Montana Mornings (The Wildes of Birch Bay Book 3) Page 4

  As she pulled to a stop in front of the old fire hall that had been converted into an apartment, she glanced across the street at the two-story, stucco-and-stone home. There’d been a “For Sale” sign in the yard all week, but the sign had disappeared, and a four-door all-wheel-drive truck now sat out front.

  She took her time gathering up her purchases, trying to catch a peek of her new neighbors, then jumped as if she’d been caught when her phone rang. Laughing at herself, she dug out her cell, and pleasure filled her when she saw that the caller was her youngest sister. Giving up on the idea of snooping, she pushed open her car door at the same time that she connected the call.

  “E!!!” Bree squealed the second she appeared on the screen. As usual, Erica’s sister was FaceTiming. “How are you? How’s the new school?” Bree leaned into the phone so that her brown eyes and long lashes filled the screen. “And ohmygoodness, how awesome is it to live in a freaking fire hall?”

  More laughter spilled from Erica at her baby sister’s parade of words. “Which question should I start with?”

  “All of them!” Bree shouted. She readjusted the phone, pulling back enough that Erica caught sight of a café sign written in French behind the twenty-one-year-old. “Let’s start with school,” Bree said. “How’s the new teaching gig?”

  “It’s great.”

  “That’s it?” The question brimmed with disappointment.

  “Well, what else should I say? I like the school. I like the other teachers.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Everything is great.”

  Bree sat back in her chair, her pink-tipped hair shifting around her shoulders, and shot Erica a haughty look. “You quit your job, Erica Alexandra. You quit your job, grabbed the first one offered to you—leaving all of us with nothing but speculations as to why, I might add—and then you moved several hours away from home. All within one week. And all you can say about your new life is that it’s great?” The corners of her lips turned down. “Come on. That’s the same as calling it ‘fine.’ You need more than fine for once in your life.”

  Erica didn’t let herself get riled over Bree’s dramatics. “Fine works perfectly for me,” she replied calmly. “And anyway, you’re wrong. Great is better than fine. Much better.”

  Bree’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Great is as boring as you had back home.”

  Erica didn’t respond to the jab. “Tell me what you’re doing in France yet again,” she said instead, and as Bree launched into a laundry list of details on her latest excursions, Erica let herself wonder, not for the first time, why her sister hadn’t had to follow the rules the rest of them had.

  Yarbroughs went to college. Then Yarbroughs returned home. It was the family tradition.

  They grew up to hold steady and respectable jobs like teachers, accountants, and town sheriffs. And if the females wanted to veer slightly off path—assuming they had the looks for it—they competed for beauty titles before settling into their respectable jobs and motherhood. Her grandmother had actually won Miss Montana back in the day, and her mother had made it to the state competition before having to pull out due to an unexpected pregnancy—which had turned out to be Erica. Annalise, their other sister, was the cream of the crop, though. She could have swept Miss USA, hands down, if she hadn’t decided not to wait to enroll in medical school. She’d had that much going for her.

  But even once Annalise finished her residency, she’d return to Silver Creek. Her fiancé had bought into a veterinarian practice there about a year ago, and Annalise already had a job lined up with the local oncology group.

  Yet Bree. Sigh. Little Bree, who was tiny but also had the beauty queen looks, was more of a dreamer than anyone in their family had ever thought about being. She was an artist, often using a variety of unconventional techniques, and she maintained the absolute belief that her muse could be found anywhere but at home. She’d skipped college altogether, took odd jobs whenever she needed money, and she’d spent more of the last three years outside of the country than in it.

  Erica was happy for her. Really, she was. She was thrilled that her baby sister got to follow her dreams, and Erica very much hoped success would someday come her way.

  But she was also jealous as heck.

  “You’re not even listening to me, are you?”

  Bree’s words reached Erica, and Erica made a face. “Sorry. I was—”

  “I know what you were doing.” Bree huffed out a breath. “Daydreaming again.” Her sister gave an exaggerated eye roll to go with the sigh. “And they say I’m the one with ADHD.”

  Erica dropped her packages onto the chair on the front porch so she could dig out her keys. “I’m not even close to ADHD, and you know it. I just let my mind wander once in a while.”

  “Right. Because you’re bored out of your skull.”

  “I’m not bored. I’m—”

  “E. Stop it. Look at yourself. You’re living Mom and Dad’s life. Not yours. I’ve watched this for years. You merely exist. You don’t live.”

  “I don’t have to travel the world to live.”

  “But thankfully”—Bree didn’t so much as pause at Erica’s words—“you have the opportunity to change all of that now. And dang, you’ve started out right. You rented a fire hall, for crying out loud. Now show it to me, will you? I’m dying to see it.”

  Anger flared to life at her sister’s criticism. Bree had a way of getting right up under her skin when she wanted to. “Is that the real reason you called?” Erica bit out. “And not because you were curious about how my week went? About how I’m doing?”

  “Didn’t I ask how your week went?” Bree returned. “How you’re doing? They were the first things out of my mouth.”

  They stared at each other, both stubborn, and neither backing down. Bree had always been the one to push back, and it ticked Erica off every time. She was the older sister.

