Home not-so sweet home. For the next three months.

Just shoot me now.

Chapter Two

Jesse was persistent, and the road leading into Willow Springs was never-ending. That’s the only reason I agreed to continue our twisted game of question and answer.

“Okay, okay,” I said, finally giving in. “This is a big one. In fact, it’s so big, our future friendship hangs in the balance.”

“That’s a bit melodramatic,” he said, slowing the truck down a bit. Maybe he wasn’t ready for our question game to be over. “But I hear you city girls have a flare for the dramatic.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And I hear you country boys have a flare for some good, old-fashioned bigotry. But I like to give a person the benefit of the doubt before I make assumptions about them being a bigoted a**hole.”

“Or a melodramatic diva?” he added, grinning like the devil. Before I could snap back, his wicked expression flattened. “Anytime today with that big, pivotal question, Non-Melodramatic-Rowen.”

“Okay, Non-Bigoted-Asshole-Jesse,”—now I was the one smiling wickedly—“do you, have you ever, or do you in the future plan to . . .” I drew it out a few more moments for “melodramatic” flare, “ . . . listen to country music?”

Jesse’s eyes flickered to Old Bessie’s newer CD player, then to me. He moved fast, but I moved faster.

His hand had barely left the steering wheel before I hit the eject button and snatched the CD that popped out of the player.

“Johnny Cash?!” I shouted. “Shit, this is worse than I thought. You don’t just listen to country. You listen to prehistoric country.” Pinching it with my fingers, I held it out for him. “Take it. Just take it. Before it burns me.”

“No, of course not. You’re not melodramatic,” Jesse said under his breath as he took the CD spawned in hell away from me.

“You can call me melodramatic when it comes to country music,” I replied. “In fact, I’m almost certain the term ‘melodramatic’ was invented in response to the birth of country music. That was, as the song goes, the day the music died.” I was lukewarm about most things in life, reserving my passion for a rare few. Country music, and the eardrums it damaged both near and far, was one of those rare few.

Then, fast as I’d moved removing it, Jesse popped that CD back into the player and twisted the volume dial until it could twist no farther. Before I could ear-muff my ears with my hands, music exploded. Some dude with a deep, Elvis-esque voice started going off about walking and lines.

“Not funny, Jesse!” I hollered above the music, dropped a hand from my ear, and chanced the inner ear damage the hellfire music would cause in order to try to wrestle his hand away.

“It’s pretty darn funny from where I’m sitting,” he shouted, welding his hand over the CD player so I couldn’t budge it. The harder I tried, the harder he laughed.

Just as I contemplated throwing myself out of the truck to be free of the whole walking lines shit, the most welcome/unwelcome sight I’d ever seen came into view: a white, two-story farm house, complete with a freshly painted, big red barn beside it.

“Oh, thank sweet baby Jesus.” I gave up my hand war with Jesse to grab the door handle. Once was one time too many when it came to riding in Old Bessie with Johnny Cash on full blast.

Right before we rolled to a stop in front of the house, Jesse mercifully turned the music off. But the damage had been done.

I would never be the same after that. Never.

“Do me a favor, will ya?” I said, shoving open the door.

“If it involves snapping in half or burning my favorite CD . . . sorry. No can do,” he replied, his own door creaking open.

“Next time I need a ride, don’t offer. I’d rather run, walk, or bloody crawl twenty miles than listen to that shit-for-music for another twenty seconds.” Once I was out of Old Bessie, I turned to look at him. His hat was back in place, and he studied me again with that same knowing smile. “Capiche?” I added, pretending like staring at Jesse staring at me didn’t make my knees feel a bit out of whack.

“I don’t speak melodramatic city girl talk, but how about if I promise to not force Mr. Cash on you again if you need another ride from me?” He slid out of his seat without taking his eyes off of me, and he slammed the door closed. Both dimples were buried in his cheeks. “Just please, promise you won’t do anything to my favorite CD? It would break my heart.”

“Even if I tried, that sucker is so chock-full of black voodoo magic it would take a dozen witches to destroy it,” I replied, arching a brow at him, which only made his smile go higher.

Jesse was just opening his mouth when a screen door screeched open behind me.

“If you aren’t the spitting image of your mom,” the woman coming down the porch steps said, smiling at me like I could have been her long-lost daughter.

I felt my face pinch together. Not because the woman looked like a modern version of the women on Little House on the Prairie, but because she’d said I looked like my mom. No one said that because we had no similarities. On the exterior or the interior.

“Rowen Sterling, it is so good to finally meet you,” she said, and just as I extended my hand to her, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a solid hug. “I’m Mrs. Walker, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll call me Rose.” Giving me a final squeeze, she lowered her arms. “My mother-in-law is Mrs. Walker.”

