by Liz Isaacson
Bree looked up at the ceiling, doing almost anything to postpone the moment she’d have to get to work. “The only place you could go that would make me wonder if we should keep seeing each other is Sushi Palace.”
Wes burst out laughing, and even Bree started giggling. “So no sushi,” he said.
“Absolutely no sushi.”
“Everything else is fair game.”
“And if you want bonus points, you’ll get me the extra-crispy chicken sandwich at ChixPix.”
“Oh, boy,” he said, his voice making Bree wish she didn’t have to work that morning. “I’ll see what I can do about the ChixPix.”
Bree giggled, sitting up as the front door opened. She sobered instantly as her boss strode inside the building. “I have to go,” she said. “Thanks for calling, Mister Hammond.” She hung up while Wes said, “I’ll text you later,” as quickly as he could.
She put her phone down, because it made no sense for a client or someone looking for a job to call her cell, and stood up. “Good morning, Marc,” she said. “I brought doughnuts today.”
“Oh, great.” He smiled at her and took one from the box. “I’ve got Chris from the city coming in this morning. Will you show him back when he gets here? Apparently, they’re doing a huge hiring fair, and they want us to get the word out.”
“Absolutely,” Bree said.
“Morning, Willie,” Marc said, giving the other woman in the office a wide smile.
Willie giggled—actually giggled—and tucked her hair as Marc walked by. Bree had seen them interact before, and it had never been like this. She kept her eyes on Willie as she watched their boss walk the rest of the way into his office. He left the door open, and Willie sighed as she turned back to Bree.
When she caught Bree watching her, she cleared her throat and reached for another doughnut.
“What is going on there?” Bree hissed at her, swiping the doughnut box out of Willie’s reach.
“Oh, don’t you deny me another doughnut,” Willie said, her bright green eyes flashing with fire. She was all bark and no bite, though, and Bree grinned at her.
She kept the box close to her chest as she asked, “Are you…did the two of you…what’s going on with you and Marc?”
Willie glanced over her shoulder and then back to Bree. “Give me the doughnuts, and I’ll tell you.”
Bree immediately handed over the box. Then she grabbed her chair and dragged it over to Willie’s desk, which was fairly close by anyway. “Start talking.”
“He asked me out on the Fourth,” Willie said, almost under her breath. “And we went out that weekend.”
“And?”
“And he’s cute, and fun, and we had a good time.”
“What did you do?”
“We went to the boutique and walked around. Went to the rodeo. Dinner. You know, typical stuff that everyone and their dog went to that weekend.”
Everyone except for Bree, though she did love a good rodeo. She hadn’t had a date, and she could save her twenty bucks the rodeo ticket would’ve cost. Right now, she was saving as much as she could, and the only reason she’d brought in doughnuts was because she’d earned a free dozen by buying them for the lodge.
“And?” Bree asked again. “What about Connor?”
“We’ve been talking,” Willie said. “And Connor has sort of faded away.”
“Have you gone out again with Marc?”
“He went out of town this weekend,” Willie said. “Our schedules haven’t matched up, that’s all.”
Bree squealed, keeping it quiet enough that it wouldn’t sound in Marc’s office. “So you can show Chris into his office later.”
“No, let’s just keep things normal here,” Willie said. “Please, Bree? I just want it to be normal here, and if we just act like everything is normal, then it’s fine.”
“When are you going to see him again?”
“Hopefully on Wednesday night,” Willie said, glancing over her shoulder. “Now get on over to your desk and get to work before he sees us gossiping over doughnuts.”
“All right,” Bree said, plucking another doughnut from the box before she rolled her chair back over to her desk. She needed to check her messages and get listings up that had been left over the weekend. She’d then print out the new jobs for the day and pin them to the board for anyone who came in physically looking for work.
