Cowgirl Next Door (Sutter's Hollow Book 3)

by Lacy Williams

  Cowgirl Next Door

  The Sutter’s Hollow series

  Lacy Williams

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Exclusive invitation

  Author’s Note

  Also by Lacy Williams

  1

  The doorbell rang, startling Noah Miller and interrupting him mid-sentence.

  Who—?

  Didn't matter.

  He left a long pause on the audio track so his producer could find and correct the aborted sentence. Took a moment to re-center himself and repeat the words silently before speaking them aloud.

  "She fumbled for her keys, almost dropped them, jammed them into—"

  The doorbell rang again.

  It was like a pulse of sensation in a limb that had gone numb. In his constant state of near-darkness, it was a reminder that the rest of the house, the space beyond his chair at this desk existed. In the absence of sound, he sometimes felt as if he were floating. As if there was no real connection with the rest of his surroundings.

  It had to be the little hoodlums from next door. Yesterday, they'd played ding-dong-ditch for twenty minutes, ringing his bell at different intervals.

  He hadn't answered his door in years. The rule didn’t change yesterday, either. He'd waited them out, knowing they would give up eventually.

  Yesterday, he’d been eating supper. Their prank hadn't cost him valuable production time.

  Who could have known their prank would be repeated?

  Unbelievable.

  His temper flared as the bell rang a third time. He quashed the instincts left from his former life. He wouldn't answer the door to yell at the rascals. Even if they deserved it.

  He'd moved to this little house on twenty acres outside of Sutter's Hollow because he'd wanted peace and quiet. He'd built a career as an audiobook narrator and voiceover artist without adding any soundproofing to the small walk-in closet in his master bedroom. Something he regretted now. He would love to be enclosed in a soundproof booth right now.

  Lord, save him from his next door neighbors.

  Next door was relative. The 100-acre farm had a house, but it was nearly a quarter-mile from Noah's. With all that land, didn't the children have something better to do than bother him?

  He hadn't even known anyone had moved in—the house had been vacant for over a decade—until several weeks ago, when he'd startled at the sound of a tractor plowing rows in the field closest to his property.

  Since then, he'd occasionally noticed the children's shouts during his afternoon walks down to the pond. The tractor ran at odd times of the morning

  He paused his recording. Then thought better of it and stopped the recording entirely. Saved it. After an interruption of this magnitude, he would have to go through his entire pre-recording routine again before he continued.

  What time was it? A press of the button and his phone announced it was a little after four. He was two pages away from the end of the chapter. He'd planned to narrate another chapter tonight. Maybe two, if his voice held out.

  But the hoodlums were out of school for the day—it was a weekday, wasn't it?—and if they didn't get lost, how was he supposed to work?

  The doorbell rang again, and his blood boiled. His voice shook as he used commands to cue up the phone app on his phone. It took him two calls to get a non-emergency line to the sheriff's office. He held on the line and finally got transferred to a deputy.

  "My neighbor's kids are running wild."

  There was a pause. Maybe he shouldn't have just spit it out like that, but he couldn't seem to help it.

  "Are they doing anything illegal? Playing music too loud? Selling drugs?" The guy on the other end of the line sounded like he'd just graduated high school. Young and inexperienced. Would he even be able to help?

  "They keep ringing my doorbell."

  Another pause. This one longer. "Have you tried answering it?"

  Noah squeezed the back of his neck with the hand that wasn't holding his phone. "I don't want to answer it. I want them to stop."

  "Look, man. It sounds like it's just kids being kids. Have you tried calling on their parents to express your concerns?"

  Was this guy from the eighteen hundreds or something? Express your concerns.

  Noah's voice was tight as he answered. "These kids are trespassing on my property. Are you telling me you're not going to do anything about it?"

  The deputy was no help. Noah hung up rather than listen to his excuses. Yes, Noah knew that the kids would be gone in the twenty minutes it took someone to drive out here. No, he didn't care if his neighbor got offended when a deputy showed up on their doorstep.

  He'd equipped his house with a doorbell camera. It helped his personal assistant, Aiden, manage deliveries. Aiden worked offsite from his home in Kansas, but Noah never wanted for groceries or clothes or anything he needed.

  Technology meant he never had to interact with another human being. Except for Aiden, who worked for him, and Noah’s mom.

  The doorbell camera would have the proof Noah needed to show that the kids were trespassing and had done it repeatedly.

  Express your concerns. Ha. He was going to have Aiden chew out the kids' parents.

  Just thinking about it filled him with satisfaction. He didn't know if the kids knew he was blind or would've pranked anybody. It didn't matter.

  Maybe it made Noah a bad neighbor, but there was a reason he'd moved onto this property and kept to himself. His Realtor had told him the place next door was in terrible shape and that the land wasn't big enough to entice one of the bigger ranchers in the area to buy it up.

