Bliss Brothers: The Complete Series Boxed Set, page 64
Beau whistles. “Wow.”
I press on. “The next morning, he showed up at my house with a sheet of paper that had my address. And…” I look up at the page on the projector. “I guess your dad got it wrong, because he had my address on that printed sheet, but that address up there is the one next door to my ranch. The Bliss Ranch. That’s the right address.”
I turn to face Asher. “That’s the address you should have gone to. And I should have told you. I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that somebody with the last name of Bliss had shown up in town, and come so close to that other ranch.” Tears burn at the corners of my eyes and sorrow grips my throat with both hands. I should have been honest with him from the very beginning. Only at the very beginning, it seemed like we’d both get out of this with no harm done. Just a saved ranch and a hasty divorce. “I let you think that setting things right at my ranch was what your dad sent you there to do, and I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong, Asher, and I’m sorry.”
It’s all I can do to look into his eyes, because I’m worse than Brutus.
“We’ll look into it,” Roman says. “Guys…”
Charlie’s the first out of his seat, Beau the last. His twin brother comes around and hauls him out of the seat, nearly spilling his drink.
“I missed something,” says Beau. “What are we doing?”
“Giving Asher the room,” says Charlie.
They’re gone in ten seconds flat, and my trembling, idiotic self is all that’s left to face Asher.
“Why?” His voice is deadly. It’s a far cry from the funny, playful man I spent he afternoon in bed with. “Why, Everly? What was so damn hard about telling me the truth in the first place?”
“I—”
“You made me look like a fucking criminal up here. Like I was stealing from my brothers. They’re not going to forget this, even if the truth comes out in the end.”
“It’s out,” I say. “It’s all out in the open now.”
“Yes, and they know I got suckered into a sham marriage by a woman who doesn’t care about me.”
It’s a hit square in the gut. It knocks the wind out of me and squeezes my stomach with both fists. “No—that’s not—I only said that because I thought it would help. I do care about you. I obviously care about you.”
“How obvious is it? You could have told me anytime. We’ve been together constantly for days. And you let me walk in here without knowing…” He gets out of his seat, sticks his hands in his pockets, and takes a big step back. “How could you do that? If you have nothing to do with the ranch next door, then why did you do that?”
“Because I had a crush on you.” The floodgates burst, tears running down my cheeks, but I’m not going to make that ugly sobbing face, I’m not. “I had a big, stupid crush on you, and you looked like a knight in shining armor when you showed up on my doorstep. The soul was fucking weak, Asher. And I didn’t want to risk letting you go.”
His jaw works. “And now what? We can’t keep this up anymore.” He gestures between us. “I won’t do it. My brothers will have me pegged for a liar. I don’t even know if this story about the other Bliss family is true.”
“It is true,” I insist. “You’re even related. I know you are.”
“How? How would you know that?”
“Because you have the same eyes.” It’s desperate, and I force the words through tears. “They have the same eyes as you. You must be cousins.”
“My dad didn’t have any siblings.”
Bricks, tumbling over one another. A long fall and a heavy landing. That’s what fills my chest.
“Then I don’t…I don’t know…”
“You let me think you were the reason he sent me there, Ev. I was living up to his expectations. And when I started falling for you, I thought…maybe it was a sign.”
My heart shatters.
“Fuck,” Asher whispers, down into his hands.
17
Asher
“Here.”
The three-ring binder falls with a thud onto Roman’s desk.
He looks up at me from behind his computer. “What’s this?”
“My travel records. My real credit card statements. It’s everything. Look at it. Do whatever you want with it. It’s proof that I didn’t steal from you.”
I parked my car in the parking lot three minutes ago and walked straight inside. All I’ve done today is ruin my life a bit more, drive Everly to the airport, and stop at the copy shop in downtown Ruby Bay to pick up the printed version of all these reports. I don’t care if they looked through it, either. Let them look. Let everybody look. Print it out on glossy paper and distribute it to the local news networks, for all I care.
He sighs. “Roman, I was out of my mind to make that accusation, and I’m sorry for it. Please don’t think—”
“Just take them. For your own peace of mind. I don’t want you to have a moment of doubt. Another moment of doubt.” I tap the binder. “It’s all there, plus a flash drive with digital copies and passwords to all the websites. You can keep track in real time. I don’t care. It’s up to you.”
He looks down at the binder, then back up at me. “Where’s Everly?”
“On a plane to Montana.”
Roman’s shoulders sag. “You sent her?”
“I did.” I don’t tell him that I’m gutted by her absence. That driving her to the airport was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. That I’m so angry at her I can hardly breathe. It’s sucking all the life out of the world.
“You should have told us what happened, Asher.” Roman is sincere—I can hear it in his voice. “We’d be the last to judge. This summer has proven, time and agin, that we all do insane things in the name of love.”
