Chapter 3
Willow got the last of the toffee shortbread cookies—her and her brother’s favorite—onto the cooling rack and untied her apron.
Moments after Sloane left, Ash found his shirt and shoes and disappeared somewhere outside himself.
“I need to find my phone,” he’d mumbled before striding straight past her and out the door, which had given Willow way too much time to think. And because she hated thinking about things she didn’t want to think about, she baked. Hence the whole early-morning shortbread-batter creation in the first place because sleeping in that big, beautiful, ridiculously comfortable king-sized bed had not been an option if all she could do was lie there and think about the fact that Ash Murphy was passed out on the couch on the other side of her door.
Except now the cookies were done, her quiet two months had turned into a fun house version of her life, and she still didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts…or with the newly divorced Ashton Murphy, for that matter. Yeah, that little nugget of information had not escaped her notice.
A.B., or Annabeth Calder-Payne, was a Scottish tennis prodigy with an affinity for country music…or at least for a certain country music singer-songwriter who grew up on a horse ranch and charmed every woman in his orbit.
As the story went, the two supposedly struck up a secret relationship around five years ago after she won a tournament that happened to be in the same town where he’d had a gig, only going public a year later when news of their engagement hit all the online entertainment outlets on an early, rainy, we-should-stay-in-bed-all-day Sunday morning.
Bile rose in Willow’s throat, and she yanked the apron over her head and tossed it on the couch.
This was why she shouldn’t be left alone with her thoughts.
This was why she’d chosen to spend the next two months far from the world of country music…other than penning her final song.
And this was why she needed to get the hell out of this house and onto the back of a horse where she could outrun the events of last night, the mistake of a deal she’d struck this morning, and the memory of a rainy Sunday morning when for a tiny fraction of a moment, she was a na?ve twentyfive-year-old up-and-comer who thought she was in love.
***
Though Willow had only met Eli once, years ago, and had yet to meet Beth in person, the three had been in contact for the past couple weeks leading to her stay in Meadow Valley.
“All three horses are healthy and fit for riders,” Eli had told her. “Cirrus, the male, is a bit rambunctious. He likes to play. But once you get him going in the arena, he’s all business. Midnight is a mama’s girl. If it’s not Beth, she seems to prefer female riders, but once she trusts anyone—man or woman—she warms up pretty quickly. And then there’s Holiday, the newest member of the family. She was only meant to be a rehab after a ligament, but then again, so were the other two. Now I own three horses.”
Willow had laughed, falling a little bit in love with each horse as he described them. “And you and Beth are okay with me riding while you’re gone?”
“Of course,” Eli replied. “Your brother claims you’re a better rider than he is, and that’s reassurance enough for me.”
As she entered the barn now, she shook her head and laughed. Colt was always her biggest cheerleader. Not a day went by that she didn’t thank the universe for reuniting the two after years apart…and for finally giving her brother the happiness he deserved with Jenna and their ever-evolving foster family. Willow wrote songs about the elusiveness of love and the inevitability of heartbreak because that was all she knew. But her brother was proof that for at least some, love was more than a few chords on a guitar, several verses of lament, and a powerful—often angry—bridge she usually sang so hard it burned her throat.
Willow strode down the walkway lined with stalls, ready to see which horse she connected with best, when she stopped short, her breath caught in her throat.
Out of three stalls bearing three nameplates to identify each inhabitant, the door labeled MIDNIGHT hung wide open with no mare in sight.
She bolted out into the arena and found it empty save for fresh hoofprints in the dirt, which she followed to the far end where they abruptly stopped. She absently brushed her finger over a fresh-looking nick in the wood on the top of the fence.
“Shit!” she hissed, a splinter sliding beneath the skin of her index finger. Willow quickly pulled it out with her teeth and then stormed back to the barn where she found herself pacing for the second time today, this time between Cirrus and Holiday’s doors.
“Is this technically his family’s ranch?” she asked the gelding and the mare. “Of course it is. But did he let his family know he was coming home to play house and upend my short reprieve between gigs?” She threw her arms in the air and glanced at Holiday’s dark eyes as she whinnied and nudged her tawny-brown nose in Willow’s direction. “No,” she told the mare. “No, he did not. And now he’s either off galivanting who knows where on Beth’s favorite horse or…” The or made her stomach drop as if she’d just leaped off a cliff.
