by Amy Vastine
“Hopefully it won’t be torture.”
“It’s only two weeks and we’ll be working most of the time. It won’t be much different from any other day at the office. The only difference is you’ll have to be nice to me the whole time.”
Tyler’s brows pinched together. “Am I not usually nice to you?”
She hadn’t meant to offend. It wasn’t like Tyler was a tyrant, he simply wasn’t warm. He was all business, all the time. Which was fine with Hadley but one of the reasons everyone in the office liked Kellen better than Tyler. It was also a huge reason the staff asked Kellen to force him to take a break.
“You’re very focused. On whatever it is that you’re working on. Which is great,” she added. “It’s the reason 2K is doing so well as a company. But if we are supposed to convince your brothers that we’re in love, you’re going to have to make an effort to pay me a little attention.”
Tyler gave an understanding nod. “I’ll work on being extra nice.”
“The upgrade was a good start.”
“Well, maybe I’ll be a fast learner.”
He wasn’t the only one who would have to learn a thing or two. All she knew about Tyler was that he was the hardest-working person she’d ever met. She didn’t know what he liked to do in his free time, the little that he left himself, or what his favorite anything was. She knew practically nothing about the person sitting next to her.
It wasn’t like her to be going into something so woefully unprepared. She’d been following Tyler’s lead thus far, but his way seemed like a recipe for disaster.
“Speaking of learning, perhaps we should do a little getting to know each other before we face your family. I mean, I know how persistent your brothers can be. What if they have a lot of questions? What’s the plan here?”
“We’ll be on our own most of the time. I wouldn’t worry.”
Not worry? He didn’t know her very well if he thought she was capable of not worrying. Meeting the family was nerve-racking when she was the real girlfriend. Being the fake one made it a thousand times worse.
* * *
TYLER KNEW TWO of his brothers had way too much going on in their own lives to worry about his. Ben and Jon weren’t going to pry too much. Ethan, on the other hand, could be a problem. He was running the ranch presently, which made him troublesome. But there was one person who might be more of a hard sell than his brothers.
“I think the only person I’m really worried about is Katie, our ranch hand. Growing up, she was like the annoying little sister we didn’t ask for. Always in our business. Ratting us out for everything we did. She’s the one we might need to be wary of.”
Hadley paled. “Wait a minute, I didn’t realize we had to outsmart a woman. Not that I haven’t been nervous about pulling the wool over your brothers’ eyes,” she quickly clarified. “But women are more attuned to the intricacies of relationships. They pay attention to things like body language and the details that are shared with them.”
She had to be kidding. Katie was female, yes. But honestly, she was more like one of the guys than a woman “attuned to the intricacies of relationships.” Annoying? Yes. In touch with her feminine intuition? No.
Tyler chuckled. “Then maybe we should be more worried about Grace, my brother Ethan’s pregnant fiancée.”
“Pregnant!” Hadley was loud enough to attract the attention of more than a few people sitting near them. “Pregnant?” she repeated in a whisper.
Tyler was confused by her outburst. “What’s the matter with being pregnant?”
“Pregnant women are freaks of nature!” Hadley threw her hands up. “They have superpowers you can’t imagine. Do you even realize the amount of blood flowing through their bodies, feeding their brain? Not to mention the fact that all of their senses are in overdrive during pregnancy. She might be able to smell our lack of pheromones.”
Pheromones? Tyler was quickly reconsidering his lack of a plan. Not because he feared being unable to convince everyone because of Grace’s apparent bloodhound sense of smell but because Hadley was hysterical. He had chosen her because she was the smartest, most put together person in the office. He hadn’t expected her to lose it over pheromones.
He placed a hand over hers. “Look at me,” he said as calmly as he could. Her blue eyes locked onto his. The vulnerability he saw there was definitely new and created this strange sensation in the center of his chest. It was such a foreign feeling, he forgot what he was going to say.
“Are you going to tell me we’re going to be fine?” she asked.
That was it.
“We’re going to be fine. Grace and Katie will be preoccupied with a hundred other things while we’re there. We’ll just have to save our best stuff for the few times we’re around them, okay?” he said with a wink.
The tension seemed to leave her body as her shoulders relaxed and she gave him a small smile. “You’re right. We’ll be fine.” She thankfully sounded sure. “Good thing you got me that upgrade. We’ll have plenty of time to cram.”
“Cram?”
The gate agent announced they were ready to board first-class passengers. Hadley stood up. “Get ready to learn everything there is to know about me. I know I can’t wait to become a Tyler Blackwell expert.”
Tyler swallowed hard. No one was a Tyler Blackwell expert. He never let anyone get that close and he wasn’t sure he could start now.
* * *
THEY’D BEEN IN the air for over an hour and Hadley was already a lifelong fan of first class.
“Favorite color?” she asked, starting with an easy question to get Tyler to open up.
“Don’t have one.”
“Come on, everyone has a favorite color.”
“Not everyone because I don’t. I have no preference.”
Of course he was going to be difficult. “Favorite food?” she tried.
Tyler glanced out his window. They were flying high above a white blanket of clouds. “Nothing really stands out as a favorite.”
“Favorite movie?”