“I don’t love her.” The lie curdles in my mouth, stinging my lips. “I’m here for the family, okay? Nobody can dispute that now. Even though I was gone. I’m—” I feel like I’m breathing in fire, which is the opposite of how these things are supposed to go. “I’m sorry, Roman. I couldn’t come back. I wasn’t trying to avoid you, and duck all those messages. It just—it was too much to see…” I wave in the general direction of his desk, his office.
“I know. I understand.”
“You do?”
Roman lifts one shoulder and lets it fall, and for the first time since the funeral, I see it—how much weight this has put on those shoulders. He’s the oldest brother. He stood up straight and tall when everything happened, and we took it for granted. I took it for granted. “It wasn’t easy to come sit at this desk. If I’d had the option to be out of the office for several months, I’d have taken it too.”
“It wasn’t right.”
“It was what happened. At a certain point, when it’s said and done, debating whether it was right or wrong is pointless.”
I squint at him across the desk. “That doesn’t sound like you, Roman. Don’t you love debating whether things are right or wrong?”
“Please. You’ve obviously been gone too long. I don’t like debating at all.” He laughs. “Don’t be a yourself up about it, Ash. We’ve all dealt with this in different ways. It only looks easy because we live next to the beach.”
“I don’t think it looks that easy.”
“Come back and live on the beach for a while. You’ll see how effortless I make it look.” Roman threads his hands behind his head, and he looks so much like my dad that I have to look away.
But then I look back, because this is reality now. And I’m alive in it, even if it feels like my heart has been flattened like the world’s saddest pancake.
“I might do that.”
“We’d be glad to have you.”
“Not Charlie.”
“Charlie’ll come around.”
“All right.” I put my hands in my pockets. He’s probably right. Charlie, out of all of us, gets mad the quickest, but I’ve never known him to hold a grudge longer than…well, a few years. Ten at most.
“You didn’t have to send her away,” Roman says softly, just when I’ve started to turn to the door.
I freeze, then draw in another jagged breath. “I did. I can’t lose Bliss, or our family. You have to understand that.”
He sighs. “I do. But you should sit down.”
I fall into the seat before I think to ask why. “You have bad news?”
“Not bad news.” He squints at the computer monitor. “Interesting news. And you look like you’ve been awake all night.”
“Tell me the news.” My head throbs at my temples, and I lean my head into my hand and rub at them with thumb and forefinger. I want a week without news. I want a lifetime without news. Let this be the last piece of news I get from one of my brothers.
“I sent a private investigator to check out the Bliss Ranch. They corroborated your story. And they found out something else.”
I pick up my head from my hand, energy coursing through my veins like I’ve been injected with caffeine. Roman’s eyes shine with a new light. “Christ, Roman, spit it out.”
“Dad had a brother.”
“No fucking way.”
Roman lifts both palms skyward. “I know. Did you ever hear anything from him about a blue notebook? A journal of some kind?”
A movement in the air makes me look toward the doorway.
Charlie stands on the threshold, eyes wide. “He hasn’t. But I have.”
Everly
For the first time in years, I march from my driveway to the property line that divides our ranch from the Bliss Ranch and cross over it without any hesitation whatsoever.
I have something to say to Lucas Bliss, and I’m going to say it now.
I’ve spent all day on a plane, feeling like I was having a heart attack. The sun on the clouds failed to brighten my mood at all. Everything is bleak, ruined, in ashes. Up in flames, up in smoke. I’m going to have to tell Brooke it’s up to her now. Either she’ll have to get married or we’ll lose the ranch, but either way, I’m not living a lie. Not for another moment.
My soul recoils at the sight of the big, wide porch on the front of the Bliss farmhouse, but I don’t let it slow me down. I take the steps one at a time, chin up, head held high.
I knock loud. No fear.
Then I wait.
There’s no sound from inside, and my nerve skitters away like a scared mouse. He’s probably not home. I could probably come back another day and—
Heavy footsteps. “Hang on.”
The door opens the door, and before he can say a word out of his stupid mouth, I jab a finger into his chest. “You owe me one. That’s all I came here to say.” I turn away, but he catches me by the elbow.
“Slow down, Everly. What do you mean?”
“They came looking for you. The other Bliss family.”
His face is all blank confusion, and then his eyes fly open wide. “The other family? I thought they were a myth.”
“Yes. There’s another family. All that money—it wasn’t a mistake. One of them came here to find you, and they found me instead.”
He narrows his eyes. “Is that how Brooke is still over in the ranch?”
“God, Luke, what’re you doing, stalking us?”
“You live next door,” he insists. “I’d notice if you moved out.”
“Keep your eyes on your own ranch.”
“Well?” He cocks his head to the side. “Is it how she’s still over there, and you’re nowhere to be seen?”
“That’s how.”
“Damn.” He nods. “You’re good.”
“Yeah. I am. But you won’t be seeing us around for long.”
“Why not?”
“It didn’t work out.”
“Ouch,” he says, putting a hand to his chest. “Then you’re not that good.”
“Screw off.” I am not going to cry. I’m not going to cry in front of Luke Bliss, who broke my heart in college and stayed next door while I picked up the pieces. Not today. “Anyway, mystery solved. That’s where the money came from, and I bet they’ll be coming back to get it from you.”
