One Magical Montana Summer

Circumstances took Casey Brand’s vacation plans with her sister and new niece on a slight detour. Now she’s staying in Brock McCallister’s garage apartment in exchange for her help with his daughter with autism. But she still has horses to ride, sunsets to savor and a handsome man to admire...who is proving more friendly than expected.

Getting divorced and dealing with custody issues has pretty much beaten Brock down. Yet how can he stay in a foul mood with Casey’s optimistic outlook right next door? Because of her, his daughter is communicating better, his home shining brighter. She’s even brought life back to the ranch’s old chapel. But is she ready to perform the same dramatic transformation with his tattered heart?

“It’d be a shame. You coming out all this way just to go home so soon.”

“I know,” Casey replied. “But I can’t impose on my sister for the summer—not now.”

“That’s right,” he agreed. Then added, “I have a loft apartment above the barn. It’s a little rough, but it’s livable.”

Casey looked at Brock and listened while he continued.

“The way you are with Hannah—it’s pretty impressive. And it got me thinking that we could help each other out. Hannah does fine with academics—she’s even strong in math and science. But it’s her...”

“Pragmatics,” she filled in for him.

He glanced at her again. “Exactly. How ’bout I let you use the loft for the summer in exchange for some private social-language support. How does that set with you?”

Casey stared at Brock’s profile. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Why? Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

“Heck no, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I think it’s a pretty genius idea.”

* * *

The Brands of Montana:

Wrangling their own happily-ever-afters

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Meet Me at the Chapel. This is my seventh Special Edition book featuring the Brand family. Amazing! Brock McAllister and Casey Brand’s journey to finding lasting love was a joy to write. Casey is an independent special education teacher whose favorite companion is a micro-teacup poodle, Hercules, and Brock is a soon-to-be single-father ranch foreman fighting for custody of his daughter with autism. This is a friends-fall-in-love story filled with beautiful imagery, tender moments and, of course, romance!

In Meet Me at the Chapel, you will encounter old friends from previous Brand books. It just wouldn’t be a Brands of Montana book if Hank and Barbara Brand didn’t make an appearance. They have been in all seven Brand stories! I love writing about the Brand family because I have an opportunity to unearth my fond childhood memories of Montana and give them a new life in the pages of my books. What a blessing!

I invite you to visit my website, joannasimsromance.com, and while you’re there, be sure to sign up for Rendezvous Magazine for Brand family extras, news and swag. Part of the joy of writing is hearing from readers. If you write me, I will write you back! That’s a promise.

Happy Reading!

Joanna

Meet Me at the Chapel

Joanna Sims

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JOANNA SIMS is proud to pen contemporary romance for Mills & Boon Cherish. Joanna’s series, The Brands of Montana, features hardworking characters with hometown values. You are cordially invited to join the Brands of Montana as they wrangle their own happily-ever-afters. And, as always, Joanna welcomes you to visit her at her website: joannasimsromance.com.

Dedicated to Aa and MM

Thank you for allowing me to use your proposal as inspiration. Congratulations on your engagement!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

“Recalculating.”

Casey Brand had been lost in thought until the portable GPS interrupted her daydream. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel of the moving truck, hands placed firmly at ten and two, before she glanced at the GPS screen.

“Recalculating.”

“No!” Casey argued with the machine. “We are not recalculating!”

“Recalculating.”

The map on the screen of the GPS had disappeared, replaced by a single word: searching. She hadn’t been to her uncle and aunt’s ranch since she was a teenager, so finding it by memory wasn’t a viable option. She needed the GPS to do its job. Casey took her eyes off the road for a second to tap the screen of the GPS.

“Darn it!” She was going to have to pull over.

Her trip from Chicago to Montana had been fraught with setbacks: violent thunderstorms, road construction, bad food, horrible menstrual cramps and a rental truck that struggled to maintain speed on every single hill. Not wanting to risk stopping on an incline, Casey punched the gas pedal several times to help the truck make the climb to the top of the hill.

“Come on, you stupid truck!” Casey rocked back and forth in her seat. “You can do it!”

Halfway to the top of the hill, the check-engine light flashed and then disappeared.

“Don’t you dare!” Casey ordered.

Three quarters of the way up the hill, the orange check-engine light appeared and, this time, it stayed.

Casey groaned in frustration. With every tedious mile, it felt like the universe was telling her that her trip was ill-fated. At the top of the hill, she turned on her blinker, carefully eased the truck onto the gravelly berm and shifted into Park.

“Recalculating.”

“Oh, just shut up,” Casey grumbled as she shut off the engine.

“You wait here,” she said to the teacup poodle watching her curiously from inside a dog carrier that was secured with a seat belt. “I’ll be right back.”

She pulled on the lever to pop the hood and jumped out of the cab. At the front of the truck, she was immediately hit with a strong, acrid smell coming from the engine. The hood of the truck was hot to the touch; Casey yanked her baseball cap off her head and used it to protect her fingers while she lifted up the hood.

“Holy cannoli!” Casey covered her face with the cap and backed away from the truck. A moment later, she ran back to the cab of the truck and grabbed the dog carrier, before she put distance between herself and the rental.

A small electrical fire had melted several wires in the engine; it looked as if the fire had already put itself out, but she couldn’t risk driving the truck now. For the time being, she was stuck on a desolate road, with her sister’s worldly possessions in the back of the broken-down rental, a teacup poodle and angry black storm clouds forming overhead.

Casey pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans to call her sister.

“Come on, Taylor...pick up the phone.”

When Taylor didn’t answer, she called again. She was on her third attempt when a fat raindrop landed on the bridge of her nose. She looked up at the black cloud that was now directly above her.

“Really?” she asked the cloud.

Her sister wasn’t answering, for whatever reason, so she needed to move on to plan B. She was about to dial her aunt Barbara’s cell number when she noticed a horse and rider galloping across a field on the opposite side of the road. She didn’t think, she reacted.

“Hey!” Casey ran across the road, waving her free arm wildly. “Hey!”

The rider didn’t seem to hear her or see her. At the edge of the road, Casey looked down at her beloved Jimmy Choo crushed leather Burke boots and then at the rider. There was mud and grass and rock between her and the rustic wooden fence that surrounded the wide, flat field. Her boots had only known city sidewalks and shopping malls. She didn’t want her beautiful boots to get dirty, but there wasn’t a choice—she had to get the rider’s attention. She ran, as softly as she could manage, through the mud and wet grass to the fence. She put the dog carrier on the ground so she could climb up onto the fence.

“Hey!” Casey yelled again and waved her hat in the air. “Help!”

This time, the rider, a cowboy by the look of him, saw her. He slowed his muscular black horse, assessed the situation and then changed direction.

“He sees us!” Casey told her canine companion. The closer the cowboy came, the more familiar he seemed. Casey stared harder at the man galloping toward her, sitting so confident and erect in the saddle.

“Wait a minute. I know you!”

* * *

Brock McAllister was galloping toward home, racing the rain clouds gathering to the west, when he spotted a woman perched on his fence, waving her arm to get his attention. Brock slowed his stallion and assessed the situation before he decided to change direction. As he came closer, he could see that the woman wasn’t as young as he had thought. She had a slight build, borderline thin, and appeared to be in her midthirties.

“Brock! It’s me—Casey,” the woman called out to him with another wave. “Casey Brand.”

The moment Casey added the last name “Brand” to the equation, Brock made the connection. He had worked on the Brand family’s ranch, Bent Tree, since he was a teenager, and had worked his way up to ranch foreman. Taylor, Casey’s older sister, was married to his stepbrother, Clint, and had just given him a niece. So he’d heard through the grapevine that Casey was coming to Montana to help her sister with the new baby, but he hadn’t given her much thought one way or the other until he found her climbing on his fence.

Lightning lit up the gray clouds hanging over the mountains in the distance and the once-sporadic raindrops were coming with more frequency. He only had a few short minutes to stay ahead of the storm. If Casey needed rescuing, it was going to have to be quick.

“You have perfect timing!” Casey gave him a relieved smile when he halted his horse next to the fence. “Would you believe it? The engine caught on fire!”

Given that information, Brock made a split-second decision that he couldn’t leave Casey behind in the rental while he went back to the farm to get his truck.

