Rory moved to the next section, and that was when she stopped. She was crouched near the base of the storage shelving, where the old wooden crates had been pushed back to make room for equipment two summers ago, and she was looking at something low on the shelf.
“What's this?”
I straightened.
It was a lockbox made out of dark wood with brass fittings, the kind of thing that came from an era before fireproof filing cabinets. I'd moved it twice without opening it. It had come with the property when I bought out the old Walker parcel from my uncle's estate, and I'd always assumed it was tools or documents related to the sale that had already been settled.
“Old property records,” I said. “Nothing useful.”
Rory ran her thumb over the brass latch. “Is it locked?”
“Leave it.”
She pulled her hand back.
“I'll move it to the house,” I said, mostly to close the subject.
I picked it up on the way back through and carried it to the mudroom shelf. Set it down. Didn't look at it again that evening.
But later, when Rory was in bed and the barn lights were off and Bella's window above the loft was dark, I stood in the mudroom doorway and looked at the box sitting on the shelf.
I'd bought the parcel from my uncle. My uncle had inherited it from my grandfather. And my grandfather, I knew in the way you know things that have never been discussed directly, had kept records that nobody had ever volunteered to explain to me.
The Walker land sat where it sat. Right between the Kincaid grazing boundary and the old Hollister fence line.
And I'd never once thought to ask why.
CHAPTER 4
BELLA
The horses woke me before my alarm did. They weren’t noisy. It was more the feeling of the barn shifting underneath me, those early-morning creaks and weight redistributions that had worked their way into my sleep patterns without even noticing. I’d been sleeping in Jace Walker’s barn for a week, and I already knew the difference between Cutter moving to his water bucket and the heavier, slower sound of the mare circling her stall. That was a problem for someone who never stayed in one place for long.
I stared at the exposed timber above me and listened to Jace's boots on the concrete below. He had a pattern, stopping at each stall in the same order. The low sound of his voice carried up through the floorboards. I couldn’t make out the words, just the tone. His voice was softer and less guarded when he talked to the horses.
I'd been here for seven days, and I'd already catalogued the man's morning routine like it was something I needed to know. I got up, made coffee on the small two-burner, and told myself I was standing at the window because the light was good.
The light was good. Six-fifteen and the June sun was already coming in at a low, honeyed angle across the paddock, catching the dust Jace had kicked up moving bales, and he was working without his shirt.
My face heated, and I looked away.
Then I looked back because that kind of beauty deserved to be appreciated by someone. And today, that someone was me. He had the kind of body that said he worked hard for a living. Broad across the shoulders and tapered at the waist, with the kind of forearm definition that came from ropes and gates and giant hay bales, not cable machines. He moved a bale from the cart to the rail with the same efficiency he did everything. Then he reached up to push his hair back, and I sighed as the whole line of his back shifted and?—
“You want to come down here and actually take a picture, or what?” He squinted as he stared up at the window.
I stepped back and almost tripped over my own foot.
He made a sound that could have been a laugh, though I wasn’t sure he was capable of humor.
I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and went downstairs because I couldn’t spend all day avoiding him. It would be better to get it over with and move past the humiliation of being caught checking him out.
He had his shirt back on by the time I came through the barn door, which was either considerate or strategic. Either way, it made it much easier to face him even if a small part of me wondered what it might feel like to run my hands down his back. Heat threatened to race across my cheeks, and I fanned myself with my hand.
He didn't look up from the latch he was re-securing on Cutter's stall. “Coffee's on in the house if you want it,” he said. “Yours is better, though.”
“It's the same brand.”
“Different ratio.”
