Take Me Away, Cowboy (Cowboys of Elks Ridge, Montana #1)
1. Homesick
CHAPTER ONE
Homesick
P aige shifted in the airplane seat, struggling to get comfortable. They hadn’t been this tiny the last time she flew.
She fought the urge to run off the plane and not stop until she hit saltwater. Second-guessing herself wasn’t her MO, so why was she doing it now?
The woman beside her fidgeted with her hands, wringing them until her knuckles grew white as bone. The color contrasted the deep crimson on the woman’s shoulders that marked her as a tourist almost as much as the bedazzled Turks and Caicos tank top she wore.
Normally, Paige was a comfortable flier, but the combination of leaving her home, her business, and her best friend made her uneasy. The nervous woman beside her amplified the feeling.
She wanted to be home. If only she had a clue where that was.
“How long were you visiting?” the woman asked, curious eyes taking in Paige’s tanned legs.
Paige looked out her window at the lush, rolling hills distorted by heat waves rising off the tarmac, realizing too late that she was sitting next to a chatty Kathy while she herself had no gift for small talk.
She didn’t want to be rude, but her heart was in flux, her life no better. What could she possibly offer anyone, especially someone she’d only know a couple hours?
She needed sleep.
A gallon of caffeine, maybe.
A reset button, definitely.
“I wasn’t. I lived here. Just over a year.”
“Oh, wow. Heading home, then?”
Paige nodded. That was an entirely truthful answer, though. Yes, she was going back to her hometown, but the island was as much a home to her as Montana had ever been.
That only added to her discomfort in leaving.
“I always wanted to live somewhere exotic, but my husband wouldn’t budge. Born in Montana, die in Montana, he always said. Now if he’d only get to that second part, I’d be happy.” The woman laughed at her own joke. “I’m glad to be rid of the two-timing bastard for that and so many reasons. You married?”
Not wanting to be rude, Paige shook her head, the swell in her chest deflating. That was the trade off, wasn’t it? Live all over the world, travel to her heart’s content, but say goodbye to romance, at least in the conventional sense. Kids and a husband didn’t fare well with her lifestyle; she’d seen that much with Paulo. She was just finally to the point she could think of him and not feel her stomach lurch.
“Yeah, well, you’re better for it. Men’re nothin’ but scum. Except for the aerobics instructor at my resort—Carlos I think his name was. Ooh, that man could move his hips. You musta met some fine ones living here.” The woman whistled a catcall like Carlos sat next to them.
“I sure did.” No one she wanted to see past breakfast, though.
The woman laughed, then abruptly settled into an uncomfortable silence as the plane engine revved. The familiar force from liftoff pressed Paige against her seat. This was it. The wheels lifted off the ground below them, and Paige was no longer a temporary resident of North Caicos. Her feelings about it were no longer a concern.
Her heart ached as she blew a secret kiss to the island towards the small, square pane of inches-thick glass separating her from the thinning air outside. She bid the island farewell. She had left a part of herself there but appreciated the fleeting view of the rainforest abruptly ending in white sand and crystal blue-green water. She knew them both as intimately as she did any lover, the forest and the beach.
Paige’s phone chimed loudly in the otherwise silent cabin. The woman beside her jerked, her neighbor’s elbow making contact with Paige’s ribs again.
“Sorry,” the woman muttered through gritted teeth, her eyes small slits under a furrowed brow.
“It’s fine,” Paige replied, though her right side argued that wasn’t exactly true. Still, she couldn’t begrudge the nerves the woman had. Paige had her own.
She fished her phone out of her pocket, shocked she still had service. Throwing a quick glance down the aisle so she didn’t get caught breaking the cardinal rule of flying two minutes into the trip, she unlocked the screen to find her favorite face smiling back at her with the beach nearest Paige’s old office in the background.
I miss you already. Fake a heart attack so they have to bring you back. Kisses and conch.–A
Paige chuckled to herself, but her pulse quickened. Her best friend and colleague, Aurelie, made saying goodbye to the island almost impossible for her to do. She jotted Aury a quick reply, then put her phone on airplane mode.
Counting down the minutes. Enjoy the island while you can. Have a dark and diet for me. K and C.–Paigey
Paige didn’t want to miss the island, didn’t like leaving anything or anyone behind, but anyone who met Aurelie would agree that she usually got her way. This time, that meant taking Paige emotionally hostage, though Paige didn’t mind as much as she might’ve in the past.
“Where’s home?” the woman beside her asked, sneaking a furtive glance at Paige’s phone, open to the picture.
The woman’s grip had lightened, her breathing regulated. Paige looked at the photo once more before shutting her phone, a deep sigh emanating from her chest. She didn’t mind answering as much as she would have before takeoff. She’d calmed down, too.
“I’m heading back to Banberry, just outside the Elkhorn Mountains where my folks live. They’ve got a farm that’s been in the family too many generations to count.”
“That’s out in the sticks,” the woman commented, and Paige smiled.
It was a common misconception that outside the cities in Montana, especially the Elks Ridge Valley where her parents’ farm lay nestled between the mountains, was hillbilly country. Her small town of Banberry was the exception. For some reason, the locals were hidden in a pocket of diversity with at least one good cowboy bar and a Costco. Paige didn’t correct the woman, though.