The hours in the employment office passed quickly, because Bree had a lot to do and not much time to do it. When Chris arrived, she jumped to her feet and smoothed down her skirt. With a smile, she said, “Morning, Chris. Let me see if Marc is ready for you.” She stepped back to his office and poked her head in. “He’s here, sir.”
“Great.” Marc got up and came toward the door.
Bree backed out of the way and said, “Come on back, Chris,” just as Marc reached her. She left the two men alone to talk business, but she knew she’d be putting jobs in like crazy tomorrow. Maybe even tonight, as sometimes Marc asked her to work online at home if they got a huge influx of jobs while she wasn’t there.
Just as she was preparing to leave for the day, someone came through the front door. The sun shone in the front wall of windows too, and she couldn’t see who it was.
“I got it,” Willie said, standing up. “You go.”
“Tell Marc I can work tonight,” she said as she bent to get her purse out of her bottom desk drawer. She could have her hike and dinner, and stay up late to get the listings put in. As long as she had them done by midnight, they’d post in the morning.
“You have to work tonight?”
Bree straightened at the sound of Wes’s voice. “Oh, hey.” She smiled at him and looked at Willie. “This is my friend, Willie. Wills, this is, uh, my boyfriend, Wes Hammond.”
“Oh, I’m the boyfriend.” Wes grinned at Bree and then Willie. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Oh, the boyfriend,” Willie said, shaking Wes’s hand.
“Okay, I’m leaving,” Bree said, heat filling her face. “I have another job to get to.”
“I’ll walk out with you,” Wes said, and that was when Bree noticed he carried a bag from ChixPix. “I got your lunch.”
“He’s a good boyfriend,” Willie said, but Bree ignored her. Unfortunately, the sun shone brightly overhead outside, and it was mid-July, so the heat in Bree’s face didn’t dissipate once she left the building.
“Sorry about that,” Wes said.
“It’s okay,” Bree said. “Nothing to apologize for.” She took the bag of food from him. “Thank you for bringing me this. I guess we’ll be having something different for dinner?”
“It’s not sushi, don’t worry.”
“Sounds like you have a plan.”
“Oh, I have a plan,” he said. Before Bree even knew what was happening, he swept one arm around her waist and said, “See you tonight. You’ll be by around six-thirty?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised at his touch.
He kissed her cheek and stepped back, the smile on his face priceless. “See you then.” And with that, he walked away. Bree stood in the parking lot near her car and watched him go, wondering why she felt like someone had poured magic into her veins.
Wes Hammond is made of the stuff, that’s why, she told herself. Then she got herself in her car and aimed it in the right direction to go to her second job. She couldn’t afford to spend too long thinking about Wes, or she’d find herself falling head over heels in love with him, and Bree simply needed more time to know if she could trust how she was feeling when it came to men.
Bree showed up at Colton’s house wearing a pair of light cotton shorts and a tank top. She’d packed her backpack with a first aid kit, a full pouch of water, and a few snacks, as usual. Wes waited on the front porch with his own backpack, wearing light blue cotton shorts and a T-shirt with a giant baseball bat on the front of it along with the words Louisville Slugger.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said, rising from the chair there. He should
ered his backpack and came down the steps on light feet. His hiking shoes looked brand new, and he hadn’t switched out his cowboy hat for a baseball cap or a shade hat.
She liked the pet names he called her, and he’d used sweetheart and beautiful before.
“Hey.” She accepted a hug from him, and they loaded into his truck. She directed him to the hike, which was about a twenty-minute drive from Colton’s house, on a turnoff on the highway that led up to Dog Valley.
“Tiger Creek,” he read on the sign.
“The falls are called Cub Falls.”
“Cute.” Wes reached for her hand, and she gave it to him, because once the trail steepened, they wouldn’t be able to hold hands. “Good day?” he asked.
“Good enough,” she said with a sigh. “Easy afternoon with just the one horseback thing, but I have to work tonight after I get home for my office job.”
Wes slowed and stopped. “We don’t have to go hiking.”
