At First Dance (Coral Bell Cove #2)

Chapter One – Rowan

Of course, she’s in the ditch.

I ease the truck onto the shoulder. The gravel pop-pops under the tires, and the afternoon heat climbs in through the open window like it belongs here.

The road is just a skinny ribbon between scrub pine and marsh, and the electric car nose-dived where the drainage cut dips.

It decided to jump the ditch and changed its mind halfway.

She stands beside it, one heel sinking into the soft mud, a long blond ponytail losing the fight with the wind.

Oversized sunglasses cover half her face.

The rest of her is purpose-built to draw eyes and test common sense: white ribbed tank under a drapey cardigan, shredded light-wash denim, the kind of delicate jewelry that looks like it costs a paycheck, and heels that were never meant for county roads.

A phone is lifted in her hand, searching for a bar of service this stretch of county refuses to provide.

I roll to a stop twenty feet back and throw it in Park.

Before I open my door, I take inventory like I always do—damage, surroundings, people.

The wheel’s pitched wrong because the undercarriage probably kissed a culvert rock.

No second car. No filmer tucked in the grass.

A cow over the fence chews with judgment.

I climb out slowly, shut the door with the kind of quiet that says I mean no harm, and stay a step or two farther than I usually would.

Hands open at my sides, I have nothing in my grip.

I know what I look like to a woman alone on a road like this: six-one, broad, boots, and a jaw I never learned to soften.

“Hey,” I say, voice steady but not loud. “You alright?”

She startles, then sets her chin like she’s bracing for a headline. “Define ‘alright,’” she says, cool on the surface but frayed underneath.

I tip my head toward the car. “You’re not driving that anywhere today.”

“That’s a”—she exhales, lips flattening—“shame.”

I take two slow steps back—make space, show I’m not between her and any exit—then plant my feet and keep my palms visible. “Not gonna crowd you. Name’s Rowan.”

She tips her head, like she’s scrolling a file in her mind.

“Rowan… Wright?” The question mark is there, but faint.

“I saw a Christmas picture once—big house, goat on the porch. You were the one in the cowboy hat holding it like it weighed a ton.” She doesn’t step closer, but her shoulders ease a notch.

“Didn’t realize I was this close to your place. ”

She studies me from behind those lenses, if the way she chews on her bottom lip is any indication, and slides her phone into the back pocket of her pants. Wind catches the tail of her hair, and a few strands stick to her peach-glossed lips.

“Ivy,” she says finally.

It lands like a dropped glass. Ivy Quinn.

My sister, Lila’s, playlist staple. The woman my brother, Crew, fake-dated for a year because someone with a spreadsheet said “synergy.” Everyone in the family treated it like it was real anyway—Ma set out an extra plate more than once, and Holt asked why Crew never brought her around.

I kept my mouth shut and fixed fences. All I ever got from Crew was, “It’s work, Ro.

” He never brought her home, which told me more than the press releases did.

Up close, the details click sharper: the clean line of that tank, the dusting of freckles across a sun-touched collarbone, and tiny hoops in her ears.

No glitter. No bodyguard. Just a woman and a bad idea of a road.

Through the tinted glass of the spaceship car’s back seat, a jacket’s slung half-out of a garment bag—navy, slim cut, the brand my brother grabs when cameras bother him.

Looks like the one he left at her penthouse during their last PR “touchpoint,” if the gossip feeds can be trusted.

So she drove out to return it herself or drop it at the carrier in town, clean and private.

Less mess than handing it off in Nashville, where ten lenses live on every corner.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say, because men never have to think to say it, and women are always calculating it. And even though she may recognize me, I’m still a stranger. Ted Bundy could be charming, too. “I’ll keep my distance.”

Her shoulders drop a fraction. “Thanks.”

“Where were you headed?”

She gestures at the car. “Away from here?”

“Good plan. Poor execution.”

A hairline crack of a smile appears. Then she rubs her temple. “It made a weird sound, and I overcorrected. I was returning”—she glances at the back seat, then hesitates—“a jacket. To someone who shouldn’t have left it where he did. I kind of left on a whim in the middle of the night.”

Crew. I don’t make her say it.

“Okay.” I blow out a breath and keep it practical. “I could tow you out after the wedding if you’re not leaking fluids. But that wheel’s stuck, and the underside probably isn’t pretty. Carl, the mechanic, can get you on a lift tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she repeats, like the word is a cliff edge.

“Yeah.”