Or he chose the horse who doesn’t take kindly to male riders, and the mare decided to teach him a lesson about his poor judgment.
Willow glanced down at the tiny spot of blood on her finger where the splinter had been and swore again. She couldn’t believe what she was about to do, especially after striking a deal with Satan less than two hours before. She was going to go save Ash Murphy.
Holiday seemed to trust her off the bat, so as soon as Willow had her tacked and ready to go, she led the mare into the arena and walked her toward the place where Midnight’s hoofprints stopped.
Holiday marched in place and snorted, shaking her head back and forth.
“You want to go find them, girl?” Willow asked, patting Holiday’s withers and then stroking her nose. She was about to ask her horse if she thought she could make the jump when she noticed that only two sections of the fence to the left there was a latch, which meant a gate, which also meant that Midnight had not been led out of the arena. She’d taken off on her own.
The only thing that lay beyond the Murphy property in the direction they were facing was the woods.
How much trouble could one man get himself into in less than twenty-four hours? She guessed she was about to find out.
She led the trusting horse through the gate and closed it behind her, already sure that riding one of Beth and Eli’s horses off of the property was not what they’d had in mind when they entrusted their barn—and its inhabitants—to her. But Willow didn’t have a choice now, did she? She’d already made one inadvertent attempt on Ash Murphy’s life. If he ended up dead in the forest off the property where she temporarily lived and where a broken vase with her fingerprints all over it lay in the guesthouse trash, who would be person-of-interest number one?
So she hooked her boot in Holiday’s stirrup and hoisted herself into the saddle. She gave the mare a gentle nudge with her heels and a reluctant “Ya!” Then the two were off toward the forest where—so help her, god—Willow better not have to drag Ash’s corpse back to civilization.
***
“No!” Willow growled as she and Holiday came to a halt in a clearing. She dismounted from the horse and tied her off to a small tree, then pivoted back to where Ashton Murphy reclined against the trunk of a massive maple tree, boots crossed at the ankles, straw hat lowered over his eyes, and a black Friesian she assumed was Midnight grazing beside him, not tied to anything.
“NO!” she repeated, louder this time, but Ash barely stirred.
“You sure do like that word, don’t you?” he mumbled from where he lay. Then he tipped his hat up and dared to flash her the cocksure grin that stared out at his adoring fans from his carefully curated social media posts. Not that she’d ever looked on purpose, but Willow couldn’t help what showed up in her feed.
She opened her mouth to respond but caught herself just as she was about to utter the exact word he expected to hear. No.
“I thought you were hurt. Or worse,” she admitted.
He straightened so he no longer looked half-asleep and crossed his arms. “And let me guess… You’re disappointed to find me alive and well.”
Willow fisted her hands at her sides and stifled an exasperated scream. Instead, she counted to five, exhaled a steadying breath, and decided that he could push her buttons all he wanted, but she would not push back. She couldn’t live like that for two days, let alone two months.
“Eli told me that Midnight doesn’t take to male riders as easily as female, and when I saw her hoofprints and a nick in the fence that indicated she’d jumped when you very well could have used the gate like any other civilized human…” Nope, she reminded herself. Not gonna push. “I did not want to find anyone un alive or un well…even if it was you.” It might have sounded like button pushing, but it was the truth.
Midnight gave Willow a cursory glance and then, as if she were a cat rather than a giant equine, she spun once and then laid herself down beside him, resting her head on his lap.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Willow said, letting out an incredulous laugh. “Actually, no. I should have known you’d have that horse wrapped around your finger the second she laid eyes on you. After all, she’s a female, right?”
Willow’s throat burned, and she spun back toward Holiday, who was happily chomping on some grass.
Maybe she was desperate for a song, but at what cost? Her pride? Her dignity?
“Willow, wait…” Ash called from over her shoulder, but he sounded closer than where he’d been lying beneath the tree.
