19. Arizona
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Arizona
Morning finds me before I’m ready for it.
I blink against the sunlight spilling through the curtains, then frown at the ceiling overhead because it isn’t mine.
A faded water stain stretches across one corner, somebody’s old baseball cap hangs from a bedpost, and a framed photograph of Sadie sits on the dresser beside a half-finished book.
Emmett’s room.
Memory catches up fast enough to warm my cheeks.
I turn my head and find him asleep beside me, one arm thrown across the mattress, blond hair flattened on one side and sticking straight up on the other.
Yesterday he’d looked every bit the handsome cowboy every woman in town secretly notices. This morning he looks like a man who lost a fight with his pillow.
A laugh slips out before I can stop it.
His eyes crack open. “Morning,” he mumbles, his smile arriving before the rest of him wakes up.
“Morning.”
He rubs a hand over his face, squints at me, then catches me looking at his hair. “You can say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I was trying to decide whether a bird built a nest in it or just considered it.”
He drags his fingers through the mess, succeeds only in making it worse, and sighs. “That bad?”
“I’d leave it. It’s got personality.”
“So do rattlesnakes.”
“I didn’t say it was good personality.”
He laughs, still waking up, and I smile before I can stop myself. The expression fades just as quickly because this is exactly how people end up holding onto places long after they leave.
One good night turns into breakfast, breakfast turns into another conversation, and before long you’re learning little things that never quite leave your mind.
That’s never been my style. I meet people, we have our fun, and I drive away before either of us starts imagining more.
Except I never made it to my truck last night. I fell asleep instead, and now I’m sitting in Emmett Holt’s bed with morning sunlight bursting through his window while his daughter sleeps somewhere down the hall.
Waking up beside him feels far riskier than anything that happened before we closed his bedroom door.
His smile softens as he watches me. “You okay?”
“I was just thinking.”
“Dangerous hobby.”
“I’ve been told.”
He reaches across the mattress and brushes a strand of hair away from my face. The gesture is so easy, so familiar, that my chest tightens before I can stop it.
This…
This is the dangerous part.
Anybody can spend one reckless night wrapped up in somebody else’s sheets. Waking up beside them and smiling over terrible hair feels like the beginning of a habit.
I climb out of bed before that thought grows roots. “I should get dressed before Sadie wakes up.”
Emmett pushes himself upright and watches me pull yesterday’s shirt over my head. “You don’t have to sneak out.”
“I’ve got plenty of experience disappearing.”
His smile fades. “I figured.”
Neither of us reaches for the conversation waiting underneath them because footsteps race down the hallway before either of us gets the chance.
Emmett’s eyes lift toward the bedroom door. “That’s Sadie.”
“I guessed when the ceiling started shaking.”
He huffs out a laugh, then looks around the room as though trying to solve a puzzle with no good answer. “You could…”
His sentence trails off while his gaze flicks from me to the wardrobe and back again.
I fold my arms. “You were about to suggest I hide in the closet, weren’t you?”
“I was considering all available options.”
“Bold strategy.”
A knock rattles the bedroom door before either of us can come up with a better plan. “Daddy?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I made breakfast.”
Emmett smiles. “That’s real—”
“And it’s making lots of smoke.”
His smile disappears.
He yanks the bedroom door open and sprints down the hallway wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, leaving me to grab my boots and follow at a much less heroic pace.
Smoke curls lazily above the stove when I reach the kitchen.
Sadie stands balanced on a chair with a spatula clutched proudly in one hand while a pancake has transformed into a charcoal disc inside the frying pan.
“I wanted a surprise,” she says.
“It definitely is,” Emmett replies as he rescues the pan before breakfast burns a hole through it.
“I found flour,” Sadie explains. “Then eggs and chocolate chips.” She turns, spots me in the doorway, and lights up. “Arizona!”
She jumps off the chair, runs across the kitchen, and throws her arms around my waist before taking my hand.
“Come with me. I’ve got to show you…”
I let Sadie tug me toward the back door while Emmett rescues what’s left of breakfast behind us, telling myself staying until morning only happened because leaving in the middle of the night would’ve been awkward.
It sounds believable enough that I almost convince myself.
Sadie marches me across the yard with my hand wrapped in hers, chatting the entire way about Cinnamon’s busy morning. Apparently she’s already eaten breakfast, chased three butterflies, and nearly become the fastest racehorse in America before deciding running was exhausting.
“Cinnamon gets distracted,” Sadie says with a thoughtful sigh.
“By what?”
She shrugs. “Whatever she’s looking at.”
“I think we might be related.”
