Page 14 of Redeeming Harmony

“She isn’t,” Wyatt said. “At least, I don’t think she is. If I had to guess, she’s upset about what happened in New York and is looking to focus her energy on something else.”

“What happened in New York?” Nathan said.

“I don’t know details, but I do know that Harper moved there to make a living selling her art. She failed, and now she’s home again.”

“How do you know she failed?” Nathan asked. “You live on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere and barely come into town. It’s like pulling teeth to get you to have dinner with me.”

“I hear things,” Wyatt said.

“How?” Nathan said in bewilderment.

“I might not go into town that often, but plenty of people who work at the ranch do,” Wyatt said. “They’re more than willing to report back any news.”

“Gossip, you mean,” Nathan said.

“In Harmony Falls, it’s basically the same thing.” A scowl crossed Wyatt’s face. “The gossip is one of the worst things about living in a small town.”

Nathan stared sympathetically at his friend. Wyatt knew better than anyone the toll that small town gossip took on a person.

He’d met Wyatt in vet school when they’d become roommates that first year. It hadn’t taken long for them to become friends, and by the second year, he’d considered Wyatt his best friend. They’d even had plans to open up a large and small animal clinic together a few years after graduation, either in Wyatt’s hometown of Harmony Falls or Nathan’s hometown of Barcombe. Nathan would concentrate on the large animals, and Wyatt would cover the small ones. It was the perfect plan.

Until tragedy struck Wyatt’s family and he had to drop out of vet school only a few months into the fourth year and return home. He’d taken a job at Whitaker Ranch as a ranch hand and never finished his vet schooling.

“You ever think about going back to vet school?” he asked Wyatt.

“Of course not,” Wyatt said.

“Why not? You could finish in less than a year.”

“I have a stable job that I like. Why would I give it up?” Wyatt said.

“Because you’ve wanted to be a vet since you were a kid,” Nathan said. “If you finish your schooling, you’d have a job waiting for you in Harmony Falls. Assuming, of course, that Warren still sells the clinic to me.”

“I’m thirty years old,” Wyatt said.

“So?”

“That’s too old to go back to school.”

Nathan scowled. “Bullshit. I started vet school late.”

“There’s a big difference between you starting at twenty-six and me going back at thirty.”

“No, there isn’t,” Nathan said.

“We’re not here to talk about my failures,” Wyatt said. “We’re here to talk about the fact that you want to have sex with Harper Brandt.”

“Have you listened to anything I’ve said for the past forty-five minutes?” Nathan said. “I hate her, Wyatt. She might cost me my dream.”

“She won’t,” Wyatt said. “And there’s a thin line between hate, and I want to bang your brains out.”

“I don’t want to have sex with her, but as my best friend, you could have mentioned that Warren had a smoking hot daughter with a perfect ass before you recommended I apply for the job at his clinic.”

“One - Harper had moved to New York, and two - there are a lot of women with great asses in Harmony Falls. I didn’t realize I needed to warn you of this.”

Nathan couldn’t help but laugh despite his worry about what would happen tomorrow. “What kind of best friend are you, anyway?”

Wyatt grinned at him. “A fucking amazing one? Look, don’t worry about the clinic thing, okay? Warren won’t let Harper influence him about his decision to sell. He’s told you how many times he’s ready to lighten his workload? By this time tomorrow, you’ll be the owner of your very own vet clinic, and we’ll be drinking champagne. I’m proud of you, man.”

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