“Brooklyn Rae Hale,” he said, voice dropping into the dad-tone that usually cut through nonsense fast. “Did you do this on purpose?”
Brooke widened her eyes, put on the whole show, but he didn’t believe her for a second.
He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for her to crack.
Not more than a moment later, she did.
“She needed a reason to stay!” Brooke protested, hands thrown up in self-defense. “You weren’t going to let her, and Emma said she needed to talk to her, so I?—”
“I didn’t tell you to throw her in a puddle,” Emma cut in, horrified.
“I didn’t know she would freak out that much over a bully!”
“How could you not realize?” Emma threw an arm in Honey’s direction. “I mean, look at her!”
“Hey,” Honey said at the same time Ethan chastised, “Girls.”
All of them fell silent. “You two,” he said, nodding at the older girls, “back in the house. Take your sister with you.”
Emma took Melly’s hand wordlessly.
“I need a word with Ms. Baxter,” he added, then glanced back at the girls. “And then we’re having a family meeting. You too, Ms. Baxter.”
“But Dad—” Brooke started.
“March, young lady.”
Brooke shuffled ahead, muttering something under her breath, but he didn’t ask her to repeat it. He just stood there, arms crossed, waiting until the front door shut behind them.
Only then did he turn to Honey.
Honey spoke before he had a chance. “Believe me, Mr. Hale. I don’t want this any more than you do.”
“Look, I’m sorry my kid knocked you over.”
The words came out gruff, but he meant them. He wasn’t great at apologizing, but watching her stand in front of him in muddy clothes with her pride barely hanging on tugged uncomfortably at something inside him.
“I’m fine,” she said, but the effect was ruined by the shiver that wracked through her.
He sighed, rubbing a hand along his jaw, then let it drop to his side. “Look, I’ve got three daughters. I know what fine means when someone says it like that. It’s the pre-cry kind of fine. The don’t-look-at-me-or-I’ll-lose-it kind.”
She blinked fast. He saw the way her mouth trembled just before she tightened it again. He’d seen that expression too many times. On Brooke, after a hard day. On Emma, when she was pretending not to care. On Melly, when her bottom lip wobbled, but she still insisted she wasn’t tired.
And hell, if he was honest, he’d seen it on himself. In the bathroom mirror. In the tractor window. In all those quiet moments when it all felt like too much.
“I miss the city,” she said after a moment, so quietly he almost didn’t catch it. “It’s been less than a day, and I already miss honking taxis and the subway rumbling beneath my feet. I just want to be home with my fleece-lined socks, my weighted blanket, and a perfectly made cup of chamomile tea.”
Ethan shifted, unsure what to do with this admission. He hadn’t asked for this kind of honesty. And damn if it didn’t make him feel worse than if she’d just yelled at him.
“I’ll be frank with you,” she said. “You’ve been a very difficult man with wild children and feral animals,and I don’t particularly like it here. There’s nothing but open space, thick air, and grass that makes my ankles itch.”
As if summoned, Cluck Norris came strutting by and flapped its wings right near her feet. Honey startled like she’d been zapped.
That was the thing that tipped her. Not the mud. Not his children or him slamming the door in her face.
The chicken.
She pressed her lips together hard and stared back at Ethan. And Ethan—who didn’t like strangers, didn’t like bureau people poking around, and definitely didn’t like her—stood there, watching a muddy, miserable woman try not to fall apart in his yard, and felt something unexpected.
