"Chloe."
That low voice. She knew it before she turned.
Corin stood in the workroom doorway, filling it almost entirely. He'd pushed up the sleeves of his flannel shirt, forearmsbare despite the cold, and there was soil on his hands. He must have come straight from the orchard.
"Morning," she managed.
"Freya said you were back here." He stepped into the room, and the space seemed to shrink around him. Not in a threatening way. Just... present. Solid. Like the mountain Freya had compared him to. "Wanted to check on the starts."
"They're worse." Chloe gestured to the tray on the worktable. "Freya can't figure it out. Soil tests normal, no disease, no pests. They're just... failing."
Corin moved to the table, and Chloe found her eyes tracing the breadth of his shoulders beneath the worn flannel. The way the fabric pulled across his back when he leaned forward. His hands, broad and capable, gentle as they lifted one of the wilted seedlings to examine it.
She looked away.
This was pointless. Corin Vane was quiet and steady and kind, and he treated her the same way he treated everyone in Hollow Oak. With patience. With respect. Nothing more.
She'd accepted that months ago. Tucked the small ache of wanting somewhere deep where it couldn't distract her.
"Same as mine," Corin said, setting the seedling down. "Roots can't seem to take hold. Like the soil's rejecting them."
"That's what Freya said."
He straightened, turning to face her. Those hazelnut eyes held hers, steady and warm. "You mentioned comparing notes yesterday."
"I did."
"Offer still stand?"
Chloe's heart did something inconvenient in her chest. She ignored it. "Of course. I was actually going to ask you the same thing. If this is happening in multiple places, maybe we can find the pattern."
"That's what I was thinking. I've got beds near the north fence that are hit the worst. Could use another pair of hands checking them."
"I can do that."
"Tomorrow morning? Before the temperature drops again."
"I'll be there."
"Good."
Chloe thought she saw a small smile, but forced herself that was too wishful of thinking.
He stepped back, heading for the door, but paused. "Something's wrong with the land. We'll figure it out." Then he was gone, footsteps fading through the shop.
Chloe stood alone in the workroom, surrounded by dying plants and the lingering scent of woodsmoke and honey.
She thought about his hands on the seedling. Careful. Reverent. The same way he touched everything he tended. She thought about the way he'd saidwe. And she told herself, firmly, that it didn't mean anything.
It couldn't. That’s just how Corin was. Wasn’t it?
6
CORIN
The mud sucked at Corin's boots as he crouched beside the north fence beds, trowel in hand. Yesterday's warmer temperatures had turned the frozen ground to slush, and now everything was wet and heavy and gray. The kind of morning that made most people stay inside.
Chloe knelt three feet away, her pale blonde hair tucked under a knit cap, cheeks pink from the cold. She'd shown up at the orchard gate right at dawn, bundled in layers and carrying a canvas bag of tools like she did this every day.
