Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“I’m sorry, run that by me again?” Noah was leaning forward, hands braced on the kitchen table, while Willow deliberately kept her focus on strapping up her knee.
“She just sort of escaped and … well now she seems to be at the Hawkins farm.”
“You’d better not have gone onto that property, Willow.” Her dad, Emmett Carter, had come in from the yard, he looked tired, had aged since his heart attack the previous year, frustrated because he wasn’t allowed to put in the long ranch days that he used to.
“I didn’t, I promise.” She wondered if her cheeks gave the lie away. “I just saw from a distance.”
Noah pushed off the table and, closing his eyes, shook his head despairingly. “Someone’s going to have to go and get Thunder back.”
Emmett cursed as he heaved himself into the chair at the head of the table, the sharpness of his voice making Rocky, who was asleep underneath, look up.
Such language was a rare enough event, it would usually surprise everyone, except if they were talking about the Hawkins family.
Anyone in Autumn Falls would warn you to steer clear of a Hawkins, the name was synonymous with trouble.
But the rift between the Carters and the Hawkins was something else entirely, it was town legend, had been going on for as far back as anyone could remember.
Willow looked at her dad sitting fuming in his chair and felt a pang of guilt at how visibly weaker he was these days.
Noah ran the ranch now, pretty much, and Emmett hadn’t taken kindly to having to take a backseat.
Martha kept a close eye on him, tried not to let him get too het up about things, but now here Willow was, bringing more stress into their lives.
“Please don’t wind yourself up about this, Emmett,” Martha warned. “Noah will get that horse back.”
They all knew that was extremely unlikely, given Thunder’s track record.
Willow winced as she was forced to add, “Problem is, I think Dylan was there.” She saw a flash of him in front of her eyes, his hand outstretched touching Thunder’s neck, succeeding where everyone else had failed, felt goosebumps shiver over her skin.
Emmett jerked upright. “You’re not serious?”
She bit her lip, not wanting to confirm it.
Noah narrowed his eyes. “You sure it was him?”
Willow shrugged as if not one hundred percent certain, but she could recognize Dylan Hawkins a mile off. Just the idea of him back in town made her have to look away from the others, worried about any kind of telltale blush.
Noah sighed and tipped his head back to stare up at the ceiling.
Emmett thumped the table. “Of all the stupid things, Willow!”
She flinched. Suddenly weirdly fearful, the smells, the table, the anger taking her back to being a teenager, raising her eyes to meet her mom’s across the kitchen.
This time however, Martha wasn’t there to meet hers, instead she was busying herself getting her dad’s box of pills and a glass of water, trying to get him to calm down.
Noah picked up his hat and strode reluctantly to the door. “I guess I’d better go try and get her back.”
As he opened the door, his girlfriend, Ren, was standing there about to push it open herself; she laughed as she half stumbled forward.
“Hey, honey pie,” she said—the kind of jokey endearment that Noah would only tolerate from her—and running her hand down his arm she went up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.
Then she took in the mood of the room. “What’s wrong? ”
“Nothing,” Noah replied, turning, brows raised in Willow’s direction as he added, “it’s all just fine.”
Willow looked down shamefully at her empty plate, hearing her dad’s damning sigh at the end of the table and Ren’s perplexed, “What’s going on?
” But, however guilty she felt about Noah having to go and get Thunder, or her dad’s extra stress, her mind kept coming back to that image of Dylan standing in the wildflower meadow, her heart thrumming with traitorous excitement at the idea.