Chapter 3
Lark Monroe
His hand was warm and his grip was careful. Not gentle—careful. Like he knew exactly how much force he was using and had made a deliberate choice about it.
“Logan Stroud,” he said.
I held on for the standard amount of time, maybe a beat past it, because my brain was already doing its thing. Cataloging. Sorting. Filing away everything the handshake told me and everything it didn’t.
He was tall. Well over six feet, broad through the shoulders and chest in a way that had nothing to do with a gym membership.
He held himself with a particular kind of stillness that most people didn’t have, every muscle aware of where it was in space, ready to move in any direction without warning.
Calm. Solid. A man who didn’t rattle easily—or at least didn’t let anyone see it when he did.
I recognized it because between Warrior Security and Resting Warrior Ranch, damned near every adult male in this town gave off the exact same vibe.
But Logan was different.
He was exhausted. Not one bad night or even a bad week. This was the kind that settled into the bones, the hollows under the eyes, the set of the jaw. The kind that no amount of Lena’s coffee here at Deja Brew was going to fix.
His eyes were alert—scanning the room, tracking the door, clocking the counter and the window and probably every exit—but they had a distance to them. Part of him was paying attention to something regular people didn’t think to look for.
I’d seen that particular combination of hyperawareness and bone-deep fatigue more times than I could count in the veterans that came through Pawsitive for therapy sessions and service dog placements.
I let go of his hand. “So, Logan. You always rescue women from office-supply disasters, or is this a special occasion?”
“Depends. Is there usually an audience, or do I just have good timing?”
I laughed. He had a dry delivery that caught me off guard, flat and understated and so deadpan I almost missed it.
“No audience. Lena behind the counter has seen worse from me, trust me. Last month, I knocked over an entire display of local honey jars. There was a sticky situation.” I waited a beat.
“That was a pun. I need you to acknowledge that was a pun.”
A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “I’m choosing not to.”
“Fair enough. So, are you in the market for a ranch hand job, or are you just being polite to the woman who nearly took out a coffee shop with office supplies?”
“Pretty sure the flyers had you outnumbered.”
I laughed again. “You should see the rest of my operation. Honestly, at this point, Pawsitive runs on good intentions and duct tape.”
He had no idea how close to the truth that was. I tucked the flyers under my arm and wrestled the tote strap back up my shoulder. It had the structural integrity of overcooked spaghetti, and I should have replaced it a year ago. Should have replaced a lot of things a year ago.
“It’s a lot of property to manage alone,” I continued. “And the animals don’t really care that I’m only one person with two hands. They have needs. Many, many needs. The chickens alone are incredibly demanding.”
“Demanding chickens.”
“Yep. They have opinions about everything. The goats are worse, but at least the goats are up front about being difficult. The chickens pretend to be reasonable and then stage a coup when you least expect it.”
Something shifted at the edge of his mouth. Barely there.
“It’s a lot of physical work.” I was doing what I always did, talking to help everyone around me feel comfortable, but I didn’t try to stop.
“Fencing, repairs, feeding schedules, hauling supplies. The buildings need some love. I’ve got a fence line on the north side that’s been held together by one very determined zip tie for about three months. ”
I kept my voice easy. Breezy. Just a woman describing a manageable situation that needed an extra pair of hands.
The truth was less breezy. The fence was one item on a list so long I’d stopped writing it down because seeing it on paper made my chest tight.
The barn roof needed patching. The east pasture gate was hanging by a single hinge.
The whole property needed a fresh coat of paint that I couldn’t afford because I was still waiting on a grant that might not come, and if it didn’t come, the second mortgage payment I was already behind on was going to become a problem I couldn’t charm or hustle my way out of.
But Logan didn’t need to hear any of that. Nobody did.
