by Joanna Sims
Ignoring the stiffness in her joints from sitting for too long in one position, Casey stood up quickly, shed the blanket, scooped up Hercules and tucked him into the crook of her arm.
She was the caboose, and followed Brock, his daughter and their dog up to the main floor.
“Oh, wow.” Casey walked to the closest window.
The storm had torn through the ranch, littering the yard with large, broken tree branches, overturned equipment and missing shingles from the roof of the barn.
“What a mess,” she said to Brock.
“I’m going to check on the horses.” The ranch foreman shrugged into a rain slicker. “Will you watch Hannah?”
She agreed to watch his daughter, of course. And, once both dogs had the chance to take care of business, Casey and Hannah took their canine companions back inside. It was drizzling outside, and the gray sky was so dreary, but it seemed as if the worst of the storm had finally passed them by.
“Do you have a landline, Hannah?”
Hannah showed her the phone on the other side of the refrigerator. She had periodically tried to get reception with her cell phone while they were in the cellar, without any luck. Now that they were out of the cellar, she still wasn’t having any luck with reception.
Relieved to hear a dial tone when she picked up the receiver, she dialed her sister’s number and silently begged her sister to answer.
“Hello?”
“Taylor! Thank goodness I got you!”
“Casey! I saw Brock’s number on caller ID. I wasn’t expecting to hear your voice, but I’m so glad it’s you! I’ve been trying to get you on your cell phone for hours!”
“I knew you had to be freaking out. I’m sorry—the truck broke down, then the tornado... It’s been a crazy day. How did you fare through the storm?”
“We’re fine—we’ll have to clean up the loose branches in the yard, but it could have been much, much worse. I’m just glad that you’re okay,” her sister said. “I didn’t want you to drive all of my stuff here by yourself, anyway. And you said the truck broke down?”
“Small fire in the engine, yes.”
“Ca-sey! I knew it was a bad idea!”
Casey heard the sound of her niece crying in the background. Penelope had been born premature and was prone to ear infections. She didn’t say anything to her sister, but Taylor sounded exhausted.
“Tay—I wanted to do it, so I did it. I’m fine. Brock happened to show up at an opportune time, so no harm done.”
There was a pause on the end of the line.
Then Taylor said, “I was wondering how you wound up with Brock.”
When her sister said her brother-in-law’s name, there was an underlying dislike in her tone. Casey knew from many conversations with her sister that Brock and her new husband, Clint, had a long-standing fractured relationship. From what she understood, Clint didn’t like Brock any more than Brock liked him. And the only glue that bound them together was Hannah.
“He kept me safe. And he’s been really nice to me.”
“Well.” Her sister seemed reluctant to give Brock a compliment. “That’s good at least.”
Casey smiled at Hannah, who was sitting at the table with an iPad while Lady took her position at Hannah’s feet.
“And I’ve had a chance to make friends with Hannah,” she said. “I hear my niece. How’s she doing?”
“She’s sick again.” This was said with the tired voice of a first-time mother. “She hasn’t slept, so I haven’t slept. Clint broke his collarbone down in Laredo...”
“Oh, no, Tay—I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“It couldn’t be worse timing—the only upside is that he’s coming home early. His best friend, Dallas, is going to drive him back and then we’ll buy her a plane ticket to get her to the next stop on the circuit.”
Taylor’s husband was a professional bull rider; Casey didn’t know how her sister, who was once married to a metrosexual man, could have wound up marrying a cowboy. But they seemed to just fit.
“He’ll be home all summer then.” Casey said the thought as soon as she thought it.
“That collarbone is going to be a tough one to heal, so I think he’ll be out of the running this season. Maybe this will be the one that makes him rethink his career.”
Still thinking about Taylor’s small bungalow on the outskirts of Helena, Casey didn’t respond right away. It must have clicked in Taylor’s mind what she was thinking, because her sister hastened to say, “There’s plenty of room here, Casey. I still want you to stay with us for the summer.”
“Let’s not worry about it now.” Casey rubbed her temples. “First thing I need to do is find out from Brock if the roads are even passable now so I can check on the truck. I don’t think he’ll mind taking me all the way into Helena if it saves you a trip.”
“Call me as soon as you know the plan. Promise?”
“Of course. I love you, sis. Give Penny a kiss from me. I’ll see you soon.”
Casey used the restroom and then joined Hannah at the table. Hannah was looking at a large diagram of a ladybug’s anatomy. Like many children diagnosed with autism, Hannah had become fixated on a topic, and that topic was ladybugs. The bathroom was decorated with ladybugs—ladybug shower curtain, ladybug toothbrush holder, ladybug towels. There was a ladybug on Hannah’s shirt and Casey had spotted a ladybug backpack hanging on one of the hooks in the foyer. Their dog was named Ladybug. One of the ways she had distracted Hannah from being scared in the cellar was to redirect to conversations about ladybugs. Once Hannah got started talking about the topic that interested her most, she forgot about the storm and talked at length about the insects. Although Brock was impressed with her ability to pinpoint Hannah’s interest, it wasn’t rocket science. All she had to do was pay attention to observable details, which was part of her job as a special education teacher.
