Fine. Direct it is. As soon as we’ve placed our orders, I bring up the kale harvest.
“This was a trap,” my younger brother sighs.
“Mom needs help.”
“I can’t close the garage every morning. She needs to hire someone for the season.”
That pulls me up short, because of course he can’t. “What about just an hour or two? Stay at the ranch overnight, do a bit of work in the morning before you come into town.”
“No can do, you know that.” Twice in the last year, someone’s broken into Cash’s garage. He now sleeps in an apartment we built for him above the office so he can be his own on-site security.
He’s right, and we both know it. I take a deep breath and scrub my hand across my moustache. But he also thinks I can work miracles.
I pride myself on an ability to make impossible shit happen, but it’s late in the season to find the right kind of workers for Kincaid’s Refuge. And that’s assuming we could convince Luna to accept help from anyone other than her sons.
I’m still stewing on the problem when I head home after lunch.
As I turn off the range road onto the township road that leads to our ranch, I see an older model compact SUV pulled off to the side.
The breathtaking view from this gravel road never gets old—it leads into the lush valley just north of Dragonfly Creek that my family has called home for the last five years—but this isn’t a safe place to pull over.
Worry tightens my brow. I slow to a stop behind them, noting the British Columbia license plate, and hop down to the dusty road.
A tall blonde woman in lightly tinted, rose-gold sunglasses jumps out of the driver’s side and waves me off. She’s wearing rolled up jean shorts and a tie-dye t-shirt, with Birkenstock sandals at the end of strong, shapely legs. If I hadn’t noticed the out-of-province plate already, I’d have clocked her as not from around here from the gorgeous city girl vibes alone.
Her strawberry blonde hair tumbles around her shoulders in messy waves, and her mouth—have I ever seen such a perfect mouth? Lush, ripe.Pink.
Hello, sexy.
But just as I have that primal reaction to the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in the flesh, a flash of bright green fur pulls my attention to the back seat.
A stuffed animal being waved out of the window by a tiny fist. A little girl.
Something cold slides down my spine.
A pretty young mother, alone, scared, stuck on a back road with a kid and nowhere to go. I know this story. I was born into this story.
And I know what kind of man stops for a woman like this. A man like my father. And countless other men who tried to “help” my mother once she was on her own with us.
So I suppress the deep tug of unexpected and inappropriate arousal, and I try to look past the distraction of that mouth, and those golden waves.
Not a walking wet dream, Zane. Get your mind out of the gutter.
I amnotmy father.
And what I see when I look at her again is a forced smile and visible unease as I approach.
“Hey there! I’m—We’re fine,” she says quickly, getting between me and her child, the owner of the stuffed animal. A green frog, it looks like. “We’re having lunch and then we’ll be on our way.”
I stop with a good deal of distance between us.
“You sure you don’t need any assistance, ma’am?” I try not to frown, but now that I’m not looking at her mouth like it’s an all-I-can-nibble buffet, I’m reminded that this isn’t the place for a picnic. And they don’t look like they were eating, either.
“Our car got too hot,” her child, a little girl, says from behind her. “It needs a nap.”
Behind her sunglasses, the mother closes her eyes. She visibly counts to three for patience. Something I’ve seen my own mother do many times, even though my brothers and I are all well into adulthood.
Kids reveal more than their parents want.
