Forget Me Not Cowboy Read online

  Dedication

  For the Root Literary team.

  Your professional acumen is second only to your warmth and loveliness. You all prove that hard work and success is a perfect match with kindness and the support of others.

  And for Holly—fearless leader, savvy professional and one of the kindest people I know. I’m so grateful to be on this publishing journey with you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Author’s Note

  Announcement

  About the Author

  By Addison Fox

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  She was home.

  Not the flit in and flit right back out in forty-eight hours sort of home. But the settle in and spend some time sort of home.

  The stay and figure out your life sort of home.

  The time to meet the ghosts of your past sort of home.

  Harper Allen looked at the main street of Rustlers Creek as she drove the last few miles off the highway and wondered at the increasing knot that twisted her stomach. A knot that had started to tighten as her flight into Billings from Seattle touched Montana ground.

  Why was it so hard? Or maybe a better question was, why did it have to be?

  She reflected on all of it as she took in the pretty, appealing look of downtown. Had it always looked like this? So quaint? So clean? So . . . welcoming?

  And she had to acknowledge that much of it had to do with her sister, Hadley Allen Wayne, a woman better known far and wide as the Cowgirl Gourmet. Hadley was a major reality star, a fan favorite of The Cooking Network, where she’d made her career. One that now included books, a cookware line and—she saw the bright shining building at the end of Main Street—a lifestyle experience with her newly opened Trading Post.

  It was fascinating to see that as her sister’s life had grown bigger and bigger over the past several years, her success and fame hadn’t only affected her. Her husband, Zack, had certainly been affected. A state that had nearly ruined their marriage before they worked it out back at Christmas.

  But Hadley had made an impact on all of Rustlers Creek, too. The entire town had been transformed by her work, the crew that regularly set up camp in town swelling the population for several months out of every year. And then there were the visitors. Several major hotel chains had actually put in locations to accommodate the influx of people that came in and out of Rustlers Creek, something that had only grown since the Trading Post had opened a few months ago.

  And then there was the latest, Harper thought, shaking her head as she turned at the end of Main Street. She’d found the online listing while looking up a state-mandated food law in Montana and realized that Hadley had created something of a tourism mecca in their small piece of heaven here in Big Sky Country. Several surrounding towns, including Granite Ridge and Whisper Falls, had gotten in on the deal, creating B and B packages, orchard visits and a horseback riding experience through the myriad of trails that made up this part of the state.

  All as a result of her big sister’s love of cooking.

  They were just shy of a year and a half apart in age, but their birth order had definitely shaped their relationship and their personalities. It had also shaped how each had reacted to their mom’s death when they were thirteen and twelve. Hadley was a nurturer and someone who showed her love for others by doing.

  What she also was, Harper admitted as she took the turnoff for Wayne and Sons ranch, was a major force in entertainment. One who’d generously offered Harper a chance with her new coffee company. A venture Harper had embarked on after leaving more than a decade working in tech in Seattle. A job that, while not necessarily inspiring, had given her a sizable nest egg and an idea for a new kind of business.

  One that built on customer interests, algorithmically taking the things they loved and creating drinks especially for them.

  Her initial work at the local shop in Seattle—one she’d purchased on a whim the week she quit her big tech job with its highly lucrative salary—had already become something of a test case for the idea, and it was working. She’d stolen business from the four surrounding chain locations in a matter of months.

  And now she was here, back in Rustlers Creek, to put it all to the real test. Building out a business that could be shipped nationwide, with the help of her smiling, enthusiastic sister and the happy souls who wandered into the Trading Post.

  “Come on, Harper. Come do it!” Hadley’s excitement spilled over as she nearly toppled her wine while they sat at their father’s worn kitchen table around 11:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day. “Come home for a while. I want to spend time with you and we can get something really cooking at the Trading Post. I need a signature blend, after all.”

  “You want me home?”

  “I do. I miss you.”

  “The way you and Zack have been entwined around each other, I didn’t know you could miss anything.”

  She grinned at her own joke as she lifted her wine to her lips, but knew it was one threaded with happiness and relief. Hadley and Zack had found their way back to each other, their marriage nearly ending over years of misunderstanding and personal struggles on the subject of children.

  It was a close call, she reflected as she drove down the long drive at Wayne and Sons, and Harper couldn’t deny how relieved she was. If Hadley and Zack—a couple who loved each other to distraction—couldn’t make it, what hope did anyone else have?

  A point that seemed important, even if she’d lost her own hope years ago. A woman got one chance at her grand romance, Harper knew. One great love that filled your soul as easily as it destroyed it.

  For some like Hadley, they were supremely lucky and got to keep it.

  And for others . . .

  She let the thought hang as she pulled into a spot near the house. Her gaze drifted over the vast land that stretched out in every direction.

