by Hanna Hart
This was very much the opposite of Miranda, who was tall, stick thin with no curves to speak of, and had boring, sandy blonde hair.
They made conversation as they fixed bedsheets and vacuumed floors, asking the usual things you ask someone new to your life:
“What kind of music do you listen to?”
“What are your favorite books?”
“What shows are you into right now?”
And with every question asked and answered, their differences became glaring.
Miranda was all about suspenseful thrillers and true crime, while Birdie loved beach romance novels and reality shows. Miranda had been in and out of foster homes since she was five years old, and Birdie actually said, out loud, that her mother and father were her best friends.
Miranda didn’t know whether to be jealous or laugh at the sentiment.
Their lack of common bonds continued to shine like a beacon as Birdie asked, “Are you seeing anybody right now?”
“Nope,” Miranda said, cringing inwardly. “You?”
“Yes! We’ve been dating for eleven months, and he just proposed to me yesterday!”
“Cool,” Miranda said unenthusiastically. “Congratulations.”
“Do you want to see the ring?” Birdie asked, clutching her left hand shyly.
“Not really,” she said, but it was too late, Birdie had already walloped her ring finger in front of Miranda’s face, showing off the gold band and vintage setting. “Pretty,” she said. “Did you pick it out?”
“What? No way! That would have taken the surprise out of it,” Birdie said. She had a twang to her voice—a slight accent that Miranda couldn’t place. “He did it while we were on a sleigh ride with my parents.”
Miranda blinked in surprise. Was this girl for real?
“Your parents were there when you got engaged?” she said, snorting out a laugh.
“We’re close,” Birdie said, her face flushing red.
Without thinking, Miranda rolled her eyes. “Sounds romantic. Too bad your grandma wasn’t there, too. Then it could have been a real family affair.”
Birdie threw the corner of the sheet down onto the bed and crossed her arms like a child. “It was,” she said indignantly.
Miranda set her jaw awkwardly. It was obvious that she had offended the poor girl, but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. It was a terrible stubborn streak she had.
Besides, this had not been her month, and saying sorry to some picture-perfect princess was not on her to-do list.
Despite Birdie’s friendly demeanor and polite instruction, the two didn’t speak for the rest of their work shift. It was seven hours of near silence.
At first, Miranda thought this was what she wanted, but it didn’t take long before she started feeling bad about the way she spoke to her trainer.
They finished their last room at four in the afternoon, and Birdie closed the door to the luxurious room, announcing, “I’ll show you how to log out for the day.”
Miranda nodded and followed her back to the main lodge. The two slipped into a back hallway where the staff took their breaks and walked her over to the same machine they had checked in at.
“Just set your finger on the scanner and follow the prompts,” Birdie said in a small voice, avoiding eye-contact.
“Right.” Miranda nodded and did as she was told.
When she was done, she desperately wanted to go back home, but something was making her stay. She felt like she had rocks in her shoes as she leaned against the wall and watched Birdie clock out for the day.
“Birdie,” she said, cursing herself for speaking up.
The brunette glanced her way but didn’t speak.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the crack I made about your engagement,” Miranda offered, rubbing her left arm with her hand. “I’m sure it was really special.”
“It was special,” Birdie said defensively.
“Look,” Miranda sighed, “I’m a pretty miserable person these days. I just got out of a pretty serious relationship and my life is kind of a mess right now. I’m a mess, actually. But that doesn’t give me the right to rain on your parade. I’m really sorry.”
Her co-worker offered her a long stare, then shrugged as if it had all been silly.
“It’s okay,” Birdie said softly. “I understand. I’ll cool it with the happy-couple talk.”
“No, please,” Miranda said, embarrassed by her childish behavior. “I want to get to know you. I was just being a crab earlier. You seem to have this great life, and my life is just...well, not so great, at the moment.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Birdie asked genuinely. She gestured toward the hallway and said, “There’s a restaurant at the ranch; we can maybe grab a hot drink?”
Miranda was two seconds away from passing on the offer, but Birdie was insistent. “We get a discount!”
“Well, I can’t say no to that,” Miranda laughed.
She followed Birdie out into the December cold and over into the sleek restaurant where the two sat side by side at the bar top, sipping on herbal teas.
It had been so long since Miranda had anyone to talk to that she nearly forgot how to open up. But for some reason, she wanted Birdie to like her.
So, she told her the whole story.
She met William when she was eighteen. The two dated for a couple of months before breaking up.
Miranda was fresh out of the system and desperately trying to get her life together and at the time she felt she was complicating his life. She didn’t know how to be a girlfriend to anybody. She wasn’t used to checking in with people or being home at a certain time. She’d spent the majority of her life on her own, and being with William felt strange.
Being friends with him, on the other hand, felt completely natural.
Staying friends after you had been romantically connected to someone was difficult, but after a few bumps in the road, she and William somehow managed to put their past behind them. They stayed close friends for the next six years, each supporting one another through job changes, breakups, and failed business ventures.
