Home Again: A Whiskey Ridge Romance

by Rachel Hanna

  He knew immediately that she was special. And when she’d smiled at him, all bets were off.

  Emmy had gone to the same high school, but their paths hadn’t really crossed much up until that point. She was a straight A student who hung out with the serious, AKA “nerdy”, crowd mostly. A member of the chorus and French club, Emmy wasn’t really someone who would’ve hung around Nash.

  He was more on the wild side, jumping out of barn lofts and asking to tame wild horses. He had no filter, no way to turn off his need for adrenaline. And his father loved that about him, urging him into the rodeo world as soon as possible.

  Billy had always worked in the rodeo too, but not as a competitor. He was too absent minded and had little common sense, not a great combination when riding a two-thousand pound very angry animal.

  So Brick had groomed Nash from a young age to take over the business one day. And when he saw Nash take an interest in Emmy, he wasn’t having any of it.

  “Women only tie you down, boy. Don’t fall for the pretty little package,” was about the extent of Brick’s relationship advice to his sons. Billy had stuck to it, even all these years later. But Nash hadn’t, something he’d kicked himself for over the years.

  Why couldn’t he have just not cared so much about Emmy? Why had he fallen in love with her so hard?

  Those weren’t the only questions he’d asked himself over these years. He’d both beat himself up for loving her and leaving her. Each one, in his mind anyway, had equally messed up his life.

  “Is this pressure okay?” she asked, her voice soft. He opened his eyes quickly, almost sure she could read his mind and know he was thinking about her, about their past.

  “What? Oh. Yeah. It’s fine.”

  She looked at him, her head cocked a bit for a moment, and then went back to her work.

  Emmy looked the same really. Same long hair that she kept tucked behind one ear most of the time. Same sea blue eyes that danced when she laughed, although he hadn’t seen much of that lately.

  But she was different at the same time. More reserved. More defensive. He had to wonder how much of that was his fault. Maybe she didn’t trust people because of how their worlds split apart all those years ago. And then he’d left her to pick up the pieces alone.

  “Okay,” she said, breaking up his thoughts, “Let’s have you turn over so I can work on some other areas…”

  He’d been looking at her. What was he thinking? Was he remembering their past together like she was? Or was he simply wishing he was back in Vegas with all of the beautiful women he surely attracted out West?

  “Does this hurt?” she asked as she eased her fingers into the back of his thigh, trying desperately not to look at his super toned butt that was hidden just under the khaki fabric of his shorts.

  “No. It actually feels good,” he said, his voice muffled by the massage table.

  This was torture. She was so conflicted by feelings that she was finding it hard to do her job already. How was she going to survive several weeks of this?

  But she had to. There were no other choices. She was a professional, and asking not to work with a specific patient just because they’d dated in high school would make her look like an idiot in front of her new boss.

  If only he’d just been her high school sweetheart. But it had been a whole lot more. And it had been way more complicated. She knew it, and Nash knew it.

  The air of tension between them was thick, and she could only hope that would get better with time. And then he’d been on his merry way back to Vegas, and she’d… Well, she had no idea what she would be doing by then. Her life was a mixed up mess right now.

  After fifteen minutes, Emmy couldn’t take it anymore and helped Nash sit up.

  “Let’s work on this arm,” she said, putting more cream on her hands. He held his arm out, and she rested it on a thick foam pad as she started to work it.

  “So, your mom got kicked out of the retirement village, huh?” Nash finally said, obviously trying to make small talk.

  “Yep. I was so proud,” she said, unable to stifle a sarcastic laugh.

  “Good old Pauline…”

  “I just don’t find her as amusing as everyone else.”

  “You never did, Emmy.”

  “Are you saying I don’t have a good sense of humor?” she asked, looking at him with a hint of a smile.

  “Not saying that at all. You just never understood your mother.”

  “Oh, and you did?”

  Nash laughed. “More than you did. She got me.”

  “That’s because neither of you has a filter between your brain and mouth, and you both have impulse control problems.”

  Ah, now this felt more natural.

  “Impulse control problems? How so?”

  “You ride bulls, Nash.”

  “Not impulsively. I trained for years to do what I do.”

  Emmy realized they were getting back into personal territory and tried to steer the conversation back to his treatment.

  “I think this muscle will respond quicker to therapy than your leg. Doesn’t seem to be nearly as tender.”

  “Don’t try to distract me from what we were talking about, Em.”

  Em. He’d always called her that.

  “I mean Emmy. I mean, doctor… What should I call you?”

  “Emmy is fine.”

  “Got it. Emmy.” She tried not to smile, but it didn’t work. Actually, she thought she might have even blushed a bit, but Nash didn’t seem to take notice. “Is Pauline just being herself or is something else going on?”

  “Well, they say she has some form of early dementia. She has had some episodes of forgetfulness, which is how she ended up at the retirement village in the first place. Kept leaving things in the oven, losing her keys. Stuff like that.”

  Nash cocked his head to the side for a moment. “This may be a longshot, but have you asked the doctor to check her vitamin B12?”

  Emmy stared at him for a moment, her hands stopping. “What?”

