Chapter One
Failure.
Kimberly Wilson set the pictures from last Christmas into the box and taped up the lid. It shouldn’t have taken her this long to put the remnants of her marriage away, but she’d been hesitant to admit her…
Failure.
She was the first Wilson in four generations to get divorced.
Sure, it had been almost a year since her ex-husband had told her he wasn’t happy and filed for divorce, but this was the first holiday she’d been without him in eight years. It was strange, suddenly being alone.
When her phone lit up, she sipped her glass of red wine and narrowed her eyes at her dad’s name across the caller ID. Her family had been a little too overbearing while she’d gone through the divorce proceedings, lawyers, court, all that.
She couldn’t afford the payments on the house she’d gotten in the divorce. Hell, she couldn’t even afford the glass of wine in her grasp. She’d chosen the most expensive bottle from the wine cellar and opened it. This was glass number two, and she was feeling it, but you know? Sometimes a girl just needed to lose herself in a buzz when her life circled the toilet.
She set the glass down and hummed off-tune the words to the song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas as she shoved the box into the pile with the others.
When she’d gotten married, she’d thought herself so lucky to land a lawyer, but throughout the divorce, she’d cursed every minute of his law school.
Brayden had won everything, and she’d lost everything.
The worst part? Kimberly couldn’t even hate him. He wasn’t evil. He wasn’t trying to ruin her whole life. To be fair, he’d bought everything, and he was only keeping what was his. She’d gone from the bosom of her wealthy parents into the arms of a wealthy man without a thing to her name, and that’s how she’d found herself in this awful predicament.
She straightened her spine and looked around the huge home. The walls were white as well as the cabinets. The counters were the color of snow. The pictures on the wall were black and white. She’d never added color because, when she and Braden had moved in here, it had felt homey enough. But now, staring at the sterile walls, chills lifted the hairs on her arms. It was like a museum in here, but with no artwork to break up the coldness. Everything was simple with clean lines and cost a fortune.
She’d had everything once.
When Kimberly sank onto the couch, she sloshed a drop of red wine onto the cushion.
“Shoot,” she whispered in horror. Stains were not acceptable. Only perfection.
She rushed to the kitchen, set down her glass, and ripped paper towels off the stainless-steel holder. In a rush, she ran them under the cold water and bolted for the couch. She had to fix it before the stain set in!
She scrubbed.
And scrubbed.
The wine stain smeared. It got bigger.
A tear fell on her cheek as she scrubbed.
With a gasp, Kimberly flinched back and rubbed the tear off in a hurry. She was a Wilson. Wilson’s were strong. She was above this unsavory emotion. She was above crying over a man who had moved onto someone new so easily.
He wouldn’t care that she was struggling. Braden had moved out almost a year ago, and he seemed happier without her. And she couldn’t blame him. A sob wracked her as she scrubbed the stupid stain. Unacceptable. Unacceptable.
Unacceptable blemish on the pristine white couch.
Unacceptable blemish on her family’s good name.
Failure.
With a scream of frustration, she threw the shredded paper towels at the window, but they fluttered down pitifully, several feet short. Shoulders heaving, she threw the expensive throw pillows, too. At least those made it to the windows.
How did her sister, Leslie, do this? How had she gone from living with money to living like she did? On nothing. Why was she always smiling as if her life wasn’t utter rubbish?
How?
How could she be happy with nothing?
Tears streaming down her cheeks, she connected a call to Leslie to demand she tell her the secrets to being happy with trash.
“Come to the shop.” There was no hello, no greeting. Her sister just said, “Come to the shop.”
“W-what?”
“I know you’re picking up the last of your boxes from the house today. Come over.”
Kimberly dashed her hands across her wet cheeks. “We aren’t close.” She didn’t know why she said that. It was just a truth that tumbled from her lips. “Let me disappear in peace.”
“We might not be close, but we are family. And you need to disappear, Kimberly. The old you needs to give the new you room to grow.”
The line died, and Kimberly looked in bafflement at the phone screen as it faded to black. Leslie had hung up on her.
She could call her other two sisters. Beth and Marie would take her out tonight and talk trash about Braden, buy her drinks, and then…go back to their perfect lives. But she would still be here. Stuck being her. Still sitting at rock bottom, waiting for her world to end.
But Leslie had fallen far away from the family tree, and for some reason, Kimberly wanted the company of the black sheep.
Who could understand her better than someone who had learned to live on nothing?
Chapter Two
When Kimberly pulled up to 1010 Pine Sap Way, she didn’t understand what she was witnessing. Her sister’s paint-your-own-pottery shop was closed with all the lights off, and in the back of the parking lot behind the building, the tiny house Leslie had lived in was adorned with moving boxes out front.
Kieran’s ugly work truck was an eyesore in front, and he and his brother, Burke, were loading boxes into the bed of it.
Kimberly gunned it and pulled in fast to a parking space near the tiny house, then threw it into park and stabbed the concrete with her high heel. Whatever Leslie wanted, Kimberly just wanted to get this over with.
Kimberly’s perpetually-defensive snide remark got clogged in her throat when she saw Leslie, though. Her youngest sister was standing in the doorway of the hideous tiny-home, staring at her with such sadness in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Kimberly asked. Clearly her wild pet cat, Turtle, had worms or something.
“I’m moving out,” Leslie said simply, her bundle of dark, wild curls lifting in the cold breeze. It was the day after Christmas, and Wyoming winters were brutal.
The two lion shifter brothers were quiet when Kimberly looked to them for an explanation, so she asked her sister, “You’re moving in with Kieran?”
“We’re getting married in two months. Of course, it’s time to move in with him. His home has become special to my heart.”
“Okaaaay. So why are you sad?” Kimberly asked, coming to a stop in front of Leslie.
“Because Dad just told me what you’re doing. You can’t move in with Mom and Dad.”
Kimberly narrowed her eyes and prepared to verbally annihilate Leslie. She didn’t like to be told what to do. Not now. Not ever. She parted her lips to insult her black sheep of a sister, but what Leslie said next stunned her into silence.
“I want you to move in here.”
What? Kimberly dragged her gaze around the tiny house. It was no bigger than a shed with a loft. Four hundred square feet—maybe.