It was whatever she’d been trying to hide beneath her polished surface.
Her hands had shaken lightly when I handed her the resumes, and sadness peeked out of her eyes that had never been there before.
Not all was well in Mallory’s world, and every protective instinct I’d ever had roared back to life the second I saw that crack in her armor.
Mallory was the girl who’d stolen my heart and run away with it. The only woman who’d ever made my pulse beat faster.
Last I’d heard, she’d married a rich corporate lawyer and built a life in Chicago.
It was everything she’d always talked about wanting.
She’d gotten out. She’dmadeit.
So that led to the big question… where was her man now?
That thought sat heavy in my chest as I pushed the door open on my old F-250, its hinges creaking the way they had for the last hundred and sixty thousand miles.
The truck was dented along the passenger side from a falling oak limb two winters back, and the bed was stained with chainsaw oil. It was a working truck for a working man, and it fit this gravel driveway a hell of a lot better than her spotless Lexus did.
I grabbed my tool bag from behind the seat and walked up to the house.
It was in worse shape now than the last time I’d been out here, helping her dad with a project. From here I could see some of the fencing had fallen down in their pasture, maybe from the recent storm.
The porch was in sad shape, too.
Paint was peeling along the railing, and some of the boards sagged in the middle as I stepped on them. I’d heard her folks had fallen on hard times. It looked like it was true.
I knocked. Three solid raps.
The door opened almost instantly.
“Hey,” she said, a little breathless. “That was fast.”
“Wasn’t far.” I kept my voice level because that was what I did. I always stayed steady, in control, even when everything inside me was anything but that.
She didn’t look like a put-together city princess any longer.
The suit jacket was gone. Her white blouse was damp and clinging to her curves in a dangerous way. The high heels were gone, and she was barefoot on the old hardwood floor.
She looked older than the girl who’d left town and more polished, even in her current state of disarray, but there was a tiredness around her eyes I didn’t remember. A fragility in the way she held herself that she was clearly fighting against, like if she relaxed for even a second the whole facade would come apart.
She’d been crying, or close to it. I could tell.
“Thanks for coming, Zane. I hope I didn’t interrupt dinner.”
“Naw.” I moved past her down the front hallway with electric awareness of the woman walking two steps behind me toward the kitchen.
Because here was the thing I was failing to manage. Her blouse had gone transparent where the water had soaked through, and the outline of white lace was visible beneath it, highlighting the delicate pattern of her bra pressed against her skin. I’d seen all that in the first second after she opened the door.
She followed me into the kitchen, rambling in that way she always used to do.
“It started as a drip and then I tried to tighten it and made everything worse,” she said, her voice tight with embarrassment as she gestured to the mess. Wet towels were piled on the floor in front of the sink, and the bucket underneath was already a quarter full.
“Happens all the time with these old fittings,” I said, keeping my tone easy as I set my tool bag down and crouched to look under the sink. Easier to think when I wasn’t looking at her. “Your dad’s been needing to replace these couplings for a while.”
“Yeah?” she knelt down to watch my work, putting herself back in my line of sight.
Her shirt clung to the full, heavy shape of her breasts, and my grip tightened on the wrench before I forced my eyes back to the pipe.
