6. Wentworth
SIX
Wentworth
There’s a big painted, wooden sign up ahead—the kind I’ve only seen in movies. It says:
WELCOME TO BARRETT VALLEY. MONTANA
POPULATION: 479
As soon as I see it, I dig my battered Red Sox cap (another gift from my grandfather) out of my duffle and pull it on. Sunglasses already in place, I lower the bill of my ball cap over my face before tugging down the sleeves of my long-sleeve shirt, making sure my tattoos are sufficiently covered. I can’t do much about the ones on my neck or my hands but they’re not the ones most people notice. It’s the one of Buck that tends to draw attention. There aren’t many six foot five guys running around, rocking a tattoo of their pet Koi fish on their forearm.
Watching me from the corner of his eye, Damien looks like he wants to ask me what I’m doing but he doesn’t. Instead, he just sighs like he’s relieved he doesn’t have to go through the shit I do while the truck crests the top of the hill to reveal the valley below. In the center of it is a clump of buildings, none of them more than a few stories tall. “That’s Barrett proper,” he tells me while we coast down the hill.
“ Barrett —as in your boss, Barrett?” I ask, studying the buildings that line the two-lane blacktop road that cuts through the middle of them.
“Yup.” Damien gives me a nod. “Barretts settled this valley in the 1900s. Not much to it, really. A bar and a diner in one building. Post office and grocery store across the street. Courthouse and town constable next door—although he doesn’t get much business. Folks around here tend to take care of their own affairs.” He looks uncomfortable for a moment before he restarts his guided tour. “General store and a few shops. Medical clinic and gas station. Main street dead ends at Barrett Square. That's the Baptist church on the corner—Presbyterian’s across the street.” He lifts a hand from the steering wheel long enough to point out a pair of bright white buildings, facing each other like they’re in the middle of a staring contest, each with a tall spire, topped with a cross, pointing at the sky. “Churches are the only thing we got two of,” he jokes before dropping his hand.
“Looks like Mayberry,” I say, referencing one of the old black and white TV shows I used to watch with my grandfather. Angling my head to keep looking at the town when Damien takes a left at the bottom of the hill, I find something missing. “No schools?”
“Ranch kids are homeschooled.” He gives me a shrug, leaving the tiny town to shrink in the rearview while we drive down a winding dirt road, barely big enough for two cars. “Town kids get bussed into Shelby.”
Not so different from my life. Delilah and I had a small army of caretakers—nannies and private tutors that followed us while our mother dragged us around the world, from one Hawthorne penthouse suite to the next. I never stepped a single foot inside a traditional classroom until I was in high school and old enough to tell her that Delilah and I wanted to live in Boston with our grandparents. Instead of angry or disappointed, Astrid was relieved to be free of us. “If everyone’s homeschooled on separate ranches, how do they socialize?”
“There’s a co-op that gets together a few times a week for the younger kids—art and music—stuff like that. They put on dances for the older kids a few times a year. Aside from that, they have 4H and rodeo—the Saddle’ll let ‘em in on the weekends to play pool and listen to music as long as they don’t get caught drinking underage.” Damien’s features crumple into a frown for a moment. “Are you a vegan?” he blurts out of nowhere.
“What?” I look at him for a second before I laugh. “No—why?”
“How about an axe murderer?” He throws me some side-eye like he thinks I might have one stashed in my duffle.
“I don’t even own an axe,” I tell him, still laughing.
“Are you into weird sex stuff?”
“Define weird .” This one stiffens the back of my neck, my laughter dwindling down to a scoff. “Where’s this coming from?” When he doesn’t answer me, I shake my head. “Look—”
“It’s just occurred to me that we don’t really know each other.” Damien gives me a shrug while avoiding the questioning glare I have pinned to his face. “This is where I live. I want to make sure I’m not making a mistake by bringing you here, is all.”
“Bullshit.” I might not have seen my brother in a while but I remember what a terrible liar he is. “You want to try that again?”
“Okay...” Damien shoots me a quick, guarded look. “Mr. Barrett has a daughter.” His frown reappears. “Two of them actually, Kait and Abs—Abigail.”
Now I’m frowning too because I suddenly understand what he’s asking me and why and I don’t like it. “ And ?”
