Whiskey Proposal (Foster House #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Emerson

This town has no business being as cute as it is.

I drive through Huckleberry Springs, Montana, resisting the urge to shrink down in my seat.

I might’ve left when I was fourteen, but almost twenty years later, I tense, waiting for all the unwanted, unneeded, and unloved feelings to roar back.

My Mercedes stands out against the pickups and SUVs.

Even the nicer cars have a layer of dust. I stopped in Billings and washed mine before I arrived.

Nerves build in my stomach. No one should recognize me, and if they do, they don’t know I bought this car used with a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. All they will see is that the dirty Langley girl whose mother abandoned her grew up to have nice shit.

They don’t have to know I still got picked last to be on a team at my old job.

I punch the button on the screen to call my brother. He always gets me away from the memories.

Brooks answers with, “Are you there yet?”

Alarm makes my heart skip a beat. “You’re not?”

“Hill had a— She needed more time.”

“Sorry, Auntie Em.” My eleven-year-old niece’s small voice filters into the speaker.

I blow out a slow breath. She’s not even from here, yet we’re on the same page. I needed more time too, but here I am. In my hometown. “How are you, Bunny?”

“Good,” she says. “Did you know that in the summer, the tails of snowshoe hares are brown on top?”

“I didn’t know that.” Hillary loves rabbits, but it’s likely one of the facts my brother pulls out when she gets stuck in her anxiety. “What else did you learn?”

“They can be three to four pounds.”

Her snowshoe hare facts tamp down my own building anxiety.

I never wanted to return to Huckleberry Springs, but our lawyer insisted that we be here to learn about some demands my father tied to his estate.

Estate. I snort. A farmhouse and acreage. The ranch. Are there even animals? What’s left of that damn place?

I pass by a cute bakery that wasn’t here before. The old café is still open though. Do they still make the largest omelets? Nope. Don’t care.

“Tell them to start without us,” Brooks says.

“We’ll wait.” I’m not sure who all will be in the office, other than the lawyer who somehow stayed with Hutch through his most dismal years. I don’t want to be alone.

Where did Hutch get the money for legal shit? A will and trust? He could barely find his checkbook. What was so important that he didn’t drink away the money for it?

My knuckles turn white on the wheel. The buildings I pass are so achingly familiar, yet there are enough differences that I feel like a swan in a duck pond. Even though growing up, I was just a muddy duck dodging pristine swans.

I run my fingers over the ends of my hair. It hasn’t frizzed out, has it? A glance in the rearview mirror eases my concern. Glossy, highlighted golden locks, so different from the shade of my childhood. What’d the other kids say? Mousy blond.

This duck has power-washed the mud off her feathers.

I take the road out of town that leads toward the old Hennessy mine.

That’s changed too. I read up on it, but not as much as the main distillery in the growing Foster House empire.

The Denver site took my focus. Besides, I didn’t care to read about the two Foster brothers who ran the Huckleberry Springs location.

The ones who helped my dad keep his ranch from failing horribly.

The guys Hutch gushed about the few times he left rambling messages.

Hutch had a soft spot for Lane, and it turns out I did too.

“You can hang out in town and wait for us,” Brooks offers. “They can’t continue without us.”

“No,” I answer before I can think about it. “I might run into someone I know.”

“You’re still hoping we can get in and out without being seen?”

“By anyone other than the lawyer? Yeah.” If I can spend less than an hour in town, cross paths with nobody, and then return to Denver and my growing marketing company, then I’ll be the luckiest girl in the world.

“. . . ain’t you the luckiest girl in the world?” Hutch’s raspy voice runs through my head and a fist grips my heart and squeezes—hard and fast, without mercy.

A cry pushes its way up, and I smother it with a squeak.

“What’s that?” Brooks asks.

“Nothing. A sneeze.” The other end is quiet. He doesn’t buy it. “Drive safe. See you in a bit.”

“You too.”

“Bye, Auntie Em.”

“Bye, Bunny.”

Brooks disconnects.