“We need to get out of the way of this storm.” Brock walked his horse in a small circle so he could get closer to the fence.

“Is there someone you can call to come get me? I tried my sister, but she didn’t answer.”

“You can’t stay here. We’re under a tornado watch.” Brock halted his horse and held out his gloved hand to Casey. “You need to come with me. Now!”

It seemed to him that his words hadn’t registered. She stared at him with a stunned expression, but didn’t budge.

“Come on!” Brock yelled at her, his large stallion prancing anxiously in place. “Give me your hand!”

The urgency in his voice, along with a clap of thunder, finally got her moving. But instead of giving him her hand, she gave him her dog carrier.

“Hold Hercules! I’ve got to get my wallet!”

Surprised, Brock reached out his hand to take the carrier before his brain had a chance to register that there was a miniature dog, the smallest dog he’d ever seen, inside of the designer bag.

“What the hell...?” Brock’s low baritone voice was caught on a gust of wind. While he waited for Casey’s return, Brock raised the carrier to eye level so he could get a better look at his new passenger. “What in the heck are you supposed to be?”

* * *

Casey ran on the treadmill regularly, so running the short distance to the truck and back was easy for her. She grabbed her wallet then locked the door. Brock’s stallion was chomping at the bit, refusing to stand still by the fence.

“Easy, Taj...” She heard Brock trying to calm the horse while he circled back to the fence. On her way to the truck, the first raindrops had landed on the top of her head and on the tip of her nose. By the time she’d climbed back to the top of the fence, it had begun to rain in earnest. Casey straddled the fence while Brock steadied the prancing, overly excited stallion that was tossing his head and biting at the bit.

“Come on!” Brock ordered. “Use the stirrup!”

Casey grabbed ahold of the damp material of the cowboy’s chambray shirt, slipped her left foot into the stirrup and swung her right leg over the horse’s rump. Casey tucked Hercules under one arm and held on tight to Brock with the other. The heavy sheets of rain were being pushed at an angle by the wind, strong enough and hard enough that the right side of her face felt as if it were being pelted by rock salt. She tried to shield Hercules as much as she could from the rain while she tried to protect her own face by tucking her head into Brock’s back.

Casey pressed her head into the cowboy’s back, and tightened her arms around his waist. In her youth, she had been an excellent rider; she knew how to sit and she knew how to balance her weight on the back of a horse. So, even though his stallion had an extra burden to carry, the impact on the horse would be minimal. Loud claps of thunder followed the lightning strikes by only a few seconds, signaling to Casey that the lightning was too close for comfort. Riding on horseback in a lightning storm was an invitation to be struck.

“Yah, Taj!” she heard Brock yell as he leaned forward and prodded the sure-footed stallion. The stallion leapt forward and kicked his speed into an even higher gear.

Casey squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on following the movement of Brock’s body. All of her senses were being bombarded at once: the masculine scent of leather and sweat on Brock’s shirt mingled with the earthy, sweet scent of the rain, the feel of Brock’s thick thigh muscles pressed so tightly against her own, and the sound of the stallion’s hooves pounding the ground as it carried them across the flat, grassy plain. When she heard what sounded like hooves hitting gravel, she opened her eyes. From beneath the brim of her baseball cap, she saw part of a denim-blue house with a flat roof and a white trim through a canopy of trees.

On their way up the narrow gravel driveway, they passed a faded brown barn and older-model blue-and-yellow Ford tractor. Now in full view, Brock’s two-story house was square with two bay windows and kitty-corner steps leading up to covered porches on either side. Brock halted the stallion directly in front of the stairs, a maneuver Casey suspected he’d done many times before.

“Get inside. The door’s unlocked!” Brock ordered. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Brock held the carrier while she dismounted; once she was safely on the ground, he handed Hercules to her. She ran up the steps, and kept on running until she reached the shelter of the covered porch by the front door. She wiped the water off her face as best she could, but her clothing and hair and boots were sopping wet and her skin was wet beneath the material of her jeans and shirt. She hesitated by the door, not wanting to drip water all over his floor. But she heard Brock yelling at her as he dismounted, telling her to get inside. Casey took one last look at the blackened sky filled with swirling gray clouds pouring rain before she followed his direction and opened the front door to the farmhouse.

The heavy door swung open and Casey crossed the threshold into Brock’s dark world. The house was old—she estimated by the look of the lead-stained glass windows abutting the front door that it had already celebrated its centennial birthday. But it had not celebrated in grand fashion. The curtains were made of a dark cherry brocade and were drawn shut to block out any light. Cornflower blue wallpaper dotted with small white flowers contrasted oddly with the forest green shag carpet. Casey knew from her sister that Brock was separated from his wife, Shannon. Brock and Shannon had been “an item” all through middle school and high school. Shannon had been a Miss Montana first runner-up and Casey could remember looking at her when she was a preteen and thinking that Shannon was the prettiest person she’d ever seen. They had married right after high school and the marriage had produced a daughter. But, according to Taylor, they were going through a messy divorce and custody battle and Shannon had been living in California with her new boyfriend.

Yes, Shannon was probably still a very beautiful woman—but she wasn’t a housekeeper. Everything in the house seemed dingy and tired—in need of a good scrubbing to get rid of the wet-dog smell and a serious cleaning in general. Yet Casey could look past the clutter and floral decor to see the potential in the house. The dark, carved woodwork used for the crown molding, the built-in bookshelves and the stairwell, which appeared to be original to the house and beautifully made. The bay windows with those antique stained-glass windows were stunning. Even though the house seemed to be sagging beneath the weight of disrepair, with a lot of TLC, it could be something truly special.

“It’s going to be okay.” Casey put the carrier down on the ground so she could kneel down and take off her boots. No sense just standing there making a puddle in Brock’s foyer. Casey took inventory of her options and then took Hercules, carrier and all, through the living room until she had reached what appeared to be the middle of the house.

“You wait here,” she told Hercules; her pocket poodle had shocked her by not making a sound, even during his first jarring ride on a horse.

Casey went to a small bathroom just off the living room.

“Jackpot.” Casey found a stack of clean, mismatched towels jammed under the sink.

She quickly dried her thick, waist-length hair before twisting it into the towel like a turban. With a second towel, she got the excess water off her shirt and jeans before ripping off her socks so she could stand on the damp towel in her bare feet.

Outside, the wind was howling around the house, sending loose leaves swirling past the window. The trees were starting to bend from the force of the wind and rain, which hadn’t let up since they arrived at the ranch.

What was keeping Brock?

As if on cue, Brock burst through the front door and slammed it shut behind him. Not bothering to take off his wet boots, he strode into the living room and turned on the television. The severe-weather bulletin that had trumped regular programing was running images of a funnel cloud that seemed to be too close for comfort.

“Stay here,” he said as he turned off the television.

Brock took the narrow stairs up to the second floor two at a time. He went to the master bedroom, tugged one of the plaid shirts down off the bedpost, then grabbed a pair of his soon-to-be ex-wife’s jeans and socks out of a dresser drawer. He needed to get his unexpected guest taken care of before he went to go get his daughter, Hannah, who was at a friend’s house roughly fifteen minutes away. He had to get to Hannah.

“They’re clean.” He pushed the clothes into her arms.

Casey was still trying to process the fact that she was caught up in a tornado situation, when Brock swung open a door that led to a cellar. A blast of stale air hit her in the face.

Brock switched on a battery-powered light. “Change and then you and your dog need to go down to the cellar. There’s a weather radio down there, along with other supplies. Switch it on so you know what’s happening. Wait there until I get back.”

“You’re leaving?” There was the tiniest crack in her voice. She was accustomed to blizzards, but tornadoes were an entirely different kind of natural menace.

“I’m going to get my daughter!” he hastened to say. And then he was gone.

She followed his directions—they were sensible and were meant to keep her safe. She stripped out of her wet clothes, wrung them out and hung them over the tub. The plaid shirt was huge on her—she rolled the sleeves up several times so her hands were free. Likewise, the jeans were loose around the waist and hips, and way too long. Casey folded the waistband down to make the jeans fit more securely, and then cuffed the bottom of the jeans so she could walk without stepping on them.

