Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Hannah glanced over when the metal shed door whined open.
She gasped. Will McAllister strode inside, flashing his dimpled smile. “Will! What in heavens are you doing here?”
He pointed at his broad chest, dressed in a simple ranch outfit of a navy work shirt, worn jeans, and scuffed cowboy boots, along with his favorite tan cowboy hat. “I’m the investor. I wasn’t sure you’d come if you knew.”
The only reason she wouldn’t have come was if Ben were here.
She froze. Was he here? Heart pounding, she looked behind Will but didn’t see him. But her stomach still wouldn’t settle.
“Is Ben part of this?” she asked hoarsely, rising out of her chair as Neil rose in a tense line beside her.
“No, this ruse is all mine,” he said as he struck a rodeo clown pose with arms akimbo and a wide grin.
“You know how I love old Bond movies. Remember how we used to watch them? Plus, I figured you had other offers, so I wanted to make my invitation stand out. Do we hug, or are you going to swat me like old times?”
He wasn’t here. Oh, thank God! She took a deep breath and tried to calm down.
“You’d deserve it after scaring me like that.” She came over and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s good to see you. You look great.”
And he did. Hannah was so thankful she’d maintained contact with Will over the years. She’d been able to hear more news about Sanctuary Springs and also follow his life. He’d remained one of her closest friends.
She’d deliberately avoided asking questions about his twin—and he’d gone along—and when he’d suffered terribly in his car accident a year and a half ago, having him accept her forms of nontraditional medicine had been so…
affirming. She knew she’d made the right choice all those years ago, even if her heart had broken as a result.
Will angled back and thrust his right leg out, the one he’d almost lost in the accident.
Then he pulled up his shirt, revealing a long scar from his hip bone to his rib cage.
“My limp is almost entirely gone—thanks to your salve, teas, and the hot springs on Wild Mountain. You too, Neil. Your rehab suggestions were pure gold. Good to see you, man. I didn’t know you’d be coming. ”
Hannah started to speak but knew she couldn’t very well tell Will the reason she’d brought Neil. Nothing was going as planned.
Neil clapped him on the shoulder. “Something told me I needed to—although I didn’t know why exactly—but now it all makes sense.”
Hannah smoothed her hands down her sides, unable to stop her frown. “Well, I need more explanation, Will. For a while there with that hood over my face, I was afraid I was meeting the cartel.”
Will gave a booming hoot of a laugh. “Yeah, Logan texted me about that. He works at the county sheriff’s department and is a good friend of mine. I had to smother my laughter in the car on the way up. The cartel. That couldn’t be farther from the reason you’re here, Hannah.”
Her skin prickled. “You’d better start talking.”
Will gave her a comforting squeeze. “If you’re as excited about my offer as I am, then we’ll bring Ben in. Okay?”
Bring him in? So he was here. Will might as well throw her up and down like a yo-yo. She hadn’t seen Ben since she’d left on that horrible day she’d turned down his marriage proposal. The few times she’d managed to save enough money to come home for Christmas, he hadn’t come into town.
But she knew why…
She still didn’t have the words to make sense of what he’d done after she’d left. All she knew was that his choices had left deep, painful marks in her already shattered heart. He’d killed all hope of them ever being together.
“I’ll listen but only because it’s you,” she told him quietly. “Anyone else, I’d be out the door. God, Will, you’re banking on an awful lot.”
“Yeah, but almost dying gave me renewed courage.” His sigh was deep and pained. “I wasn’t going to kick things off this way, but I guess we’re starting here.”
She looked into his troubled face when he took her by her shoulders.
Growing up, he’d been the easygoing brother while Ben had been more serious.
They had the same black hair, but Will kept his short and clipped close while Ben had always waited until his was as shaggy as a grizzly to seek out Razor’s Edge Barbershop.
Racing had seemed the perfect fit for him after college, but it was obvious the accident had changed Will. She wondered how Ben had changed.
No, she had no right to wonder anymore.
“Hannah, you know I made you a promise when you left, one I didn’t feel I could make good on when Ben got together with Amber.”
God, she did not want to talk about this.
