CHAPTER ONE #3
It startled her, that he could turn her own insult back on her without a hint of bite. It wasn't the first time tonight he'd surprised her, and something in her, some old professional instinct that had nothing to do with the story anymore, told her it wouldn't be the last.
"So," she said, dragging her sandwich through a swirl of homemade mustard, "did you grow up here?"
He filled two mason jars from a jug in the fridge and set one in front of her, close enough that his fingers brushed hers on the handoff and neither of them mentioned it. "Pretty much. Moved back full-time after my dad passed."
"Was this his farm?"
He didn't answer right away. "Was. Rebuilt most of it after a tornado took the main house, eight years back."
Piper looked up sharply. "Tornado?"
"EF3. Hit before dawn. Ripped the roof clean off the house he grew up in and I grew up in both." He said it flat, like a fact he'd worn smooth from handling. "Lost a couple neighbors that same night. Lost the version of me that thought being careful was enough to keep people safe."
"Jesus, Beau."
He shrugged — the kind of shrug that cost more than it let on, the kind she'd learned to recognize from grief counselors and first responders and the rare, careful people who'd survived something and refused to make a production of it. "Storms come. You ride them out, or you don't."
"Unless you're not prepared."
"Exactly. So I got prepared. Prepared for everything I could think of." Something flickered behind his eyes, gone before she could name it. "Turns out that's a longer list than one man can actually finish."
Something heavy and unspoken settled into the space between one bite and the next.
She studied him. "Is that why you hate reporters? Because we only show up after the damage is done, and ask you to relive it for a segment?"
His jaw flexed. "I hate reporters because most of you don't listen. You just wait for your turn to ask the next question."
"I do listen."
His eyes found hers and held, something in them daring her to prove it. "We'll see."
The lights flickered, dimmed, held.
"I should check in with my station," she said, mostly to herself. "Let them know I'm off the road."
"Won't get signal till morning. Maybe."
She rubbed a hand over her face. "Perfect. Marcus is going to assume I drowned."
"Would that be so bad? For him, I mean. Fewer follow-up emails."
"You're hilarious."
"I contain multitudes."
She barked out a laugh at her own line thrown back at her, and something eased another degree between them.
He collected the plates and rinsed them in the deep farmhouse sink, and she let herself watch him work — the roll of his shoulders under soft flannel, the careful precision of his hands, the silence he wore like a second skin, comfortable and worn-in in a way that made her wonder how long he'd been wearing it alone.
He wasn't just gruff. He was lonely, and he didn't trust easily, and she'd interviewed enough men like that to know the difference between a wall and a habit.
This didn't feel like either, exactly. It felt like a man who'd built something specific and load-bearing to keep the world at a survivable distance — and had just, for reasons neither of them could name yet, let her step over the line without setting off the alarm.
When he turned around, she changed tack before she could think too hard about why that mattered to her. "So where do you want me?"
He blinked.
"To sleep. I mean."
"Right." He scratched the back of his neck, and if she wasn't mistaken, the tips of his ears went faintly pink. "Spare room's off the den. Sheets are clean. Door sticks."
"And you?"
"Couch."
"You don't have to do that. It's your house."
"Exactly."
She held up both hands. "Alright, alright. Not arguing with a man armed with storm shutters and stubbornness."
He grabbed a quilt from the hall closet and pressed it into her arms, his hands lingering half a second past necessary. "Flashlight's in the drawer by the bed, if the power cuts. Don't open the windows. And don't wander around outside tonight, even if it seems quiet."
"Because I might drown in your front yard?"
"Because something worse might find you."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Coyotes or cryptids?"
He didn't smile. "Both. This is Honey Creek. We don't do things by half."
She couldn't tell if he was joking, and that, somehow, unsettled her more than a straight answer either way would have.
"Right," she said, hugging the quilt to her chest like armor. "I'll be in the room with the stuck door and the mysterious flashlight, trying not to get eaten by folklore."
He shook his head as she padded down the hall, and if she'd turned around, she'd have caught him watching her go with an expression he hadn't let himself wear in front of another person in a very long time.
The door really did stick; she had to throw her hip into it.
The room was small but cozy — a heavy wood bed, a narrow dresser, a braided rug older than she was.
She dropped the quilt on the mattress and sat on the edge, her pulse still humming with something that had stopped, somewhere between the porch and the grilled cheese, being entirely about adrenaline.
This wasn't how tonight was supposed to go.
She'd expected a decent quote, a few moody shots of the storm rolling in, a hotel room by ten and a draft filed by midnight — the shape every assignment took, if she moved fast enough and let nothing slow her down.
She hadn't expected to be barefoot in a stranger's flannel, curled up in his farmhouse while rain lashed the windows and thunder walked the roof like it owned the place, thinking about the specific tired way he'd said lost the version of me that thought being careful was enough.
She definitely hadn't expected to be intrigued by a man who'd told her no seven times in writing.
But that's what this was. Under the frustration, under the friction, a current ran low and insistent — the kind she usually only felt chasing a story worth losing sleep over, except this one didn't come with a byline attached.
Beau Walker was wrong for her in every practical, logical, professional way she could name.
She catalogued the reasons like evidence: the isolation, the distrust of exactly her profession, the eight years of proof that he preferred a life with no one in it.
None of the reasons made the current go away.
When the next crack of thunder shook the house, she didn't flinch. She just listened. Somewhere down the hall, a floorboard creaked. Then a pause. Then nothing.