Chapter 6
The afternoon passed in a fever dream of writing, strumming, rewriting, scrapping the whole thing, and starting again. Somehow Willow was both depleted and elated. Even though the song was still a mess—a jumble of lyrics that so far worked best as scattered verses rather than a cohesive song—she couldn’t remember the last time writing had felt like this. She couldn’t remember the last time it had been…fun.
Not that Ash Murphy was fun. He was…he was Mayhem from the Allstate commercials, leaving scandals and broken hearts in his wake, and Willow would not be foolish enough to get sucked into that kind of orbit again, not when she knew better.
She stood in the kitchen, nibbling on one of her shortbread cookies, when she heard singing coming from the bedroom. Correction…the bathroom. But Ash hadn’t bothered to close the bedroom door.
After the pair decided to call it a day, Ash had disappeared into their shared showering space to clean up. He still hadn’t told her what happened earlier that day, and Willow hadn’t asked again. Whatever trouble he’d been up to was his business, not hers. She didn’t care who split his lip or where he went when he wasn’t in the guesthouse. Hell, she didn’t care about anything pertaining to Ashton Murphy unless it concerned the song they were writing.
Which they weren’t right now. So why, if Willow couldn’t care less about her roommate’s whereabouts or actions, did she find herself moving toward her bedroom? Why was she suddenly slipping through the door he’d left ajar, tiptoeing so she could hear better. So she could identify the song.
Her breath caught in her throat when the bathroom acoustics carried a familiar lyric out to where she stood.
“‘This time I’ll pick myself up when I fall…’” Ash crooned, his deep rasp of a voice adding a new layer of aching regret to the line. Her line. “‘This time I’ll block your number before you call. This time I’ll hold the needle and thread. Jagged stitches ’cross my heart…cold sheets on your side of the bed.’”
Before her brain registered what she was doing, Willow stormed into the steam-filled bathroom and threw open the shower door.
She was greeted by a really great ass and sculpted back, but she would not let that get in the way of her fury.
It took a second for Ash to react to the gust of cold air that must have rushed in to greet him, which meant a second more of him staining her song… her song…with his uninvited—albeit gorgeous—voice.
He finally flinched at the change in air temperature and spun to face her, but when he saw Willow standing there, he actually had the audacity to grin.
“You afraid I’m using all the hot water?” he teased. “Or do you want to join me that badly?”
He was lathered in body wash, but that did nothing to hide what he had going on between his legs. If any of the online tabloids wanted to know if Ash Murphy was a shower or a grower, Willow could probably make a pretty penny with her intel. But there was no way in hell she was going to boost his ego by publicizing that he somehow—and impressively—both.
“What gives you the right?” she cried over the sound of the shower’s spray.
He blinked as water hit him in the side of the face and trickled down over his eyes.
“What?” he asked. “What did I do now? Wait. This is ridiculous.” He slammed his palm against the shower knob, effectively turning the water off despite the fact that he was still full of suds. He crossed his arms over his bare chest.
Willow’s mouth fell open. “What are you doing?”
“Freezing my ass off,” he told her. “So I don’t have to shout over the water to defend myself for…” He shrugged. “Whatever I fucked up between leaving the living room and now.”
Her palms clenched into fists at her sides. “You were singing,” she said coolly, though there was nothing cool about her heart hammering against her ribs.
Ash laughed. “Yeah. I know. I sing in the shower. So what?”
“So what? So what ? So…so you were singing my song.”
He laughed again. “Yeah. I know,” he replied, parroting his own words. “It’s a good song,” he added matter-of-factly.
Willow’s eyes widened, and she glanced left and right, then back at Ash as if suddenly realizing where she was and wondering how she got there. The argument in her head seemed so logical when it first took root, but now she knew her accusation was so way off base that it wasn’t even on the field anymore.
“That’s why we make music, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice gentler this time. “So other people will sing it?”
She opened and closed her mouth to respond her fight-or-flight retreating because it knew she couldn’t just up and admit why the incident had her stomach tied in knots.
Willow blew out a breath, her shoulders relaxing. “It caught me off guard,” she told him, which technically was the truth. It just wasn’t the whole truth. “It was never released as a single, so it kind of freaked me out that you knew it well enough to just…sing it.”
“Hello?” a male voice called from outside the bedroom. “Anyone home?”
“Are you a ventriloquist?” Willow whisper-shouted to Ash. “Or do I need to grab another vase?”
“Just getting out of the shower!” Ash called, then returned his attention to Willow. “It’s just Boone. My brother. Keep him company until I rinse off? I’ll be two minutes.”
Willow grumbled something under her breath though was secretly grateful for whatever divine intervention was getting her out of the whole yelling-at-a-very-naked-Ash-in-the-shower situation.
“Fine,” she told him as if it were a burden to leave, then spun on her heel and headed straight back from where she’d come.
“Boone!” Willow said with probably too much enthusiasm for a man she’d met once a few years back. “It’s nice to see you a—”
But when the other Murphy brother turned around to face her, she gasped at the slight bruising under his left eye.
“It was you ,” she added as realization hit her like a boulder. “ You’re the fight Ash got into earlier today.”
Boone laughed, his bright-blue eyes crinkling at the corners. He was a slightly older version of Ash, all dark hair, blue eyes, and the same rugged, rancher-ness. But there was something softer in Boone’s presence compared to Ash’s sharp edges. That was the only way Willow could explain it. Even when Ash was all smiles and teasing, she knew that if she wasn’t careful around him, she might get cut.
