Returning for Love: A Western Romance Novel (Long Valley Book 4)

by Erin Wright

  His original plan had been, “Absolutely nothing at all.” There was a reason that they weren’t together. Sure, the shock of seeing her had been overwhelming and he’d tried to ask her to dance, but now that moment had passed. He couldn’t date Iris.

  Except, after making himself into a jackass at Wyatt’s wedding, he realized that he’d backed himself into a corner. If he didn’t ask Iris out on a date, well now, he’d be sending the message loud and clear that he didn’t want to date someone who wasn’t whole and perfect. And that wasn’t a message he wanted to send anyone, and certainly not the message he wanted to send Iris.

  As near as he could figure it, he was now honor-bound to ask her out on a date. Just one, just to show that it wasn’t her disabilities that were causing the problems. He had no idea what that date could involve, though. No hiking, no playing H.O.R.S.E. at the city park on the basketball courts, no dancing, no horseback riding…

  They could go to a movie, he supposed, although that seemed awfully uninspired, and out to dinner, which seemed awfully unoriginal, and he’d have to make sure that the businesses they went to had no steps that needed navigating.

  Then, once his pity date his duty was done, then he could go back to his life and she to hers and he wouldn’t have to feel bad about making her feel bad. They could just drift apart and no one had to have any hurt feelings about disabilities or anything.

  Except…

  His hand paused on the bed of the truck as he was pulling the tarp down into place. What if she was dating someone? Hell, she could even be married for all he knew.

  Jennifer hadn’t mentioned a boyfriend, a fiancé, or a husband for that matter, but that didn’t mean a damn thing. She probably didn’t know their history and didn’t know why Declan had been asking all of those questions. Iris could have some boyfriend tucked away, back in Pocatello or Boise or in New York City for hell’s sakes.

  Maybe that’s why she’d said, “Don’t you know?” It was awfully presumptuous of him to assume she was single.

  He grunted as he got back into the beast and started the engine, the rumble vibrating through the driver’s seat as he threw it into first gear. He didn’t like the idea of Iris having a boyfriend because he probably wasn’t good enough for her. Nobody was good enough for her.

  That was all.

  He wasn’t jealous, of course. He had no reason to be jealous. He and Iris hadn’t been exclusive for years. Thirteen, to be exact. Not that he was counting.

  The idea that she would be single was downright ludicrous, really, unless the whole state of Idaho was filled with blind and stupid men.

  Still, he ought to ask Jennifer to find out. Just in case. If Iris was seeing someone, well, his duty was done. He could move on. And if she was single, he’d ask her out on one pity date do his duty, and then he could move on.

  Either way, he and Iris McLain weren’t meant to be. He’d figured that out a long time ago, and no amount of gorgeous red hair could change that fact.

  Chapter 6

  Iris

  Gripping her cane with one hand, she held tightly to the handle of the grocery sack with the other as she listened to her sister chatter in her ear through her Bluetooth earpiece.

  “Listen,” Iris said as soon as she sensed a break in the conversation, “we need to talk about Mom and Dad’s 40th wedding anniversary party.” She was making her way down the two steps to the front door of the mother-in-law apartment and then through to her kitchen. This was her sixth load of groceries into the house; everything was slower when she had to “waste” one hand holding on to a cane and thus could only carry groceries with the other hand. She dropped the bag on the counter and then trudged back toward the open door.

  She was letting cool air in by leaving the door propped open, but she couldn’t find it in herself to give a damn. Managing a cane, a bag of groceries, and the door knob? That was a recipe for disaster if she ever heard one. She’d just have to throw on a sweater, once she’d managed to get everything inside.

  “Ugh,” Ivy groaned dramatically. “Iris, I do not want to go back to Long Valley.”

  “I know, but this is Mom and Dad’s big four-oh. You have to come back home for it. I bet you Tiffany and Ezzy aren’t even here in the valley anymore.”

  “You just moved back yourself. Are you sure?”