Once she was in dry clothes, she pulled the towel off her head and twisted her tangled hair into a topknot.

“Here goes nothing.” Casey opted to breathe through her mouth to avoid inhaling the musty odor of the cellar. After some time down there, she hoped she wouldn’t even notice it.

At the bottom of the rickety steps, Casey found a spot on the ground where she could unfold a blanket and hunker down until the coast was clear. The wind was so strong that it felt as if the house was swaying and groaning overhead.

“Come on out, little one.” Casey opened the carrier and coaxed the rust-colored micro-poodle out onto the blanket.

She was glad that Hercules was content to curl up in her lap, because she needed his company. He made her feel calmer. With a frustrated, self-pitying sigh, Casey turned on the weather radio and knew that the only thing she could do now was wait and pray.

* * *

“I’m so sorry, Brock.” Kay Lynn opened the door to the trailer. “I had to call. I haven’t seen her like this in a while. She was hitting herself and biting her hand again. She’s been in a nosedive for the last hour or so.”

“Is she in her normal spot?”

Kay Lynn nodded toward the hallway of the single-wide trailer. Brock walked quickly, but calmly, down the narrow hallway to the spare bedroom. Squeezed between a full-size bed and the wall, his twelve-year-old daughter was curled into a tight ball, rocking back and forth. In front of her, lying on top of Hannah’s feet, was a golden Lab.

“Good girl, Ladybug.” Brock knelt down, put his hand on the dog’s head for a moment, before he reached out for his daughter’s hand.

“Hannah,” he said softly. “It’s time to go home.”

Hannah had been officially diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when she was eight. Her IQ was very high, but there were quirks to her personality that set her apart from other children her age. And, when a storm was coming, Brock always anticipated that she was going to have an off day. If he’d had any idea that she was going to spiral like this, he would have stayed home with her.

“Come on, baby girl.” He directed the protective dog to move out of the way so he could help Hannah make the transition from the trailer to his truck. “We’re going home.”

Hannah lifted her head up. Her face, so much like his, was still damp from shed tears. His heart tightened every time his daughter cried. Brock wiped her tears from her cheeks before he lifted her up into his arms and hugged her tightly. The squeezing always calmed her.

“Why didn’t you come sooner?” Hannah asked when he put her down.

“I got here as fast as I could.” Brock took her hand in his. “Now, I need you to use your ‘stay calm’ plan on the way home. Okay?”

Hannah nodded. “Come on, Lady.”

Now that he had his daughter with him, Brock felt complete. He could handle anything, as long as he had his daughter by his side. He could even handle a messy divorce from Shannon, Hannah’s mother. They were in a custody battle for Hannah and had been for nearly a year. Shannon wanted to move Hannah out to California with her, and it was going to happen over his dead carcass. Hannah was going to stay in Montana, with him, in the only home she’d ever known. Period.

“You’d better hunker down, Kay Lynn. You’re a sitting duck out here. You could come with us, but you’ve got to come now.”

Kay Lynn’s silver-streaked hair blew around the sunken cheeks of her face. She waved her hand as if she could bat away the tornado with her rough-skinned fingers. “That tornado don’t want none of me, Brock. You go on and get Hannah home. I’ll be right as rain.”

There was no sense wasting time trying to convince Kay Lynn to leave her home—she was as much a part of the prairie surrounding the old trailer as was the willowy Junegrass. He’d offered, but knew she wouldn’t take him up on it.

With a quick wave to Hannah’s sometimes babysitter, Brock bundled Hannah into the truck and headed back to his little Montana spread. They didn’t see much more than a few drops of rain on their short drive back. Brock pulled into the gravelly driveway that led to their farmhouse knowing that they were in a lull. The clouds above were still churning and angry, and it was only a matter of time before the wind would start howling again. They were in the most dangerous time of a tornado, the time when many folks get fooled into thinking that the threat was over, when in actuality it was just about to begin.

Chapter Two

“It’s time for our storm plan, Hannah. Tell me what we need to do.” Brock pulled the screen door open to their house. The rain was still misty, but he knew from experience that that could change on a dime.

Hannah was faithfully rattling off the steps of their storm plan when they reached the foyer safely. They had created the storm plan years ago, not only to keep safe, but to keep Hannah feeling calm and in charge during an emergency.

“Good job, baby girl.” Brock shut the door firmly behind them. Now that they were inside the house, he could take his anxiety level down a notch.

Hannah was on the ground yanking off her wet boots and he was knocking the excess water off his cowboy hat when he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Brock hung his hat on a hook by the door before he walked around the corner toward the sound of the noise.

“Oh!” Casey exclaimed, balancing a full glass of water in one hand and Hercules in the other. “Hey! You’re back!”

“Why aren’t you in the cellar?”

“The rain and the wind stopped, so I figured we were in the clear,” she explained to him offhandedly on her way to greet his daughter. “You must be Hannah. I’m Casey. I’ve heard so much about you from my sister, Taylor.” Casey smiled at the preteen who was nearly as tall as she was. “And this is the awesome Hercules.”

Casey knew from her sister that Hannah was on the spectrum, so she understood when Brock’s daughter didn’t look her in the eye. She also knew that Hannah loved animals and it showed by the way Hannah reached over to gently pet Hercules.

“You can get acquainted in the cellar.” Brock moved behind his daughter and put his hands on her shoulders. “It may look like it now, but we’re not in the clear.”

“No?” Casey asked him.

“No,” he reiterated. “We all need to get down in the cellar. Now.”

* * *

For two hours, the three of them hunkered down in the cellar while the worst of the storm stalled in their region of the state. The wooden house creaked and groaned as the storm reenergized. She couldn’t see it, but she had been able to hear that the force of the wind was blowing debris against the sides of the house. Casey was grateful that fate had landed her in Brock’s cellar instead of being stranded out on a desolate road in a rented moving van. But her gratitude was beginning to give way to discomfort and claustrophobia. It was cool and damp down in the cellar—her skin felt clammy and she still felt chilled even after Brock gave her a blanket to wrap around her shoulders. Worse yet, the air was stuffy, and even though she had hoped she would be able to eventually ignore it, she hadn’t grown accustomed to the smell at all. It was reminiscent of her middle school locker room—body odor and dirty socks.

“Do you think it’s safe to go up yet?” Casey asked her host expectantly.

It had been at least fifteen minutes since the wind had knocked anything into the exterior of the house. The pounding sound that the driving rain had made as it pummeled Brock’s antiquated farmhouse had died down.

“Give it a few more minutes. The last funnel touched down mighty close to here.”

With a heavy sigh, Casey shifted her body to take pressure off her aching tailbone. Sitting on the floor had stopped being a fun option when she reached her thirties. She preferred a comfy couch or squishy chair. Sitting on the floor was for the birds.

“God—my poor sister. She has to be scared to death wondering where I am.” Casey readjusted the blanket on her shoulders. “You know—my horoscope did say that this was a bad time to travel.”

“You don’t really believe in that, do you?” he asked her.

“Only when they’re right,” she said with the faintest of laughs. “I’d say a broken-down truck, a tornado and getting stuck in your smelly cellar are three very strong indicators that it was a bad time for me to travel.”

She heard Brock laugh a little after she spoke, and then she realized what she had said. “That sounded really ungrateful.”

“It’s okay.”

“I am grateful,” she added. “I could still be out there, stuck.”

“I knew what you meant,” Brock reassured her.

“And now I’m babbling. If you want me to zip it, just tell me. I won’t be the least bit offended. My mom has told me that I was a precocious talker and I’ve had the gift of gab ever since I was a toddler. Of course, Mom doesn’t really mean that in the most positive of ways.”

“Talking makes the time go faster,” Brock reminded her.

“Well, now you’re probably just being nice, but that’s okay.”

“I haven’t been accused of that trait too often,” he replied humorously.

Hannah made a content noise as she snuggled closer to her father. Ladybug, the golden Lab that Brock and Hannah called Lady for short, lifted up her head to check on Hannah before putting her head back down on her front paws. It was endearing to see the closeness between Brock and his daughter. They were so bonded that it was hard to imagine a third person in that dynamic.

