Chapter Five
Kind of tired.
Right, she thought a few hours later, staring up at the dark ceiling from her lonely, empty queen-sized bed. But sleep was apparently impossible.
Whose dumb idea was it to get connecting rooms with this hot limo driver, ex-football player anyway when only last night we were wrapped around each other like butter on rice?
Oh, right. Yours.
Dumb move, Isabella. Dumb.
She gave up on sleep, threw off her covers, and got up.
Isabella drifted toward his door again and pressed her ear there. Still nothing. Somehow, she hoped he’d be as unable to sleep as she was, and she could—
His door swung open, and she fell back with a guilty gasp. “Oh! Will.”
He frowned with confusion at the sight of her standing in the dark near his door. He was holding his phone in his hand. “Izzy? What are you—”
“What are you—” she said at the same time.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking all warm and rumpled and not okay.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Staring down at his phone, he said, “My brother Liam. Texted me. Something about my mom. I have to go home.”
“Go? Home?” she stammered, still not grasping what he was saying.
“To the ranch. I have to go now.”
Isabella blinked. Go? Alone? As in, leave her behind? “Is she—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything except—”
“What did he say exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?”
With a hollow look, he stared down at his phone. “He said, ‘It’s mom. Get home now.’ I have no idea what’s going on because now he won’t answer my calls. None of them will. He’s been trying to call me for a couple of days. I didn’t answer him. Maybe they can’t answer right now, I don’t know. Maybe she’s in the hospital. But I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Of course, you do.” Of course, he did.
It was his mom. But the feeling he was ditching her crept up through her toes. It was an old wound, one that kept opening and opening.
As he moved into her room, walking toward the window to search the parking lot as if he might find answers there, Isabella backed into the bed with her knees and sat down hard.
Don’t be ridiculous, Isabella. You’re a big girl and it’s his mother. He’s hardly abandoning—
“I know I promised to take you, but I can put you on a bus or a train up to Seattle,” he suggested. “You could probably get there by tomorrow.”
“Uh…”
“Or,” he said, turning back to her, “you could come with me. Montana is on the way to Seattle, sort of. Once you get your cards and ID back you could fly to Seattle from Bozeman.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. All the emotions that had been rushing through her for the past hour filled her eyes.
“Yeah, that’s a dumb idea,” he told her. “You need to get to Seattle and start getting your life—”
“But I could,” she interrupted him. “I could go with you. I’m not on a deadline and… I’ve never been to Montana, and you could get rid of me whenever you want once we get up there. Anyway, it’s the middle of the night and maybe you shouldn’t be driving all by yourself in your state of mind.”
“Really? You sure?”
“Sure you shouldn’t be alone or sure I want to come along?” she asked. “Both, actually.”
“Can you be ready in ten minutes?”
She smiled. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but I packed really light.”
He flashed a grin back at her, one that warmed the chill that had settled in her.
“Looks like I’m the drama now,” he said, and turned back toward his room.
“Hey, Will?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. Really. For everything.”
“You may want to hold off on that thank-you,” he warned. “For a few days.”
She shook her head. “Whatever may occur…”
*
They drove throughthe night, up through Colorado and Wyoming along Interstate25 alongside big rigs making their nightly long-hauls. It was too dark to see much but the cone of headlights in front of them, so they played the Sirius radio full blast to keep themselves awake.
Bringing Izzy along for the trip to his home had probably not been his best idea because she’d be thrust into something he wasn’t sure he was ready to face himself. But all the same, he was glad she was here. Just having her beside him on this ride was the distraction he needed from imagining what his mother’s situation was right now. He tried not to think about the opportunities he’d missed to tell her he loved her and wondered if he’d get the chance. How many ways could a man screw up his family? He’d managed at every turn. But he sent up a prayer or ten that his mom would be okay. That, whatever was going on, he wasn’t too late.
They rolled into his hometown of Marietta as the sun was still behind the mountains and just a halo of morning silhouetted the Absaroka Mountains. Marietta lay tucked into a valley in south-central Montana between that range and Copper Mountain, a flat, sprawling landscape bisected by both the Yellowstone and Marietta Rivers. It was every bit as beautiful as he remembered and seemingly unchanged from the last time he was here, two years ago. Although then, it had been covered in snow and was cold enough to steal his breath.
His father had died at Christmastime of a stroke, when the snow was knee deep and coated the world in white. He would forever relate Christmas to the procession of black town cars against the snowy backdrop of the landscape he’d grown up part of. He remembered his mother’s contained grief. His own guilty relief.
