Chapter 3
three
Maggie froze mid-step when the front door of the main house swung open.
A man emerged—silver-haired, weathered face—and her throat tightened.
No. This couldn’t be Anson. This man was easily in his sixties, old enough to be her father.
Her fingers went numb around her keys as their eyes met across the yard.
He walked toward her with the easy gait of a cowboy, hat in hand, his sharp blue eyes assessing. A cattle dog trotted at his heels, mirroring his measured pace.
The ground shifted beneath her. Six years of letters. Six years of pouring her heart onto paper, telling this man things she’d never told anyone else. And she’d never once thought to ask how old he was.
What kind of idiot drove two thousand miles to meet a man whose face she wouldn’t recognize in a lineup?
“You must be Maggie,” he called, his voice deep and gravelled by time.
Her mouth went dry.
A woman appeared in the doorway behind him.
Slender with silver-streaked brown hair that fell in soft waves around her face, she wore jeans and a loose sweater, and her expression was all warm welcome.
She hurried to catch up with the man, and he paused, waiting for her.
He draped his arm around her shoulders with the easy familiarity of long companionship, leaning down to place a gentle kiss on her temple.
Husband and wife.
Oh, God.
In those letters, they’d shared everything—nightmares, regrets, hopes they were afraid to voice aloud. They’d never bothered with the superficial details. What did it matter what he looked like? What did it matter how old he was? She’d thought they had connected on a deeper level.
But he had never once mentioned a wife.
How much else had he left out?
She looked down at the gravel beneath her feet, shame and anger battling for dominance. The shame was winning.
How could she have been so stupid?
A few handwritten letters, and she’d built an entire relationship in her head. Projected every quality she wanted onto a man she’d never even seen.
The couple stood now at the base of the porch steps, waiting for her. The man’s face was unreadable, but the woman smiled.
She pasted something approximating a polite smile on her face and took a step toward them. She’d make some excuse, get back in her truck, and get the hell out of Solace before anyone else saw her. Before she humiliated herself further.
The woman touched the man’s arm and whispered something to him. He nodded, dropping his hand from her shoulder but keeping close.
“Heard a lot about you,” the man called, his voice carrying across the yard. “Anson’s been waiting.”
Anson.
Waiting.
She blinked, the words not quite computing.
If this wasn’t Anson...
Across the yard, a door creaked open. She turned toward the sound. The bunkhouse door swung wide, and a large dog bounded out. Huge, shaggy, silver-gray.
Bramble.
She’d know that dog anywhere. The wolfhound that slept by the door of his forge, that collected pinecones and sticks like it was his job and was suspicious of snow, that still flinched at the lonely howl of a wolf, but never let Anson out of his sight, no matter how scared he was.
Which meant...
She lifted her gaze from the dog to the man behind him.
Tall—God, he was tall—with the kind of shoulders that came from swinging hammers and shoeing horses, not from a gym.
Dark hair fell past his collar, catching the afternoon light.
His beard was thick but neatly trimmed, framing a mouth she couldn’t quite see but had spent six years wondering about.
Even in worn jeans, a dark Henley, and a flannel that had seen better days, he looked.
.. solid. Capable. Exactly like someone who could shape metal with his bare hands.
And he was wearing the red scarf she sent him five years ago.
Relief crashed through her so hard she almost staggered.
That was Anson.
She let out a breath and looked back at the older man, who must be Walker Nash, the ranch’s owner. The woman would be Dr. Johanna Perrin, then. The therapist who worked with the veterans here and Walker’s long-time girlfriend.
Anson didn’t look happy to see her. In fact, he wouldn’t even look at her. His gaze skipped over her face, landed somewhere near her shoulder, then dropped to the ground.
What had she been expecting? That they’d fall into each other’s arms like some romantic movie? That all of those letters would translate seamlessly to real life?
She’d been naive. Again.
But Bramble bounded ahead of Anson, tail swishing. The dog, at least, seemed glad to see her.
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back furiously—she was not going to cry in front of two strangers and the man she’d been desperate to meet—and stepped forward, trying to arrange her features into something resembling normal.
God, her face felt stiff, like she’d forgotten how to smile naturally.