“Everly, I never asked for you to—”
“I know you didn’t.” My heart softens. Nobody asked me to do any of this. I wanted to. “But when they show up, try to keep my name out of your mouth. Okay?”
He reaches up to tip his hat, only he’s inside, so there’s nothing there. Luke settles for a nod. “Okay.”
“I’m headed down to the courthouse. Stay off my property.”
“Will do. Thank you, ma’am.”
I leave him behind with one finger in the air.
18
Everly
There’s a line at the clerk’s office.
I have never, in all of my life, seen a line at the clerk’s office, and I’ve been here at least…five or six times. This is the first time I’ve had to wait. I thought I would have to wait when I applied for my driver’s license at sixteen, but no. When it didn’t really matter, I walked right up to the counter.
Waiting is the last thing I want to be doing.
The county’s website is down, so I couldn’t even search for the forms to fill out for a divorce in advance. Oh, no. This is going to be as mortifying as possible. Maybe nobody noticed when we got married, but they’ll notice this, that’s for sure. I’ll be the talk of Paulson. The woman who got married for a week, just to save her ranch. The woman who traded her body for some cattle and rolling green hills. They’ll never listen to the real details.
I’d trade my body every day if it meant being with Asher again, but that’s a thing of the past now. I can’t bring myself to blame him. If I’d lied to me the way I lied to him…
I want to put my hand to my chest to staunch the bleeding that’s surely spilling out onto my shirt, but when I look down to confirm, there’s nothing there. Good. At least when I die of a broken heart, it won’t be messy.
“This line?” The old man at the front of the line hovers his pen over his third form of the day. “Right here?”
“Yes, sir. We need your signature.” Her finger stabs down onto the paper and his pen wavers above the line. My heart aches for him, but the ache twists itself into irritation and back again. I’m sure he can feel me standing here, being impatient, and that’s not the best version of myself.
I don’t know who the best version of myself is. Not anymore. I thought it was the version of myself who was sitting in that bar, trying anything to get a husband. Including propositioning handsome strangers.
I have got to stop thinking about that handsome stranger if I’m going to survive the rest of my life on Sweewater Ranch.
“First and last name?”
“And middle initial.”
I rise up on tiptoe, then let myself back down slowly.
I probably deserve this wait to let myself stew in this disaster of my own making. And it was my own making. All I had to do to head this off was open my mouth and say, oh, Asher Bliss, do you happen to know Austin? He’s got your same eyes and his brother shares some gestures with your brother, Beau, and it doesn’t seem possible that you are unrelated.
Yet I did not.
And now everything’s in shambles.
I still haven’t seen Brooke to give her the news.
I take a deep breath against the pain and pressure in my chest. I’m ready to start my new life. No more secrets, no more lies. Only the truth, from here on out.
So help me god.
The old man shuffles away from the window, and I step up and open my mouth. Shit—what do I say? “I’d like, uh, some paperwork.”
“Everly. Wait.”
The clerk looks behind me, and then her face brightens like she’s looking at Ben Affleck. “I’ll give you a minute, hon.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
The hum starts in the tips of my toes, and I look over the other shoulder. There’s no line behind me. Of course.
So I have no excuse not to look into Asher’s eyes.
“How did you get here?’
He draws me away from the window. “Would you believe me if I said I called in a favor on a private jet?”
“What, five seconds after you dropped me off at the airport?”
His eyes catch the fluorescent lights above us and turn it into something that makes my heart skip a beat. “About then, yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“Dead seriously.”
“Well, go away.” My chin quivers, and I clench my teeth together until it stops. “I’m trying to do something here.”
“Don’t do it.” Asher’s voice is urgent, and that urgency reflects in his eyes. The clerk is pretending to give us a minute, but I can sense her back in her cubicle three feet from the window, hanging on every word.
I take my phone out of my purse and look at the screen. “I can wait fifteen minutes, if you have something to say.”
“I do. But…maybe not here.”
“Where do you want to go, then?” I’ve walked all the way in here, and my car is parked three blocks away. I’m not going to drive anywhere. “Fifteen minutes isn’t a lot of time.” And it’s all the time I can wait. Because if I wait a single minute longer, I might not go through with it, and that will really be a disaster.
“Out on the sidewalk.” Asher has this planned out, I see now. “I have a spot in mind.”
19
Asher
Everly follows me out, and I take deep, calming breaths, trying to get my heart back under control. It took forever to fly here, even by private jet, and I’m sure I broke every speed limit in my rental on the way to downtown Paulson. I didn’t take the chance that she’d be at home. Knowing Everly—and I do know her—she’d go straight to the courthouse.
I almost missed her.
I was almost too late.
In a place like Paulson, there’s no doubt her request would have been expedited, if only so that the lady behind the counter would have the full story from start to finish. She’d even be a bit player. It’s the same as Ruby Bay, only in Montana. No wonder it felt so familiar.
