She glanced out the window at the pure ice still falling from the sky. Snot nuggets. What was she going to do?
She passed her credit card across the desk for him to swipe. A couple hundred bucks would put her close to her credit limit, but it couldn't be helped.
She signed the credit slip and was turning away from the counter when she had a thought.
She turned back. "Do you know anybody who buys antique tractors?" She opened the photos app on her burner phone and showed him the few pictures of Cord's tractors. She'd snuck outside in that last ten minutes on the ranch and snapped them.
"Callie Rae in Honey Bend—that's the next town to the west—buys and sells tractors like those. She makes a pretty penny when they're fixed up real nice."
Molly glanced over her shoulder to find Cord was still on the phone, sounding furious now. She turned back to Rick and smiled. "Would you do me a favor? When he"—she threw her thumb to indicate Cord—"comes up here, will you tell him about Callie Rae? He's selling his ranch, and I'm sure he could use the money."
She put her wallet away, threw her backpack over her shoulder, and wandered up the nearest aisle toward the window that faced Main Street.
What was she supposed to do now? Stranded in the middle of an ice storm? Cord had made it clear she wasn't welcome back at the ranch. She'd rather not pay to have her truck towed into town. In this weather, a tow truck was likely to slide off the road.
Where was she supposed to stay? She hadn't seen a hotel or bed-and-breakfast in town. Not that she could afford one.
Behind her, she heard Cord's voice as he spoke to Rick in low tones.
Outside the window, someone was coming up the sidewalk. A man. Tall. She couldn't make out his features in the haze of ice and the glare of the streetlight right behind him, but something in the way he moved...
Cord said something. He sounded closer, but she couldn't tear her gaze away from the man getting closer to the hardware store with each step.
Panic coiled in her belly, and she froze.
Fight or flight?
Flight—
Someone touched her elbow, and she reacted by instinct, shoving away the touch. She raised frantic eyes and saw Cord back up a step.
"What…?" he started to ask.
She couldn't breathe.
She had to get out of there. She had to run.
And then she was out of time as the man on the sidewalk pushed through the door and stepped inside the store.
She shouldered into Cord, trying to escape, before she registered that the stranger was at least two decades older than Toby and looked nothing like him.
It wasn't Toby.
Not Toby.
Not Toby.
Her heartbeat seemed to pound the words into her skull. She couldn't stop trembling.
"Molly." Cord's voice shook her out of the haze of panic and confusion. "You all right?"
Molly gulpeda breath so big it must've burned her lungs, but Cord didn't think that was why her eyes were bright with tears.
The guy who'd entered the hardware store—the guy who'd spooked her—barely gave them a glance before he approached the counter and moved out of their line of sight.
"I need to—" Molly gasped the words as if she couldn't quite breathe. And then she fled, running out the door into the icy wind.
Like a stupid sap, he followed her. Same way he'd followed her into the store. The closer they'd gotten to town, the more jumpy she'd been. The way she'd darted glances up and down the street after she’d gotten out of the truck...
