“It would be great if I didn’t have to use a dating app at all,” he said, and then he went inside to eat his Friday-night dinner with his parents, feeling more pathetic than ever.
twenty-nine
Chapelle McRae woke up with the same bad taste in her mouth she’d had since Friday night.
“Something has to change,” she whispered to herself, but she wasn’t sure what that should be.
She worked for the city of Coral Canyon as a soil engineer in their landscaping and agricultural department, and while it had been a good enough job out of college, she now found the Wyoming weather almost unbearable. She’d only been in town for about four years, and her gypsy soul itched for a change. Not only that, but she knew she needed to?—
“No, what youneedto do,” she told herself as she swung her legs over the side of her bed. “Is get rid of Bryson.”
She barely liked her boyfriend anymore, and thankfully he’d gone back to Jackson Hole last night. Chapelle wouldn’t have to deal with him lounging around her apartment and bothering her roommates while she went to church. And if Chapelle needed anything right now, it was divine assistance with where she should be and who she should be with.
She showered and, as she soaped and shaved, admitted to herself that she’d only started dating Bryson because he was herolder brother’s best friend. “Such a cliché,” she said into the shower spray.
Because she’d gotten up early, she had plenty of time to blow-dry her hair until it was long and shiny and straight.
She lived with two other women, and they all had a private bedroom and bath in a farmhouse that sat in a suburb here in the small town of Coral Canyon. It had grown a lot in recent years, but it still had the feel she loved—where neighbors knew one another’s names and would notice if they hadn’t seen someone for a few days.
Chapelle wasn’t much for cooking, so she ate out a lot, and she had her favorites where she knew the waitresses and managers. Her mind automatically flowed to the dark-haired, dark-mannered cowboy she’d encountered on Friday at The Darling Dragon. She hadn’t gotten his name, and he hadn’t offered it. He’d said he was visiting his parents, and he’d dismissed her with all the coldness of a Wyoming winter before walking away.
The last thing Chapelle needed was an ill-tempered cowboy. The man she currently dated—a lawyer at a firm in Jackson Hole—couldn’t be further from that, and Chapelle didn’t like him either.
“Maybe you need new everything,” she said to her reflection as she finished buttoning her denim skirt and pulled her sweater vest down over the waistband.
She found her roommate Laurel in the dining room sharing breakfast with her boyfriend.
“I’m going to church,” she said.
Laurel jumped up. “Oh, Chapelle, could you stop by the animal clinic on the way back and pick up Rockford?”
“You didn’t get him last night?” Chapelle froze, her arm reaching for her purse. “Laurel, that’s going to be, like, a three-hundred-dollar charge.”
“We were just so late coming back from the concert,” Laurel said. “They were closed already.”
“I would have gone to get him,” Chapelle said.
“But you know Bailey McAllister, right?” Laurel asked. “Won’t you see her at church?”
“I don’t know,” Chapelle said, disliking this level of responsibility her roommate was laying on her. “She might be there, but it’s not like I keep track of her.”
“Well, if she is, can you grab her and both of you can swing by there and get Rockford? He’s there alone. She said there would be someone there, but not all the time.”
“Yeah. You probably caused her a problem, Laurel.”
A frown finally appeared on Laurel’s face. “Can you talk to her or not?”
“Will you text her first?”
“Yeah, I’ll text her.” Laurel turned and huffed and then stomped back to the table, as if Chapelle was the one doing something wrong.
Chapelle grabbed her purse, glared at her roommate’s back, and pulled open the hall closet to get out a coat. She had to wade through no fewer than eight of Victoria’s coats to find one of hers, and she had no idea why someone needed so much outerwear. Of course, Victoria had grown up in El Paso—right on the southern border of the United States—and she’d never seen snow until she came to Wyoming. She worked in the luxury lodge business here in town, of which several more had been going in recently.
Chapelle stepped outside and made the quick drive to the little church where she’d been attending since she moved to Coral Canyon. They often had a lot of visitors, as it sat at the mouth of the canyon where one of the luxury lodges welcomed guests, as well as a gated community that the wealthy owned but didn’t live in. They rented those houses.
Chapelle had quickly realized that half the people in Coral Canyon in the summer were tourists. In February, though, she wouldn’t have to deal with that, and she hurried inside the little chapel, catching sight of an aisle spot in the middle section, about halfway down.
She slid into the seat there, realizing a beat too late that someone’s phone and Bible already sat on the pew. She glanced around and didn’t see anyone, and gently pushed the book and device further in. There was still plenty of room for someone to sit there.