“What could possibly make you head back there when you were livin’ in the middle of paradise?”
Staying in an all-inclusive resort, Paige bet that came close to true—people to cook your meals, clean your dishes, but just outside the walls existed a poverty as crushing and crippling as anything in the States.
Still, the answer to why she was going back to Montana eluded her. She could go anywhere.
“I’m a traveling pediatrician, and my time there ran out. It was only a temporary position, but I’ll miss it.” That was only partially true. She could have made the move a permanent one, but that had never been the plan. Permanence was not in Paige’s genetic makeup.
“Sounds excitin’. I’m headed back to Dallas, and I’ll tell you what. When my kid’s off to college—he’s got a football scholarship comin’ his way—I’m outta there, too. The world’ll be my oyster.”
“Good for you, and congratulations,” Paige said, an honest half-smile raising the corner of her mouth. “I think travel is the best way to get to know yourself.”
“Well, that’s true, I’d reckon. For instance, I now know that I’m not settlin’ for anything less than Carlos’s hips in my next husband.”
Paige didn’t offer the possibility that Carlos could have a boyfriend at home.
“Well, you enjoy. Your folks must be so happy to have you back,” the woman said.
Her folks.
Paige nodded and looked out the window again despite the glare of the sun off the now-deep blue water. It would be good to see them again. Afterall, a year was a long time. The version of Paige that had left them at the Helena International Airport had been heartbroken after breaking up with Paulo and hungover from the subsequent binge at Cowboy Joe’s that had followed—a completely different person than the one heading back to them. Would her family even recognize her anymore?
Paige fetched her phone again, turned on the airline Wi-Fi and opened Facebook. She skipped over her memories of the past year, stopping instead at thirteen months prior, at her announcement to the world that she’d accepted the job in Turks and Caicos.
Memories of the night she’d returned to Banberry from Africa, single and lost, flooded the backs of her eyelids.
Paige had sat in her small, childhood room, looking out over the green fields of new wheat and corn on her parents’ two-hundred-year-old farm, the rugged Elkhorns in the background. She browsed the internet in search of something, anything, that would give her an out from her crappy situation, something that would still allow her to practice medicine.
When a small pop-up ad chimed in the upper right-hand corner of the computer, her body had gone rigid, a light sheen of sweat formed on her brow. That had to be it. She’d known it immediately.
Before the week ended, she was gone as quickly as she’d come. She landed at a small clinic in the Turks and Caicos Islands, specifically North Caicos, and the small town of Bottle Creek. The one lesson she’d learned from all her travels before this was that if the signs pointed her in a direction, she followed them. She’d never been steered wrong yet.
“Who’s that? Boyfriend?” the woman beside Paige cooed, throwing Paige an exaggerated wink. “He’s handsome.”
“Brother,” Paige said, laughing. “He’ll appreciate the compliment, though.” She cracked her ankles again, a habit when she sat for too long a stretch.
“Well, shoot. All the good ones are either taken or related, aren’t they?”
Paige smiled. Her brother was the best man she knew aside from her father.
She was ready to see him for multiple reasons, least of which included his ardent support of her. A cloud formed in the corner of her mind as she thought about the serious talk she planned on pelting him with the second she got the chance. She needed to sit him down and explain all the reasons his girlfriend, Julia, was just like Paulo. And just like Paulo, she needed to go. Now.
It wasn’t a conversation Paige was looking forward to, especially with how entrenched Brad and Julia were in each other’s lives. Hell, even their mothers were best friends.
She scrolled through Julia’s home page. Not a single photo from the past two months featured Brad. Her most recent post was a vague, “How to Know if Your Man Loves Work More Than You,” article attached with no explanation. Such bullshit.
Brad worked two jobs to take care of Julia, who at most picked up twenty hours a week at a local retail outlet. He also wrote crime novels in his limited free time, trying to turn his hobby into a career. Paige was proud as hell of him for finally taking himself seriously as a writer, but Julia hated that it took his attention away from her.
So, it was up to Paige to sit him down and tell him just what she thought about Julia and her manipulations, a sort of one-woman intervention. Her dad would be on board, but for some reason Paige couldn’t comprehend, her mom had been skewered by Julia’s talons and still sung her praises.
Oh well, she had time to formulate a strategy. A week was a long stretch where family was concerned.
When the water below her faded to a deep blueish black and the sun had set over where the islands lay in the distance, Paige closed her eyes again. This time she imagined west Montana, the farm in summer, warm and moist with growth and renewal. She pictured the best key lime pie she’d found this side of the equator without having to make it herself, and her brother, strong, able, and there, even knowing she would be gone again in not much more than a heartbeat.
Though a far cry from the place she’d called home the past year, with its easy living and simple pleasures, it was still home. She was anxious for both her flights to be behind her, the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet to help her find the path she should take next. Within minutes, Paige fell asleep, softly snoring. Her ease into slumber was the comfortable way of someone who traveled for a living and had learned to rest in flight.
However, she dreamed not of the rolling sea nor crashing waves, but of fields that ebbed and flowed with the wind and the weather, reminiscent of her time as a child when she had promised herself she would never call those fields home. In her dream, she stood, fully grown, pregnant, on a porch that wasn’t her parents’, looking out over the land and happily calling it hers. She slept fitfully, and woke unrested, wondering what it all meant.