Casey was sure that there were many sides of Brock that she hadn’t seen—wasn’t that the case with all people? But he’d been nothing but nice to her, and he was so gentle with Hannah.

“I’ve never seen anyone connect with Hannah as quickly as you did,” Brock told her quietly.

Casey heard the admiration in his voice and it made her feel good. “I work with kids with all sorts of disabilities for a living—I guess it’s just second nature to me now.”

“What do you do again? I think your sister told me once, but I apologize—I forgot.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to remember something like that, anyway.” Casey uncrossed her legs to relieve the ache that had shifted from her tailbone to her knees. “I’m a special education teacher for Chicago public schools. I provide services for students who have individual education plans and need extra support to access the curriculum.”

“Is that right?” Brock asked. “Chicago has a reputation for having some pretty rough neighborhoods, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. Those rough areas were one of the main objections her father, a prominent judge in Chicago, had to her desire to become a teacher. For her mother, it was all about the prestige of the job and the money. Or lack thereof.

“I do work in a high-poverty school. It’s not easy, and, yes, there are too many problems to count, but my kids make the challenges worthwhile. Most of the kids I work with—they’re good kids. Great kids. They just need someone to care enough about them to help them succeed—to help them supersede their backgrounds.” Casey’s voice became more passionate as she continued. “Do you know that so many of the kids I serve wouldn’t have needed the services of a special education teacher if they hadn’t been born into poverty? They would have had the exposure to print and early literacy development, and different experiences to build background knowledge. And it’s not that the parents don’t want to provide their kids with the best start possible, but living hand-to-mouth...” Casey counted things on her fingers. “Food insecurity, illiteracy, lack of education and job opportunities, so many factors, that parents don’t have the time, or the energy, or the resources to read to their children, or provide them with those vital foundational skills. By the time these kids get to kindergarten, they’re already behind in all of those fundamental skills, like vocabulary and phonemic awareness... It’s really sad. Shameful, really.”

When Casey spoke about the kids she worked with in Chicago, her face lit up with excitement. It turned a rather ordinary face into one that was really quite extraordinary.

“You love your job.”

Casey gave him a little smile that was self-effacingly saying, What tipped you off?

“I really appreciate your passion for your work.” Brock seemed like he wanted to reassure her. To validate her. “Kids like my Hannah need teachers who are dedicated, who genuinely care about her success. You’re a hero to parents like me. I mean, the way you redirected Hannah and kept her calm... It was impressive.”

In the low light cast off from the lantern between them, their eyes met and held for the briefest of moments before Brock looked away. His dark hair, threaded with silver near the temple, was slicked back from his long face. His jawline was square, his brows heavy above deeply set blue eyes. When she was a scrawny teenager, and Brock was eighteen, she had thought he was so handsome—and she still did. But all signs of youthfulness had been worn from his face. The wrinkles on his forehead, around his mouth and eyes, were evidence of frowning and stress. This was a man who was under a major amount of pressure—she recognized the signs. She also recognized the signs of a devoted father. Whatever marital problems he was having—and she had heard from her sister that there were many—he hadn’t let them interfere with his dedication to Hannah.

“Well, thank you.” Casey felt her cheeks get a little warm. “I’m glad I could help.”

Hercules picked that moment to sit up, stretch, yawn and then take a large leap off her thigh and onto the blanket.

“Is that a real dog? Or do you have to wind it every morning?” Brock had turned his attention to her teacup-sized poodle that had just made the large leap off her leg onto the blanket.

“Hey! Don’t pick on Hercules!” Hannah scooped Hercules up and kissed him several times. “Though he may be but little, he is fierce!”

“Now it’s getting serious. You brought Shakespeare to the table?” Brock teased her.

Hercules gave a little yap and ran around in a circle.

“A little Shakespeare never hurt anyone.”

“Speak for yourself,” he retorted. “I took a class on Shakespeare in college. Worst semester of my life.”

“It pains me to shift the subject away from Shakespeare, because I happen to be a fan, but I think—” she nodded her head toward her pocket poodle “—he needs a bathroom break. He does have a microscopic bladder, after all—poor baby.”

“Okay.” Brock shook Hannah’s shoulder to wake her. “I think it’s safe to go topside.”

Ignoring the stiffness in her joints from sitting for too long in one position, Casey stood up quickly, shed the blanket, scooped up Hercules and tucked him into the crook of her arm.

She was the caboose, and followed Brock, his daughter and their dog up to the main floor.

“Oh, wow.” Casey walked to the closest window.

The storm had torn through the ranch, littering the yard with large, broken tree branches, overturned equipment and missing shingles from the roof of the barn.

“What a mess,” she said to Brock.

“I’m going to check on the horses.” The ranch foreman shrugged into a rain slicker. “Will you watch Hannah?”

She agreed to watch his daughter, of course. And, once both dogs had the chance to take care of business, Casey and Hannah took their canine companions back inside. It was drizzling outside, and the gray sky was so dreary, but it seemed as if the worst of the storm had finally passed them by.

“Do you have a landline, Hannah?”

Hannah showed her the phone on the other side of the refrigerator. She had periodically tried to get reception with her cell phone while they were in the cellar, without any luck. Now that they were out of the cellar, she still wasn’t having any luck with reception.

Relieved to hear a dial tone when she picked up the receiver, she dialed her sister’s number and silently begged her sister to answer.

“Hello?”

“Taylor! Thank goodness I got you!”

“Casey! I saw Brock’s number on caller ID. I wasn’t expecting to hear your voice, but I’m so glad it’s you! I’ve been trying to get you on your cell phone for hours!”

“I knew you had to be freaking out. I’m sorry—the truck broke down, then the tornado... It’s been a crazy day. How did you fare through the storm?”

“We’re fine—we’ll have to clean up the loose branches in the yard, but it could have been much, much worse. I’m just glad that you’re okay,” her sister said. “I didn’t want you to drive all of my stuff here by yourself, anyway. And you said the truck broke down?”

“Small fire in the engine, yes.”

“Ca-sey! I knew it was a bad idea!”

Casey heard the sound of her niece crying in the background. Penelope had been born premature and was prone to ear infections. She didn’t say anything to her sister, but Taylor sounded exhausted.

“Tay—I wanted to do it, so I did it. I’m fine. Brock happened to show up at an opportune time, so no harm done.”

There was a pause on the end of the line.

Then Taylor said, “I was wondering how you wound up with Brock.”

When her sister said her brother-in-law’s name, there was an underlying dislike in her tone. Casey knew from many conversations with her sister that Brock and her new husband, Clint, had a long-standing fractured relationship. From what she understood, Clint didn’t like Brock any more than Brock liked him. And the only glue that bound them together was Hannah.

“He kept me safe. And he’s been really nice to me.”

“Well.” Her sister seemed reluctant to give Brock a compliment. “That’s good at least.”

Casey smiled at Hannah, who was sitting at the table with an iPad while Lady took her position at Hannah’s feet.

“And I’ve had a chance to make friends with Hannah,” she said. “I hear my niece. How’s she doing?”

“She’s sick again.” This was said with the tired voice of a first-time mother. “She hasn’t slept, so I haven’t slept. Clint broke his collarbone down in Laredo...”

“Oh, no, Tay—I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It couldn’t be worse timing—the only upside is that he’s coming home early. His best friend, Dallas, is going to drive him back and then we’ll buy her a plane ticket to get her to the next stop on the circuit.”

Taylor’s husband was a professional bull rider; Casey didn’t know how her sister, who was once married to a metrosexual man, could have wound up marrying a cowboy. But they seemed to just fit.

“He’ll be home all summer then.” Casey said the thought as soon as she thought it.

“That collarbone is going to be a tough one to heal, so I think he’ll be out of the running this season. Maybe this will be the one that makes him rethink his career.”

Still thinking about Taylor’s small bungalow on the outskirts of Helena, Casey didn’t respond right away. It must have clicked in Taylor’s mind what she was thinking, because her sister hastened to say, “There’s plenty of room here, Casey. I still want you to stay with us for the summer.”

“Let’s not worry about it now.” Casey rubbed her temples. “First thing I need to do is find out from Brock if the roads are even passable now so I can check on the truck. I don’t think he’ll mind taking me all the way into Helena if it saves you a trip.”

