Chapter 12
Even though the ride back from the farmers market was less than five minutes, the silence in Colt’s truck—despite the four people sitting in it—felt interminable.
Willow leaned forward and placed a gentle hand on her brother’s shoulder as he slowed to a stop in front of the guesthouse.
“What are the odds we make it out of this truck and back inside without you doing the big brother thing I already know you did last night?” she asked with what she hoped was a mollifying tone.
To her sister-in-law’s credit, Jenna did grab her husband’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Willow had at least half her immediate family’s support.
“Slim to none after what I saw behind that tent,” Colt replied through gritted teeth.
“It’s okay, Wills,” Ash remarked from where he sat in the back of the cab beside her. “Whatever Colt wanted to happen last night needs to happen now. Then we move forward.”
Willow sighed, kissed her brother on the cheek, and then pivoted to face Ash. She thought better of putting on any sort of public display in her brother’s truck. So she offered him a tentative smile, still not sure herself what to make of everything Ash had said…and the words she’d still been unable to say back.
“Come with me to check on the hens?” Jenna suggested, and Willow nodded with a sigh.
She hopped out of the cab and retrieved her guitar case from the bed, carrying it to the front porch of the guesthouse before following Jenna across the field to the chicken coop.
“I don’t really need to check on the hens,” Jenna admitted once they were far enough away from the truck that they could no longer see or hear what might be taking place between Colt and Ash. “I was already here before dawn collecting eggs for the market.”
“I know,” Willow replied. “But can we… I mean, if you’re going to tell me how stupid I am or what a huge mistake I’m making, can you just not? It’s not any different from the conversation I’ve already had a hundred times in my head, and it’s not going to keep me from worrying that the two men I care about most might be a hundred yards away kicking the shit out of each other because of me.”
Jenna cupped Willow’s cheek in her palm and smiled sweetly. “You know that the reason your brother and I do what we do—fostering kids, especially siblings others deem too old to adopt—is because of what happened to you and him.”
Willow nodded, her throat growing tight as her eyes burned. “They were good people,” Willow admitted, unable to keep the tears from falling. “They loved me and treated me like their own, but a part of me never forgave them for splitting up Colt and me. All those years apart when he was bouncing in and out of Child Services.” She shook her head. “He won’t even tell me about it, which means it’s probably worse than I imagine.” Willow sniffled. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that.”
Jenna nodded, then pulled a pack of tissues out of the tote bag slung over her shoulder.
“Thank you.” Willow let loose a soft sob as she accepted the offering.
“The hurt that you will always feel for your brother is not unlike the hurt he’ll always feel for you after what happened with Ash four years ago.”
“But he doesn’t know…” Willow began but then let her voice trail off. Colt didn’t know the whole story. He didn’t know that Ash tried—at least, Willow wanted to believe he tried—to make things right. But that didn’t matter. He was her brother, and he loved her and would do anything to protect her from getting hurt like that again. “Right,” she continued. “I get it.”
Jenna grabbed Willow’s hand and gave her a soft squeeze. “If there is one thing you can rest your heart on, it’s that one of Colt Morgan’s missions in life is to make sure you never hurt like that again…even if that means bitin’ his tongue and grittin’ his teeth while he watches you fall for a man he neither likes nor trusts… yet .”
A hen squawked inside the coop, and Jenna grinned. “Attagirl,” she said with a grin. Then she slipped inside the coop and returned with one of the hens under her arm. She set the chicken down in the grass and watched as she circled Willow’s feet, pecking a trail around them.
Willow laughed. “Lucy, right?” she asked, remembering the hen from the last time she’d visited her brother and sister-in-law. Though Willow hadn’t received such a greeting from the feathered friend back then.
“That’s right,” Jenna replied. “And that’s all I need to see to know that my girl hasn’t lost her touch and that this thing with you and Ash is the real deal.”
Willow’s brows furrowed. “I don’t follow.”
