There were some things about being married that had its perks, which was always having someone to tell about your day, someone to touch bases with at the end of one.
Andrew hadn’t been the best companion, but he’d been an artificial source of comfort. Now, Vivian just truly felt alone in the world.
As she stepped off the tour bus and parted ways with the other passengers, on her way back toward her hotel, Vivian’s phone vibrated in her clutch. Taking it out, she saw Gretta’s name appear on the screen and smiled as she answered.
“Hey, old friend, how are you?”
“Old?” Gretta scolded. “I bet I could run laps around you.”
“You probably could,” she laughed. “So what’s up?”
“Nothing. I was just headin’ to bed for the evenin’ and wanted to touch bases.”
Vivian glanced at the skyline, which was still bright, the sun a couple of hours away from setting. “It’s still pretty early. Are you feeling okay?”
“Right as rain, dear. The boys and I had an early dinner, and I shipped them back off to their families. Now I have the house all to myself.” There was a pregnant pause, and then she added, “It’s too quiet around here with ya gone.”
The hotel was within sight, and Vivian thought of returning to the empty hotel room. “I know what you mean.”
“Ready to come home yet?”
They’d been over this before. To avoid hurting her feelings, Vivian said, “I went on a tour today. Tried some pretty nice beers and didn’t fall over drunk once.”
“Well, amen for that! I always did enjoy me a nice draught fresh from the tap in the fall. Of course, it doesn’t mix too well with my meds now, so I have to live vicariously.” She sighed longingly. “Oh to be twenty again.”
“It’s all downhill from thirty,” Vivian lamented with her.
“Says the pinup model. What are ya, thirty-one?”
“Thirty, actually,” Vivian said, somewhat abashed.
Gretta made a pishing sound. “You don’t know what downhill is yet. Just wait until you hit fifty and your boobs drop to your kneecaps, and your chin develops a turkey gobble.”
Vivian laughed until she cried. “Oh, Gretta, I miss you.”
“I miss you too, girl. Hurry up and finish your midlife crisis and get your ass home. We got some catchin’ up to do. This phone call business just ain’t cuttin’ it for me.”
The more Gretta pressured her, the more Vivian had to admit it was working. Each time, it grew harder and harder to say no.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“I know you will,” Gretta said without missing a beat. Despite never missing an opportunity to throw the offer to return into their conversations, Gretta was good at rolling with Vivian’s deflection.
Reminding her to take her pills and wishing her a good night, Vivian got off the phone and then realized that Gretta hadn’t mentioned Nash this time. She wondered why, her thoughts immediately turning to another woman entering the picture.
Would he move on that fast? Well, she wasn’t his wife, so of course, he could. It had been easy for him to turn his back on her, so she didn’t know why it would be a surprise that he might replace her just as fast.
Why was she even dwelling on this? It wasn’t as if they had ever been together. They hadn’t even been officially dating, and here she was getting jealous and upset over the possibility he might be seeing someone else.
Because he’s a great catch, she heard the little voice in her head say, and it was right. Nash was the best kind of man she’d ever met. Stubborn as a mule, just like Gretta accused him of being, but once you scraped off that hard exterior, a good man was waiting to be found.
He certainly outshined the men in her life. She loved that he was hardworking and dedicated, not only to the job but to his community and the people—and horse—in his life. Hell, even the memory of his wife. Nash was one of a kind, as far as she was concerned. So yeah, thinking of another woman taking her place, taking what she wanted irked her like nothing else.
She wanted to race into that town and march up to him and demand he give her another chance.
So why was she just standing there thinking about it when she could be doing something about it?
Gretta was right. She was being a stubborn ass.
Here she was, driving all over the country, telling herself and everyone who’d listen that she was finding herself and her place in the world when all she was really doing was running away from it all.
“What the hell am I doing?” she questioned aloud as she let herself into her hotel room. There was open luggage on the bed, a couple of empty drink bottles on the table beside it, and some discarded food containers in the trash—because she never felt right having perfect strangers in her personal space when she wasn’t around, so she kept the Do Not Disturb sign permanently affixed to the door handle.
The room was nice, pastel, nondescript artwork by some unknown artist on the walls and bedding and curtains that echoed the design, but it felt cold today, more so than the other days since she’d arrived.
Suddenly, Gretta’s open invitation and insistence she come sounded like the perfect solution, as tempting as a chocolate sundae on a hot day—or really any day.
Checkout wasn’t until ten the next morning, and Vivian had worn herself out walking all day, but right there at that moment, she had decided.
“Fine,” she muttered to herself as she went around picking up clothes and placing them neatly into the open suitcase, “you win.” Although Gretta couldn’t hear her, Vivian had no doubt the woman had some supernatural power to know what her next move would be. And no doubt, the woman was grinning like a lunatic because she was right.
First thing in the morning, Vivian was going to check out, turn her sights east, and go home.
TWENTY-FIVE
The drive back to South Carolina was impossibly long this time around. Probably due to anticipation. Vivian couldn’t seem to get there fast enough. There was a ball of tension in her gut, settled like a stone. She was anxious, and she didn’t know why. Was it because she couldn’t wait to get back? Partly. But she also had a nagging feeling that she needed to get there as fast as possible.
With nothing to verify her feelings, she drove too fast whenever the road ahead was clear and developed a nasty habit of cursing other drivers when she was forced to slow down and go their pace.
With each mile gained, she could breathe a little easier. But that never lasted long. So she turned up the radio and blasted anything that wasn’t full of static. That usually ended up being country music or a sermon of some kind, but it was noise at least.
