Authors: Amber Lin
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Right. Joe again.”
“They come into the diner pretty much every morning. So if I’m not there or in my apartment, she’ll know I’m...somewhere else?”
His expression was unfathomable, until he said, “Stop cleaning.”
“Oh!” She glanced down and realized she had been straightening a stack of mail. “Sorry.” She set down the unruly pile and patted it. “It’s a habit.”
“There’s coffee in the pot while you wait.” He pushed off from the counter. “I’m going to check on a few things outside.”
“Okay,” she called to his back, as if her cheery tone could offset her awkward blush. “I’ll make breakfast.”
When he grunted in what she assumed was assent, she tackled the pile of dishes in the sink with a sigh of relief. He hadn’t given her much to go on. Would he have preferred her to leave? But anyway, she had managed to find a comfortable role here after all. The dishwasher, the cook. The one who served breakfast and then faded into the background.
* * *
Sawyer banged his thumb as he drove a nail into the tarp, trying not to think of a certain sexy woman cooking in his kitchen and focused instead on getting the roof of the barn cleared of debris and covered before the damn thing caved in.
He had enough saved up from his tours to patch this place up, and that wasn’t even counting the nest egg he’d been shocked to find in his father’s bank account. They’d lived on rice and beans and a TV that had been ancient when Sawyer was born. What had the man been saving for?
Except for the harvest, his ornery, wiry old man had run this farm by himself. Sawyer was physically stronger, more capable, better trained at strategy and tactical maneuvers, and yet for all his labor, the farm was a complete wreck, not close at all to being ready for planting. It felt like a puzzle, a challenge.
“Damned prideful bastard,” he muttered, though he wasn’t sure who he was talking about.
After the barn was secured, he went to check on the irrigation. Sure enough, it was broken too. The three-foot-deep trench that skirted the field should have been lively with running water after the flash flood last night. Its purpose was twofold: to supply water to the roots within the field and to keep the plants from drowning. Instead it was full of still, glassy water, while the field itself was a muddy slosh. One more downpour and it might overflow right into the house.
He followed alongside until he found the blockage. Some animal must have built its den here, judging by the packed pile of debris and excrement floating nearby. Was it any wonder he hadn’t wanted to be a farmer? Now he’d have to shovel all this shit out and hope he didn’t find a drowned rabies-infested body inside. Whatever it was should have known to evacuate when the water started rising, but on principle Sawyer doubted the intelligence of any animal that lived here, including himself.
The hard work was therapeutic, though, allowing him to work off some of his earlier annoyance. Joe Peterson, seriously? He was a tool. And obvious too, hanging around the diner like that.
So Sawyer had gone to the diner every evening. That was different. A man had to eat.
Yeah, it was the same thing. If anything, Sawyer was the asshole because he had no way of following through and marrying Natalie. The woman pretty much defined marriage material, right down to the X-rated honeymoon playing on a reel in his mind, but he couldn’t commit to anything when he wasn’t planning on staying in Dearling. Yet since he’d come up with the fool idea to contest the water rights, he wasn’t planning on leaving anymore.
There was a large gaping hole where his plans should be.
In the military, plans were the fucking Bible. He drafted ironclad plans, accounted for every contingency and then executed them with precision and skill. Or he died. And yet, here he was, puttering around a broken-down farm that he hated, and he couldn’t even leave. Fitting, though, because Natalie Bouchard embodied this town. He couldn’t have her, but he couldn’t stand not having her either.
When things didn’t make sense, Sawyer resorted to hard physical labor. Sex would have been better, but he wouldn’t make a move on her now, when she was dependent upon him. Actually, he just might, so better that he stay away from her. Better that he focus on farm triage, clearing up fallen tree branches, shoveling muck and trying to find out how far he had to push himself before he stopped thinking about her warm, sexy mouth.
A very long way, judging by the way the sun rose overhead and then set. But the task of pretending Natalie wasn’t smoking hot and bed-head tousled and
in his house
was made more difficult by the fact that she kept visiting him bearing food. First she brought waffles, which it turned out tasted not like Eggos but heaven. She came at lunch and then snack time—possibly she thought he was in preschool. He didn’t care. Snack time was awesome, and he salivated over the smells coming from the kitchen for what he presumed was dinner.
