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That was what bothered her the most.
How out of control it had all been that night. Sometimes, the nightmares were worse than others. She just felt so out of control sometimes now.
Dusty threw on some sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and headed out of her room, and through the family kitchen. Chloe stayed on her heels.
She kept to the areas that were pet-friendly—any place that wasn’t carpeted—and made her way through the inn that had been in her family for ninety-nine years. They would celebrate one hundred next summer.
Marin was already planning the celebration. Marin handled most of the marketing for the businesses now. She was really good at it, too. She’d raised the occupancy rates at the inn by twenty-nine percent in the years since Rowland Bowles had made his movie in Masterson County. And increased profit at the diner by a full ten percent in the last year alone. Marin had the most business-oriented mind of them all. Even with her intuition and gut feelings.
She’d gotten that mind from their grandmother.
Sixty-seven years ago, her grandmother had taken a massive risk, and started the Masterson Diner, using her small inheritance from her own grandfather, and a lot of gumption. She hadn’t even been an adult at the time. Ten months later, Arnold Reginald Talley had taken one look at her and decided she was going to be his forever. She’d been seventeen at the time she’d first opened the doors to the little diner downtown.
She’d married Arnie Talley the day after her eighteenth birthday. Ten months to the date after that, her twin sons Gerald and Arthur had been born. Her daughter Jessica had followed five years later.
Her grandmother was a remarkable woman, no denying that.
Dusty didn’t feel remarkable at all.
She felt like a mass of nerves and fear more than anything now.
Afraid. Ben had asked her if she was afraid. What she was afraid would happen. She hadn’t thought it wasfear.Not really. But now…the man had been right. Of course, he was. Ben saw right through her, apparently. To theDustyshe was inside.
That terrified her, too. That man…
She hadn’t beenafraidbefore. Not of life. Not of a man likeBen.
Brad had robbed her of her courage. Her confidence.
Her believe that everything would be okay.
She would never forgive him for that.
Now she was afraid of everything. Of every possiblerisk.Not just with personal safety—though she would never take that for granted ever again—but with far more than that.
Emotional safety was far more tenuous. Dusty believed that down to her soul now.
Dusty checked on Jacy, their night clerk on duty at the front desk.
Everyone else had gone to their suites, but Marin had been around somewhere. Checking on the inn one last time. “Where’s Marin?”
“She’s around the back. Next to the gardens. Said there was something she needed to check on. In six inches of snow. She had thatlookin her eyes again.” Jacy was their father’s cousin’s daughter. She was twenty now, and did online classes through the college two counties over. She had the Talley green eyes, too. When her father had died three years ago, she’d asked for a job at the inn to help support her two younger sisters and the aunt who had helped raise them—who was working two jobs herself. The aunt had two children under ten, too.
Now, they would fight tooth and nail to keep Jacy, even though they hadn’t known her well growing up. Jacy was extremely sweet. Rather like Dusty’s baby sister Daisy. Jacy, her aunt, her cousins, and her two sisters Macey and Casey lived in a small house on the outskirts of town. Just eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. Their aunt was thirty-four or thirty-five or so. But they stuck together. They were family.
Family.
Family mattered to the Talleys. More than anything.
And if Marin had thatlookin her eyes again, it meant nightmares. Marin’s nightmares were probably back, too. They all had their struggles now.
Dusty turned toward the gardens.
32
Masterson County.He was back in Wyoming yet again. Sean wasn't entirely certain how he had ended up here. Not really. He'd just been driving. The road from Idaho had looked familiar, so he had just kept driving. As he'd processed what LaDonna had said.
He just wanted to see somethinggoodin the world tonight.Nebraska was getting worse. And it hurt. Innocent people, children, were involved.