She’d rehearsed this moment a hundred times in her mind during the long drive, imagining what she’d say, how he’d respond. None of those imagined scenarios included him staring fixedly at the ground like he wished it would swallow him whole.
“Hi,” she managed, the word catching in her throat.
Anson’s gaze flickered up, met hers for a fraction of a second, then skittered off somewhere over her left shoulder. “Hi.” His voice was deeper than she’d imagined, rougher around the edges. He cleared his throat. “You, uh, found the place okay.”
“Yeah. Someone at the café gave me directions.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, acutely aware of Walker and Johanna watching from a respectful distance, probably wondering why two people who’d written each other for six years were acting like awkward strangers.
Because that’s what we are, she realized with a sinking feeling. Strangers. For all the words they’d shared, all the secrets, all the late-night confessions, they’d never had to navigate the simple act of standing in each other’s presence.
Anson nodded. His hands—the ones she knew had crafted intricate leather work, had calmed frightened horses, had penned thousands of words to her—were jammed deep in his pockets. “Nessie,” he said. “At the café. Jax’s girlfriend.”
“Yeah.” Maggie forced herself to take another step closer, bridging the vast chasm between them by a few inches. “She seemed nice. Said you’d been checking your watch. Waiting for me.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, visible even through the beard. Still, he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “They talk too much.”
The silence stretched between them, heavy with all the things she wanted to say but couldn’t find words for. In her letters, she could edit, rewrite, find the perfect phrasing for complicated feelings. Here, with him watching—but not watching—her, everything tangled in her throat.
“How’s the forge?” she tried, desperate to connect. In his letters, he’d written about building it with someone named River, about the peace he found in shaping metal, about how Bramble would lie in the doorway watching him work. “Still working on those hinges for the stable doors?”
“Done.”
“Oh.” She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t. “What about the leather collar for Echo? The one with the brass fittings?”
“Finished that, too.”
Another dead end. Maggie looked around, searching for any topic that might break through the wall he’d erected. She’d known he was reserved—he’d said as much in his letters—but this was something else entirely. This man was physically incapable of sustaining a conversation with her.
Ugh, this whole trip had been a colossal mistake. She should get back in her truck and—
Bramble suddenly pressed against her legs, nearly knocking her off balance. She braced her hand on his back to steady herself, fingers sinking into his coarse fur, and laughed despite herself.
“Hi, Bramble. You’re exactly how he described you. The gentle giant.”
Bramble huffed, tail swishing. He nudged his snout against her hand.
“He likes you,” Anson said, his voice softening.
She crouched down, bringing herself to Bramble’s eye level. The dog immediately pushed closer, his amber eyes watching her with far less reservation than his owner’s. She cupped his grizzled face between her palms and let him snuffle at her cheek, her hair, learning her scent.
Bramble’s tail thumped against the ground. He allowed her to stroke his ears, his beard, the white-flecked muzzle that spoke of advancing age, the scars where his hair hadn’t grown completely back.
Anson had written about how Bramble had defended his flock against a wolf attack, but came out of it with PTSD.
His previous owner couldn’t use a dog who startled at every unexpected sound, so the wolfhound had ended up at Valor Ridge shortly after Anson arrived.
He’d written about how they’d instantly recognized something in each other, two creatures designed for facing danger who now flinched at their own shadows.
“I’ve been wanting to say this to you for a long time—you’re such a good boy,” she murmured and kissed Bramble’s head. “The absolute best boy.”
When she looked up, she caught sight of Anson’s hands. He’d pulled them from his pockets while watching her with Bramble, and the scarring there was—
Oh… wow.
They were so much worse than she’d pictured.
Thick, ropy tissue covered his knuckles, stretched across his palms, and disappeared beneath the cuffs of his shirt.
She stared a beat too long.
Anson followed her gaze down at his hands, and his jaw clenched. He shoved his hands back into his pockets, his shoulders hunching forward.
“Anson,” she started, wanting to explain, to tell him it didn’t matter.
But he’d taken a step back, putting distance between them. His face shuttered. All traces of the softness that had appeared while watching her with Bramble vanished behind an unreadable mask.
“I should… get back to work,” he muttered, not even pretending to look at her now.