“I'd better get going,” I say, my chest burning like crazy. “Thank you again for taking Pigasso.”
“No problem. Good to see you, Mira.”
My gaze flips to his. He’s waiting on it and pulls it in, holding it tightly. I could get lost in his eyes if I wasn’t careful.
But I am.
“It was good to see you, too, Hart. Take care.”
I slide my glasses over my eyes, before he can notice anything in them, and then spin on my heel and walk away. Because small moments together are all we can have anymore.
Small moments keep things from getting too big.
CHAPTER
THREE
Hartley
“Brooks tried to tell me to put some extra nails in it, and said it’d be fine,” Bobby says, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. “You’re lucky that I’m not easily persuaded. He could sell sand to a desert.”
I rest my arms over the bed of my truck, breathing in the sweet smell of spring. My father used to say it was the smell of life. Wet, loamy soil, mixed with the sharpness of fresh grass and the softness of blooming dogwood trees, is the scent of my childhood. It’s the scent of home.
“Oh, what the hell does Brooks know?” I ask, shaking my head. “Give him a pair of gloves and a hammer, and he’s suddenly a carpenter.”
Bobby snorts. “Well, that’s probably cheaper than having him think he’s a mechanic. He swung by the barn yesterday while we were replacing the water pump in the tractor, and he tried to tell me it was the alternator. He was sure of it. I had to pry a wrench out of his damn hands and summon the Holy Spirit so that I didn’t knock him in the head with it.”
“Nobody has ever accused Brooks of having low confidence, that’s for sure.”
A warm gust of wind slips through the fields, rattling the weathervane at the apex of the barn in front of us. A cloudless sky gives no place for the sun to hide, and it blazes down with all its late morning glory. It’d be a damn good day to drive the back roads of Sugar Creek with the windows down or to sit on the front porch with a glass of iced tea. But there’s too much work to do.
And I must figure out where to putmynew pig.
“It’s like he knew it—he knew his fate. And instead of just standing there looking cute, he chose life. He raced around the arena, searching for an out. He knocked over a farmer and a card table, and I swear the little thing nearly had a heart attack. It was so sad.”
A grin tugs at my lips. I want to be mad about Mira’s antics, but I can’t. Thisisa ranch, and wedohave space. Besides, saving a baby pig is so Mira-coded that it’s kind of cute.
“Want me to run to the lumber yard and grab some boards?” Bobby motions toward the pile of rotten decking we just yanked from the barn’s loft. Although he’s in his fifties, he can nearly work circles around me. “I think ten, maybe fifteen boards ought to get us.”
I peer up at the neglected barn.
If I had any sense about me, I’d knock over the structure at the back of Blackbird Ranch and build something new. Half the time, I expect the wind to do the job for me. But this was the first barn on the ranch, hand-constructed by my great-grandfather and named after my great-grandmother, and I can’t bear the thought of tearing it down when it still stands. It’s a relic from a time when people built things to last, not just until they got tired of them.
“Yeah. Swing by the feed store and see if they have any gates to replace the one leading into the barn lot, and grab some tar, if they have it. We’re gonna have to get up there and seal a couple of those seams before it rains again.”
“Your old man used to say that when he bought back the land your grandpa sold to St. James, he was going to expand Betsy Barn and run all the cattle out of here. If nothin’ else, your dad would love to see this back up and running again.”
The words land like a weight in my chest. My gaze drifts past Bobby, across the creek, and to the three hundred acres on the other side that my grandfather sold decades ago to stay afloat.
Land my father spent his life trying to get back.
Land that used to be a part of Blackbird Ranch.
Land that, according to Mira, Ed Beardsley is circling. And, if that’s the case, I’ll never have a shot at bringing it back into the Adler family.
A knot twists in my stomach so tightly that it almost knocks the wind out of me. I’ve tried my damnedest not to think about either one—Mira or Ed—since she left this morning. Both send a fire shooting through my veins, just for very different reasons.
“I’m gonna head to town. Text me if you think of anything else you want me to pick up while I’m there,” Bobby says.
