Chapter Two
Ellie
“Ellie, where are you headed next?” my friend Jessie asked me.
“Nebraska.”
Groaning, she questioned, “Seriously? Why Nebraska?”
“I found this little town. It has less than two thousand people, and it has a bookstore. So, I want to see if they will let me do a book signing,” I happily informed.
“Less than two thousand people will not make a big impact on you or the bookstore,” Jessie countered.
I loved her.
I did. But she always questioned my motives.
Jessie and I met in college. We were roommates for three years and we got along great, except for when I had an idea that she didn’t understand. Which, thinking back, was all the time.
Jessie was a literal thinker. She had no imagination. Everything was black and white for her.
“This little town is two hours northeast of Denver and an hour east of Cheyenne. Those are good size cities that people will travel to for a book signing,” I explained.
“Oh wow, you’re right. That makes sense. So, what’s it called?”
“Diamond Creek. I am hoping it will be my diamond in the rough,” I said wistfully.
I had been looking for a place to settle down. I wanted a small town to live in. Somewhere everyone knew each other. Somewhere you couldn’t just hide. Somewhere people cared if you disappeared.
Not like New York City.
Not people like my parents.
I was eleven when my brother Sebbie packed his belongings and left without a word. My parents never even bothered to look for him. When I turned eighteen, I looked. While I was in college, I met people who were good with computers, who tried to help.
However, not even they could locate him. It was as if my brother ceased to exist.
I don’t know why, but I secretly kept hoping I would find him hiding out in one of these small towns.
“Ok, so when are you leaving?”
“Next week. I have a few things to take care of before I can go.”
“What about your parents?” Jessie asked with a wince.
Sighing heavily, I didn’t want to think about my parents. They didn’t know where I was. And I preferred it that way. Everything I had, everything I was, I had in my pen name. My bank accounts, my debit card, even my car.
All so they couldn’t track me.
I never wanted to go to college, but my parents forced me to go, and they even chose my major—finance—but I also majored in literature. And I met some very helpful people who taught me to hide, so I guess going to college served its purpose.
Maybe Sebbie met some people like that too.
I still hoped I would find him one day. It had been thirteen years since he left. Just thinking about him hurt sometimes. He was my brother, and I missed him dearly. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead.
No, that wasn’t true.
I knew he was still alive. I would feel it if he were dead.
After I graduated from college, I said goodbye to my parents and left. Once a month, I called them to let them know I was ok because my conscience wouldn’t allow me not to, even if I had every right to ignore them after the way they treated me after Sebbie left.
It would only be fair, but I was nicer than they were.
That was my cross to bear.
Being nice.
“I’ll call them in a couple of days, right before I head out. Will you be coming to Nebraska?” I asked her.
I always called my parents right before I left a town for good. They didn’t know about my pen name or my writing.
After graduation, I received my trust fund.
That was the stipulation, and why I agreed to major in finance. My parents neglected to add a stipulation saying I had to actually work in finance. So, after college, I didn’t hesitate to move that money out of my parents’ bank and into one of my choosing—an offshore account they couldn’t track. It helped to know people who could hide things. Shortly after that, I bought a pickup truck and a small travel trailer and learned to drive both. I traveled the country writing my books and putting small-town bookstores on the map.
On my own, I could be myself. I didn’t have to adhere to my parents’ rule. I could just be me and that consisted mainly of jeans and T-shirts. I only wore power suits and pearls when I had to, and I couldn’t be happier.
It might seem everything I did was overkill, all these precautions to avoid my parents, but I had my reasons. Mainly, I was avoiding the plan they had for my life that did not fit with what I wanted.
That was what they tried to do to Sebbie, too.
They expected him to marry Bianca Stevenson— the bitch .
My oldest brother, Preston, was the golden boy. He got to choose what he wanted. But not Sebbie and me. Our parents expected us to fall in line.