Jenna picked the hen back up and cooed at her like they were speaking their own language. “Lucy here is an expert at matters of the heart.” She held up a hand to ward off any protest, not that Willow could think of one at the moment. “I don’t like to share when it comes to Lucy’s… abilities …unless she’s in the midst of…ability- ing . Otherwise I might have people making demands of my girl to predict things she cannot predict. She can only call it when she sees it.”
Willow took a step back, suddenly yet inexplicably on the defense. “What does she see?” she asked, not sure why she heard a tremor in her own voice.
Jenna waved her off with a grin. “That you’re in love , sweetheart.”
Willow swallowed. “I’m not… I mean, I never said…”
Jenna kissed the feathers on top of Lucy’s head and then put her back in the coop.
“It’s okay,” Jenna assured her. “Even if you don’t know it yet, Lucy does.”
Except Willow had never said the word love to anyone other than her birth mother and Colt. Just because she was letting Ash back into her life didn’t mean that would—or could—change, not after her heart had been clobbered just for having the audacity to think it.
“She could be wrong, couldn’t she?” Willow asked. “I mean, she’s a goddamn chicken, Jenna. Just because she pecks at my feet doesn’t mean—”
“Hey…” Jenna interrupted, hands held up in defense. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought it would help you to know it was real.”
“I’m sorry.” Willow cleared her throat. “I know you’re trying to help. But I need to be able to trust Ash on my own.” She held her arms out, spinning slowly to take in not just the Murphy Ranch but all that Meadow Valley had become for Jenna and Colt. “I’m so happy that you and my brother got the fairy tale. I really am. But that doesn’t mean it exists for all of us.”
Jenna sighed. “You’re right,” she told her.
Willow’s eyes widened. “Wait… I am?”
Jenna took a step forward and placed her hands on her sister-in-law’s shoulders.
“Darlin’, if you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, you’ll find a way to make sure it does.” She shrugged. “Lucy might be able to spot the real deal, but she can’t do your part of the job.”
Willow scoffed. “Which is what, exactly?”
“Letting yourself believe that you deserve the fairy tale just as much as the rest of us do.” Jenna nodded back toward the guesthouse. “Come on. If they were going to kill each other, they ought to be done by now.”
Jenna dropped her hands, turned toward the guesthouse, and started walking without giving Willow a backward glance.
What the hell did Jenna mean…believe she deserved the fairy tale? Of course Willow believed she deserved it. Why wouldn’t she? She was a good person, right? And good people deserved good things. So why were Jenna’s words crawling beneath her skin and seeping into her blood like a slow-acting poison?
Willow shook off the thought. Whatever happened between her and Ash was about Ash proving that they were the real deal, regardless of whether a hen agreed with them or not.
When she got back to the guesthouse, Colt and Jenna were gone, and she found Ash waiting for her on the porch swing, beside which she’d rested her guitar.
He patted the spot next to him, and Willow was relieved to see no evidence of violence having ensued between him and her brother. She lowered herself beside him and felt her pulse quicken not only at his nearness but also at what she recognized was her fight-or-flight instinct kicking in.
They rocked back and forth for several seconds in silence. Finally, Willow broke the ice.
“I’m terrified,” she admitted.
Ash slid an arm behind her and pulled her to him, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“I know,” he replied. Then he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, lingering to inhale with his nose buried in her hair.
The realization sent a shiver down the back of Willow’s neck all the way to her toes.
“Your brother wanted to hit me, you know,” Ash added with a laugh. “You want to know how I changed his mind?”
She tilted her head to look at him and nodded.
“Same thing I told you, except I put it in writing.” He pulled a folded-up napkin out of his pocket and handed it to her. In his smeared, left-handed scrawl, the words on the napkin read:
I, Ashton Murphy, hereby certify that from this day forward, the day I broke Willow Morgan’s heart, I am retiring from the music industry as a singer, songwriter, performer, and any other entity whereby I profit from being a musician. Additionally, the witness to this contract is permitted to enact Article A should the former come to pass.
It was signed both by Ash and by her brother as a witness.
“All we have to do is take it to the library in the morning and get it notarized. Then it’ll be official,” he added.