  He might be out there, even now. Because when you came back to a place filled with the ghosts of your past, Harper mused as she parked her rental car, you could run into them anywhere.

  Dr. Grayson McClain removed his gloved hand from a deeply intimate spot on a deeply pregnant heifer and stood back to assess the animal. “She’s a bit distressed but should deliver just fine. My examination likely didn’t help with the distress part. She’ll resettle in a bit.”

  “You seem pretty sure about that,” Zack Wayne said as he got to his feet from where he’d crouched beside Gray. “She’s a bit later than the rest of the herd.”

  “It’s late March, Zack. We’re still well within birthing season.” Gray took in Zack’s anxious face. “What has you so bothered?”

  He’d known Zack Wayne for a long time and considered the man a friend. He also knew him to be one of the best and most responsible beef producers in the state of Montana. So the sour expression that filtered across Zack’s dark brown gaze, and the sun-worn grooves edging the man’s eyes, was a surprise.

  “I’m trying to spare Carter from any of the pregnancy discussions this year.”

  “He and his wife are having a baby, not a cow.” It was an obvious point, and Gray couldn’t help but wonder if Zack was transferring a bit too much of his concern over the herd onto their ranch foreman. “Carter can handle it.”

  “I’m not so sure. He seemed real suave and smooth for most of the pregnancy, but ever since Bea moved into her last trimester he’s gotten a hell of a lot more skittish.”

  “He’ll be okay.”

  Zack didn’t appear persuaded. “His latest worry is that we’ll get a late spring snowstorm when Bea goes into labor.”

  Of all his possible concerns, Gray figured Carter was more accurate on that front than any other worry the man might think up. But as someone who’d practiced medicine for fifteen years—albeit the large-animal kind—he’d learned that it was the things you never anticipated that were the ones to blindside you.

  And that Mother Nature was a hell of a lot more sure of herself than humans gave her credit for.

  But that blindsiding part of the equation? Well hell, Gray thought as he stripped off his rubber examination gloves. Wasn’t that really the definition of life in a nutshell?

  “Look. Gray.” Zack closed the fence door to the pen where they had the expectant heifer settled and turned to face him. That dark expression struck once more and Gray went on high alert.

  What did have Zack so bothered?

  “What’s going on?”

  “Harper’s back. I mean, she’s back in Rustlers Creek, but she’ll be here on the ranch quite a bit, too. She and Hadley are working on her new venture.”

  And there it was. Blindsided on a perfectly respectable Tuesday afternoon, Gray thought as Zack continued speaking about his sister-in-law. Even if the words had grown garbled and fuzzy and faraway sounding, he still managed to catch most of them, any morsel of information about Harper Allen something he couldn’t resist.

  Somewhere
, Gray surfaced enough from his Harper-haze to key back into Zack’s words. “What venture is that?”

  “Harper’s bought a coffee company. She’s determined to change the industry and she’s working with Hadley on an exclusive blend for the Trading Post.”

  “Coffee? Harper? What happened to her computer science and programming work?”

  “That’s the amazing part. She’s using it all to create custom blends. Her customers in Seattle are going nuts for it. And she’s come up with some really good brews.”

  Zack’s enthusiasm for his sister-in-law’s new business venture was evident, but even with the description, Gray was still having trouble picturing Harper Allen in a barista’s apron, blending coffee like a mad scientist.

  Yet, even as he considered her new venture, it made an odd sort of sense.

  Hadn’t there been that summer she’d decided she was going to learn to mix a list of the ten most challenging cocktails and had set about dissecting every recipe with the most minute attention to detail.

  They’d been damn good, too, as Gray recalled. He’d still never had a better old-fashioned than Harper’s, no matter how many he’d tried.

  “I’m happy for her, then,” he finally said, the words feeling like cement against his tongue. “That’s great people are responding so well.”

  The Allen-girls magic, Gray figured. Hadley had it in spades, with national acclaim to back it up. But Harper . . .

  While seemingly quieter on the surface, she carried a magic all her own. He’d been drawn to her from the first, all those years ago when it was awkward and frowned upon to be a senior trailing after a sophomore. He’d hidden his feelings then, well aware the son of Burt McClain didn’t get a pass on anything, and that a seventeen-year-old male chasing after a fifteen-year-old female would only be seen through the most negative of lenses.

  So he’d waited, only spending time with her when they both worked their jobs with the town’s vet. Harper worked with the grooming crew and he worked directly with Doc Andrews, and that had been all the time he’d been allowed to see her or talk to her with any level of intimacy or privacy.

  It had only been later, when she’d come home from school and he was already hard at work on his veterinary degree, that he’d finally been able to act on his feelings. Feelings, he’d been deeply relieved to know, that were mutual.

  “So you’re going to be okay with it?”

  Once more, Gray keyed back into Zack’s words, those long-ago memories needing to stay right where they were. Hadn’t he learned a long time ago, you got nowhere traipsing down paths that weren’t for you?

