Page 4 of Tempting Wyatt (Triple Creek Ranch #1)

CHAPTER THREE

ivy

Somewhere just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah

AFTER MY LIFE IN LA FALLS APART, I do what any girl would.

I consult my good friend, Google, to determine my next steps. I learn that the Internet’s answer to what to do when you walk in on your fiancé and your closest friend having sweaty sex on your living room floor, is to get away and regroup for a bit.

I drive almost to Salt Lake City before stopping to rest and formulate an actual plan.

In a cheap hotel room, lying in bed in the dark with the light from my phone glowing on my face, I click on an Airbnb ad that says Welcome to Paradise. With that tagline, I’m expecting beaches. But there are no palm trees or pina coladas. Only rustic rental cabins in the mountains of Montana.

According to the listing with the cutest cabin, Triple Creek Ranch is a stunning working ranch and host Laurel Logan has excellent reviews. Well, one review. But it’s a good one, so the probability of getting murdered seems low. Ish.

Her profile picture shows an attractive woman, probably mid-fifties, brunette with a tinge of gray framing her face.

Next to her is a large chestnut-colored horse.

Seems legit. She has a trustworthy look about her—though as my current circumstances demonstrate, I’m not an excellent judge of character.

And just like that, the memory of Heidi’s bare chest sliding against Malcolm’s sweat-drenched flesh plants itself behind my eyes. I wonder if the image will ever fade.

Maybe one day.

Hence why it’s time to change my view.

Immediately.

IF ANYONE HAD ASKED, I COULDN’T have pointed out Paradise Valley, Montana on a map before today.

I’m still not certain if it’s one separate city or a mountain valley made up of multiple towns.

It’s late Saturday afternoon when I arrive.

The air is different here.

Not just ten or more degrees cooler than I’m used to at this time of day, but cleaner, crisper somehow, as if there is simply more of it.

Rolling the windows down, I inhale the breeze as deeply as my lungs will allow.

Lying alone in that hotel room last night, it occurred to me that while there will always be some hurt about my relationship ending the way it did, it’s better that I found out sooner rather than later.

Life with Malcolm, while financially stable, was stifling.

He’s controlling and temperamental, both at home and at work.

Constantly berating me and causing me to second-guess myself.

I hadn’t written a single word since moving in with him, and he reminded me of it daily.

Working together was going to make my professional life increasingly difficult over the next few months, as production on Captive was set to start soon.

But I realize something as I’m driving. Something I needed space to find the clarity to see clearly.

It’s not Malcolm I miss. It’s the parts of myself I gave him and the ones I erased entirely to try to keep him happy.

I want them back more than I ever wanted Malcolm.

Truthfully, I miss the hair products I left behind more than my life in LA. Having a headful of curly hair is no joke and takes serious effort and several small miracles to keep under control.

An acute pinch of pain, as I think about what Heidi did, tries to worm its way into my chest, but I shake it off.

Heidi is a twenty-three-year-old reality star, trying to become a serious actress.

She’s had so much plastic surgery that she doesn’t even resemble the same human being I met two years ago when she was cast in the third season of my first scripted series.

Working in the entertainment industry has ground her down into a fraction of who she used to be—the same way Malcolm was doing to me.

She isn’t a bad person, just a young girl looking for constant validation.

Heidi told me she’d slept with every director and most of the producers she’d worked with, which should’ve set off alarms when she said she wanted to audition for Malcolm for the lead in Captive.

But I listened and didn’t judge, so I didn’t connect the dots until they were connected for me.

With each passing mile, my overactive mind wants to dwell on every moment of my time with Malcolm to see if I missed the obvious signs he was cheating.

Pushing the impending obsessive overthinking session out of my mind, I vow to focus on the present as I reach my destination. It’s not too difficult with the breathtaking mountain range before me.

When I find a gas station that looks like it may have a relatively clean restroom, I pull into the parking lot, step out of my car and stretch my legs.

This place looks Photoshopped—literally too beautiful and majestic to be real.

Embracing the tourist vibe, I snap a quick picture of the quaint downtown area with the barest hints of fall foliage and mountains in the background.

My phone screen resembles a postcard. But the picture still doesn’t do the actual view justice.

There are no specialty coffee shops from what I can see, but there is a diner-style café on the corner across the street from where I’ve stopped. After I freshen up and fill my gas tank, I make my way over to it.

A bell chimes overhead as I walk through the door.

Well-worn leather booths bracketing weathered wooden tables fill the space while the scent of stale coffee and greasy French fries mingle in the air.

It’s familiar in the way diners have always been due to my mother having been a waitress most of my life.

Spying an open stool at the counter between two older gentlemen, I step up and wait for the waitress, who appears to be about my age, to make her way to me.

