Page 2 of Pretend To Be My Cowboy
“Fine,” Emma murmured.
Lizzy’s sigh was loud through the phone’s speaker. “I still don’t think you should have gone on your own. Or at all.”
Emma turned back to the window, rolling her eyes and pressing her lips together. She didn’t want to have this argument again. “I didn’t want to do this remotely, and you have a wedding to plan for, remember?”
“I know. Can you believe it’s only six weeks away? There’s so much to do.” Lizzy’s tone grew distant for a second and then Emma heard the blender turn on as her sister made a protein smoothie like she did every day after her power walk. “But I still don’t like that you’re there on your own.”
“I’ll be fine,” Emma said again. The noises in the background on her sister’s end were oddly soothing as she rested her forehead against the plastic of the plane’s window. Born only one year apart, they’d always been close, but add to that the fact that they’d been roommates in a small Chicago apartment for the past six years, since Lizzy graduated college, and they were basically joined at the hip.
“The internet, telephones, Zoom calls… those were all invented for a reason, you know.” Lizzy’s dry tone did nothing to sway Emma’s decision. It hadn’t when they discussed it the first, second, third and fourth time, it wouldn’t now.
As much as Emma hated disagreeing with her sister, she was determined to actually see and explore the ranch left to them by a father they barely knew.
“You’ve never traveled alone before,” Lizzy pointed out.
Emma rolled her eyes again, sinking back in her seat as the seat belt sign dinged off and the people around her rushed to their feet. “I might not be a world traveler, but I’m a grown woman who teaches in inner city Chicago. I think I can handle a short trip to a small town in Montana.”
Lizzy let out a snort of laughter. “First of all, you’re a kindergarten teacher. Let’s not pretend you’re breaking up knife fights on a daily basis, okay?”
Emma snickered, shifting just in time to dodge Mr. Fishing Vest’s giant carry-on as he tugged it out of the overhead.
“Have you methimyet?” Lizzy asked.
“The foreman from the ranch?” Emma said. “No, I told you, we just landed. I haven’t even gotten off the plane yet.”
“You’re not going to stay there long, right?” Lizzy’s voice held that anxious note that never failed to make Emma’s protective older sister radar go into high alert.
“Lizzy, it’s going to be okay. We still have plenty of time until your big day. Trust me. None of those last minute details will get missed.”
Lizzy let out a long exhale. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I just need you here, that’s all.”
Emma winced. The timing really wasn’t great. But was there ever a good time to lose one’s father?
“Are you sure we can’t just sell the ranch from here?” Lizzy asked. She muffled the phone and shouted something.
She’d be talking to their third roommate, Sarah, who’d been living with them for the last four years. The last and best in a long line of roommates who made it possible for the sisters to afford a place in the city.
Emma wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough, and neither was Lizzy with her retail job at Nordstrom, but with a third roommate they made it work.
Emma was grateful for the distraction. The rows of passengers before her were filing out of the plane and it was almost time for her to disembark. Definitely not time to rehash this conversation for the millionth time.
She wasn’t sure any amount of explaining would make Lizzy understand why she felt like she had to do this in person.
Heck, Emma wasn’t suresheunderstood. Frank O’Sullivan might have been their biological father, but he wasn’t a dad to them in any way that counted. He hadn’t been a part of their lives since he’d divorced their mom when Emma was three.
Since then, he’d sent birthday and Christmas cards every year, and...that was about it. Which was fine by Emma and Lizzy. They already had a dad. Their mom had remarried when Emma was four and their stepdad, Derek, had been the best father any girl could ask for. Frank O’Sullivan had supported the girls financially, but even their mom had stopped having dealings with him decades ago. All requests for money went through a third party. It was all very civil.
Sterile but civil.
Emma had never really minded the fact that she didn’t know much about her real father until she’d found out he was gone.
They’d missed his funeral because they hadn’t been notified of his death in time, and that was when she realized that she’d never really known him at all...and she never would.
What little Emma knew about their father she could list on one hand, and it mostly came from the stories her mother had shared about the brief, ill-advised marriage in their early twenties, or some business articles she’d found about him online. All of which was summed up in his impersonal obituary as well. He was from Chicago originally, was a successful businessman, and had bought this Montana property as an investment. Apparently over the years he’d turned it into a lucrative working ranch. That was about all she knew. But as for the real man? What he cared about and who he loved?
That was still just as much a mystery now as it had been when she was a child. And that just seemed horribly sad. She still wasn’t sure what she hoped to find at the house he’d left to her and her sister, but some part of her needed this closure.
“Lizzy, I’ve got to go,” Emma said, interrupting another muffled conversation her sister was having with Sarah.
