48 pages • 1 hour read
Heartless
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Cade”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The novel opens at Wishing Well Ranch in Chestnut Springs. Thirty-eight-year-old Cade Eaton; his father, Harvey; and his future sister-in-law, Summer Hamilton; are interviewing a woman to be a nanny for Cade’s five-year-old son, Luke, over the summer. After the applicant leaves, Harvey and Summer scold Cade for his bad attitude. Cade needs someone to watch Luke because he is busy with the ranch, but he feels frustrated with the hiring process. He hasn’t liked any of the applicants and doesn’t want Harvey to take on the babysitting responsibilities. Cade suggests that Summer watch Luke, but she is too busy running her own business. Cade promises to be more flexible if she finds him a nanny just like her. Summer agrees.
Later, Cade stands in line at the coffee shop. Watching an attractive woman order in front of him, he tries to remember when he last had sex. He hears the woman laugh and feels aroused. When she drops something, Cade picks it up for her, and they are both embarrassed to realize that the item is a pair of her underwear. The woman winks at him and tells him that he can keep them. Cade reels, overwhelmed by her beauty and surprised by her sass.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Willa”
Twenty-five-year-old Willa Grant tells her best friend, Summer, about the underwear incident at the coffee shop. The two friends are spending time together at Summer’s house in Chestnut Springs. Willa is glad to see Summer again and regrets not making more time to visit her and her rancher husband, Rhett Eaton. She tells Summer that her brother is closing the bar where she works for the summer because he wants to work on his music. She wishes that she could “spend the summer traveling from horse show to horse show,” but her horse, Tux, “need[s] surgery” (14). She is living on a trust fund and doesn’t need to work, but she isn’t sure how to spend her time off. Summer suggests that she act as a nanny for Rhett’s nephew, Luke, for the next two months. Willa doesn’t have experience with children, but she agrees to the offer because she wants to spend more time with Summer.
Willa and Summer drive across Wishing Well Ranch to Cade’s house so that Willa can meet Cade and Luke. Cade is immediately skeptical of Willa when he recognizes her from the coffee shop. However, he lets her and Summer take Luke out to play.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Cade”
Cade sits on the couch to read after everyone leaves but finds himself distracted by thoughts of Willa and Luke. He doesn’t know if he can trust Willa and is worried about his son. Ever since Luke’s mother, Talia, left Cade, he and Luke have been on their own. Cade has also been the responsible one in the family ever since his mother’s death when he was eight. Now, Rhett arrives, interrupting Cade’s thoughts. Cade gets annoyed when Rhett reveals that Luke is alone with Willa. Rhett assures him that the two are fine. Sitting on the porch, Cade hears Willa encouraging Luke to climb a tree. When Luke tells Willa that his mother moved away, Willa says that his mother is missing out; overhearing this, Cade is touched.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Willa”
Willa feels sad when Luke mentions his absent mother. She has loving parents and cannot imagine growing up without a mother. She helps Luke out of the tree and climbs up a few branches per his request. When they emerge from the tree, they run into Cade and Rhett. Willa immediately notices how attractive Cade is, but she dismisses the thought as she and Cade talk about the nannying gig. This isn’t the summer that Willa planned for herself, but she is used to spending her time moving from place to place. She hasn’t been interested in settling down yet, and this gig could work out very well for her.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Cade”
Cade waits on the porch for Willa to arrive with her bags. She’ll be staying at his house for the next two months. He is shocked when she pulls up early. Cade helps her carry her bags inside. After they put Luke to bed, they discuss the terms of the nannying arrangement. Willa gets upset when Cade implies that he doesn’t like or trust her, and she insists that she won’t spend the summer “living with a woman hater” (47). Cade calms down, and the two work out their differences. Willa promises to keep Luke safe and keep Cade updated on what they’re doing while he’s ranching.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Willa”
The next morning, Willa and Luke make pancakes together. Then, Willa agrees to go to the store and buy lettuce so that they can throw it out of her Jeep while driving down the back road. At the store, a woman recognizes Luke and asks if he is okay being with a stranger. Luke reveals that the woman was a nannying applicant and that Cade didn’t like her. In the car, Willa teaches Luke about keeping his thoughts to himself in public so that he doesn’t hurt people’s feelings. Then, they drive down the road, tossing out the lettuce and laughing.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Cade”
Willa and Cade make dinner and talk about Willa’s first day of taking care of Luke. Luke reveals that they threw the lettuce out of the car, which Cade didn’t want him to do. Willa gently reprimands Luke for not being honest with her and for lying about the fact that his father has forbidden this game. Cade notices how good she is with Luke.
After Cade puts Luke to bed, he takes a soak in the hot tub on the porch. Willa appears, unaware that Cade would be outside. Cade invites her to stay. She joins him in the hot tub, and they start chatting. Cade is shocked when Willa reveals that she has never worked with kids before. Then, Willa reveals that her father is a famous musician. Cade agrees to overlook her inexperience with nannying if she gets him an autograph. Meanwhile, he thinks about his attraction to Willa and the state of his life ever since Talia left.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Willa”
Willa is making dinner when Cade comes home from work. He insists that she doesn’t have to cook for them. Later, he interrupts her alone time, demanding to know why she did his laundry and reminding her that she isn’t his maid. However, Cade lightens up later when he sees Willa and Luke playing together.