  And falling for a woman, no matter how magical, wasn’t in the cards when she was the bright, vibrant daughter of one of the town’s most respected men and you were the son of one of its least.

  Yep, Gray had learned that lesson the hard way. And as he pushed off the thick bars of the corral, he stared Zack dead in the eye.

  “I’m fine, Zack. And I’ve been more than okay with it for a long time.”

  Harper sat at the long bar counter and watched her sister work. It always struck her as odd when she was here at the ranch that she sat at the very same counter where her sister regularly broadcast to millions of people. Sat at the same counter that was on display on the front of hundreds of thousands of cookbooks, in homes all across America.

  And sat at the same counter where she’d cried her heart out to her sister on more than one occasion.

  How did those things coexist?

  It was the strange juxtaposition in her life that the one place she’d run from all those years ago had somehow become the very place she couldn’t avoid.

  Even before she’d made the decision to buy the small coffee company in Seattle, that had been the case. Her small, dot-on-the-map hometown had been transformed into a place people wanted to come to.

  And all because of her sister.

  “How was the flight in?” Hadley expertly chopped chives for a baked potato bar she’d already set up on the opposite side of the kitchen, her gaze seemingly on the very sharp knife she used as well as Harper’s face, both at the same time.

  “Good. I always forget how long that drive seems from Billings.”

  “It’s a lot of wide-open space here.”

  “Not so much when you drive through downtown. Things look different.” Harper considered those first impressions she’d had as she drove through Rustlers Creek. “Fresher, somehow.”

  Hadley scooped up the chives with the edge of her knife and dropped them into a small serving bowl. “A coat of paint’ll do wonders.”

  “So does that Hadley Wayne shine.”

  Her sister actually blushed at that, a feat that wasn’t all that hard to do with her strawberry blond hair. “That’s silly.”

  “It’s true. The whole world is in love with you, rightly so.” Harper picked up her bottle of water and lifted it in toast to her sister. “And the whole town shines right along with you.”

  “I really do love how the business supports other people. The way others in Rustlers Creek have benefited from my success. It makes all the fuss seem a bit more worth it, you know?”

  “What fuss?”

  “The whole ‘TV shit show’ as Zack calls it.”

  Harper stilled at that. She and Hadley had spoken in depth about the challenges Hadley and Zack had faced in their marriage, and Harper knew a lot of it had grown difficult under the scrutiny of filming a TV show. Was it still a problem?

  “I thought Zack was over being upset about the show?”

  “He was never upset about the show, exactly. But he’s still got eyes and a working ranch. He has a healthy skepticism about the whole Hollywood aspect of our lives and he’s not wrong.”

  “Now you’re the one who sounds skeptical.”

  Hadley shrugged as she pulled out a length of plastic wrap to cover the various bowls she’d prepped for the potato bar. “It’s less skepticism and more an understanding of what I nearly lost. A pretty set and lots of people who watch my show could never replace my marriage, and all the Hollywood stuff is really just a fancy mirage. I always knew that, but almost losing Zack pressure tested that belief. Zack and me, you, Dad, Zack’s family. That’s what’s real. What matters.”

  She understood what her sister was saying and knew that while not completely identical, working in the tech industry had a lot of that same mystique. The mythos of what went on inside a modern tech firm, the thrill of venture capital funding for the latest technological promise, and the hope that the business you worked and sweated for would become a Wall Street unicorn—all of it had consumed her life for the better part of a decade.

  And where had it gotten her?

  Disillusioned with it all and happier about walking away than she ever could have imagined.

  Wasn’t that part of what had bothered her so badly these past few months? She’d left Montana after things went to hell with Gray, convinced she was starting out on a new adventure. One she’d sunk her all into—everything she was.

  And again, Harper thought with no small measure of frustration, where had it gotten her?

  Damn near sick with an ulcer and disillusionment about ever finding happiness with anything, anywhere.

  And she hated it. She was a reserved person by nature, but she wasn’t maudlin and she wasn’t hopeless. So why . . .

  Why had she felt exactly that way for longer than she could remember?

  She considered her sister as Hadley moved around the kitchen. Because they were so close in age, they’d always had a sort of emotional and conversational shorthand, much the same way people spoke of twins having a bond. And yet, Hadley had kept her in the dark about her marriage and all the challenges she and Zack had faced.

  Harper respected the decision—sisters or not Hadley was entitled to her privacy—but she could also admit to feeling left out. Or worse, sad that her sister had faced those scary times all alone. She was still struggling with how to verbalize those feelings and was conscious enough of how close her own emotions were to the surface to know now wasn’t the best time to address how she felt.

  But she would find a way to talk about it.

  “Is there something I can do to help?” Harper had been waved off from prep work when she’d first arrived, but suddenly sitting still didn’t suit her mood. Action would feel better.