  The ridiculousness of the argument knocked the air out of her, and Erica lowered her gaze. She should apologize. Bree had called to check on her, and she knew that. Her baby sister was her own personal cheerleader.

  Yet she didn’t apologize.

  Instead, she opened the door to her place and took Bree inside the fire hall. Bree had come to mind the moment Erica laid eyes on the place. She’d known her dreamer of a sister would love this apartment. So without another word, she entered the bottom floor of the small two-story structure and immediately tapped the screen so her sister could see exactly what she saw upon entering the room.

  Flipping on the overhead light, Erica smiled when Bree gasped.

  “You have a pole.”

  Erica bit the inside of her lip at Bree’s blunt statement. Yes. She had a pole. It separated the living room from the kitchen. “I was surprised to find they hadn’t removed it when they’d renovated the place. It’s not like I can decorate it or even spruce it up. It’s actually more of an eyesore than anything.” She moved to the pole and pointed the camera up. “But it does connect to my bedroom.”

  “E! That is absolutely the coolest thing ever. Please tell me you slide down that thing every day. Oh!” She gasped again. “And pole dancing. You are pole dancing, right?”

  “No!” Erica flipped the screen around so that Bree once again faced her. “Of course I’m not pole dancing. Why in the world would I do that?”

  “Why in the world wouldn’t you? You have a freaking pole.”

  “That doesn’t mean I need to strip down and start gyrating around it.”

  Bree shot her a knowing look. “You cannot convince me you haven’t thought about it. There’s a pole right there, for crying out loud. And, you dance every morning.”

  “I dance because it’s excellent exercise.”

  “So is pole dancing.”

  They had another staring standoff, and this time Erica caved first. She glanced away, her heart pounding as she allowed one small concession to her baby sister. “It’s too big,” she muttered. Because, yes, she’d thought about it. She loved dance
of all kinds. She’d taken classes as a kid, and the love for it had never left her.

  So of course she’d considered it. But mostly it had crossed her mind because every once in a while, she found that she wanted to be the type of woman who gyrated around a pole.

  The corners of Bree’s mouth slowly quirked up when Erica finally looked back at her, but she didn’t say anything. She just smiled in the annoying way a baby sister could.

  “What?” Erica snapped when Bree remained silent.

  Bree gave a casual shrug. “I’m just thinking about other things that can . . . seem . . . too big on occasion.”

  “Bree.”

  “Hey. Sometimes having something big in your life is a good thing.” When Erica didn’t rise to the bait, Bree added, “I’m just saying.”

  “We both know what you’re just saying.” Erica pulled out her teacher voice. She didn’t want to talk about fire hall poles or any other “big” items. She’d sworn off such things. “Now did you want to see the rest of this place or not?”

  “Yes, Ms. Bird.”

  Erica gritted her teeth at her sister’s mocking tone. “I could just hang up on you.”

  “But you won’t. You love me too much.” They had another small stare-off, and then Bree sighed and the bratty-sister routine fell. “Please don’t hang up on me. I really do want to see the rest of it. Show it to me? Please?” she wheedled. “I promise I’ll behave from here on out.”

  “You’d better,” Erica grumbled. “I’ve had a long week, and I’m not in the mood for this.”

  Before Erica could begin the tour of the rental, Bree asked, “What happened?” Erica could see the worry on her sister’s face. “I thought you said your week was fine.”

  The problem Erica had been trying to put a name to finally dawned on her. And it came in the form of one small child. “Jenna Wilde,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Jenna Wilde. She’s in my class. She’s been difficult this week.”

  “How so?”

  “Typical acting-out stuff. Stubbornness, talking back, refusing to do as she’s asked. Only”—Erica paused as she pictured the little girl—“her eyes, Bree. That child is so sad. Or adrift might be a better word. She seems to have no anchor.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure. But she has terribly tall walls for a seven-year-old. She worries me.”

  That was it. It wasn’t the trouble that Jenna had caused throughout the week. It was the worry Erica held for her.

  “What’s her home life like? That’s what you always mention first. Have you met her parents yet?”

  Bree’s questions had Erica taking a good long look at her sister. She hadn’t realized Bree had ever paid that much attention to anything she’d said. Sure, they talked on a regular basis and always had. And with the twelve-year age gap between them, Erica had been fully into teaching long before Bree left town, so she’d heard Erica discuss methods of dealing with different problems over the years. But Erica had never realized that her sister had soaked any of it in.

  “I know her dad,” Erica admitted. “Or I once did. We went to college together. But I haven’t met her mom yet. Gabe brought her to school the first day, and I haven’t seen either of them since.”

  And that bothered her, too, she realized. Since she and Gabe had once meant something to each other, she supposed she’d been expecting to hear from him over the course of the week. Especially given that he was also a new teacher in the district. She’d looked him up in the directory and found that he wasn’t in the same building as she was. However, the high school was only across the street. He could have stopped by.

  She’d also looked up the Wilde orchard. Just to make sure it remained in business.

  The website had seemed up to date, and when she’d passed by it on her drive today, the orchard appeared to still be open.

