2. Martin
MARTIN
Martin had a hurdle to replace, a flock that would be jumpy for the rest of the afternoon, mud to his knees, and a stranger standing in his field whose name he had just been given and immediately regretted asking for.
None of that explained why his pulse was behaving as though he had run the fence line twice rather than spent ten minutes shouting at sheep and wrestling a gate back into place.
This was not on the list. The list, as far as Martin had drawn it up over breakfast, had contained a broken hurdle, a vet call about the Suffolk ewe, and possibly enough time before dark to look at the guttering on the lambing shed.
Galen Storms had not been on the list. Galen Storms, it now appeared, was going to be Martin's afternoon regardless of what the list said.
Martin had managed Ashcombe's flock for the better part of a decade, long enough that Jacks trusted him with everything except the final decision, and long enough that a stranger appearing mid-crisis in one of his fields should not, by rights, have thrown him this badly.
He made himself look properly, since looking briefly clearly had not worked.
The man was tall enough to look Martin straight in the eye, mud to the knee same as Martin, hair come half loose from wherever it had started and stuck in dark ropes to a jaw that had no business looking that good.
There were tattoos up both forearms, visible now that the jacket he had sacrificed to the sheep was slung over one shoulder rather than covering anything useful.
And there were the eyes, which Martin had already clocked once and was apparently going to have to keep clocking, an unreasonable, almost artificial blue-green that looked as though it had been chosen off a colour chart rather than occurring in nature.
Beautiful, Martin thought, with real irritation, and tired in a way that had nothing to do with the last ten minutes of sheep.
Of course he was called Galen Storms. Martin was drawn to him anyway, immediately and comprehensively, which felt like the sort of thing his own good sense ought to have vetoed at the door.
"Van's up on the verge," Galen said, nodding vaguely back toward the lane, already moving past the moment the way a man moved past a shop window he could not afford to stop at.
"Temperature gauge went, then a knock, then a smell I didn't love.
She's not going anywhere under her own power tonight, I don't think. "
"She," Martin repeated.
"Nina."
"Of course she has a name."
"After Nina Hagen."
That got him something that was not quite a smile, more the shape a smile made when a man was too busy doing arithmetic to commit to it fully. Martin knew that look. He had worn it himself often enough, standing in a field doing sums that did not come out right no matter how many times he ran them.
"Phone signal's rubbish out here," Martin said, mostly to have something ordinary to say. "Farmhouse has a landline, if you need it."
Galen was already patting his pockets for his phone, one bar flickering in and out as he considered the offer, and Martin watched something shift behind his face. The flirtation, or whatever it had been, folded itself away in favour of a more urgent kind of worry.
"I need it," Galen said. "Booking's at Knightley Moorings. I should already be setting up."
The call was conducted from the farmhouse kitchen with Martin standing close enough to hear Galen's side and doing his best impression of a man who was not listening.
Galen's voice on the phone was a different instrument entirely from the one that had been swearing cheerfully at sheep half an hour earlier, level and careful and apologising with the specific fluency of someone who had made this exact call before and hated it every time.
He offered to cover the cost of a replacement out of his own fee.
He asked, without much hope in his voice, whether anyone else on the agency's books could cover at short notice.
He said "understood" twice in a row when the answer, evidently, was that this might affect future work, and he did not argue either time.
Martin had spent enough of his own life being counted on to hear what Galen did not say.
When the call ended, Galen stood very still for exactly one second, then exhaled through his nose and said, "Right. Recovery, then, if you know anyone who does old Volkswagens without wanting to be the one who has to explain what air-cooled means."
"I might know someone." Martin folded his arms. "You're not going to ask what you owe me for the phone call."
"I was getting to it."
"No, you weren't."
That, finally, got him the full smile, quick and startled out of him, gone almost as soon as it arrived. Martin decided he did not like how much he wanted to see it again.
He was still deciding what to do about that when the back door opened and Jacks came in already talking.
"That'll be the van on the Ashcombe lane, then," she said, taking in Galen, the mud, and the general shape of the afternoon in one sweep. "It can come into the yard. Peter'll want to look at her before anyone tows her further than that."
"We will need the yard clear before we bring the ewes through," Martin said, because someone had to say something useful, and it might as well be him.
Jacks crossed to the kettle without looking at him. "Peter's not coming till morning regardless."
"That's not—" Martin started, then stopped, because he could feel the argument dissolving before he had finished building it.
The yard, the ewes, the general principle of Ashcombe not being a campsite: none of it survived contact with Jacks deciding otherwise, and he suspected, uncomfortably, that none of his objections had ever really been about the yard.
Hazel came in from the front room a moment later, took one look at Galen, and said, "You're freezing and you haven't eaten," the French still clear in her vowels and none of it diminishing the correction.
She had a tea towel over one shoulder and the settled authority of Jacks's partner of longer than either of them advertised, a woman who had run this kitchen and this life alongside her for decades, and who had never once doubted that feeding a stranger was simply what afternoons were for.
