Chapter 1
Evan
Six Years Later
The sun broke over my mountain, and I cracked open an eyelid, squinting at the light peeking in my bedroom window and cursing it all.
“Why are you in my bedroom, starin’ at me?”
Ty didn’t respond.
Dr. Whitley’s name flashed across my phone’s screen, and when I punched Accept Call and lifted the phone to my ear, I yawned.
“Good morning, Evan. I hope I’m not waking you.”
I ran my fingers through my hair and realized I was way overdue for a date with my clippers. “Mornin’, Doc. No, no. I’m up. Everything alright?”
“Yes but I wanted to call and give you a heads up. Someone will be staying at the cabin over the holiday. I apologize for the late notice, but the arrangement has just been made.”
“It’s fine, sir. I’ll get things ready for you. Mrs. Whitley comin’ with you? Y’all haven’t been up this way in a long time.”
“Oh no, we won’t be there. There’s a woman coming to stay.
She’ll be there tomorrow night around seven.
I hate to ask, Evan, but would you mind putting in a little extra effort when you’re getting things ready?
Make things comfortable? And if it’s not too much trouble, I wanted to ask you to look after her.
I don’t like that she’ll be up there alone, but it’s… necessary.”
Weird that he hadn’t said who would be coming to stay.
A little twinge of hope stirred inside my chest, but I couldn’t be that lucky.
The doc’s granddaughter—a.k.a. Eli Winter, my Eli—would not be coming to stay.
There was no way Lizzie would spend her Christmas in a dingy cabin alone.
She probably had an entourage and was used to much finer accommodations.
She hadn’t been to the Whitley cabin since she was a girl.
Since her mama died. I still remembered the last time I’d seen her that summer, in the meadow between the doc’s cabin and mine, laughing and running in the sunlight.
She was little Lizzie Whitley then, and until that night at Manny’s six years ago, I’d pictured a girl.
Now, when I thought of her, which was way too often, I saw a woman.
One hell of a woman… who hadn’t remembered me at all. I was certain as she drove away that night that she had no clue I was the little boy who lived on the mountain she used to visit, the one she used to sing to.
“No, sir. It’s no trouble.”
“Thank you, son. I knew I could count on you. Mrs. Whitley wants me to ask if you received our Christmas card? I put a little something extra in it for you.”
“I did get it. Thank you.” The fifty bucks they’d sent had reminded me of my grandma, so much I was surprised it hadn’t arrived with a package of socks. Still, the gesture was kind and appreciated.
“Merry Christmas, Evan. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
I chuckled despite my mood. It was a good thing he didn’t know I’d been pining for his granddaughter these last six years, or that I’d kissed her.
He probably wouldn’t trust me so much then, especially not after what my brother had done to bring shame to the whole state of Wyoming, and I wasn’t planning to remind anyone about Ty threatening an entire arena of rodeo fans. I couldn’t do that to his memory.
Or maybe it was me the reminder would hurt.
“I apologize, but I have to run. There’s a medical emergency I need to attend to, but give me a call later if you have any issues. Thanks again, Evan. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking care of things.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, and Evan?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I count on you to keep this to yourself? The person coming is… Well, she’s in a bit of a situation, and it would be a great favor to me if you could refrain from speaking of it to anyone.”
“’Course, sir.” Who the fuck am I gonna tell, my dead brother?
The doc hung up, and when I clicked off my phone, Ty was smirking at me from across the room. “What was that about?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I looked at the phone again, then slammed it face-down on the bed. 8 a.m.? Goddammit. Since when do you sleep the day away?
“Since you got old,” my brother reminded me, the sound of his voice like an echo in my head.
I sat up against the old log headboard, scowling at him as he leaned back in the chair and crossed his imaginary boot over his knee.
“Fuck you, Ty. Who asked you?”
He folded his arms behind his head. “You did.”
“Just ’cause I can’t get rid of you, it don’t mean I wanna hear you yammerin’ in my head all day long. The shit you say now makes about as much sense as the shit you said when we were—when you were alive.”
“I’m actually not yammerin’ in your head, bro. You’re concocting this entire conversation ’cause you’re bat-shit.”
“I’m not arguin’ with you.”
“Good, ’cause you’d lose.”
“Ain’t you got anything better to do? Go bother God or somethin’. Leave me be. I gotta get the Whitley cabin ready for a guest. Doc asked me to put a little extra effort into it. Whatever the hell that means.”
Ty smirked. “Ooo. A woman?”
“That’s what he said.”
Tyler snickered, and I whipped a pillow at his imaginary head.
Just ’cause he was dead, it didn’t mean I couldn’t…
Actually, that was exactly what it meant. The beating I wanted to give him would haunt me for the rest of the day.
“Seriously. It’s a goddamn mystery to me how you can still annoy me.
Didn’t you do enough of that when—” I flicked a glance in his direction, but he wasn’t really there, and the image in my mind of him standing and walking toward me to slap me on the back or punch my arm as he ran to hog the bathroom before I could even take a piss dissipated as I climbed out of bed.
His voice and the memory etched into my head, the one I saw every time I thought of him before his whole life went to hell—carefree with a shit-eating grin on his face—once they’d disappeared, the weight of life settled hard over me.
Every goddamn day.
He was right too. I was bat-shit crazy. If talking to my dead brother didn’t clue me in, not leaving this backwoods prison when I’d had the chance nailed the coffin lid shut on the matter.
Now that my dad had passed on, too, living alone on this mountain had become painful in its loneliness. When Ty’s actions killed all hope of me continuing my rodeo career, my mountain was where I’d retreated to, and the memories and reality of what my only brother had done trapped me here.
But if I left it… If I left my home, I’d lose my brother and my parents.
I’d lose the last thread of connection I had to them, and that, I couldn’t stand.
