Meant to Be Read online

  He just wished he’d had time to think of something with a little more gravity than a stupid chair.

  “Cooper.” She grimaced. “There’s a sweet little porch swing for two already on that porch.”

  “Yep, and I’m not sitting in it.” He raised his eyebrows. “Chair or not? How much do you want me to take this job?”

  “Dammit.” She sighed, picking up her clipboard and adding a checkbox to the bottom. “But I’m putting one of Ma’s quilts over it. That thing is hideous with a capital H.”

  Cooper sighed as Kyla headed out the door. He liked what he already did at Whisper Creek—the trail rides, the guest lessons, the quiet afternoons when he could ride for hours without seeing another human. His head had been spinning when he’d arrived, and the horses and skies had helped heal him, but he still had a hell of a long road ahead.

  And sitting on his ass waiting for Miss Hollywood to need something was exactly the wrong medicine.

  A couple of minutes later, Decker walked in, loaded down with two saddles. “Mornin’, Coop.”

  “Decker.”

  Cooper hadn’t meant for his voice to sound so clipped, but seriously? The guy had approved his wife’s crazy-ass plan, even though he’d apparently argued first, and there was nothing Cooper could do about it.

  Decker laughed. “I gather Kyla’s been by?”

  “Just left.”

  “And you said yes to watching over our VIP guest?”

  “Actually, I said no. She has terrible hearing.”

  “I’m familiar with that problem.” Decker rolled his eyes. “You okay with it?”

  “Yep.”

  Hell, no.

  “You can say no to her, you know.”

  “Right. Have you tried that lately?”

  Decker laughed. “I didn’t say I could do it, but you could.” His face grew serious. “I mean it. Don’t let my tiny wife with her big ideas bully you into playing buddy tag if the thought of it has you itching to take off on Bandit and never come back. There are other guys here we could tap for the job.”

  Cooper swallowed, considering it. But no. Kyla and Decker had been nothing but good to him since he’d arrived at their ranch. He owed it to them to do what they needed him to. This VIP guest—and the money she brought with her—wasn’t something they could do without, he was sure. And honestly? Now that he knew about the celeb, he’d be watching her like a hawk anyway, not trusting any of the other ranch hands to keep her safe.

  “I’ll give it a shot. If it totally sucks, I’ll cry uncle and turn Miss Hollywood over to you.”

  “No, thank you. We’ll give her to Cole.”

  Cooper laughed as Decker threw his own brother under the bus. “That works.”

  “Bet you never thought a dart in a map would have you prepping to hang out with some celebrity on the lam, huh?”

  “No. Can’t say as I did.”

  Cooper thought back to the night in Dunleavey’s Tavern—the one after he’d come from his childhood home, where the door had slammed in his face. Dunleavey kept a U.S. map on the wall, sometimes to settle arguments, but usually to test how drunk his regulars were before they left.

  “Name ten state capitals and I’ll give you your keys,” he’d say.

  That night, with Cooper on his fourth shot, Dunleavey had handed him a dart. “Here. Before you’re drunk enough to put out somebody’s eye with the thing, take a shot at the map. Wherever it lands, go. Take a year. Get your shit together.”

  Cooper had been just drunk enough to toss the damn dart, and when it had landed on Scranton, Pennsylvania, he’d heard a maniacal laugh erupt, then realized it’d come from him.

  “Throw again,” Dunleavey had said, plucking the dart and handing it back. “Nobody picks Scranton for a fresh start.”

  This time, Cooper had studied the map through an enveloping fog, looking westward. He’d never been west. Never been to the Grand Canyon. Never seen the Pacific Ocean. So he’d aimed. Shot. Landed on a tiny town in Montana, just east of the northern Rockies.

  “Perfect.” Dunleavey had pulled a tube of Krazy Glue out of his pocket and squirted it on the damn dart, leaving it stuck to the paper and wall. “Good country for a fresh start. Good place to figure out who a man is…especially when everybody’s been so damn busy lately trying to convince him he’s somebody else.”

  And here he was, three months in…but a far cry from figuring it out yet.