"I'm all right," Galen said, in the automatic way of someone who said that a great deal and rarely meant it.
"You'll eat before anyone drives you anywhere," Hazel said, already turning toward whatever she had in the oven, and that appeared to be the end of the discussion.
Jacks poured tea strong enough, in Martin's professional opinion, to restart agricultural machinery, and handed a mug to Galen without asking whether he wanted it.
Galen thanked her and took a swallow.
His eyes widened by a fraction. It was barely anything, a brief failure of whatever discipline had kept the rest of his face under control through the agency call, but Martin saw it.
He watched Galen's throat work, watched him lower the mug carefully, and watched the expression resolve into the polite neutrality of a man determined not to insult a woman currently rescuing both him and his van.
Jacks's brew had a reputation. Even the district vet had once tried to dilute it when she wasn't looking. Galen took a second drink without complaint.
Martin filed that away as one more piece of evidence in a case he had never agreed to build.
Jacks rang Peter while Hazel put bread, cheese, and something warm from the oven in front of Galen.
Peter's verdict arrived precisely as Martin expected.
He would come in the morning. The knocking wanted a proper inspection rather than a roadside guess, and nobody was to start the engine in the meantime.
"The hard standing by Martin's cottage," Jacks said after she hung up. "Power point's there, and Peter can get the trailer in without disturbing the flock."
Martin looked at her.
Jacks looked back.
The matter was settled.
"Bring him back when you've moved it," Hazel said. "He can shower here, and you'll both eat before anyone starts discussing beds."
Galen opened his mouth, presumably to object to at least one part of that sentence.
Hazel gave him a look.
He closed it again.
They went back for the van once tea and a plate of Hazel's bread had been dealt with, Martin driving Jacks's old Land Rover down at a crawl with the tow strap coiled in the footwell. Galen sat alongside him empty-handed, having left everything that mattered to him right where he had secured it.
Nina turned out to be every bit as improbable as her name suggested and considerably less charming than Martin had braced for.
He had expected something bohemian and hand-painted, the sort of van that turned up on postcards.
What he got was faded pea-soup green gone patchy with primer, a pop-top that had clearly been raised and lowered several thousand more times than the manufacturer had intended, and a rear curtain hanging half an inch off true that nobody had bothered to fix because it still, technically, closed.
She looked less like a lifestyle and more like a fact Galen had simply been living with for a long time.
Galen slid open the side door and reached beneath the rear bench for a pair of work gloves. Only then did he spare a thought for himself, running a hand back through his ruined hair as an afterthought.
Martin watched him do it and felt something in his chest rearrange uninvited.
With the side door still open while they rigged the strap, Martin caught a brief view inside.
A green-plaid bench ran across the rear beneath faded yellow canvas curtains, and along one wall a narrow countertop held an inset sink and two-burner hob.
Green carpet covered the floor. It was cramped and battered, certainly, but everything had its place.
It told him more about Galen Storms in fifteen seconds than the man had volunteered in the last hour, and Martin disliked how much the glimpse made him want the rest.
Attaching the strap required them both bent over the same stretch of bumper, close enough that Galen's hair brushed Martin's wrist when he leaned in to check the hook, close enough that Martin caught, in the flat grey afternoon light and without the excuse of any drama to blame it on, the exact, startling colour of his eyes.
Martin straightened first and gave instructions for the tow with more force than the tow strictly required.
Galen followed every one of them without argument, steering Nina in a dead straight line behind the Land Rover as though he had been doing it his whole life, which, Martin supposed, he more or less had.
They parked her on the hard standing beside Martin's cottage, where the power point sat beneath the kitchen window and Peter could bring in the trailer without crossing the working yard.
The van sat twenty feet from Martin's kitchen window.
Galen would shower and eat at the farmhouse, but Nina would remain here through the night, a faded green obstruction in the middle of Martin's established view.
Peter might solve the mechanical problem tomorrow.
Martin had considerably less confidence in anyone's ability to solve the other one.
Galen stood with one hand resting against Nina's side and looked toward the lane.
Martin caught, for just a second before Galen covered it, something under the dry acceptance: a flicker of the stress from the phone call, the fee gone, the next booking now in question, the particular tiredness of a man doing the sums again and not liking the answer any better the second time.
It vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by the same wry, functioning face Galen had been wearing since the field, but Martin had seen it.
It did something to him considerably more inconvenient than lust had managed all afternoon.
"Sorry," Galen said, following Martin's glance toward the van parked against the cottage wall. A stranger, a small green problem sitting exactly where Martin would see it every time he came home. "I know I'm in your way."
Martin looked at him for a moment too long before he answered and found, when he did, that he had already stopped pretending to himself that this was only about the yard.
"You already are," he said, and something in it came out gentler than he'd meant it to, the corner of his mouth giving him away before he could stop it.