I didn’t. Not at all. I’d never been west of the Mississippi River and I’d never seen a real mountain. The Massachusetts’s Berkshires didn’t count. Now they surrounded me in my little rental car. Everywhere I looked, prairie, still brown from winter, patches of snow dotting the landscape. In the distance, the song America, The Beautiful, was right. Purple mountains majesty.
It was beautiful. And freezing.
It had been three days since I stormed out of Sam’s and Ashe’s hotel suite. I’d been so upset, so overwhelmed, I’d forgotten where I’d parked my car and had had to search two levels of the parking garage before I found it. If anyone had noticed my wet hair, they’d been smart not to comment.
I’d gone home and fumed. And hated men, two in particular. How dare they not tell me I’d been a job to them! How dare they not tell me the second they saw me that my mother had lied to me and my father had been alive for years and years. He’d even outlived her.
I’d never been close to Peter, my stepfather, so I couldn’t say for sure if he knew about Aiden Steele specifically. He had to know my mother had been with someone. I looked just like her; I didn’t come from a cabbage patch. While we didn’t dislike each other, Peter wasn’t the kind of guy to drop this kind of bomb on. If I didn’t know about my father, then it was possible he didn’t either.
It wasn’t fair to him to share details I didn’t even know or understand. I’d tell him eventually, but not right now. Same thing with my girlfriends. Since I’d texted Cara, my friend and neighbor, my location at Sam’s insistence, I’d had to give her the dirty details of my one-night-stand, but that was all I told her. And I only mentioned one guy, not two.
I was embarrassed, mortified and confused. So I called the one person who could help me—without me wanting to strangle or jump him. Riley Townsend. As Sam had said, the lawyer’s contact information had been on the top piece of paper in the folder. After reading through the details—most of which was about me—I had a long chat with the man.
And after swearing him to secrecy, I went online and booked a flight to Montana. Time off had been easy. It wasn’t as if Alan had been able to argue with my request since I’d almost broken his fingers. He’d been low key, as if nothing more than a client meeting had happened, but had immediately signed off on my extended vacation.
Now, I listened to my GPS telling me turn in a half mile as I took in the north end of town. Small. Tiny. So tiny there was perhaps three stop lights. Boston, with its ridiculous traffic, was light years away. But Barlow was pretty. Quaint. The people were nice. Laid back. They waved as they passed me on the road. The fact that I was recognizing that people were nice meant I needed to rethink where I lived.
Montana. Could I live here? As I put on my blinker, then turned left onto one of the neighborhood side streets, I tried to picture myself in Barlow. I’d need a whole new wardrobe. A job. God, a job. What could I do here? I had to assume the cost of living was much lower. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t afford it. And that wasn’t even taking into account the inheritance. Riley had said flat out I was rich. A millionaire. If I were smart with my money and didn’t buy a Lamborghini, I wouldn’t have to work again if I desired. No more Handsy Alan.
But I could do that in Boston, too. The inheritance didn’t require me to live in Barlow, although I could live on Steele Ranch. It was mine along with my sisters. God. I had four of them. And as I pulled up in front of an attractive home with a wide porch, I was about to meet one of them.
A sister. God. Besides Peter, I’d had no family since my mother had died. No grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
But now, I had a huge family. Riley—and a guy named Cord—were married to Kady and they had a daughter. The other sisters were Penny, Sarah and Cricket, but I lost track of names for their spouses/significant others because none of them had just one man. They each had two, and from what I heard, Cricket had three.
It made me think of Sam and Ashe, how I’d had no issue with spending the night with both of them. Was it a Steele sister thing or what? I’d pushed thoughts of that night, of those two, down deep. Way deep, like buried in mud. Now wasn’t the time to stew and drink more wine. I was in Montana meeting a long-lost sister.
My hands were damp inside my mittens and the car—and all the puffy clothing—felt suffocating all of a sudden. I was overwhelmed. Turning off the engine, I took a breath, then another.
Sam and Ashe wouldn’t be here. I shook my head, as if I could shake those thoughts away.
The front door opened and a woman with bright red hair came out onto the porch. She wore black leggings, thick socks and a turtleneck sweater in a bottle green. God, she was pretty. Smiling, she waved and then curled her fingers.
I couldn’t turn the car back on and pull out of the driveway. I was nervous, not rude.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped out, went up the walk.
“You look like you’re freezing. Come inside,” she said.
She closed the front door behind us and took my hat and gloves after I tugged them off.
“Just as I imagined. You look nothing like the rest of us,” she remarked.
I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on a peg by the door beside a few others. Big men’s coats and a shimmery silver one that had to be Kady’s.
Boots were lined up on a mat beneath, so I assumed this was a no-shoe house. I toed off my new ones as Kady chattered.
“Penny’s short and blonde, Cricket has darker hair but is taller. Curvier. But she has nothing on Sarah, who’s like a pin-up girl.” She put her hand to her hair and rolled her eyes. “Then there’s me.”
“I’m the one built like a boy then,” I countered, looking down at myself in my jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt. In comparison to Kady, with her soft and lush new mother curves, I definitely had the physique of a boy. I’d dressed in my apartment when I got up this morning and now I was standing in front of a sister in Montana. Crazy.
“I bet Sam and Ashe didn’t think you’re built like a boy.”
She grinned and I could feel my face heat. I looked anywhere but at her, took in the entry and the great room beyond.
“Oh my god.” She grabbed my arm and stepped close. “You slept with them.”
I glanced around some more. “How can you tell that?” I countered. Just then, a baby screamed from some other part of that house. “Don’t you have to um…go see to your baby?”