by Kait Nolan
From somewhere beyond the barn, a dog barked. Her heart leapt.
Sam?
But it wasn’t her mutt racing from around the corner. It was a pair of border collies she didn’t recognize. Neck and neck they raced toward her, sending up happy yips. It didn’t even occur to her to brace herself, so when the dog in the lead jumped up, it knocked her flat on her ass.
“Ow!”
Somewhere between the stinging palms and the enthusiastic tongue bath to her face, she realized she was very much awake. Which meant…she really was on the farm where she’d grown up. Except her father had never been able to coax this kind of abundance from the land. How the hell had she gotten here?
Shoving back the dogs, she dragged herself to her feet…and saw Logan’s truck far out in the north field. Memory came back in pieces. She’d called and asked him for a ride and he’d brought her here? He had no way of knowing this had been her childhood home. Which meant…it was his. The farm that had claimed so much of her family’s blood, sweat, and tears belonged to someone else. Someone who’d made of this place what her father never could. The idea of it sucker punched her already bruised heart. In her present state, she had no defenses, no walls, and this was more than she could take.
How could she face him after this? The truth was, she couldn’t. She’d break.
I have to get out of here.
Stumbling in her haste, she went back into the house. Now that she was looking, she saw change everywhere. New paint. Refinished floors. Different furniture and art. Her house, but not her home. A sob threatened to erupt from her throat. She scrambled up the stairs, finding the water and painkillers on the bedside table this time. Downing them both, she rounded up her purse and shoved her feet into the shoes lined up neatly by a rocking chair in the corner.
How the hell was she going to get home? Her car was still at the bar. She didn’t want to get into any of this shit with her sisters. Not yet. And she didn’t want to wait for Logan to finish whatever early morning farm chores he was on. Thumbing through her phone, she called the one other person she knew wouldn’t judge her right now.
“Porter, I need a favor.” Her foster brother could always be counted on in a crisis.
“Athena? Everything okay? It’s really damned early.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I was about to be leaving for the job site at the spa to check on progress. What’s the matter?”
“I need a ride to my car. I left it at the bar last night.”
Silence stretched out a beat too long. “Where are you?”
“I’m at Logan Maxwell’s farm.” She could practically hear Porter’s eyebrows hitting his hairline. “It’s not what you think.” Though even as she said it, she had dim memories of hauling him down to her on the sofa. She really hoped that was a dream. “I was too drunk to drive and I called him for a ride last night. I was apparently too drunk to go home, so I slept here. He’s already out in the fields, and I really need to get home.”
The words came out in a rush, and she could only hope he didn’t pick up on her desperation.
After another infinitely long pause, he said, “I’ll be by to get you shortly.”
Chapter 5
Logan toed off his muddy boots at the door and went into the house in search of coffee. He’d downed a cup before heading out for morning chores, but it hadn’t been high-octane enough to make up for the restless night from having Athena under his roof and not in his bed. His brain had been all too happy to keep him awake with alternate scenarios in which he hadn’t clung to his status as a gentleman. Alternate scenarios that would’ve left them both extremely satisfied. But he wasn’t an asshole who’d take advantage of an inebriated woman. And as much as he wanted to revisit things with Athena, he didn’t have any interest in being her rebound guy.
The dogs bumped at his knees in their haste to race over and assume the position beside the treat bucket.
“Yeah, yeah. I got it. Morning treats.” He lifted the lid and dug a couple of biscuits out. “Wait,” he ordered.
They both sat, perfectly still but for the swishing of their synchronized tails, as he carefully balanced the biscuits on the bridges of their snouts. Peep’s eyes went a little crazed, but she didn’t break the hold until he said, “Okay.”
The coffee pot hadn’t been touched since he’d left it, so he could only assume Athena wasn’t up yet. Maybe he’d just take his coffee upstairs and check to make sure she was still among the land of the living. With visions of a full country breakfast—made by his hands, not hers—scrolling through his head, he climbed the stairs. Bacon, fried eggs, toast… Biscuits would be better, but he wasn’t sure he had that kind of time. Either way, she’d need something to help combat the hangover, and he’d learned in his college years that a big, greasy breakfast usually did the trick.
