Page 1 of Whiskey Proposal
CHAPTER ONE
Emerson
This town has no business being as cute as it is. I drive through Huckleberry Springs, Montana, resisting the urge to shrink down in my seat. I might’ve left when I was fourteen, but almost twenty years later, I tense, waiting for all the unwanted, unneeded, and unloved feelings to roar back. My Mercedes stands out against the pickups and SUVs. Even the nicer cars have a layer of dust. I stopped in Billings and washed mine before I arrived.
Nerves build in my stomach. No one should recognize me, and if they do, they don’t know I bought this car used with a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. All they will see is that the dirty Langley girl whose mother abandoned her grew up to have nice shit.
They don’t have to know I still got picked last to be on a team at my old job.
I punch the button on the screen to call my brother. He always gets me away from the memories.
Brooks answers with, “Are you there yet?”
Alarm makes my heart skip a beat. “You’re not?”
“Hill had a— She needed more time.”
“Sorry, Auntie Em.” My eleven-year-old niece’s small voice filters into the speaker.
I blow out a slow breath. She’s not even from here, yet we’re on the same page. I needed more time too, but here I am. In my hometown. “How are you, Bunny?”
“Good,” she says. “Did you know that in the summer, the tails of snowshoe hares are brown on top?”
“I didn’t know that.” Hillary loves rabbits, but it’s likely one of the facts my brother pulls out when she gets stuck in her anxiety. “What else did you learn?”
“They can be three to four pounds.”
Her snowshoe hare facts tamp down my own building anxiety.
I never wanted to return to Huckleberry Springs, but our lawyer insisted that we be here to learn about some demands my father tied to his estate.
Estate. I snort. A farmhouse and acreage. The ranch. Are there even animals? What’s left of that damn place?
I pass by a cute bakery that wasn’t here before. The old café is still open though. Do they still make the largest omelets? Nope. Don’t care.
“Tell them to start without us,” Brooks says.
“We’ll wait.” I’m not sure who all will be in the office, other than the lawyer who somehow stayed with Hutch through his most dismal years. I don’t want to be alone.
Where did Hutch get the money for legal shit? A will and trust? He could barely find his checkbook. What was so important that he didn’t drink away the money for it?
My knuckles turn white on the wheel. The buildings I pass are so achingly familiar, yet there are enough differences that I feel like a swan in a duck pond. Even though growing up, I was just a muddy duck dodging pristine swans.
I run my fingers over the ends of my hair. It hasn’t frizzed out, has it? A glance in the rearview mirror eases my concern. Glossy, highlighted golden locks, so different from the shade of my childhood. What’d the other kids say? Mousy blond.
This duck has power-washed the mud off her feathers.
I take the road out of town that leads toward the old Hennessy mine. That’s changed too. I read up on it, but not as much as the main distillery in the growing Foster House empire. The Denver site took my focus. Besides, I didn’t care to read about the two Foster brothers who ran the Huckleberry Springs location. The ones who helped my dad keep his ranch from failing horribly. The guys Hutch gushed about the few times he left rambling messages. Hutch had a soft spot for Lane, and it turns out I did too.
“You can hang out in town and wait for us,” Brooks offers. “They can’t continue without us.”
“No,” I answer before I can think about it. “I might run into someone I know.”
“You’re still hoping we can get in and out without being seen?”
“By anyone other than the lawyer? Yeah.” If I can spend less than an hour in town, cross paths with nobody, and then return to Denver and my growing marketing company, then I’ll be the luckiest girl in the world.
“. . . ain’t you the luckiest girl in the world?” Hutch’s raspy voice runs through my head and a fist grips my heart and squeezes—hard and fast, without mercy.