William had just gotten out of a relationship when their romance began to blossom. On the night of her twenty-fourth birthday, William kissed her on the lips. He told her he’d always liked her, and suddenly it clicked.
It was him. Everything she had been waiting for. She was just too stupid to see it all those years.
Things went fast and furiously from there. William was her best friend, and now she had the luxury of kissing him whenever she wanted.
After they’d been dating for two months, William got a job offer at his parents’ company, flipping and renovating houses in Ohio. When he asked if she wanted to come with him, she gave an emphatic yes.
Everything was absolutely perfect. She was this troubled girl who had finally built a life for herself. She was in debt. Massive debt. But she was happy. She’d found this beautiful boy who seemed to adore her. She made his family her family, adoring his mother and looking up to his father.
“Miranda,” William said, nodding toward her in their newest property buy. She was surprised to see him there, as, after two years of flipping houses, Miranda was good enough to be left alone on the job site without the rest of the family worrying. “We’ve gotta talk,” he said.
“Oh my gosh, did you hear from the inspector?” she said, removing her hard-hat and walking toward him.
“What? No, why?”
Miranda’s brows shot up, and she stuck a finger in the air.
“Mold,” he said, unimpressed.
“Mold,” she nodded.
“This is why I tell you never to buy blind.”
Miranda laughed. “I thought it was a steal! It was so cheap. I guess we know why now, huh?” She snorted. “Come here; look at this,” she said, pulling him upstairs into the master bedroom. The whole house was filled with boxes, furniture, and garbage, but that wasn’t where she was drawing his attention. She was pulling hi
s attention to the giant hole in the ceiling. “We’re going to have to rip all of the sheetrock out.”
William’s face creased into a frown as he looked around the bedroom. “Who lived here?”
“Hoarder house,” she said.
“Geez,” he groaned. “Hoarder houses aren’t usually this bad. They’re dirty, but once you clean them up, paint, and stage, it’s usually an easy sell.”
“I know, right?” she giggled. “So much for my master plan to take my share of this ‘steal’ and start paying the government.”
William looked up at the hole in the ceiling. He seemed off, but at the time, she figured it was all because of the state of the house.
“Are those flies?” he asked.
“Bees,” she confirmed.
“Oh, even worse,” he said, backing out of the room.
“Worse than flies?” she said, following him out.
“Way worse. There are thousands of them!” he said, pointing to the clumps of filled honeycomb that had fallen from the hole and lined the already messy bedroom. “If they were flies, we could just exterminate them. But these are bees. We’re going to have to get a bee expert in here to find out how to safely remove them. They’ve got to find the queen, and it’s this whole process.”
“My little bee expert,” she said fondly. She knew the house was a mess, but she was always up for a challenge. She wasn’t the least bit deterred. If anything, the horrendous state of the property only encouraged her to make it a masterpiece by the time she was done.
She leaned up to kiss him, but William craned his neck to avoid her lips. “Miranda, we have to talk,” he said.
“I know, I know,” she said exasperatedly. “It’s a bigger challenge than we expected but—”
William ran a hand through his red hair and swallowed uncomfortably. “Look, I, well, I kind of screwed up,” he stammered out.
“Hey, I’m the one who said we should buy the place,” she offered sympathetically.
“It’s not about the property,” he said quickly.
“Oh,” she said. The longer she looked at him, the worse she started to feel. Suddenly, a rush of adrenaline coursed through her body, and her heart started thumping wildly against her chest. “Oh,” she repeated emphatically, suddenly understanding the gravity of what he was trying to say. “William, what did you do?”
He showed her his teeth, clenching them together nervously before admitting, “It’s Johanna.”
His ex.
“Did you cheat on me?” she asked.
“No! No!” he said, raising his palms in front of him. “I swear, I didn’t touch her.”
“But you saw her?” she deduced.
William looked down at his feet. “Yeah, I saw her.”
“And?”
“And, we want to get back together,” he admitted.
“You...” she laughed in shock. “But...you’re with me?”
“I’m so sorry, Miranda,” he said, his words coming out in a rapid-fire of desperate tones and sad, sympathetic eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you. You knew when I first kissed you, I was going through something. You knew I was still in love with her.”
“But that was two years ago!”
William winced. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s it? Just ‘I’m sorry’ and it’s over? You’ve already decided?” she blinked, still not fully understanding what was happening between them. “How long have you been thinking about this, William?”
“I don’t know,” he said, giving a one-shouldered shrug. He looked like a hurt puppy, and she hated that she felt sorry for him. “I’ve been talking to her for a couple of months.”
“Months?” she repeated—that sympathy suddenly fading.
“I know you’re mad,” he said.
She gave a long blink and snapped, “I feel like a disposable wet wipe right now!”
“A...wet wipe?” he repeated curiously.