Of all the people for Ben to get together with, why her? That he would turn to Amber less than a month after she’d left—and get her pregnant—then marry her? There is no coming back from that sort of betrayal.
“Hannah,” Will continued, tipping up her chin.
“Since we never discussed Ben, you need to know my brother and I were further apart than ever after he hooked up with Amber. I started racing cars to be away more, and I lived a little wild. I didn’t like how things were anymore.
I felt like I was losing my brother and everything I loved.
Then I had the accident, and it was my wake-up call, my second chance. ”
Laying a hand on his arm, she gazed at his troubled face. He still hurt, and the emotion called to the healer inside her.
“I told you how the semitruck veered in my lane and struck the side,” he continued hoarsely.
“You know how my car tumbled down the ravine. What you don’t know is that as I lay there on the ground, a light appeared outside the vehicle.
It hurt to turn my head, but I had to see what it was. I saw Sarah, Hannah.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth, tears welling. “You did?”
“Yeah.” His light blue eyes were shining with tears as well. “She looked so sweet, standing there in white with her green eyes filled with this white light from inside her. I called her name, but she shook her head. She told me I couldn’t go.”
Tears were slipping down her face now.
“I had to stay—to make things right between you and Ben.” He gave a heartbreaking smile. “Because you’d once loved each other deeply and the wounds had to be healed.”
A full-body shiver stole over her. Sarah…
When she’d left for Scotland, she’d felt Sarah understood.
But after her year was up and she’d heard of Ben’s divorce not too long after, some odd things had happened.
Her lights had started to flicker at home, like her sister used to do when they were kids, trying to scare each other.
Her apartment flooded, forcing her to find another place to live.
Her gut had churned, thinking if it was Sarah trying to tell her to leave Scotland and go back home, but she’d told her sister to quit torturing her—if it was her doing it.
Didn’t Sarah understand how deep Ben’s betrayal had cut?
The strange occurrences had stopped, and if she ever saw the lights flicker, she’d shut them off and leave the room.
Had Sarah never truly given up? Because that was what she was hearing.
Neil’s hand came to rest on her back, and she leaned into the comforting touch. “Oh, Will. I don’t know what to say.”
He gripped her shoulders. “Say you’ll listen to my idea, that you’ll keep an open mind and heart. Because it’s not just me who wants you to. It’s Sarah.”
Pain racked her chest. Even now, she ached for those cold winter nights when they’d read under the covers with a flashlight, giggling together and holding hands as they went to sleep. “All right, Will, I’ll listen.”
“Let’s sit down,” Neil quietly said, guiding her back to her chair. “Have some water. Take a couple of cleansing breaths. You too, Will. It can’t be easy talking about having a near-death experience.”
Will eased slowly into the metal chair he dragged from the corner.
“It’s not. The only other person I’ve told was my dad—and I’m not sure he knew how to take it.
You know how he is, Hannah. He’s there to help when you need him, but listening isn’t one of his strengths.
I’ve had to learn that one myself. I felt like I was drowning after you left.
Probably because Ben’s my twin and I could feel his anguish.
That’s not something I want you to take on.
I’m just saying you mean a lot to us—not just Ben. ”
She swiped away more tears. “Whew! And here I thought I was coming for a PowerPoint presentation.”
“I could make up slides, if you want,” he joked, taking the bottle of water Neil handed him before gulping half of it down. “All right, let’s turn to my presentation. You remember my grandma Elena?”
“Of course. She was a trailblazer in botany and helped women back in a time when it was a rarity.”
Will set his large hands in his lap. “Neil, a little background. She’s my triple-great-grandma, who met and married my grandfather when he went down to Texas to buy cattle in the late 1880s. She was from a wealthy Spanish family and had been sent to a finishing school in Switzerland.”
“But she was no debutant, Neil,” Hannah interjected.
“You should hear the stories about how she made Sanctuary Springs a haven for women who had no place to go after closing down the town’s whorehouse as a bet in a high-stakes poker game with the owner.
She ran ads in newspapers in Chicago and San Francisco, telling women they could find sanctuary in the town.
That’s why the town changed its name. She gave them vocational training and then found them jobs all over the country. ”
“She sounds like an amazing woman,” Neil said, sitting calmly next to her.