CHAPTER ONE #2
She threw it into reverse. Nothing but a spinning whine of mud flung against the wheel wells. She climbed out, checked the tires, and groaned at the specific, personal unfairness of it.
Stuck. In the middle of nowhere. At the mercy of a man who looked like he'd rather watch her rot in a ditch than lift a finger — a man who, less than a minute ago, had told her exactly what he thought she was.
The first fat drop of rain hit her shoulder like punctuation, and somewhere far off, thunder laughed at her, unimpressed, the same way he had been.
?
Beau heard the engine rev from inside the barn and paused with one hand on the latch of the feed bin, listening while the tires spun, spun, and finally stopped. A muffled curse followed, distinct even through the walls, and he almost — almost — let himself smile at it.
Of course she was stuck. Of course the woman who'd stood in his mud in city heels arguing about journalistic integrity hadn't thought to check whether the shoulder of his driveway could hold a rental SUV's weight.
He tried to ignore it. Turned back to the feed like the goats' dinner mattered more than it did right now, which it didn't, not by a long shot, and some old, unwelcome part of him understood exactly why that bothered him.
Five minutes, he told himself. She'd call a tow.
Someone from town would come pull her out, and she'd be gone before the real rain hit, and he could go back to a farm that hadn't had a stranger standing on it, uninvited, in longer than he cared to count.
Except there was no signal out here, and they both knew it, and some meaner corner of him had almost enjoyed watching her figure that out.
Another curse. Closer this time. Sharper, with an edge of real panic under it that made something in his chest tighten against his will.
He'd spent eight years teaching himself not to go running toward other people's panic.
It hadn't saved his father. It hadn't kept his brother from leaving either.
He'd built this whole quiet, careful life on the specific premise that needing nobody meant nobody could be lost, and it had worked, mostly, right up until a woman in a ruined blazer parked her whole complicated existence in his driveway and got stuck there.
He wiped his hands on a towel and went outside anyway, and told himself it had nothing to do with her.
Piper Lane was crouched at her back tire, jamming a flattened cardboard box under the wheel like that was going to solve anything.
Her hair, glossy an hour ago, had started to frizz in the humidity.
Mud streaked one sleeve of her blazer in a long, accusatory smear.
Her heels had all but disappeared into the ditch, sacrificed to a cause that clearly wasn't going to work.
He should have felt smug. Instead he found himself walking toward her, boots sure on ground that had already claimed her twice, some part of him already doing the math on firewood and traction before he'd consciously decided to help.
"You planning to dig out the whole ditch, or just the half you're standing in?"
She startled, a smear of mud along one cheekbone that did nothing to make her less recognizably furious. "You're really going to stand there and gloat?"
"Tempting."
She stood, brushed her hands against slacks already beyond saving, and narrowed her eyes at him with the specific fury of someone who hated needing help and was going to ask for it anyway, because the alternative was worse. "Do you want to help, or are you just here for the view?"
"Didn't ask you to come out here."
"And I didn't ask for a rainstorm to trap me. Nature's not exactly taking requests today."
Thunder cracked, closer now, and a gust of wind sent dust swirling between them.
Beau muttered something under his breath that she didn't quite catch and stalked past her to the back of the SUV.
He crouched, dragged a length of firewood from the pile near the fence, and wedged it against the tire with the unhurried competence of a man who'd done this exact thing a dozen times, for a dozen less complicated reasons.
"Rock it. Reverse, drive, reverse. Just enough for traction."
She slid behind the wheel, biting back every sarcastic thing crowding her chest, and did exactly what he said. The tires spun, caught, rolled back an inch.
"Now forward."
Another grind, another groan from the engine, and the back wheel lurched up and over the wood. The SUV rolled free onto solid ground, and Piper let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding since Dallas.
Beau came around to the driver's window, close enough now that she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes — sun lines, weather lines, the kind you earned instead of inherited. "You're not making it to town in this. Roads'll flood inside the hour."
"So what do you suggest?"
He tipped his head toward the house, and something in his jaw suggested this cost him more than the words let on. "Wait it out inside. One night. Then you're gone."
"You don't even like me."
