The Hard Way Read online

  The Hard Way

  Jill Sanders

  Contents

  Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Also by Jill Sanders

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  DIGITAL ISBN: 978-1-945100-30-7

  PRINT ISBN: 979-8-511661-96-4

  Copyright © 2021 Grayton Press

  All rights reserved.

  Copyeditor: Erica Ellis – inkdeepediting.com

  * * *

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Summary

  Brent has spent the last few years of his life in denial that his shithead parents had left him and his little sister all alone in the world. Alone and broke. Naturally, after their sudden death, he’d done what any guy would have done. He drank, screwed anything that moved, and let his little sister take care of him. But then, things had changed. He had changed. Now, he knew that it was past time he woke up and grew up. Which meant returning to Haven, Montana, and facing the music.

  Mel has been trying hard to leave her past behind her, keeping her head down, working hard, and staying out of sight. She’d already started over once, and she wasn’t about to screw up this time. After taking the first job available in a small town, the last thing she’d expected was to fall hard for her new boss.

  Chapter 1

  Brent stood over the grave of his parents on his twenty-first birthday and silently cursed them. Life as he knew it was officially over. When he felt his sister Dylan take his hand, he couldn’t help thinking that it felt like a weight, holding him down. He loved Dylan, really, he did. As far as little sisters went, she was cool. But knowing that he would now be responsible for her future caused him to wince.

  Why hadn’t his parents been more like parents and less like cool older friends who liked to party and hang with their children? They had left their two kids totally unprepared for life and destitute, which made him even more pissed.

  Their vacation to Cancun had started out like all their other family vacations. By day two, he was missing his then girlfriend, Tilly. He was horny and had been eyeing a cute girl his age who was staying at the same resort. He didn’t want to cheat on Tilly, not really, but if the pretty brunette kept giving him looks, well, he was game.

  But when the boat bringing them back from their snorkeling trip that day had blown up, everything had changed. Thankfully, he and Dylan hadn’t been injured too badly, aside from some cuts and burns they’d received when they’d been thrown clear of the explosion.

  Their parents and several of the others on the vessel hadn’t been so lucky.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Dylan whispered to him.

  He squeezed her hand and looked down at her.

  “Now, we go home.” He wrapped an arm around her. “Just the two of us. That’s how it’s going to be.”

  For the first few months, he did his best, or at least tried. But nothing he did stopped the flow of money out of their accounts. First, there had been the funeral charges. Just having his parents’ bodies brought back to the States had drained their savings accounts. Then there were the house payments, insurance payments, and his outstanding college fees. He dropped out quickly after seeing that bill.

  Then he’d received the call telling him that his parents had left behind massive debt and, before they’d taken that fateful trip, his mother’s car had been repossessed. He’d thought she had left it at her work or at the airport. His father’s car was taken away shortly after that.

  If they hadn’t sold their childhood home, along with several other large items that their father had purchased, such as the boat that sat in storage and the Jet Ski that they’d only taken out on the lake twice, he and Dylan would have been destitute.

  But a little over a year later, they were in the same position anyway. Thankfully, he still had his truck. He had gotten a dead-end job and had started to give up on life. Drinking helped him drown his sorrows. So did fucking every pretty woman that batted an eyelash at him. He’d also let his anger loose on any guy that looked at him sideways. Which is how he’d ended up in jail that first time. By the third time, he understood that Dylan had pretty much given up on him.

  He still remembered a fight he’d had with her a while back. She’d actually compared him to their father.

  Just how the fuck was he like their old man? They were nothing alike. Carl McCaw had been a banker. The son of a banker and grandson of a banker. Brent was pretty sure that if his dad had lived much longer, he would have convinced Brent to go into banking as well.

  Not that any of his family had owned their own bank. No, they worked for men or women who had all the money.

  The fact that Carl, third generation banker, didn’t know how to balance his own personal budget said everything you needed to know about the man. In everything his dad had done, he’d been selfish first and foremost.

  He’d push a car payment or two back to take the vacation he wanted, then claim that the trip was well worth it. Bills would pile up, and he’d spend a few months working harder to catch up, only to throw it all away again on the next thing he wanted.

  Brent was nothing like that. His bank account had sat empty since the day he’d paid the last cent of his parents’ debt off.

  In a last-ditch effort to make a living, he’d allowed his sister to talk him into moving to nowheresville Montana for jobs. Dylan had told him that she’d read somewhere that the small town of Haven was desperate for workers.