“What else do you have on your iPad?” she asked, curious to see Hannah’s reaction.
“Stuff,” Hannah replied without looking up from the screen.
Brock’s daughter wasn’t interested in showing her any other apps on the iPad—not in the middle of looking at ladybugs.
The door to the house swung open. Brock peeled off his wet rain slicker and tossed it onto a rocking chair just outside the front door. He stepped into the foyer, stomped his feet on the rug and slapped the rain off his hat by hitting it across his thigh a couple of times.
“How’s it looking out there?” Casey asked.
Brock shook his head as he closed the front door tightly behind him. “It’s a mess.”
He joined them in the kitchen—it wasn’t a tiny kitchen, but with Brock in it, it seemed to shrink before her eyes. He had been a tall, lanky young man the last time she had seen him. Now he was a large man, taller than most and burly. He was active and strong, but he had developed a bit of a paunch around the middle. A lumberjack. That’s what he reminded her of—a Paul Bunyan lumberjack. Not many of those running around Chicago.
“I got ahold of Taylor.”
Brock had just downed a glass of water and he was filling it up again. “Good. She doing okay?”
“Penny’s sick again and Clint broke his collarbone, so he’s heading back from Texas. She said that she weathered the storm okay, though. Just a couple of small branches in the yard. Nothing major.” She noticed that Brock’s demeanor didn’t change at all when she mentioned that his stepbrother had gotten hurt. “What’s the chance of you getting me into Helena tonight?”
“Zip.” He put the empty glass on the cluttered counter. “Downed trees are blocking the major roads into town.”
“You’re not serious?” Casey said with a frustrated sigh. “You are serious.”
“I can take you to Bent Tree or you can bunk with us tonight,” Brock said. “Han
nah—it’s time to feed Lady. Turn off the iPad.”
Hannah didn’t respond.
“Hannah.”
“Just one more thing.” Hannah didn’t look up—her entire focus was on the screen.
Brock was tired and she could see that he was losing patience.
“Here—let’s do this, Hannah. I’m going to set my timer to one minute and when the timer goes off, you can turn off the iPad.”
The timer on her phone was set, the one minute ran out and Hannah, albeit reluctantly, turned off the iPad and tended to Lady’s needs.
Brock didn’t say it with words, but there was a definite thank-you in his eyes when he looked at her.
“I don’t know if I have the energy to face my aunt and uncle right now. But are you sure it would be okay if I crashed here tonight?”
“It’s no problem. You can take my bed upstairs and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No—I’ll take the couch.”
“No—you’ll take my bed. I sleep on the couch most nights, anyway.”
Sleeping in a bed instead of on a couch sounded like a much better scenario. If the bed were usually empty anyway, what would it hurt to take him up on his offer?
“All right—but only if you’re sure.”
He didn’t respond to that comment, but instead moved the conversation forward. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep, have breakfast and then we can stop off and check on the truck on our way to Helena.”
“Oh.” Casey groaned the word. “Geez. The truck. I hope the Beast is okay.”
Chapter Three
By nature, she was a light sleeper. Always had been. But the night she had spent in Brock’s massive California king-size bed had been one of her deepest sleeps on record. Perhaps it was the fact that she had been flat-out exhausted, or maybe it was the silky-soft material of the sheets. Either way, she had awakened from her sound sleep in the dead center of the bed, surrounded by a pile of plump pillows that had to be Brock’s soon-to-be ex-wife’s doing, feeling happy and content. She didn’t even scramble out of bed, as was her usual practice. Instead, she opted to linger a bit, staring up at the ceiling with the comforter pulled all the way up to her nose.
“Dad says get up!” Hannah burst into the room without knocking.
Shocked out of her random, drifting thoughts, Casey popped upright, her long auburn hair a mass of tangles. Hercules was vaulted forward, but he landed on all four paws. He waggled his tail and yapped at Hannah.
“If you want to come into someone’s room, what is the polite thing to do?” Casey asked.
“Knock.”
Casey gave the preteen two thumbs-up. “Okay—try it again.”
“What?”
“Knocking before you come in. You knock, wait for an answer and then you come in. But only if I say it’s okay. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Hannah slammed the door shut, causing Hercules to yap wildly. Casey heard a knock on the door, but she waited for a couple of seconds before she answered just to make certain Hannah wouldn’t burst in without getting the green light.
“Come in!”
Hannah flung open the door again with a laugh. “Breakfast!”
“Thank you, Hannah. Nice waiting, too.” Casey smiled at the girl. “Can you do something for me? Would you take Hercules out to use the bathroom while I get dressed?”
Brock’s daughter’s face beamed at the thought of being able to carry Hercules for the first time.
“I know you’ll make sure he’s okay.” Casey was reassuring herself as much as she was reassuring Hannah. It was hard to let Hercules out of her sight. He was so small and vulnerable. But she had heard about Hannah’s affinity for animals from Taylor, and she had seen how kind she was with her own dog, Lady.