He also suspected she was cleaning. He was afraid to ask, because if she said yes, he’d get all these dirty images of her, like a pornographic version of
The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Too late.
When he had cleared the ditch and it functioned properly, Sawyer examined the muddy land. If he was going to contest the water rights, he’d need a solid crop, which meant he would have to prepare the soil, till it and seed it, within a week or two.
If he delayed seeding much longer, the plants would be too weak to fruit properly. Maybe he could skip soybeans, his father’s usual crops, and plant corn. It was much hardier, but he knew nothing about corn. Which meant it might catch some sort of corn ague and die before he’d even realized what hit them.
After washing up at the pump, he paused to stretch. The sky had split into different colors: purples, blues, and pinks, with a slash of orange. Enough clouds hung over him that there might be a repeat of last night. God, he hoped so, even if that made him a bastard. That had never stopped him where Natalie was concerned.
Far in the distance, he could make out the boxy outline of the closest farmstead, abandoned by the McClellan family. Beyond that would be Joe’s house. From Natalie’s conversation in the diner, he knew Joe’s sister Lucy still lived there, though their parents had passed. He also knew that the man was the sheriff now.
The honest-to-God sheriff of Dearling.
Sawyer snorted, derisive. What did he care? But the memory came anyway.
He had been a scrawny freshman walking the proverbial thirty miles home, when an old Cadillac stopped beside him. Out came an enraged six-foot Eliot Barnes with his upperclassmen friends, claiming Sawyer had made out with Eliot’s girl. It didn’t really surprise Sawyer, because despite being scrawny and a freshman, his cockiness and public denouncement of all things agricultural were a hit with the ladies of Dearling High, including Eliot’s
former
girlfriend, Natalie Bouchard.
No, what had surprised him was that Joe Peterson was with them.
As the only young boys in a six-mile radius, he and Joe had been inseparable, fishing in the watering hole or pulling pranks on their short-tempered dads. Then middle school hit, and their two-year age gap grew to unconquerable proportions. But jumping him after school? That was new.
It had been little consolation that Joe didn’t actually join in. He’d been there, watching, while Eliot and the two other guys took turns punching him. Sawyer didn’t get to return the favor too often, being smallish and outnumbered, but he’d prided himself on standing again after every blow. Even then he knew: never let them see your pain.
The screech of brakes interrupted them, and in disbelief, Sawyer saw his dad hollering and cussing up a storm. Eliot and his three friends had jumped in their car and sped away, but not Joe. He stood there while his dad narrowed his gaze and said, out of breath, “And you.”
Two simple words, but they captured the betrayal perfectly.
Sawyer had been grateful for the physical protection, but more than that, he was honored by the verbal defense. Fierce pride welled up in him, for his father, for the tiny family unit they made together. Overfull with it, he’d gotten into the truck, leaving Joe standing in the upturned dust.
Yes
, he’d thought, smug despite his bashed-up face,
and you.
Despite the pain from his bruises, he’d practically vibrated with newfound respect for his father. Only, he hadn’t known how to express it properly, how to explain how much his father’s support meant to him.
“You look pathetic.” His father hadn’t taken his eyes off the road. “Did you even try to fight back?”
Oh
, Sawyer had thought.
Oh.
He’d turned his shame and frustration into physical activity, bulking up so not Eliot Barnes nor Joe Peterson, no one at school ever dared to mess with him again.
He enlisted in the navy the day he turned eighteen, not because he had an affinity for the sea, but because he wanted to be the best, and the SEALs were the best. All through Hell Week, when his commanders had shouted in his face to ring the bell, to give up, all he heard was “
Did you even try to fight back?
”
This was his answer. Surviving, fighting. Winning, when his old man had as much as called him a loser.
