Something Wilder

He nodded and brought his forehead down to rest against hers. “I promise.”

Chapter One

Hester, Utah—Archie’s Bar

May, Present Day

“IN HINDSIGHT,” LILY said, wincing, “I know better than to ignore a bar fight going on behind me.”

Archie extended a meaty hand, passing her a dripping cloth full of ice. “I’m more concerned you took an elbow to the back of the head and barely flinched.”

“Is that a joke about me being hardheaded?” She sucked in a breath at the shock of ice against the nape of her neck.

Archie leaned over the bar. “I’m saying you’re a tough little cowgirl, Lily Wilder.”

Lily shoved him away with a laugh. “Kiss my ass, Arch.”

“Any time you want, Lil.”

With an elbow resting on the scuffed wood, she held the ice in place and watched condensation track in slow, fat streams down her pint glass. But as soon as she dragged a finger through it, the glass got muddy. All day long, wind worked the red desert dust into the creases of her clothing, into her hair. Hands, arms, face. Thank God for showers and sunscreen. With the kind of crowd one found at Archie’s, though, it was never worth showering before coming in—whether Lily was sitting at the bar with a beer or working behind it in the off-season. The errant elbow to the back of her head was proof enough.

The door opened, briefly blasting the dim room with light, and Nicole arrived in a flash of messy blond hair and checked red-and-blue flannel. Sliding onto the stool beside Lily’s, Nicole lifted her chin to Archie in both silent greeting and beverage order. He pulled a lager into a questionably clean glass and slid an even more questionably clean bowl of peanuts toward the women. More starving than fastidious, Lily dug in.

Nicole gestured to the ice pack. “What the hell?”

“Petey and Lou were at it. I was collateral damage.”

“Need me to kick their asses?” She moved to stand, but Lily stopped her with a hand on the arm.

Nicole was taller and stronger than Lily, and her loyalty made her nearly feral when provoked. Lily wagered that Petey and Lou would have a pretty fair fight on their hands. If Lily gestured for Nic to go at it, she’d die trying. But Nic was all she had, so Lily tipped her head instead toward the small stack of papers on the bar near her friend’s arm. “Is that the new group?”

Nicole nodded. “Arriving tomorrow.”

“Dudes?” Lily asked. Their clients were almost always men coming out to hunt treasure and play at being outlaws. A group of women felt like a breath of fresh air. Those trips were quieter, more easygoing. They almost made the job worth it. Almost.

“Yeah. Four of them.”

“Bachelor party? Birthday?”

Nic shook her head. “Looks like it’s a group of friends just taking a trip together.”

At this, Lily groaned. At least bachelor parties were on some kind of mission, usually to sneak booze and have a week of debauchery they’d talk about for years to come. But the groups that came to Lily’s tourist expedition company, Wilder Adventures, just to “get away” always needed more babysitting, more structure. Sometimes that was fine—helping people enjoy a vacation on horseback had been Lily’s joy growing up and was to this day—but right now she was running on fumes.

“All of them signed the waiver?” Lily asked.

Nic scratched her cheek, hesitating. “Yeah.”

Pointing, Lily asked, “What’s that mean?”

“Well,” Nicole said, “it kind of looks like they were all signed by the same person.”

Lifting her beer to her lips, Lily muttered a quiet “Shit.”

“Dub, it’s a formality.”

“Unless it isn’t,” she said. “I can’t afford a lawsuit.”

“Girl, you can barely afford this beer.” When she ducked to catch Lily’s gaze, Nic’s wild hair fell over half her face, leaving one glimmering blue eye free to study her best friend. “How are you thinking this will be our last trip out?”

Lily squinted down at the whorls in the scuffed wood bar. Truthfully, she had been hoping more than anything that this would be the last hurrah for Wilder Adventures. She wanted this to be the last time she took city slickers out into the desert to team-build and “rough it” and hunt for fake treasure. She wanted to put her dad’s journal away and never have to look at it again. She wanted to live where no one asked her about Duke Wilder’s maps or his stories and she could forget all about Butch Cassidy. Lily wanted to never again see a man wear polished dress shoes while riding a horse or hear another woman wearing a Prada “western” shirt complain how sore her ass was after a half hour in a saddle. She wanted to be running a ranch, to tack up Bonnie at sunrise and wrangle her own horses across sagebrush and frost-tipped grass that glimmered like diamonds and crunched beneath hooves. She wanted enough money to move out of her dad’s old run-down cabin and leave this dusty shit town. She wanted this to be her last trip out more than anything.