“Ash…” she started, shaking her head. “I would never ask that of you. To say it is one thing. But you can’t put your career on the line to get me to trust you.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t. I put my career on the line to get your brother to trust me.” He flipped the napkin over and handed it back to her. “Article A was his idea.”
Willow gasped.
Should the former come to pass, the witness and promisor will face each other in the firehouse ring, gloves off.
“Absolutely not!” she exclaimed. “Honestly, what is the matter with men? Violence solves nothing .”
“Says the woman who knocked me out on first greeting.”
Willow groaned. “How long are you going to keep throwing that in my face when I thought someone had broken into my house and bedroom ?”
Ash laughed. “Okay! Okay! Last mention. I promise. But this?” He waved the napkin between them. “I need the people who matter to know that I am prepared to put my money—and your brother’s fists—where my mouth is.”
Willow hated the contract. She really did. But she couldn’t help the way it forced a crack into the armor she was still wearing.
“What if I put something else where your mouth is?” she teased. Because even if the prospect of love terrified her, the prospect of want was something else entirely.
He hooked a finger under her chin and tilted her head toward his. Willow closed her eyes and skimmed her teeth over her bottom lip, waiting for Ash to take her up on her offer.
“Willow Morgan, there is nothing I want more than to scoop you up off this swing and take you straight to bed. But I have something else I want to do first.”
He spoke so close to her mouth that she could feel the vibration of his words in his breath. But he didn’t kiss her. When she opened her eyes, ready to protest, he was grinning at her with the kind of mischief she would never trust on another man’s face, but she decided if they were going to give this thing a real chance, she had to start somewhere.
“This better be good, Murphy.”
“Oh, it will be,” he assured her with his patented Ash Murphy wink. And then he hopped off the swing and held his hand out for Willow to take. “Follow me.”
***
“Riding?” she asked after Ash directed her to put on boots suitable for riding and walking and pack a few overnight essentials. Then he led her to the barn. “I basically throw myself at you, and you want to go riding?” He already had Midnight tacked and ready to go with more substantial gear than Willow had shown up with. “Why do I get the feeling we aren’t heading out to the clearing?”
Ash answered her first with a grin. “Because we’re not heading out to the clearing,” he added.
“We’re taking the horses overnight?” she asked as Ash grabbed her small backpack and hiked it onto his shoulders. “Hey… I can carry my own pack,” she added.
He nodded toward Holiday where she stood tacked and ready to go as well. “I talked to Eli, and we both agreed that Holiday is good to go for the trip, but we don’t want her bearing any more weight than her rider for at least another six months, so the pack’s all mine.”
Willow crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him. “You talked to Eli, figured this whole trip out, and tacked up both horses while I was throwing together a ‘few overnight essentials’?” She made air quotes around the last three words, and Ash nodded.
“Fine,” he relented. “I talked to him and Boone about it last night before you showed up. And before you think I was getting ahead of myself and assuming you would actually agree to come with me on a trip like this, I put it all out there as a hypothetical. I just…” He blew out a shaky breath. “The thought of having you in my hometown and not being able to show you some of my favorite places?” Ash shrugged. “I wanted to be prepared on the off chance you decided you didn’t hate me anymore.”
He winced when he said the word hate , and Willow found herself doing the same.
“I never actually said I hated you,” Willow mumbled.
He huffed out a laugh. “Maybe not, but when I asked if you were going to hate me forever, I remember you saying something about checking back at forever o’clock.”
“Yikes.” She grimaced. “So that’s what I sound like after four years of buried—”
“ Hate ,” Ash interrupted, finishing the sentence for her.
But Willow shook her head. “ Hurt ,” she corrected. “Four years of buried hurt can sound an awful lot like hate.”
Ash nodded slowly. “And now?” he asked.
She glanced from him to Holiday, and the mare whinnied and snorted at her in response.
“Now,” she started, “I think you should show me one of your favorite places.”
He grinned, and they both mounted their horses and rode with Ash leading the way.