyoming, sort him out, come back? What was stopping me? In that moment, I made myself a promise.
I was going to finish the list of names for the company and get everything ready for the meeting. Then I was going to treat myself to a holiday. In wild Wyoming.
I finished the dishes, made coffee and some toast, and went back to work. With my mind thinking so positively, it seemed like the work was going faster. I was surprised when, by five P.M., I was more than halfway done. If I kept it up at this rate, by Sunday lunch I would be finished.
I stuck at it until dinnertime and then headed downtown to see if Alexa, the company accountant and a good friend of mine, was up for going out.
I drew up outside her stylish apartment block. She lived only three blocks away and so we were used to me turning up at her door, or the other way, at odd times, and ringing the bell.
“Yoo-hoo!” her cheerful voice came down over the mic when she heard my voice. “Dinnertime?”
“If you’re around?”
“Sure I am! You want to eat here, or go out?”
I shrugged. “Go out?”
“Great. Come up if you like. Just getting changed.”
“Okay.”
While Alexa changed out of jeans and a T-shirt into something more going-out worthy, I sat outside the bedroom door and asked her about the day.
“It was good,” she shouted, voice muffled as she shrugged off her top. “I went to the gym, then I headed up to The Table for lunch and then I went shopping…” she went quiet again as she reached for something. “How was your day?”
I sighed. “Not bad,” I lied. In contrast with her day, mine was unremarkable. I wasn’t really going to own up to it.
“Great! Let’s go.”
Alexa always looked good. In a soft gray sweater with charcoal slacks and a midthigh length duster, she looked chic and elegant. I felt clunky in my outsize ocher shirt and faded tan jeggings. I shrugged, ran a hand through my frazzled strawberry curls and joined her.
“What’s up, Kell?” she asked as we both got into my car and headed downtown. “You’re stressed.”
“Nothing important,” I lied. Then I paused. “Miller?” I always called her by her surname—it was a tradition we’d started when we met
“Mm?”
“Am I crazy?” I sighed. “I mean…why is it I’m not living the life everyone else seems to b
e living?”
Alexa put her head on one side. “You’re not crazy,” she said after a long pause. “And besides,” she added as we pulled away from the stop street, “why is that a bad thing?”
“Why is what bad?” I asked, keeping an eye out for the stoplight. I didn’t need a traffic fine.
“Not being like everyone else?” she questioned.
I paused. “Well…I guess it isn’t that bad.”
She laughed. “It’s not bad at all. You know what?”
“What?”
“Some people would wish they could say that. Even I sometimes wish I could.” She made a small rueful face.
“You?” I laughed. “I don’t believe that, Miller—you’re so perfect.” I thought she was. A good job, great wardrobe, a boyfriend who was starting his own company. She was what everyone was supposed to be.
She snorted. “In whose opinion?”
I shrugged. “Well, our bosses. The rest of our colleagues and… everyone, I guess.”
“Well, it’s nice of you to say so. But really? Since when is doing everything normal anything but, well, normal?”
I blinked. “Well, when you put it like that, I guess…”
She laughed. “I do put it like that. You’re great the way you are, Kell.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling a flicker of pride in my chest.
“Now, come on,” she said encouragingly. “Let’s go and get dinner. I’m ravenous.”
“Me too.”
As we drove to Green Food, our favorite vegetarian restaurant, I found myself feeling not only a small glimmer of pride, but of excitement.
I was going to do something out of the ordinary. I was going to pack my bags and head to Wyoming. To help my grandpa. And, for once, to enjoy being myself.
CHAPTER TWO
Reese
The dust on the road blurred my vision as the pickup coughed and then died in the drive of my farm. I ran my hands through my dark hair and sighed, my patience fraying even further.
“My life is a mess.”
I fiddled with the key in the ignition of the pickup, then put my foot on the gas and did the same thing, trying to get the thing to start. Damned pickup! It was secondhand and had a mind of its own.
I did the trick with the gas again. It was a delicate undertaking, getting the balance right. The spark plugs were going—I knew that. I just hadn’t found the time to go to the dealer and by more.
I don’t seem to find time for anything sensible nowadays.
Ever since moving to Sheridan, WY, I had found my life was full of small, hard-to-solve problems. On the one hand, that annoyed me. On the other hand, it was great—it stopped me from having to think about big, impossible-to-solve problems.
Like the fact that I’m such a loser.
That was the litany that played through my head every day, the one that had plagued me ever since I returned from my military service with the 4th Combat.
The engine made a promising noise. It started. “Yay!” I yelled, relieved. “We did it.”
I put my foot on the gas and shot out of the yard, heading into town.
The road was hot and steaming, a ribbon of tar through fields that baked under a merciless sun. As I drove across the barren, scrubby landscape, I made a point of not focusing on the place it reminded me of. The stony, wind-scoured hills of the Karakorum. Not that they looked similar—not really—it was just that they were both desolate and uninhabited.