“Call me as soon as you know the plan. Promise?”

“Of course. I love you, sis. Give Penny a kiss from me. I’ll see you soon.”

Casey used the restroom and then joined Hannah at the table. Hannah was looking at a large diagram of a ladybug’s anatomy. Like many children diagnosed with autism, Hannah had become fixated on a topic, and that topic was ladybugs. The bathroom was decorated with ladybugs—ladybug shower curtain, ladybug toothbrush holder, ladybug towels. There was a ladybug on Hannah’s shirt and Casey had spotted a ladybug backpack hanging on one of the hooks in the foyer. Their dog was named Ladybug. One of the ways she had distracted Hannah from being scared in the cellar was to redirect to conversations about ladybugs. Once Hannah got started talking about the topic that interested her most, she forgot about the storm and talked at length about the insects. Although Brock was impressed with her ability to pinpoint Hannah’s interest, it wasn’t rocket science. All she had to do was pay attention to observable details, which was part of her job as a special education teacher.

“What else do you have on your iPad?” she asked, curious to see Hannah’s reaction.

“Stuff,” Hannah replied without looking up from the screen.

Brock’s daughter wasn’t interested in showing her any other apps on the iPad—not in the middle of looking at ladybugs.

The door to the house swung open. Brock peeled off his wet rain slicker and tossed it onto a rocking chair just outside the front door. He stepped into the foyer, stomped his feet on the rug and slapped the rain off his hat by hitting it across his thigh a couple of times.

“How’s it looking out there?” Casey asked.

Brock shook his head as he closed the front door tightly behind him. “It’s a mess.”

He joined them in the kitchen—it wasn’t a tiny kitchen, but with Brock in it, it seemed to shrink before her eyes. He had been a tall, lanky young man the last time she had seen him. Now he was a large man, taller than most and burly. He was active and strong, but he had developed a bit of a paunch around the middle. A lumberjack. That’s what he reminded her of—a Paul Bunyan lumberjack. Not many of those running around Chicago.

“I got ahold of Taylor.”

Brock had just downed a glass of water and he was filling it up again. “Good. She doing okay?”

“Penny’s sick again and Clint broke his collarbone, so he’s heading back from Texas. She said that she weathered the storm okay, though. Just a couple of small branches in the yard. Nothing major.” She noticed that Brock’s demeanor didn’t change at all when she mentioned that his stepbrother had gotten hurt. “What’s the chance of you getting me into Helena tonight?”

“Zip.” He put the empty glass on the cluttered counter. “Downed trees are blocking the major roads into town.”

“You’re not serious?” Casey said with a frustrated sigh. “You are serious.”

“I can take you to Bent Tree or you can bunk with us tonight,” Brock said. “Hannah—it’s time to feed Lady. Turn off the iPad.”

Hannah didn’t respond.

“Hannah.”

“Just one more thing.” Hannah didn’t look up—her entire focus was on the screen.

Brock was tired and she could see that he was losing patience.

“Here—let’s do this, Hannah. I’m going to set my timer to one minute and when the timer goes off, you can turn off the iPad.”

The timer on her phone was set, the one minute ran out and Hannah, albeit reluctantly, turned off the iPad and tended to Lady’s needs.

Brock didn’t say it with words, but there was a definite thank-you in his eyes when he looked at her.

“I don’t know if I have the energy to face my aunt and uncle right now. But are you sure it would be okay if I crashed here tonight?”

“It’s no problem. You can take my bed upstairs and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No—I’ll take the couch.”

“No—you’ll take my bed. I sleep on the couch most nights, anyway.”

Sleeping in a bed instead of on a couch sounded like a much better scenario. If the bed were usually empty anyway, what would it hurt to take him up on his offer?

“All right—but only if you’re sure.”

He didn’t respond to that comment, but instead moved the conversation forward. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep, have breakfast and then we can stop off and check on the truck on our way to Helena.”

“Oh.” Casey groaned the word. “Geez. The truck. I hope the Beast is okay.”

Chapter Three

By nature, she was a light sleeper. Always had been. But the night she had spent in Brock’s massive California king-size bed had been one of her deepest sleeps on record. Perhaps it was the fact that she had been flat-out exhausted, or maybe it was the silky-soft material of the sheets. Either way, she had awakened from her sound sleep in the dead center of the bed, surrounded by a pile of plump pillows that had to be Brock’s soon-to-be ex-wife’s doing, feeling happy and content. She didn’t even scramble out of bed, as was her usual practice. Instead, she opted to linger a bit, staring up at the ceiling with the comforter pulled all the way up to her nose.

“Dad says get up!” Hannah burst into the room without knocking.

Shocked out of her random, drifting thoughts, Casey popped upright, her long auburn hair a mass of tangles. Hercules was vaulted forward, but he landed on all four paws. He waggled his tail and yapped at Hannah.

“If you want to come into someone’s room, what is the polite thing to do?” Casey asked.

“Knock.”

Casey gave the preteen two thumbs-up. “Okay—try it again.”

“What?”

“Knocking before you come in. You knock, wait for an answer and then you come in. But only if I say it’s okay. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Hannah slammed the door shut, causing Hercules to yap wildly. Casey heard a knock on the door, but she waited for a couple of seconds before she answered just to make certain Hannah wouldn’t burst in without getting the green light.

“Come in!”

Hannah flung open the door again with a laugh. “Breakfast!”

“Thank you, Hannah. Nice waiting, too.” Casey smiled at the girl. “Can you do something for me? Would you take Hercules out to use the bathroom while I get dressed?”

Brock’s daughter’s face beamed at the thought of being able to carry Hercules for the first time.

“I know you’ll make sure he’s okay.” Casey was reassuring herself as much as she was reassuring Hannah. It was hard to let Hercules out of her sight. He was so small and vulnerable. But she had heard about Hannah’s affinity for animals from Taylor, and she had seen how kind she was with her own dog, Lady.

Casey yawned several times, wiped the sleep out of her eyes and stretched her arms high above her head, before she scooted to the edge of the bed with a dramatic sigh. Rest time was officially over for her. Today, she had to go see how the Beast had fared in the storm, figure out how to get it towed if need be and then figure out whether or not she was just going to stay for a short visit with her sister and then head back to Chicago. She wanted to stay in Montana for the summer—it was too late to put in a request to work summer school. And she had been looking forward to this trip for months. She’d hate for it to all fall apart, but she couldn’t imagine staying with Taylor and Clint, in their small rental, for three months. Even though Taylor would try very hard to make her feel like she wasn’t a bother, she knew that she would, in fact, be an intrusion on the newlyweds.

Casey went into the tiny attached bathroom to fix her hair, if possible, and wash her mouth out with mouthwash. When she got a load of herself in the mirror, she started to laugh. She looked like a redheaded Medusa. She had tried to tame her hair before bed, but it hadn’t worked. Now, it was even worse after a night of sleep.

“Whatever.” Casey made a face.

She took off the white undershirt Brock had let her borrow. After getting dressed, she made the bed, and then left the folded undershirt on the comforter, along with the pajama bottoms she hadn’t used. Brock’s pajama bottoms had just slipped right down her hips.

Finally, she retrieved her beloved Jimmy Choo boots from beneath a nearby chair and stared at them sadly. They were ruined. Her beautiful, expensive, Jimmy Choo boots that she had vision-boarded for months, that she had saved a little every month to buy, were caked with red clay and still wet from the day before.

“You poor, poor boots. You didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve this.” Today, she wasn’t even going to try to be careful with them. There was no use shutting the gate after the cow got out. Resigned to their untimely demise, Casey shoved her feet into the boots and headed downstairs.

“Good morning.” Casey was met with a cornucopia of breakfast food smells when she entered the kitchen.

“Mornin’,” her host greeted her. “Coffee’s hot, mugs in the drying rack are a safe bet.”

“Bless you.” Casey poured herself a cup of coffee.

“If you need milk or sugar, they’re somewhere in the fridge. Just fish around.”

“I take it black.” She took her coffee to the table.

