The farm seemed different tonight.Perhaps because it wasn’t all lit up with a yuletide bonfire and half the town gathered around. There was no band with live music or scent of cinnamon and clove in the air. Even though Hodge Podge and the barn for purchasing trees were lit up with twinkling lights as people wandered between the two, it still seemed more subdued, maybe even a little lonelier than I was expecting.
For the first time in maybe forever, I wondered what the reality of living and working on such a large farm was like. I’d thought I knew. At eighteen, I thought I knew everything. At twenty-eight, I realized I knew nothing beyond my own experience.
Glancing across the darkened cab of the old Ford, I gazed at Archer more openly than I’d allowed myself in so very long.
It wasn’t his physical looks I was interested in right now but more the things I couldn’t see beneath them. What had it been like all these years as the man in charge of such a large farm? How much pressure did he feel to keep his father’s legacy alivewhile also making it his own? I’d heard from more than one source that he kept to himself quite often and didn’t leave the property much.
I’d been surprised by that.
But here, now, watching him drive somberly along the winding road that led deeper into the acres that made up Hodge Farm, I could see how that might be true. How a man who’d once been open became more closed off.
“It’s snowing,” he remarked quietly. He hadn’t even looked at me once since we’d climbed into this truck and sped down the road. He kept his eyes ahead, actively scanning the road as we went, on the lookout for his dog.
“He hasn’t been out long enough to freeze. Aussies have lots of fur.”
He seemed startled, as though he’d forgotten I was there, but for once, I wasn’t offended because I knew he had more important things to focus on.
“I’m going to park up here,” he told me, gesturing to nothing but land and trees. “He likes to run out here sometimes, and I was out here earlier, tagging and cutting trees. Maybe he followed my scent.”
I nodded. “Good idea.”
Archer slowed the truck and stopped, not bothering to pull to the side of the dirt road. “Snow’s gonna start sticking soon,” he murmured.
It was already blanketing the landscape. The dirt road would definitely be next.
“We’ll find him,” I assured him, noting the tightness in his jaw.
He glanced at me then, our eyes connecting through the dark. “I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to him.”
I leaned forward to lay my hand on his arm. “It won’t. Dogs are smart, and Marlowe knows this land.”
He glanced from where I touched him to my face, his eyes more of a caress than a physical touch. “I’m glad you’re here.”
My stomach tightened, the whispered words so warm in this snow-filled night. The loneliness I’d felt before seemed farther away, far beyond the halo of light the headlights on the old truck created.
Things I’d been holding back for years bubbled up inside me, pushing past my esophagus and coating my tongue. How much I missed him. How sorry I was that I’d stayed away when his father died. How, no matter how hard I tried, there was just no getting over him.
That even though my love for him was one-sided, it would forever remain.
But I didn’t say any of it.
I did what I should have done all those years ago. I put my own thoughts and feelings on the back burner and chose his needs over mine.
“Me too,” I replied simply. “Now let’s go find him.”
I turned away, but he caught my shoulder. “Wait.”
I turned back, heart thundering because of all the things I held back. Archer leaned in, that pine-soaked scent of his twirling beneath my nose and the scruff on his jaw so close I could practically feel it brush my skin.
Breath catching, I froze in anticipation, brain scrambling more with every centimeter he leaned. The latch on the glove box snapped me out of my stupor, and I blinked, noting that he wasn’t even looking at me but rummaging around inside the open door.
“Ah,” he called, triumphant, and pulled back with a smile. Thrusting something between us, he said, “Here.”
I glanced at what he offered and then back up. “Gloves?”
“And a hat.” He confirmed. “Put them on.”
“Why?”