Not relief, exactly. But, perhaps, liberation from his old man’s judgment and fatherly control, whether real or imagined.
After an all-night drive, he was having trouble keeping old thoughts at bay.
“Oh! It’s adorable,” Izzy exclaimed about the town, sitting up straighter in the seat beside him as they rolled onto Main Street of Marietta, past the western storefronts and shops, still mostly closed for the night.
“It has its charm, I guess,” he admitted, pulling into a diagonal parking spot in front of the only place that was open this early, a little shop called The Java Café. “I need some coffee and I’m going to try Liam one more time before we get there. If they’re at the hospital, that’s right here in town.”
“Maybe call Shay? Or, how about I call the hospital for you while you get coffee? I’ll just check to see if she’s admitted there. Sarah Hardesty, right?”
He nodded, feeling relief that she’d do that for him. “Thanks, Izzy. I’ll be right back.”
He headed into the Java Café where Sally Driscoll was working behind the counter. She looked up and smiled with surprise. “Well, if it isn’t our very own football hero! Will Hardesty. What a surprise to see you.”
“Hey, Sally. Good to see you, too.” The delicious smell of coffee and fresh baked goods filled the small café. She must have gotten here in the middle of the night to have the baker’s cabinet already full and ready for the morning rush. “How’ve you been?”
“Well, it’s going to be a beautiful June day, warming up at last. The sun’s almost up. I’m great. Your mom talks about you all the time. I see her when she stops by for coffee or a croissant.”
“Lately? Have you seen her lately?”
She shrugged. “Actually no. Not just recently. Why?”
“No reason. I’m heading out there now. I just need a couple of coffees.”
“Coming right up,” she said, surreptitiously glancing out the big plate glass window at the limo parked outside where Izzy was waiting. “That your car out there?”
“Yup.”
She whistled. “Niiice. I knew the NFL treated its players well, but—”
“I’m not… I don’t play anymore.” But she knew that, right?
Handing him the two coffees, she smiled at him. “You’re always going to be a star around here, Will.”
“Thanks for the coffee, Sally. Have a good one.”
“You, too. Come back soon!” She finger-waved him out the door and Will felt his neck grow hot. At least she hadn’t asked about Izzy because he wasn’t sure what he would have said.
Back in the car, Izzy shook her head with a hopeful look. “No Sarah Hardesty admitted to the Marietta Hospital. That’s good news, right?”
A qualified relief washed over him. Maybe. Maybe it was worse. His heart rate picked up speed as they drove toward the ranch. Izzy said nothing, apparently sensing the edge he was walking now that they were almost to his home. As they drove down the graveled road and came to the HARD EIGHT RANCH sign dangling over the entrance, he pulled the car to a stop and for a long moment, just stared at the house in the distance.
Everything looked normal. The same as it had always looked. All the buildings still standing, the animals pastured, several pickups in the driveway pulled up close to the house. He recognized Liam’s and Shay’s, but the other was new. Or rather, old, but new to him. Maybe it was Cami’s. They were all there, which had the spit in his mouth going dry.
Jerking the door open, he got out, needing to walk off this knot in his belly for a moment before going there. Sucking in a lungful of air, he paced outside the limo until he heard Izzy walk up beside him. He sent her a look that made her bite her lip.
Now, she stood beside him, leaning a hip against the side of his dust-covered limousine, beneath the weathered ranch sign that sported the ranch brand in the shape of a pair of rolling dice.
This entrance was a good half mile from the house with its surrounding white barns, metal pens, and horses. Farther away still, cattle grazed in a foggy, rangy pasture that seemed to go on forever. And behind it all, like the backdrop to a painting, jagged mountains rose in a purplish haze from the nearly flat plains below. Snow still tipped their crowns, even now in early June.
Will watched Izzy take in the otherworldly beautiful in the dewy morning light. The quiet of the place washed through him like a slow river, broken only by the sound of birds darting across the fields announcing the day.
Arms folded across his chest, Will scowled at the bucolic scene with something closer to dread than peace.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said, still taking it all in. “So many cows. How many cows do you think—”
“Cattle,” he corrected.
“Okay. I’m a city girl. How many?”
“Not sure anymore. Seven hundred now. Maybe eight.”
She whistled. “When you said your family had a little spread in Montana, I pictured something… smaller.”
“Small compared to some. And not nearly big enough.”
“Big enough for what?”
“Survival.” He stared at his boots, one crossed over the other in the red, Montana dirt. “Profit.”
“But isn’t it all yours?” she asked. “I mean, your family’s?”
“Not mine. Not anymore.”