They had a husband all picked out for me. One of my brother Preston’s friends. Which wouldn’t have been an issue, except Preston was ten years older than me.
Ok, I know, I have written an age gap romance book or two and I don’t have a complete aversion to dating someone older.
In my book, older meant more experience.
More experience, hopefully, meant better sex with more orgasms.
But Jeremy St. Matthews was no book boyfriend.
He was arrogant, entitled, and, frankly, butt-fucking-ugly.
He was only five foot nine, and overweight.
By a lot.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not body shaming the guy, but hear me out. He had a receding hairline, and his gut hung over his belt. That was not what a thirty-four-year-old man should look like.
During my travels, I met a couple in New England, and the guy was forty-eight, and he was a bigger guy, and bald, but it worked. He had a beard, and he rode a motorcycle.
Any guy that rode a motorcycle was hot in my opinion.
I had never been on one, but someday, once I had that experience, I planned to move on from my billionaire romance books to MC romance. They say write what you know. My whole life I had been surrounded by the rich and famous. I knew how they acted, and I knew how women wanted them to act. So I combined the two.
“I will,” Jessie said, pulling me out of my head.
“Will what?” I asked, confused.
“Meet you in Nebraska,” Jessie replied with a chuckle. “You get caught up in your mind again?”
“Yea, the life of a writer. Someone is always talking.” I smiled.
I was leaving tonight, so it was time to call my parents.
With a sigh, I reached into my truck’s glove compartment, pulled out the new phone I’d bought, its weight heavy in my hand. I punched the number into my phone, hearing the familiar ring echo through the line as I waited for someone to answer.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Ellery, where are you?” she immediately demanded.
“I am not telling you that, Mom. I am just calling to let you know I am ok.”
“Ellery Simone Livingston, you need to stop this nonsense and come home. You have a duty to this family.”
“A duty, Mom? Like the duty you had to take care of your children? Have you heard from Sebbie, Mom? It’s been thirteen years.”
“Ellery,” she sighed. “I have told you, I don’t know why Sebastian left. He said nothing to us or left any note.”
“Do you think maybe it had something to do with the woman you were pushing on him who I caught having sex with his brother?”
“Ellery, that is not appropriate,” my mother exclaimed.
“You’re right, Mother. Having sex with your boyfriend’s brother is not appropriate, but what’s even worse is marrying that brother when the first one dumps you.”
“Did you call just to tell me what a horrible mother I am?”
“No, Mom. I called to let you know I am still alive. I am happy. I hoped you would appreciate that, but if you’d rather I not call anymore, I won’t.”
“Ellery, please come home. Jeremy will not wait much longer.”
“Have you not heard anything I have said? I am not marrying Jeremy. When I get married, it will be to someone I choose. Someone I love, who loves me back.”
“Oh please, Ellery. People in our station do not marry for love. We marry for money and power. That is how we get higher up the ladder.”
“That’s just it, Mother. I don’t want to move up the ladder. I don’t want more money or power. What if I told you I was happy living in a trailer, traveling the country?”
“Don’t even joke about that!” my mother screeched, before she muffled the call to speak to someone else. She really believed if she covered the mouthpiece, the other person couldn’t hear her.
“You found her?” she whispered. “Where is she? Utah?”
I chuckled. My mother wouldn’t know what to do with Utah.
“Ellery—”
“Mom, I have to go. By the time you get here, I will be gone. I don’t know why we have to go through this every month when I call.”
“Ellery, wait—”
“Bye, Mom. Talk to you next month. Maybe.”
I quickly ended the call.
I had secured everything in my trailer and hitched it to my truck.
I was ready to hit the road.
The September air in Nebraska was crisp and cool, with a hint of autumn in the air. Not too warm, but not too cold yet, either. I could have driven from St George, Utah, to Diamond Creek, Nebraska, in about twelve hours.
Instead, I took my time and enjoyed the beautiful sights.