I purse my lips and exhale. Soon, the burn at the back of my eyes goes away.

“I am a professional. I have my shit together. This is just another business meeting. Then I’ll get on with my life.” Another inhale. “I am a professional . . .”

The highway to the ranch where I grew up assaults me with green pastures, golden fields, and a nicely mown ditch with round bales.

A pristine barbed-wire fence lines a pasture where red and black Angus graze.

This area used to be ours, but Hutch sold it off to two of the three Foster brothers.

The third and oldest lives a couple of hours away.

I’ve only met one of them.

Soon, I approach the turn that’ll take me down into the valley, farther away from the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains.

One of the tributaries of the Stillwater River runs deeper into the land, but the road stops at the house I was raised in.

The place that Brooks rescued me from when I was fourteen.

“What the hell?” The sprawling log house set into a grouping of trees was not there when I left.

A drive turns off the road I’m on, leading to the house and to a massive shop with horses grazing by it.

I crane my head as I pass, rubbernecking on the empty road.

The yard is neatly kept with the cutest cut log fence around the house.

A brown-and-white dog stands at the edge of the driveway, its tail wagging.

The corner of my mouth lifts, but I set my gaze back on the road. Is that where he lives? A cloud drifts over the sun as I continue.

Icy fingers dance up my spine. The charred remnants of an old barn that should’ve been torn down decades ago lie in front of me, like its last breath was a puff of smoke.

I was warned away from that barn my entire time living here.

Why was Dad—Hutch—still using it? The lawyer told me that supposedly Hutch was trying for a controlled burn before we reached the heat of summer.

He managed to put out the worst of it and give himself a heart attack in the process.

Mom always said Hutch would let the land swallow him whole rather than move away and find something better. She’s the one who moved and left her seven- and eleven-year-old kids behind. For another seven years, I watched Hutch prove Mom right.

I follow the curve around, and there it is. The house. All two stories of peeling white paint and green shutters. The black shingles have seen better days.

Was this what it always looked like to my mom? Once upon a time, I thought it was a palace.

Memories bombard me, and they’re not the bad ones that play on repeat when I least expect them. Playing catch with Brooks. Chasing our dog, Sausage. Catching chickens. With that thought, little shadows grow visible, pecking at the new spring growth around the trees.

“Oh my god, there are still chickens.” Delight streams through me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this close to the birds I used to love raising.

White hens dart across the yard. The shed that should’ve leaned all the way to the ground stands proud, its door open. Not everything has met its end here.

A red SUV is parked by a newer and more expensive blue pickup.

Who else is here? Is that Hutch’s new ride? Did he buy it with the land sale funds?

I park and get out. I’m assaulted by the smell of musty earth fresh from the thaw, manure, and crisp spring air. Inhaling deep, I let my eyes fall shut.

I missed this.

No. I didn’t miss any of it. Flipping my eyelids up, I stride over the gravel.

My heels crunch and I bypass a bigger rock that might twist an ankle.

I shouldn’t have worn these shoes. It took months for me to save up for them.

My black skirt joins the shoes in another poor choice, but I was determined to arrive in town much different from how I had left it.

I smooth my sweaty palms over my skirt before pushing up the baggy sleeves of my loose-knit fuchsia sweater. A swan in a muddy duck pond. Or a Silkie chicken among the Leghorns. I chose this outfit, chiding myself the whole time. I’m too damn old to worry about getting teased for what I’m wearing!

The front door opens, and an older man emerges. He’s wearing gray pinstripe slacks and a matching vest over a white dress shirt. The corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles.

“Miss Langley,” he says in a warm tone that dissolves a portion of the tension I’ve been carrying since my brain connected the dots of my dad’s passing with having to return home.

I wouldn’t have come, but I wasn’t leaving Brooks to do this himself. The lawyer also informed me that it was a requirement of the trust Hutch left behind that I return. So there’s that.

He touches long fingers to his chest. “I’m Zack Beckford. We talked on the phone.”