Casey yawned several times, wiped the sleep out of her eyes and stretched her arms high above her head, before she scooted to the edge of the bed with a dramatic sigh. Rest time was officially over for her. Today, she had to go see how the Beast had fared in the storm, figure out how to get it towed if need be and then figure out whether or not she was just going to stay for a short visit with her sister and then head back to Chicago. She wanted to stay in Montana for the summer—it was too late to put in a request to work summer school. And she had been looking forward to this trip for months. She’d hate for it to all fall apart, but she couldn’t imagine staying with Taylor and Clint, in their small rental, for three months. Even though Taylor would try very hard to make her feel like she wasn’t a bother, she knew that she would, in fact, be an intrusion on the newlyweds.
Casey went into the tiny attached bathroom to fix her hair, if possible, and wash her mouth out with mouthwash. When she got a load of herself in the mirror, she started to laugh. She looked like a redheaded Medusa. She had tried to tame her hair before bed, but it hadn’t worked. Now, it was even worse after a night of sleep.
“Whatever.” Casey made a face.
She took off the white undershirt Brock had let her borrow. After getting dressed, she made the bed, and then left the folded undershirt on the comforter, along with the pajama bottoms she hadn’t used. Brock’s pajama bottoms had just slipped right down her hips.
Finally, she retrieved her beloved Jimmy Choo boots from beneath a nearby chair and stared at them sadly. They were ruined. Her beautiful, expensive, Jimmy Choo boots that she had vision-boarded for months, that she had saved a little every month to buy, were caked with red clay and still wet from the day before.
“You poor, poor boots. You didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve this.” Today, she wasn’t even going to try to be careful with them. There was no use shutting the gate after the cow got out. Resigned to their untimely demise, Casey shoved her feet into the boots and headed downstairs.
“Good morning.” Casey was met with a cornucopia of breakfast food smells when she entered the kitchen.
“Mornin’,” her host greeted her. “Coffee’s hot, mugs in the drying rack are a safe bet.”
“Bless you.” Casey poured herself a cup of coffee.
“If you need milk or sugar, they’re somewhere in the fridge. Just fish around.”
“I take it black.” She took her coffee to the table.
Brock was manning the stove in a “Kiss the Chef” apron, while Hannah, who had already had her breakfast, was on the floor formally introducing Lady and Hercules in the light of day. They had met informally in the cellar, but this was the first time that they were nose to nose, so to speak. Lady was lying down on the floor, her head between her two outstretched front legs, obviously trying to do her best to make friends, while Hercules was yapping as loudly and as ferociously as he could manage in order to assert his dominance in the relationship.
“Hercules—that’s not nice.”
“How do you take your eggs?” Brock asked her.
“Are they eggs from free-range chickens?”
“The chickens live out back. Is that free enough for you?”
“Lucy and Ethel!” Hannah supplied the names of the chickens.
“I Love Lucy and ladybugs. That’s what she loves.” Brock looked over at his daughter.
“And animals,” Casey added.
Brock turned his body away from the stove and toward Casey. This wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to get a better look at her in his favorite shirt. It engulfed her, but it looked good on her. Her hair, seemingly more red than auburn in the daylight, was mussed and wild, and he could swear that she had the brightest green eyes he’d ever seen on a woman.
“And animals,” he echoed her sentiment. Then, so he wouldn’t be standing in his kitchen ogling her like a teenage boy, he asked again, “How do you take your eggs?”
“Scrambled works.”
“How about some bacon made from free-range pigs?” Brock
teased her.
“No. Thank you. I’m a pescatarian.”
Brock wasn’t exactly sure he’d heard her right, so after he got the eggs cooking, he turned back around.
“Did you say you were a Presbyterian?”
“No!” Casey laughed so easily. It had been a long time since he’d heard a woman laughing in his house. “Pescatarian. I don’t eat meat, except for fish. But I’m trying to give up fish, too.”
“What for?”
She smiled at him; she had deep dimples in each of her pale cheeks. Sweet.
“Health mainly—bacon is full of fat and salt. High in cholesterol.” Casey wrinkled her nose at the thought of eating bacon.
“Dad has high cholesterol and high blood pressure,” Hannah shouted from the living room.
“Hannah—remember what we said about private information?”
“But Dr. Patel says that he has the heart of a much younger man.”
It was too late to cork that bottle—instead, Brock decided to ignore the fact that his daughter had just provided a near stranger with all of the recent results of his physical and finish scrambling the eggs. The only thing that she hadn’t shared, because she hadn’t been in the room to hear it, was the fact that he had a mildly enlarged prostate and needed to drop twenty pounds.
Brock put a healthy portion of scrambled eggs on the plate, along with cheese grits and a couple of biscuits.
“Eat it while it’s hot.” He put the plate down in front of her and then sat down on the opposite side of the kitchen table.
“Mmm. Thank you. I’m so hungry.” Casey stabbed a couple of eggs with her fork. “What about you?”
“I ate hours ago. We’ve been waiting on you.”
Casey chewed her eggs quickly so she could ask, “Why didn’t you wake me up when you got up?”
“I got up while it was still dark.”
“Oh.” That was different. “Well, why didn’t you get me up sooner, then?”
“No harm done. It’s my day off and I’m not looking forward to getting up on the roof to see how many shingles need to be replaced. You need salt or pepper for the eggs?”