The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass - Maisey Yates Page 0,3
to keep them corralled from an early age because she was naturally more...well, more of a rule follower.
She was used to taking that role at Hope Springs, but outside of it she tended to shrink back a little. Some people even read her as being shy or timid—Iris didn’t feel she was either—but she definitely didn’t have a lot of practice with taking charge away from the ranch.
She was in a space now where she needed to push, and Rose was an excellent pusher.
Rose scurried off, and made one phone call, and Iris could see from where she was sitting that Rose was wheedling. She exchanged a glance with Logan.
“Try living with it,” he said.
“I did,” Iris said, deadpan. “I raised it.”
“Yeah, well,” he muttered. “You’re not as much of a sucker for her as I am.”
“That is true,” Iris responded.
When Rose returned a moment later, she had a triumphant grin on her face. “I have an address for you. 9020 Carson Creek. That’s all the way up Echo Pass.”
“There’s not... There’s not even electricity out there,” Iris said. “He can’t live out there.”
“Well, that’s the address that Pansy had for him. Honestly, he’s probably got some huge fancy house up there with satellite internet and a generator and stuff. Anybody that owns that much property in town has to have some fancy spread way out there. He’s probably some rich old guy. You should bring cookies.”
Iris didn’t know how she had gone from standing in front of a shop window only a few moments ago to being sent on an errand up into the north forty to meet a man she’d never even heard of.
“Rose, I don’t know...”
“It might be worth it,” Rose said. “And you won’t know unless you try.”
Her sister had a point. And as this sort of thing went, it was better than being with a guy who didn’t excite her. She had been offended before when she’d thought Rose had imagined that she couldn’t handle a fantasy more compelling than Elliott.
At least this felt like the start of something exciting.
* * *
GRIFFIN CHANCE WAS impossible to get a hold of, it turned out. Or maybe it was just that he declined to be gotten a hold of. Iris couldn’t be sure. But in the days since she had discovered he was the owner of the property that she was interested in renting, she had left messages on two different phone lines, both with robot voices that had given her no indication of what the man himself actually sounded like, and had written two emails.
So it couldn’t be said she hadn’t tried to warn him.
But Iris had spent the last several years of her life in a place of absolute stagnation, and she was over it. Absolutely and completely. That meant that she wasn’t accepting no response for an answer. You would think that the man would get back to her. After all, she had matters to discuss with him. Well, she was trying to finagle a way to get lower rent. And maybe he sensed that. Maybe that was why he wasn’t getting in touch with her personally. But she had a plan, a plan that involved about two dozen cookies.
Shortly, Mr. Chance would see that what she was proposing was going to be so profitable that in the end he would benefit.
If there was one thing Iris knew about herself, it was that she was a fantastic baker. She didn’t have a whole lot in the way of self-esteem. But what she had was pretty solid. And that was how she found herself driving her sister’s truck up the back roads toward Griffin Chance’s house.
She hoped that he was home. But if not, she would leave everything behind with a detailed note and go from there. The important thing was that he try her food. It was very, very important. Much to her chagrin, the road narrowed, and turned to gravel long before her phone said she was set to arrive at his house. And then there was... There was a damn log in the middle of the road, not five hundred feet from where she was supposed to turn to get up the drive to his house.
She parked her truck and sat there, looking around. She didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to do. This is it. This is the first challenge. You can either fall down, or you can keep going.