She pulled into a parking spot next to the convenience store / gas station / restaurant / trucker shower stop hybrid. “Hold on. I’ll be right back. Don’t puke in the rental—that smell will only make the motion sickness worse.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thank you very much for that mental image.”
“Sorry,” she said as she lowered the windows before getting out of the SUV and hurrying inside.
It took only a few minutes to buy a couple of cans of ginger ale and a snack-size box of saltines as well as some over-the-counter Dramamine, but by the time she got back out, Will was standing outside the car, leaning against it with his boot heel on the tire and the brim of his black cowboy hat dipped low. Replace the highway in the background with grassland and it would look like the start of a cheesy cowboy movie. All he needed was the single strand of straw hanging from the corner of his mouth.
It wasn’t fair that he could still manage to look so hot even while looking like a basic-cable-cowboy rip-off. That he did and she still noticed just revved her up in the way being around him always did.
It made no sense.
He looked exactly like her best friend—duh, they were twins—but she had never been tempted to kiss Web. Just the thought of it made her make the “ew” face.
But with Will? It was always half hate and half lust swirling inside her at even the mention of his name, which pissed her off to no end. Why didn’t being around Web make her body react like that? It would make her life so much easier. The whole situation just drove her up a wall.
“I got you this.” She shoved one of the cans of ginger ale and the box of crackers into his hands, covering up her inconvenient attraction with a surly attitude, per usual. She opened the box of Dramamine and threw a pill at him. “Take this, too. This is pretty much the end of the line for places like this. We’ll hit a couple of small gas stations between here and the ranch, but if you need anything, you should get it now.”
“I’m good,” he said, sounding more like his usual cocky self, but took everything she’d held out.
She gave him a nod and got back in the driver’s side, syncing up her driving playlist with the car stereo again and making her way down the highway.
“Thanks for the ginger ale and crackers,” he said, settling back in the reclined passenger seat and closing his eyes. “That plus a nap should get me through this.”
Of course he was snoring quietly before they’d gone five miles. The spoiled and the rich never needed to worry about anything. It had nothing to do with the Dramamine, she insisted to herself.
The rest of the drive, while not quick by any means, went about as fast as it usually did. Growing up out in the sticks, a person either had to learn to deal with a lot of time in the car to get to a mall, the movies, a supersize grocery store or they had to spend their life at home and hope that UPS would deliver even though their address was a PO Box at the closest post office.
Some people loved it, relished the rugged individualism of it all. That was not Hadley. She’d had moving feet since birth, and by the time she was fourteen when her mom married Gabe, she’d already planned how she was going to ditch the sticks for Harbor City. She’d have a gorgeous apartment with a view, a glamorous job, and a thriving social life. At least, that’s what she’d promised everyone.
What she’d ended up with was a fifth-floor walk-up with windows looking out on the brick side of the building next door, a frustrating but rewarding job that she’d just lost, and a social life that usually consisted of Netflix and the occasional work-related party. Except for Fiona and Web, she didn’t have many friends. Acquaintances? Sure. Friends? Not so much. And she was lonely.
It was a real transition to go from her hyper-involved family on the ranch to the city where people didn’t even make eye contact when you accidentally plowed into them on the sidewalk.
But she wasn’t pathetic. She hadn’t failed to make her dream a reality. It was just taking longer than expected was all.
So she’d kept her mouth shut about the realities of her life in Harbor City when she talked with her mom and let everyone think she had it made. She stuck to her plan to fake it until she made it in Harbor City. No one—especially not her family—needed to know the real situation.
Will woke up as soon as she made the left turn off the paved two-lane highway and onto the gravel road leading to the ranch. “Where are we?”
She tried not to watch out of the corner of her eye as he extended his arms in a stretch that showed off all his muscled glory. The man’s forearms should be illegal. They could cause an accident.
She forced her attention back to the road. “We’re almost home.”
He looked around, his green eyes widening as he no doubt realized the landscape went on for practically forever without a single building getting in the way. “So what’s the backstory of our relationship, or do you just want me to wing it?”
Her heart sped up in panic at the idea of Will winging it.
“Web and I were sticking close to the truth.” Because that was the way not to get caught in an embarrassing lie. “We started out as friends, and it just morphed.”
He nodded. “I can work with that.”
“It’s not serious, though. I’m not bringing ‘the one’ home to meet my parents,” she continued. “Web was just giving me a buffer, an excuse to not spend all my time with my family. I love them, but they’re just…a lot to take. And they never understood why I left for the city.” She sighed. She hated lying to her family, but she also didn’t think she could take a whole week of “helpful” nosiness, either. Especially not now that they didn’t know she’d been fired.
Her jaw clenched at that memory, and she grabbed on to the anger like a life raft. “It’s your fault I got fired, which my family knows nothing about, so really, you’ve got no one to blame for this mess but yourself.”
He cocked one arrogant eyebrow at her but gladly didn’t argue.
They drove in silence until they crossed underneath the sign for Hidden Creek Ranch. It only took a few seconds before Hadley spotted the three cowboys in the distance. They were sitting on their horses on a slight rise in the land. Something soft and good settled in her belly right then—that sense of being home.