Her Rival Hero (Heroes of Purple Heart Ranch #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Her third-hand, pink-painted food truck coasted to the gravel shoulder.

The engine gave one last wheeze of protest before going silent.

She sat for a moment with both hands on the wheel, looking at the flat stretch of two-lane highway ahead of her.

Cornfields on the left. Wheat fields on the right.

And cows, endless spots of grazing cows.

On the dashboard, the oil light was on. Ivy had absolutely known the oil light was on. She had looked at it twice since Evansville and decided it was a personality trait rather than an emergency.

She picked up her phone. There was exactly one correct response to this situation, and that was to document it. She pulled up the vlog app and flipped her camera into selfie mode.

"Good morning, hungry people. It is approximately — "she checked the clock on the dash — "nine forty-seven a.m. on what was supposed to be the triumphant homecoming Chapter of my life, and Sugar like a problem to be assessed, oiled, capped, and slammed shut.

"You filled my oil," she said. "About an hour ago, on 41. The pink truck."

"I remember. You filmed me doing it."

"I'm a food blogger. I have a vlog. Content is kind of — it's what I do." She paused. "The clip has over eight thousand views."

He looked at the sky briefly, in the way of a man appealing to a higher authority that was not going to help him.

"I won't film your setup without asking," she said. "I won't use your products in my content without permission. I won't get in your way. I'm only here for the summer, so…"

That tidbit of information perked him up. His shoulders visibly relaxed. His jaw unclenched.

"Finn Hargrove," he said. "Don't put things on my side."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"The chalkboard sign is mine."

"I'll get my own."

"Don't play music."

"I'm going to play music."

He turned back to his tomatoes.

Ivy looked at the large space they were meant to share. It suddenly felt too small. She looked at her phone, the notification count climbing past ten thousand.

She thought about Devon's version of her future. About Chicago and the food competitions and the way she'd almost disappeared into someone else's story.

She thought about her grandmother's kitchen, the smell of sugar and butter.

She thought about the way she'd sat on the counter at age seven tasting batter from a spoon, absolutely certain that this — this particular pleasure, food and memory and the feeling of being completely present in a moment — was the thing she was going to build her life around.

She set down her bag. She started to unpack.

By noon, the view count was at twenty thousand. The comments had named the man in the video Highway Grump and were offering her varying degrees of support and speculation. She had to finish setting up. She had a summer to somehow pull off success in the town she'd spent a decade leaving.