  “No,” Iris admitted with a small laugh. “You’re right, I’m not sure. But I am sure that we can skip sending them an invitation, so for the week or so that you’re here, you can hide out, away from them. If I have to live in Mom and Dad’s mother-in-law apartment for the foreseeable future, you can at least come stay with me for a week. It’s only fair. I’ll let you sleep on the couch.”

  Iris’d made it back to the car and was eyeing the last item dubiously. She’d known even when she’d bought it that it was going to be damn awful trying to get it into the house. But grocery stores didn’t sell cat food by the cupful.

  She sat down on the tailgate of her car for a moment, catching her breath. She’d never realized it was such an athletic adventure just hauling in groceries.

  “Hmph. Well, speaking of old news,” Ivy said in an obvious bid to change topics, “have you run into Declan yet?”

  “Ugh. Yes…?”

  “Why did that sound like a question instead of an answer?” Ivy asked, laughing. “Either you’ve run into him or you haven’t.”

  “Well, we only spoke for a few moments, and then Stetson needed his help. He…he asked me to dance.”

  Iris hated that her voice broke just then. Hated it with a passion. It’d been a little over a month now. She shouldn’t be upset any longer over it. Crappy things happened to good people all the time. Her lot in life was just a bit crappier than most, was all.

  “Oh.” Ivy just went quiet because really, what else was there to say?

  But Iris couldn’t leave it alone. Finally, someone to talk to who wasn’t her mother, pushing her to “just get back out there.”

  “Somehow, the gossip chain here in Long Valley failed to pass the word on to him that his ex-girlfriend is now practically a cripple, and sure as hell can’t dance. You know, this is the same gossip chain that had Mom knowing that I’d snuck out of the house before I’d barely got my foot over the lip of the bedroom window. I don’t think I sneezed in high school without someone somewhere telling someone else about it. And yet, the one time that I wanted the knowledge to pass on, the gossips of the world went mum.”

  “Iris, you are not a cripple. You are beautiful and smart and amazing and it just so happens that you fall sideways unexpectedly. And run over things that are right in front of you.”

  Iris laughed at that. Painfully true, in every sense of the word.

  “But the doctor said you’ll get better over time,” Ivy plowed on. “You just need to give yourself some space and forgive yourself for not being the Sawyer High School basketball star anymore.”

  “Yeah, my days of dribbling up and down the court are long gone.” It seemed like so long ago that she’d been able to dribble circles around her opponents, putting the ball up and taking the shot to win a game. It was a glorious, freeing, amazing feeling.

  That she’d never, ever feel again.

  “Well, be that as it may, you don’t want to go on a date with Declan Miller anyway. He’s the one who chose farming over you, for God’s sake. He’s an ass. Plus, you don’t want to be stuck in podunk Idaho for the rest of your life. As soon as you’re healed up, you should move down here with me. The weather is so much better in California, I promise. No snow, no horrific winds, and not a pine tree in sight.”

  “I like pine trees!” Iris said with a laugh. She pushed off the bumper of the car and turned around, eyeballing the sack of cat food again. It was time to get the thing inside since it certainly wasn’t going to get there by itself.

  Well, technically, she could wait until her father got home and he could carry it in for her – she was rather sure that was the whole idea behind them forcibly mo
ving her into the MIL apartment – but she was sick of everyone doing everything for her. She wanted to unload groceries all by herself – was that so much to ask?

  “You like pine trees? Well, everyone is entitled to be wrong,” Ivy said, laughing, and Iris just rolled her eyes, even though her younger sister couldn’t see her. When her high school graduation had rolled around, Ivy’s bags had been packed. She walked across the stage, accepted her diploma, and kept on going. She didn’t even stay for the graduation party that night. She was leaving Sawyer, Idaho, and she was never going back.

  It was no surprise that she wouldn’t think a farmer was worth dating. Iris would’ve worried that Ivy’d had a personality transplant if she’d tried to argue otherwise.

