Chapter 3
MATHEW
“There you are! You just missed her!” Rose pouted.
Mathew frowned and glanced over his shoulder. “Missed who?”
“The girl you’re going to marry.”
He arched a brow. “Okay, I agreed to come out with you tonight because my boss kicked me out for working too much this week. That doesn’t mean I want to get set up. We’ve been through this.”
Mathew’s cousin, Rose, rolled her eyes. “You’re no fun, Matt.”
“This isn’t news,” he huffed. “I’m going to get a soda.”
Before Rose could argue, he slipped through the crowd.
His thoughts drifted immediately to the girl he’d bumped into.
The woman had a unique beauty. Her hair was dirty blonde and long, falling past her shoulders.
The color of green in her eyes had thrown him off guard, and he’d lost the ability to speak to her. It was the strangest thing.
Simply put, she was gorgeous.
But it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen beautiful people before.
He had the strangest urge to go back outside to see if he could talk to her. He only saw the back of the man who guided her out. Mathew wasn’t sure who he was, but he was clearly with her, Mathew was nothing if not a gentleman. He wouldn’t be the reason a couple broke up.
With a sigh, he moved toward the bar. “Just a diet cola,” he told the server.
The man behind the counter nodded and handed him a bottle after he removed the cap.
Without trying, Mathew’s thoughts returned yet again to the woman. Why was he so drawn to her? What was it about her that made him want to find her and just… get to know her.
It wasn’t romantic. He had zero interest in dating someone right now.
If being married to Victoria had taught him anything, it was that he wasn’t capable of splitting his focus between work and a relationship.
She’d drilled it into his head day after day and long past the second they’d both signed on the dotted line.
He wasn’t good enough.
He wasn’t relationship material.
He was a workaholic who couldn’t see what was right in front of him.
Mathew took a swig of his drink and turned his attention to where Rose was standing with some of her sisters. They were all having a good time.
His sweep of the room indicated that most everyone who was in attendance belonged here.
Whether it was their shared upbringing in this town or something else, he couldn’t tell.
And maybe it didn’t matter much. It wasn’t like Mathew went out of his way to socialize.
His father wouldn’t approve of such frivolity.
Fred Klein had been a workhorse—still was.
Though he’d moved to the city for the girl he loved.
Didn’t stop him from working himself ragged, though.
His father had been born and raised in a small town much like Copper Creek. He loved the outdoors and the life it offered. But his mother couldn’t leave her life in the city. It wasn’t a surprise when they both retired that they moved closer to family. Only, it had been too late.
The plan had been to move to Copper Creek to help out his aunt and uncle. Kate and Fred had been inseparable as children. But now his aunt was gone.
Mathew’s theory was that his parents moved here to feel closer to Kate. And the fact that George needed help on the farm was the cherry on top. Hard work was the only personality trait that Mathew’s father could respect.
But it couldn’t be just any hard work.
One had to work hard labor with their hands.
Imagine his irritation when not one but all three of his children went into fields that didn’t require heavy labor.
Mathew sighed again and glanced toward the door. Maybe he could slip out right now and his cousin wouldn’t notice. She’d practically begged for him to come until he couldn’t take it any longer. Not even Jason or Penny was annoying enough to drag him out of his quiet apartment to come out to… this.
Just seeing the crowd of people in their early twenties was enough to give him a headache. He wasn’t young anymore. He’d just turned thirty, and normally that’d mean he’d already have a family to go home to.
If he’d stayed with Victoria, there was no telling how many kids he could have had.
His stomach soured.
He wouldn’t be a good father. His workaholic ways would see to that.
If he couldn’t even make the girl he married stick around and love him, how could he expect his children to?
Yet another reason why he and his siblings had moved away from home.
To put some much-needed distance between them and their father.
But now his mother needed them. She was forgetting more and more about their lives. That fact was breaking him little by little with each passing day. He prayed for her every day and tried to visit when he could.
The fact that Rose had planned to ambush him with a blind date ate at him more than he cared to admit. She had no right to meddle in his life. He was fine. Happy. Just because he was alone didn’t mean his life wasn’t fulfilling.
With one final look in Rose’s direction, Mathew tossed back the rest of his diet cola. He gave the server a twenty and handed him the empty bottle before taking off.
“You ever meet anyone with a darker blonde hair and green eyes?” Mathew asked as nonchalantly as he could.
Aiden was the wrong person to ask. He froze, his fingers on the keyboard. Then he swiveled his chair around and lifted his brows. “Are you asking about the female variety?”
Mathew’s flat glare had Aiden chuckling.
“Okay, so that’s a yes.” He tapped his chin. “Hmm. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Like what kind of green eyes? Do they sparkle with humor when you tell a joke? Or do they get darker?”
“Aiden,” Mathew warned.
“Wait, I think I know who you’re talking about,” Aiden mused with a straight face.
“You do?”
Then his friend’s face broke into a wide smile and he laughed out loud.
“No, Matt. I don’t. You gave me nothing to go off of.
Short hair? Long? Wavy? Curly? And green eyes?
I mean, they’re not that common, but that’s seriously nothing.
You’d have better luck trying to describe her to an artist at the sheriff’s office. ”
“You think that would work?” Mathew regretted the question the second it slipped past his lips.
Aiden gaped at him before laughing again. “Where did you meet this chick? I mean, you did meet her, right? You didn’t just see her through her front window while you stared at her from beneath a streetlamp like some stalker…”
“Okay, enough,” Mathew said. “Don’t you have rounds to make?”