I am going to forget all about that.
The last memories I wanted to revisit were the memories from then. My time of service in Afghanistan. Now that I was here, demobbed, and released from that, I could finally forget. Or at least that was the plan. That was what I’d hoped when I returned to Wyoming and bought a farm, settled down. Some hope. It was also then that I had learned, completely and unequivocally, that the memories weren’t going anywhere.
I couldn’t even manage to save Parker and Hewitt.
I didn’t want to think about that. The day the firing had started, and they had been following me, I hadn’t made the right choices. I had gotten those men killed, for nothing worse than listening to me. I hated myself.
I bit my lip, made myself forget. The words that shamed me and called me a coward, never stopped. Not really.
I couldn’t even make things work with Brody, my girlfriend. I wasn’t the same person when I came back and we had both decided to go our separate ways. I was glad she could be reasonable about it. At the time I hadn’t been too good at being reasonable. Or rational. Or anything.
Stop it, Reese. Keep your mind on the road. I clenched my big fists round the wheel and focused on the long, winding road up ahead: it calmed me.
If I was driving or fixing the millions of small issues that happened on the new ranch, I could forget my past; silence those voices that told me I was weak and stupid and a failure. No other time.
If for no other reason, I’m glad I bought it for that. It gave me distraction. And distraction was what I needed.
“Oh, for crying…” I swore as the engine made a funny noise.
I was on the main road, heading from my ranch to Sheridan, funnily enough, to take the pickup in to see if I could have the brakes replaced.
This is all I need. The pickup breaking down on this road. The pickup—ancient and maltreated—had been sold to me by the farmer up the road for what I had thought was a fraction of its worth. I now understood why. There was more wrong with it than right with it. And now, it seemed, it had decided to abandon me in the middle of the landscape.
“Damn it!”
I slammed the wheel in sheer frustration. I had the feeling that the trick with the gas wasn’t going to help. It wasn’t not starting that was the problem. Something was wrong.
I climbed out and opened the hood. The clouds of steam that billowed out told me something had overheated.
Either that or I forgot to refill the radiator. Oh, for…I sighed.
The engine was really hot, and I could smell oil and steam and the burning scent of metal that was far too hot for any good.
“Now what?”
I was out on a road that was miles away from anything. If anyone came by, it would probably be a miracle. And I had forgotten to plug in the phone.
Not that anyone was going to pick up if I called. I sat down on the roadside in frustration.
“My life sucks.”
I sighed. That wasn’t going to help matters. I stood and walked around the truck. Came back to the front.
That was when I heard it. An engine. Someone was coming.
I stood up and dragged myself to standing. I watched the approach of whoever it was. The car driving along looked in little better repair than my own pickup, but it was better than dying of thirst on the roadside while I waited. I waved, thumbing down the car. To my amazement, it slowed. To my even greater amazement, it pulled up. Someone got out of the door.
I stared.
The woman standing on the roadside was easily the hottest thing I had ever seen. With clouds of red hair and a trim waistline, with a sweet face and big smile, I had never laid eyes on someone who had the same effect on me as she was having. To say nothing of the big breasts in that tight sweatshirt. I was staring and I knew it. My blood was thudding in my veins and my whole body felt a tingle go through it. I think it was her appearance combined with how unexpected it was. I wasn’t expecting a hot woman to get out of that beat up old VW on the main road.
“Can I help?”
I grinned. “Maybe.”
She gave me a look. “Seriously, mister. Don’t try it on…I was asking if you need help with your car. Can I call the roadside help?”
I laughed, surprised by her confrontational attitude. It was meant to push me away, I guess, but it had the effect of getting me even more excited. “I dunno if anyone can help with this,” I said, feeling a mix of annoyance at the offer and a need to impress her. “If I can’t fix it, it ain’t possible.”
She raised a
brow. The expression was delightful. It sent a fire running in my blood. “You’re confident,” she said.
I nodded. “Yeah. I am.” I felt a stab of annoyance. Fine…this woman was my only hope of getting into town without risking a long, parched wait on the roadside. But would she either just call the car-repair people and spare me the knowledge I couldn’t fix it, or go away? I was feeling stupid.
She didn’t say anything. Just turned her back and went back to her car.
“Hey!” I called out. “Where’re you going?” I was suddenly filled with a very real panic: what if she just got into her car and drove away, leaving me here?
She gave me a pitying stare. “I’m getting the phone.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “Well, thank you.”
“Oh!” She grinned. “You do have manners.”
“Sometimes.”
I laughed.
A moment later I heard her on the phone. “Hello. Yes, I’m calling from the side of the…which road is this again?” she yelled to me. I frowned. Didn’t she know that?
“The three-three-two!”
“It’s the three three two.” A pause while she listened to their next instructions. “Whereabouts? I’m thinking…about five miles away from Sheridan?”