  Chapter 2

  “Whisper Creek Ranch?” That night, Shelby’s voice was quiet as she eyed Nicola, who had four suitcases laid out on the bed. “You’re sending me to a dude ranch?”

  Nicola held up two sundresses. “Blue? Or green?”

  “Neither. Why am I going to a ranch? I don’t even know how to ride a horse anymore.”

  “Because.” Nicola packed both dresses. “We—I—think you need a little vacation. I mean, when’s the last time you took some time off, just for you?”

  “But—we’re mid-tour. And I need to be here, seeing to my father’s things.”

  I need to be here, where I can still feel him.

  “Your father’s things will still be here when you’re ready to come back. Right now, we need to get you out of the spotlight and into a place where you can get your head back together.”

  “My head’s fine, Nicola. It’s just sad. Isn’t that allowed?”

  “Of course,” Nicola snapped, then took a deep breath as she placed a pile of folded T-shirts carefully in a suitcase. “But let’s take your sad out to Montana, okay? Where the tabloids can’t find you.”

  “Why are you so afraid of the tabloids, all of a sudden? Why are you hiding me away?”

  “Nobody’s hiding you away. And there’s nothing sudden about my fear of tabloids, honey. Surely you know that.”

  Yeah, Shelby knew, all right. Half of Nicola’s job some days involved suppressing whatever stories the rag sheets came up with. At last count, Shelby had had affairs with at least six married men and had dealt with anorexia, bulimia, and everything else on that spectrum. Coupled with the alleged plastic surgery disasters and drunk-driving charges she’d purportedly bought herself out of, it was a good thing she didn’t have a mother who had to see the headlines at the supermarket.

  In reality, she’d had exactly zero affairs, had never been to a plastic surgeon, and rarely ever had more than a glass of wine.

  “I don’t want to go to—wait, where is this place?”

  “Montana.” Nicola efficiently dumped five pairs of jeans in one suitcase while stuffing underclothes in another. As Shelby watched, it occurred to her that she should feel something—anything—about the fact that her assistant was handling her underwear, but she was too numb to do anything but follow Nicola’s hands as they went from drawer to bed to drawer to bed.

  “Have I ever been there? For a concert?” Her voice sounded hollow, like it was coming through one of those old cement playground tunnels. She struggled to hold on, to not let the chill creep all the way up her spine.

  “No. Denver’s the closest you’ve gotten.”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  Nicola’s hands paused, and Shelby felt her stomach jump. “Not this time.”

  “But…you always come with me.”

  Her own voice sounded pathetic, and how many times had she dreamed of being left alone? But right now, right here, it felt…scary. Nicola might be an uptight, controlling pain in the butt, but she was also a beacon of sorts, helping Shelby navigate the past decade. What was she going to do without Nic around?

  “I know. But it’ll be better this way. You can go have some R-and-R, and I’ll be back here handling things for you. It’ll be better if you’re out of the fray, believe me.”

  Shelby tipped her head, Nicola’s tone not sitting quite right, even though it was the same tone she’d been using for years.

  “What if I don’t want to be out of the fray? What if I want to be here, ‘handling things’?” She air-quoted the last two words, sudd
enly irritated that she was being packed up and shelved in Montana without even knowing why.

  “Shelby, honey, they’re not the things you’d know how to handle, even if you wanted to help. And I appreciate that you do. Really. But right now, what you need is some space and some time. Trust us, okay?”

  Shelby looked down at the quilt her gramma had made before she died—shades of green and blue that matched the Tennessee hills at dusk—and felt a creeping fear take hold.

  “Who’s us?”

  Nicola dropped the straightening iron she’d just fetched from the bathroom, but she quickly leaned down to scoop it from the carpet.

  Before she could answer, Shelby stood up. “It’s LolliPop, isn’t it? They think I’m two tantrums shy of a breakdown, don’t they? They’re sending me out there so I don’t do something crazy and ruin my slim chance of a comeback—am I right?”

  “Shelby, no. Come on, honey. It’s not like that. They care about you.”

  Shelby snorted. “Of course they do.”