“Fight?” Boone replied. “Is that what he called it? I like to think of it more as a brotherly bonding sort of thing. Was hoping after having a few hours to marinate on the situation, Ash would see it that way too.”
“ Bonding? ” Ash asked accusingly, and Willow whirled to see Murphy brother number two rinsed and in a clean pair of jeans pulling a gray T-shirt over his head. Without the suds covering his skin, she caught a glimpse of what looked like his own slight bruising over his left ribs.
“Seriously…” Willow began, her gaze volleying back and forth between the two of them. “Why are men? Just…why?” She grabbed them each by the wrist and dragged them to the breakfast bar. She pointed toward the stools. “ Sit. Both of you.”
They sat.
She left them there and strode around the corner and into the galley kitchen where she grabbed the tin of her homemade cookies and plopped it down on the counter in front of them. Then she poured them each a glass of ice-cold milk. “You two are going to sit here like good little boys, eating your cookies and milk, and talking your shit out. NO. HITTING.”
They both had the decency to look chagrined as they nodded.
“I’m going to give you boys some space and go groom the horses. If you do what you’re supposed to do and feel up for it, you boys should go for a ride after. Pretty sure activities like that are more of a brotherly bonding sort of thing than whatever you two were up to this morning.”
The brothers nodded again.
“She’s scary,” Boone said to Ash.
“Tell me about it,” Ash replied. “The vase to the temple? My welcome-home gift?” He nodded toward Willow.
“No shit,” Boone replied, then reached for a cookie, but Willow smacked his hand.
“ Not until you ask your brother why he took a vase to the temple,” she told Boone.
Boone sighed, then turned to Ash. “Why did you take a vase to the temple?”
Ash blew out a breath. “Destruction of property… Drunk and disorderly…” He waved a hand in the air. “It’s my healthy way of dealing with public humiliation.”
Boone swore under his breath, and Willow saw all manner of teasing leave his expression. “Why didn’t you call?”
Ash shrugged. “Thought I’d sleep it off in the guesthouse before letting you know I was home, but the mediator over there thought I was breaking and entering.” He nodded toward Willow, then let out a mirthless laugh. “Pretty sure, though, that even if I rang the bell, things would have gone down in about the same way.”
His eyes met hers in a flash of acknowledgment before Ash turned his attention back to his brother. Willow’s throat tightened. What was he acknowledging? Her hurt? His regret? Singing “This Time” in the shower?
“Can I have a cookie now?” Boone asked, breaking the silence. “I can smell them, and my mouth is watering, and it kind of feels like not eating one will—I don’t know—give my taste buds blue balls or something.”
Ash barked out a laugh, and Boone shrugged.
Willow rolled her eyes. “I’m heading to the barn,” she said, then waggled her index finger back and forth at them. “No…?”
“Hitting,” both men mumbled.
“Good,” she replied. “And no recess until you boys have served your full detention, which means working your shit out with words .”
She gave them one final look that she hoped solidified her expectations before booting up and heading outside.
***
Willow had made it a couple of laps with Holiday in the arena when she heard hoofbeats behind her. She slowed her mare and waited to see which of the brothers approached first. But because she had zero patience, and something about the anticipation of Ash Murphy’s presence made her more anxious than him sleeping on the couch outside her room, she made it approximately three seconds before glancing over her shoulder to see Boone atop his white gelding…and only Boone.
“Did I scare your brother off?” she asked with a nervous laugh when the older Murphy and his horse trotted up beside her.
Boone shook his head. “He’ll be out in a bit. I guess inspiration struck, and he’s out on the back porch writing before he ‘loses the magic.’” He said the last part with finger quotes.
“Writing?” Willow asked, and she fought the knee-jerk reaction to jump straight to anger, still stinging from her misinterpretation of Ash’s new injury when he returned home earlier that day. “On our song?” she added, trying to sound more curious than accusatory.
He shook his head again. “Nah. Said he’s always working on his next album and has to write when the words come. He told me about the duet, though.” Boone smiled at her, but even beneath the brim of his hat, she could see the hint of concern in his gaze. “I know we don’t know each other well,” he continued, motioning between them. “But I feel like I know enough to ask… Are you sure you want to go down that road with my brother?”
Willow’s stomach protested before she could find the words, tying itself in copious knots, reminding her of just how unsure she truly was.
“No,” she replied, because what would be the point in lying to Boone when he did know enough to ask the question. “But I need a song, and your brother needs another image refresh.” She shrugged. “I know that tons of writers will tell you that there is no such thing as writer’s block, but I’ve been blocked for…well…a while.” How about two years ? But this conversation didn’t call for that much honesty. “And for some reason—probably stemming from a hideous crime I must have committed in a past life—the universe has decided to open the floodgates of creativity only when I’m verbally sparring with your brother.”
Boone laughed. “I’m guessing that crime was hideous as hell.” He tipped his hat and nodded toward the expanse of track in the straightaway ahead of them. “You up for a bit of nonverbal sparring? Maybe clear your head?”
Willow nodded back toward the guesthouse. “Did you boys work your shit out like I asked you to?”
Boone gave her a wink, and despite the vast differences she could already see between the brothers, they both had the same mischievous glint in their eyes. “It was a good start,” he told her. “Admittedly better than me dragging him to the firehouse boxing ring and goading him into taking a swing at me.”
Willow winced. Not only had she accused Ash of starting some sort of daytime brawl, but now Boone had to tell her the guy didn’t even want to fight in the first place?
“Yeah,” she finally said. “Nonverbal sparring it is.” Then she gave Holiday a nudge with her heels as she called, “Yah!” And the mare took off, hopefully leaving Boone Murphy in the dust.