Daring to Fall

by Shannon Stults

  She’d thought he was joking when he first suggested she come with him to Carly and Darren’s wedding. “Not as a date,” he’d assured her before she could say no. “Just another opportunity to get you out of your comfort zone.” He’d tried to make it sound like a challenge, hoping that would be enough reason for her to say yes.

  Harper’s gaze wandered around the room as they danced. “Do you think Cole’s okay?”

  Cowboy glanced across the crowded room at his best friend, a dark-haired man standing off to the side in a suit, blue dress shirt, and tie. He was listening to his sister, Tatum, with an almost solemn look on his face. “He’s been going through some stuff the last couple weeks.”

  “I heard about what happened at Wade’s. Running into a burning building and saving the chief of police’s life after the roof collapsed above them. No wonder he needed to get away from town.”

  He nodded. It was the same story Cole had given him for why he’d been gone the last two weeks, but he knew his friend well enough to suspect there was more to the story than he’d let on. Cole had been like a ghost of himself when he sat down in the church pew between Cowboy and Tatum, and the only life Cowboy had seen in him all day was when—big surprise—the bridal party started down the aisle and Logan Kase entered the room.

  “He’s lucky he got out of that bar unscathed,” Harper said.

  “Trust me, he’s got his own set of scars he’s dealing with.” Cowboy stopped dancing and looked down at her. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve got a new dare for you.”

  Harper sighed, hardly sounding surprised. “Is it going to be awful?”

  “Depends. How opposed are you to breaking the law?”

  *

  “You know, when you dared me to commit breaking-and-entering, this wasn’t exactly the first thing that came to mind.” Harper huffed as she shimmied through the open window, giving Cowboy a lovely view of her ass.

  Not that he was looking.

  Okay, so he’d had trouble not looking since she stepped out onto her porch in that pale blue dress that hugged tightly to her every curve and then flowed loosely down to her knees. She may not have been his type, but he was still a man after all. And she could hardly hold it against him looking like that.

  “Abandoned buildings not really your style, Midge?”

  She cleared the window, stumbling as she stood aside for him to get his bulky frame through next. “Not creepy old ones where I used to live with my mom and dad. I haven’t been inside my parents’ B&B since I was twelve.”

  Cowboy climbed through and righted himself, dusting off his suit as he examined the dark room. He’d never been inside the B&B himself and, seeing as it had been closed up for the last ten years, didn’t expect much now. He could just make out the shapes of chairs and tables and bookshelves beneath several dusty white sheets.

  Harper ran a hand over one of the linen-draped end tables. “It’s all still here. I thought for sure that the bank or whoever bought it would have cleared it out by now,” she said, rubbing her hands over her bare arms.

  “Here.” He shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

  She pulled it tight around her, snuggling deep into the fabric. “Thanks.” She looked around the dark room once more and crossed her arms over her chest. “So, why did you bring me here?”

  “The way you were talking about it at the bar that night, I thought maybe you missed it.”

  A timid smile lifted the corners of her lips. “I have. Thank you.”

  Cowboy’s chest grew light, and the tiny bit of joy his small effort brought her put a grin on his own face.

  She hugged his jacket tightly around her as she made her way over to the fireplace on the far side of the room. There was the faintest sliver of moonlight cutting in through the trees outside the window, but it was just enough to illuminate the row of picture frames lined up meticulously on the mantel. She took one of the frames in hand and stared down at it while Cowboy scanned through the rest.

  He saw a picture of an older woman with slightly graying hair sitting on the front porch with a little blonde girl in her lap and a sleeping baby cradled in her arms. One of a man and a woman who looked remarkably like Harper on their wedding day.

  He continued looking over the line of photos. Strange that everything still seemed to be in place when the B&B had been closed and sold for ten years. Wouldn’t the new owner have wanted the place cleaned out when they bought it? And he couldn’t imagine Harper’s grandmother would have just left all this stuff here, completely forgotten.

  He paused at another photo, a little blonde girl with glasses, who couldn’t have been anyone but the small woman standing next to him. She was probably only about five or so at the time, hamming it up in front of the camera with hands on her hips, eyelids pinched together tightly, and the toothiest grin he’d ever seen. She looked so relaxed and silly and so not like the Harper he remembered from high school. What happened to that innocent, fun-loving little girl in the photo?

  He was just about to ask his question aloud when he noticed the frame she still clutched tightly in her hands. It was the same couple from the wedding photo posing with a grinning Harper and the smaller girl he could only assume was her sister. They were standing in front of the B&B, Harper’s long, gangly arms wrapped around her mom while her dad held Sadie tight in his arms.

  “They died a couple months after this was taken,” she said, her voice suddenly low and gritty.

  Shit. He knew she’d lost her parents when she was young. Everyone in Willow Creek had been devastated when the sweet, friendly couple died in a horrible accident, leaving their two little girls behind to be cared for by their grandmother. But as the years went by, that story had become just another long-healed scar to him and most of the residents of Willow Creek. He should have realized that coming here tonight would feel like ripping off the bandage and tearing out the stitches for her.