  The moment he’d driven into town, he’d known nothing would change for him there. The first sign was that the small town had almost as many strip clubs as it did gas stations. Then he’d met Darla. From the moment he’d laid eyes on the pretty blonde, he’d been infatuated. Then again, it could have been her double Ds and watching how she worked the pole at the strip club. Plus, some of the draw was the fact that he’d never dated a stripper before.

  Months later, he’d caught Darla poking holes in the condoms in his nightstand. That had been the wake-up call he’d needed to break things off with her.

  That hadn’t gone over great since Darla had been both drunk and high at the time. Then she’d had the gall to yell at him and say that he didn’t know how bad her life was.

  But the final thing that had opened his eyes for good was the night of his friend Jake’s stag party. He and a bunch of his work buddies had ended up in the drunk tank.

  Instead of bailing him out, Dylan had left him in jail all night. Normally, after he called her, she’d come post his bond and take him home. This time, he’d waited the entire night out with his buddies and had to w
alk to work the next day.

  When she’d showed up, he’d grabbed her arm. He knew he was being a little rough with her, but damn it, he was tired and pissed that he didn’t get a shower before having to come into work.

  “Oh, good, you found your own ride.” Dylan had smiled at him as if it was the most natural thing in the world to leave him to rot in a cell.

  “Dylan, why the hell did you leave me there?” he’d asked.

  Her eyes had narrowed. “I don’t know, Brent. Why the hell did you allow two of your idiot friends to break into my place and scare me to death?” Oh, right, he’d forgotten that his buddies had tried to kidnap him the night before for the party. He winced remembering how scared Dylan had been. “Why didn’t you give a damn about me when someone broke into the office and knocked me unconscious? You didn’t even stop by the clinic to see if I was okay!” she screamed in his face. Over the past few years, she’d yelled at him a lot. He could take that. But then she lowered her voice, took a step back, crossed her arms over her chest, and gave him the look that broke him. “You’ve been less like a brother to me every year since the accident. I’m tired of playing parent to you. I need to focus on my own life. I don’t have the strength anymore to raise you.” He felt his heart skip and drop in his chest. “I can’t keep caring about someone who doesn’t care about me.” She turned to go, but once again, he placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her, this time more lightly. Tears stung his eyes, and something came over him. Something surfaced that he’d believed had been long dead, killed the day their parents had been.

  Without thinking, he let his heart split open and his mouth for once finally caught up. He loved Dylan. Probably more than anyone else on the planet. She’d been there, by his side, through thick and thin. Not just after their parents had died, but long before.

  He remembered the day she was born so well, even though he’d only been three. He’d fallen for her then and still felt the same way. He knew he’d fucked up. It was about damn time he let her be happy, and he could see that the man she was currently dating was making her so. He figured he’d get the hell out of the way, since he was the one thing making her unhappy.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her softly. “I… didn’t know…” He shook his head. “I fucked up. No one asked me if I was prepared to take on such big responsibilities at such a young age.” He closed his eyes. “I’ve been pissed at our folks.” His eyes opened, the pain that had built up totally exposed to Dylan. “They should have made better choices. They should have planned for something like this. Instead, they continued living like…”

  “Children?” Dylan finished for him. He nodded in agreement.

  “I was thrust into adulthood when I was only twenty-one. I didn’t know what to do to make house payments. Hell, they didn’t either.” At this point, he released the secrets that he’d been shielding from her. “They were months behind on the house payment when they died,” he admitted.

  “What?” Dylan looked at him with surprise.

  “One of the cars had already been repossessed before we took the trip.” He sighed, really wishing for a shower and some coffee. “Dad’s car was next. Thankfully, they had enough life insurance policies to pay his truck off.”

  “Brent.” Dylan reached up and touched his shoulder. He didn’t want her pity. Hell, that’s why he’d kept most of this from her in the first place. She was the smart one. All his life, he’d known she’d make something of herself. Then his parents had gone and fucked that up.

  “I wanted you to go to college.” He closed his eyes. He’d always thought she would. “Hell, everyone knew I wasn’t smart, but you…” He smiled down at her. “Wile E. Coyote.” He smiled at his old nickname for her. “Super genius,” he finished. “I had always expected that you’d go to Harvard or Yale. Then… they left us with a mess, and nothing mattered anymore.” His shoulders slumped. “I fucked everything up. Just like they did.” His stomach twisted, and he knew there was only one thing he could do at this point to make things right.

  “Hey.” Dylan moved closer. “You’ve gotten us this far.” She wrapped her arms around him for the first time in years, which broke him even more. “You can go the rest of the way. I’ll help you.”

