The Challenge

Chapter 1

CHLOE

This place looked nothing like the listing.

Wandering around the house I’d rented, I couldn’t help but notice that it already seemed inhabited—or at least not cleaned since the last tenant.

There were a couple of dirty dishes in the sink and a man’s large black hoodie hanging over one of the kitchen chairs.

I’d just arrived in my hometown of Dry River, Wyoming, after a long hiatus, and this had been the only place available in the vicinity.

The next town was an hour away. I’d been back home once briefly in the past year, but that was only to visit.

This trip was different because I’d be staying indefinitely.

My mother, who had dementia, lived in a long-term care facility now, and instinctively I knew these might be her final days.

Even if she didn’t know who I was anymore, I needed to be here for her.

I surveyed the scene again. I’d been looking forward to using one of the three bedrooms in this rental home as an office.

As of now, two of the bedrooms had clothing and other personal items strewn about in them.

One of the rooms had a little girl’s stuff in it.

What the heck? People had to be living here.

The property management company I’d used to book the place had already taken my money and confirmed that everything was good to go.

The code they’d sent me for the front door had worked, but that was the only thing going according to plan thus far.

I felt my blood pressure rising and my chest growing tight as I considered my options. Which were none.

About ten minutes later, as I continued to walk around the house, trying to make sense of things, I froze when I heard footsteps. Then came a deep voice.

“Hello?” he called. “Who’s here?”

I walked back toward the front door.

The sight of him nearly knocked the wind out of me. Those deep brown eyes. A body that towered over me. Beautiful jet-black hair that curled around his ears. In a matter of seconds, I was a teenager again. And he was ten times more man than I remembered.

“Oh my God.” I covered my chest.

“Chloe?” He blinked.

Standing before me was the one guy who needed no introduction.

Evan Ricci. The same Evan that twelve-year-old me had secretly crushed on back when he’d moved in with my family for a year before he joined the military.

The same Evan who’d become my best friend when I was seventeen and he was twenty-two and fresh out of the Army.

The same Evan I’d basically fallen in love with at eighteen, whether he realized it or not.

The same Evan who’d broken my heart before I moved away for college.

Now, a decade later, staring up into his dark eyes seemed surreal.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

His tone snapped me out of it, and my heart started to pound. “I’m supposed to be staying here. I rented this place.”

Evan’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not possible.”

“Yes, it is. I signed a lease.”

“This house isn’t available. I took the listing off the market a week ago.”

“Well, I booked it long before that, and the property management company certainly didn’t notify me about a cancellation. They took my money and gave me the code to get in.”

Evan let out a long sigh. “They fucked up. I’m living here now with my daughter. Have been for a few weeks.”

His daughter. I’d heard through the grapevine that Evan had gotten married and had a little girl. But I’d avoided any further details over the years. If he was living here with his daughter alone, though, where was his wife?

I blew a breath up into my hair. “So, you own this place?”

“It’s one of a few investment properties I have in town. We wouldn’t normally choose to live here—the rooms are too small—but our new house is being renovated. So, Effie and I moved in temporarily.”

Effie. What a cute name.

Then a little girl came in, carrying a basketball tucked under her arm. She was maybe seven or eight years old and had Evan’s face, but her hair was lighter than his. My heart squeezed.

She looked up at me. “Who are you?”

Just as I’d opened my mouth to speak, Evan interrupted. “Effie, go hang out in your room for a bit, okay?”

She pouted. “But I—”

“Please,” he urged.

“Okay…” She sulked.

I offered her an apologetic smile before she stormed off, bouncing the ball all the way to her bedroom. I’d wanted to look at her longer, examine her face and wallow in the enormity of Evan having a little girl.

“Obviously, if I’d known the situation, I would’ve never put myself in this predicament,” I told him. “I’ll need to figure out another place to stay now.”

“What are you doing in town?” he asked.

“Visiting my mother. She’s not well.”

“That’s rough.” He momentarily closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I heard she has dementia.”

I inhaled. “It was time for me to come home and face it.”

Evan nodded. “How long are you staying?”

“As long as I need to go through my family’s storage unit and be here for Mom.”

He scratched his chin. “I see.”

As silence settled around us, I again noticed that Evan was even more ruggedly handsome than I remembered.

Dark facial hair traced his perfectly angular jaw.

His eyes were a deeper brown than I recalled, and his black hair was as thick as ever, though looking a bit flattened, as if he’d worn a hat earlier.

This man’s effect on me certainly hadn’t changed a bit in all the years we’d been apart.

We stared at each other for a few tense moments before I shook my head. “Well, I’d better get going on finding another place to stay.”

“You might have a hard time,” he warned.

I knew he was right, but asked anyway. “Why is that?”

“It’s peak deer hunting season. A lot of people travel in and stay here this time of year. There are only so many rooms. A buddy of mine tried to book something in town the other day and was told they were all sold out.”

Shit. That had been my experience as well. Still, feigning confidence, I stood straighter and pushed my shoulders back. “Well, I’ll find something. Surely there has to be at least one space open in this whole damn town.”

“What about your father’s place?” he suggested. “Could you stay with him?”

I shook my head. “I’m barely speaking to my dad. And there’s no way I’m staying with him and his new wife.”

Evan’s eyes widened. “He remarried?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“I didn’t.”

“I would think this town is small enough that you might’ve heard.”

He sighed. “I have a lot going on. No time to keep up on the gossip. But I did know your parents had gotten divorced and sold the house. That surprised me.”

His daughter reappeared. “Daddy, I’m hungry. Can I have a snack?” She turned to me and repeated her question from earlier. “Who are you?”

“I’m Chloe,” I answered before Evan could intercept.

“Chloe?” She blinked, seeming confused. Either she hadn’t heard me clearly, or she’d heard my name before.