  “I remember when Sadie was little, she would get so upset whenever Mom and Dad had to leave us with Grams or a babysitter. Just wailing at the top of her lungs before they were even out the door. And they always promised us they’d come back. That nothing would ever keep them from coming home to us.”

  She let out a small snort, the frame unsteady in her trembling hands. “But they had no idea. They had no idea they’d never see me graduate high school or get into Georgia Tech. They won’t see me go off to med school in August, become a doctor. They’ll never see me get married or have babies. They’ll never tell me how proud they are.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks, and Cowboy’s instinct to let her get it all out battled with his desperate need to comfort her and assure her it would be okay.

  “And I’ll never get to tell them how much I love them, how much I miss them. I lost all of that the second they got in that car.”

  “Harper—”

  She lifted the picture frame in her hand, and Cowboy ducked when it flew across the room. Wood splintered as it crashed against the wall. The frame fell to the floor, shattered glass spraying out around it. She reached for another frame from the mantel and threw it, then another, the room filling with the sound of breaking glass and loud thuds as wood hit the plaster wall and fell to the ground.

  Cowboy righted himself as she picked up yet another frame and readied to throw it. He grabbed her arm before it went flying like the others.

  “Stop, Harper.”

  “Let me go,” she wailed.

  Cowboy yanked the picture frame from her hand and held her arm tighter as she tried to pull out of his grasp. “Not until you calm down.” She squirmed again, and he pulled her against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly to him.

  She gasped before going still, and her attempts to escape his embrace morphed swiftly into submission. She clung to him as her body shook and tears poured down her face.

  He took several steps back, pulling Harper with him until he was leaning against the wall. Then they were on the flo
or, Harper sitting between his legs and sobbing while he cradled her in his arms. “Shh. It’ll be okay, Midge,” he whispered over and over, and he realized with terrifying clarity that he would give anything to make those words true.

  He sat unmoving for several minutes, holding her tightly until her breaths were calm and even. He ran his hand gently over her hair. “Feeling better?”

  She wiped at her face and nodded, not looking him in the eye. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” she said into his tear-stained dress shirt. “I’m usually a lot better at keeping my emotions in check. I don’t think I’ve cried like that since Grams told us about the accident.”

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I know you think you always have to be in control,” he whispered, his deep voice coming out as rough and ragged as hers. “But you don’t have to have it all together all the time. You’re allowed to be angry or hurt sometimes. You’re human, Harper. You’re allowed to feel.”

  She shivered, and he tightened his hold on her even more. “Sorry if I freaked you out. This was probably the last thing you wanted to deal with tonight.”

  “I’m not going to lie. When a woman starts throwing stuff around me, it’s generally aimed at my head.” That was also about the time he got the hell out of Dodge. Crying women terrified him, their tears repelling him like the matching pole of a magnet. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d felt drawn toward one. At least not until today. “This was…a new experience for me.”

  “So I did freak you out.” She sighed.

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Enough to regret inviting me to the wedding?”

  Cowboy managed a small chuckle. “Is that your official question?” he asked. A deal was a deal, after all. And she did break into the B&B like he’d dared her to. Honestly, he was still a little amazed she’d actually gone through with it.

  Harper shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  Cowboy ran his hand through her hair one more time. Then he placed his finger under her chin and pulled her face up toward his. Her cheeks and eyelids were red and puffy, but at the center of it all shined the clearest sky-blue eyes he’d ever seen. “Not even a little bit.”

  Chapter Six

  “Holy shit!” Logan practically shouted through a mouthful of chicken salad.

  Harper nodded, ignoring the several pairs of eyes staring at them in the café. She’d been working for hours to clear various rooms of Grams’s hoarding when she got the invitation to meet Lo in town for lunch. Between Sadie’s silent treatment the last week and her firm belief that sorting through one more box of random junk mail and newspaper clippings might actually set her over the edge, she’d practically jumped at the chance to get out of the house.

  “That’s more or less what I said when Mr. Nielson finished explaining the will to me.” Mostly more. She took a sip of her sweet tea, and her taste buds tingled. No one made sweet tea quite like Byrdie.

  While in Boston, Harper had tried just about every possible place she could find sweet tea in that big, bustling city. But no matter where she went, she’d still yet to find anything that measured up to that of the small café and bakery in Willow Creek. It also helped that Byrdie was just about the sweetest lady Harper had ever known, and her mother’s closest friend when she was alive. Even when Harper was just a little kid coming in to grab a donut or a bagel on the way to school, Byrdie always took the time to ask how Harper was doing, how school was going, before putting whatever Harper ordered that morning on her parents’ or Grams’s tab. She hadn’t realized until just a few years ago that there never even was a tab.

  “So, you’re rich. Like filthy rich. As in you could probably buy this whole town if you wanted to.”

  Harper shrugged. “Guess so.” Other than Sadie, Harper hadn’t told anyone about their recent revelation, and it felt good to finally have someone to talk to. Especially when that someone wouldn’t suddenly bite her head off for no reason. She did wish Logan would keep her voice down and stop drawing so much attention to them, but that wasn’t completely Lo’s fault. Logan Kase had never been the quiet type, and with her effortless beauty, tanned skin, and long, thick brown hair—not to mention her baby bump and soon-to-be-mom glow—it was hard for people not to turn their attention to her.