She smiles as she pours coffee for the locals.

For a moment, I wish I belonged here—that I knew her name, that I had a usual table, that she knew my order by heart.

The craving for a sense of belonging is nothing new to me.

Growing up, we moved around a lot. Apartment landlords would raise the rent or refuse to repair the plumbing or deal with pest control issues, and we’d have to find something else.

Whenever anyone asked, I would say I was from Bakersfield because that was where my mom worked the longest at a travel center truck stop diner.

The truth was, I attended at least eight different schools over the years and finally got my GED at sixteen to stop the insanity of starting over.

My mother is tough. She was raised by her harsh aunt Rose and had me at seventeen. Not interested in another mouth to feed, her aunt—whom I’ve thankfully never met—kicked my mom out of the house when she refused to abort me or give me up for adoption.

She was put into the foster care system and had a bad experience—which she’s never shared the details of—before moving in with a friend until she could work enough to get a cheap apartment.

The first of many.

I love my mother, even when our relationship is strained—which it always has been. I was in the way a lot as a kid—my mere existence keeping her from the career she wanted or a man she was interested in who didn’t want kids.

When I moved to LA after winning a screenwriting contest at eighteen, she practically said good riddance to my face.

I check in occasionally, but she’s married to a banker named Bruce and seems to be happy. She’s never been warm and fuzzy, and I’ve accepted that she gave me what she could. No matter how little we communicate, I’ll always be grateful for all she sacrificed to raise me.

As much as I try to put my childhood behind me, as an adult, I still long for a real home. A place to belong, a place where I’m wanted. Maybe that was why I moved in with Malcolm so quickly when he suggested it. Even though I can admit to myself now that I never felt at home at his place.

He liked things “just so,” and anytime I disrupted his space, he ranted about how his home was his sanctuary, and he needed it a certain way. Cold. Pristine. Mostly empty, except for some stark white leather furniture.

The waitress reaches me just before I fall down a Malcolm-memory shame spiral.

“Need a menu, hon?” She offers me one with a kind smile.

“Just a coffee, please.” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the specialty lattes of my favorite café in LA, but I know better than to order something that would be considered pretentious in a place like this.

She pours me a cup and nods to the containers of various sweeteners and creamers. “Let me know if I can get you anything else.”

“Actually, could you tell me where Triple Creek Ranch is? My GPS can’t seem to locate it.”

The man to my right chuckles. “That’s because it’s nearly twenty thousand acres.”

That wasn’t mentioned in the listing.

The waitress seems satisfied that this man will answer my question and moves on down the counter.

Stirring some sugar and cream into my coffee, I blow on it gently. “Any idea where the best entrance to it is? I’m renting a cabin there, and the address appears to be in the middle of the woods.”

Standing, he places a few bills and his ticket on the counter.

“Keep going west on the highway until you get to the next exit. Follow the signs to the nature preserve. When you see a large wooden sign telling you it’s ten or so miles further, you’ll see a dirt road on your right.

Take it to the fork and make another right.

There will be a gate with an iron sign above it.

You’ll have to hit a button on the post for them to let you in. ”

I thank him and repeat the instructions to keep them fresh in my tired brain. I’ve already been in the car for hours since leaving the hotel outside of Salt Lake. I’m hoping the coffee will perk me up.

Once I freshen up a little more in the diner restroom, I’m back in my car with the windows open, feeling optimistic. This is the perfect place to find inspiration. I wrote my first screenplay in a matter of weeks—I can do it again. I just need to relax and let the story come to me.

Before I get back on the road, I text my agent and let her know I need a two-week extension on the screenplay submission. She doesn’t respond, but notifications fill the screen.

Malcolm has sent a dozen hateful, threatening texts and tried to call me as many times.

I’ll have to talk to him at some point. Besides being in possession of the rest of my belongings, he’s the executive producer of Captive, and we’re supposed to have casting finalized this week. I feel sick just thinking about it.

Whenever an unpleasant event from my childhood comes up, my mom says, “There’s a reason the past is past. Leave it behind you, where it belongs.”

It used to hurt my feelings that she refused to acknowledge the pain her actions had caused, but in this case, it’s excellent advice.

I already gave myself from LA to Salt Lake to listen to breakup ballads and angry done-me-wrong songs. Since Salt Lake, I’ve ridden in strangely welcoming silence, enamored with the landscape.

Malcolm is the past, and our life together is the past. Out here, LA feels a world away. It might as well be on a different planet.

I don’t know what I’ll do about finalizing the casting for Captive, and I don’t know how in the world I’m going to meet my upcoming deadline for the screenplay I haven’t even started when my mind is as blank as the Montana sky.

All I know is, I’ve rented a cabin in the middle of the woods for the next two weeks, and I intend to make the most of it.