  “Whether or not I should date Declan,” Iris said, “I won’t date Declan. Mostly because I won’t be seeing him again.” It’d been five days since the wedding, and she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man. Just like she’d expected, someone had finally told him the truth.

  Which she was just fine with. Happy about, even.

  Very happy.

  It would’ve been nice to finally get some answers, and according to her friends, it was a lack of those answers that were keeping her from moving on. But she’d lived this long without them; she didn’t need them before and she didn’t need them now.

  She was about halfway back to the apartment when the bag started to slip out from under her arm. She swung her other arm around wildly, trying to catch it before it went tumbling to the ground, but they all went tumbling instead. She landed with a heavy thud on top of the bag, busting the top seam open and sending cat food everywhere.

  “Are you okay?” Ivy yelled in her ear, obviously hearing the ruckus. Iris rolled off the bag and stared up at the brilliant blue sky.

  “Yeah, just fine,” she said with a shaky half-laugh. “Apparently, I am no longer friends with cat food bags.”

  “What?” Ivy asked, confused.

  “Never mind. Listen, I gotta go. We’ll talk later this week – we need to get some planning done on this party. It’ll be here before we know it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Iris pushed herself to her feet, surveying the damage in front of her. Cat food had gone everywhere, and there was now a busted seam that she would need to be careful not to spill more food out of.

  But, in good news, the bag was now much lighter since half of it was on the ground.

  There was a silver lining to everything, it turned out.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Love ya, sis. Talk to you later.” She pressed on the bluetooth ear piece to turn it off and then swung back towards the MIL apartment. She’d need to get a bucket or bowl to pick up the spilled cat food. Time to clean up yet another one of her messes.

  Chapter 7

  Declan

  He knocked on the door and then stepped back, clutching his bouquet of late-blooming irises to his chest. With a name like Iris, she’d either love the flower or hate it, but luckily, Declan knew which one from their high school days. Also luckily, Carla at Happy Petals was able to get in a bouquet for him. He hated to think how far they’d had to go to find irises at this time of the year.

  Iris opened the door, looking out quizzically and then her mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “Declan!” she exclaimed. He could tell she would’ve expected a grizzly bear before she would’ve guessed he’d show up, and considering it’d been six days since they’d seen each other at the wedding, he couldn’t blame her. It’d taken him time to figure out what to do for their date, and to get irises ordered in. If he was going to talk her into this, he needed something to help sweeten the pot.

  Oh, and he also had to find the time to ask Jennifer if Iris had someone special in her life. He didn’t like to focus on the joy he’d felt at the news that Iris was single. That was just…heartburn.

  Pleasant heartburn.

  He thrust the irises at her. “Royal purple, your favorite,” he said with a nervous smile. He was trying to hide that nervousness, but was pretty sure he was failing.

  Miserably.

  She stepped back and held the door open, taking the irises from his hands as he walked past into the apartment. “I love them,” she said, burying her face in the irises for a moment. She navigated her cane, the irises, and the closing of the front door with ease, which he was happy to see. Maybe stories of her clumsiness were overblown.

  Then again, she was 35 years old and walking with a cane. Maybe she was just good at hiding her disabilities.

  “Carla at Happy Petals got them in for me. I’m glad you like them. I came over to find out if you were free to go with me to Franklin this Friday.” It came out in a rush but she seemed to understand it anyway because she just froze for a moment, staring at him.

  “Franklin? Are you…sure?” she breathed.

  “I wouldn’t have come over to ask if I wasn’t,” he said with a teasing grin. “I thought it’d be fun to attend the music festival and eat all of the fair food that’s totally awful for you, and catch up on old times. Find out what you’ve been up to lately.”

  She froze and he froze, and time just stopped.

  He gulped. Hard. “I mean, other than…that,” he said, gesturing at the cane in her hand.

  She glared at him for a moment longer and then nodded. Once. “What time are you going to come pick me up?” she asked, ignoring his faux pas for the moment. Thank God.