She stopped a foot from her horse, and Holiday lifted her head to ask for a quick pat on the nose, to which Willow immediately obliged.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Ash continued, close enough now that he could speak softly. “It caught me off guard, and I needed to get away for a bit to clear my head. I should have said something before leaving. I should have known that you were still you…that you’d worry.”
She rounded on him, her gaze narrowed on his. “It was a few months four years ago, Murphy. You don’t get to pretend like that means you knew me then, and you certainly don’t know me now.”
He nodded. “Plus a few more months of touring before we...” he reminded her. “But fair enough.”
“Or that you seeing me creates any sort of need for you to clear your head,” she added. Because what the hell did that mean, and why did she even care? She didn’t. Not then and not now.
He nodded again. Ugh. Why was he being so agreeable? It made it a lot harder for her to hold on to her anger.
“I can go to your brother’s ranch,” he told her. “Or see if Boone and Casey can put me up…after he reams me for missing his and Casey’s wedding.”
“And Eli and Beth’s,” Willow mumbled. “Plus the births of their children.”
He flinched as if she’d threatened to strike him with another vase, and for an odd moment, her chest ached at the possibility that Ash’s absence from his family’s life might not have been entirely by design.
But then she remembered he was an adult with free will and swallowed the lump of guilt rising in her throat.
Willow sighed. “We already established that you’d turn the guest ranch into a zoo. And last I heard, Boone, Casey, and Kara live in a two-bedroom apartment above her salon. Where are they going to put you?”
He shrugged. “I’m either a couch surfer in the guesthouse or a couch surfer over there. Hell, if Eli and Beth are gone long enough, I can probably crash over there.”
She shook her head. “They’re only in Vegas for a week. Don’t you… I mean, haven’t you talked to your brothers? Didn’t they know you were coming home?”
Ash pulled his hat down further over his eyes so that all she could see of his face were the tip of his nose and the tight line of his jaw.
“ I didn’t know I was coming home until I did.” He shrugged. “And I wasn’t exactly sure they’d be happy to see me after—you know—missing all those things.”
The words I’m sorry dangled from the tip of her tongue. But they were also words she’d waited months to hear from the man standing directly in front of her. Yet it was somehow four years after the fact, and she’d never heard a damned thing.
“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and I already have no idea how this is going to work,” she admitted. “But I need a song. I need the song.”
“And I, apparently, need yet another image refresh,” he added.
Willow glanced over his shoulder to where Midnight now rolled back and forth in a small patch of dry dirt. She laughed. “I can’t believe you had her eating out of the palm of your hand in a matter of minutes.” She flicked the brim of his hat up, and Ash’s eyes widened before he met her grin with his own.
“Come on, Morgan,” he drawled. “You know it was seconds, not minutes.”
She groaned. “Of course it was.” She suddenly eyed him up and down, realizing that when he’d left the guesthouse earlier that morning, he was wearing a different-colored T-shirt, and there’d been no cowboy hat in sight. “Where’s all your stuff?” she asked. “And where did you change?”
He glanced down at his fresh white tee and the same dusty jeans he’d thrown back on that morning. “Turns out,” he began, his eyes meeting hers again. “That I got taken into custody before I had a chance to pack last night, but the hotel boxed up my belongings and dropped them on the front porch this morning. Grabbed a clean shirt and my hat on my way out the door and then tossed the box into the bushes. Didn’t feel like the right time to unpack.”
She’d already seen him nearly naked today, but for some reason the thought of him stripping off his old shirt for a new one—all on the way to hopping onto the back of a horse—knocked her a little off-kilter.
“What?” he asked, and Willow noticed she was staring at him.
She shook her head and let out a nervous laugh. “I feel like there’s a lyric in there somewhere. Didn’t feel like the right time to unpack… ”
“ With the whole damned world cracking a whip at my back? ” he asked but didn’t wait for her to answer. “ So I hopped on a horse and rode until dark… ”
“ Knowing with each step I’d never recapture the spark! ” Willow bounced on her heels, a grin spreading across her face. “Holy shit, Murphy. This might actually work!”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and sang the words with a random melody into her voice recorder before she forgot them.
The song might work, she meant, of course. Living together for two months without killing each other? The jury was still out on that one.