“So yeah, I’m looking for someone who is a sort of jack- or jill-of-all-trades. Room and board plus a little pay,” I said. “I won’t lie, the money is not great. The money is, in fact, terrible. But the housing is free, and nobody will judge you for talking to a horse at three in the morning.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand why you don’t have dozens of applications for that reason alone. Is Pawsitive near town?”
“About twenty minutes. Forty acres, give or take. White buildings, green trim. You can’t miss it unless you’re actively trying.”
“Yeah, I think I saw it a couple days ago when I was driving by.”
And then something clicked. Passing through, my hiney.
Tuesday. I’d been coming out of the feed store, and he’d been across the street with Beckett Sinclair.
They’d been walking toward Draper’s, and I’d noticed him because Beckett had been doing his Beckett thing—hands moving, grinning, filling every available square inch of airspace—and the man beside him had been the opposite.
Quiet. Contained. Letting Beckett’s noise wash past him without absorbing any of it.
“Hang on a second,” I said. “I saw you in town earlier this week. You were with Beckett.”
Something in his expression closed. Subtle, but I caught it. A door that had been slightly cracked open went shut.
“Busted. I’ve been around about a week. I was staying out at Resting Warrior Ranch, working with Warrior Security.”
I knew the whole crew. Beckett had helped out with dog training and stayed on the property to care for the animals when I had to go out of town.
His German shepherd Jet was one of my best training success stories and had aided in saving Beckett’s fiancée’s life.
And Hunter had sent veterans my way for animal-assisted therapy more times than I could count.
“Thought you were just passing through?”
He shrugged. “Headed out probably would’ve been a more correct turn of phrase.”
“Where to?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
The way he said it had no cover story attached. Just a flat admission that he had nowhere to go and no plan for getting there.
I watched him stand there with it, and I could see what it cost him, even though his shoulders didn’t move, his hands didn’t fidget, his face stayed level. The exhaustion I’d clocked when we shook hands wasn’t the whole picture.
Something heavier lived underneath it. Something I wasn’t going to ask about because I’d learned a long time ago that pressing a wound before someone was ready to show it only made them protect it harder.
“So,” I said. “No job, no plan, and you’re standing in a coffee shop at five thirty in the morning in a town that takes forty-five seconds to drive through.”
“That about covers it.”
“And I’m standing here with a help wanted sign for a position that pays almost nothing and involves getting bitten by a parrot. Aren’t we quite the pair?”
He looked at me.
“In all my infinite wisdom—which is obvious by how I was putting up my flyer so gracefully, by the way—I think you should take the job.” I grinned at him.
“We’d solve each other’s problems. Until you figure out your next move and I find someone who actually wants to be yelled at by chickens for a living. ”
He didn’t laugh.
He didn’t respond at all. He stood there with his hands at his sides, looking at me with those tired, sharp, too-aware eyes, and I realized with a jolt that he was actually thinking about it. My joke had landed somewhere real, and he was standing in the middle of it trying to decide what to do.
“Wait,” I said. “Are you actually considering this?”
“Maybe.”
“Really?”
“I can fix fences. I can do repairs, haul supplies, handle the physical work. Could be a good fit for both of us until I figure out what’s next. No security stuff, right? Just manual labor?”
No security stuff. He had no idea how much that gave away of what he was going through. As if I hadn’t seen PTSD practically tattooed all over his body.
“No, no security stuff. Unless you count an alpaca that is stubborn as hell and spits.”
“Al Pacacino spits?”
I nodded slowly. “He likes to rule the roost.”
Logan rubbed his chin. “Well, that has to be taken into consideration. But more importantly, I need to know if Clarence can teach me any new words, or if I’ve got some he hasn’t heard yet.”
I stared at him. He looked back at me, completely straight-faced, and I couldn’t tell if I was being charmed or bulldozed or both.
“Lark, honey, does your TD&H friend want his usual?” Lena called from behind the counter. She had her purple streaked hair pulled back into a messy bun and that look on her face that meant she’d been eavesdropping since the flyers hit the floor.