  “Damn.” Logan took another bite of her chicken salad croissant and chewed it for a while before she took a sip of her own sweet tea. “So, what are you going to do now?”

  “Not sure. I guess I should probably start with selling the B&B and work on fixing up Grams’s house. But after that I don’t really know.”

  “What about med school? Any way you can go back once Sadie’s done with high school?”

  Harper looked down at her half-eaten sandwich and fidgeted with her glasses. “I don’t think med school is really an option anymore.” She didn’t explain any further, not ready to admit, even to Logan, that she’d been on the verge of flunking out of Boston University’s medical program when she got the news about Grams. She’d just spent the entire summer trying to make up courses and catch up on her credits, only those classes were just as difficult the second time.

  “I’m sorry. I know that was your dream.”

  Yes, it had been. Up until she threw it all away. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. Just means I have to come up with a new plan.”

  Lo nodded sympathetically. “Trust me, I know exactly what it’s like to think you’re heading one way and then have the whole rug swept out from under you. I mean, three years ago I was ready to marry a doctor and move to California. And now, I’m here with Cole and the gallery, and I can’t imagine my life being any different.”

  Her eyes lit up the second she mentioned her husband and the art gallery she worked at in town. That was the passion Harper needed, the passion she’d once had for becoming a doctor.

  “So, what’s got you down then?”

  “Being a doctor was my dream for so long. I guess I thought that if I went to school and became someone who could help save people’s lives, maybe it wouldn’t feel so much like my parents died in vain. But now I don’t even have that, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do next.”

  She stared down at her drink, her fingers skimming the smooth edge of her cup. “I love Sadie, and I want to be here with her. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do while I’m here. And now suddenly I’ve got all this money and no idea what to do with it. I went from having a plan with next to zero means to having all the means in the world but no plan.”

  Harper couldn’t even remember the last time she didn’t have a plan. She’d spent years strategizing her future, mapping out necessary test scores and schools she wanted to go to. Now she had nothing. No strategy, no idea what to do next.

  “On the bright side,” Logan said once she’d finished off her sandwich and tea, “you’ve got a shitload of money to take care of you and Sadie while you find a new dream.”

  Harper shook her head. A new dream. Lo made it sound so simple.

  Logan glanced at her phone and frowned. “Damn. I told Louise I’d be back at the gallery five minutes ago. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You go ahead, and I’ll take care of the bill.”

  “Nuh-uh. I’m not letting you pay for a pregnant woman’s meal. That would clean out anybody’s wallet.” Harper laughed because, for once, Lo wasn’t kidding. She’d ordered not just the chicken salad croissant she’d been craving but also a muffin, three donuts, and a cookie—though the cookie she swore she was taking home for Cole. Having watched Logan inhale her meal with a bottomless appetite, she wasn’t sure the cookie would make it back to the gallery.

  “You forget, I’ve got all the money in the world now. I’ll let you get the next one if that makes you feel better,” Harper lied.

  “Fine, but only because there will definitely be a next time.” Logan stood from her seat and grabbed her purse. Then she was hugging Harper over her basketball of a belly. “Call me if you need to talk, okay?
Maybe you can come hang out with me and Cole at our place one night.”

  Harper’s smile fell. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Though she knew it was more than likely Cowboy would be out for the night with some girl, Harper didn’t think she could handle being in the house he shared with his two best friends. Whether he was there or not. In fact, she wasn’t sure which would be worse, seeing him there face-to-face or knowing why he wasn’t there.

  Logan winced. “Right, sorry. We’ll go out somewhere, Cole’s and my treat. As sort of a welcome home dinner.”

  “Sounds good.”

  After Logan left, Harper finished her sweet tea and then walked up to the register. Behind the counter, busily wiping down surfaces and restocking her display after the lunchtime rush, was Byrdie Hamilton. The fifty-four-year-old woman was rail thin despite working with sugary pastries and confections every day of her life, and her bright, white smile stood out against her dark skin and the short, black hair Harper was pretty sure she dyed these days.

  “You leaving already, sugar?” Byrdie asked. She stopped working and came over to the register where Harper stood waiting to pay.

  She nodded. “Logan had to get back to work, and I should probably go home and get back to cleaning.”

  Byrdie started shuffling through the stack of receipts, looking for the right one. “Did I hear you say you’re selling the B&B?”

  “Probably. I’m surprised Grams held on to it this long. I thought she’d have sold it herself by now.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said. She’d found the receipt and started tapping at the screen. “I’ve got a lot of good memories of that place. Your mom did an amazing job with it. Not to mention all the good business it brought me.” She laughed, her eyes meeting Harper’s, accompanied by a warm, affectionate smile.

  “I still remember all those customers who used to come in here telling me about the little blonde girl at the B&B they were staying at who highly recommended the lemon and poppy seed muffin.” She shook her head. “That was my most popular item on the menu because of you. Business hasn’t been the same since Molly and Nathaniel passed. Not just mine, but all the local businesses. The town could use a place like that again.”