My brothers are both talking and asking questions, but I’m not listening. The only thing I can think of is my girl.
For the first time in a long time, I can see a future at Rock Creek Ranch, and it has everything to do with her.
“Wyatt?”
I don’t even realize I’m walking away, moving toward my truck, until I hear my name called. I wave behind me. “I’ll be back. I have something to take care of.”
ANNA
The clinic smells like a mixture of disinfectant and animals. It’s familiar, even a little comforting, and most importantly, it’s nothing likehim.
Wyatt smells like coffee, wood smoke and something else I can’t quite define or get out of my head. It’s a scent I haven’t been able to wash off, no matter how many showers I’ve taken since I left the ranch.
And him.
I’ve been keeping busy. The last few days have been filled with appointments, a few house calls and of course, paperwork. Whenever I am in the little office I’ve been sharing with Uncle Bill, time seems to slow. I pretend that I’m not glancing at the clock every few minutes, wondering with every chime of the bells over the door if it’s the big, broad-shouldered cowboy coming to find me.
It never is.
I haven’t so much as received an email or a phone call since I drove away.
It’s like I was never there.
As if those few days stranded by the snowstorm had never happened.
But they had.
I can’t stop thinking about them.
Finishing up the file notes on the retriever I just examined with a limp; I push through the door that leads to the waiting room.
Suzanne, our receptionist, looks up when she sees me.
“Have we heard from Wy—Mr. Thorne up at Rock Creek Ranch?” I try to sound more casual than I feel. “I was wondering if he’d called to schedule his next appointment?”
“No.” Suzanne shakes her head. “Nothing?—”
“Terrible shame about that place,” Mrs. Rumpel’s voice interrupts the receptionist as she sets her cat carrier on the counter. “All that beautiful land up there, and it’s just been run into the ground.” She clucks her tongue. I try not to bristle.
“Wyatt’s making big changes up there,” I say, forcing a smile.
“I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Rumpel waves a dismissive hand. “Folks say he’s just like his father was. And I’ve been around here long enough to know what a piece of work he was. There’s a reason those boys all left as soon as they could. And you know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“That’s not true.”
She lifts her brows. “And you’d know?”
I swallow the lump rising in my throat. “He’s doing his best up there with what his father left,” I say. “He’s a good man.”
Her lips purse, clearly unwilling to change her opinion. “Maybe. But good men don’t always stay that way for long up there alone in those mountains.”
I manage a polite goodbye and excuse myself into the back room, but my hands are shaking by the time the doors swing shut behind me.
Even if she’s right. And I refuse to believe she is. The ranch and the mountains aren’t going to have a chance to harden or change Wyatt. He’s leaving anyway.
First chance he gets, he’s selling and leaving.
Despite the fact that I haven’t heard from him, the thought of Wyatt not being nearby hits me hard in the chest.
