Chapter 5
FIVE
No thanks, malls. I shop from home without pants like a normal person.
—Holly’s secret thoughts
HOLLY
I slept like shit.
There was no other word for it.
I tossed and turned, thinking about what I was going to do, and got almost zero sleep because of it.
When I finally peeled my eyes open and admitted defeat around five, I decided that there was only one option.
Sugar.
I got up, took a shower, and headed to the coffee shop in town.
I wasn’t the first to arrive, but I was early enough that all of the good pastries were still available.
“Hi, Reyelle.” I smiled at her tiredly.
She took one look at me and started to make me a coffee.
I watched as she put not one, not two, not three, but four shots of coffee into my iced latte before adding the vanilla.
I sighed. “It’s like you know me.”
“I know you,” she agreed with a smile. “But I also can see. You look like crap.”
I felt like crap, too.
“Ma,” Shade, Reyelle’s son, called from the kitchen. “Do you want me to take these pastries out?”
“Yeah, son,” Reyelle called as she looked down at her feet. “Poncho, do you want to go say hi to your second-favorite person?”
Poncho didn’t rise, but I leaned over the counter to get a look at her dog.
He was an Alaskan Malamute and old as time. He was also curious as hell, and got himself into pickles when he should be enjoying himself sunning on the porch. Not getting poked by a porcupine.
Something he’d done last week.
Poncho looked up with a doggy smile.
“Hey there.”
His tongue lolled.
“Lookin’ good there, Ponch.”
“His wounds are healing nicely,” Shade said as he came into the room. “Pain in the ass.”
I smiled.
I liked Shade.
I also loved Reyelle.
They were two of my best clients and had been seeing me for months with their curious Poncho.
Someone should tell the old man that curiosity killed the cat.
“What kind of pastries do you want today?” Reyelle asked.
“Anything that has copious amounts of sugar and will make me happy,” I teased.
She loaded me up, then added a few extra for Boone.
“See you this afternoon.” She smiled.
I was a regular at Reyelle’s, and usually stopped in before work and after.
“Thank you!” I waved at Shade who’d gone to put the chairs down off the tables.
He gave me a chin lift and kept working.
I headed out the door, then navigated the quiet streets of Sawtooth while quietly sipping on my coffee.
I kept my eyes peeled, because I may be in a quiet town that was pretty good about crime, but I was still a woman walking alone in the dark.
As I got to Windsor Animal Hospital—WAH as I dubbed it in my head sometimes—I used my key on the back door and headed to the back where the kennels were.
I greeted all of our boarders with smiles and coos, but stopped at one cage in particular.
“Hey there, Froto.” I smiled.
Froto was the runt of a Pomeranian litter that was in here a couple of weeks ago.
Froto’s family had gone home, but we’d taken possession of the runt when he’d been abandoned by his mother.
Froto was a cute little thing and had all the love in the world to share.
If I had a better home-life/work-life ratio, I’d take him home.
Sadly, I didn’t.
And I wasn’t going to adopt a dog that wouldn’t have my undivided attention.
Between Boone’s wife, Nettie, and me, we gave this little bugger all the love.
I was loving and kissing on him while getting the clinic up and running when there was a pounding on the front door.
My heart hammering, I walked to the office where the video feed was located and saw a man wearing jeans, a weathered Carhartt jacket, and a cowboy hat at the front door.
He was holding a large animal in his hands.
I put Froto back and headed to the front door.
Opening it wide, I blinked when I came face to face with Denver.
“Oh.” I blinked, trying to calm my pounding hard as well as mild annoyance that it was him on the other side of the door. “What’s going on?”
“My livestock guardians were attacked by the same wolves that got my cows yesterday,” he growled, anger in his voice. “Had to put my older one down. But Greta looks like she’s going to make it.”
I gestured for him to come inside.
He followed me into the back and laid Greta on the stainless-steel table.
I groaned when I saw all the damage to her face and front legs.
“Poor girl,” I said as I went to work.
Denver stayed at my side for a while, until Froto’s pathetic whining had him turning toward him.
“What’s wrong with him?” Denver asked.
“He’s starving,” I admitted. “He’s fed every couple of hours, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to get him fed before you got here.”
I kept working, my eyes on the work I was doing.
Greta was going to make it.
