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Chapter Two
Jill Kyle shimmied into the pale blue bridesmaid dress, frustrated at herself for the extra few pounds she carried. A month ago, she hadn’t had the extra curve in her hip, but she’d had a very trying couple of weeks, and she’d been coping with her stress by eating.
Her kryptonite was ice cream and potato chips, and she’d been drinking a protein shake for lunch while carrying a bag of chips at the same time.
“You’re stunning,” Hannah said, and Jill turned toward her.
“You’re joking,” she said, taking in Hannah’s much taller frame and much trimmer waistline. “I can’t even zip this thing up.”
“I can.” Hannah stepped over to her, bringing the soft scent of a rosy perfume that Bill had given her. The zipper went right up, and Jill could still breathe. That was a win in her book, and she had something to put in her gratitude journal that night.
Jess and Dallas were getting married today, so she should probably put something like,I got to watch one of my best friends marry the man she loves, in her gratitude journal. She was grateful for that, and she decided to save the zipper for a day when she literally couldn’t find anything to express her gratitude.
Hannah wrapped her in a hug, and Jill turned to return the embrace. “How are you today?” Hannah asked.
She searched her emotions, and thankfully, she’d found some stable ground. “I’m okay,” Jill said honestly. She wasn’t alone, and that helped immensely. She lived about twenty-five minutes away from where her parents did, and Ginger had been more than accommodating with Jill’s requests to be there when her mom went to her doctor’s appointments, and when she got home from the first round of chemotherapy.
Daddy was taking good care of her, and Jill’s youngest sibling, McKenna, lived in Sugar Hill, so she’d been able to help a lot too. Haven, the oldest, lived thirty minutes in the opposite direction of Jill, and she’d been present at everything Jill was. Probably more, because Haven was the most perfect at everything.
Their brother had come to what he could, but he lived in Oklahoma now, and he had a wife and family there, along with an important job he couldn’t just leave whenever he wanted.
“We better get going,” Hannah said. “We don’t want to be late.” She slipped out of Jill’s bedroom and down the hall to hers while Jill moved over to the closet to find her shoes.
Jess and Dallas were getting married in their back yard, and they were having the most traditional ceremony of anyone who’d been married in the past year. Jess was still going to ride her horse down the aisle, but then they’d have a traditional wedding dinner and dance following the nuptials.
Her parents had been in town for a week, and Jill already missed her sassy and strong presence around the ranch while she’d been off entertaining them and finalizing details for the wedding. She and her dad had come to the West Wing yesterday, and together, the two of them had cleaned out the bedroom where she’d lived for twice as long as Jill had been at the ranch.
Jess was still going to work at Hope Eternal Ranch, so Jill would get to see her. She knew it wouldn’t be the same, because when change happened, things simply weren’t the same anymore.
She put on her shoes, wishing it was as easy to slip on a smile. Stopping in front of the mirror mounted to the back of her closet door, Jill tried on her smile. It looked surprisingly real, and she paid attention to how it pulled, and how her muscles in her face felt. If she could just get through the next few hours with this smile in place, she could retreat to the safety of her bedroom and text her father to find out how Mama was doing.
She met Hannah and Michelle in the hallway, and the three of them walked into the kitchen one after the other. Jill remembered she couldn’t go anywhere without Chapstick and detoured over to the drawer beneath the microwave, where they kept several tubes of the stuff. She slathered up her lips and tucked the tube into her bra before following the other girls out the door that led into the garage.
Michelle almost always parked in the garage, because she only lived at the homestead part-time. She came to the ranch about once a week to meet with Ginger, talk about the prisoners they had there, and offer other legal advice to keep the ranch in the clear. She had a bedroom here, because there was enough room—especially now that Emma, Ginger, and Jess had all vacated their rooms—and because she often came in the evenings after she finished her work in San Antonio, which was a two-hour drive from Sweet Water Falls.
She’d come on Thursday night and stay until Sunday, and Jill had been crossing her path at odd hours as she left the ranch when Michelle was arriving.
Her sleek, dark eggplant SUV sat just steps away from the entrance to the West Wing, and Jill rounded the hood to get in the passenger seat. She glanced to the back deck that extended off the Annex, and she found Slate leaning against the railing, looking out over the ranch.
He wore a dark suit that fit him like a glove, and coupled with that cowboy hat…Jill’s pulse went crazy. She’d vowed not to date anyone for a while after her last boyfriend—a man she’d met at Nate and Ginger’s wedding—had cited the reason for their break-up to be the distance between them.
Physical distance, he’d meant, and the drive was eighteen minutes.
Jill knew it was something else, but Mike had refused to say what. She’d decided she’d had enough of flirting and flitting from man to man. She was thirty-three years old now, and she was going to take her relationships more seriously. That way, maybe the men she dated would take her more seriously.
“Slate,” she called, though she hadn’t expressly told herself to speak. The faux cowboy turned toward her, his face a stoic mask until he recognized her. Then he lit up, and Jill wondered if that meant something.
It doesn’t, she told herself.
He’d been extremely kind to her a couple of weeks ago, and Jill had not forgotten it. She’d been a complete mess, about to launch herself into the ocean waves and tell God to take her instead of her mother. Slate had been there, and he’d calmed her enough to get her into his truck. He’d spoken to her like her feelings and actions were normal, that she wasn’t the only one who felt the way she did, and that she didn’t need to apologize for the emotions raging through her.
Haven had scolded Jill about “falling apart” in front of their mother, and to “have more faith” to see them all through this crisis.
Jill wasn’t even sure what that meant. All she knew was that she’d had plenty of faith about a lot of things in her life, and God did what He wanted to do anyway. What was the point of pouring her heart out to Him? Why should she kneel beside the bed and beg, plead, and cry, only to do it again the next night? And then the next. And the next.
She felt abandoned, and that morning at the beach had been the worst bout of abandonment of all.
Then Slate Sanders had been here, and while Jill had met him once and seen him around the ranch a couple of times, she didn’t know him.
