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CHAPTER 1
Callie
“Don’t speed! Not like I need to tell you that…” My older sister Tessa giggles, either because she thinks the lesson is obvious, since I’m currently on a two-hour drive from Los Angeles to fight a speeding ticket, or because she thinks the idea of me driving the actual speed limit is laughable.
“Wow, you should consider taking your comedy on the road. Where you’ll get honked at for driving like a snail and taking thirty seconds to change lanes.”
“Obviously, I just meant to get here safe.”
“Obviously.”
Not only is Tessa the oldest of our family of five sisters, but she’s also a lawyer, which means I’ve personally offended her sense of justice by going eighty-five in a sixty-five-mile zone. On a highway with no cars in sight and no sun glare to make it dangerous.
In my opinion.
The irritable highway patrol officer with the cliché mustache face and aviator glasses begged to differ. “Do you know that driving more than twenty miles over the speed limit is felony reckless driving?” He tapped his palm with a forefinger, as though citing the vehicle code.
I told him I did not know that. He scowled like I was a foul-tempered animal caught by his ingenious radar gun.
“You’re just lucky I’m only citing you at eighty-five, not eighty-six or even ninety.”
I wanted to ask if he was allowed to make up new speeds when I was going eighty-five, but a jumbled blast of directions on his radio stopped me from getting myself tossed in jail for sass.
“I don’t think my car even goes that fast.” I widened my eyes and innocently glanced at my decade-old blue Volkswagen Beetle and tried for one small glimmer of sympathy. Maybe the officer would see me as a charming ingenue who didn’t know much about cars or how they work. Someone who is too sweetly naive to understand that pressing hard on the gas pedal is not just a way to relieve stress and stretch my calves.
Peering at me over his shades, he pinned me with a disgusted look that said he was unmoved.
“You can discuss your concerns in traffic court.”
Which brings me to my court date today in the tiny town of Willow Springs. It may as well be in Kansas, given how familiar I am with the drive. I’ve been on the road for what feels like forever, and I’m still a freeway, a state highway, and several country roads away.
Shaking my head, I glance at the time. Forty-five minutes to go, and I’ve picked the wrong sister if I want sympathy. Somehow, Tessa managed to make this drive every week—while pregnant—for nearly a year to meet with architects and contractors. I don’t know how she did it. Maybe it helped that she had a hot cowboy at the other end of the road. He’s now her husband.
Then again, I don’t know how she moved here either. The only thing that sounds worse than living in LA forever is signing up for a smaller town forever and giving up the one bit of freedom to see the world that a girl has left. Not for me. No how, no way.
“I’ll come over after court. Maybe I can make a lookbook and start the design process for Loveland. Get some buzz going on our future farm-to-table ranch resort.”
Construction on the main house and guest quarters is finished, but it’s a far cry from ready for business. Tessa has been overseeing construction, but with a career and a baby, she’s tapped out. Someone needs to step in now if we want to open a ranch resort, and I never thought I had the skills. Or the time.
And anyway, first I need to get out of trouble with the traffic courts in Willow Springs.
“I think it’s going to take more than a lookbook. We need someone here full-time to turn this place from a big idea into a fully functioning vacation spot. You planning on doing that all this afternoon?” The doubt drips from her words, and I know it’s a rhetorical question. I’m not exactly known for commitment—to an idea, a job, a relationship. Good to know my sister has about as much faith in me as I do.
“I don’t know. Stranger things have happened,” I say.
“Not around here. Willow Springs doesn’t do strange. It’s the epicenter of ordinary.”
A little twinge of nervousness bubbles up at the image of a courthouse in a town that’s so ordinary that it’s a foreign land. “Can you come and be my lawyer for the day? Maybe they’ll go easy on me now that you’re a local.”
“Honey, they don’t allow lawyers for traffic tickets.”
“Fine. Will you at least pick up those tamales from the good place?”
“Of course. Carne asada and chicken, coming right up.”
“Perfect. I’m driving way over the speed limit now, see you in a few!”
“Stop. Don’t—”