  “Around two?” he asked.

  “Sure, that works.”

  “Okay, good.” He backed towards the door slowly. “Good talk. See you later,” and then he was escaping outside and into the autumn air. He closed the door behind him and groaned. Hopefully between now and then, he’d learn how to talk to Iris again. They used to be able to talk for hours without missing a beat. She’d been not only his girlfriend, but his best friend, there for a while.

  And now, all he seemed to be able to do was jam his cowboy boot into his mouth whenever he got around her.

  Not exactly the start to their date that he’d been wanting.

  He crunched his way through orange and brown leaves skittering across the yard, and berated himself. Actually, this was exactly the start to their date that he’d been wanting. This was a pity date, nothing more. If it went awkwardly, all the better. Then she wouldn’t be surprised when he didn’t ask her out again.

  Because he wasn’t going to ask her out again. That wasn’t part of the plan. One and done.

  Nothing more.

  Chapter 8

  Iris

  Iris paced the living room of her apartment, waiting for Declan to pick her up.

  Or rather, she wanted to pace the living room.

  In reality, she was simply sitting on her couch, too afraid she’d run into something or fall over and hurt herself before Declan even arrived. Wouldn’t that just be a fine start to the afternoon – a faceplant into the carpet. He could walk into her house and find her sprawled out on the floor, her dress up around her head.

  No siree bob. She was going to keep her butt planted on the couch until he showed up. She could just pace in her mind.

  Unfortunately, pacing in her mind didn’t work nearly as well as she would’ve liked, because none of her nervous energy was being worn off. She looked at the silver watch bracelet on her wrist and groaned. Only three minutes since the last time she’d looked at her watch, and ten minutes before Declan was supposed to show. He was a punctual person so the chances were pretty good that he’d actually be there in ten minutes, but even so, right then? Ten minutes might as well have been a thousand years.

  Her stomach was twisting in so many knots, worried about how this date was going to go and all of the myriad of ways she could screw it up, she was pretty sure the first thing she was going to do to screw it up was throw up all over Declan’s cowboy boots.

  Wouldn’t that be a fine way to start the date. She almost preferred the dress-up-around-her-ears outcome.

  S
he reminded herself that she was going to use this date to pin him to the wall, like a botanist pins a butterfly to a board. She was going to get answers, dammit. Years of no answers was about to come to an end.

  Milk jumped up onto the couch and snuggled up against her thighs, looking up at her with piercing green eyes as she tried her Jedi mind trick to convince Iris to pet her.

  “You know you don’t have to use your Jedi skills on me,” Iris said with a laugh, stroking her beautiful brown tabby body from head to rump. “I’ll pet you whether or not you stare at me intently.” Milk’s purrs just grew louder and she stretched out on Iris’ lap, really getting into the pettings now. “You know, it’s a good thing I love you, or I wouldn’t put up with you shedding your hair all over my clothes just before I go out on my big date.” Milk flicked her tail, completely unconcerned about the summer fur she was shedding everywhere in preparation for her winter coat.

  Iris let the long strokes and the rumble and purrs soothe her. She felt a little less anxious already. This was just Declan. There was nothing between them. That’d died years ago, when he’d chosen farming over her, as her sister so eloquently put it. This wasn’t a real date. They would just go out this one time, catch up on old times, she’d get her answers, and then they’d never see each other again.

  Ugh. But this was Declan.

  The one guy she’d never been able to get over, no matter how many guys had asked her out while she was at Idaho State University. Back when she’d been in shape, back when she’d been confident on her feet and sure about where she was going and who she was, she could have a date every Friday night if she’d wanted.

  She’d found, though, that the guys who asked her out were too tall or too short; too loud or too quiet; trying too hard, or not trying at all.

  Too…not Declan.

  Her roommate, Rebecca, had told her that she wasn’t over Declan, but Iris had ignored her, mainly because it didn’t matter. Whether she was “over” him or not, she wasn’t going to be dating him anymore, so why think about it?