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Josie put up her hand and interrupted before he could get any further. “Then don’t guilt-trip me about having a conversation with the guy when you’re the one assigning us chores all week.”
She spun and stalked out of the house with as much dignity as she could muster in her socked feet, pulling on her boots at the front door and leaving for home to shower and change before her shift at the diner.
Luke having those feelings towards his big brother and all the family drama they’d gone through? Fair. Totally fair. She’d support her friend and stay away from Sawyer if that was the type of person he really was underneath all his big-city charm.
Making her feel like a piece of trash for thinking Sawyer was half decent when she’d had no idea how deep it all went? Not cool. Very not cool. If she didn’t have to go to a waitressing shift where she was paid to be nice to people, she would have let her anger bubble up and explode and then raked him across the coals for the next half an hour. Lucky for him, she had to leave one job and go to another.
During the drive back to her small townhouse that needed a million repairs done, Josie forced herself to get zen and calm down. She didn’t like being angry. She liked being happy and smiling and making other people smile. But she was already having to pinch her own pennies wherever she could, knowing that once the farm sold, she would be out of a job. The horses would be gone as well, sold on to somebody else, since they were technically Luke’s and she had nowhere to keep them withoutthe Butler Ranch at her disposal. Her favorite place and her favorite animals would both be gone in one fell swoop. So Luke was right about that, at least; the last thing she needed was some playboy with commitment issues taking up any more of her brain space just because she thought he wasnice.
Josie got dressed for her diner shift and, as she locked the door behind her, decided that both the Butler brothers deserved a talking-to. But that could wait until tomorrow.
CHAPTER 5
SAWYER
To say Sawyer had been dreading coming back to Willow Ridge not for days butweeksmight have been dramatic, but it was accurate. Now that he’d met Josie, though, that dread was starting to disappear. You heard people described as pocket rockets and as balls of sunshine, but rarely did you meet people who wereactuallylike that. At least the people Sawyer met, the ones at after-parties and private suites, there was always some sort of agenda behind the niceness. Some sort of catch. Josie seemed to genuinely be a breath of fresh air without a single bad bone in her body.
That didn’t mean you could walk all over her, though. She had enough attitude and sass to see her through whatever situation came her way, and Sawyer had no doubt that she’d made at least a few grown men cry in her time. Part of him wanted to stick around to see it for himself, someone being stupid enough to mess with her and the firecracker that she’d become when they did.
But he wasn’t staying. God no. But spending the day with Josie Moore had been like befriending some sort of wild little critter;cute as a button, but you had to remember that it had teeth. Overall, the word Sawyer would have to use to describe his feelings towards her was fascination. He wasn’t sure that Josie, or anyone else, would see that as a compliment though, so he kept that thought firmly to himself.
But maybe,maybe, the fascination and tentative friendship he had with Josie would make it all bearable. Maybe a miracle would happen and the days would fly by until he could go home and life could resume its normal programming. Miraclescouldhappen. Sometimes.
Sawyer kicked off his filthy shoes and escaped into the cool of the house, the setting sun still hot despite its trajectory. It was still eerie to be here, especially on his own. It was like time travel, but not the fun, exciting sort from movies or books. He walked through the house quietly, memories hitting him like full-blown tackles, knocking the air from him. How if Luke ever went missing, you could find him not on the couch but behind it with a comic or a book and how Sawyer had never snitched and told his parents about Luke’s hiding place. Though now, as an adult, he realized that they probably knew all along. How the third and seventh stairs creaked, so if you were sneaking out you had to skip those two. The smell of the wood and varnish that still infused the place no matter how many years passed. The corner of the living room that his mom had always sat in, until she didn’t. His dad’s chair that he always used, until now he didn’t either.
The house had always been a darker place, full of shadows and dim light to protect its inhabitants from the summer heat. In winter the sun had switched positions and brought light and warmth streaming through the windows. But Sawyer never liked the winter. His mom died in the winter. He could never standthe cold after that, not even in Houston. He could probably move to the equator and any sort of chill breeze would still have the power to set his teeth on edge.
There were plenty of things that were different though, signs that time had passed and new things had happened. Sawyer clung onto those with a fierce grip so that he could be sure he definitely wasn’t back to being twelve years old again.
Bouquets of flowers all around the place — picked straight from the garden — because Sandy insisted that it wasn’t a home without fresh flowers. In the kitchen hung a massive wall calendar, a couple feet wide, that showed the whole year at a glance because it was the only way that Luke had ever been able to plan anything, never mind that you could set an alert on your phone these days. The kitchen showed more evidence of new life than the rest of the house, with a proper block of chef’s knives on the counter, spice racks and potted herbs on the window sill. Sandy’s collection of bottle openers, artfully arranged on a small shelf, was Sawyer’s particular favorite though. It seemed she had improved the place a whole lot just by being here, and Sawyer felt a lick of regret at not knowing her better than he did.
“Oh, hi.”
Sawyer looked up from the silver bottle opener engraved withHappy 21stand found Luke in the doorway to the kitchen looking alarmingly similar to their father.
“You look like Dad,” Sawyer said. Luke just blinked, not sure what to make of the words. Sawyer wasn’t sure either. He’d said it because it was the truth.
“Thanks?” said Luke, unsure.
“Don’t know if it was a compliment, considering he was never the prettiest thing to look at.”
Luke huffed a small laugh but still looked a little confused about where the conversation had taken a turn.
“Didn’t expect you to talk about Dad. Like, at all.” He said it, still staring at Sawyer like he was some sort of alien. Sometimes Sawyer felt like something from another planet, like he didn’t really fit anywhere. He shrugged.
“Just thought you looked like him, that’s all.”
They lapsed into an awkward silence that propelled Luke forward to the sink to drink a glass of water, dumping more water on the potted herbs while he was at it. Sawyer leaned against the edge of the counter, resisting the urge to retreat.
“Josie is cool,” Sawyer said, determined to at leasttryand make conversation.
Luke nodded, swallowing his last sip of water. “Yes. Yes, she is. She said that you guys got a lot done?” He was still looking at Sawyer like he might bite or something, which stung, but it made Sawyer only want to dig his heels in and prove that he wasn’t a complete waste of space like everyone seemed to think.
“Yeah, we did. I just did as she told me, though. She seemed to have it all figured out. Could probably run this whole town if she had to. I was just the muscle.”
Sawyer nearly missed it, but he thought he saw the ghost of a smile flicker across his brother’s face.
“That’s her,” Luke said, putting his glass on the draining board and making to disappear again.