“Okay, Rose,” I said. “I think I can manage that.” Especially since the only time I called people Mr. or Mrs. was when it involved a hefty dose of sarcasm.

She tucked a few curls of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. “We’re all so glad you’re here. When your mom called and asked if you could spend the summer with us, I don’t think I gave her a chance to finish her sentence before I said yes.”

Rose and my mom had grown up together back in Portland. Mom went off to college, and Rose went off to Willow Springs after marrying Mr. Walker, whose first name I’d also forgotten. Examining the warmth and simplicity that was Rose Walker made me wonder how, in our universe or the next, my mom and her were childhood best friends.

If two people could get more opposite, I hadn’t seen it. Mom was tall, platinum blond (thanks to her stylist), believed makeup wasn’t only a tool but essential to everyday life, and didn’t wear an article of clothing that wasn’t expensive and in season. Rose was shorter, had dark brown hair, didn’t wear a smudge of makeup from what I could tell, and her flower-print dress looked like it could have been homemade.

From what I knew, mom and Rose didn’t keep in touch all that often, but every year, we got a Christmas card from Willow Springs Ranch. They had to be good enough friends that mom would entrust her only child to a family a couple of states away.

When I thought of my mom and Rose, the phrase “oil and vinegar” came to mind.

“Thanks for having me,” I said, reminding myself to be gracious. Rose didn’t have anything to do with Mom’s nutso idea to send me off to Ranch Responsibility School for the summer.

“Are you kidding me? A chance to have another woman on a ranch overrun with men who think a decent conversation consists of a half a dozen words?” Rose patted my arm. “Thank you for having us.”

Either she was high on the latest and greatest mood-enhancing pharmaceutical, or she was just plain high on life. There was no arguing she was high on something.

Behind us, Jesse cleared his throat. I hadn’t forgotten he was there. It seemed, I couldn’t.

“I’m going to run Rowen’s bag up to her room. Then I’ve got to get back to work on that fence.” He pulled the giant-sized bag out of the truck bed in one seamless move, and he flashed that dimpled smile at me as he passed by.

“Have fun with those fence posts,” I said, meeting his smile with an overdone one of my own.

“Oh, I will,” he said, continuing up toward the front door. “I’ll think of you and your excellent taste in music the whole time.”

Rose watched Jesse disappear through the screen door. When her gaze shifted back to me, noticing that my eyes had also watched Jesse’s entire journey, she gave me a knowing kind of smile. “He’s a good looking kid, isn’t he?”

I bit the inside of my cheek to give myself a moment to recover. “I suppose,” I started, giving a small shrug. “If you’re into that whole Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall thing. Which I’m not.” That was true. I never went for the blond-haired, blue-eyed, sexy-shmexy, boy-next-door-to-the-tenth-power guy. I went for the dark-haired, pale, lanky, brooding type. “I was more team bear-that-tried-to-kill-Brad-Pitt-in-the-end.”

Rose didn’t bat an eye. Instead, she laughed an honest to goodness one as she weaved her elbow through mine. “My,” she said, leading me up the front steps, “the ride from the bus station must have been interesting.”

“Interesting is a good word for it,” I said, taking a closer look at the farm house. Even for all my doom and gloom preferences, I kind of dug the place.

It was old, from the intricate, beveled windows to the way the wrap-around porch creaked when we walked over it, but it had been well preserved. The front door was cobalt blue to match the shutters, and there was a porch swing on either side of the door because one just wasn’t enough, I guess.

It was a house that was “lived in.” It had history, and I could only imagine the number of stories and moments that had been shared inside its walls.

“I imagine after your day, you’ll have just enough energy left to take a bath and crawl into bed.” Rose swung the screen door open and waved me inside. “So I’ll send a dinner plate up to your room later if you like. Tomorrow, after you’ve had a good night’s sleep, we can settle you into the routine here at Willow Springs.”

After she’d said the word, my muscles almost ached for a bath. “That sounds great.”

“But I’m afraid three young ladies are very eager to meet you before you escape,” Rose said as she led me into a living room with robin egg blue walls and white crown molding. A few antique looking pieces of furniture were mixed in with a few more contemporary pieces. It was a mish-mash of decor, a designer’s worst nightmare, but somehow, it worked. I’d barely taken five steps inside the room, and I already felt comfortable enough to plop down on the floral couch and kick my feet up on the distressed coffee table.

“This is really nice,” I said truthfully. Everything about the room, from the bold use of color to the window of walls, was a stark contrast to my room back in Portland. My walls were a deep aubergine purple, the ceiling, too, and I kept the lone window covered with a black-out curtain. I liked to keep the light out—except for when I was drawing or painting—while Rose preferred to let the light in.

Before I could get too deep down that thinking well, three figures hovering off to the side caught my attention.