That I knew.
But she’d be sore and stiff for a while yet.
I don’t know when Boone finally got there, but when I got done with Greta, I had an extra set of hands to get her put into a kennel where she could rouse herself from the sedation.
When I got done and washed up, my back was already aching.
Oh, and all of my pastries were eaten.
“Denver’s gone to the store to replace them all,” the front desk worker, Rhett, said. “We didn’t realize you hadn’t eaten yet. We’re really sorry.”
“He’s going to get you another coffee, too.”
My brows rose. “Why? It would’ve kept.”
I was mad that he’d thought to replace it, to be honest.
I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t feel like it was any of his business whether my coffee was hot or not.
“It would’ve,” Boone agreed. “But Froto got excited when Denver was feeding him and knocked it to the ground.”
“Oh,” I grumbled, the anger leeching out of my sails.
Just as I said that, the front door opened and Denver came through, carrying my drink and another box of pastries.
I crossed my arms over my chest and watched him come toward me, not sure how to feel.
He set everything on the counter between us and asked, “Greta?”
“She’ll make it.” I eyed my drink. “Thanks.”
“My fault for knocking it over,” he said, not bothering to tell me how it’d gotten knocked over. “I’m sorry they ate your food, too. Got some replacements.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Least I could do,” he admitted.
“She’ll be fine,” I said. “You can come back later and probably pick her up. Was a lot of bluster, but I bet she’ll recover better at home.”
“Okay, Quad Shot.” He grinned.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about a nickname coming out of Denver’s mouth aimed my way.
But I decided not to be too angry about it.
Mostly because he looked relieved that his dog would be okay, and I would allow him a pass seeing as he’d had a hard morning.
After he left, I got changed into some scrubs and got to work.
I didn’t get a chance to check my email until midday.
When I did, I saw that my query on the room over the barn had been replied to with a number.
I immediately dialed as I gorged myself on the rest of the pastries Denver had brought back.
I fully expected the person who answered on the other end to be male, but when a young girl picked up, I frowned in confusion.
“Hello?”
“Uh, hi,” I said quietly. “I’m calling about the room for rent.”
“Oh!” she chirped. “That’s me! Or us! Well, it’s my dad’s. Kind of? I’m sorry. I’m blabbering. Hi, I’m DeeDee.”
“DeeDee Windsor?” I asked forlornly.
Because I knew that if this number went to DeeDee, that likely meant that this room for rent was over Denver’s barn.
Not some random strangers that hadn’t stolen my home.
“Yes.” She paused. “Do we know each other?”
“It’s Holly.”
“Holly?”
I gritted my teeth when I said, “Georgina. Georgie.”
“Oh!” DeeDee cried. “Georgie!” She paused. “You go by Holly?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Okay. I’ll try my hardest to start calling you Holly then. I don’t blame you for going by something different. Your mom’s name is everywhere.”
It was.
My mother, the Hollywood starlet that she was, was known far and wide.
Even people who had just moved here joked about how my name and my mother’s name were so close. Not that they knew that Georgina Kate was my mother.
I didn’t tell anyone that information.
But the town knew.
There was no hiding it.
Georgina Kate made her way back to Sawtooth every once in a while.
And when she did, she always caused a stir.
And by stir, I mean she caused her daughter, A.K.A.
me, to have to deal with her high-fallutin’, pompous, thinks-she’s-better-than-everyone self.
I always had to clean up the mess of anger and resentment she left in her wake.
Anyone who met Georgina Kate hated her.
She was not an easy person to get along with, and certainly wasn’t someone that anyone liked when they saw how she treated people she thought were less than her.
“Thank you,” I said to DeeDee, numb.
What was I going to do?
I’d started this phone call off hopeful.
But now…
“Please, please tell me that you’ll take the apartment.
It’s free. The only thing that’s wrong with it is that the shower doesn’t work in the apartment.
But it’s something my dad’s going to work on.
He has a contractor that he’s on the list with.
But he doesn’t trust many people to come out to the ranch and snoop in his stuff.
That’s also why this place isn’t taken yet.
Dad runs them off before he even meets them.
He’s done a background check on every person that’s called so far, and found all of them lacking.
I have a feeling you’ll be perfectly fine, though. ”
Before I could reply, she kept talking.