Brock was manning the stove in a “Kiss the Chef” apron, while Hannah, who had already had her breakfast, was on the floor formally introducing Lady and Hercules in the light of day. They had met informally in the cellar, but this was the first time that they were nose to nose, so to speak. Lady was lying down on the floor, her head between her two outstretched front legs, obviously trying to do her best to make friends, while Hercules was yapping as loudly and as ferociously as he could manage in order to assert his dominance in the relationship.

“Hercules—that’s not nice.”

“How do you take your eggs?” Brock asked her.

“Are they eggs from free-range chickens?”

“The chickens live out back. Is that free enough for you?”

“Lucy and Ethel!” Hannah supplied the names of the chickens.

“I Love Lucy and ladybugs. That’s what she loves.” Brock looked over at his daughter.

“And animals,” Casey added.

Brock turned his body away from the stove and toward Casey. This wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to get a better look at her in his favorite shirt. It engulfed her, but it looked good on her. Her hair, seemingly more red than auburn in the daylight, was mussed and wild, and he could swear that she had the brightest green eyes he’d ever seen on a woman.

“And animals,” he echoed her sentiment. Then, so he wouldn’t be standing in his kitchen ogling her like a teenage boy, he asked again, “How do you take your eggs?”

“Scrambled works.”

“How about some bacon made from free-range pigs?” Brock teased her.

“No. Thank you. I’m a pescatarian.”

Brock wasn’t exactly sure he’d heard her right, so after he got the eggs cooking, he turned back around.

“Did you say you were a Presbyterian?”

“No!” Casey laughed so easily. It had been a long time since he’d heard a woman laughing in his house. “Pescatarian. I don’t eat meat, except for fish. But I’m trying to give up fish, too.”

“What for?”

She smiled at him; she had deep dimples in each of her pale cheeks. Sweet.

“Health mainly—bacon is full of fat and salt. High in cholesterol.” Casey wrinkled her nose at the thought of eating bacon.

“Dad has high cholesterol and high blood pressure,” Hannah shouted from the living room.

“Hannah—remember what we said about private information?”

“But Dr. Patel says that he has the heart of a much younger man.”

It was too late to cork that bottle—instead, Brock decided to ignore the fact that his daughter had just provided a near stranger with all of the recent results of his physical and finish scrambling the eggs. The only thing that she hadn’t shared, because she hadn’t been in the room to hear it, was the fact that he had a mildly enlarged prostate and needed to drop twenty pounds.

Brock put a healthy portion of scrambled eggs on the plate, along with cheese grits and a couple of biscuits.

“Eat it while it’s hot.” He put the plate down in front of her and then sat down on the opposite side of the kitchen table.

“Mmm. Thank you. I’m so hungry.” Casey stabbed a couple of eggs with her fork. “What about you?”

“I ate hours ago. We’ve been waiting on you.”

Casey chewed her eggs quickly so she could ask, “Why didn’t you wake me up when you got up?”

“I got up while it was still dark.”

“Oh.” That was different. “Well, why didn’t you get me up sooner, then?”

“No harm done. It’s my day off and I’m not looking forward to getting up on the roof to see how many shingles need to be replaced. You need salt or pepper for the eggs?”

“No. I’m good. These eggs are delicious, FYI.”

“That’s good.”

She finished her breakfast, offered to clean the dishes, which he refused, and then all five of them, two dogs and three humans, piled into Brock’s truck. First stop was the moving truck and the second stop was Taylor’s house.

“I feel really bad about Clint breaking his collarbone.”

She watched Brock’s face for a reaction. There wasn’t one.

“He was supposed to be gone all summer,” she added.

Brock glanced over at his passenger. She had been biting her lip nervously since they had gotten into the truck. Now he understood some of her nerves at least—she was worried about living in a house with a newly married couple and a newborn. Even if they told her that she wasn’t going to be a bother, Brock had a feeling that Casey wouldn’t even take the chance of being an inconvenience to anybody. During the short time they had spent together, she was always worried about his comfort and his feelings, as well as the comfort and feelings of his daughter. He found her politeness refreshing.

“Might be mighty tight over at their place,” Brock said, broaching the topic.

Casey turned her head his way, met him eye to eye. She said, “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

“You thinking about cutting your trip short?”

The woman beside him breathed in very deeply and then let it out on a long, extended sigh. “I’d hate to do that. But I just might have to...”

“It’d be a shame. Coming all this way just to go home.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Casey making little circles on the top of Hercules’s head. “I know. But I can’t impose on Taylor for the summer—not now. Newlyweds need their private time. Besides, Clint is hurt. He’s not going to be in any mood to have a houseguest.”

“That’s right,” he agreed, then added, “I have a loft apartment above the barn. It’s a little rough, but it’s livable.”

Casey looked at Brock, interested.

“The way you are with Hannah—like I said last night—it’s impressive. And it got me thinking that we could help each other out. Hannah does fine with academics—she’s even strong in math and science. But it’s her...”

“Pragmatics,” she filled in for him.

He glanced at her again. “Exactly. As you can tell from our breakfast conversation, there’s still a bit of a ways to go with that.”

Casey nodded her agreement—a deficit with social use of language was a universal symptom of individuals with autism across the spectrum.

“How ’bout I let you use the loft for the summer in exchange for some private social language support. How does that set with you?”

Casey stared at Brock’s profile. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Why? Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

“Heck, no, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I think it’s a pretty genius idea,” she said with a smile. “Can I let you know?”

“Sure. Offer stands.”

Casey’s smile was short-lived.

“Oh! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!” She put her hands on top of her head in disbelief.

The rental truck was knocked on its side.

“What’s wrong?” Hannah looked up from her iPad.

Brock pulled onto the berm on the opposite side of the road from the rental truck.

“Damn.”

“Swear jar!” Hannah yelled.

“Hannah,” Casey said in a stunned, monotone voice. “Would you hold Hercules for me?”

“Stay in the truck and wait for us, okay, baby girl?” Brock pulled his hat off the dash and pushed it onto his head.

Together, they crossed the road. In silence, they both walked around the perimeter of the truck. The back was still locked, but the truck was facing the wrong direction.

“The only thing I can figure is that a twister caught it and spun it ninety degrees. Then for kicks, knocked it on its side.”

Casey stood, shaking her head back and forth, and back and forth. She couldn’t find words. Everything her sister owned, everything her sister cherished, was in that truck. There was a collection of Royal Doulton statues worth thousands, as well as a collection of Lladró figurines, also worth thousands. Taylor had been collecting them since she was a teenager.

“I want to cry,” Casey said quietly. “I really do.”

Brock looked down at her, she saw him in her periphery, and then he took his cell phone out of his pocket and made a phone call. She heard him make arrangements with a friend who had a tow truck made to haul big rigs to come and set the Beast upright and tow it to Helena.

“Thank goodness I took the insurance.” Casey couldn’t stop staring at the rental truck. She’d never seen one from this angle before. It was a bit like looking at a surrealist painting, trying to figure out why people were walking on the ceiling.

“Right?” Brock crossed his arms in front of his body. “My friend Billy will be able to get this right-side up sometime around noon.”

“Thank you.”

They stood together, both looking at the truck without anything else to say about it.

“Are you done looking at it?” the ranch foreman asked her.

Casey sighed. “Yeah. I guess. The damage is done.”

“That’s right.”

The rest of the way into Helena, Casey felt sick to her stomach. Taylor was going to be heartbroken and it was her fault. She was the one who’d had the idea of saving her sister some cash by renting a truck and driving it herself. Taylor had said, repeatedly, that she thought it was best if professional movers brought her things to Montana. But, as she always did, she persisted until she wore Taylor down. And now, all of her belongings were trapped in a toppled rental truck on the side of a desolate Montana highway. Brilliant.

“This is it.” Brock stopped at the end of the driveway of a little Craftsman bungalow.

With a heavy sigh, Casey nodded her head. “Yep.”

“Can I go in and see Penny?” Hannah asked excitedly.

Casey met Brock’s eye before she said, “Not this time, Hannah. Penny has an ear infection.”

“Next time,” Brock added. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear something from Billy.”

“Text me if I don’t answer.”

“Consider it done.”

She stood with the truck door open and mustered a small smile for him. “Thank you for everything, Brock. Seriously. Above and beyond the call of duty.”