“I told her to focus,” Sadie says. “She forgot.”
The upside down feed bucket waits beneath the fence where she left it yesterday, covered in wildflowers and a fresh drawing of Cinnamon sporting six legs, eyelashes that belong on a movie star, and a cowboy hat balanced proudly between her ears.
“Cinnamon cleaned up nicely.”
Sadie nods. “She’s meeting people.”
“Big day.”
She crouches beside the bucket and pats it fondly. “Dad says she isn’t a real horse.”
“That sounds like your dad.”
“I heard that.”
I glance over my shoulder as Emmett heads toward us carrying two mugs of coffee. Freshly showered, clean shaven, and wearing a faded flannel, he looks far too awake considering he sprinted into a smoke-filled kitchen in nothing but jeans twenty minutes ago.
He offers me one of the mugs. “Peace treaty.”
I wrap my fingers around the warm cup, catching his smile before either of us remembers we probably shouldn’t be smiling at each other quite so much.
Willy strolls across the yard balancing a sack of feed on one shoulder while finishing an apple. “Morning, campers.” His grin finds me first. “You’re here early.”
“Er, yeah, it seems like I am.”
He tosses the apple core toward a bucket. It clips the rim and bounces into the grass. “That went exactly where I planned.” He finally notices the matching coffee mugs, then flicks a look between Emmett and me. “Well, well.”
Emmett sighs before Willy even speaks. “Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.” Willy grins wider. “I leave you two alone for one evening and suddenly you’re sharing coffee. Next thing I know you’ll be discussing curtain colors.”
“It’s coffee,” Emmett says.
“Every great love story starts with a hot drink.”
I lift my mug. “Mine usually start with whiskey.”
Willy winks at me before heading for the barn, laughing to himself, and I let out a small breath as he disappears through the doors because he’s only having fun and hasn’t figured out where I spent the night.
A second later the barn door swings open again, and Red steps into the yard carrying a toolbox in one hand and a coil of rope in the other.
“Mornin’,” he says.
“Morning.”
His eyes drift to the upside down feed bucket surrounded by Sadie’s drawings, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “Cinnamon behaving herself today?”
Sadie plants her hands on her hips and fixes him with the same look I’ve seen adults use in bars when they’re about to win an argument. “She heard that.”
Red changes direction without hesitation, walks over to the bucket, and tips his hat. “My apologies, ma’am. I’ll choose my words more carefully from now on.”
“I forgive you,” Sadie replies in her deepest cowboy voice. “Because I’m Cinnamon.”
“I appreciate your mercy.”
Laughter rolls around the yard while I cradle the mug between my hands and watch them fall into a routine they’ve probably repeated a hundred different ways over the years.
Willy keeps everybody laughing because he enjoys the reaction as much as the joke itself, Emmett’s dry remarks arrive just late enough to catch people off guard, and Red acts like he’d rather be working while quietly making sure everyone around him is looked after.
Dusty Spur is the strangest but warmest-feeling family I’ve ever been near.
The rumble of an engine carries across the yard just before lunch, and conversation fades as Sheriff Hank Miller’s pickup pulls alongside the burned trailer.
Red meets him halfway. “Morning, Hank.”
“Hate seeing you under these circumstances.”
“You and me both.”
Hank adjusts his hat, glances at the blackened trailer, and nods. “Show me.”
The ranch hands gather while he circles the trailer, crouching beside the axle before running his hand across the scorched frame. Everyone has an opinion.
“Looks like wiring.”
“Trailer’s older than dirt.”
“My cousin lost one the same way.”
Hank lets them talk while he checks the hitch, scribbles a note in his pad, then walks the length of the trailer again.
I stay beside Willy, watching faces instead of burned timber.
“You writing a song already?” he asks.
“Maybe.”
“About us?”
I smile. “You’d complain if I left you out.”
“I’d complain louder if you made me rhyme with ‘orange.’”
“I’d never do that.”
“You looked tempted.”
Across the yard, another ranch hand shrugs. “Bad luck, far as I can tell.”
Red doesn’t answer. He asks Hank another question instead, but I catch the way his jaw hardens.
Beside me, Willy’s grin disappears.
Red glances his way.
The exchange barely registers before both of them carry on, yet it leaves me with the uneasy feeling they’ve already started asking questions the rest of us haven’t caught up to yet.
Sheriff Miller tucks his notebook into his back pocket and brushes the soot from his hands before looking at Red. “I’ll get somebody to haul the trailer away once I’m finished here.”
I catch myself speaking before I’ve decided whether I should. “You think somebody set the fire?”