“ And Mr. Barrett put Kait in charge of cleaning up after you and making your weekly supply runs but if you’re an axe murdering sex weirdo, I’d just as soon know now because—”
“Fuck you.” I growl at him, narrowing my gaze on his profile. “I’ve never hurt a woman and I never will—not ever .”
“Sorry.” My heated response loosens the tension in his jaw. “I had to ask, man.”
“Fuck off.” I turn away from him to aim my gaze out the window. “Seriously, fuck off—and for the record, I don’t need someone cleaning up after me. The last thing I want is some dizzy little farm girl hanging around, figuring out who I am and blabbing online that I’m hiding out in her father’s hunting cabin.”
“Ranch.”
“What?” I bark back, feeling my temper start to cool when I see the corners of his mouth twitch like he’s fighting to keep from laughing at me.
“Technically, Kait isn’t a farm girl.” The grin he’s been fighting to hold back breaks loose. “She’s a ranch girl and as far as the internet goes, you’re safe. There aren’t too many places in the valley that can even catch a signal.” Pulling off the main road, Damien pilots the truck down a private drive, passing under a large, arching sign that reads:
BARR TT
In the distance, there’s a large two-story house made of log and stone surrounded by several outbuildings and sprawling green grass. Instead of heading in their direction, Damien takes another right, this one taking us up an incline and into a series of narrow switchbacks, the house and outbuildings instantly swallowed by a thick screen of trees. “She’s going to college—Kait.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it, keeping his eyes on the razor thin road ahead of us. On my side is the mountain where climbing. On his, a sheer drop-off of about a hundred feet and climbing. “The university of Montana—online.”
“You just said there’s no Wi-Fi signal out here,” I remind him while the truck rumbles over a cattle guard.
“No.” Executing another right-hand turn, Damien shakes his head. “I said there aren’t too many places to catch one—this is one of them.”
I give him a puzzled look, trying to figure out what ranch girl’s education plan has to do with me. Before I can ask, the road opens on a large swath of land dug in between mountains. Out Damien’s window, I can see a smallish lake, so clear and blue it reflects the sky and mountains above it, faint wisps of steam rising from its surface.
“Hot lake,” Damien tells me when he catches me looking out the window. “Water stays about eighty degrees, year-round. From what Mr. Barrett says, it’s one of the reasons Elias Barrett settled the valley—Northpoint is the original homestead. Mr. Barrett rebuilt it a few years back.”
Ahead a smaller version of the large, sprawling house we just left behind comes into view. There’s someone sitting on the front porch steps. When they spot us coming up the road, they stand.
A girl—maybe a woman—with long brown hair that shines a burnish sort of gold in the sunlight and the kind of body that makes me sit up a little straighter in my seat. Compact and curvy in a pair of worn jeans and T-shirt that does little to hide her full breasts and firm, round ass.
Definitely a woman.
My age—maybe a little younger but not by much.
I suddenly understand why my brother is nervous about my being alone with her.
Sensing my sudden interest, Damien slows the truck to a crawl. “I did you a favor, right?” He asks while he brings the truck to a stop in front of the porch steps the woman is standing on. “When you needed somewhere to lay low, I delivered.”
I cut his boss a check for four-hundred grand for my stay here but he’s right—if not for Damien giving me the hook-up, I’d probably still be in LA hiding under my bed. “Yeah...” I say it cautiously while I watch the woman standing less than ten feet away, watch me. “So?”
Goddamn, she’s beautiful.
Not the kind of beautiful I’m used to.
Not perfect and plastic like my mother.
Not carefully constructed like Lexi and the rest of the LA crowd I’ve gotten used to over the years.
This woman is a kind of beautiful I’ve never seen before. Quiet and steady. Strong and connected to everything around her but there’s sadness, buried so deep, it’s almost like a secret. Looking at her makes my fingers ache and my mind race to memorize the curves and angles of her face so I can remember them for later.
Shifting the truck into park, Damien kills the engine, leaving the keys dangling from the ignition. “So, when I did that, I didn’t know Kait uses Northpoint’s Wi-fi signal for school.”
“Northpoint?” I don’t look at him when I say it.
He gives me a slightly exasperated sigh. “Yeah— this is Northpoint. ”
When he says it, my gaze drops to the backpack sitting on the porch steps at the young woman’s feet and it suddenly clicks—his offensive personal questions and his overshare about his boss’s daughter.
Before I can tell him no— hell no —Damien, opens the door on his side of the truck and gets out.