*
Isabella nodded, thinkingfamilies were so complicated. They were quiet for a minute as morning crept over the distant fields.
“Will? You know,” she suggested gently, “avoidance is basically futile. Eventually, you’ll have to go and walk through that door. I mean, we’ve come this far. One thousand four hundred and forty-four miles to be precise. I googled it on your phone.”
“Avoidance, huh? Says the woman who’s just turned that into an art form.”
“Fair point, sir.” She folded her arms. “On the other hand, we did drive all night.”
He slid a tight look in her direction.
“Okay,” she admitted. “That would be the royal we. You drove all night. But that must count for something.”
“I’m not avoiding it. I’m just… bracing myself.”
“Girding your loins.”
He exhaled a breath. “Something like that.”
“Maybe it’s not as bad as you think with your mom.”
But Will Hardesty wasn’t the kind of man who bought trouble. He was the kind who faced it. She knew at least that much about him.
Isabella tucked herself against him and the morning chill. “You were there for me. I’ll be here for you. Consider me your… support team, if or when you need one. Fair’s fair. But probably you won’t. Need one. They’re your family. You can do this, Will.”
She squinted up at the sunrise spreading over the distant mountains like a painter’s palette. All reds and pinks and heart-stopping beauty. Nothing at all like Dallas, the city she’d left. Check that—the city she’d run away from.
“Get in the car,” he said suddenly, untangling himself from her and stalking back to the driver’s side.
She complied, of course, watching him closely, feeling anxious and itchy herself. It wasn’t every day that events literally altered the course of one’s life. But as odd as it was that they’d wound up here together, on this rural Montana road, two strangers with nothing in common except the need to be somewhere else, she suspected—no she was quite certain—that once he drove down that road and walked through that door, it would somehow change the course of his life. Maybe both of their lives.
But maybe she was being overly dramatic. After all, what could be more life-skewing, embarrassing, or dramatic than what had happened to her three days ago? At worst, stopping here at his family’s ranch in Marietta, Montana, would only mean a short pause in her headlong escape from what was undoubtedly the biggest mistake of her life. The cautionary tale that proved her point about love.
Will aimed a look at her as if he was somehow privy to her thoughts. “You’re going to be okay, Izzy,” he said.
Isabella’s lips parted. They hadn’t been talking about her.
Scanning his features, from his slightly crooked Roman nose that fit him so well to those blue, blue eyes that seemed to be able to read her in the dark, to the brawny beauty of him, she resisted the impulse to touch his arm, to comfort him right back. Instead, she tucked her hand in her lap and stared at the road ahead.
Oh, yes. She was completely done with love. And nobody, definitely not even Will Hardesty, could change that.
As Will pulled the car into the front yard, an older woman—in apparent glowing health—dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, appeared from around the side of the house with a shallow bucket in her arms, and a flock of chickens following along behind her. She tossed one last handful of feed onto the ground for them, her mouth half open in shock at seeing Will who was already halfway out of the car.
“Will?” she half-breathed, half screamed, before dropping the bucket and running toward him.
This, Isabella deduced, was Sarah Hardesty. Not dying. In fact, looking perfectly healthy. Not even looking the least bit—
“Mom?” Will collided with her in a fierce hug. “You’re okay?”
“Well, now that you’re here, of course I am. What in the world? I didn’t expect you.”
She pulled back to get a good look at him before pulling him against her again. “It’s so good to see you!”
“Liam called. Texted. He said… I thought you were—”
“You thought I was… what?”
“He implied—” He didn’t want to say the words.
It took her a beat to get it. “Ooohh, that rascal. Don’t tell me he lied to get you to come?” She turned and shouted, “Liam!”
“No,” Will told her. “I needed to come. To see you anyway. It’s been too long. But I’m so glad you’re not—”
“I’m definitely not,” she replied. “Liam!”
Isabella stood back by the car, hiding behind the door as Will’s brother, his image only slightly smaller, sauntered out the door and onto the covered porch.
He glanced from a scowling Will to the car where she stood watching the scene. “It’s about time you showed up, big brother. Did you drive all the way from Dallas overnight?”
Will took a step toward Liam, but Sarah, who was little more than half the height of both of them, turned a mama lioness-like look on her younger son. “Tell me you didn’t lie to Will about my health to get him here, looking like he drove all night to do it.”
Liam gave a careless shrug. “Nothin’ else worked. Sorry about that, Mom.”