One perk of living in a trailer was that it afforded the opportunity to see the country. So, I gave myself a week. I backtracked through Nevada, up to Idaho, through Montana, Wyoming, then into Nebraska, stopping to see the sights and only driving a few hours a day.
That made it harder to be tracked as well.
After finding a campground, I parked my trailer and hit the local store to get stocked up, since I would only be here until the book signing, but no one would know that except for Jessie.
My anonymity was very important to me, so I never let people take pictures of me at book signings. That and I couldn’t take the chance of them getting back to my parents.
So far, it had worked out well, but it was only a matter of time before my parents figured out what I was doing and where I was. Hopefully, by the time they did, I would have a husband I chose myself.
I had been lucky for the last two years, always one or two steps ahead of them, but I wanted to settle in one place. I didn’t want to travel forever. I had seen almost every state, and now I was earnestly looking for the small town of my dreams.
After putting away my groceries, I went back to town and looked around. I stopped at the diner for lunch. Sitting in a corner booth, I could see the entire room. I was a people watcher and enjoyed observing people come and go, as I looked for new inspiration for characters and what I could write about. And boy, did this town provide some characters.
There were a couple of older gentlemen playing cards while they ate their lunch.
A young girl came in with two little girls, the older one babbling excitedly about having cake. I assumed she was a nanny. She didn’t look old enough to have what looked like a five or six-year-old.
Then there were the bikers. Hot bikers. Hot, smexy bikers. They came in laughing, teased the waitress, and caused a ruckus.
Not in a scary way. Not like bikers in New York. The bikers in New York were terrifying. No one wanted to get on their bad side.
I didn’t have to wait long for the owner of the diner to introduce herself. Her name was Joellen. She seemed like a woman who didn’t take crap from anyone. Joellen looked to be in her mid-fifties, and I wouldn’t say she looked rough, but she certainly wasn’t soft. More than once, I saw her put those bikers in their place.
And then it hit me.
This could be a great place for inspiration.
After leaving the diner, I checked out The Boutique and The Ice Cream Shoppe. Even The Bookstore.
Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, sneakers and a ball cap, I wanted to blend in like anyone else that might live here as I scoped things out and got a sense of what the town was like. Mainly, I wanted to see what the bookstore owner was like before I offered to do a book signing. I didn’t work with business owners that were unkind.
Walking into The Bookstore, I smirked as I heard a little bell jingle over the door. The man behind the counter looked up and smiled.
Wow!
Damn, were all the guys in this town hot? Even the sheriff, who came into the diner earlier, was a silver fox.
“Afternoon. Looking for anything specific or just browsing?” he asked.
“Uh… just browsing,” I replied.
“Let me know if you need any help.”
“Thank you.”
Just then, the young girl from the diner and the two little girls rushed in. I stepped between two rows so I could watch without being noticed.
“Daddy!” the older of the two girls cried as they both ran over to him.
Scooping them up, he hugged them tight.
“Thanks, Avery. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“No problem, Ryder. Bye, girls!”
“Bye, Avery!” the older girl called. The younger girl just waved.
Damn. He wasn’t available. I should have known. His wife must also work if they had a nanny.
Oh well, there were others in town. Though, I couldn’t help but wonder what his wife did, and if I had met her in one of the other stores I had already walked into.
Seeing the way he was with his girls helped me decide. This was definitely a bookstore I wanted to work with.
I pulled a few books from the shelves to purchase, when the little girl who waved but didn’t speak pulled on my shirt.
I looked down and smiled.
“Hi,” I said.
I crouched down to her level, and she threw herself against me, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“Hi,” the older girl said.
“Hello.”
“Tabby likes you.”
“I see that,” I agreed.
“My name is Chrissy.”
“Girls! Where are you?”
Chrissy put her finger to her lips, telling me to be quiet. She grabbed her sister’s hands and pulled her away. Tabby waved to me, and I waved back.
I wasn’t sure what just happened, but it felt big, and I immediately wondered if this little town might be my diamond in the rough after all.