“Uh, I ate four doughnuts this morning,” Bree said with a smile. “We definitely do need to go hiking.”
Wes chuckled and ducked his head. “All right.”
“It’s less than a mile up,” she said. “It’ll take us about half an hour. Then we’ll eat, and it’s much shorter to come down.”
“I’m not in the greatest shape,” he said, looking up the trail.
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “How many doughnuts did you eat this morning?”
“Oh, I didn’t have doughnuts,” he said. “I ate two cupcakes with my morning coffee.”
Bree laughed, because she knew how much Colton liked cupcakes, and that had Colton written all over it. “Let me guess. The Chocodile.”
“They have one called the shredded wheat cupcake,” Wes said. “It was almost like eating a bowl of cereal.”
Bree pealed out another lungful of laughter, because Wes’s addiction to breakfast sweets made her happy. Being with Wes made her happy. Should she doubt that? What if what she was feeling wasn’t real?
Why wouldn’t it be real? she asked herself. And she had no answer. That was the biggest problem.
As the trail narrowed, and Bree moved in front of Wes to hike, she did something she should’ve been doing all along: she prayed for help, for guidance, and to know exactly what to do about Wes so that neither of them would get hurt.
Chapter Eleven
Wes rode the high from Monday night’s hike for almost a week. Bree sure had been surprised at the table-for-two at the falls, where Wes had then served two fully plated meals from his backpack. Chicken cordon bleu rolls, with mashed potatoes, and roasted asparagus.
Bree had looked at him with stars in her eyes, and while he’d wanted to stay at the falls for a lot longer, she still had work to do that night, so they only stayed for forty-five minutes before making the hike back to his truck.
He’d wanted to kiss her in Colton’s driveway, but Colton and Annie had been sitting on the front steps when he’d pulled into the driveway, and that fantasy still only lived inside Wes’s head.
“Maybe today,” he muttered to himself as he pulled into the parking lot at Whiskey Mountain Lodge. He was working the check-in that afternoon, though it was Sunday. He’d already held hands with Bree on the bench at church, able to listen a little more fully this week. Pastor Clemens had talked about serving one another through good times and bad times, and Wes had started thinking that he needed to do more in the service department.
He wasn’t working much anymore, and he had plenty of money. Surely there was something around town that he could do to put his time and money to good use. Something he could do to bless someone else’s life. He’d stopped to talk to the pastor and his wife on the way out, and they’d agreed to meet on Wednesday evening, after one of the church-sponsored classes.
He and Bree were set to enjoy lunch with the crew at the lodge again this week, then another riding lesson, and then Wes would do the check-ins before heading back to Colton’s.
He hadn’t mentioned to anyone but his brother that he’d called a real estate agent that week too, and he was hoping to be looking at houses this week as well. His stomach clenched at the thought of it, though he had plenty of money to invest in property in Coral Canyon. In this growing community, the house would have great resale value, and Wes wasn’t worried about that. He still had the penthouse in Denver, too, though he’d done a sublet to a couple from Paris who’d taken a fifteen-month position in the city.
He had no plans for returning to Colorado, or where he’d live when he did. His parents lived outside the city, and he could stay in Ivory Peaks. Help with the farm, the way Gray and his son, Hunter, did.
Hunter lived with Wes’s parents right now, and he was apparently tolerating the isolation of the farm. Gray worked in the city during the week, and only went out to the farm on weekends, and he’d told Wes last week that things were “going really well.”
Wes still worried about him, because Gray tended to take on too much and wouldn’t acknowledge it until he broke. Completely broke. So Wes would call him again tonight, after his buttling shift at the lodge.
Lunch was just as loud and just as crazy as last week, but Wes didn’t hate it this week. He laughed with the Whittaker brothers and promised they’d meet this week for sure. He wondered how long that would go on until they would finally meet to talk about the lodge. But honestly, Wes thought they were doing a bang-up job at Whiskey Mountain. They were booked months in advance, and the reviews that came in were four and five stars. He wouldn’t even know what to say to them.