  He'd had five years of peace and quiet. Five years of not having to remember what it felt like to interact with other humans.

  He wanted it back.

  * * *

  Why hadn't anyone told her that being a mom would be this disgusting?

  Jilly Tatum fished the blue homework folder out of her ten-year-old foster son's backpack. It was covered in crumbs, and she peered deeper into the recesses of the backpack. If she reached down there, would her hand meet something gooey or sticky?

  Unfortunately, it'd happened before—last week.

  Maybe if she'd raised the trio, ten-year-old PJ, his seven-year-old sister, Lindsey, and their twelve-year-old cousin, Casey, she'd be used to crumby backpacks. Or the sheer number of food wrappers that kept appearing on the floorboards of her minivan.

  But Jilly had only been fostering the kids for six weeks, so every sticky mess—like the unknown substance that had coated the TV remote yesterday—was a surprise.

  She was trying to be cool about it. She'd spent years cleaning up after her kid sister, Iris. Her foster kids obviously hadn't learned much hygiene in their former placements. It was no big deal.

  But she still wiped down the folder with a baby wipe—those things were gold—and washed her hands at the kitchen sink before she opened it. After dinner, PJ and Casey had both insisted their homework was finished. But she'd seen the furtive look that had passed between them before they'd asked to be excused.

  She could hear them cha
ttering from the living room, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. She'd learned that noise was a good sign. It was when the kids got quiet that they were up to mischief.

  Her feet were killing her today, and she sank into one of the chairs at the dining table. She paged through the homework in PJ's folder, wincing slightly at his horrific spelling. All three of the kids were behind in their schooling. She'd been working with their teachers and the elementary and middle school counselors, but it was going to be a long road to get them where they needed to be.

  That was okay. She'd spent two years fighting the same cancer that had stolen her mom's life. She was no quitter.

  A piece of paper had been folded into fourths and tucked behind the last page of homework. Hidden?

  Her heart sank as she unfolded it and recognized the signature at the bottom of the printed note. PJ's teacher. It was dated two days before. PJ had been disruptive during read-quietly-at-your-desk time.

  This was the second note on his behavior she'd gotten. She'd hoped to make it to Christmas break without having to apologize to his teacher again. So much for that.

  She needed to talk to PJ.

  She rose and went to the living room doorway.

  "—zombie. You know, like that guy from the movie—" Casey whispered.

  The boys sat on the couch with their heads together, poring over a spiral notebook. They didn't notice Jilly. A pair of binoculars that had once belonged to Jilly's uncle rested on the coffee table. All three of the kids had been raised in the city, and living on a farm, even a small one like this, had brought its share of surprises. They'd been shocked to live so far from town. Shocked at only having one close neighbor—and Noah Miller was a recluse, so not much of a neighbor at all. Lately, the boys had gotten into birdwatching. She was hoping they might join a scouting program in the spring.

  Across the room, Lindsey was curled in a ball on the chair's ottoman, fast asleep. She was constantly pretending to be a cat. The child preferred to stay near her brother. She must've been playing, or watching the boys, and drifted off. It wasn't late, but Jilly knew that Lindsey was still adjusting to being in a new school. Making friends was exhausting. At least, she hoped Lindsey was making friends. At the parent-teacher meeting last month, Lindsey's teacher had said the girl kept to herself and didn't interact with the other children in class, not even during recess.

  Lindsey was shy. She still hadn't opened up to Jilly, not really. Mostly, she pretended to be a cat and meowed.

  But Jilly figured that, when you were a foster kid and could get moved to a new placement at a moment's notice, it would be hard to make friends. It would be even harder to open up and trust the adult in the house.

  Jilly was determined to win over all three kids. She already loved them like her own.

  "I don't know." PJ shook his head. The boys still hadn't noticed Jilly in the doorway. "What about his walking stick thing? What does he use it for?"

  Walking stick? He? Who were the boys talking about?

  Her cell phone rang from the kitchen counter where she'd left it. She was a little concerned about the subject of the boys' conversation, but she snatched her phone. It might be Iris. It might be an emergency.

  It wasn't Iris.

  It was an out-of-state number. She debated whether to answer. She didn't have the time or patience to deal with another telemarketer. But, just in case… "Hello?"

  There was a pause on the line. She braced herself.

  When the voice came, it was uncertain. First day on the telemarketing gig?

  "Is this Jilly Tatum?"

  She opened her mouth to tell him exactly what he could do with her phone number, but the young man rushed on.

  "This is going to sound really strange. I work for Noah Miller."

  Jilly's mouth snapped closed.

  "You're his neighbor, right?" the man asked.

  Remnants of the ten-year-old guilt rose to tighten her throat. "Yes."

  "Well, ah... My employer asked me to call because your children have been ringing his doorbell repeatedly."

  What?

  "Mr. Miller works from home, and the prank has interrupted his work two days in a row."