Aiden made a sweeping gesture with his hand toward the computer. “I’m working on discharge instructions.”
“Well, hurry up and go make your rounds.” Mathew stalked off to see his next patient.
Aiden snickered. “You know you’re not my supervisor, right?”
Later that day, Mathew sat across from his brother, Jason, at the café he managed.
He was taking his dinner break, and they were splitting a large sub sandwich.
Mathew continued to glance in his brother’s direction, wishing he could ask the question without getting the third degree, but he knew better.
Asking Jason was a good idea only due to the fact that he met a lot of customers.
People came and went from the café. And he was good with faces.
“What is it, Mathew?” Jason asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I can tell you’re about to burst.”
Mathew leveled him with an irritated look. “I am not.”
“You feel those crevices between your brows? They’re as deep as the Grand Canyon. Just spit it out so I can finish my half of the sandwich before I have to get back to work.”
Well, there was no backing out once Jason dug his heels in. “Have you seen a girl in here with blonde hair and green eyes? Her hair would be about this long,” he gestured. “And she has a lot of freckles across her nose.”
Jason paused with his cup halfway to his mouth.
Mathew’s scowl deepened and he stared down at his food. “Never mind. Forget it.”
“Some kind of lost connection?” Jason asked. At least he wasn’t making fun of him like his so-called friend. Mathew would get Aiden back for the way he treated him.
“You could call it that,” Mathew admitted.
A slow smile crossed Jason’s face, but it wasn’t the kind he wore when he planned to tease his siblings. It was honest happiness. “That’s awesome, man.”
“It’s nothing,” Mathew corrected. “I just…”
“You just…” Jason drawled.
“I bumped into her, okay? Like literally, we collided at the country club.”
For the second time in five minutes, Jason looked stunned. “You went to the country club? To go dancing or something?”
“There was no dancing,” Mathew said. “Rose dragged me there. She… there wasn’t any dancing,” he finished lamely. “Anyway, I bumped into her on the way in, and I was curious.”
“Curious.”
“Yeah, curious.”
“You want to ask her out?”
Mathew shoved his head into his hands and groaned, recalling the way the man had guided her out of the building. “I don’t know. She might be seeing someone.”
Jason chuckled. “Okay, so I know that’s not your style.”
“I just want to know who she is. I can’t get her out of my head.
” He lifted his eyes to his brother, praying he’d understand.
Jason had gone through something similar when he’d met Isabelle the first time.
And as miracles would have it, the universe set them on a collision course a second time in their lives.
They were soul mates, if something like that even existed.
“Hmm.”
“Just answer the question,” Mathew said with a groan. “Have you seen someone like that?”
“I see a lot of people. This town is small, but it’s not that small. There’s a chance I’ve met her. But I don’t know. You didn’t catch a name or anything?”
Mathew shook his head.
“I don’t know what to tell you. Sorry.”
“Yeah,” Mathew muttered as his phone started vibrating. “Me too.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw Rose’s number flashing on the screen. He held up a finger. “Rose, what do you need?”
“It’s our mechanic.”
“What is?” He tossed a confused look at his brother.
“Can you stop by the farm? We need help treating a burn.” There were some muffled voices, and Rose huffed to someone with her.
“You’re getting it looked at. I don’t care if you’ve had this before.
My cousin is a doctor. He can treat it.” Then she returned to the conversation.
“I can’t tell how bad the burn is. I think you should come check it out.
Do you have ointments or stuff like that? ”
“Rose, burns are common when working with hot machinery. I’m sure your mechanic has dealt with—”
“Just come and take a look. I’d feel better knowing that it’s not going to fester or scar.” Then, without waiting for a response, she hung up the phone.
Jason arched a brow. “Their mechanic got burned?”
Mathew rose to his feet. “Yeah. I guess she’s worried enough that she wants a medical professional to take a look.”
“Charge her a fee for making a house call,” Jason shouted at his back. There was amusement in his voice—and something else. It was like he knew something Mathew didn’t.
Mathew arrived at the farm with a medical bag in hand. Rose rushed out from the hangar to meet him.
“Did you bring the stuff?”
He held up the bag with a disgruntled look. “What do you think? Seriously, Rose. Guys don’t like being babied. Just earlier this week, we had to hold down a man who didn’t want stitches.”
Rose wrinkled her nose. “Really? Who?”
“You know I can’t tell you.”
She frowned, and her small hand wrapped around his upper arm. “Come on. I’ll take you.”
He entered the hangar and blinked a few times for his eyes to adjust.
“Over there.” Rose pointed to where the mechanic’s backside jutted from an engine. Combat boots, baggy pants, and a tattered hoodie were all he caught a glimpse of when he nodded to his cousin. “Go get me some cool water and some clean rags.”
Rose nodded and darted out into the sunlight.
Mathew cleared his throat and the mechanic startled, bumping his head with a grunt. “I know this is a little unprecedented, but I’m here to look at your burn. You might as well let me do it, because my cousin is nothing if not persistent. And frankly, she scares me a little bit.”
The sound of something metal clanking where the guy was working was all that reached Mathew as he drew closer. Then the mechanic withdrew and walked around to the side of the machine. He caught sight of a backwards baseball cap that was streaked with grease.
Then the engine started, and he jumped back a few steps. When he looked up into what had to be some kind of tractor, his eyes clashed with hers.
Not a man was the only thought that penetrated his foggy mind when the woman from the country club hopped down from her seat.
She wiped at her face with the back of her hand, smudging grease against her pale skin. Then she cocked her head, and recognition filled her gorgeous green eyes.
“It’s you,” she whispered.