He tipped his hat to her, and she interpreted that gesture as a you’re welcome and a thank you, too. She got out of the truck and said goodbye to Hannah and her father.

Her sister was opening the door at the same time Brock was pulling away.

“Casey!” Taylor was holding her baby daughter in her arms.

They embraced tightly, as they always did. They were more than sisters—they were, and always had been, best friends.

“Oh, Tay—she’s even prettier in person.” Casey touched Penelope’s creamy, chubby cheek. “Hi, Penny, you sweet, sweet thing. Your aunt Casey is going to spoil you absolutely rotten! Yes, I am!”

“She’s so fussy right now because she doesn’t feel well.” Taylor kissed her daughter’s warm forehead.

“Poor Penny.” Casey looked at her little niece compassionately.

“I’m so happy to see you, Casey.” Taylor hugged her again. “I’ve missed you like crazy.”

Together they walked up the driveway to the front door of the bungalow. “I’ve missed you. I hate that we don’t live in the same town anymore.”

“Me, too.” Taylor shut the front door behind them. “Let me see if she’ll lie down for her nap. It’ll give us a chance to catch up. She hasn’t slept well for a couple of days, so cross your fingers.”

Casey held up her crossed fingers for her sister to see.

Taylor didn’t reappear for a while. When her sister returned to the living room, she was talking in a quieter voice.

“Okay—she’s down. For how long is debatable! Is it too early for wine?”

“No. Bring it on, sis.” She could use a large glass or two.

Taylor had been diagnosed with the inability to lactate after the birth of her daughter, and the only upside her sister could find was the fact that she had been cleared to drink wine.

Casey sat down at the breakfast bar while her sister got the wineglasses.

“Red or white?” Taylor asked her from the open refrigerator.

“Either—as long as it’s not too dry.”

Taylor held up a bottle for her to see. “How about this?”

Casey gave her the “okay” sign; generous portions of wine were poured and the two of them moved to the cozy family room next to the kitchen. Taylor immediately coaxed Hercules onto her lap, and the micro-poodle didn’t hesitate to abandon her owner for a novel lap.

“Traitor,” Casey said to her canine companion.

“Here’s to a great summer.” Taylor touched her glass to hers.

“To a great summer.” She took several large gulps of the wine. Taylor hadn’t even asked her about the rental truck.

Her sister curled her legs to the side, leaned into the couch cushion and smiled happily at her. “I am so happy to see you.”

“You may not feel that way in a minute.”

Taylor’s eyebrows dropped and her pretty blue eyes registered confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Casey downed the rest of her wine. One of her most intense childhood memories was the time that she decapitated Taylor’s favorite Barbie doll and then flushed the head just to see if it would indeed flush. It had. And Taylor had gone absolutely crazy-town ballistic on her and then stopped speaking to her for a month. Granted, they were kids when that happened. But then again, this was much worse than decapitating Barbie. Much worse.

Chapter Four

Her sister’s reaction to the news that her belongings were trapped in a tipped-over truck on the side of the road was not at all what she had anticipated. Taylor wasn’t angry. Taylor wasn’t looking to blame her. Instead, her sister was simply grateful that Casey and Hercules were okay. Taylor had always had a flair for the dramatic, and this change in her was unexpected, but it was a change for the better. Perhaps it was the fact that she was a mother now; or perhaps it was because she had already lost one of the most valuable gifts she had ever been given—Penelope’s twin brother, Michael, had died soon after he was born. Casey hadn’t experienced it, but she didn’t have to experience something to understand that losing a child, an infant, could change a person forever.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us? Clint and I both want you to stay,” Taylor asked her as they walked together along the brick walkway that led to the driveway.

She’d been in Montana for a week already, and so much had happened: the Beast had been towed into town, her travel trunk and Taylor’s boxes had been recovered and Clint had arrived home with his arm in a sling and loaded up on pain medication. According to the doctors in Texas, Clint’s healing time would be roughly a month or two, but he wouldn’t be fit to get back on a bull. He was grounded for the entire summer, at least.

Casey, who was holding her niece in her arms, was too busy nuzzling Penny’s sweet-smelling neck to pay full attention to her sister. “Mmm, you have that new baby smell, Penny.” She hugged her niece, not wanting to let her go. Casey smiled at her sister. “Babies! They always smell so good. I wish I could bottle this smell and take it with me.”

“Casey! Please, stop ignoring me. You came all the way to Montana to be with Penny and me, and I feel like deep down inside you think that we don’t want you here because Clint is home. And that’s not the case at all.”

Casey smooched her niece all over her face one last time before she said, “Trade.”

Taylor frowned at her as they traded babies—her sister handed over Hercules and she handed over Penny.

“I don’t think you’re kicking me out, Tay. I know you want me to stay. I know Clint is sincere when he says that he’ll be happy to have me staying on his couch for three months, but I’m telling you, it’s gonna wear real thin by the end of four weeks. Trust me. He’s an active guy and now he’s stuck with his arm in a sling when he should be out earning points. Your husband is going to want to sit on his couch and watch TV, in his tighty-whities, whenever the mood strikes.”

Her sister didn’t respond for a second or two, because Taylor knew she was right.

“I’ll come and visit all the time. I’ll be here on a moment’s notice if you need me. Nothing’s changed.”

For the last week, her sister had been debating her choice to stay in Brock’s loft apartment with her. Taylor had her own agenda: she either wanted her to stay with her or stay with their aunt Barb and uncle Hank at Bent Tree Ranch. Basically, anywhere besides Brock’s ranch.

Taylor’s eyes had a watery sheen and Casey knew that her sister was upset to see her go. “Look—I know you don’t like the idea that I took Brock up on his offer, but it really is for the best. His place is closer to Helena than Bent Tree. And I love the idea of being able to ride anytime I want. Brock says he has a palomino mare who’s getting barn sour. I’m actually going to be doing him a favor by riding her this summer.”

Her sister wiped under her left eye with her pinky. “I know how much you want to ride again.”

This was Taylor’s way of giving in to the inevitable.

“Come here and give me another hug.” Casey hugged her sister again, and then kissed baby Penelope’s chubby hand.

“I want one,” she told her sister of her niece.

“It’s the best hard work I’ve ever done,” said Taylor.

Casey opened the door to the light blue vintage VW Bug sitting in the driveway. She paused before getting in the driver’s seat.

“And Taylor...I’m perfectly ready to like your husband very much.”

Taylor beamed at her with pleasure. “He’s a good one, right?”

Casey nodded as she got into the blue Bug and then put Hercules in his new, less fancy dog carrier for safe traveling. She put the key in the ignition, cranked the engine, then rolled down the window.

“Thanks for loaning me your car, Tay.”

After her divorce, Taylor had sold her BMW, left her executive job at the bank, put her stuff in storage and then drove this very Bug from Chicago to Montana. It was on that trip, a trip where she had ridden a portion of the Continental Divide Trail on horseback, that she met her husband, Clint.

“Now you won’t be stuck,” Taylor said to her. “That car brought me a lot of luck. Maybe it will be lucky for you, too.”

Casey backed out of the driveway with a sense of anticipation and excitement that was making her stomach feel a bit queasy. It felt as if she were heading off to her own adventure, much like her sister had last year. She waved her hand, tooted the horn and shouted one last “I love you” to her sister and niece before Casey set her course for Brock McAllister’s ranch. She had the distinct feeling that this summer was going to be one of the best summers of her life. And she couldn’t wait for it to start!

* * *

Casey slowed her speed in order to take the bumps in the dirt and gravel drive to Brock’s ranch. The heavy rain from the storm had deepened the potholes, which made it difficult to navigate in the VW bug. Brock, she noticed, had already gone a long way toward clearing the debris; stacks of large branches dotted the side of the road every hundred feet or so. As the house came into view, Casey had the strangest feeling in her gut. She felt like she belonged there. Whatever lingering doubt she had in her mind about her choice to stay in Brock’s barn loft studio apartment vanished. She was in the right place, at the right time, and doing exactly what she was meant to do.

Brock was on the roof repairing shingles when he heard the distinctive sound of an old school VW coming up the drive.

Casey.