  Oh no. On their first day home, she'd showed the children the property line, complete with barbed wire fencing and a rusty old gate between the two farms. She'd given them freedom to roam on the hundred-plus acres she now owned and told them not to cross the fence line.

  Obviously, they'd disobeyed her rule. Anger and disappointment rose hot in her chest. Her face burned, and she was thankful Noah's employee couldn't see her.

  "What's your name?" She paced past the kitchen table to the window over the sink. From here, she could see Noah's roof and about half of the front of his house. The rolling plain between them hid the lower half.

  "Aiden."

  "Aiden," she repeated. "Please tell Noah that it won't happen again. I'll bring my boys over so they can apologize." She assumed it was the boys. Maybe Lindsey had been involved, too. She'd have to talk to the kids.

  That would be fun.

  "That's not necessary."

  Maybe not to Noah, but she'd set boundaries for the boys, and they'd made a bad choice. “It’s no trouble.”

  "That's really not a good idea."

  The urgency in Aiden's voice registered. "Why didn't Noah call himself?"

  There was some hesitation in Aiden's voice this time when he spoke. "He asked me to call. And he won't answer the door. He's already tried calling in a complaint with the sheriff’s department."

  He what?

  The heat had been slowly draining from her face, but now it was back and blazing hotter than ever. Noah had called the sheriff first? What kind of person did that, instead of trying to solve a simple prank in a neighborly way?

  "Mr. Miller just wants to be left alone."

  Aiden's simple, firm statement left no room for argument.

  It also drew a memory, unbidden, from the depths of her memory bank. Two days after high school graduation. Two days after the auto accident and the surgery that had saved Noah’s life but hadn’t been able to restore his sight, she’d called his cell phone. Even though they hadn’t been close, she’d wanted to visit him at the hospital. The call had connected and she’d heard the murmur of his mother’s voice in the background. And then Noah’s angry exclamation just before the call had disconnected.

  He hadn’t answered any of her calls after that.

  Over ten years later, Noah still wanted to be left alone.

  She hung up the phone and walked back to the living room doorway. This time, she saw Casey's furtive glance and how PJ looked guilty as he flipped the spiral notebook closed.

  Walking stick. Zombie.

  Suddenly, the binoculars and the boys' secrecy made a sick kind of sense. They'd been spying on Noah. And playing a prank on him.

  She felt suddenly exhausted, weighted down by disappointment and knowing she still had a hard discussion and some kind of punishment ahead of her tonight.

  It didn't change how she felt about them. She'd known from extensive discussions with the kids' social worker and some reading she'd done in preparation that their transition into her household wasn't going to be easy. But she'd loved them from that first night together. When she'd shown the boys their room upstairs, she'd seen the vulnerability they worked to hide as they remained tight-lipped and quiet.

  It was her job to love them. And part of loving them was helping them grow into good citizens, men who could face their mistakes and apologize when they'd done wrong.

  But Aiden had insisted that Noah didn't want an in-person apology. Should she respect his decision, even if it wasn't neighborly?

  2

  Late the next evening, Noah's doorbell rang again.

  Seriously? Did these kids not have a responsible parent around?

  He ignored it. He was in his office, but he'd already finished recording. The punks from next door wouldn't ruin his work today.

  H
e played another audio clip from the university's online library of birdsongs. This morning, during a brisk walk down to the pond, he'd heard a completely new bird and been unable to identify it. He could still remember the trill, tweet tweet, trill—had recorded a voice memo with his own terrible mimic of the birdcall—and wanted to identify it before the sound faded.

  Thirty seconds later, someone knocked stridently on the front door. And didn't quit.

  It was impossible to focus with the onslaught of noise. Noah grabbed his phone and put in a quick call to Aiden, who had access to the video feed for his doorbell.

  "It's a girl—woman," Aiden corrected himself. "She is... She is very attractive. Short hair. Really short. Light eyes. Blue maybe—"

  "Aiden."

  Very attractive. Aiden was twenty-four and single. Of course he'd notice. It'd been over a decade since Noah had been eighteen and girl crazy. Sometimes he felt like it had been more like a century. Aiden still had his whole life ahead to chase girls and make plans.

  Noah's life had ended before he'd reached puberty. He just hadn't known it then.

  "Sorry. She's got—uh... Looks like it must be the mom of the two boys who've been messing with you. They're standing behind her."

  His neighbors. He'd told Aiden to make sure they stayed away.

  Either his assistant had botched the message—unlikely—or the neighbor lady was a stubborn jerk who didn't listen.

  The knocking turned to pounding on his door. Like she wanted to break it down. The unwanted noise pulsed like a pounding headache against the base of his skull.

  He had to unclench his teeth where his molars were grinding together. Two minutes. He'd give her two minutes to get lost, and then he was calling the sheriff's office and report her for trespassing.