Page 30 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

Chapter Twenty-Four

The next morning, I woke up to Thor, looming over me with one of his horrible hangover concoctions in a jar. He smiled and began to shake it up.

“Is this a mad scientist house call?”

He grinned.

I rubbed my eyes, noticing his workout clothes. “Wait, you’ve already been running?”

“All three of us went running, Sleeping Beauty.”

We tended to travel light these days, though my guys insisted on bringing workout clothes due to their mania for keeping in top physical condition—something I definitely approved of.

I took the jar and unscrewed the lid.

“Drink up!”

I groaned.

He sat next to me and cajoled me to at least sit up. “Isis. Since when I have put something in you that didn’t feel excellent?”

“You are terrible.” I drank the beverage slowly and warily.

It did make me feel better, though—or, at least, good enough to take a shower in the fussy bathroom that had different spigots for hot and cold in the sink, which used to seem so classic, but now it seemed just inconvenient when you wanted the water warm.

I headed down to breakfast feeling much better. Margie was there, laughing and chatting with my guys, who were looking fresh as daisies…if daisies were hot and masculine and had beard stubble.

Which these ones did.

I sucked down an entire mug of coffee in one gulp. Thor disappeared and came back with the box from the antique store.

“You didn’t have to get me a gift!” Margie said.

“Of course we did. Open it,” Thor said.

“My goodness.” She unwrapped the paper carefully, parted the sea of shreddy things. She lifted out the pair of cupids. “Oh!” It was the good kind of oh , rich with emotion and drama. Her coveted cupids. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I think we did,” Thor said.

“Really, that one you broke—you can barely tell.”

Odin smiled his bullshit-calling smile. He’d helped Margie glue it back together, but you could tell.

“I love them.” She looked up and met all our gazes, one at a time. “I’ve had my eye on them…this is so thoughtful.”

“I know we haven’t been model guests,” I said. “But we’ve really appreciated staying here.”

She examined her cupids. “I’m glad you had a nice time.

” With a shadow of a smile, she added, “If I ever get out of the bed-and-breakfast business, maybe I’ll have to go into insurance investigations.

” She looked up at me with an admiring look on her face, and this shiver came over me. A good shiver.

All this time I’d thought she was silently disapproving of us—of me. But it was just the opposite.

I grinned. “It’s a good business. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Across the table, Zeus smirked.

We packed up and said goodbye. The guys seemed to be in a big hurry; I didn’t know why. We had reservations at a luxury hotel near the Milwaukee airport. It was a three-hour drive, but they’d hold the room.

Maybe they were eager to soak in the hot tub. Hopefully the hotel bathrobes would be nice and fluffy, the way we liked them.

We said goodbye to Margie. Zeus and Odin and I took one rental car, Thor took the other. We headed out. A few minutes into the drive, we missed the road to the highway.

“Hey,” I said. “U-turn. We passed the way out.”

“We’re good,” Odin said from the passenger seat.

I leaned up between them. “We have to make a U-turn. I’m telling you, this isn’t the way.”

“Pit stop,” Odin said.

I stiffened. We’d already had breakfast. “What kind of pit stop?”

“You’ll see,” Odin said.

But my pounding heart already knew. My racing pulse already knew. “What are you guys doing?”

“Just a quick stop,” Zeus echoed.

“No. Tell me.”

Odin twisted around. “We arranged something.”

“What?” I demanded. “You’re not bringing me there. They can’t—I can’t. We’ve been through this!”

“Don’t you want to see them, though?” Zeus said. “Just lay eyes on them from afar? See them happy?”

“ No .”

Zeus looked nervously in the rearview.

“Turn it around.”

“You want to, goddess,” Odin said. “We know you do.”

“I can’t.”

Still they kept driving, passing the old familiar landmarks; the fallen-down shed at the edge of the Tuckers’ alfalfa fields. The stop sign with bullet holes in it. The old hickory that looked like it had scary hands in winter. The entrance to Miller’s Acres.

“It’ll endanger them. ”

“For you to lay eyes on your sisters from afar? No, goddess.”

In truth, it would endanger me. “I can’t see them.”

“Why?”

“It’ll hurt too much.”

Odin climbed over the seat and sat in back with me.

“Get away.”

He put his arms around me. “ It’ll hurt is never a good excuse to pull back from love.”

I shook my head.

He brushed my hair aside. “We’ll turn around if you want.”

I shook my head some more, and once my throat was unclogged enough to talk, I said, “I want to see them and the farm more than anything, but I can’t.”

