The first book in a small-town western romance duology from <New York Times< bestselling author Lyla Sage, featuring a rugged craftsman in need of a fresh start and a photographer whose life has come to a screeching halt . . . and the supernatural forces that bring them together.

Autorentext

Lyla Sage

Klappentext

Home is where the heart is—and this one is haunted.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of the Rebel Blue Ranch series returns with a brand-new story, featuring a small-town upholsterer in need of a fresh start, a photographer whose life has come to a screeching halt . . . and the supernatural forces that bring them together.

Collins Cartwright does not want to go home. Sweetwater Peak, Wyoming, was supposed to be in her rearview mirror, but when she finds out a developer is trying to buy her parents’ antiques shop out from under them, she doesn’t have a choice—at least, that’s what she tells her family. They don’t need to know she’s lost her job and is out of money. Or that the ghosts who have always been her companions have recently gone silent.

But just because she’s returned home doesn’t mean she has to stay with her parents or crash on her twin sister’s couch. Lucky for her, the new-to-town upholsterer has a room for rent above his store. Unluckily, it is absolutely crawling with more ghosts who are freezing her out. And Collins hates being ignored.

Brady Cooper is absolutely and totally fine. Seriously, there’s no secret reason why he decided to uproot his life and suddenly move to Sweetwater Peak. He just needed a change of pace. At least that’s what he tells himself. And everyone else.

When he agrees to let the elusive Collins Cartwright stay in his spare room, he doesn’t know that she’s absolutely bonkers—constantly talking to herself and having conversations with no one—or that she looked like that. But as they begin to get closer, the lines between them start to blur, leaving both of them—and the ghosts who have been pushing them together—wondering whether their temporary arrangement could be something more permanent.

Leseprobe
1

COLLINS

There were three things that I could see out of my car’s windshield, and all of them were ominous: a sharp and jagged mountain range with one point taller than all of the rest, a gray sky with clouds that were undoubtedly full of rain, and a plume of black smoke that was a little too close for comfort.

How close? Coming out of the hood of my car close.

“C’mon, girl,” I whisper hopefully—­giving my 2002 Camry a couple of slaps on the dash for good measure. My car was nowhere near the weirdest thing I’d spoken to. “Forty more miles. That’s it. You can do forty more miles.” Never mind that the forty more miles were steep, skinny, winding switchbacks that only had one destination: Sweetwater Peak, Wyoming.

Nestled in the shadow of the tallest peak in the Elk Spine mountain range, Sweetwater Peak was quiet, quirky, and quaint. It was also the last place I wanted to be.

As if my car could read my mind, she started to shake and sputter. Well, that’s not a good sign. “I get it,” I said. I didn’t really take that great of care of this car—­I didn’t even remember the last time I drove it. For the past three years, it had been covered by a tarp in a storage unit in Meadowlark—­about two hours south of Sweetwater Peak—­which I got to by hitching a ride with a nice couple who were on my flight from Portland to Jackson. They were going to some guest ranch in the area for a week.

I liked having the freedom of having my car where I could get to it if I needed to . . . without coming all the way home, though. So a storage unit was a good solution.

Now that my car sounded and felt like it was going to give out at any moment, though, I regretted not taking my twin sister up on her offer to pick me up from the airport today.

But I needed some time to mentally prepare to see Clarke and my parents. I love my family—­really, I do. I’m just a firm believer in the whole “distance makes the heart grow fonder” thing. I’ve never loved my family more than when I wasn’t living in the same town as them. Boundaries worked a hell of a lot better when there were thousands of miles between us.

I sighed loudly but not loud enough that I couldn’t hear the rattle that was unmistakably coming from my engine as the car started to slow—­even though my foot was still firmly on the gas pedal. Shit.

At this point, I didn’t have a choice but to pull as far as I could onto the soft shoulder of the road. It wasn’t wide enough to fit a whole car, but if I went any farther, the Camry and I would be barrel-­rolling down the mountain.

I got out of the car and slammed the door a little harder than I needed to before walking to the front of the hood. I knew a little bit about cars—­like how to check my oil and change my own tire, but I didn’t even know where to start with the black smoke situation.

“Maybe this is a sign,” I muttered to no one in particular. If I had any company of the, um, specter variety, they hadn’t made themselves known yet, but it was only a matter of time as I got closer to Sweetwater Peak. “Maybe I should just hop in the car, throw it in neutral, and coast back down the mountain.”

Thunder boomed around me, and I felt its reverberation in my chest—­like I was right next to the speakers at a concert.

I took a deep breath before I popped the hood and was promptly enveloped in the smoke. My lungs burned as it wrapped around me, and I started to cough as I stepped back and tried to fan it away.

I wasn’t clear of it until I was ten feet in front of my car, and even then, I spent an embarrassing amount of time with my hands on my knees hacking. “Can’t”—­cough—­“catch”—­hack—­“a f***ing”—­cough—­“break. Can you, Collins?”

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and looked at the top right corner. No service. Of course. There was a pocket of cellphone service in Sweetwater Peak, but it didn’t extend very far outward. The last hour of the drive was a dead zone.

There was a string of texts from Clarke on my screen—­the last one was delivered an hour and a half ago.

Lars: Remember how you said you were going to be here before noon?

Lars: Weird that it’s almost five, and you’re still not here.

Lars: You’re not even here yet, and you’re already giving me premature gray hair.

Lars: Seriously, Collins. Where are you?

Well, there was no use in trying to text her back when I knew that text wouldn’t go anywhere until I was inside the town limits. I should’ve called her while I was driving—­told her where I was, so she knew that she should come rescue me when something inevitably went wrong, and I wasn’t home when I said I was going to be.

Clarke was always saving me.

Something cold and wet hit my nose, and then my arm, and then the top of my head. Thunder clapped again, and like that was all the rain needed, it started to pour.

I didn’t make for the shelter of my car right away. Instead, I stood there with my eyes on the engine and let the rain soak me all the way through.

I’d already resigned myself to sleeping in my car as soon as the smoke started pouring out of the engine, so there was no need to rush into it. Tomorrow morning, someone would have to drive dow…