Chapter 2
Chapter 2
H arper Quinn opened the front door of the cottage she’d inherited from a distant relative—it was a fixer-upper by any definition—and felt a strange, sweet frisson of— something as she took in the man standing well back from the welcome mat, hands in the hip pockets of his battered blue jeans. His long-sleeved chambray shirt was open to reveal a worn T-shirt beneath, and the stubble on his chin matched his dark, longish hair.
He was accompanied by a young boy, ten to twelve years old, similarly clad, and a German shepherd with a graying muzzle and gentle eyes.
Ollie, Harper’s teacup Yorkie, scrabbled at the heels of her sneakers, wanting to slip past and greet the visitors.
His yapping was making her low-grade headache worse, and the shepherd was big enough to swallow Ollie whole, so she stooped to gather him up. He squirmed and wriggled in protest, but at least the barking stopped.
“This is Trey,” the boy said, patting his dog’s head.
Benignly, Trey plunked himself down on the weathered boards of the porch, tongue lolling, and in that moment, Harper would have sworn the critter was smiling.
Harper smiled, too, looking at the boy. “This is Ollie,” she replied, taking one of his tiny paws between her thumb and index finger and waggling it briefly.
The man laughed, and the sound was rich and masculine. “Now that the dogs have been introduced,” he said, still keeping his distance, “I’m Jack O’Ballivan, and this is my son, Gideon.”
“Harper Quinn,” Harper said, a bit puzzled. She was a city girl, unused to neighborly visits. In the Seattle high-rise where she’d lived until a few weeks before, she had only a nodding acquaintance with one or two of the other tenants.
“My dad owns all that land across the road,” Gideon said, his expression solemn and his tone vaguely hesitant, as if he wasn’t quite sure of his own words. “You can’t see much from here, except maybe the barn roof, because of the trees. It’s called Diamond Creek Ranch, and it’s almost a thousand acres.”
“Gideon,” Jack said, in a tone of gentle reproof. “We’re here to welcome Ms. Quinn and offer help, not to brag about the size of our property.” He rested a hand on the boy’s head and ruffled his hair, and Harper’s discouraged heart warmed at the sight; in her former life as a social worker, she’d seen so many children neglected and abused that she’d almost forgotten how it looked when a parent showed such easy affection for their child.
Gideon smiled, but his mouth wobbled with the effort.
His father seemed to sense the boy’s reticence, and pulled him to his side, held him there for a moment or so. His intensely blue eyes were fixed on Harper’s face, and the lopsided grin on his attractive face held a modicum of sadness.
“Obviously,” Jack O’Ballivan said quietly, “you were on your way out, so we won’t keep you. We’re throwing a shindig next weekend—a big bonfire, a barbecue, some games and even a dance, to celebrate finishing the new barn. If you’d like to join us, that would be great—half of Copper Ridge will be there, so you’ll have a chance to meet a lot of the locals.” With that, he tilted his head back and took in the sorry state of the cottage, with its sagging shutters and peeling paint. “And I can recommend a few contractors, if you’re planning to renovate.”
Harper was planning to renovate; it had been years since anyone had lived there, and the neglect showed. After the surprise notification that she’d been left a house and several acres of land in northern Arizona, she’d applied for and gotten a counseling job with the Copper Ridge school system.
“Ummm,” she said, biting her lower lip. She wasn’t sure she was up for a party, even if it would allow her to meet the attendees, some of whom were bound to be teachers, or parents of the children she would be working with in a month or so, when school started. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Is that okay, you’ll come to the party, or okay, go ahead and send over a contractor or two?”
Harper felt her cheeks flush. Her feet felt rooted to the floor. Jack O’Ballivan wasn’t classically handsome; he was rugged and strong, and though he was lean and muscular, he seemed to take up a lot of space.
Maybe he knew he had that effect on some people, and had taken care to maintain a small distance so as not to overwhelm the newcomer to the neighborhood.
She recovered quickly and replied, “Both. The party sounds like a lot of fun, and as you can see, this place needs a ton of work. I’ve been here a week now, and I’ve done a lot of cleaning and painting, things like that, but the roof is in poor shape and the fireplace chimney”—she gestured toward the side of the cottage—“is crumbling. In fact, half of it is lying in the yard. So I do need to hire someone as soon as possible.”
Bringing the place up to speed was going to take a chunk of her savings, but of course, she didn’t share that.
Gideon and Trey were already walking away, toward the broken front gate. The picket fence zigged and zagged and stuck out in every direction but straight up.
Mr. O’Ballivan lingered, one foot on the ground, one on the porch step. He gave her a thumbs-up and smiled again.
“I have most of the construction workers in the area occupied, working over at my place, but I can spare a few guys.”
Straining in Harper’s arms, Ollie started wiggling and yapping again, most likely wanting to follow the boy and the other dog. Maybe Harper’s best friend Devon had been right, and she should adopt a second dog to keep her Yorkie company.
