Page 3 of Take Me Away, Cowboy

So, it was up to Paige to sit him down and tell him just what she thought about Julia and her manipulations, a sort of one-woman intervention. Her dad would be on board, but for some reason Paige couldn’t comprehend, her mom had been skewered by Julia’s talons and still sung her praises.

Oh well, she had time to formulate a strategy. A week was a long stretch where family was concerned.

When the water below her faded to a deep blueish black and the sun had set over where the islands lay in the distance, Paige closed her eyes again. This time she imagined west Montana, the farm in summer, warm and moist with growth and renewal. She pictured the best key lime pie she’d found this side of the equator without having to make it herself, and her brother, strong, able, and there, even knowing she would be gone again in not much more than a heartbeat.

Though a far cry from the place she’d called home the past year, with its easy living and simple pleasures, it was still home. She was anxious for both her flights to be behind her, the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet to help her find the path she should take next. Within minutes, Paige fell asleep, softly snoring. Her ease into slumber was the comfortable way of someone who traveled for a living and had learned to rest in flight.

However, she dreamed not of the rolling sea nor crashing waves, but of fields that ebbed and flowed with the wind and the weather, reminiscent of her time as a child when she had promised herself she would never call those fields home. In her dream, she stood, fully grown, pregnant, on a porch that wasn’t her parents’, looking out over the land and happily calling it hers. She slept fitfully, and woke unrested, wondering what it all meant.

CHAPTER TWO

Homecoming

Brad was thereto greet her at the gate, his sly half-smile pinned to his face. It made him look more like her younger brother, not one three years her senior. He held a homemade sign that read, “Welcome Home, Paigey-poo.” She smirked and flipped him the bird as she walked out of security, earning a laugh as he jogged up to meet her.

He wore his usual—jeans, cowboy boots, and a V-neck T-shirt that showed off how fit he’d become. He’d always been a runner, but he must’ve started lifting weights lately. It made her happy to see him taking care of himself, physically at least. Though it did nothing to assuage the pang of guilt at the come-to-Jesus talk brewing beneath her calm exterior.

“There’s my baby sister,” he said, a laugh escaping from his chest as he picked her up and twirled her like a rag doll. She’d always been tinier than him, than every member of her family, but yeah, he’d grown stronger.

“I wouldn’t call attention to the fact that you’re old, Brad,” she teased when he let her back down, playfully reaching up to punch his shoulder.

“Hey, there, sis. You’ve been back on American soil for less than five minutes. Be nice or I’ll have you flown right back to the islands.” Paige rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

“Where’s Mom? I thought her email said she was coming, not that I’m not way happier to see you.” She meant that last part. She and her mom had never been close, and the idea of a half-hour trek home with her was more than Paige wanted to tackle.

“Something came up. We’ll see her in a bit.”

“Whew. At least now I can escape the endless barrage of ‘why don’t you settle down somewhere, Paige,’ or ‘you’re never going to find a husband if you keep gallivanting all over the world, Paige.’”

“Who says I’m not going to give you the same speech?”

Paige giggled and hoisted her rucksack over her shoulder.

“You got anything else?” Brad asked her.

“Nope. You know me; if it doesn’t fit on my back, it doesn’t come.”

“That sounds like a kinky movie title,” Brad said, earning another playful nudge. “You shipped your books, didn’t you?” She shrugged, bit her lip. Her brother got her, she’d give him that.

He snatched the ruck from her back and walked with her out of the baggage claim area, headed towards the elevators that would take them to parking.

“It’s good to see you, big brother,” Paige said, tears pooling in the corner of her eyes, meaning every word. Brad was one of the only people who could make her homesick, wistful of a time when they had been inseparable, and the idea of home still included her parents and their vast expanse of land.

It had only taken her until fourteen to realize just how small the farm really was. At sixteen, that included the state and entire southwest. By college, it was all her parents could do to convince her to go to a university in the U.S. She’d obliged since they helped her foot the bill, but for medical school, she hadn’t applied anywhere outside of Europe.

“You too, twerp.” He ruffled her short, spiky hair, which didn’t do much with all the product in it.

“So, how’s the book coming along?” Paige asked.

“Good, actually. I’ve got the first draft almost done and am looking for readers if you have time this trip,” he told her.

“You mean besides Dad?” she asked.

“Yeah, he’s a given. He’s only called every day to see how the writing’s going.” Their dad, Alan, was a self-professed crime novel aficionado and had gone full fanboy when Brad confessed he was writing in that genre.

“But yeah, I’m in. I’ve always wanted to know what goes on in that pea-brain of yours,” she teased.

“Wow, the islands changed you. You got mean, girl.” He laughed, but his words scraped at the formerly rough edges around her heart that the island had changed, smoothed over.

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