It was a breath of fresh air when she finally crossed state lines into South Carolina. She was almost there, almost…home.
It felt strange to call it that, but it’s exactly what it had come to be. Even if she was a big-city girl and owned designer clothes and an expensive car, had her hair professionally colored and didn’t know a backhoe from a rake or how to make a proper pot of grits, she had been accepted into a family, even if that family consisted of only one person.
But she suspected there were a few more there who might consider her part of their tribe, too.
She certainly considered them part of hers.
Funny how fast life could change. One day you’re sitting in a high-rise loft, wondering when you should make your next spa appointment, and then next you’re sweating bullets in an aging farmhouse with an old ballbuster of a woman who’s somehow become a friend and taking a crash course in how to survive in a kitchen full of hungry men.
From trophy wife to housekeeper, and all it’d taken was a divorce and what Gretta had termed a “midlife crisis” to get there.
Split-rail fences and open fields became a common scene, and Vivian started looking for the most important one—the one that started it all.
It was so obvious what she was doing that she didn’t even bother trying to deny it to herself. She was searching for Na
sh. Any glimpse, no matter how small, would do. She just needed to see him because, dammit all, she missed the man.
She hoped he would feel the same about her because it would be a crying shame if she came all this way only to find him still in a bad mood.
But Gretta was right. She had to be. Nash was just being stubborn. When Vivian took time out to think about it, she thought he may have been able to let her go so easily because he was afraid of what it might mean if he didn’t.
He’d already lost one person he loved. He probably didn’t want to risk losing another. Not that she thought he loved her. She might have fallen for him, but there was nothing to say that he had taken the same plunge. Although, the thought was nice.
All the same, she’d decided he must be protecting himself. In that sense, she couldn’t blame him. He was just trying to survive any way he knew how just like she was. Only he’d done it all wrong. He should have pulled her closer, staking his claim, rather than telling her to go.
The first thing she was going to do when she got there was change his mind. Right after she surprised Gretta with her arrival.
The drive into town was uneventful, despite her expecting to repeat history and blow another tire or perhaps run out of gas again. Her first stop was to the grocery store she’d arrived at her first day there, just for old time’s sake.
“I was wondering when I might see you again,” Jack said, as he handed her change for the bottle of tea and package of cupcakes she’d purchased. “I wanted to thank you for shaming Old Nash into behaving himself.”
“I don’t follow,” she said with a smile.
His grin was wide behind his bushy beard and put color in what little of his cheeks she could see beneath it. “That man hasn’t stolen a single thing from this store since you were in here last. He’s a changed man!”
“Well…hallelujah,” Vivian said with a grin. “I guess some horses can change their spots.”
“I don’t follow…” he said slowly.
A frown pulled at her lips and creased her brows. “Oh…I thought it was one of those Southern sayings…”
He continued frowning for a heartbeat longer and then burst out laughing, his hand slapping the counter. “I’m just pullin’ your leg!”
They had a good laugh and then wished each other a good day, and Vivian was on her way again.
She didn’t make any more stops on the way, knowing that if she didn’t reach Gretta’s house fast, word of her arrival would make it to her ears before she could surprise her.
She should have told Jack to hold his tongue. He wouldn’t, but maybe the request would have filtered down through the grapevine.
Oh well, hindsight was twenty-twenty and all that.
When the old white farm home rose up into view from just beyond the hill, a smile sprouted into place, and Vivian had to control herself, so she didn’t start speeding again. The winding road seemed to stretch on until she questioned if it had gotten longer since she’d been away. But that was stupid. Just like watching the clock made time seem to stand still, her eagerness was making the trip feel longer than it actually was.
The gravel crunching under her tires was music to her ears as Vivian pulled into the drive and made her way up to the house.
It was no surprise when she spotted Gretta sitting in the weathered wicker chair on the porch as if awaiting her arrival, but it was a relief to see that the woman had some color left in her cheeks. She hadn’t realized how worried she was about her until just that moment.
“Okay, who told?” Vivian called out as she parked and threw open the car door.
Gretta rose to her feet, appearing a bit older than she had when Vivian left. She moved slower too, which renewed Vivian’s concern.
“Dead men tell no tales,” she said jovially as she approached the top step.
Vivian held up her hand, a gesture telling her to wait there and she’d come to her. Climbing the steps, she said, “I was hoping to surprise you.”
“I knew you’d be back, one day or the next. Just a matter of time.”
“I forgot, you know everything.” The two embraced, holding on for a while, the days between them feeling deeper than either had expected.
“You won’t be leaving again, I’d guess,” Gretta stated, but there was a question in there.
“I don’t think so,” Vivian told her, casting a fond look around the property. Off in the distance, she could just make out the start of the fencing that surrounded Nash’s property.
She’d tackle that problem later.
“I did some exploring,” she said, returning to the moment, “stretched my wings a bit, but at the end of the day, this was where I wanted to be.”
Gretta beamed, wrinkles littering her face. She patted Vivian’s arm. “I’m happy to hear that. Come, I made tea.”
Vivian wore a private smile as they entered the house together.
She still had a lot to figure out, but she’d come to realize that none of it had to be solved in a day. She had time.
One thing was certain: it was good to be back.
It was good to be home.
To be continued…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.C. Valentine is the USA Today and International bestselling author of the Night Calls and Wayward Fighters Series and the Forbidden Trilogy. Her vivid imagination and love of words and romance had her penning her own romance stories from an early age, which, despite being poorly edited and written longhand, she forced friends and family members to read. No, she isn't sorry.
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Finding Home (Roped by the Cowboy Duet Book 1) Page 17
