The words land somewhere between my ribs and my common sense.
A mail-order bride site.
"You're telling me I drove fourteen hours from Houston because someone posted you on a dating site for mountain men looking for wives, and I thought it was a job listing."
"I didn't post anything."
"Somebody did."
"Yeah." His voice drops even lower. "And when I find out who, there's gonna be a conversation involving the business end of my patience."
We stare at each other across the porch steps. Pine trees sigh overhead. The creek keeps running like nothing is wrong, like the universe hasn't just played the world's most elaborate practical joke on a woman who can barely remember to eat.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket.
Cat:
Did you make it?? Send pics of the cabin!! How's your new boss??
The laugh that comes out of me is closer to a bark. Unhinged. Too loud for this quiet place.
Owen McCall takes a step forward. "You okay?"
"I'm great." My voice cracks on the word. "I quit my job. Broke my lease. Packed everything I own into a Honda Civic. Drove fourteen hours across three states to apply for a job that doesn't exist, at a cabin retreat run by a man who didn't ask for me." The shaking in my hands crawls up my arms. "So yeah. Doing fantastic."
His eyes track the trembling. Not with pity. Something else.
"When's the last time you ate?"
The question catches me off guard. Not "where will you go" or "do you need a refund" or "I'm sorry about the mix-up." When's the last time you ate.
"I don't know. Amarillo?"
"That's ten hours ago."
"I wasn't counting."
He turns without another word and walks inside, leaving the door open behind him. The smell of bread hits me full in the face, warm yeast and butter, and my knees almost buckle.
"Come inside," he calls from somewhere deep in the house. "I've got soup on the stove."
Every survival instinct I've built over twelve years of ER nursing says don't walk into a stranger's house in the mountains. Every other part of me, the part that's been running on fumes for six weeks, the part that hasn't been taken care of by anyone in so long that a man offering soup feels like being handed a lifeline, says sit down and eat.
The cabin's already paid for. My old apartment isn't. The ER has already posted my position. Houston is fourteen hours in the wrong direction.
Nowhere else to go.
My feet carry me up the porch steps before my brain agrees. The wood is solid under my sneakers. The wildflowers smell like honey. From inside, I hear the clink of a bowl being set on a counter, a spoon placed beside it, a chair pulled out.
Owen McCall is making me a place at his table before he even knows my last name is the same one I've been signing on death certificates for the past twelve years.
I step through the door.
Chapter Two
OWEN
She eats like someone who forgot food existed.
