Page 1 of Oops I Fell For The Rancher Next Door

Chapter One

SHELBY

The cabin looks like it's trying to die.

Not in a graceful, rustic way. Not sun-bleached wood and charming decay. The porch sags left, the front steps are missing a middle board, and the roof has a patch of moss growing thick enough to qualify as landscaping. The real estate listing said mountain retreat with character. What it should've said was structurally questionable shack sold to a desperate woman who didn't ask for photos.

I turn off the engine and sit in my car for a full minute, hands still on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield at what I just spent the last of my savings on.

The drive from Denver took four hours. The last ninety minutes were a single winding road that made my ears pop twice and my GPS lose signal three separate times. My phone has one bar. One. And it flickers to zero every time the wind blows, which is constantly at eight thousand feet in October.

I could cry. That's an option. Sit here in this dusty Subaru with the check engine light that's been on since Pueblo and just let it out.

Instead, I pop the trunk.

Three suitcases. Two boxes of kitchen stuff I grabbed from the apartment. A bag of groceries from the last gas station that had anything besides jerky and energy drinks. That's it. That's everything I own that isn't currently being argued over by two lawyers billing four hundred dollars an hour.

The air hits me when I step out. Thin. Cold in a way Denver never gets, even in winter. Pine and dirt and absolutely nothing else. No exhaust. No restaurant grease. No cologne that costs more than my car payment because someone needed to impress clients at dinner parties I planned but was never allowed to enjoy.

Stop.

I grab the heaviest suitcase and drag it up the porch steps, skipping the gap where the middle board should be. The front door takes three shoves to open. The wood is swollen from moisture, or age, or spite.

Inside is dim. Dusty. A main room with a stone fireplace, a kitchen along the back wall, and a hallway that probably leads to a bedroom and bathroom. The furniture is covered in sheets that might've been white once. Everything smells like cedar and mouse.

I set the suitcase down and pull out my phone. Zero bars.

"Perfect."

The word echoes in the empty room. Flat. Bitter. A thirty-two-year-old woman standing alone in a cabin she's never seen, in a town she couldn't find on a map, talking to nobody.

My throat tightens.

I don't cry. I unload the car instead.

Three trips up the porch steps, dodging the missing board each time. Groceries on the kitchen counter, which is laminate peeling at the corners. Suitcases in the hallway. Boxes stacked against the wall.

The electricity is supposed to be on. The previous owner mentioned a generator out back for when the power goes, which according to the paperwork is "occasionally during weather events." Given that I'm in the mountains and it's late October, I'm guessing "occasionally" means "every other Tuesday."

I flip the kitchen light switch. Nothing.

I flip it again. Nothing.

I try the one in the main room. Dead.

My chest gets tight. It's just electricity. People lived without it for thousands of years. Those people also died at thirty-five from infected teeth, so maybe that's not the comfort I'm reaching for.

The generator is out back. I know this because I read the homeowner's manual twice on the drive up. In theory, I pull the choke, flip the fuel valve, and yank the starter cord. Easy. Lawnmower logic.

I find it behind the cabin under a tarp so weathered it cracks when I pull it off. The generator is red. Or it was, once. Now it's rust and grime that suggests nobody has touched it since the previous decade. The fuel tank has a cap I can't get off. My fingers slip twice before I realize it's a twist lock, not a pull.

I twist. Nothing moves.

I try harder. My hand slips and my knuckle drags across the metal housing. Pain. Blood.

"Son of a..."

I suck the knuckle, tasting copper, and glare at the generator. Which, technically, does owe me money.