“Yes.”

“I’m Effie.”

“Nice to meet you, Effie.” I smiled.

“Why are your cheeks red?” she asked.

I brushed my fingers along my face. “Are they?”

She nodded.

“She blushes easily,” Evan interrupted. “Always has.”

A shiver ran down my spine. Well, if I hadn’t been before, now I knew I was blushing. Actually, it felt like I was about to combust. I needed to get out of here before that happened.

“Do you mind if I leave my stuff here while I drive around and try to talk to one of the motels to see if they’ll take me?”

“Fine by me,” Evan said, his tone a bit cold.

“I heard you say you don’t have a place to stay,” Effie interrupted. “You can stay here with us. We have an extra bedroom.”

That was sweet. “I don’t want to impose on you and your dad.”

She looked over at Evan. “She can stay with us. Right, Daddy?”

Evan said nothing. Not that I would ever want to stay here, but his silence spoke volumes: I wasn’t welcome. I’d rather stay on the street than with someone who didn’t want me around. Although Evan’s reaction made sense. He had every reason to dislike me after the way I’d left things with him.

“I really appreciate your kindness,” I told Effie. “But I need to find another place to stay. You and your dad deserve privacy.”

Without looking at Evan again, I offered Effie one last smile before retreating to the room where I’d dumped my things earlier.

After closing the door, I leaned my back against it, taking a moment to find my bearings.

In the privacy of this room, it all started to hit me.

Evan Freaking Ricci. Somehow, during the handful of visits home over the years, I’d managed to avoid him.

This felt like some sort of cruel joke. And of course he had to be even more handsome.

He’d always had that gorgeous face, but had he always been so damn muscular?

And those veiny forearms? Those might just be a weakness I didn’t know I had.

He was every male characteristic I’d ever been attracted to rolled into one.

God, I hadn’t been prepared in the least for thirty-four-year-old Evan.

I hoped I hadn’t stared at him for too long.

To my surprise, I was able to sneak out the door without seeing Evan or Effie again. They’d apparently disappeared into their respective bedrooms. Relief coursed through me as I took in a deep breath of the cool air outside. I got in the car and leaned my head against the seat for a minute.

After I finally started the engine and began driving through town, I noticed just how much hadn’t changed here in Dry River.

The hardware store. The same brick buildings on Main Street, the exterior of my high school.

A feeling of nostalgia and a bit of sadness washed over me.

As much as all of these things were the same, so much in my life was different.

I had no home here anymore. It was a strange experience to feel unwelcome in the place that still held such a big piece of my heart.

I spent the next hour visiting each motel in town to try to find a room. Not a single one had a vacancy. Still driving around, but with no destination in sight, I called my friend Liz back in Chicago to vent. I put the phone on speaker as it rang through the car.

“Hey!” she answered. “Are you settled?”

“You’re never going to believe this…” I scoffed as I drove over the railroad tracks.

I’d never spoken about Evan to Liz—or to anyone in Chicago, for that matter. But for the next several minutes, I tried my best to summarize the situation.

“He was living with your family, supposedly like an older brother to you, and you fell for him?” Liz said when I paused to take a breath. “That sounds messy.”

It was messy. No one had a clue how close he and I had come to blurring the lines between us. My parents and sister had probably assumed I’d viewed Evan like a brother. But it was never like that for me.

“Our relationship was pretty intense, even if it wasn’t sexual,” I explained with a sigh. “We were close. I had feelings for him—strong ones. And he…well, let’s just say, he knew it, but he didn’t reciprocate.”

“He didn’t return your feelings, or he just didn’t act on anything?”

The answer to that question had haunted me over the years. I’d never been sure which it was—or why Evan had rejected me.

“I’m five years younger than he is, but that wasn’t necessarily a deterrent,” I answered.

“At the time things shifted in our relationship, I was about to leave for college, and he was just starting his job at the power plant here. After I left town, I heard he started dating someone around a year later. Then eventually, he got married and had a kid.” Even after skipping some important parts of the story, my chest hurt from thinking about my first real heartbreak.

“What are you going to do tonight?” Liz asked. “I can’t believe there’s not a single place to stay in town.”

“I truly don’t know.”

“And you won’t consider staying with your dad?”

“No.” My hands tightened around the steering wheel. “I’d rather book a flight and go back to Chicago than do that.”

“What if you took the little girl up on her offer and stayed with them, just until you could find something else?”

I had to chuckle at that. Her offer—not his.

“While that was very sweet of her, I don’t think she’s the one in charge, and believe me, Evan doesn’t want me there. He didn’t say a word when she mentioned it. That told me everything I needed to know.”

“Why would he not want you to stay if there’s an extra room?”

Where to even begin with that… “We’re not currently on the best of terms.”

“Why, though? It’s been so long.”

I sucked in a breath. “For starters, I got drunk one night in college and wrote him a letter. My therapist at the time had suggested I do that to let out my feelings. She’d encouraged me to write it, even if I didn’t end up sending it.

” I paused, cringing at the thought. “Because I chose to write it while intoxicated, though, my judgment was off, and I decided to mail it, too. It was pretty mean, and I’ve regretted it ever since.

At the time, I was still angry about his rejection.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to take it back. ”

The line went quiet for a moment. “He’s holding a grudge because of some words you wrote a decade ago?”

“I don’t know, Liz. I wouldn’t blame him if he was. It was a pretty scathing letter, even if I can’t remember exactly what I wrote. Only Evan really knows.”

“Damn.” She sighed. “So you’re just driving around right now with no plan?”

“I’m gonna go back there, get my stuff…and probably sleep in my car.”

“You said it gets chilly in Wyoming in October. It’s too cold for that.”

“Trust me. Evan is even colder.”