Chapter 1-3
1078 Words
Finally, the three younger women realized they had company and glanced in her direction. Her sister, Brianna, couldn’t be troubled to give more than a nod in acknowledgement. Brock’s wife, Anna, at least smiled, but she had her hands full scooping more icing into a piping bag for Lily, who was so focused on her task that she remained oblivious to everything else. Curtis’s wife, Christina, was the only one who put down what she was working on and wiped her hands on the apron that did nothing to hide her gigantic belly. Heather took a step further into the kitchen, but Christina didn’t wait for her to come to her. She greeted Heather at the door with a big hug and a laugh.
“Happy birthday, old woman!”
Heather gave a sniff of laughter. “Thanks.”
“You’re early,” her mother remarked. “Where’s Dustin?”
“In Bozeman.”
This was a conversation they’d had so many times that she didn’t need to spell it out for her mother, and she didn’t expect she’d have to wait long for her mother to connect the dots.
Lily didn’t disappoint. Without so much as a brief smile of welcome, her mother groaned. “Not again. What did you do?”
“I woulda thought that was obvious. I broke up with him.”
“Oh, Heather…. Why? Dustin is such a wonderful man.”
“Yes, he is.”
Lily waited for her to elaborate with brows pinched together and an icing-spattered hand on her hip. Heather met her gaze head on and waited her out. For such a dainty and classically feminine woman, Lily Brown had a deceptively forceful nature, and Heather watched the practiced poise slide into scorn.
“When are you going to grow up and stop pushing good men away? Or do you want to be alone the rest of your life?”
“Somedays that’s a rather appealing idea.”
“What is wrong with you?”
Heather stared at her mother in stunned silence. Lily was strict and stern and rigid in her idea of what was and wasn’t the proper way for a woman to behave, but she was rarely cruel. She glanced between her mother, Brianna, Christina, and Anna. They were all slight, delicate women, and Heather stood four inches higher than the tallest of them with a heavier frame toned by her highly physical job. She felt like an awkward giant standing next to them.
Her mother’s words echoed in her mind. What is wrong with you?
She straightened her spine and glared down at her mother, meeting Lily’s disgust with fire.
“A lot. Thanks, Mother. Happy f*****g birthday to me.” She stormed to the door and yanked it open.
“Heather Jade Brown, don’t you dare—”
She slammed the door behind her.
She was halfway out to her truck when the door opened again and Christina jogged awkwardly out it. Heather winced, momentarily guilty for making her friend run when she was so close to her due date.
“Heather, wait! Please.”
She stopped and waited for Christina to reach her. “I’m not going back in there.”
“I didn’t figure you would. I wasn’t going to ask you to.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I’ll go out with you. We’ll celebrate your birthday in town, away from all this. Sounds like you could use a couple drinks tonight.”
Heather eyed her friend’s pregnant belly and lifted a brow. “That’s all right. I already have a backup plan.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I bumped into Jeremiah a bit ago, and it turns out I’m not the only one who has something to drink about today.”
“Jerry Mackey?”
“I’m pretty sure he prefers to be called Jeremiah.”
“You can’t be serious. You just broke up with Dustin, who was a great guy, and—”
“And Jeremiah’s not?”
“Well…. Come on, Heather. He was arrested for running drugs, or did you forget that?”
“And one mistake—which he’s paid for—should condemn him for the rest of his life?”
“But it wasn’t just one mistake. Have you forgotten that he assaulted Aaron not once but twice?”
“And yet Aaron turned around and offered him a job on the Lazy H… a job he still has eleven years later. Seems you’ve forgotten that.”
“The man has a temper, Heather.”
“Maybe he did. Or maybe he was just a hurting kid lashing out. I don’t know, and I’m not going to judge him for what happened over a decade ago until I do know.”
Heather pressed her mouth into a flat line. Once upon a time, they’d been the best of friends, but that had changed when Christina had married Curtis, even though Curtis was easily Heather’s favorite sibling. “I miss the days when you were still my friend first and my family second.”
She’d said it gently, but that couldn’t strip the bite from the words, and Christina stared at her for a moment with her eyes rounded with hurt. Then her friend spun on her heel and marched back to the house.
She should call her friend back and apologize, but right at that moment, she wasn’t in the mood. There had been a time when such a thought would never have entered her mind let alone escaped her lips, and Heather missed it. She needed Christina’s unconditional friendship today, and that comment about Jeremiah made it painfully obvious she didn’t have it anymore.
Scowling, she jumped into her truck, started it, and slammed it in reverse, spraying slush and mud as she peeled away from her parents’ house.
She wasn’t sure if Jeremiah was even home yet, but if he wasn’t, she’d wait on the porch of the bunkhouse he shared with Austin McGuire. Anything was better than sticking around to listen to her family deride her for breaking up with Dustin or going home to stew in the silence of her cabin.
She was in luck. His old Ford was parked beside the bunkhouse, and she pulled her three-year-old Silverado in beside it. The stark difference in their vehicles ignited her anger at Christina’s remarks all over again. Whatever he might’ve done when he was young and stupid, Jeremiah had busted his a*s to get to where he was now, and he’d done it with admirable humility. That said a lot more to her about his character than the choices he’d made as a dumb teenager.
He answered her knock with unveiled surprise. So he really hadn’t believed she would take him up on his invitation.
The smile that spread slowly across his face was one she’d never seen before, and right then, it was exactly what she needed.
“That offer still open?” she asked.
That sweet, surprised smile widened into a beaming grin, like she’d just handed him the world. Euphoria swamped her.
It was nice to be wanted without conditions.
- Writer
