Page 5 of Score to Settle (Oakwood Ranch #1)
THREE
HARPER
Notes for feature: The first time I meet Jake Sullivan he walks in an hour late and reeking of cheap women’s perfume.
“You’re at Oakwood Ranch? Have you been kidnapped?”
“Very funny, Mia,” I whisper as I close the door to Chase’s bedroom.
“So that’s it, then? You’re leaving me without warning? How am I supposed to survive with nerdy Edward and his blender on my own? Who am I going to bitch about those gold diggers on LA Love Hunt with?”
I laugh into the phone. “Edward’s not some creepy housemate.
He’s your boyfriend and you bought him that blender for Christmas last year after you broke his old one making margaritas.
I thought you’d be glad to get your couch back for a while.
Besides, we both know Edward only pretends to hate LA Love Hunt .
Now that I’m gone, he can watch it with you. ”
Her cackle makes me grin. “True. So what’s it like being there again?” she asks. “Is Jake still as hot in real life as he looks on TV?”
I think of those broad shoulders and muscles, the dark hair he keeps pushed away from his face and the stubble across his strong jaw. Hotter , I think, but I keep it back. Mia needs no encouragement to start talking about hot men and my sex life, or lack of one.
I cast my eyes around Chase’s bedroom. It looks the same as it did on the one time I came here when I was sixteen. Dragged along by Mia to third wheel while she had a brief thing with Chase in high school. I only said yes so I could see where Jake lived. And because Mia begged me.
There’s still a teenage-boy feel to the space. There’s a poster behind the door showing the back of a woman’s naked body. She’s wearing cowboy boots and leading a horse into the sunset, long hair flowing down her back toward a perfectly shaped ass.
There’s a small desk and above it three shelves lined with shiny trophies.
A Stormhawks flag hangs proudly on the wall, its bold red and white colors standing out against the plain walls.
Chase might play for the Trailblazers now, but it’s clear who his home team was growing up.
A framed college football jersey with the number “10” and “Sullivan” printed in bold letters hangs above the bed.
“It feels the same,” I say, remembering the instant sense of peace I felt staring across the paddocks and grassland as a sixteen-year-old madly in love with the star of the football team.
The air fresh and dewy, the sky endless.
Even on a cold November evening there’s a warmth to the ranch I can’t explain.
It’s hard not to compare it to my dad’s house.
How his minimalist décor creates the opposite effect to Oakwood Ranch—cold and uninviting.
Or maybe that’s just the way it’s always felt with my dad after my mom died and it was just the two of us.
For a moment, the loneliness of my childhood threatens to consume me.
I was only three when Mom died and I don’t remember her.
But I remember the emptiness. My dad working away more often than not.
I grew up being raised by nannies—people who were paid to care for me.
I didn’t know any different until I started going to friends’ houses and seeing what families really looked like.
No surprise I spent most of high school at Mia’s.
I glance out the window. Chase’s room is over the kitchen, facing toward a large barn.
Beyond the wide driveway and the two trucks lined up beside Jake’s are a row of fenced paddocks, the grass rich green and overgrown.
There’s a stillness here, a wild beauty that makes me feel like I can breathe a little easier, despite every fiber of my being screaming at me that this is a bad idea.
“Are you ripping off your clothes around him yet?” Mia’s laugh drags me back to the moment. Then she gasps. “Oh my God. Do you remember that story you wrote?—”
“Mia,” I cut her off, my face flaming at the memory she’s yanking, kicking and screaming, to the surface of my thoughts. “That was a long time ago. I was sixteen. Now I’m a journalist and a professional and I’m here to do a job.”
It might’ve been a long time ago, and I might be a different person now from the shy, nerdy girl I was in high school, but I haven’t forgotten the story Mia is thinking of.
It was an article about Jake—the star of the football team.
But I made the mistake of showing one person, and it got out—copied and plastered all over the school.
I’ll never forget the hurt and humiliation from Jake’s words after he read it.
Mia laughs again. “Do a job? Do Jake Sullivan, more like.”
