HOME TO YOU
Sneak Peek

The cowboy hat twenty feet away made my heart stop. But it wasn’t just the hat. It was the man whose head it was perched on. The one who, at least from behind, looked exactly like my ex—six-foot-two, two hundred pounds of solid muscle, that high, tight ass in well-worn jeans, strong, broad shoulders tapering down to a trim waist. Even his dark hair curling at his nape was the same shade I used to run my fingers through.

When he twisted to grab a bundle of bananas, I ducked behind the apple display in the center of the produce section, bobbing up and down like a prairie dog as I tried to get a better look at him without being noticed.

But when the man turned fully around, it wasn’t Jake Mercer’s face staring back at me—just another Montana cowboy in a sea full of them.

I let out a shaky laugh and straightened, feeling ridiculous as I glanced around the store, noticing that at least twenty other men were wearing similar hats.

I’d been back in Bridger Falls exactly eighteen hours, and I was already jumping at shadows. This was precisely why I swore I’d never return.

Not because I didn’t love it here, because I did. There was a reason this place was called the Last Best Place. But when I left, I took the coward’s way out. I’d fallen too hard, too fast, for a man with sparkling eyes and a wicked mouth who was never part of my plan. So I did what any panicking twenty-three-year-old would do: I ran and never looked back.

But here I was anyway, ten years later, hauling boxes up my Aunt Mags’s porch steps and trying to pretend that seeing a cowboy hat hadn’t nearly sent me into cardiac arrest. At my age, I was supposed to be past jumping at shadows. Past letting the ghost of Jake Mercer haunt me.

Clearly, I had some work to do.

The lock stuck, just like it used to, so I jangled my keys this way and that, giving the door a little hip bump while juggling our groceries. It creaked open.

“I’m home!” I called out, trying not to choke on the word.

Home.

A week ago, that was a sleek penthouse overlooking Lake Michigan … one I’d shared with my cheating bastard of a husband until I walked in on him screwing my best friend. In our bed. The one I’d picked out.

“In the kitchen!” Aunt Mags hollered, her voice perpetually cheerful.

I followed the smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls to find her standing at the stove wearing one of her signature novelty aprons—this one says “Knit. Purl. Kick Ass.” Her hair—silver now—was pulled into a messy bun, and there was flour on her cheek. While almost everything about my life has changed, it was nice to see some things stay the same.

I set the bags on the counter, and a package of Double Stuf Oreos tumbled out, followed by a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

My aunt raised an eyebrow. “Rough morning?”

“Something like that.” I shoved the ice cream in the freezer drawer before it could melt any further and betray just how long I’d sat in the parking lot after my shopping trip, gripping the steering wheel and trying to get my heart rate back to normal.

“You didn’t have to bake,” I said, though my stomach chose that moment to rumble with hunger.

She chuckled, waving away my words. “You looked like a ghost when you got in last night. Figured you could use something full of butter and sugar to restore you. Though it looks like you beat me to it.”

I pulled out a chair and dropped into it, feeling exhausted already. It was only ten o’clock, but I’d spent the morning checking off the last boxes on my “starting over” to-do list and having a meltdown in the cereal aisle.

“You’re a lifesaver. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Well, let’s hope you never find out,” she said with a grin, setting a mug down in front of me. “Hazelnut. One sugar. Exactly the way you like.”

“Thank you.” I smiled, even though the expression felt foreign as it lifted my cheeks. Two weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to smile again.

We enjoyed our breakfast as the wind rustled the aspens outside, the morning sun lighting up the mountains in the distance.

“So,” she eventually said, breaking into the quiet. “You all set for Monday?”

I took another sip of my coffee and polished off the rest of my cinnamon roll. When I was done chewing, I pushed the plate aside and wiped my mouth on the soft linen napkins. No paper towels for this woman. “My classroom’s ready, and I met some of my colleagues when I finished dropping off my supplies earlier.”

She watched me carefully for a few protracted moments. “And you’re really okay being back here?”

“As okay as a woman can be when she’s crawling back to her aunt’s house in the town she swore she’d never live in again,” I said with a bitter laugh. “Not that your house isn’t lovely, Mags, but I hate feeling like I’m trapped in the past. Like the last ten years never happened.”

“Fair enough.” She pushed up out of her chair—slower now than she used to be—and moved to the other side of the kitchen to refill her mug. Leaning against the counter, she asked, “Did you ever reach out to him?”

I didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. I knew exactly who my aunt was referring to.

Jake and I had spent three glorious months together, back when I was a grad student at Montana State University. At the time, I told myself it was casual, that we were just having fun. But in reality, I’d been in love with him, and it had terrified me. So much so that when he told me he loved me too and asked me to stay in Montana and be his wife, I broke his heart instead.

Broken my heart, too, if I was being honest.

But I was young, and I’d worked hard to put myself through college after my mom died. Worked even harder to land a coveted teaching position at my old fancy prep school back in Chicago, the one I’d attended as a scholarship kid since my mom was a secretary in the admissions office. It’d been my dream for as long as I could remember to walk through those hallowed halls not as a poor charity case but as someone who truly belonged.

So I told Jake I didn’t love him back. That I didn’t want to be some rancher’s wife who’d be expected to pop out five kids just like his mother had. Told him he’d been a fun distraction, but it was time to get on with my real life.

Back in the here and now, I lowered my eyes to the scarred oak table, picking at a divot with my thumbnail. “No.”

“You think you’ll see him?”

“I don’t know.”

A lie.

Of course, I’d see him … eventually. The Mercers were as close to royalty as it came in Montana. There was even a show on Netflix based loosely on his family. I wouldn’t be able to avoid him even if I tried.

Mags studied me for a beat. “You know he’s a single dad now?”

My head snapped up. “What?”

She nodded. “Has a son. Maybe nine or ten? Cute kid. I think his mom passed away a couple of years back.”

My throat constricted, and the mug slipped from my nerveless fingers, clattering against the table hard enough to slosh half my coffee across the scarred oak surface.

“Oh, honey.” Mags was already moving to grab a dish towel, but her eyes never left my face.

“I’m sorry, I …” I stared at the spreading puddle, my hands shaking as I tried to mop it up.

A son. Jake had a son.

The thing I’d wanted most in the world—the thing my ex, Richard, had promised and then taken away with his lies—Jake had gotten with someone else.

But then my aunt’s words echoed in my head like a record scratch, and my mind started doing math I didn’t want it to do. I left ten years ago. Mags said his son was nine or ten, which meant … God. Jake hadn’t waited long at all, had he?

The coffee was spreading toward the edge of the table now, but I couldn’t seem to make my hands work properly.

Jake, who’d asked me to be his wife, had apparently found someone willing to give him what I wouldn’t within months of my leaving.

What the hell was I supposed to say to that—congratulations for moving on so fast?

“I didn’t … I had no idea,” is what I said instead.

“You might if you’d ever reached out to him,” she said, her tone gently recriminating.

My aunt understood why I had to leave Bridger Falls and go back to Chicago, but she’d never really supported the manner in which I’d done so. It wasn’t like she’d taken Jake’s side; she just hated to see me take the coward’s way out. “We James women are made of sterner stuff than that,” was one of her favorite sayings.

I winced. “I know.”

There was so much more she could say. More I probably deserved to hear. But Aunt Mags just patted my hand.

“You’ve got a fresh start, Eden. Don’t waste it hiding from the past.”