  “If you know her dad,” Bree said, bringing Erica back to the present, “then maybe you should . . .” Bree’s brows pulled together then. “Wait. Did you say her dad’s name is Gabe? And Jenna’s last name is Wilde? Wasn’t that”—she blinked—“is that the guy you dated in college?”

  Erica forced herself not to react. She should have known Bree would remember Gabe.

  “Her dad is the guy you dated?”

  “That’s not important, Bree.”

  “Well, it could be!”

  “But it’s not. We broke up back then. He got married. I got married. I haven’t seen him since.” Which wasn’t completely true. She’d run into him a few years ago in Missoula. She’d turned the corner of an aisle in a bulk-goods store, and there he’d been. It had been good to see him. “I once knew him—that’s all. Now he’s my student’s father.”

  “Okay.” Bree nodded slowly, as if still not believing there was nothing more to the story. “But what a coincidence, right?” Then she sucked in a breath, and her eyes went wide. “Is that why you took the job there?”

  “Bree. Stop it. He has nothing to do with why I’m here. Plus, he’s married.” The only way Gabe had played into her decision was that, due to him, she’d been to Birch Bay before. Therefore, moving there hadn’t totally seemed like an unknown. “Now can we please focus on Jenna? She’s the issue. Not Gabe.”

  “Sure.” Bree continued to eyeball her, though, and Erica wondered if she was remembering how Gabe used to tease her any time he’d visit Erica at the house. At nine years old, Bree had been completely smitten with Gabriel Wilde—and Erica had been able to say the same thing. “Is he still married?” Bree suddenly asked.

  “Jenna.” Erica reminded her. “That’s who we’re talking about.” And as far as she knew, Gabe was still married. But she’d wondered that very thing when there’d been no sign of his wife all week.

  “Fine.” Bree made a face. “We’ll talk about Jenna. So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m only here for a short time,” Erica said halfheartedly. “Maybe I shouldn’t even worry about it.”

  Bree snorted. “Like you could do that. I’ve known you my whole life, remember? You’ll get involved.”

  Which was true. But only because she cared. In fact, after only four days with this new group of kids, she already cared too much. It would be hard to walk away from them in only seven more weeks.

  She opened her mouth to reply, to try to explain how for the first time in her life she almost didn’t want to get that invested in her students. That she wanted to protect her heart. But the sound of tires crunching on loose gravel caught her attention.

  “What is it?” Bree asked when Erica turned her head.

  She moved to stand by the side of the window. “Someone pulled up across the street.”

  “And . . . ?” Her sister drew the word out when Erica didn’t explain the significance.

  “And that house has been empty until today.”

  “New neighbors? Cool. Let me see.”

  Erica chuckled at her sister’s never-ending exuberance and reversed the view so Bree could participate in Erica’s nosiness. Then she sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Who is it?” Bree asked.

  The front door of the house had opened at the same time as the SUV’s doors. “It’s them,” Erica muttered in shock. She took a half step back, careful not to be spotted through the open blinds. Gabe Wilde was her new neighbor?

  “Them who?”

  He moved farther out onto the small covered porch, the fray of his jeans dragging the concrete beneath his bare feet, while his daughter hopped down from the backseat of the vehicle. Haley dropped from the other side, an enormous dog following her, and Dani Denton slid from behind the steering wheel. Her cute little belly seemed to poke out even more today than when Erica had seen her at the school the afternoon before.

  “Erica?” Bree prodded when Erica remained mute.

  “It’s him,” she stressed. “Gabe.” She angled the camera toward the little girl. “And his daughter.”

  But where was his wife?

  Her gaze went back to Gabe. Or more s
pecifically, to his hair. It had been tamed and so teacher-ish when she’d seen him earlier that week. But now it stood out in random hunks, dark and a little wild, and clearly not as closely cropped as she’d previously assumed.

  She let her gaze trail down over him, and his snug T-shirt and ripped jeans made her think of the nineteen-year-old she’d temporarily lost her mind over so many years ago. That first semester with him . . . good Lord, they’d been unable to keep their hands to themselves. It’d just been sex. At first.

  She tugged at the collar of her polo and swallowed as she remembered.

  She’d finally accepted that her high school boyfriend didn’t want her anymore now that he was in college—and she’d gotten mad.

  She’d also been hurt, but more mad than anything.

  So after watching her stew in their room for weeks, claiming more interest in studying than in boys, Erica’s roommate had finally declared Erica’s period of mourning over and talked her into dating again. Which had not been the success Lindsey had hoped. Erica either hadn’t been interested in each guy from the get-go, or she’d quickly found a reason not to go out a second or third time. But Lindsey had been persistent. She’d dragged her out night after night, flirting with random guys, talking them into “giving Erica a shot” when they learned that Lindsey was in a committed relationship herself. And then Lindsey had talked her into going to the frat party.

  And Erica hadn’t known what hit her.

  “You think that’s his wife?” Bree asked. “She looks pregnant.”

  “That’s his sister. And she is.” And Erica suddenly felt very guilty if it turned out that Gabe was still married. Because he was as good-looking today as he had been back then. And her thoughts were currently anything but teacher-parent.