So many questions.
Jill tried to smile at her grandmother.“So much for spring.”
Grandma’s response was nothing.Not a curve of her mouth.Not a word or grunt or communication of any kind.She just shed her coat and boots.
Jill was used to the silences.The feeling of being completely alone even when her grandmother was right there, but ever since Grandma had revealed shecouldoccasionally talk, Jill felt uncomfortable.With the silences.With her grandmother whom she loved so dearly.
And she had a harder time just letting those silences sit and stretch out and feel like an anvil on her chest.
“My agent wants to send out my new proposal,” she said into the silence.
Grandma shuffled over, gave her shoulder a pat.A kind of positivegood for youthat might have made Jill feel good if too many things were different.
She sighed.“I have to talk to Cal first.”
Grandma nodded slowly.She offered nothing—verbally, in sign language, in the written word.Just the nod, and then she was walking down the hall of the tiny cabin to her room.
Because even with her ability to talk, or communicate with her hands or writing, Glendadidn’tcommunicate.She was like a… brick wall.A fortress.Like she didn’t need or want Jill at all anymore.
Sometimes Jill considered going back to Boston.Grandma had recovered from her stroke.The only thing she resisted doing for herself was driving, but likely shecoulddrive, and if Aly checked in on her, as much as everyone would still worry about Glenda, shecouldpotentially live out here alone again.
But Jill didn’twantto leave.She loved her life in Montana.The Jill Harrington of Boston seemed like a totally different person and writer than the one she was now.
She liked this one better.
“I’m not leaving.I’m getting to the bottom of this,” she muttered to herself.
Then looked at the email again.And apparently, she was going to have to deal with Cal Bennet.
Because she wanted to sell this damn book and write the hell out of it.
Chapter Three
The Bennet Ranch
Cal Bennet knewwhat he was doing.
Sometimes he had to remind himself of that very fact, but that didn’t change that hedidknow.He was a damn grown man, with a successful career—maybe that particular career was being left behind in Texas, but he could certainly build a new one on top of the ashes of that one.
He was a damn good lawyer, and maybe the little town of Marietta didn’t need him setting up shop, but it couldn’thurt.Between Honor’s Edge Investigations bringing people in who often would need some kind of legal help, and the fact he could travel if need be, meant it was doable.
Once he passed the Montana bar, which he considered more technicality than anything to worry about.
The thing hewasworried about was facing Aly Cartwright.Soon to be Aly Bennet.And it pissed him off he was worried about telling her he was going to live in town instead of on the ranch.
He was a grown man.One with a considerable amount oflifeunder his belt.He’d been living alone for over a decade.What did her opinion matter to him?
Sure, she was a close friend, his soon-to-be sister-in-law and, hell, even if she wasn’t marrying Landon, she’d been like a sister to him most his life.She meant something to him.
But that didn’t mean he needed her approval.
Don’t you wish.
Truth of the matter was, Aly had pretty much always been there—the daughter of his dad’s foreman growing up, then just about raised by his parents after her father had died when she’d been a teenager.She was a fixture in his life and on this ranch.
And he hated hurting her.
The Bennet Ranch had been a good place to recover from his gunshot wound, to deal with some of his mental shit, but it would never be his life like it was Landon and Aly’s.Aly wouldn’t understand that.He knew she wouldn’t, so he was dreading this.