I guess there was something to be said about choosing which misery you allowed to rule your life.
It was a pathetic choice to hold onto, but a choice, nonetheless.
At least I still had Fowler.
“Where you at, dog?”
I heard a mumbled ruff behind the couch in the living room, and as I left my bedroom, Fowl’s scruffy brown and white face appeared over the back, one ear up and the other limp against the side of his head.
For a dog, he really was like another person living in these woods with me.
His hair was curlier than Mrs. Donahue’s down at the Sip and Spin, and he spent more time preening and primping it than she probably ever had her own hair.
His clear brown eyes could be so expressive, his little black eyebrows always crooking up when I did something he probably deemed to be ridiculous.
Like talk to my dead brother.
I yawned again and set my coffee to brew, grateful I’d prepared the grounds the night before. I needed the caffeine quick this morning, and the silence in my house was loud. The trickle of the coffee into the pot would calm my nerves a bit.
Grabbing my hat from the hook on the kitchen wall, I called for Fowl, “C’mon, dog. Let’s get the day on.”
He barked and leapt over the back of the couch.
Heading straight for the dog bed in the kitchen he never slept on, he grabbed his stuffed horse and then ran to the front door and marched in place, yipping with his mouth full till I opened it.
When I did, he shot outside like a bullet, dropped his horse on the porch, and disappeared behind the barn, into the trees that hugged the edges of my land.
I really hoped he wouldn’t have another run-in with a Marten or a goddamn porcupine.
Last time it took hours to pull out all the quills and days to find all the fat, bloody ticks.
I stretched, reaching my arms up to touch the roof beam running the length of the porch, and looked out at my snowy mountain. Ty and I had carved our names in the wood years ago, and the subconscious urge I felt to touch it every day didn’t escape my notice, but I tried to ignore it this morning.
The mountains were another reason I couldn’t leave this place. What would I do without the Tetons guiding and guarding me? I felt pretty certain if I lived in some flat-land city, I’d get lost all the time. And where would I keep my horse?
Fuck. Exactly what did “put a little extra effort into it” really mean? Was I supposed to buy flowers for some woman I’d probably never see?
Naw. Screw that shit. I’d clean the place, make sure all the appliances were in working order, and I’d set up the beds with clean sheets and the bathroom with fresh towels. That would have to be enough. I had plans of my own for the day to get some work in before the snow fell.
A big storm had been predicted, and when they said twelve inches, what they really meant was at least three feet up here in the sticks.
But the light would be perfect before the storm, and I was banking on some good shots of a little spot deep in the forest I’d been meaning to photograph for ages.
Moose and bears frequented the clearing set between two rising peaks, though, bears were probably a no-go this time of year, but the moose were regular subjects in my work.
They sold the most. And wolves. The Yellowstone packs sometimes strayed this far west. If the photos were any good, the proceeds from the sales could feed Fowl and me for months.
Last year, I’d even sold the rights to one of my photos to an author who wanted to use it for a cover of a book she’d written.
The librarian down in Wisper had called to negotiate for a friend of her friend.
She set the whole thing up. Seemed weird to me to put a wolf on a romance book, but whatever. It paid the bills.
I had no clue who Dr. Whitley had invited to stay in his cabin, but the man himself hadn’t been here in years.
He’d said many times in the last few years that the hour drive up wasn’t something he had a lot of time for lately.
I suspected age was a factor too. He and Mrs. Whitley had to be in their early eighties now.
Hiking mountain trails probably wasn’t at the top of their to-do list. He’d told me years ago that he’d given keys to his kids, but I’d never set eyes on his son.
He was a doctor, too, in California, and I hadn’t heard anything about Doc Whitley’s daughter in a long time. Maybe it would be her coming to stay.
The Whitleys themselves came up to the cabin less and less as the years passed.
If I thought back to the last time, it had probably been five years.
The doc usually called once a month to check in, but lately I’d gotten the feeling that it had become more of a habit than a need to make sure his cabin was still standing.
The owners of the cabins I looked after had all hopped onto the rental trend and had turned their properties into summer destinations.
Tourists paid good money to spend their vacations in the Tetons.
Doc had also mentioned that he’d entertained the idea of selling the place.
He’d called to ask my opinion on a couple occasions, and every time we talked, I hoped to hear about Lizzie, about how she was taking over the world one song at a time as Eli Winter, but he never mentioned her. Why would he?
He had no idea I dreamt about her almost every night.
The doc was a good man, and he’d made comments in the past that he worried about me alone up here, but I’d lived on this mountain my whole life, save for my time on the circuit, but those days were long gone.
There was nothing for him to worry about.
Now, if I lived down in Wisper where he and Mrs. Whitley lived, that he could worry about.
I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I had to talk to people on the street every day or go to some nine-to-five job.
The pity I’d most likely see in their eyes for my lost career and my dead brother wasn’t something I could handle.
But if I was right and it was Doc’s daughter coming over the holiday, why wouldn’t she stay with her parents in town? There hadn’t been any new rental reservations, so maybe the mysterious guest was a family friend. I’d met a few of those over the years.
I had no idea why a woman would want to come to the middle of nowhere for Christmas by herself, but it didn’t really matter.
The manners my parents had instilled in me made it impossible to ignore the fact that a lady would be stranded a mile away from my house, staying in a cabin I’d been paid to caretake during a serious winter storm.
She probably had zero experience with snow, and the snow up here could swallow you whole if you weren’t careful.
I’d have to be neighborly. Dammit. But Dr. Whitley and the other property owners I worked for paid the bills my photos didn’t cover, so I’d do what he asked with a smile.
A smile might’ve been pushing it, but I’d do it anyway.
I had shit of my own I needed to get done, Christmas or not, and this woman, whoever she was, would only be a distraction.