  Nash chuckled. “I realize I’m no doctor, but there was this guy who competed on the circuit with me a few years back. His mother started having issues. They said Alzheimer’s or something. Anyway, he had money so he got her in to see some fancy, alternative doc out in California. Turned out she was severely low in B12. Started taking these shots, and she was like a new woman from what he said. You may want to just ask, that’s all. I could be totally wrong.”

  Emmy smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Nash. Really. I’ll look into that. I’d love to think it’s something simple like that because the thought of my mother losing her memory…” She stopped for a moment to keep her eyes from welling. “Well, I just don’t want that for her.”

  Nash reached for Emmy’s hand, but she quickly pulled back and went back to her work.

  Chapter 7

  Emmy sat at the cafeteria table. The hospital wasn’t exactly state of the art, and the cafeteria still looked like something out of the 1970s. But the people she worked with were nice, and the food wasn’t all that gag inducing as she’d feared. Still, she was going to start bringing her own lunches from now on because the mound of meat on her plate didn’t have enough gravy to cover the strange taste.

  “Hey, Emmy!”

  Emmy looked up to see one of the nurses she’d befriended since starting at Whiskey Ridge Hospital. Her name was Tara, and she was as bubbly as anyone Emmy had ever met.

  With bright blue eyes, a huge toothy smile and a head full of the craziest brown curls she’d ever seen, Tara was a ball of energy. She looked more like she belonged at an art studio than a hospital, but patients seemed to love her sunny personality.

  “Hey, Emmy. How’s your day going?” she asked as she pointed at the open seat across from Emmy.

  “Please join me,” Emmy said. “And is there any chance you can identify this?”

  Tara leaned over and looked at Emmy’s plate. “Well, they claim it’s Salisbury steak, but I think it’s yesterday�
�s leftover meatloaf with the ketchup scraped off and some gravy added. And I think the gravy is actually the French onion soup thickened with corn starch.”

  Emmy laughed. “Wow. That was oddly specific.”

  “I went to culinary school for awhile,” Tara said, taking a bite of her salad.

  Emmy could totally see that making sense. “Why did you stop?”

  “It’s weird, really. I had always wanted to be a chef, ever since I was a little kid. But then my grandmother got sick when I was about twelve. She had cancer. I spent a lot of time at the hospital, and I just felt pulled in that direction, you know? I wanted to help people.”

  Emmy took a sip of her sweet tea. “I totally understand. I think most people who work in medicine consider it a calling.”

  “I love it. It makes me happy to get up in the morning. So, how’s your new job going?”

  “Good. I mean, I like my patients. Most of them…”

  “Uh oh. That sounds like trouble. Care to explain?”

  “Maybe one day,” Emmy said with a chuckle. “Listen, I have a question you might know the answer to.”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “Is it possible for someone to be diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimers but they really have a vitamin B12 deficiency?”

  “Absolutely. Why?”

  “Well, let me tell you about my mother…”

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Billy asked when he came around the corner and saw Nash laying on the sofa with one arm stretched out to the side and his eyes closed.

  “I’m working on my stretches. Emmy said to do this twice a day.”

  Billy snickered. “Oh, Emmy said so…”

  Nash opened his eyes and glared at his brother. “Really? You sound like a ten year old.”

  “Hey, that ain’t a jab. I’d love to go back to being ten years old. Remember Susan Kramer? I kissed her down by the creek when I was that age.”

  Nash rolled his eyes. “You realize you’re the only one who remembers that, right?” He slowly sat up and leaned back against the couch.

  “I bet Susan remembers it,” Billy said with a grin. “Want a beer?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh, did Emmy tell you no beer?”

  “Ha ha. Very funny. No, actually my doctor and my boss told me no beer with my medication. But I’m ditching the meds soon too.”

  “Good because it isn’t nearly as much fun to pick at you when you’re all drugged up.” Billy popped the top on the beer and fell into the arm chair, his cowboy booted legs flung over the arm.

  “Can I help you?” Nash said.

  “Nope. Dad said to meet him here. He wanted to talk to us.”

  “Oh great. This feels like the old days.”

  “Yeah, when he would yell at us for not cleaning up the garage or sucking at bull riding?”

  “Or when we didn’t cut the grass in straight lines,” Nash added. “Pretty much anything we did, or didn’t do, resulted in a long lecture about our mutual suckiness.”

  Billy laughed and took a long drink of his beer. “He’s actually changed a good bit in the last few years, Nash. Gotta give him some credit for that.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well, that’s because you never come home. He’s mellowed a lot since…”

  “You boys here?” Brick called from the front door.

  “We’re here,” Nash called back, wondering what his brother had been about to say before they were interrupted.

  “Billy, help me with these bags,” Brick said. Billy hopped up from the chair and trotted over to the front door.

  “What’s all that?” Nash asked as he watched his father and brother maneuver several overfilled brown paper bags through the foyer and into the kitchen.

  “Just hold your horses,” Brick said. “I’ll explain in a minute.”

  Once everything was put away, Billy plopped back into the chair and Brick sat on the stone hearth across from Nash. The living room of his house really was beautiful with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the mountains that stretched out further than he could even see.