“Incorrigible. As you can see, Will, I’m perfectly fine.” Sarah’s chickens mingled nearby, plucking both at the ground and the pan that Sarah had dropped, scattering the seed everywhere. Their purring, clucking noises were an apt soundtrack for the awkward silence that surrounded the trio.
Another woman appeared at the front door. She also bore a striking resemblance to Will, but in a perfectly feminine way. With auburn hair like Will’s but tied back into a messy bun, she was as pretty as Will was handsome and taller than her mother by a handspan. Standing in the doorway behind her, a teenaged boy who looked nothing like either of them.
“Shay,” Will said, as the woman hopped off the front porch to throw her arms around him. He reciprocated in kind.
“The prodigal brother returns,” she said, her words muffled against his chest. “God, it’s good to see you.”
He tightened his arms around her. “You, too. But what? You don’t answer your phone anymore?”
Sheepish now, she glanced at Liam, and it became suddenly clear she was in on the conspiracy. “Would you really have come home if we’d just asked? I mean really, Will. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
Sarah looked shocked. “Oh, Shay… for heaven’s sake.”
Shay motioned to the teenaged boy to leave the doorjamb and join them, but the boy held back. “Ryan. It’s your uncle Will.”
The boy waved shyly, then disappeared inside again.
“Sorry,” Shay said. “He’s thirteen, going on difficult. I’ll talk with him later.”
Will deflected with a shake of his head. “He doesn’t really know me. Not his fault.”
Only then did Sarah seem to spot Isabella standing near the car. With a questioning look at Will, she said, “Who’s that, darlin’?”
Isabella held her breath, waiting for Will to introduce her to his family as his limo fare, his passenger, or maybe his obligatory client on her way to somewhere else.
Instead, he smiled her way and said, “This is Izzy. Isabella Stanton. Izzy, this is my mom, Sarah. My sister Shay and my lying-through-his-teeth little brother, Liam.”
She felt heat travel up to her face, but she moved away from the car as he extended his hand toward her. “Hello. Nice to meet y’all. Mrs. Hardesty, I’m so glad you’re okay. Will was so very worried about you.”
With a wondering look, Sarah pulled Isabella in for a quick, two-handed handshake. “So happy to meet you, Izzy. Can I call you Izzy?”
To be known by an entirely different name than the people in the rest of her life knew her by felt strangely and wonderfully liberating. “Of course.”
Shay exchanged a questioning look with Will before shaking Izzy’s hand, too. “Sooo nice to meet you, Izzy. Will never brings anyone around for us to actually meet.”
She rightly guessed they all had the wrong idea about who she was, but it felt too awkward to correct them herself. So, she just remained silent about it. Will would tell them soon enough that she was simply his paying customer. Nothing more.
Just then, his younger sister, this one blonde and nearly as petite as Sarah, rushed out the door. “Holy cow, it worked. You’re here. I can’t even believe it. Liam, you’re a genius.”
Before Will could manage a complete scowl at his brother, Cami had wrapped herself around Will and he had lifted her in his arms. “Hey, goofball. Settle down,” he said. “I’m here under false pretenses, apparently, and you three have some explaining to do.”
“But first, are you going to introduce us?” she asked, turning her headlight smile on Izzy. “Hi, I’m Cami. The younger sister.”
“Hi. I’m… Izzy. Nice to meet you.”
“And you. Now, I’m really, really sorry, but school starts in a half-hour and if I don’t head them off at the pass, my third-grade class will be in utter chaos before the bell rings.” She sighed. “Damn. I always miss the good stuff. We”—she gestured with forked fingers between her eyes and Will’s—“will catch up this afternoon, right, long-lost, delinquent brother of mine?” She turned to shout at the open door. “Ryan! Let’s go! We’re going to be late for school!”
Backpack in hand, Ryan darted out the door and jumped in the truck right behind Cami.
As they watched her drive off, a trail of dust behind her, Izzy noticed a hawk circling overhead, observing the group gathered in the driveway. It sailed above them for a few moments before casting off on an air current toward the far pastures. She felt a weird affinity to that lone bird, the odd man out in this little gathering, simply observing, but not at all a part of.
At least that awful tension felt like it had melted away from Will. Seeing him here with his family was like meeting him all over again. He was different with them, even if time, geography, and a lot of history had come between them. They were the kind of family she had never, ever had.
He sent her a reassuring smile before turning back to his remaining family. “So, is someone gonna tell me why I just drove all night to get here as the sun is coming up in Marietta?”
Sarah threaded her hand through her eldest’s arm. “Can we simply enjoy having you here for a moment before we get into all of that? I have some biscuits in the oven and was just about to cook some fresh eggs.”