Her Temporary Hero (Heroes of Purple Heart Ranch #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The rental car smelled of pine air freshener and failure.

Eliot had chosen the pine scent himself, back at the airport.

The alternative was called Ocean Breeze.

And since he was already having the worst week of his professional life, he had decided he didn't need to smell like a disappointed beach vacation on top of it.

The GPS said fourteen minutes to Valor City.

It took ten. Mainly because there was little to no traffic on the road.

Just a large haul truck carrying tractors.

A few pickup trucks. And one hybrid that looked entirely out of place against the sprawling fields.

The small town announced itself with hand-painted mailboxes, three roadside fruit and vegetable stands, and one water tower painted with the words Valor — Where the Clouds Tell the Story! in cheerful yellow letters.

Eliot stared at that water tower for longer than was safe at forty-five miles per hour.

Where the Clouds Tell the Story. Oh, wait; he shouldn't forget the exclamation mark. It was, after all, dotted with a cloud at the bottom instead of the top.

Eliot was a man with a meteorology degree from Penn State and twelve years of broadcast experience in major cities. He'd been brought down from on high to spend the next three months in a town whose civic identity was an imaginary weather phenomenon.

Well, not entirely imaginary. It was perfectly natural for some clouds to resemble hearts to the human eye and imagination.

It was insanity to think that the clouds formed in that particular cardiac shape during a particular month and in a specific space.

And now he was sent to cover the fiasco as though it were real weather news.

The universe had a terrible sense of humor.

He turned onto what the GPS identified as Main Street — an optimistic name for a two-lane road lined with hanging baskets of fake-looking purple flowers — and was assaulted by coordinated small-townness.

Checkered blankets.

There were checkered blankets everywhere.

Red-and-white, blue-and-white, some ambitious yellow ones.

They were draped over folding tables, stacked in crates, arranged all across the town square.

Bunting fluttered from every available surface.

A banner strung between two oak trees read, in letters large enough to be visible from low Earth orbit: Heart-Shaped Clouds Festival — 63rd Annual!

Sixty-three years? This had to be a joke. Right?

For sixty-three consecutive years, the grown adults of this town had organized a public event around the possibility — the unconfirmed meteorological possibility — that clouds formed cardiac anatomy for all eyes to see on a specific day.

Eliot put the car in park. He sat very still for a moment. Then he pulled out his phone and typed a message to his agent that he deleted before sending because it contained language that would have alarmed her.

He typed a second message to his therapist. He deleted that one, too. Dr. Snyder had only known him for a couple of weeks. The two appointments Eliot had been mandated to attend had not gone well. Instead, he got out of the car.

Miles Nakamura was waiting for him on the sidewalk. The cameraman was twenty-six years old and constitutionally cheerful in a way Eliot had always found professionally useful and personally baffling. He was holding two cups of coffee and grinning as if they were here on vacation.

"You made it." Miles handed him a cup. "How was the flight?"

"Turbulent."

Miles nodded with the serene acceptance of a man who had arrived two days earlier and already made peace with his surroundings. He had driven the equipment and the satellite truck across country. And now he was wearing a flannel shirt and… were those cowboy boots?

Eliot looked down at the charcoal trousers he'd worn on the plane along with the expensive loafers he'd had to take off on his trek through TSA.

"This place is incredible, right?" Miles rocked on his heels, surveying the square with visible appreciation. "Betty Ann says the blankets are all handmade. The checkered ones. She says the tradition started with—"

"Who's Betty Ann?"

"Your landlady." Miles reached into his jacket pocket and produced a key attached to a small wooden cloud. Hand-carved, by the look of it. "Betty Ann Perkins. She owns the three garden apartments above the bakery. The Flour the slim kind, barely bigger than a stylus, designed to fit in a field jacket pocket and measure wind speed on the go.

The kind of thing a meteorologist kept within reach.

Or apparently, in her case, in her hair.

She was arranging something in the pastry case and talking to a small, beaming, white-haired woman — the Betty Ann, presumably — with the easy, affectionate shorthand of two people who did this every morning.

"The lavender ones sold first yesterday, so I did a double batch," she was saying. She had a warm, slightly too-much voice, the kind that sounded like it was always just on the verge of laughing at something.

"Dalene, darling, you know you don't work here. And it's the weekend. You should be taking a much-needed break."

"It's still summer break, so I have time. Besides, baking is my love language."

"Ah, you're so much like grandmother."

The freckle-faced Dalene beamed. Even though that smile wasn't directed at him, Eliot cocked his head to the side, like a bulldog being bopped on the nose by a bunny rabbit. A fearsome creature being surprised by something cute and cuddly.

And then the freckle-faced bunny woman with the stylus in her hair turned that smile toward him. Eliot's favorite thing was watching the sun rise. That was what Dalene's smile felt like to him; a dark night turning over into a brand new sunshine day.

"Good morning." She straightened, that smile stretching wider, beaming past the Earth and into the next galaxy. Open, automatic, the smile of someone who meant it with no effort at all. "What can I get you?"

It took him three tries to clear his throat and get his voice to work. "Coffee. Black."

"Coming right up." She turned toward the machine, then paused. "Scone?"

Eliot looked at the pastry case. The scones were golden, evenly risen, dusted with something crystalline. "Fine," he said.

She set one on a small plate and slid it across the counter. He picked it up. He took a bite.

It was lavender. Distinctly, aggressively lavender.

He chewed. He waited for it to improve. It did not improve.

The texture was slightly over-developed, the crumb too tight, and the flavor was doing something that could only be described as floral in a way that suggested personal hygiene rather than dessert.

He set it back on the plate. "It tastes like soap."

The bakery went quiet. All at once. Even though there were only a handful of people at the quaint little tables, the silence made it feel like a crowd was now watching him in silence. And then darkness.

The freckle-faced bunny's smile fell. Her freckles had all but dimmed. The light went out of those sparkling eyes.

Eliot needed to explain. "The crumb is too tight. You've overworked the dough."

"Have I."

"The sugar ratio is also off."

"You know, most people just say thank you and keep their mouths shut."

"Most people are lying." Eliot Brooks was not a liar. He told the one hundred percent truth. Even when it cost him his network job.

He picked up his coffee. He looked at the room, which was still watching him with the alert, collective stillness of a town that apparently knew something he didn't. He looked back at the woman.

The flour on her collarbone. The stylus in her hair.

The wind was not blowing in his direction. Her sun-bright smile had gone dim.

Good. She needed to see that he was a pitbull. Bunny rabbits had no business being friends with pitbulls. Eliot wouldn't be here long enough for it to matter, anyway.

He turned to the small, beaming, white-haired woman at the end of the counter.

"Betty Ann Perkins?" he asked.

"The very same." Her eyes were bright and entirely too amused.

"Eliot Brooks. I believe I'm your new tenant." He held up the key with the carved cloud.

"We're happy to have you here, Mr. Brooks."

He did not respond to that. Though he got the sneaking suspicion that it wasn't sarcasm. She meant it.

"Thank you for the coffee," he said, placing a bill on the counter, and left.

Behind him, through the closing door, he heard Betty Ann's voice, low and warm and thoroughly entertained.

"Well," Betty Ann said. "He's going to fit right in."

He did not hear what Dalene said in response. He told himself he hadn't wanted to.