A few nights later, Willa attends a family dinner with Cade at Harvey’s house. Summer and Cade’s brothers, Rhett and Beau, are there, too. Their family friend Jasper Gervais, a famous hockey player, also joins. He grew up with the Eatons and is like their brother. When Harvey makes a sexual innuendo about leaf-blowing the lawn, Cade dismisses himself from the table. Worried, Willa follows him outside to check on him and is shocked to discover that he is laughing uncontrollably. She hasn’t seen him do anything but scowl since they met. They continue Harvey’s joke and keep laughing together. Willa notices how much more attractive Cade looks when he smiles.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Cade”
Cade and Willa rejoin the table. They smile at each other, still amused by the joke. Cade hasn’t felt this lighthearted in some time. After dinner, Harvey offers to watch Luke so that everyone else can go out for drinks. Cade, Willa, Summer, Rhett, Beau, and Jasper head out to a bar called The Railspur. Cade’s friend Lance Henderson appears and hassles Cade about participating in the weekend rodeos again. Cade insists that he is too busy with Luke and the ranch to compete anymore. Then, he notices Lance looking at Willa and asks Willa to dance, using the request as a way to escape the interaction with Lance. On the dance floor, Cade is overwhelmed by desire when he finds himself so close to Willa. Suddenly irritated by his feelings, he leaves the dance floor, and another series of men ask Willa to dance.
Chapters 1-9 Analysis
Cade Eaton and Willa Grant’s whimsical meet-cute and his subsequent hiring of her as a nanny act as the inciting events of the novel. As their early interactions reveal glimpses of Cade’s lonely lifestyle and past losses, their mutual attraction fuels the unspoken tension in the air, and Cade invites Willa into his life despite his hesitations about her nannying experience. The novel thus uses Cade’s personal conflict to draw the two protagonists together. Their resulting arrangement, in which Willa agrees to become a nanny for the summer, introduces the novel’s use of the forced-proximity trope. The protagonists’ differences also draw upon the well-worn dynamics of the enemies-to-lovers trope. Because Cade has been looking for an “uninteresting, responsible, asexual nun who also wants to do fun things with an active little boy” (25), the vivacious and playful Willa is a far cry from his ideal candidate for the nannying job, and his frustration with Willa incites additional conflict between the two protagonists. Cade’s status as a single father also raises unspoken questions about the absence of Luke’s mother, and his gruffness with Willa makes it clear that The Impact of Trauma on Intimate Relationships plays a significant role in his distrustful demeanor. Ultimately, the two must overcome their differences and work together for Luke’s sake, and the boy soon proves to have a unifying influence on them both.
The start of Cade and Willa’s working arrangement also introduces the novel’s explorations of The Search for Home and Belonging. For Willa, staying at Wishing Well Ranch for the summer offers her a temporary sense of stability. Unlike her family and friends, Willa has “always flown by the seat of [her] pants. No idea where [she’s] going, just kind of […] along for the ride” (38). The use of clichés in this passage and the allusions to flying and riding convey the full extent of Willa’s carefree nature. She is not interested in settling down because she feels that life “is more exciting” when it’s unplanned (38). Willa is therefore at a transitional, interstitial phase of her adult life. At the age of 25, she is still experimenting and exploring before she chooses where she wants to be and what she wants to do. By agreeing to be Luke’s nanny, she gains a temporary resting place where she can reflect on her future and decide what she wants and needs. In this way, Wishing Well Ranch acts as a symbol of home and belonging. Its rural location is warm and welcoming, and the ranch is run by a close-knit family. As Willa grows to appreciate the people and the lifestyle, the serenity of the picturesque landscape promises to have a profound impact on the course of Willa’s life.
Meanwhile, Cade’s regard for himself and his life is defined by his traumatic experiences. Cade is not only a single father; he is also still healing from the emotional wounds of his ex-wife Talia’s infidelity and abandonment, as well as his lingering grief over his mother’s death when he was still a child. Cade is perpetually “on extra high alert” because he “always feel[s] like [he’s] looking out for someone. For everyone” (27). Ever since his mother died, he has had “the weight of the world on [his] shoulders” (27). This metaphor conveys the overwhelming and immobilizing nature of Cade’s adult responsibilities, and while he acknowledges that he puts much of this pressure on himself, he also feels incapable of casting off his anxieties and embracing life in a more carefree manner. These ingrained traits render him a foil to the lighthearted Willa, and the author engineers this fundamental contrast to take advantage of the conventional idea that “opposites attract.” Therefore, although Cade is still trying to come to grips with his past experiences, Willa’s lighthearted presence in his home foreshadows a range of deep emotional changes for Cade.
Cade and Willa are still getting used to each other in these opening chapters of the novel, but the more time they spend together, the more they learn to tolerate and accept each other’s quirks. The scenes in which Cade and Willa take a soak in the hot tub and talk and laugh at the Eaton family dinner mark distinct turning points in their burgeoning relationship, and Willa’s positive effect on Cade highlights The Transformative Power of Love. Throughout these scenes, Cade lets his steely demeanor slip and begins to show Willa his true self, and it is clear that Willa is already unconsciously showing Cade that with love, he might one day find a way to heal from his past trauma. At the same time, these scenes foreshadow the fact that Cade will teach Willa important lessons about the power of home, family, and belonging.
Unlock all 48 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
