Prologue #2
“The same person who’d put a wedding gift in the stables to begin with,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought it either. But here we are.”
Anna pursed her lips and turned to search the tack room, which occupied the far corner of the building. It was smaller in there, cluttered with hanging leather and the sharp smell of neatsfoot oil. She squeezed past a saddle stand and reached for the back shelf—
And stopped.
There it was. The carved box, sitting neatly on the highest shelf, well out of reach.
“Found it,” she called.
She stretched up onto her toes. Her fingertips brushed the edge of it. She stretched a little further—
“You’ll knock it off.”
She startled at the voice, which was much closer than she’d expected, and turned to find Luke standing in the doorway of the tack room. His arms were folded, and he watched her with the long-suffering expression of a man surrounded on all sides by people determined to do things wrong.
“I wasn’t going to knock it off,” she said.
“Your fingers barely reached it.”
“My fingers reached it.”
“Touching something and having a secure grip on it are not the same thing.” He moved past her.
The tack room was small enough that he had to turn sideways, and close enough that she caught the scent of him—something like cedar and leather and the outdoors.
He reached up and effortlessly lifted the box from the shelf in one easy motion.
Anna stared at him, feeling her cheeks flushing and hoping he wouldn’t notice.
He held it out to her.
She took it. “Thank you,” she said, with more frost in her voice than gratitude.
“You’re very welcome,” he said, with no warmth whatsoever.
They looked at one another for a moment in the narrow space of the tack room, the afternoon light gold through a gap in the planks beside them.
Up close, his eyes were the dark brown of polished walnut.
He was, she thought again with a sense of deep personal injustice, extremely handsome.
It seemed entirely unfair that a man with the conversational warmth of a fence post should have been issued a face like that.
“Was that so difficult?” she asked.
“Was what so difficult?”
“Being civil.”
Something moved across his expression, a softening—too quick to catch, there and gone. “I’ve been civil.”
“You’ve been a grouch,” Anna said pleasantly, and walked out of the tack room.
***
Jane cried again when Anna pressed the box into her hands, and Liam shook Luke’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder, and the afternoon rolled on in its golden late-afternoon light.
But Anna noticed that Luke did not linger over the gift’s return.
He took his hand back from his brother’s grip, nodded once, and withdrew again to the edges of things, which was clearly where he preferred to be.
She found herself watching him, on and off, for the rest of the afternoon. And she could not entirely explain why, not exactly. One thing was clear to her though—even if he was infuriating, part of her was drawn to him.
***
The station platform was quiet in the early evening, the last of the daylight softening everything to copper and rose. Jane stood beside her, one hand tucked through Anna’s arm.
“I don’t want you to go,” Jane said simply.
“I know.” Anna leaned her head briefly against her sister’s. “I’ll come back soon. I promise.”
“You always say that.”
“I always mean it. And I always do.” She straightened, adjusting her traveling bag on her shoulder.
Jane smiled, but there was something careful in it. A question waited just behind her eyes. “And are you all right? Truly?”
“I’m perfectly all right.”
“You seemed—” Jane hesitated. “You seemed a little quiet this afternoon. After the gift business. Did something upset you?”
Anna let out a breath that was very nearly a laugh. “Your brother-in-law,” she said, “is possibly the most disagreeable person I have ever met.”
Jane did not look entirely surprised. “Luke is…”
“Cold,” Anna supplied. “Abrupt. Thoroughly uninterested in the basic requirements of polite conversation.”
“He’s had a difficult few years,” Jane said gently. “He isn’t always like that. He’s actually… quite sensitive when you get to know him.”
“I’m sure he’s perfectly lovely to people who’ve known him for more than an afternoon,” Anna said, with more generosity than she felt. “I didn’t mean to criticize—and he didn’t upset me.”
Jane gave her arm a small, affectionate squeeze. “Give him time. He grows on you.”
“He can have all the time in the world,” Anna said cheerfully. “From a considerable distance.”
The whistle of the approaching train cut their conversation short. They turned to face each other properly, the way they always did at partings—as though they were memorizing every detail.
“Write me the moment you’re home,” Jane said.
“The very moment.” Anna pressed a kiss to her sister’s cheek, then pulled back to look at her. “You are so happy,” she said softly. “It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Jane’s eyes filled. “You’ll have it too. I know it.” She smiled. “How are things with Ethan? Do you think he might…?”
Anna felt a warmth move through her, hopeful but tentative. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But perhaps. I think—perhaps.”
An image of Ethan flickered into her mind, handsome and well turned out. He was the very opposite of Luke. Why, she asked herself, was she thinking about Luke at this moment of all moments?
Jane beamed. “Oh, Anna. I’m so glad.”
The train exhaled great clouds of steam along the platform. Anna picked up her bag, and they held hands until the last possible moment, fingers slipping apart as Anna stepped up onto the carriage and turned to look back at her sister one last time.
Jane was waving, both hands raised, her face alight.
Anna waved back until the platform disappeared from view.
She settled into her seat as the Ohio countryside began to unspool outside the window, the last of the light turning the fields to burnished gold.
Then she let herself think—very briefly, very reluctantly—of dark eyes in a dim tack room, the scent of cedar and leather, and a face that had no business being that dashingly handsome on a man so thoroughly impossible.
She thought of Ethan instead. Safe, respectable Ethan. She smiled as she watched Ohio slide away into the growing dusk.