“We’ll be there with you.”

I couldn’t even talk.

“We’ll turn around—”

I shook my head through my tears. Zeus was heading up the border trail, the road that went between our pastures and the Millers’ pastures. We were so deep in now, my head spun.

The road turned to dirt and wound down to the base of the ridge…just out of sight of the ridge. Vanessa would’ve told them to do that. It’s how I would’ve gone if I’d wanted to sneak a look. Hide the cars below the ridge and climb up.

“Don’t cry, Ice. We can go back,” Odin said, but it was too late—the old place was working its magic on me. The trees, the shoots coming up in the fields, even the giant holes in the dirt road. Everything in me drank this place up.

“I’ll do it,” I said in a small, shaky voice.

We parked side by side at the base of the ridge. We used to take the sheep down here now and then, but it was a weekday, a school day—no time for an excursion. They’d let them out on the upper grazing area.

Zeus came around and opened my door. “Vanessa says they’ll be coming out at nine exactly. ”

“Kaitlin should already be at school,” I said.

“She has study hall until ten. Come on—your sister said they’d only be out for a bit. There’s a fence issue.”

I smiled wistfully. “There’s always a fence issue.” Still I didn’t get out. I couldn’t.

Thor slid in. He took my hand. “Together,” he said.

“I love you,” I whispered.

He squeezed my hand and pulled me out. I let him.

We were technically on the Millers’ property, though our families had traditionally shared this as a kind of no-man’s-land road that afforded access to both fields.

We climbed the sloped side and on up to the crest. There was the fence in the near distance, and beyond it, our land, stretched out in mud brown and spring green—the grazing land framed by trees.

You could see the barn in the distance, the red faded to brown, and our little white farmhouse beyond that.

A lot of things in Baylortown were somehow smaller or shabbier than I remembered, but the old pasture edge was more beautiful than ever.

The far side we were looking at was shaded by old oaks and hickory trees.

I used to love this side. We’d bring the sheep out here during the hottest days of summer.

A bell rang out. The dinner bell.

“That’s our sign,” Zeus said. “Come on.” He headed to the giant pine that was a few yards outside of our fence line, one of the best climbing trees with limbs like ladder rungs and enough foliage to conceal you. Almost like a giant tent, that pine.

Zeus handed me the binoculars. “Let’s do it.”

I strapped them around my neck and we climbed.

I hadn’t been in that tree since childhood. It made me love Vanessa even more for thinking of this as a vantage point.

We arranged ourselves on the branches that jutted out horizontally from the trunk. Zeus and Odin were on the other side from me, Thor just below. I shifted around so I could see through the pine boughs. I heard Petey the dog first.

“Shit! He’s going to smell me!”

“Can he get out the fence?” Odin asked.

“Hopefully not,” I said.

“Just a squirrel,” Odin said. “That’s all they’ll think.”

“Petey has way higher standards than that. Just a squirrel indeed!” I put the spyglasses to my eyes. The herd had grown—I knew it from the newsletter, but it was exciting to see. Petey raced back and forth behind the four dozen or so sheep, nipping and barking.

I spotted Vanessa, coming down the field. And then there was Kaitlin, running behind her.

My heart skipped a beat. Kaitlin.

She’d grown her red hair out and had it caught up in a ponytail. Her face was filled out—she looked more mature. Like a young woman. Vanessa had said she’d made the soccer team, and I felt like I could see that confidence in her movements.

I couldn’t stop looking; every step and glance she made gave me a new hit of how much I loved her—and missed her.

She glowed with energy. She caught up with one of the ewes and ruffled its back.

She’d always gotten close to those animals.

Well, we all had. We celebrated those animals. Some of them were like family.

Candace came into view, running to catch up to Vanessa. When she got there, they walked as a pair. Candace had her phone out and was talking to Vanessa at the same time. She wore a baseball cap and a side braid and a blue jacket I recognized.

“My jacket,” I said, like that was the most important detail of the whole scene. “Once upon a time, she would’ve gotten in a lot of trouble for borrowing that without asking.”

Thor put a hand on my shin. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“How do they look?” Zeus asked.

“Happy,” I said. “Amazing. They’re going on.”

Without me .

It was here that it really hurt. I couldn’t climb down there and run over and congratulate Kaitlin for making the team.

I couldn’t laugh with her or look over those college catalogs.

Or watch old movies with Candace, or do crafts with Vanessa while we watched Sleepless in Seattle for the millionth time.

Or make cheese and fight about who had to get in there to do the smear or turn a batch in the middle of a movie.