  He swallowed the pain. “No.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to drag you down with me. You’ve got a fresh start here.” He glanced around and saw the big brick building with McGowan Enterprises in fancy letters hanging above the door. “You’ll be better off if I leave.”

  “What about your job?” Dylan asked.

  He thought back to a possible job opportunity his buddies had mentioned the night before. “I have a chance to transfer to a job site in North Dakota for the McGowans.” Hell, if he had to, he’d beg Trey McGowan, the man Dylan was dating, to transfer him. “I think I’ll take it. Jake is heading there after Seth’s wedding. I’ve told him I’ll drive. I’ve already packed,” he lied.

  So, after work that day, he’d walked home, packed quickly, and within a week, he’d driven to North Dakota to start his new life.

  In the first few months, he’d cleaned up, stopped drinking all together, started saving his money, and never looked back. That’s all it had taken. Just knowing that he’d hurt his sister as much as his parents had hurt him.

  Two years later…

  * * *

  Brent sat at the table and looked down at the piece of paper sitting in front of him. What the hell had he just done? How the hell had he ended up here?

  It was just chance that he’d been there that night. A friend of a friend had gotten the flu, which meant the guy’s poker night had been short one person. Since Brent owed that friend, he’d been talked into filling in. This particular group of McGowan Enterprises employees had been gathering since they’d all met up in Haven. And since he was part of that main group, he figured he’d sit in. He didn’t have anything better to do that night, anyway.

  The last thing he’d expected was to win and win big. Looking down at the deed, he suddenly felt a surge of excitement. He’d been meaning to return to Haven, Montana.

  After all, Dylan and Trey’s baby was due in a few weeks. It would be nice to be close to his first nephew or niece, right?

  Then a spike of adrenaline rushed through him. Here it was, his first chance to be his own boss. He folded the paper up, tucked it into his jacket pocket, and left the tiny hole-in-the-wall bar with a new spring in his step.

  The following morning, he waltzed into his boss’s office, set down his resignation, and start driving to his new future.

  Less than three days later, he was standing on a side street in Haven, Montana, again, in front of an old two-story brick building. The building had obviously had its heyday back in the early eighteen hundreds.

  All of the windows were boarded up and several of the outside walls were covered in graffiti. The sign for the place was falling off. Instead of reading Hardwood Way, the sign was down to just saying Hard Way.

  He couldn’t remember ever seeing the building before, and that somehow caused the scene in front of him to sink in a little further. He’d just given up the steadiest high-paying job he’d ever had for a money pit.

  When a car honked, he turned around to see his brother-in-law Trey stop directly behind hm.

  “You’re back?” Trey jumped out of his truck, leaving it running in the middle of the road—a sure sign of the low traffic the street had—and headed his way. “I didn’t know you were back.” Trey gave him a one arm man-hug. Then he leaned back and narrowed his eyes. “Does Dylan know you are back?”

  “No,” he answered quickly. “It was kind of last minute.”

  Trey chuckled. “Good, because I’m not the one who’s going to be murdered today.” Trey slapped him on the shoulder, then pulled out his phone.

  “Do you have to?” he asked. It wasn’t that he didn’t want his sister to know that he was back. He’d just hoped he’d have some good news to tell her first. He glanced sideways at his new place and hel
d in a groan.

  “Done.” Trey stuffed his phone back in his pocket. “So, what are you doing?” Trey glanced at the building and then back at him.

  “I’m…” Maybe if he told Trey first, telling his sister he’d done a stupid thing would come easier. “She’s all mine.” He motioned to the building.

  Trey’s eyebrows rose. “You… bought the Hardwood Way Inn?”

  “It’s an inn?” Brent looked back at the building once more.

  “It used to be.” Trey laughed. “About a hundred years before we were born. So, does this mean you’re back in Haven for good?”

  He was so focused on assessing the building that he absently nodded to Trey.

  “Your sister is going to be so happy,” Trey replied, then he looked at the old building. “She’s not much to look at. What are you going to do with her?”

  “I thought it was a bar,” he answered. “I wouldn’t know what to do with an inn. How many rooms are there?”

  “Two,” Trey said with a chuckle. “The rest of the buildings out back burned down in…”—he tilted his head— “the nineteen eighties.”

  He turned to Trey, just as his sister’s car turned into the parking lot of the building. “So, it’s not an inn?”

  “Not anymore. But around here, nothing ever changes,” he said with a shrug.

  Trey walked over and helped his sister out of her car. Dylan looked the same, with the exception of the wide belly and some baby weight.