He stared blankly back at her.
“Book? Television show? Band? Coffee shop? Come on, Tyler.”
“What? I’m not a favorites kind of guy.”
Hadley took a deep breath to keep her anxiety at bay. She’d told Tyler everything she could think about herself. Perhaps embarrassingly too much about her obsession with Harry Potter during middle school. The important thing was he’d be prepared with plenty of Hadley knowledge.
He seemed determined to leave her completely in the dark about himself, however. She couldn’t go into this knowing next to nothing.
“Tell me about your brothers. What are they like?” she asked, hoping he’d be more willing to discuss the other Blackwells.
“Jonathan is my oldest brother, the only one who isn’t a twin, but he does ironically have twin girls.”
“What’s Jon’s wife’s name?”
“No wife. Jon is divorced. Although, he recently got engaged to his nanny, Lydia.” Tyler raised his eyebrows like it was a bit scandalous.
“He left his wife for the nanny?”
“No, no. His ex has been out of the picture since the twins were born.” The invitation to talk about someone else was all it took to open up the floodgates. “Jon’s the quintessential good guy in the white hat. He’s a hardworking cowboy. He was my dad’s favorite, probably because they were so alike. You’ll never see the guy in anything other than jeans, a plaid shirt and cowboy boots. Total opposite of Ben. Ben is all city boy. I’m sort of shocked he gave up his life in New York to settle back down in Falcon Creek, especially since he got dumped at the altar a few years back. No one likes getting dumped, but it was worse than that. She left him for our grandfather.”
“Whoa, wait. What?” Hadley knew about family dysfunction, but that was really messed up.
“Trust me, I think Ben got the better end of the deal. Zoe was nothing but a superficial gold digger. Ben deserved better and I’ve always thought that maybe Big E proposed to her because he knew Ben would have been miserable if they had ended up together. Ben has always been our grandfather’s favorite. The two of them have the same cutthroat mentality.”
“What’s keeping him in Montana, then?”
“Since he’s been home, he somehow managed to fall in love and get married to Rachel, an old friend whose family lives on the ranch next to ours. You’ll meet her, too.”
Fantastic, another woman in the mix. Hadley needed more information if she was going to trick three men and four women.
“In fact, the latest is that Big E filed for divorce and Zoe is back in Falcon Creek heartbroken,” Tyler said with a smile.
“Will I have to meet Zoe, too?”
“Lord, I hope not,” Tyler said as the flight attendant offered them a refill on their drinks and a warm cookie. Hadley might never be able to fly economy ever again.
“Jon and Ben will be busy with their own ranches. Ethan will be with us. Ethan is Ben’s twin,” Tyler continued after devouring his cookie. “Ben will tell you he’s five minutes older so that makes Ethan the middle child, which fits his personality. He gets along with everyone and always tries to be the peacekeeper. He was the softy in our brood and our mother’s clear favorite. The two of them had the same love of animals. She’s probably the reason he became a vet.”
For someone who didn’t have any favorites, he was awfully aware of how his family played them. “So let me guess, you and your twin brother were the black sheep of the family. No one’s favorites?”
Tyler chuckled. “Chance would tell you he’s the lone Blackwell black sheep because living in Big Sky Country wasn’t for him, but when we were little and our real grandma was still on the ranch, he was by far her favorite. She used to sing and play songs on the piano with him. I’m the only one in the family who didn’t have anyone’s undivided attention.” His gaze drifted back out the window. “I was the invisible one.”
Hadley knew exactly how it felt to be the invisible child. How frustrating it was to never quite be enough. She had felt that way her entire life. Being the younger, less successful sister of Asher Sullivan wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“Maybe we have more in common than I thought,” Hadley said, turning her body in his direction.
“You don’t want to be like me. No one loves me the most for a reason.”
“Oh, come on. You aren’t that bad.”
His jaw tightened and he took a deep breath through his nose. “Trust me, Hadley. I’m the worst.”
CHAPTER FOUR
TYLER STRUGGLED TO ignore Hadley’s incessant fidgeting in the passenger seat of his rental car. He had warned her that she should be prepared to be in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re almost there. Can you try being still for a minute?” he asked. When she wasn’t peppering him with her millions of questions, she was distracting him with her anxious silence. After two hours on the plane and two hours in the car, maybe they had both hit their limit of togetherness.
“Any chance we can stop to use a bathroom?” she asked. That explained her wriggling.
They were only a few miles away from Falcon Creek. Tyler was more than happy to delay their arrival at the ranch. Actually, he wished he could turn around and get back on a plane headed anywhere but here. Being this close to the place he used to call home made his stomach ache with something other than hunger.
“Maybe we should grab some lunch in town. We’ll be eating at the ranch the rest of the trip.”
Hadley seemingly had no issue with that idea given that her stomach growled loudly. Tyler spotted the sign for Falcon Creek and exited the highway. This place was still a one-stoplight town. It hadn’t changed since Tyler was a baby.
The dive bar where Chance played his first real gig was still standing. Pops Brewster sat out front Brewster Ranch Supply playing chess just like he had for as long as Tyler could remember. Maple Bear Bakery was where Big E used to buy Ty and his brothers doughnuts when he was feeling generous, which wasn’t often, but that made the treat so much more delicious.
