Chapter Twenty-One – Paisley
Chapter Twenty-One
Paisley
M y desk looks like a crime scene where coffee cups went to die. I count seven empty mugs, each one a testament to my spectacular life choices this week. The latest victim—a chipped blue cup Emma picked out for me at Wilson's—sits perilously close to my laptop, dregs of cold coffee creating a ring that would probably give my Manhattan housekeeper an aneurysm. If I still had a housekeeper. Or, you know, a life that didn't revolve around avoiding emotionally unavailable cowboys while mainlining caffeine like it's a personality trait.
The cursor blinks at me from my laptop screen, patient as a confession booth. I've been writing for—I glance at the timestamp on my last save—thirty-six hours straight, breaking only for coffee refills and the occasional reminder from my body that humans need things like food and sleep to survive. Though honestly, sleep feels like admitting defeat at this point. Because every time I close my eyes, I see him. Standing in Martha's diner, looking at me with those impossibly blue eyes while systematically dismantling any chance we had at... whatever this was.
But the words. Oh, goodness, the words.
They're pouring out of me like a broken dam, raw and real and nothing like the sanitized cowboys I used to write. My hero isn't doing sunrise yoga or wearing designer boots that have never seen mud. He has hands roughened by real work and shoulders that carry the weight of generations. He's complicated and stubborn and absolutely terrified of letting anyone close enough to matter. He has calluses on his hands and ghosts in his eyes and a heart so carefully guarded that it would takes an act of God—or maybe just a determined heroine—to crack through those walls.
Wonder where I got that inspiration from.
Spoiler alert: it's not from Yellowstone marathons this time.
I grab the nearest coffee cup, find it empty, and contemplate whether licking the dried residue would be a new personal low. Probably. Though still not as low as falling for a man who'd rather push me away than admit he might actually have feelings. Or as low as hiding in my room like some kind of caffeinated hermit because it's easier than facing the quiet disappointment in Emma's eyes every time Wes and I do our carefully choreographed dance of avoidance at breakfast.
My phone buzzes—Miranda, probably checking on the manuscript I promised her yesterday. I'd called her in a caffeine-fueled fog of inspiration, babbling about authentic characters and real ranch life and how I finally understood what my books had been missing.
"I've got ten chapters," I told her, the words tumbling out faster than my brain could filter them. "Raw, real, nothing like before. No designer jeans, no perfect hair, just... truth. The kind that hurts to write but feels like breathing for the first time."
She's quiet for a long moment before saying, "Send me what you've got. And Paisley? Try to sleep occasionally. Insomnia isn't actually a personality trait, even if you're writing about emotionally constipated cowboys."
That was two days and three chapters ago. Turns out, heartbreak is one heck of a motivator. Who knew all I needed to write authentic romance was to have my own heart thoroughly and systematically dismantled by a man who probably thinks emotional vulnerability is something you catch from reading too many Hallmark cards?
The house creaks around me, settling into its morning routine. Emma's at school, Jake and Colt are probably out fixing fences or whatever ranch task Wes assigned to keep them away from his brooding, and Wes himself...
Well.
Let's just say we've elevated avoiding each other to an Olympic sport. Though he still makes coffee every morning, leaving it brewing like some kind of caffeine-scented olive branch. Because apparently, emotional constipation doesn't override basic hospitality. It's like living in a very specific kind of hell where the devil wears Wranglers and makes really good coffee.
I stretch, my back protesting hours of hunched writing posture, and consider the possibility of venturing downstairs for fresh coffee. The risk assessment is complex: potential Wes encounter versus caffeine necessity. Though lately, he's been timing his movements through the house with military precision to ensure our paths never cross. It would be impressive if it wasn't so thoroughly depressing.
That's when I hear it—a strange ringing that cuts through my writing fog. Not my phone—I've been staring at that screen for hours. Something else, something almost archaic in its persistence, like the ghost of communications past, has come to haunt the house.
I follow the sound downstairs, through the quiet house that's become more home than my Manhattan apartment ever was, until I find it: an actual landline phone, mounted on the kitchen wall like a relic from a simpler time. The kind of phone that probably remembers rotary dials and party lines and less complicated relationships.