If it was anyone else, I’d carry on arguing, but instead I groan, not really minding.
Mia has had my back since the seventh grade when her parents divorced and she moved from Michigan to be closer to her mom’s side of the family and the family business—running Arquette Media, the home of Sports Magazine as well as a dozen other magazines and newspapers, and one news channel.
For all of five minutes we had plans for her mom to marry my dad, making us sisters. It quickly went out the window when we realized Mia’s mom’s corporate media head was the opposite of my dad’s journalistic view of the world.
But we’ve been best friends through high school and college, and she was there to pick up the pieces when it all went wrong in New York this summer. No one makes me laugh like Mia.
I don’t have many other friends. Despite my dad being away chasing stories most of my life, his love of journalism and his focus still rubbed off on me.
But with a surname like Cassidy, I have big shoes to fill in the industry.
I have to prove I’m professional, focused, and hardworking, and a good journalist in my own right.
But somehow, my efforts always get read as stuck up and prickly.
Like the team at Sports Magazine who love Callie but give me the side eye.
It’s always been this way. Mia is the only person in the world who really gets me, and I count myself lucky to have the best human on earth by my side.
“Just my job,” I reply to Mia’s innuendo. “Talking of which, Mia, what the hell is a tight end?”
She laughs again. “Are you serious?”
My silence says it all.
“OK,” Mia says and I can hear the smile in her voice.
“I’m not an expert or anything, but a tight end is the football player who does a little bit of everything.
They’re like a mix between a big, strong blocker and a receiver who catches the ball.
So, on one play, they might be protecting the quarterback, and on the next, they’re catching passes and scoring touchdowns.
It’s kind of a do-it-all position and one Jake Sullivan is very good at.
He used to play quarterback in high school but moved to a different position in college and is now tight end for the Stormhawks.
Talking of high school, did Jake mention?—”
“No,” I say quickly, before another memory I don’t want rushes to the surface. “I’m one hundred percent sure no one in this family realizes I went to West Denver High and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
“Chase will remember you.”
“Thankfully he’s not here. I’m more than happy to be Harper Cassidy, the journalist from Sports Magazine .”
“Is she all that different from Harper Cassidy, the high school girl hopelessly in love with the star football player? I quite liked that girl, you know.”
“I’ll be that girl again if you bring back your braces and your obsession with the rodeo.”
We laugh back and forth a while longer, remembering versions of ourselves that feel like different people.
“Just remember to have some fun too, Harper,” Mia says when the conversation moves back to my feature on Jake. “Work isn’t everything. You need to have a life as well.”
“Says the woman who works twelve-hour days and most weekends. Don’t worry. I think I might find this fun. Jake already thinks he’s God’s gift to the world. I’m looking forward to digging deeper to find out if there’s anything underneath.”
“Uh-oh! I recognize that tone. Poor Jake. He’s toast.”
From somewhere in the house, a door slams. I lower my voice. “I better go.”
“OK. Love you. Text me later.”
“You know I will. Love you too,” I say, catching my reflection in the mirror.
My eyes are still dancing from laughing with Mia.
I drop my phone on the red Stormhawks bedspread.
Mia’s mention of clothes makes me look down at my tailored skirt and blouse.
I’m overdressed for a family dinner on a ranch.
As I unzip my suitcase and swap my outfit for a pair of tight, stone-washed jeans and a black sweater that hugs my curves, the window draws my gaze again.
In the dusk, the view beyond the paddocks is almost lost, but I can just make out the first craggy foothills.
I feel like I could walk straight into the mountains without meeting a single road, fence, or human along the way.
All my life, I’ve had pictures of the New York skyline on my walls, desperate to escape this state, but I’m still reeling from the reality of the city and there’s something comforting about this room and this view.
Is this feature on Jake out of my comfort zone?
Yes. Is it going to be glaringly obvious within three seconds of speaking that I don’t have a clue about football?
Also yes. But maybe I can find some peace in the tranquility of the landscape while I’m stuck here.