  Right. If they’d cared about her, they wouldn’t have taken a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old, covered her up with makeup and glitter, renamed her Tara Gibson because her real name sounded too country, and poured her into the pop-princess mold that had worked so well with their other clients.

  If they’d cared about her, they might have let her record the music her heart understood, rather than the heavy-bass, driving-beat crap she fronted every night on tour.

  If they’d cared about her, they might have helped her, rather than look the other way as her financial world had crashed and burned in a New York courtroom.

  “Here.” Nicola opened her laptop and tap-tap-tapped, then turned it toward Shelby. “This is where you’re going. You can’t tell me there’s nothing appealing here.”

  Shelby took the laptop, sighing, but felt her eyes widen at the sight of the Whisper Creek home page.

  “Holy cowboys.”

  “Right?” Nicola zipped up one suitcase. “Keep clicking. There are more.”

  Shelby clicked. And clicked. And clicked. She saw bonfires, horses, mountains…and the hottest cowboys she’d ever seen in her life.

  Not that she’d, say, ever actually met one.

  “They can’t be real.”

  “The cowboys?” Nicola raised her eyebrows. “Actually, I have it on good authority that they are.”

  “You asked?”

  She shrugged. “How could I not? I mean, seriously! Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “No-o.” Shelby clicked back to the home page, where three cowboys on horseback were framed against a mountain sunset. As she stared, for the first time in two weeks, a tiny sliver of peace stole through the tension in her shoulders.

  While Nicola finished packing, Shelby clicked through the entire website, looking at the guest cabins, the main lodge, the schedules and horses and food. She had to give her assistant credit—if she’d been assigned to hide away her pop star, she’d done a damn good job of picking a place.

  And then she thought of something that gave her a delicious, tiny shiver of possibility. Maybe, just maybe…

  “Nic? Who did you book me as?”

  Please don’t say Tara. Please say Shelby.

  “I just gave your first name—the real one, which nobody would have any reason to recognize.” Nicola hauled one suitcase off the bed, then reached for the other. “I presented you as a VIP guest who needs a month of peace and quiet.”

  “A month?”

  Nicola looked at her carefully, like she was weighing what to say. “The company’s picking this one up, so don’t think about the money. You need the time, Shelby.”

  “But…a month?” Shelby looked around her bedroom, not sure whether to feel panicked that she was definitely being shoved out of the way for a while…or to feel a tiny bit elated that no one would expect anything of her for an entire, blessed thirty days.

  “This whole trip thing—does it have anything to do with the china?” She raised her eyebrows. Nicola had come back to the house as Shelby’d been sweeping up the shards the other night. With one hand still on the doorknob and one eye firmly on Shelby, Nicola had dialed her phone and closed the door behind her.

  “No.” Nic looked the other way. “Of course not.”

  “Nic, be serious. Are you afraid I’m having—I don’t know—a nervous breakdown or something?” Shelby suddenly realized Whisper Creek sounded an awful lot like a dry-out complex, or a fancy place stars went when the pressure got to be too much and they finally broke. “Is this a rehab sort of place?”

  “No. It’s just a guest ranch. Promise.” Nicola sighed, perching at the edge of the bed. “Listen. I know you’re devastated. I know your father was everything to you. But what if it’d been one of the caterers who’d come in the other night? Or a guest who’d forgotten her purse or something? They would have seen you acting like a raving maniac, and things are precarious enough right now. We can’t have the press start painting you as a fragile, heading-over-the-edge has-been, you know?”

  Shelby put a hand to her throat, hearing very clearly what Nicola was trying hard not to say.

  “Like my mother, you mean?”

  “No. Of course, no.”

  “Because I’m not her, Nic. I’m nothing like her.”

  “I know.”

  “Nic?” Shelby twisted her hands. “You’re talking to me like I’m a mental patient. Just saying.”

  “I’m not. Promise. I just want to help you get some peace and quiet, out of the spotlight.”

  Shelby nodded slowly. She got it, but seriously? Had no one ever seen grief before? Was it supposed to be a neat black dress, a pretty veil, and some delicate tears into a monogrammed handkerchief? Was it supposed to be a quiet sob as a coffin rolled by? An admirable chin-up-shoulders-back stiffness at the graveside?