Silence creaks between us. She looks like she’s balancing ten stories on a spine that forgot how to bend. I do the only smart thing: make it safer.

“You can say no,” I add, and hook a thumb toward my truck. “But if you want out of here, I’ll get you to town. Or somewhere with air-conditioning.”

She eyes the truck. “And if this is the start of a murder documentary?”

My mouth kicks sideways. “Then I’m terrible at it. Give me your phone.”

She freezes. I lift my hands again, palms forward. “Selfie. With me. When we get to the property and the service is better, you can send it to whoever would hunt me down if you don’t text later.”

Her throat works. Then she digs in her back pocket and hands the phone over.

I frame us wide—her sunglasses, my stupidly white shirt I ironed for the first time this year, black jeans, a wedding-appropriate belt Lila bullied me into buying, and clean boots that won’t be that way long.

I look like a cowboy dragged through an REI.

I hate selfies. I take it anyway—one of me stonefaced, one of me trying not to look like I swallowed a nail—then pass the phone back.

“Rowan, Coral Bell Cove,” I say while she’s tapping out a text. “Otter Creek Farms. If I blink wrong, half this county can find me.”

That gets me an actual smile. Not the red-carpet one. Smaller. Real. “Noted.”

She slides the phone into her bag. I offer an elbow toward the shoulder. “Let’s get you out of the mud.”

She hesitates, clocking the distance I’ve kept, then slips her hand into the crook of my arm like we’re strangers on a dance floor that isn’t there. Her skin is warm against my sleeve. The vanilla citrus of whatever perfume she uses finds me and stirs up memories I don’t want.

At the truck, I pull the passenger door wide and stand back so she can climb in without feeling my eyes on her. She tucks her legs like she’s done this in too many borrowed cars and settles the cardigan over her lap, like armor, like decency in a world that tries to devour it.

The cab takes her scent the way cotton takes dye—fast and indelible. I start the engine and let the low hum do the first round of talking for us. Gravel shifts under the tires. A heron lifts slowly from the ditch, like a curtain going up.

“You really rescue stranded celebrities often?” she asks after a minute, chin tipped toward the window.

“First time.”

“Great. I’m a novelty.”

“More like an inconvenience.”

She huffs out a laugh that sounds like surprise. “Honesty. That’s refreshing.”

We roll past the hedgerow, and my back acreage opens up on the right—fence lines I mean to fix, shrubs I mean to clear, the kind of work that anchors a man when the rest of life leans too hard. Her knee bounces in a fast, staccato click. I pretend I’m not counting.

I break the quiet with the only thing that makes sense. “Big day ahead,” I say, nodding at my shirt. “Sister’s wedding.”

“Of course,” she murmurs. “It’s always a wedding in a small town.”

“Sometimes a funeral,” I say dryly. “Weddings are better.”

“That’s debatable.”

I glance over. “You don’t like them?”

She shrugs. “I like the idea of them. The spectacle… not so much.”

We pass the hand-painted wooden Otter Creek Farm sign that hangs a little crooked. “You’ll be alright,” I say before I think about it. “Spectacle or not.”

She doesn’t answer, but her knee slows. Progress.

At my parents’ lane, the trees open to white clapboard and a backyard mid-transformation: strings of lights, wildflowers in Mason jars, and chairs in imperfect rows.

Music drifts out of the barn—someone doing a sound check on a speaker and a guitar run that sounds like summer.

The air hums with the kind of happy chaos you don’t get in cities—kids barefoot, aunts already bossing, and men pretending they don’t like boutonnieres.

I cut the engine. For a second, neither of us moves.

“You’ve got two choices,” I finally say. “I can stash you in the truck and run interference, or you can walk in with me and allow Lila to squeal in your face.”

She pops her sunglasses up to her hair. Her eyes—blue, and not subtle about it—hit me like a bucket of cold well water.

“I’m not hiding,” she says, calm as you please. Then a smile that lifts something sharp in my chest. “Also… if this turns into a murder documentary, I want good lighting.”

I huff a laugh I shouldn’t let her hear. “Come on, then.”

I climb out, circle to her side, and offer a palm to steady her hop down. She ignores it on principle, then takes it anyway because the heel sinks, and I’m not letting her face-plant five minutes from a wedding. Her hand fits mine like a problem I could solve if I let myself.

We’re halfway around the house when the moment I’ve been stupidly trying to avoid happens. She reaches up, futilely patting at that wind-battered ponytail again, jaw tight, a little frayed at the edges. Frazzled. Human.

“Hold still,” I murmur.