"Didn't say I did." His arms crossed again, some habitual, protective thing she was already starting to notice, filing away the way she filed everything — for later, for the piece, though this detail, she suspected, was never going to make it into a script.
"But I don't much like the idea of a headline that reads Local Reporter Swept Away in Flash Flood. Let's go. Rain's coming."
It was already here.
By the time they crossed the yard and reached the porch, the sky had opened for real, sheets of water hammering the tin roof, the kind of deluge that swallowed sound and blurred the horizon into gray static — a wall between the woman who'd driven three hours toward a story and the man who'd spent eight years building a life specifically designed to keep stories like her out.
Neither of them, standing dripping on that porch, had the faintest idea how thoroughly that wall was about to come down.
?
Inside, the farmhouse smelled of cedar, old paper, and woodsmoke — warm, but not welcoming, more functional than lived-in. Bare walls. Spare furniture. A fire burning low in the stone hearth, the only light in the room, throwing more shadow than glow.
Beau pulled a towel off a hook by the door and tossed it to her.
She caught it. "Thanks."
"Bathroom's down the hall. Dry off. Then we'll figure out where you're sleeping."
"Sleeping?"
"You think this storm's done with us?"
She paused, and something in her chest, unbidden, agreed with him completely. "No."
"If it is, it left something behind."
She disappeared down the hallway, and Beau scrubbed a hand over his face once the door had shut behind her.
What the hell had he just done?
He didn't need company. He definitely didn't need Piper Lane's particular brand of big-city ambition cluttering up the quiet he'd built for himself, board by board, over eight years of making sure nothing in his life needed him back badly enough to break his heart a second time.
She was the kind of woman who turned everything into a headline and everyone into a source — he'd have bet the farm on it an hour ago.
Letting her stay, even for one night, was asking for trouble in flannel and mud-caked heels.
And yet he found himself stoking the fire with more care than usual.
Clearing the kitchen table without his customary grumbling.
Setting a spare mug beside the coffeepot like he'd been expecting her all along, some traitor part of him already rearranging the house around a guest he hadn't wanted an hour ago.
She came back a few minutes later wearing one of his flannel shirts, sleeves rolled and tied, the waist cinched with a belt she'd clearly dug out of the closet herself.
It hung halfway to her knees. It was undeniably his, and something about the sight of her standing in his kitchen wearing it like she belonged there hit him somewhere he didn't have a defense built for yet.
"Your bathroom has seen better days," she said.
"Don't like it, find a hotel."
"Down a flooded road? Bold strategy."
"Keeps people out."
"Clearly not working."
He couldn't help it. The smile was small, barely there — but she caught it, and for the first time since she'd climbed out of that mud-sunk SUV, the air between them stopped feeling like a fight and started feeling like a truce neither of them had signed yet.
"I make a mean grilled cheese," he offered, mostly to have something to say that wasn't stay.
"Is that your idea of hospitality?"
"No. It's my idea of dinner."
"Fine. But I want a quote after."
"You're relentless."
"You're impossible."
"Learned it from the land. It's impossible too. Still standing, though."
That one caught her off guard — a real laugh, surprised out of her, and he looked almost as startled by it as she was.
"Hope you're not lactose intolerant," he said finally, and turned for the kitchen before either of them could examine that laugh too closely.
She followed, fighting a smile of her own. She lost.
?
The grilled cheese was, infuriatingly, incredible.
Piper sat at the wooden table, steam curling off her plate, while Beau moved around the stove with the quiet economy of a man who didn't need company but was, against every stated principle he owned, starting to tolerate it.
She took a bite and groaned despite herself. "You said mean. You didn't say transcendent."
He glanced over his shoulder, the ghost of a smirk on his mouth. "Bread. Cheese. Butter. Cast iron. City people overcomplicate it."
"You calling me a city person like it's a slur?"
"If the shoe fits. Or in your case, sank."
"Low blow, Walker."
"Accurate blow."
"What would you call a man who lives off-grid and growls at anyone who knocks?"
"Self-reliant."
"Grumpy hermit with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas."
He laughed under his breath — a real one, low and startled out of him twice in ten minutes now, which she suspected was some kind of record. "Takes one to know one."