He stood upright, wiped the sweat off his neck with the bandana from his back pocket and then stared at the end of the driveway, waiting to catch the first glimpse of Casey as she arrived. He had seen her once over the last week, briefly, when he had picked up her trunk from her sister’s house and brought it back to the ranch. He didn’t understand it, really, but he had actually missed her. He had missed her. And, perhaps even more important, Hannah had missed her, too.

He waved his hand in the air so she would see him. At the same time Casey was waving her hand out the driver’s window, Brock heard the slam of the screen door and the pounding of his daughter’s feet on the wood planks of the porch. Hannah had been hyped up all day in anticipation of Casey’s arrival. Right behind Hannah was Lady, barking and wagging her tail.

Normally, he didn’t like to have a job interrupted once he started, but now seemed like a good time to take a break. He climbed down the ladder and followed his daughter and dog to where Casey had parked her car.

“Don’t strangle her, Hannah.” Brock laughed at how tightly Hannah was hugging Casey around the neck.

Brock watched as Casey made a fuss over his daughter, and then squatted down to hug Lady. A flush of excitement and happiness had turned her pale skin a pretty shade of light pink. In the sunlight, the reddish freckles on her face and the red of her thick hair pulled back into a ponytail were so striking. And then there were her eyes. So wide and so green—he always had to remind himself not to stare.

“You’ve really put a dent in it!” Casey said about the progress he had made with the cleanup.

“I’ve been hammering away at it. Little by little.” Brock was glad that it was his turn to greet Casey.

She smiled at him with that open, friendly smile of hers. It had been an awfully long time since a woman had smiled at him like that—no reservation, no pretense or judgment, just open and friendly. That smile was a magnet for him and he realized that now—by the simple fact that he was standing down here instead of still working up on the roof.

“Do you want to start getting settled in?”

“Absolutely.” Casey walked around to the passenger side and got Hercules.

Hannah was running like a wild child around in circles, her long, tangled curls flying behind her.

“She’s been like this all morning,” Brock explained. “Usually the medications keep the hyperactivity in check enough for her to function, but not on days like today, when she’s excited about something.”

“I understand,” Casey reassured him.

That’s when it really sunk in—he didn’t have to explain or justify or apologize for his daughter’s behavior. Casey worked with children with disabilities for a living—she, more than anyone else in his life, would truly understand Hannah. It was a relief to spend time with someone who could understand, and accept, his daughter for who she was, regardless of her behavior—good, bad or indifferent.

“I did warn you that it’s humble,” Brock said as they reached the top of the stairs that lead to the loft apartment above the barn.

“I’ll spruce it up.” Casey didn’t mind humble. And, if it was dirty, there usually wasn’t much that couldn’t be fixed with elbow grease. She’d never been afraid of hard work or of getting dirty.

Brock opened the door and let her go in first. He was right—the loft apartment with its pitched roof and rough-hewn, wide-planked wooden floor was indeed humble. But the inside of the roof was lined with sweet-smelling cedar, and there was a single bed in one corner of the room, and a small love seat on the other side. The bathroom was tiny and the kitchen only accommodated a hot plate, microwave and little refrigerator. Her large black trunk, a trunk her mother had used when she went to boarding school, was waiting for her at the end of the bed.

Brock had to duck his head as to not bump on the low part of the ceiling—he could only stand completely upright when he was standing directly beneath the pitched ceiling.

“I tried to straighten up the place a bit.” To her ears, he sounded a little self-conscious.

“This is great.” Casey wanted to reassure him. “It’s perfect for us.”

She saw a faint smile move across his face. He was pleased that she was pleased.

“Well, I’ll let you settle into the place. I’ve got more work to get done before supper,” Brock said, his head bent down so he didn’t bang it on the top of the door frame. “You can use the kitchen for cooking—the hot plate is only good for so much. And you’re always welcome to join us for meals.”

“Thank you—let’s just play it by ear, see how it goes.”

Brock nodded his agreement before he ducked his head completely free of the door frame, put his hat back on his head and then left her to her own devices.

The first thing she did in her new home was let Hercules out of his carrier so he could get used to the smells and layout of the loft. Next she checked the bathroom accommodations and the feel of the mattress, before she unlocked the trunk and began to unpack. Every now and again, she would look out the window and watch Brock at his work. He was focused and relentless in the way he attacked his work—that kind of work ethic was attractive to her. It reminded her of the work ethic that her own father and grandfather had both had.

It didn’t take long for her to get settled into her summer loft apartment. Hercules had his toys strewn across the floor, which made her feel right at home. She scooped up her poodle and sat on the bed to contemplate her next move: to take a nap, or not to take a nap—that was the dilemma. In the end, the “take a nap” side won out. She kicked off her boots and curled up on her side. The bed was just big enough for her and Hercules.

“Mmm.” Casey closed her eyes with a contented sigh.

She had managed to find the perfect spot to spend a stress-free, worry-free summer. She usually worked during the summer session—this was her first real summer off since she had graduated with her master’s degree in special education and took a job with the public school system.

She was in a comfortable bed, the cedar on the roof smelled sweet and there was a gentle breeze coming in through the open window. Life was, indeed, pretty darn good.

* * *

Casey had dozed off quickly and was awakened abruptly. Hannah burst through the door; the door swung open and hit the wall with a loud thud. Casey sprung upright, catapulting poor Hercules forward.

“My stars, Hannah!” She clutched the material above her rapidly beating heart. “You scared me! Remind me again about what you should do before you come into a room?”

Hannah spun around in the center of her bedroom/living room combo space, her head tilted back and her arms spread out wide like airplane wings.

“I was supposed to knock.” The girl kept on spinning. “Dad wants to know if you want to have some gluten-free mac and cheese with us.”

Casey felt a little foggy brained; she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, then blinked several times to get a clearer view of the preteen spinning like a top.

“Tell your dad I’ll be down in a minute.”

Hannah left as quickly as she came, without a greeting or a salutation. There was a lot of work to be done to improve Hannah’s social language skills. It would just take time and patience. But the reality was, and she hoped Brock was realistic about it, Hannah was never going to have completely “normal” pragmatic skills; it was possible, however, for Hannah to have friends, a job and a fulfilling social life. With supportive people in her life, Hannah’s quirks and slightly askew social skills would be expected, understood and accepted.

Casey freshened up a bit and then headed down to the farmhouse. As expected, Brock was at the stove with his standard “Kiss the Chef” apron on, which may have been feminizing on some men, but not on the ranch foreman. Hannah was at the table eating macaroni and cheese out of her plastic ladybug bowl, with her ladybug silverware. Casey had a feeling that Hannah insisted on eating out of that particular bowl, using those particular utensils—and if she didn’t get her way, she would either begin to have a tantrum or flat-out refuse to eat.

“Thanks for the invite.” Casey sat down at the table.

“It’s gluten free.” Brock handed her a bowl. “Hannah’s allergic.”

“I figured.” Casey nodded. “I actually dated someone who had celiac disease, so I have a lot of gluten-free recipes stored on my phone if you want to see if I have any that you don’t have.”

“That would help,” Brock told her. “I have a heck of a time getting her to eat much of anything other than mac and cheese. That’s all she wants. Mac and cheese.”

“I have some tricks up my sleeve,” Casey reassured him.

Hannah finished her meal quickly, left the table without taking her bowl to the sink and ended up on the floor in the living room playing with Hercules.

“I’d like to take a couple of days to get settled in here, let Hannah get used to the change, and in the meantime, we can sit down and talk about some practical goals,” Casey said quietly.

Brock agreed with her timeline. Any change, even if it were a positive change like Casey coming to stay on the ranch for the summer, would be difficult for Hannah to process.

“I’d like to hear your thoughts.” Brock stabbed a chunk of hot dog he had mixed into his mac and cheese with his fork. Before he took that bite he added, “I’m sure you have some.”

He was right—she did. Her brain just naturally observed children with special needs, catalogued the behaviors to try to fit the pieces into a puzzle and then, always, there were a list of goals that emerged from her informal, naturalistic evaluation. She had been a special education teacher for a decade and it was like breathing now—it happened without thinking about it. And, in the short time she had observed Hannah, she had made a laundry list of pragmatic goals—but it was always up to the parent and child, if possible, to help prioritize those goals.

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