Of course, it wasn’t.
Maisie was careful, cautious. Drew’s confidence had been a turn-on, almost a drug. It was no wonder Maisie had felt the need to pretend to be like her. She’d been tempted to act like someone she wasn't. The type of person who can tell her boss to take a job and shove it.
That was all well and good for Drew, a rich rancher who had the kind of money to blow on big nights in Vegas. What was it to her? But she’d made Maisie believe in fairy tales, and now she was waking up in a nightmare.
Alone.
She swept the room with her eyes again, taking in the disaster. Had Drew even left a note? There was nothing. Not a text. Not a scribble on a piece of paper. Nothing.
Nothing except utter ruin. Maisie knew right then there was exactly one thing that had caused her life to go up in smoke: Drew.
“You got me into this mess,” Maisie seethed, bitterness pooling in her stomach like poison, “and where are you now? Nowhere to be seen. I thought you were chivalrous, but you were nothing but a cad.”
Whatever had gone down last night to get her riled up enough to quit her job, Drew had to have had a hand in it. Maisie went to call the woman, wanting to know what she remembered, but then she thought better of it. Drew had done enough damage. The best thing to do would be to put everything about last night in the past and keep it there.
Maisie tapped the trash can next to Drew’s number.Are you sure you want to delete this contact?her phone asked. Oh, yes. She was sure.Would you like to block this number from contacting you in the future?Hell, yeah. That was even better.
Crawling out of bed, Maisie hunted for her clothing. She had fifteen minutes to get dressed, figure out where she was, and get back to her hotel so she could fly home and find a new job, pronto.
Her bra had landed on top of a platter of shrimp, now lukewarm and spoiled. Such a waste! Maisie’s anger at Drew increased. It was clear in the harsh light of morning that Drew wasn’t the type of woman Maisie should have admired. They didn’t share the same values.
Holding her nose as she plucked her fishy-smelling undergarment from the refuse, Maisie uttered a curse toward Drew, and pink Cadillacs, and champagne—and whatever else Maisie had allowed to lead her astray. “Now to put my life back together and forget any of this ever happened.”
CHAPTERTWELVE
Three months later…
“Hold on, Dad.”Drew took four long strides toward the glass door at the entrance to the law office building in downtown Gillette, a massive city compared to their little town of Rock Creek Valley, which was hardly more than a school, post office, and gas station. The bitter March wind was reason enough to hurry inside. Having 30,000 people crowded in one place was plenty of incentive to get this over with as fast as possible. She was a rancher at heart, preferring cows to people.
Drew was trying not to compare her speed with the mincing steps that were all her father could manage since the heart attack he’d been lucky to survive. “Let me get it for you.”
“You don’t need to act like I’m an old man,” he huffed. “I’m fit as a fiddle.”
Even if Drew hadn’t been in constant communication with his cardiologist and known the exact state of his recovery, her father’s wheezing would’ve betrayed him, along with his painfully skinny, frail body. This trip to see the family attorney was his first non-medical outing since it had happened, and he’d donned a suit for the occasion. Drew assumed it was something he’d purchased for a wedding or funeral back when his muscles were bulked from the daily exertion of life on a ranch. The clothing hung on him now, making him look like a boy playing dress-up. Even his neck had shrunk.
Not that she’d ever tell him that.
“Hey now. I’m just showing good manners, like you raised me to.” Drew had gotten used to tiptoeing around her father’s feelings during his lengthy recovery. Exactly how long that had been was becoming a blur.
Ever since Drew had woken up with a massive hangover to an urgent call from Cord early on her last morning in Las Vegas, it felt like life was going a hundred miles an hour yet standing perfectly still at the same time. She didn’t even remember leaving the hotel room, except for a lingering sense of regret about Maisie that she tried to tamp down as much as possible. It was stupid to feel that way, anyway, considering the only thing Drew had lost was an awkward but inevitable goodbye.
Would that really have been better than no goodbye at all?
It didn’t matter. Time had been of the essence, and Drew hadn’t had a choice. She and Cord had managed to make the normally two-day drive back to northeastern Wyoming in fifteen hours. She couldn’t recall a single thing along the way. Then there was the haze of long nights sleeping in a chair by her father’s bedside in the hospital’s ICU. Countless doctor appointments. Nurses coming to their home. Neighbors bringing one bland casserole after another. All the while, the work on the ranch falling further and further behind.
How had this become her life? It was enough to make Drew fantasize about riding off into the sunset on Stormy and leaving everything behind. She would never do it. She was the oldest daughter and would as soon cut off her own arm as ditch her teenage sister, let alone her father or the animals on the ranch. Leaving was something her mother had done, and Drew was nothing like that woman. Even so, dreaming about escaping now and again helped to keep her head from exploding.
Dan King sat at his scuffed wooden desk inside the small office, looking the same as ever. Not that Drew and her family were the type to need a lawyer often. She counted her lucky stars there weren’t any criminal branches on the family tree. But when the occasion arose, Dan was a one stop shop, handling anything and everything, from estate planning to contract law, that a rancher might need.
Bankruptcy, if it came to it, though that was a problem for another day.
Today’s problem was enough to deal with.
Dan waved for Drew and her father to take a seat in the two vinyl-covered chairs. Business must’ve been good lately because the cushion on one of them had been redone since Drew’s last visit and was no longer being held together with a strip of silver duct tape.
“It’s great to see you up and out of the house, Andy,” Dan said with a warm smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Like everyone’s waitin’ for me to keel over dead,” Drew’s dad grumbled.