Page 2 of Take Me Away, Cowboy

Paige didn’t want to miss the island, didn’t like leaving anything or anyone behind, but anyone who met Aurelie would agree that she usually got her way. This time, that meant taking Paige emotionally hostage, though Paige didn’t mind as much as she might’ve in the past.

“Where’s home?” the woman beside her asked, sneaking a furtive glance at Paige’s phone, open to the picture.

The woman’s grip had lightened, her breathing regulated. Paige looked at the photo once more before shutting her phone, a deep sigh emanating from her chest. She didn’t mind answering as much as she would have before takeoff. She’d calmed down, too.

“I’m heading back to Banberry, just outside the Elkhorn Mountains where my folks live. They’ve got a farm that’s been in the family too many generations to count.”

“That’s out in the sticks,” the woman commented, and Paige smiled.

It was a common misconception that outside the cities in Montana, especially the Elks Ridge Valley where her parents’ farm lay nestled between the mountains, was hillbilly country. Her small town of Banberry was the exception. For some reason, the locals were hidden in a pocket of diversity with at least one good cowboy bar and a Costco. Paige didn’t correct the woman, though.

“What could possibly make you head back there when you were livin’ in the middle of paradise?”

Staying in an all-inclusive resort, Paige bet that came close to true—people to cook your meals, clean your dishes, but just outside the walls existed a poverty as crushing and crippling as anything in the States.

Still, the answer to why she was going back to Montana eluded her. She could go anywhere.

“I’m a traveling pediatrician, and my time there ran out. It was only a temporary position, but I’ll miss it.” That was only partially true. She could have made the move a permanent one, but that had never been the plan. Permanence was not in Paige’s genetic makeup.

“Sounds excitin’. I’m headed back to Dallas, and I’ll tell you what. When my kid’s off to college—he’s got a football scholarship comin’ his way—I’m outta there, too. The world’ll be my oyster.”

“Good for you, and congratulations,” Paige said, an honest half-smile raising the corner of her mouth. “I think travel is the best way to get to know yourself.”

“Well, that’s true, I’d reckon. For instance, I now know that I’m not settlin’ for anything less than Carlos’s hips in my next husband.”

Paige didn’t offer the possibility that Carlos could have a boyfriend at home.

“Well, you enjoy. Your folks must be so happy to have you back,” the woman said.

Her folks.

Paige nodded and looked out the window again despite the glare of the sun off the now-deep blue water. It would be good to see them again. Afterall, a year was a long time. The version of Paige that had left them at the Helena International Airport had been heartbroken after breaking up with Paulo and hungover from the subsequent binge at Cowboy Joe’s that had followed—a completely different person than the one heading back to them. Would her family even recognize her anymore?

Paige fetched her phone again, turned on the airline Wi-Fi and opened Facebook. She skipped over her memories of the past year, stopping instead at thirteen months prior, at her announcement to the world that she’d accepted the job in Turks and Caicos.

Memories of the night she’d returned to Banberry from Africa, single and lost, flooded the backs of her eyelids.

Paige had sat in her small, childhood room, looking out over the green fields of new wheat and corn on her parents’ two-hundred-year-old farm, the rugged Elkhorns in the background. She browsed the internet in search of something, anything, that would give her an out from her crappy situation, something that would still allow her to practice medicine.

When a small pop-up ad chimed in the upper right-hand corner of the computer, her body had gone rigid, a light sheen of sweat formed on her brow. That had to be it. She’d known it immediately.

Before the week ended, she was gone as quickly as she’d come. She landed at a small clinic in the Turks and Caicos Islands, specifically North Caicos, and the small town of Bottle Creek. The one lesson she’d learned from all her travels before this was that if the signs pointed her in a direction, she followed them. She’d never been steered wrong yet.

“Who’s that? Boyfriend?” the woman beside Paige cooed, throwing Paige an exaggerated wink. “He’s handsome.”

“Brother,” Paige said, laughing. “He’ll appreciate the compliment, though.” She cracked her ankles again, a habit when she sat for too long a stretch.

“Well, shoot. All the good ones are either taken or related, aren’t they?”

Paige smiled. Her brother was the best man she knew aside from her father.

She was ready to see him for multiple reasons, least of which included his ardent support of her. A cloud formed in the corner of her mind as she thought about the serious talk she planned on pelting him with the second she got the chance. She needed to sit him down and explain all the reasons his girlfriend, Julia, was just like Paulo. And just like Paulo, she needed to go.Now.

It wasn’t a conversation Paige was looking forward to, especially with how entrenched Brad and Julia were in each other’s lives. Hell, even their mothers were best friends.

She scrolled through Julia’s home page. Not a single photo from the past two months featured Brad. Her most recent post was a vague, “How to Know if Your Man Loves Work More Than You,” article attached with no explanation.Such bullshit.

Brad worked two jobs to take care of Julia, who at most picked up twenty hours a week at a local retail outlet. He also wrote crime novels in his limited free time, trying to turn his hobby into a career. Paige was proud as hell of him for finally taking himself seriously as a writer, but Julia hated that it took his attention away from her.

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