When he'd driven out of sight, she leaned against the front door and exhaled hard.
Twenty million dollars. And she hadn’t instantly said yes. Which was objectively sheer madness. Nobody sane turned down that kind of money.
She wasn't sure why she’d put him off, but the answer had come out of her without a second's thought, more by instinct than conscious consideration. Before the workshop and the toys, before the sound of Makayla laughing in the barn, she might have seriously considered signing away the farm.
Who was she kidding? She would've jumped at his offer in a heartbeat.
She pushed away from the door wearily. Time to feed the critters. Again. She paused at the top of the porch steps, searching for Bonnie and Clyde. They'd taken to hiding in the bushes or around the corner of the barn and ambushing her the moment her back was turned to them.
As she reconnoitered the goose threat, she spotted Arlo standing at his fence, staring grimly at the cloud of dust left by the Hutchins's truck. Her neighbor wasn't laughing now. His weathered face was hard, and he gripped the fence rail tight enough to whiten his knuckles. Brown Dog pressed against his leg, ears flat.
He caught her eye as she gazed at him. He didn't wave or nod or offer up a cryptic observation. He just looked at her with an expression that needed no translation at all.
Beware of that one.
6
Dillon knew he was in trouble the morning he walked into the farm supply store next to Cobbler Cove's grain elevator and bought a pair of blue jeans.
Not for himself, but for an eleven-year-old girl who wasn't his daughter, whose mother he had no business thinking about, and whose wardrobe was none of his concern.
He'd told himself it was practical. The kid was wearing skirts, leotards, and ballet flats in a barn. He'd noticed during his first visit to the farm that Makayla had nearly stepped on a nail in those flimsy shoes—a rusty one poking through a board in the hayloft. It could’ve earned her a trip to the ER and a tetanus shot.
Practical. That's all this purchase was.
He also grabbed a pair of rubber muck boots with steel toes in what he hoped was her size, because nobody should be do barn chores in unsafe footwear. The boots were sage green, the only color in her size range.
The woman at the register—Donna something, whom he recognized from the pinochle group at Rose’s Diner—glanced at the jeans and boots with raised eyebrows. "These for the Lawrence girl?"
Small towns. You couldn't buy a gallon of milk without six people knowing about it before you got home. "She's doing chores in school clothes and sneakers," he said flatly.
He was still telling himself the purchase was purely practical when he pulled into Fern's driveway Saturday morning to check on the animals.
Tessa was in the barn. He could hear her before he saw her—talking to Dolly the llama in a voice he'd never heard from her before. Not the polished, careful voice she used with people. Something softer, gentler, and entirely unguarded.
"I know it itches, sweetheart. I'm going as fast as I can. Hold still, please. Please. I'm almost done with this side."
He stopped just inside the barn door and watched for a moment. She was standing in the llama's stall in a plain gray t-shirt, jeans that had seen considerably cleaner days, and bright pink rubber boots that were caked with enough mud and worse to suggest she'd been at this for a while. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and her face was bare of make-up. No pearls. No French twist. No silk within a hundred yards.
She was swabbing the medicated wash onto Dolly's bare patches with a gentleness that surprised him. The llama leaned into Tessa's hand and hummed in a low, contented vibration that announced the treatment was soothing her irritated skin.
"That's better, isn't it?" Tessa murmured. "See? We're figuring this out, you and me."
Reluctant respect for her passed through him. He'd privately thought the betting pool at the diner, which averaged guesses of Tessa sticking it out here for between two and three weeks, had been way too optimistic. Was everyone, including him, wrong about her after all?
He ignored his impressed reaction to her with practiced efficiency. He'd been ignoring inconvenient feelings for the better part of five years. Ever since Lexi walked out on him.
He cleared his throat. "Morning."
She startled. Just a tiny flinch of her shoulders, but he caught it. The social armor went back on. Not all the way, not like at the funeral, but enough to straighten her spine and level her gaze.
"You're early," she said. "It's six forty-five."
"Beecham's mare needed checking at five. I was already out this direction."
"Do you ever sleep?"
He shrugged. "Now and then." He set his bag down and crossed to the feed room. Dolly's medicated wash was sitting on the shelf. He checked the application log Tessa had taped to the wall—a neatly printed schedule, color-coded by animal, with checkmarks in every box.