For a moment, I just stare at it. Who even has landlines anymore? Though I suppose in a place where cell service is considered more of a suggestion than a guarantee, backup plans make sense. The Montgomerys seem big on backup plans. Well, except when it comes to emotional intelligence. That particular skill set appears to have skipped a generation.
The ringing continues, insistent as a deadline, until I finally pick up the receiver. "Hello?"
"Paisley?" Emma's voice comes through, small and miserable. “I don’t feel good. Can someone come get me?”
My heart does a complicated little dance of concern and panic. All thoughts of caffeine withdrawal and emotional unavailability vanish, replaced by pure protective instinct. “Of course, sweetie. Are you at the nurse’s office?”
“Yeah.” She sounds congested, like she’s been crying or coming down with something. “I tried Uncle Wes’s cell, but it went straight to voicemail. And Uncle Jake's not answering either."
Because of course, they're not. They're probably all out doing something desperately masculine and reception-challenged while their ten-year-old niece needs them. Classic Montgomery timing.
"I'll come get you," I say, already scanning the kitchen for keys. My eyes land on Wes's truck keys, hanging on the hook by the door like a challenge. "Just hang tight, okay?"
There's a pause, then, smaller, "Really?"
"Really." I grab the keys, trying not to think about how Wes will react to me borrowing his precious truck. Though honestly, if he wants to complain about it, he should try answering his phone occasionally. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
"'Kay." She sniffs, and my heart does that squeezing thing again—the one that reminds me I'm already in too deep with this family, no matter how hard I try to pretend otherwise. "Paisley?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you answered."
The words hit me right in the chest, right where I've been pretending I'm not already too invested in this little girl and her complicated family. Right where I've been trying to convince myself that leaving at the end of my three months won't feel like leaving home.
"Me too, kiddo." I grab the keys, my voice steadier than my hands. "Me, too."
And isn't that just the perfect metaphor for my life right now? Standing in a kitchen that isn't mine, holding keys to a truck that isn't mine, about to drive through a town that isn't mine, to pick up a child who isn't mine—all while trying to pretend my heart isn't already more invested in this place than my next book contract.
Miranda would probably tell me this is great material for the novel. Real, authentic emotion bleeding onto the page.
I just wish it didn't have to bleed quite so much.
Here's the thing about Pine Ridge that my Manhattan-trained brain still hasn't fully processed: everything's exactly ten minutes away, except when it isn't. And of course, in true small-town fashion, no one actually gives addresses. It's all "turn left at old Miller's place" and "keep going past where the Jensens’ barn used to be before the fire of '82."
The world's most unhelpful signpost looms before me, its faded letters making suggestions rather than providing actual directions. I squint at it like maybe if I stare hard enough, GPS coordinates will magically appear.
"Take the dirt road past where the old oak used to stand," Martha had said, like I'm supposed to have intimate knowledge of the town's arboreal history. "Can't miss it!"
Spoiler alert: I can absolutely miss it. I've been missing it for approximately twenty minutes now.
My phone, that traitorous piece of technology, mockingly displays No Service like it's personally offended by Montana's cellular infrastructure. I'm starting to suspect the entire state has some sort of collective agreement to confuse city folk. It's probably written into their constitution somewhere, right between All cowboys must be unreasonably attractive and Road signs are more like guidelines than actual rules.
A truck rumbles past—the third one in ten minutes—and I resist the urge to flag it down like some sort of directionally challenged damsel in distress. Though at this point, I'm seriously considering it. Maybe I could offer up some of Martha's pie as payment for navigation services. It's practically currency around here anyway.
"You've got this," I mutter to myself, channeling the confidence of my fictional heroines who never seem to get lost on their way to small-town adventures. "You're a successful author. You've navigated Manhattan during fashion week. You can find one school in a town small enough to fit in Central Park's pocket."
The irony that I'm talking to myself like one of my characters isn't lost on me. If my editor could see me now—the woman who once wrote an entire novel about a cowboy finding his way home through a blizzard using nothing but instinct and determination, completely lost on a perfectly clear morning because apparently, "turn left where the Thompsons’ cow broke through the fence last spring" isn't specific enough for my city-trained brain.
