Page 4 of Oops I Fell For The Lumberjack Next Door

So I fought for myself. Sold my half of the apartment. Quit my in house editing job, went freelance. Found this cabin on a real estate listing at two in the morning with a glass of wine and an itchy trigger finger, and thought, that one. That's the project that isn't my marriage.

I did not account for the ghost of college past living next door.

Princess Buttercup meows once, soft and pointed, still staring out the window.

"We're not doing this," I tell her. "He ruined my life once. Not again."

She tucks her paws under her chest and settles in to watch.

I take my wine, my sleeping bag, and my phone, and I set up camp in the bedroom. The floor is cold. The walls are thin. Somewhere outside, an owl is doing its thing, and the wind moves through the trees with a sound that is, against my will, beautiful.

My phone buzzes.

Unknown Number:

Hey gorgeous, it's Sheriff Parker's office. Tom Parker here. Heard from the real estate company you were moving in today. Wanted to make sure you got in okay. Welcome to Whisper Vale. You need anything, you call.

Small towns. I text back a thank you, tell him I'm settled, and don't mention the porch.

Then I lie in my sleeping bag on the floor of my fixer upper cabin in a town I've never been to, next door to a man I've hated for fifteen years, and I stare at the ceiling.

You're having a moment, Margot.

Maybe. But at least it's mine.

CHAPTER TWO

BRIGGS

Five in the morning, and I'm standing in my kitchen staring at the tree line between my property and hers.

Tinsel sits at my feet, chin on my boot, waiting for the signal that it's time to start the day. He's patient. Bernese mountain dogs are good at waiting. I'm less good at it, especially when my brain won't stop replaying the look on Margot Hemmings's face when she realized who I was.

Hemmings. She took her maiden name back. Which means the marriage is done, the husband is gone, and whatever brought her to a cabin she bought sight unseen in a town where she knows nobody was bad enough to drive her three hundred miles in the wrong direction.

Except it isn't the wrong direction. It's mine.

I pour coffee into a thermos and grab the work gloves off the counter. Outside, the air is sharp, the mountains dark against a sky just starting to lighten at the edges. September on the farm means shearing the Douglas firs, checking the balsam for blight, running equipment maintenance before November hits and every weekend turns into controlled chaos. The cut your own season brings families from Reno, Carson City, sometimes as far as Sacramento. Mom runs the wreath barn. Dad helps on weekends, bad hip and all. It's a good life. Quiet. Useful.

Lonely, if I'm being honest, but I've stopped noticing. Same as a scar. Give it enough years and it becomes part of the landscape.

Tinsel and I walk the rows. He trots ahead, sniffing for rabbits, occasionally looking back to make sure I'm still coming. Two hundred acres of Douglas fir, balsam fir, and noble fir in various stages of growth. Some saplings knee high, planted last spring. Others taller than I am, seven years in the ground, branches filling out. The biggest ones are almost ready for their last season. A Christmas tree takes seven to ten years from planting to harvest. You learn patience on a farm, or you don't survive.

My hands move through the routine on autopilot. Check the irrigation lines. Inspect the shearing on the south block. Make a note about the three balsams showing brown tips along the fence line, possible fungal issue, needs treatment this week. Normal morning. Steady work.

But my head is forty feet through the trees in a cabin with a broken porch and a woman who hates me.

Margot Vance. Margot Hemmings now. Twenty years old the first time I saw her, walking into Ryan Prescott's dorm room with a stack of books and a laugh that made me forget what I was saying mid sentence. Brown eyes, auburn highlights, glasses she was always pushing up her nose. She wore oversized cardigans before that was a thing, read three novels a week, and had opinions about everything that came out of her mouth fully formed and impossible to argue with.

Ryan didn't deserve her. I knew it within a month.

My best friend. My roommate for three years. The guy I shared notes with, ate dining hall food with, watched bad football with every Saturday. And behind closed doors, behind Margot's back, he was sleeping with anyone who looked twice at him. I watched it happen. Heard him brag about it when she wasn't there. Saw the texts he didn't bother to delete because he knew she'd never check his phone. She trusted him completely, and he treated that trust with less care than he gave his laundry.

What was I supposed to do.

I couldn't tell her. She'd have asked how I knew, and the answer was that my best friend told me, in detail, because he didn't think it was a big deal. Telling her meant betraying him. Keeping quiet meant watching her get betrayed. So I did the worst possible third thing. I tried to make it end without saying why. Showed up at their dinners. Made comments. Created enough friction that maybe, I thought, she'd get tired of the drama around Ryan and walk away on her own.

She didn't walk away from Ryan. She walked away hating me.