Chapter 8 Ryder
RYDER
Eve comes down from her shower looking winded. She’s wearing a new sweater in a similar cream color to the one she was wearing before and leggings topped with bare feet that pad nearly silently across the wood floor.
Before she can say or do anything to make it clear that I should leave, I stand, grabbing her wine glass off the coffee table and pressing it into her hand. I’ve barely touched mine—whiskey is my drink of choice—but I take a sip regardless.
“Thank you,” she says, beelining for the armchair adjacent to the couch.
I’m hoping that despite our brief swim, we can continue with our night.
I left my wet shoes and socks in the tray by the door, and while I’ve felt confident around Eve until this point, something about walking around barefoot in her house has me questioning things.
A sense of comfort has overtaken me—more comfort than I feel even at my own apartment in the city—and it’s putting me on edge.
“Are you alright?” I ask as she takes a thirsty sip of her wine and leaves the glass on the coffee table between us.
She huffs. “I’m bummed about my sweater, but I’m physically okay.”
I nod. “Was it cashmere?”
I know I had my hands on it earlier, but I was much more concerned about the sopping wet girl in front of me than I was about the fabric of her sweater.
Her brow furrows and she snorts. “I wish. No, it was wool. It was scratchy as hell but one of my warmest. And I don’t think the best dry cleaner in the world is going to be able to get the stream gunk out of it.
My washer has seen worse than that as far as my leggings go, but that sweater is done for. ”
“I guess you can say I owe you.”
She waves me off. “It was just a sweater and it was an accident. You don’t owe me anything.”
I cock my head to the side.
Sometimes I get the idea that Eve wants to hate me but has trouble doing so. Like her nature is all forgiveness and kindness, but when she sees me she does her best to come off as tough and unyielding.
“Well, I’m sorry to have been the reason you ended up in the stream.”
She shrugs. “Thank you for trying your best to save me.”
We’re quiet for a moment before I continue, “So, still up for giving me that tour?”
She turns to look out the window, her nose crinkling as she moves. “We can, but I’m not sure how much we’ll see at this point. I love your land, but it’ll be hard to get around in the dark. And the barn is rented, so it’s not like we can go in there anyway.”
I nod, scrambling to come up with an alternate plan.
“Okay. Well, in that case, maybe I can show you the draft my architect came up with? It’s not finalized by any means—I need a better look at the land and I’ll be bringing my guys through to see it too, but it’s a start.
” I eye her, searching for signs of panic, but she seems resigned more than anything.
“I actually think this might ease your mind a little.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Yeah?”
I move over, patting the cushion next to me, and she gracefully switches to the couch, grabbing her wine glass off the table as she moves. With her weight next to mine, the couch sags, bringing us closer together, and we both shift so we’re not touching, but we don’t move away.
The scent of her perfume wafts over to me, all delicate and floral, and for a moment I have to remind myself that I’m not here to sniff the pretty girl.
I unlock my phone and navigate to my email, pulling up the rough sketch the architect sent over that overlays the survey I sent him earlier.
We tend to go back and forth a bunch—and I pay him an exorbitant amount of money for it—so he doesn’t mind sending me rough drawings while we figure out our end goal.
And what he sent me actually looks natural for the setting.
A village just past Eve’s dirt road and halfway up the hill with a view that looks down on the sunflower fields.
It’s far enough up the hill that it shouldn’t affect any pictures, and I’ve already accepted that the building materials for this development are going to be sky high in an effort to make everything look as cohesive as possible.
The way I’m envisioning it, these buildings are going to look so nice that Eve is going to want her customers taking pictures of them.
I hold my phone out, zooming out so she can see where we’re planning on building first before getting into the details.
She takes one big sip of wine before angling closer to me so she can see my screen.
“So this is where I’m planning on building,” I say, moving the image around and making sure not to obscure the path of the road that briefly dips onto her land.
While I don’t think it’s the right time to ask her for anything, I don’t think she’ll be pleased if she thinks I intentionally hid the potential easement from her.