Sawyer jerked himself from his musings and trekked back inside the house, but Natalie wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the kitchen, where the appliances gleamed and a covered casserole dish warmed in the oven. She wasn’t in the bedroom or the bathroom. Suddenly the thought hit him. What if she’d got her car free of the mud and left without him noticing? What if the phones had started working, and she’d called for a ride?
Her car and his truck were both firmly entrenched in the still-wet mud, which was good. The roads would be flooded, and if she got the idea to leave without telling him, she’d get into trouble. Who was there to look out for her—Joe? If so, he was doing a piss-poor job.
No one else in town seemed to notice that she worked where men could ogle her all day, and did, apparently. No one seemed to be concerned that the most gorgeous woman who ever donned an apron lived alone in a place with outdated locks and no security lighting.
After dinner, he would take his coffee to go and lounge in the shadows outside until she had closed up the diner and gone upstairs. Sure, it was a little creepy of him. Maybe a lot. But he didn’t give a shit about the cheerful small town credentials of Dearling, Texas. If deployment had taught him anything, it was that some of the worst fuckers came packaged with uniforms and Boy Scout smiles. They weren’t getting their hands on Natalie Bouchard.
If she hadn’t come to visit him, the storm would have blocked his route to town. He probably would have gone to check on her anyway, but a sense of relief—and satisfaction—filled him at having her nearby, under his roof and his protection. If that meant he got to spend a little more time with her, all the better.
It turned out that she hadn’t actually wandered away from the house, but above it. Instead of the pull-down ladders most modern houses had, a rickety spiral staircase at the back of the house led to the attic.
Once, when Sawyer was a young boy, he had gotten locked inside. He’d been trapped for hours, waiting for this father to come in from the field as the sun slipped out of sight and suspicious scratching sounds emanated from the walls. Except that night his dad had gone to visit his female friend that Sawyer wasn’t supposed to know about. Sawyer had been found the next morning, mildly traumatized and damp at his crotch.
Not a rip-roaring good time, that attic.
But he wasn’t scared of much these days, and if he hadn’t pissed himself when an IED went off beside him, he wasn’t likely to in an old dusty attic. He still avoided it, but that was because he had to hunch his body very tightly to fit between the metal railings. He gingerly climbed to the top, not sure this thing was certified to carry over two hundred pounds.
Once able to pierce the gloom, he saw Natalie sitting in the far corner, facing away, little snuffling sounds emanating from her. It sounded almost like...crying.
Shit.
This attic was terrifying, he knew that. He should never have left her for so long. He should have had this whole mousetrap of a house torn down, as a public service.
His strides would have been long, if there weren’t so many damn boxes in the way. “Are you okay?”
At his question, she turned back, and though her eyes were red and watery, she smiled. “Of course I’m okay. I was looking through some old photos and the dust got to me.”
“Oh, good,” he muttered, and yeah, it sounded sour, but that was only because he had rammed his knee into an old trunk on the way across.
“What’s in that box?” She gestured to the one thing up here not covered in an inch of dust, the box that held the framed medals from his service.
He’d sent those damn things home as a joke, an afterthought, a final middle finger to the father who never thought he’d do anything worthwhile. He’d been shocked as hell to come home for the old man’s funeral to find them hanging in the middle of the wall, a place of honor.
He frowned. “It’s nothing. What are you doing up here, anyway?”
“I shouldn’t have snooped,” she said contritely. “I was vacuuming, and then I saw these stairs and didn’t know where they led. And there was so much dust! But then I saw these albums and got distracted. I’m sorry.”
The pictures, the medals, none of it mattered. “You don’t have to clean my house, Natalie. But I guess it was pretty boring waiting around. I’m sure you’re eager to get back.”
“Oh, right. Yes. I’ve been checking the phone every hour. No luck yet.”
Every hour? “Great. Let’s get out of here.”
She made her way down the stairs, every creak of those old stairs grating deep in his gut. Pausing halfway down, she looked back at him. “I really am sorry.”
“Just go,” he choked out, because she hadn’t been kidding about that dust.
When they were both standing on solid ground again, he took a deep soothing breath of slightly less dusty air.