Clearwater Café was probably the best place to stop for a hot meal. Tyler sat in an open booth while Hadley ran to the bathroom. He glanced over the menu and ordered a couple of sodas for the two of them.
“That was the cleanest public bathroom I have ever used,” Hadley reported as she slid into the seat across from him. “I think I love this place.”
“They also serve your favorite—macaroni and cheese.” Tyler could tell anyone who asked Hadley’s favorite everything. She had been more than thorough in preparing him today.
She smiled and he noticed the way it lit up her entire face. “You remembered.”
“Tyler Blackwell? Is that you? Oh, my goodness, it is.”
Tyler had hoped they would go unrecognized, but that was impossible in this small town. He turned his head to find a pink monster headed his way.
“Grandma, is that you? You look so much older than the last time I saw you.”
Of all the people he didn’t want to run into, Zoe was at the top of the list. She scowled at him as she flipped her long, blond ponytail behind her shoulder.
“You’re really going to kick me when I’m down, Ty? That horrible excuse for a human being you call your good-for-nothing grandfather already did quite enough to make me feel like a worthless piece of trash.”
An unexpected guilt washed over him. Tyler didn’t realize he could feel sorry for Zoe given all she had put his family through, but he did.
“Big E has a way of making everyone feel small. Don’t take it personally.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” she replied, her face softening a bit. “What are you doing back here? I thought you were never coming back. And who is this?” Zoe turned all of her attention on Hadley.
“Hadley, meet my ex-stepgrandma, Zoe. Zoe, this is Hadley.”
“His fiancée,” Hadley clarified.
Tyler internally chastised himself for not being prepared to begin this charade. Remembering to refer to her as his fiancée was important and he’d failed right out of the gate.
“Fiancée?” Zoe’s eyes nearly bulged from her head. “I can’t believe Rachel didn’t tell me.”
“We were pretty surprised to hear Ben and Rachel got married so quickly.” Hadley reached across the table and grabbed Tyler’s hand. “We thought we’d be first down the aisle. Right, honey?”
She was good at this fake relationship stuff. Maybe her brother wasn’t the only actor in the family.
“The Blackwell boys all caught the wedding bug at the same time, huh?”
“Guess so.” Tyler prayed she wouldn’t ask too many more questions or want to see the ring. Zoe was one of those people who might be able to sniff out a fake diamond when she saw one. “Well, it was good to see you again. We’ll see you around,” he said, hoping she’d take the hint.
“Oh, please don’t tell me Day Four is back,” a voice full of disdain said behind Zoe. That voice could belong to only one person.
“Is this where all of Big E’s exes come for lunch?” Tyler pondered aloud as Myrna Edwards, with her hair as white as the snowcapped Smoky Mountains, approached the table.
“I’m positive three Blackwells is all this town can handle. You should head back to whatever hole you crawled out of, Tyler Alexander Blackwell.” She may have been short in stature but her memory was long. Myrna was Big E’s second wife, who, thanks to the boys, didn’t last very long as Mrs. Elias Blackwell.
“I’m here to help my brothers sell the ranch so you never have to worry about the Blackwells ever again.”
One side of her mouth quirked a smile. “Oh, don’t tease me, Day Four. No more Blackwells? That’s too much to
hope for.”
“Just give me a couple weeks. We’ll have a big ol’ sold sign hanging out front.” He glanced across the table at Hadley. Darn, he’d forgotten again. “We, as in me and my fiancée,” he quickly added. “Hadley, this is another one of my ex-stepgrandmothers. Myrna, this is Hadley, my fiancée.”
“You may call me Myrna,” she said to Hadley. “You, Day Four, may only refer to me as Judge Edwards. Don’t ever call me your ex-stepgrandmother again. Please stay on your ranch until you sell it. I am tired of seeing Blackwells in my courtroom and my restaurants of choice. Have a nice day.”
She walked across the restaurant and sat down at a table by herself. She probably never remarried after Big E. Leave it to Elias to make a woman give up on men completely.
“She hates you guys. Not that she likes anyone that much, but she hates you,” Zoe said with such awe.
Myrna had good reasons to dislike all five Blackwell brothers. Although in their defense, they were only kids when they ran her off the ranch a short five days after her marriage to Big E. She had tried to take over as the mother figure too soon after their grandmother left and their parents died. The boys were knee-deep in their grief and unable to welcome anyone into their lives.
“It was great to see you again, Zoe. Have a good one.” It was the last hint he was giving her. If she didn’t leave them alone, he was going to get rude.
Zoe wasn’t oblivious, but she was obnoxious. She grinned and, instead of moving along, sat down next to Hadley. “I’m late for an appointment, but I am so curious about how you and Ty got together. He was always such a little brat when we were younger. Maybe once you settle in, Rachel and I can take you out for some girl time.”
“That would be—” Hadley began.
“Unnecessary,” Tyler finished for her. “We’re only here for two weeks and supposedly have a ton of work to do to get the ranch ready for sale. I hear someone’s vision for the place was a bit out of touch with what’s marketable.”