Just as I'm about to resign myself to an eternal life of aimless wandering, I spot it—a landmark I actually recognize. The gas station. The one and only in town, which I remember because Martha had warned me that if I ever planned on driving anywhere, I should fill up here unless I wanted to test the true depths of my survival skills.
Hope flares in my chest as I rerun Martha’s directions in my head. If I passed the gas station, that meant… oh! I should’ve taken that last right instead of panicking when the road turned from pavement to dirt.
I spin the wheel and execute a three-point turn that’s more like a twenty-seven-point turn thanks to the narrow road and an inconveniently placed ditch. Dust billows behind me as I ease back onto the right path, squinting through my windshield like the school might materialize out of sheer willpower.
Then, like a mirage in the desert, a squatty brick building emerges at the end of the road. A faded wooden sign out front reads Pine Ridge Elementary in lettering that has definitely seen better days. My shoulders sag with relief as I pull into the small gravel parking lot, kill the engine, and step out. I smooth down my shirt, straighten my spine, and plaster on a confident smile. I might’ve just spent the better part of half an hour getting lost in a town with only three main roads, but no one needs to know that.
Besides, I made it. And in Pine Ridge, that has to count for something.
The school nurse's office smells like every school nurse's office in history—antiseptic, chalk dust, and vague disappointment. The nurse herself, a woman who looks like she's been dispensing Band-Aids and life advice since the Stone Age, brightens when she sees me.
"You must be Paisley!" She says this like we're old friends meeting for coffee instead of strangers in a school infirmary. "The writer staying at Whispering Pines! I loved your last book, though the scene with the stallion was a bit far-fetched. Horses don't actually?—"
"Mrs. Harrison?" Emma's voice, small and congested, interrupts what I'm sure would have been a fascinating critique of my equine accuracy. She's curled up on the vinyl cot, looking impossibly young in her unicorn pajama shirt and jeans.
"Right, right." Mrs. Harrison waves me through with the kind of authority that comes from decades of managing small-town emergencies. "Emma's running a fever, poor thing. Usually, we’d need family authorization, but...” She winks. “Word is, you’re practically family anyway.”
I open my mouth to protest this particular piece of small-town gossip, but Emma’s already struggling to sit up, and suddenly, nothing else matters.
I cross the tiny room in two strides, crouching beside the cot. Emma’s skin is warm when I brush her hair back, her usually bright eyes dulled with fever.
"Hey, kiddo," I say softly. "Looks like you’re playing hooky today."
Emma musters a small smile, but it’s weak around the edges. "Didn't even get to do the spelling test."
"Tragic," I tease, though my heart squeezes at how exhausted she looks. "Don’t worry, I’ll make you spell ridiculously long words later just to keep you sharp."
She hums a half laugh, half sigh and leans against me as I scoop her up. She's lighter than I expect, all lanky limbs and trust, and I tighten my grip as I stand.
Mrs. Harrison hands me a small bag—her backpack and a bottle of water. "Tell Wes to keep her hydrated and let her rest. She should be fine in a day or two."
"Will do," I promise, though the thought of delivering a sick Emma to Wes feels like walking into an ambush. Not that I’m scared of the gruff cowboy. Much.
Emma nuzzles into my shoulder with a sleepy sigh, her fingers curling into the fabric of my sweater. “You found the school,” she murmurs, voice thick with fever and drowsiness.
I chuckle, carrying her out into the bright Montana morning. "Barely. I almost had to offer up a pie for navigation services."
She makes a small, sleepy noise that might be amusement, and I shift her carefully, unlocking the truck with one hand. Settling her in the back seat, I click her seat belt into place and brush a few stray curls from her damp forehead.
"All right, kiddo," I say gently. "Let’s get you home."
She sighs, her eyes already drifting shut. "Home," she echoes, like the word itself makes her feel better.
And as I start the truck, turning back onto the dirt road that finally, mercifully, leads me somewhere I recognize, I realize it makes me feel better, too.