  “How was therapy?” Brick asked as he took a long drink of a bottle of water.

  “It was therapy. Not much to tell. What’s this all about, Dad?”

  Brick sighed, took another drink and looked at Nash.

  “I’d like to introduce you to someone at dinner tonight.”

  “Who?”

  “Her name is Lana.”

  “Okay… and who is she?”

  Brick shot a glance at Billy, who nodded at his father to continue.

  “What’s the big secret here?” Nash asked.

  “Lana is… my fiancee, Nash.”

  Nash’s mouth dropped open as he stared at his father for a moment. Of all the people in the world - well, with the exception of Billy - Brick was the last person he ever expected to get married.

  Brick had long ago said that he would never marry again. No way, no how. He was focused on the rodeo business, and a woman would only get in the way of that.

  And now he was engaged?

  “When did this happen?”

  “A couple of weeks before you came back to Whiskey Ridge.”

  “And why am I just now learning about it?”

  “Well, I didn’t want to complicate this whole situation, for one thing. Plus, Lana has been out in Colorado visiting her sister so it was easier. But you’re still here, and she’s home so…”

  “So you had to tell me?”

  “Well, yeah. Kind of. And I want you to get to know her, Nash. Billy has known her for almost two years now.”

  “Two years?” Nash said a little louder than he’d planned. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?”

  “Come on, Nash. You know we’ve barely spoken in the last few years. I didn’t think you’d want to hear about my love life.”

  “First of all, please don’t say ‘love life’ because that creeps me out. And second of all, you didn’t think your own son would care that you’re getting married?”

  Brick thought for a moment. “No, I actually didn’t.”

  “Wow. That’s just great. Says a lot about our relationship.”

  “Come on, man. You’re at much as fault as he is,” Billy said.

  “Seriously? You were raised with this man too, Billy. Maybe you didn’t run as soon as you could, but for me it was necessary.”

  Nash looked at his father, and the hurt was there in his eyes. His stomach clenched when he realized what he’d just said.

  “Dad, I shouldn’t have…”

  “Stop. I don’t want to go down this road, Nash. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and I accept my fair share of it. But I won’t sit in my own house and listen to you try to blame me for your messed up life. You made choices, and I was here when you needed me. I’ve never abandoned you, and I’ve been here waiting for you to come home for years. But you chose not to be in my life all those years ago.”

  “And you chose to shun me because I made a different choice than what you wanted. You made me an outcast in my own family because I wanted to strike out on my own.”

  “Oh, that’s BS and you know it! You and I both know why you left, Nash Collier. And it wasn’t just me.”

  Brick stood up and walked to the kitchen. Billy looked at his brother. “What’s he talking about?”

  “None of your business,” Nash said as he pulled himself up and into his wheelchair.

  “Where are you going?” Brick asked from the kitchen. Nash continued rolling toward the side door. Thankfully, his father had installed a temporary ramp for his wheelchair, although he hoped to graduate to full time crutches soon.

  “Out.”

  “Dinner’s at seven,” Brick yelled back, but Nash said nothing.

  “I’ll take six of the blueberry and six of the chocolate explosion,” Emmy said to the girl behind the counter of Mountain View Muffins. The new shop was all the buzz around town, and Emmy had already been th
ere more than once.

  “We only have five of the blueberry left, darlin’. You want to try the new caramel nut?”

  “Sure,” Emmy said, secretly crying inside as she grieved the loss of one of her prized blueberry muffins. Going into the weekend without enough muffins could prove to be disastrous.

  “Hungry?”

  As she walked out the door, she found Nash sitting at one of the small bistro tables lining the sidewalks of Whiskey Ridge square.

  “Are you stalking me?”

  “Yes, I’m quite the stalker with my two maimed limbs and squeaky, old man wheelchair.”

  Emmy couldn’t help but laugh at that, but Nash looked super serious and almost upset about something.

  “You okay? Are you in pain or something?”

  “I’m in the same amount of pain I was this morning. My therapist might not be qualified.”

  “Very funny,” Emmy said as she sat down at the table. “What’s going on?”

  “Are you a psychologist too?”

  Emmy knew Nash well enough to know to change the subject, at least temporarily. He wasn’t one to give up information easily.

  “Talked to my mom’s doctor today about the B12. He’s going to test her next week. So thanks for the idea.”

  “You’re welcome. Might not help, but at least it’s worth a try.”

  “Definitely,” Emmy said. A long pause hung in the air between them, almost as thick as the caramel on the muffins in her bag. “Okay, what’s going on, Nash?”

  “Nothing. Listen, I gotta go…”

  “No. Come on. You helped me. Now let me help you.”

  “You helped me this morning,” he said with a quirk of a smile.

  “Oh, so you’re saying I am a good physical therapist?”

  “What do you have in that bag anyway?”

  Emmy held up the bag and acted like she was modeling it. “Well, what I have in here is what you call a ‘sugar coma’ complete with chocolate and caramel… and blueberries because they’re healthy, right?”

  Nash finally laughed. “You always did love sugar.”

  “It’s my one vice. Want one?” She didn’t really want him to say yes.