“Just Emerson, please.” I pick my way up the stairs and shake his hand.

“Only if you call me Zack.” His grin has the right touch of welcome and understanding, and my respect for him grows. This day is hard. Being here is disconcerting.

My gaze is glued to the peeling front door, and more memories batter my brain.

Brooks and I charging out the door yelling.

Me in the corner of this very porch, my feet hanging over the end and the dog I lost when I was ten sitting next to me.

Watching Mom drive away. “Mind if we do this outside? It’s such a beautiful day. ”

“Absolutely. As long as you’re here, we meet that stipulation.”

What other ones are there? I’ll find out when Brooks arrives. “Thank you.”

He gives me another smile that unknots a muscle between my shoulder blades. Maybe this won’t be so bad.

The door opens, and I turn, surprised. Right. The other vehicle. It was too nice to be my dad’s.

“Ah, Miss—uh, Emerson. This is your dad’s neighbor . . .”

The rest of his voice is drowned out as the tall man exits the house I grew up in. I never expected to see this guy in or around this house. I hoped I’d make it out of town before seeing him again.

Dark hair is brushed off his forehead. The hard line of his jaw is at odds with the caution in his cobalt-blue eyes. The pools of his irises are as mesmerizing now as they were when I first laid eyes on him a month ago.

“Lane Foster.” Zack’s voice pokes through the haze, introducing me to a man I already know. “This is Emerson Langley.”

I’m frozen, stuck in the tractor beams of his intense gaze. It’s the calculation. The thinking. The attention he paid me. Like he never tuned out when I spoke to him, and for a girl with daddy issues, that’s my kryptonite.

“Why are you here?” My heart slams against my ribs. My present in Denver is commingling with my past in this very spot. It’s unexpected. It’s unfair.

A new memory, one more recent than it has a right to be, surfaces. His lips feathering against the skin of my neck. Electricity zinging through my nerves. My damn nipples on high alert, waiting for his touch.

“Em.” There’s that rich, deep voice, rolling across me like it owns me. “How was the drive?”

My right eye twitches. Where’s his surprise? His shock at seeing me?

Goddamn him. He knew who I was!

“Lane. What a surprise,” I say with a frosty punctuation on each word.

Instead of smirking, guilt passes through his features.

Can’t he look smug so I can dislike him and quit remembering how his lips felt dominating mine? “Why are you here?”

“Yes,” Zack says, and there’s a nervous tinge to his tone that wasn’t there earlier. Is the tension between me and Lane that bad? “Lane is also required to be here.”

The recoil snaps me out of my hot-guy stupor. “What? Why?”

“I’ve been helping your dad for the last few years,” Lane answers for him.

Zack lets out a good-natured chuckle and pats Lane fondly on the back. “More than a few years.”

That’s Lane. A good guy. I’m the bad one in our scenario.

I finally notice what he’s wearing and how unfortunately devastating he looks.

Jeans instead of slacks. A tight black shirt instead of an unforgiving dress shirt that has nothing to forgive on his unyielding body.

I rake my gaze down him, struggling to hold back any interest. Cowboy boots. That’s just not fair to my hormones.

I am not the luckiest girl in the world.

An engine sounds in the distance, and I get another wave of relief. Brooks and my niece. I won’t be alone.

Zack half turns toward the rumble of Brooks’s pickup. “Excuse me while I grab my case from inside. Emerson would like to talk out here.”

I’m sure as hell not going in that house.

Especially not with a man who toyed with me.

My stomach twists on itself. This feels too much like the time I got invited to a birthday party when I was twelve.

I arrived at an empty house and heard laughing down the block.

Never did get an explanation, but all those girls have moved away. I made sure of it before I drove in.

Lane’s hooded gaze doesn’t leave me. “Fine with me.”

When the lawyer disappears, my restraint snaps. Flames lick along my veins. “You knew exactly who I was.” I don’t even make it a question.

The briefest flash of regret darkens his eyes before the intensity in them surges. “Yes, Emerson. I’ve always known who you are.”