He pulled off the road, as he didn’t really have a driveway here. “All right,” he drawled, bringing out his Texan accent. “Go check it, then.” He nodded toward her side of the truck, where the RV now waited for her “expert inspection.”
Briar glared at him, then turned to open her door. She sucked in a breath and recoiled away from the door. “What is that?”
Tarr leaned forward and tried to see past her. “What?”
“It’s a porcupine.” She gasped again and swung around to look at him. “Tarr, the door to your RV is swinging open, and I swear that porcupine just came out from inside it….”
“No,” he said, immediately dismissing the idea. Then he saw the way the door slammed against the side of the RV. His pulse dropped to the soles of his cowboy boots. “Stay here.” He unbuckled his seat belt and left the truck running to go check on his temporary dwelling.
You can’t stay here, ran through his mind in a multitude of voices. His. Tucker’s. Briar’s. His momma’s. God’s.
He saw the dark brown animal as it ducked around the front corner of the RV. Tarr came to a complete stop, his heartbeat hammering up in his ears now. The last of the quills on the chunky porcupine disappeared, and Tarr didn’t dare take another step.
The door to the RV was open, and he didn’t know how that had happened. Porcupines didn’t have hands that he knew of.
“Come back,” Briar called, her voice joining the whipping wind swirling around Tarr, through his head, down into his soul. “Tarr, come back to the truck. It’s starting to snow.”
That got him to look up into the sky, where yes, Mother Nature had started sending down white stuff through the gray sky.
He turned and went back to the truck, catapulting himself up and into the cab. He slammed the door and reached for his phone just as Briar said, “You should come stay with me tonight.”
Tarr froze again, though his mind still moved a million miles a minute.
Briar reached over and gently extracted his phone from his hands. “Take me home, and I’ll start getting my second bedroom ready for you. Then you can come back here, pack a bag, and then….”
She shrugged and didn’t finish the sentence. But then again, she didn’t need to. Tarr couldn’t stay in the RV if wild animals were coming and going at will, if there was smoke damage, if he couldn’t stay warm, and if he couldn’t eat or bathe or anything.
“Fine,” he grumbled, and he had to turn on his windshield wipers before he could back away from this spot of land that seemed to be betraying him at every turn.
six
Briar removed her current work-in-progress from the easel and moved to stash it in the bedroom closet. The easel folded up easily, and she put that away too. She loved the light coming in the west windows, though the storm had turned the day mostly the color of cold rocks.
She sighed as she turned back to face the couch, which stood against the wall just inside the door. Briar loved the dark leather, and a slip of weariness pulled through her as she reached to remove the back-rest cushions.
The full-sized couch only had two, and she set them on either side of the couch, then started pulling off the seat cushions as well. Straining, she lifted and pulled out the metal frame holding the air mattress.
The couch in the living room could be folded flat to make a double bed too, as the previous owner of this farm has used this cabin as a guest house for his family before he’d hired her.
His family had mostly stopped visiting by then, and Clive had been going to see his daughters and stay with their families instead of them coming to the farm.
A wave of nostalgia that made no sense to her swept over Briar. Clive Hollowell had been incredibly kind to her, though,and he’d always treated her like his own daughter. She smiled fondly and reached for the remote to inflate the air mattress.
“More like a granddaughter,” she murmured to herself. He’d been one of the first people in Briar’s life who’d taken one look at her, smiled, and drew her into a hug. Even now, she could feel his arms around her, telling her she’d be safe here, and that she could move into this cabin.
Briar had treasured it every day since.
“But he left too.” She supposed she couldn’t blame him for passing away, and she didn’t. Not really. His death had simply been a reminder that life was constantly in motion, and it wouldn’t slow down or stop just because Briar wanted it to.
She had carved out a few years of peace and serenity here, but she’d been feeling a great change coming for several months now. Since the coyote attack, really.
“Since Tarr,” she whispered.
The tall, dark, delicious cowboy hadn’t arrived at the cabin yet, though he’d dropped her off a couple of hours ago. He’d texted only a few minutes after that, saying he wanted to go get some groceries and wondered if she needed anything.
She’d given him a few essentials, because if Tarr would bring her eggs, milk, and English muffins, why not? Then maybe he’d make her the breakfast sandwiches he once had after staying over to make sure she took her medication on time and wasn’t in too much pain.
He made a mean sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich, and Briar needed to get her chub of breakfast sausage out of the freezer. She made up the bed with navy blue sheets and a blue, white, and gray-checkered comforter.