“You’re just throwing me away, and I don’t even get a say in it! You never even gave me a chance to fix whatever was broken. I mean, are you serious right now?”
Miranda knew she was falling out of her shock as the anger started to well up in her throat. William was the only person she had ever relied on since...ever. And the fact that he was throwing away the life they had been building together for the last two years—the friendship they’d built for eight years—without a second thought hurt more than she ever thought it could.
She moved for him. She changed for him and made her home with him, and he would throw it away for someone he dated for just eight months more than two years ago?
The two of them continued to fight.
Correction—she fought. He just stood there being agreeable and empathetic, which only made her angrier. Why did he have to be so perfect all of the time?
“You can keep your job,” he offered, to which she let out a loud scoff.
She didn’t want to be anywhere near him, so she moved back to Willowdale. She packed everything she could into her little red rolling suitcase and backpack and got a bus ticket that very night.
When Miranda finished telling the story to Birdie, she noticed that she had pressed her lips thin so that they were tight and hard against her teeth. It was a nervous habit of hers, and one she had certainly been making a practice of since she got back to Utah.
“Oh, my goodness gracious!” Birdie said, and Miranda almost laughed. This girl had the soul of a Southern woman. “I can’t believe it. He just left? Just like that?”
“Yep,” Miranda said, nodding slowly.
Birdie looked indignant. “A relationship is about two people,” she snipped. “He can’t just decide it’s over and tell you after the plans are made; that isn’t fair!”
“That’s what I said!” Miranda exclaimed, suddenly feeling not so indifferent to her new workmate.
Maybe this partnership wouldn’t be such a nightmare after all.
Chapter Three
Phoenix
Phoenix trusted Adam. He knew the man only had his best interest at heart, but asking him to find a girlfriend for the sake of his public persona seemed beyond reasonable. Surely, his fans would see his revamped image as PR-play.
Adam was right about one thing, though. Phoenix was slipping. He’d stopped caring about his image. He was stuck in his head, wallowing over his broken life.
At one time in his life, there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to protect his career. He didn’t care about the ranch or his money. He only cared about his music. Perhaps, he wondered, that was why Rachel had left in the first place.
But he was here now. He was mentally present. He was ready to be her partner—but she wasn’t coming back. He was too late.
“I just got in,” he said into his phone as he stepped into his Utah home.
“My poor boy,” his mother said on the other end of the line. “How is it?”
“Looks the same,” he said, stepping gingerly into the foyer.
“I’ll be it does,” Shannon said softly. “But I more meant how are you feeling?”
“Fine,” he said, dropping his luggage on the marble entryway.
“It’s okay to admit that you’re not okay,” his mother cooed.
“I know,” he responded.
Shannon had been his rock throughout the breakup. She’d come to all three of his houses, in Utah, New York, and Tennessee, to stay with him throughout various stages of his mourning.
His brother Colt, only one year his senior, had come to visit him with his kids and his new wife, but they only stayed for a weekend. Phoenix was poor company. Usually, he loved being around his nieces and nephews, but interacting with baby Eleanor made Phoenix feel a longing for Rachel and their unborn child that wrapped up in the pit of his stomach like an anchor.
“But I do think it’s good that you’re going back to the ranch,” his mother said approvingly. “It may not feel like it now, but you’ll find some peace there. How long will you be able to stay?”
“I don’t know,” Phoenix said. He was surprised at his mother’s response to all of the news about the record label wanting to drop him. He thought for sure she would be outraged, but she seemed to be in an unspoken agreement with his management.
“They want me here indefinitely, basically, until we start recording for the record,” he said.
“Well, you know what? I think this is good,” Shannon said firmly. “I do. You rarely get the chance to be home. You’re always traveling around. Now you can finally sit back and enjoy the ranch you worked so hard to build.”
“Right,” he said, struggling to find his enthusiasm.
The truth was, Phoenix hadn’t been back to Utah since he’d went to talk to Rachel in Wyoming.
He’d locked himself away in Tennessee, getting lost in the lights and sounds of new talent. Getting lost in drinking. Getting lost in his writing.
Phoenix walked through the glass corridor of his home, past the immense living room, down the hallway by the master bedroom, down the hall by his music room and study, and stopped in front of the door to the nursery.
His mother talked about trying to get his youngest sibling, Kennedy, to go back to school and how impossible it was to keep track of her seven children, but Phoenix could barely hear a word of it.
He pushed open the door to his child’s room and hovered in the doorway, looking at all of the
“Sweetheart?” his mother said, interrupting his silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m just a little distracted.”
“Make it your safe-haven, Phoenix. It will be new. It will be different. But it will be yours.”
Though she couldn’t see him, Phoenix was nodding.
“So, you really think I should stay?” he asked again.
“I do,” she said. “I…” she began but seemed to think better of whatever she was about to say.
“What?” he urged her.
“I’ve been worried about you. Both your father and I have,” she said. “You know we don’t look at tabloids.”