Devon ran an animal rescue organization back in Seattle, where Harper had lived and worked until she’d made the decision to leave the city and make a whole new start in a state she’d never even visited before.
With the deed to her cottage in hand, she’d scanned the internet for job opportunities in the area.
She’d been interviewed for the position in Copper Ridge via Zoom and, much to her relief, had been hired almost immediately.
Then, after breaking the lease on her condo in Seattle and sending the few things she’d decided to keep on ahead to be stored in the cottage, she’d loaded Ollie and a couple of suitcases into her compact car and headed for Arizona.
It had seemed a practical plan at the time—the property, unsaleable as it stood, was worth fixing up, in her opinion, though it would be a lot of work. Ultimately, if things didn’t work out there and she wanted to move on, it would probably be easy enough to sell the place.
All around, the restoration would make for a good long-term investment and, since it was only ten to fifteen minutes from the school buildings in town, the commute would be easy.
On top of that, the surrounding countryside was spectacular.
More difficult in winter, though. Elliott Parker, president of the school board, had warned her that the Arizona high country was considerably different, weather-wise, from the desert farther south.
Heavy snowfalls, even blizzards, were not uncommon in this part of the state.
Returning from her woolgathering with a jolt, Harper set Ollie down inside the house and shut the door behind her so he couldn’t escape. He’d never lived in the country before, and she’d had to chase him through the underbrush twice since they’d arrived. Since his brain was roughly the size of a lima bean, he couldn’t know he’d make the perfect snack for hawks and coyotes and a number of other wild creatures.
“I’m on my way to town to shop for groceries,” she said, adjusting the shoulder strap of her handbag resolutely. “Do you need anything from the store, Mr. O’Ballivan?”
“Jack,” he corrected her, looking amused. “We’re neighbors, after all. Your place is right across the road from mine.” A pause, a shake of his head, in response to some thought he evidently didn’t plan to share. “Thanks for the offer, but with the party coming up, I’m planning to hit Costco, up in Flagstaff, and we’re okay until then.”
Harper nodded. Watched him walk away, stop at the edge of the wide dirt road between their properties, look both ways, and then follow his son and his dog to the other side, turning to wave once before he started up the long gravel driveway toward the house.
Behind her, Ollie barked; like most dogs, he didn’t like being left behind.
He had plenty of food and water, though, and after a few minutes, he would surely curl up in his velvety-soft little bed in a corner of the kitchen and snooze until he heard her pull into the limestone driveway beside the house later on.
Not for the first time, Harper questioned her decision to completely reinvent herself, moving to a new place, finding a new job.
It was a whole different way of life, rural and somewhat isolated.
Her old job had been a meaningful one, even if it had left her burnt out and broken.
She might have managed to return to work after she fell into a state of mental exhaustion, if her then-fiancé, George Carrington, hadn’t decided to hook up with one of her coworkers, a woman named Brittany Summers, whom she’d considered a friend, if not an especially close one. George and Brittany had been involved for more than six months when Harper accidentally stumbled across the truth.
The romantic bubble had burst one evening when Harper had arrived home from an out-of-town conference a day early, planning to surprise George with his favorite meal, in honor of a recent promotion and his birthday, combined.
George worked hard as a real estate developer, and he loved surprises.
The shower in the adjoining bathroom was running when Harper walked into the master bedroom and tossed her suitcase onto the bed to unpack later.
She’d been on the verge of stripping down to the skin and joining her man under that warm spray of water when she heard a familiar laugh—a female laugh.
Fully clothed but barefoot—Harper hated wearing heels, so she’d kicked them off as soon as she stepped into the condo—she’d stood absolutely still for a few long moments, unsure whether she ought to barge in and confront George and the other woman, whoever she was, or turn and flee the scene.
She could have spent the night at Devon’s place, or stayed with her older sister, Adelaide, and elderly aunt, Sylvia, her only living relatives.
But she’d been leaning on Devon too much lately, and she wasn’t all that close to either her sister or her aunt.
In the end, she’d decided to stand her ground, face the facts, and deal with them.
She’d opened the bathroom door, stepped into the steamy room, and caught George and Brittany, a fellow social worker, naked and laughing as they lathered each other in the shower.
They’d spotted her right away, unsurprisingly, and both of them had frozen in place, their blurry images visible through the condensation on the glass door.
Belatedly, Brittany had covered her silicone-enhanced breasts.
George had hesitated, then reached for a towel and wrapped it around himself before stepping out onto the mat and uttering the classic trope, “I can explain everything. . . .”
On top of the pressures of her work—Harper was confronted with heartbreaking situations virtually every day—the affair was too much.
She’d been strong that night. She’d thrown her engagement ring in George’s blandly handsome face and told him to take his bimbo and get out of her condo.