  Bullshit.

  It wasn’t.

  Grief was a ripping, tearing, powerful force that broke your ribs and drained your tears while memories tormented you from all directions. It was hard, and it sucked…and it shouldn’t have to be silenced.

  But she—she was definitely being silenced.

  She just didn’t know quite why.

  —

  Late the next afternoon, Shelby’s eyes burned with fatigue as she stared at a strange, majestic landscape and tried to come to grips with how she’d ended up here. Kyla Driscoll had kept up a running monologue from the driver’s seat, and in two hours, Shelby had learned more about the state of Montana, the town of Carefree, and the ranch itself than she probably would ever need to know.

  She’d smiled and nodded in what she’d hoped were appropriate intervals, but as chipper and welcoming as Kyla was, Shelby couldn’t wait to get to the ranch, find her cabin, and get started on the disappearing-for-a-month part of Nicola’s little plan.

  She’d held it together on the plane ride—flying coach for the first time in twelve years. Yeah, LolliPop might be underwriting this little getaway they’d engineered to keep her under the radar, but they weren’t being shy about making it clear they were doing it under duress. There’d be no assistant, no private plane, no bodyguards, and no waiting limo at the other end.

  She’d held it together at baggage claim, as she’d hefted her four huge suitcases off the conveyor and longed for someone besides tiny Kyla to help muscle them to the parking garage. She’d held it together as she’d pulled herself into a truck so tall it made her duck as they exited the parking garage, sure they were going to shave the roof of it right off. And she’d held it together when Kyla had described her cabin, complete with a little kitchen where she could make all of her own meals.

  Shelby didn’t know how to cook an egg, let alone meals.

  And right now, her right calf was cramped, she needed a bathroom, and her wig was itching like crazy. Nicola hadn’t wanted her to be recognizable as either Tara Gibson or Shelby Quinn, so they’d gone with the light-brown waves and big sunglasses. Tara’s dark hair was packed in one of h
er suitcases, and somewhere under the spray and bobby pins, Shelby’s own blond locks were hiding under the fake brown tresses.

  They couldn’t get to Whisper Creek fast enough.

  “Almost there,” Kyla chirped, as if she’d heard Shelby’s thoughts. She waved her arm in an arc across the dashboard. “This is Whisper Creek land all around us now.”

  “Wow.” Shelby’s eyes widened. Rippling grasses swayed in the late-afternoon breeze, their tips touched by angled sunlight. Between the blades, wildflowers peeked out, splashes of whites and reds and yellows. In the distance, she could see mountain peaks rising, their muted blue and purple a complement to the wide, blue sky. “It’s stunning.”

  “Yeah.” Kyla looked over, her smile wide and genuine. “Hard not to fall in love with this place. I’ll warn you ahead of time.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “It might also be harder than it should be to not fall in love with the cowboys.” She winked. “Woman to woman, I feel the need to warn you about that, too.”

  “Thank you.” Shelby felt a slight smile emerge. “I’ll try to avoid the cowboys.”

  Kyla shook her head. “Oh, don’t do that. They’re half the fun.” She flicked on her blinker and turned onto a wide gravel drive flanked by a tall archway and white whiskey barrels spilling over with red flowers.

  “This looks like a movie set.” Shelby leaned forward to look up at the archway, which spelled out WHISPER CREEK RANCH.

  “I mentioned the cowboys, right? Hang out long enough, and you’ll definitely think you’re on set.”

  “So…those aren’t models, then? On your website?”

  Kyla laughed out loud. “Nope. All real.”

  “I imagine you don’t have a lot of trouble filling your cabins, do you?”

  “Nope again. Actually, we built some new ones this spring, including a couple of honeymoon cottages behind the main lodge. You’ll be staying in one of those.”

  “Please tell me I’m not displacing any honeymooners.”

  “No. We just finished them, so they weren’t booked. Your timing was excellent.”

  Before Shelby could answer, Kyla pulled over a small rise, and the ranch spread out below them, nestled in a valley so green it hardly looked real.