The box couldn’t contain anything she was looking for because she wanted the future, not the past. She folded it shut.
The next morning at dawn, Nate was working side by side with Josh in the horse barn, raking dirty straw and loading it in the back of a flatbed. The barn was still cold before the spring day could warm it, and the horses occasionally neighed to one another, or butted Nate’s arm when he passed. Scout moved in and out of the stalls, yipping at the horses as if greeting old friends.
“So have you been to Outlaws recently?” Nate asked. “It’s been a long time since you offered to be my wingman.”
Josh laughed, for neither brother ever needed help approaching a woman. Nate tended to be more open and sociable, filling time with words instead of having to answer questions, while Josh let the soulful-cowboy thing work for him.
Josh stepped out of an empty stall and regarded him with interest. “Funny you should mention that. I was at Outlaws, and saw Brooke and Monica with that new woman everyone’s talkin’ about.”
Pretending nonchalance, Nate looked at the time on his phone, then put in his earpiece. The calls would begin soon. He realized Josh was still watching him. “Brooke didn’t mention seeing you.”
“I didn’t want to be noticed by my sister,” Josh said dryly.
Nate chuckled.
He leaned on the end of his rake. “Nice dodge, big brother.”
Nate shoveled a pile of straw into the wheelbarrow. “Dodge?” He didn’t want to talk about Emily. But now she was there in his mind, her expression full of hesitation and hope and even wariness in the shadowy dining room looking at the box from her past.
And then his phone rang on his belt and relief washed over him. He tipped it toward him to read the ID. “Give me a sec. It’s about the grandstands for the rodeo.” He kept the conversation brief, then tapped his earpiece to hang up. “So what happened at Outlaws?”
“It’s amazing how you go from one thing to another without missing a beat.” Josh smiled, shaking his head, and took his towering wheelbarrow outside to shove onto the flatbed.
Nate piled his own wheelbarrow a bit higher than his brother’s had been.
“You have an amazing mind,” Josh continued, returning to lean against the empty stall, “able to do so many things at once—too many things. You can’t possibly keep functioning this way, doing everything, being everything to everybody.”
“Josh, you sound like I’m an old man who needs to slow down. I’m in my prime, boy!” he said, keeping his voice light, even though Josh was irritating the hell out of him.
“I’m glad about your new girl, really I am.”
Nate kept his face impassive. “She’s not my girl.”
“Tony De Luca said you met her the first night she was in town. That’s good. She might help you remember there’s more to life than work.”
Nate turned his back. “I played some pool that night, and that was all.”
“Really? Besides Tony, there were others doing some talking.”
Nate rubbed his forearm across his perspiring face. “Let me guess—Ned and Ted.”
As Josh gave a knowing grin, Nate’s phone rang again. The strangest expression came over Josh’s face. Nate let the phone ring.
“Get that,” Josh said seriously. “It’s important to you.”
“Everything’s important to me. And I treat it all that way.”
Nate answered, continuing to rake while he talked to Joe Sweet about Valentine’s organic farms co-op. Joe was a fellow rancher whose family also owned the Sweetheart Inn. As if Joe didn’t have enough to do, he’d gotten involved in coordinating the distribution of organic produce to restaurants in Aspen and the rest of the Roaring Fork Valley.
When he hung up, Josh was coming back in with the empty wheelbarrow. The phone rang again, and Nate silenced it without looking.
Josh sighed. “I know you. You’ll regret not taking that. You try to be there for every fence post we put in a hole, every horse that needs to be shoed—and every report about the winery or the farm. You can’t keep this pace up. Maybe this woman will help you see that you have to make choices, Nate.”
“That’s enough,” Nate said shortly.
“For now,” Josh shot back, and stalked out of the barn.
Emily slept a bit too late for a long run, so she decided to walk through Valentine Valley for her exercise. On leaving her room, she glanced at her mother’s box, then away again. It seemed to stare at her as she left. She was