“You ready for this?” Bree asked as they left the patio, where misters kept it cool despite the July heat, and headed for the stables.
“I didn’t do too bad last week,” Wes said. “So I think I’m totally ready for this.” He took Bree’s hand in his. “I wanted to ask you about something.”
Everything changed in less than a breath. Less than a step. Tension poured from her, and she drew in a deep breath. Wes didn’t like that, because it sent up a big red flag that indicated she had secrets. Secrets she didn’t want to tell him.
Wes took a few moments to think through what he wanted to say. “It’s nothing serious,” he said. The stable neared, and Wes felt like the ground would vanish beneath his feet on the next step. The next step.
When there was still solid ground under his feet, he took a deep breath. “You asked me why I didn’t have a girlfriend, and I was wondering what happened with Alex.”
Bree stepped through the open door and into the stable, turning back to smile at him. “You want my dating history.”
“Yeah,” he said with a smile. “I mean, I told you I’d been engaged twice. Have any diamonds sat on your finger in the past?”
“Not even one,” she said, holding up her left hand. “Never been married. Never been engaged.”
Wes didn’t need to punish himself, but as he reached for the saddle he’d used last week, he decided he needed to know. “I would like to know about Alex. I mean, we were talking when you met him, and you chose him over me.”
Bree didn’t answer right away, and Wes kept his head down as he took his tack outside and started saddling the big, beautiful, dark brown horse he’d ridden last week. His name was Chocolate Brownie. “CB for short,” Bree had told him last week.
He’d managed to get on the horse last week, and this week was even easier.
“Good job,” Bree finally said. “You got ‘im saddled and ready.” She beamed at him. “Let’s see how he does under those trees that spooked him last week.”
“You just want to see me jump off again,” he teased.
“Not true.” She smiled back at him. “But I do want you to keep him calm. Remember how to get him to move? To go left or right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He clicked his tongue at CB, and added, “Let’s go, CB.” The horse didn’t move, other than his long tail flicking at the imaginary flies around him.
“He’s not a dog,” Bree said. “It’s just go. Go, C
B.”
The horse started walking forward, and Bree told her steed to “Go, Cookie,” and her horse moved too. Her black-and-white horse was named Cookie Crumble, but Wes had learned that almost all the horses went by abbreviations of their full names. And they were all named after sweets, something Colton would’ve really liked.
The cowboy hat Wes now loved kept the sun off his face, but relief still covered him when CB moved under the cover of shade cast by the trees along the edge of the property.
“I chose Alex over you, because he was here and you weren’t,” Bree said. “That was all, really.”
Wes looked over to her. “It was the long distance?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And he was cute, and he asked me out to dinner, and I couldn’t go to dinner with you.” She shrugged. “I was stupid, I’ll admit it.”
“You’re not stupid,” he said.
“Yeah, well.” Bree exhaled, a sound that was much too heavy for Wes’s liking. “Remember how I said I don’t really trust myself?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I remember.”
“It comes from my last few boyfriends,” she said. “Alex was a freeloader. He said he had a job, but I think that was a lie. I paid for everything we did, and now I’m thousands of dollars in debt.”
The horses clip-clopped along, the only thing disturbing the peaceful forest around them.
“In five months,” she said. “It’s amazing how much I spent in five months. That’s why I have the job at the employment office.”
“I can pay those,” Wes said, thinking maybe this could be the way he could serve someone.
“Absolutely not,” Bree said.
“It wouldn’t even impact me,” he said. “And Pastor Clemson said we needed to look for ways to serve each other. I’ve already set up a meeting with him and his wife for Wednesday to see what I can do.” He looked at her, the idea of paying her debts growing and getting real teeth. “Why not you, Bree? Why can’t I serve you?”
She shook her head. “I feel stupid enough about it already.”
“Then go ask the pastor for help.”