“TD&H?” Logan whispered.
“Talk, dark, and handsome. Don’t let it go to your head. It’s Lena’s most common expression of endearment.”
Logan turned toward Lena. “I’ve ordered here three times. I don’t think that qualifies as a usual.”
“Sweetie, in Garnet Bend, twice makes it a usual. Three times makes you a regular. You’re basically a local now. Want your black coffee?”
He nodded, walking to the counter.
I had maybe ninety seconds. I dug my phone out of the tote bag, which took longer than it should have because the tote had become a small black hole that swallowed everything I put into it. I found Hunter’s name and typed fast.
Any reason I shouldn’t hire this Logan person for handyman work at Pawsitive?
I watched Logan at the counter while I waited. Lena was talking to him the way Lena talked to everyone—warm and friendly.
My phone buzzed.
Definitely hire him.
Three words from Hunter Everett. No hedging, no caveats. Hunter didn’t say things he didn’t mean, and he’d just given me the most direct endorsement I’d ever gotten from him about anything.
I took a breath. Let it settle.
Logan came back with a paper cup and stood in front of me, and I could see the question on his face before he asked it. He wasn’t sure I’d been serious. He was giving me an out if I wanted one.
“The job’s yours if you want it,” I said.
He studied me. “You sure about that? You don’t know me.”
I held up my phone and showed him Hunter’s text. He read it. His eyebrows lifted a fraction: surprise, or something next to it.
“If Hunter Everett vouches for you,” I said, “that means something around here. And it definitely means something to me.”
He looked at the phone. Looked at me. Nodded once, slow and deliberate.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Great. Can you start today?”
“I’ve got a truck and a duffel bag. I can start right now.”
“Even better.” I pulled a pen from the tote bag—three tries, because black hole—and wrote the address and my phone number on the back of one of the flyers.
I handed it to him. “Follow the main road south. Left at the fork past the old grain elevator. You’ll see the sign.
It’s actually next to Resting Warrior. Seeing as you’ve been there and Warrior Security, you’ve probably seen the outline of the buildings in the distance. We share a property line.”
He took the flyer and folded it in half, precise and even. “Sounds good. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Take thirty. I need to warn Clarence that he has competition.”
He turned and walked out of Deja Brew with his coffee in one hand and my flyer in the other, and the bell above the door chimed behind him.
I stood in the middle of the coffee shop with my tote bag hanging off one elbow and my own coffee cold against my ribs.
I’d just hired a stranger to live on my property.
I knew his name. I had Hunter’s word. I had the fact that Beckett Sinclair had been walking around town with him like a friend, and Beckett didn’t do that with people he didn’t trust.
That should have been enough. It was enough.
But my hands were shaking. Just slightly, in a way that had nothing to do with Logan Stroud and everything to do with the last man I’d trusted to share my space. I pressed them flat against the stack of flyers and held them there until they stopped.
Lena appeared beside me with a fresh coffee and took my cold one. “So. That was interesting.”
“I hired him for some handyman work.”
“I gathered. He’s handsome, by the way. In a sad, quiet, could-probably-carry-a-refrigerator kind of way.”
“I didn’t notice.”
She nudged my shoulder. “Oh, you noticed.”
I smiled at her because it was easier than saying what I was actually feeling. I’d just invited someone into the one place in the world that was mine. The place I’d built from nothing after everything had been taken from me. The place where I was safe.
It was the right decision. Hunter said so. My gut said so. Every instinct I’d spent six years learning to trust said so.
But, still. It was a man in my personal haven.
I shifted my tote bag again, dumped the extra flyers in the recycling bin by the door, and waved to Lena as I walked out into a morning that was just starting to turn gold along the ridgeline. My truck was parked across the street. I climbed in, put both hands on the wheel, and sat there.
My hands had started shaking again.
I held the wheel until they stopped. Then I turned the key and drove toward home.