“I’m not sure exactly where the property lines are, but I know there are local ordinances about building too close to single-family housing, so we might have to adjust there a little bit. Or buy out the single-family homes.”
She snorts.
I glance at her.
“Oh, you’re serious,” she says, shaking her head and taking another long sip of wine. “That probably shouldn’t surprise me.”
I shrug. “To be honest, that’s not an option I want to take. I don’t want to have to deal with Reed any more than I need to, and he’ll have a say if we need to rezone.”
She nods. “Okay.”
I eye her. “What are you thinking?”
She shakes her head, taking another sip of wine. “Nothing.”
“That doesn’t look like a nothing face.”
She rolls her eyes. “Why do you keep asking for my input? If I’m okay? You’re going to do what you want to do, right? I get that you’re trying to play nice, but it’s not like I really have any options here, right?”
I shrug. “Can’t know that until you tell me what’s upsetting you, can you?”
She bites her lip, running the hem of her sweater between the thumb and forefinger of her free hand, and then she fixes me with her gaze.
Full on, big brown eyes staring me down like a challenge I didn’t know I needed.
“I’m upset because when I was little, there was a little part of me that thought maybe, if I ever took over the farm by myself, I would have already gone to college and gotten a degree and been smart enough to make this place really thrive again.
” She swallows, taking another quick sip of her wine.
“And I thought that once I made this place into the bustling farm it used to be, I would buy one of the cabins up there and turn it into my own tiny little castle that overlooks everything I made.” She purses her lips.
“And if you buy out those cabins, that dream dies for good.” She shakes her head.
“Honestly, it’s silly anyway. This place is never going to be anything but a constant grind so it doesn’t make sense for me to hold onto that dream.
I guess there’s just something very real about it not just being improbable but now impossible. ”
I nod, digesting this information.
Something tells me that absolutely anything I do with the property next door will make Eve Harper upset.
She wants things to stay exactly the same forever, and while I understand that dealing with this change probably makes her feel like she’s losing control, she’s going to have to compromise on something.
Then again, I’m here, sipping wine with her in her bungalow while we go over plans for the property next door.
Perhaps she’s compromised enough for the time being.
Before I realize what I’m doing, my mouth goes on without me.
“You know what? I won’t.”
She pauses, wine glass halfway to her mouth.
And I swear, there’s a little spark that jumps back into those warm brown eyes of hers.
“What?”
I shake my head. “Thank you for sharing your concerns with me.” I take a desperate sip of wine because I know I’m agreeing to things that are going to be exceptionally hard to follow through on, but something in me senses that she needs this.
A gesture—however small—that shows her she’ll be listened to throughout this project.
That’s all I’ve been trying to do, after all, and while I can’t promise her that nothing will change, this feels like a way to prove that working together gets us both what we want.
“I won’t buy up that land,” I tell her. “We’ll find another way to make the village work.”
Her eyes narrow, her gaze traveling all across my face. Her voice is soft when she speaks. “What is it that you want from me?”
I know that I’m supposed to ask her for the easement right now. She knows there’s something I want from her, because why else would I be so willing to get a neighbor’s feedback on building plans?
But it doesn’t feel like the right time.
The easement is not going to have a significant impact on her land, and she’s still feeling defensive about the project in the first place.
If I were to ask her right now, I could just see the way her eyes would light up, delighted by the opportunity to throw a wrench in my plans.
I don’t want her immediate answer to be ‘no’ without a thought.
I don’t want to give her the opportunity to dig her heels into something for the sake of feeling like she’s in control when the outcome of that could be buying out those cabins for the sake of fitting the driveway on my land, and only my land.
“All I want is for you to keep an open mind.”
She takes another sip of her wine, her eyes locked on mine.
And I want to just say it. Beg her to agree to the tiny little easement for the sake of this project going through with as few issues as possible.
I suppose I’ve really only given myself the opportunity to dig my heels in. Because something tells me that she’s this close to trusting me. That if I asked her right now, she might consider it.
But maybe that’s the white wine going to my head.