They’d dressed quickly and fled, while Harper had stood, arms folded and jaw tight, in the kitchen, trembling with shock and fury.
But in the coming days and weeks, despite her best efforts to hold it all together, she had gradually fallen apart.
She’d resigned from her job, holed up in her condo, and wallowed in depression for way too long.
Her friends had tried to help, and actually, so had Adelaide and Aunt Sylvia, but Harper had only withdrawn further into the darkness that seemed to swamp her very soul.
A few dreary weeks had passed when Devon had appeared one sunny afternoon, with a very small dog prancing ahead of her on a leash.
“His name is Ollie,” Devon had said, in her direct way, decisively opening the window blinds. “He’s been abandoned—wait till you hear why—and he needs you as much as you need him.”
Strangely, Harper had felt an instant connection with the puppy. He was so small that he literally fit in the palm of her hand.
She hadn’t thought of herself as a dog person, but that was before she met Ollie.
“Normally,” Devon had gone on, setting two bags with pet-shop logos on the floor, “I wouldn’t place an animal without the usual protocol, but it isn’t as if I don’t know you, and the minute that woman walked into the center with Ollie peeking out of her designer handbag and said she wanted to re-home him, my mind was made up.”
Harper’s lethargy had abated enough for her to nestle the tiny fellow in the curve of her arm and ask, “Why didn’t she want him?”
Devon had begun to laugh then, very softly, but at the same time, tears had glimmered in her bright brown eyes. “Are you ready? Because he poops. He made a mess in her Hermès bag, and she’s going to have to have the silk lining replaced. Obviously, that will be expensive.”
“Well,” Harper had responded, with a lightness she hadn’t felt in weeks, “that’s a first-world problem if I’ve ever heard one.”
“I can’t stand people who think of animals as accessories instead of living creatures,” Devon had declared. “And you wouldn’t believe how many purebred dogs and cats land on the doorstep at the center because of things like this. Dogs that bark. Cats that throw up on the Persian rug. It’s ludicrous.”
Just then, Ollie had climbed onto Harper’s shoulder and tentatively licked her cheek.
“He’s adorable,” she’d said.
Devon had sunk into a nearby armchair, looking relieved. “You’ll keep him, then? If you need a trial period—”
But Harper had shaken her head and stroked Ollie’s black-and-tan fur. “No trial period. Ollie is my dog now, and he’s not going anywhere.”
Harper returned from memory lane with a snap and tightened her grip on the steering wheel of her small hybrid. She’d driven all the way into Copper Ridge with her brain wandering around in the past.
She pulled into the parking lot at the supermarket—there were only two in the entire town—and went inside.
While shopping, she encountered Dot Mansfield, one of the teachers she would be working with in the Copper Ridge school system. They’d met two days before, at a little tea party held by the superintendent and his wife, and Harper had taken an instant liking to the woman, a trim and active person in her fifties, and a lifelong resident of the town.
“Don’t forget to come to the book club,” Dot exclaimed, after a hearty hello in the aisle containing cleaning supplies. “We’re meeting tomorrow night at seven, at my place.” Here, she repeated the address, which Harper committed to memory. “And we always have a potluck supper.”
Harper smiled. “What if I haven’t read the book you’re discussing?” she asked, loading a set of mop heads into her cart. “Maybe I should wait until next month to join.”
“Nonsense,” Dot replied, beaming friendliness like a lighthouse on a dark pinnacle. “Seven o’clock. We’ll be discussing—oh, dear, the title escapes me, but it’s something about a highway.”
Harper guessed the title, but kept it to herself. It was a recent bestseller, The Lincoln Highway, about two young brothers on the road, and their adventures, and she’d read it months ago.
“I’ll be there,” she confirmed.
Dot wasn’t through with the impromptu chat. “Have you met Jack O’Ballivan yet? The man who owns the land just across from your cottage? He’s a relative newcomer, like you. Plans to turn that rundown old place into a working ranch—but he’ll also be helping out with a foundation that specializes in horseback riding therapy for people of all ages. And he’s throwing a party this coming weekend—seems like half the county is invited, and the other half can show up anyhow, if they want to.”
“I met Mr. O’Ballivan today. Him and his son, Gideon.”
“Gideon,” Dot murmured, looking genuinely sad. “That poor child’s been through a lot. Rumor has it that his mother dropped him off at the ranch and signed over custody the very next day. She’s a wild one—carried on something terrible in front of the whole town, her and that boyfriend of hers, before they finally left.” Here, Dot paused, brightened. “Well, Gideon will be in my class, and I’ve got a feeling I’m going to like him, though he’s sure to be a handful.”
Harper straightened her back and smiled, thinking of the boy, and the pride he took in the land his father owned. The way he’d stroked his dog and asked about Ollie.
“Maybe so,” she said. “But we’re up to the challenge, aren’t we?”
Dot’s high-wattage smile flashed again. “You bet we are,” she replied.