The door to the guest room hung ajar. He lifted a hand to knock on the doorframe, and realized the room was empty. So was the adjoining bathroom. Logan frowned, wondering if she’d gone exploring. But she wasn’t anywhere in the house and her purse and shoes were gone. She’d apparently snuck out while he’d been in the fields.
Maybe she’d been embarrassed? Why else wouldn’t she leave some kind of note or something? But how the hell had she left? Had she called somebody else for a pickup now that it was morning? He hadn’t heard a vehicle, but then he’d had the tractor cranked up.
It should’ve relieved him. He wasn’t responsible for taking time out of his work day to get her back to the inn or her car. But given her emotional state the night before and the likelihood of the mother of all hangovers, he couldn’t just let it go. What if she didn’t have a ride and had gotten a wild hair to walk back to town? She was just stubborn enough to do it.
He poured his coffee into a travel mug and climbed in the truck before he could think better of it. She wasn’t trudging down the side of the road, which didn’t make him feel a whole lot better. How much of last night did she remember? Did she think something had happened between them? Was that why she’d bolted? At least he could put that fear to rest. If he could find her.
The inn was the obvious first stop. Judging from the cars lining the drive, everybody had shown up for breakfast. This would be boatloads of fun. He let himself in, heading straight back to the kitchen.
“Logan! What a lovely surprise.” Pru beamed at him from the griddle where at least two pounds of bacon sizzled and popped.
From his place at the long, kitchen table, Xander lifted his coffee mug in greeting. “Hey man, what brings you over this way?”
Logan needed to decide fast what he was going to say here. A quick scan of the room showed his quarry wasn’t present. Which left the truth or some kind of bald-faced lie. He’d never been any good at prevarication. “Is Athena here?”
“What do you want, Logan?”
He turned to see her standing in the doorway. She’d showered and looked about two steps above warmed-over death. The smudge of shadows deepened the gray of her eyes and only served to highlight the pallor of her skin. Her chin held a defiant tilt, and her stance said all shields were up. But her arms told a different story. They were crossed over her middle in a self-protective gesture that belied her fierce stance. Without a word, he took a step closer, studying her eyes. It wasn’t anger he saw there, but devastation. This wasn’t about the boyfriend or the cheating. That had been all temper last night, more a wound to her pride than her heart. What had happened?
“I came to check on you.”
“I’m fine.” Her tone was as hard and implacable as steel. But she wasn’t nearly as sure of herself as she wanted them to believe. Beneath all that bravado, she was shaking.
“I don’t think you are or you wouldn’t have snuck out this morning without a word.” He ignored the gasps from the table and continued walking toward her. “Nothing happened. You passed out on the couch with the dogs, so I took you up to the guest room to sleep it off.”
Her face went impossibly
paler. “I know exactly where I woke up this morning,” she snarled.
“Okay, forgive me for interrupting, but exactly why are you biting Logan’s head off?” Kennedy asked. “Because, from where I’m sitting, it sounds like you drank too much, and he picked you up and took care of you.”
He saw the momentary flash of pain before her temper ignited.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “Why didn’t any of you think to tell me?”
Okay seriously, what the hell was going on? “Tell you what?” Logan asked.
But she wasn’t looking at him. Her glare seemed to be divided between her sisters and Xander, who looked as baffled as Logan felt.
Xander winced as realization struck. “Aw shit. I didn’t even think.”
For the love of… “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on?”
Pru rescued the bacon and switched off the griddle. “Your farm is where Athena grew up.”
Given everybody’s chastened expressions and Athena’s palpable fury, this was a big thing. Obviously the news had blindsided her, but for the life of him, he didn’t understand why it was a big deal. A surprise, sure. One of those random, small-town coincidences. But not a reason for the raw emotional wound he saw on her face.
“I’m taking a walk.” Without another word, she stalked out the back door and slammed it.
Pru jumped into the ensuing silence. “I’m sorry about that. She’s—”
Logan just held up a hand. “Stop apologizing. If she wants to tell me, she’ll do it herself.” Without waiting for further commentary or questions, he followed her out.
She didn’t have that much of a lead on him. Following her down the trail to Opal Springs was a helluva lot easier in the daylight than it had been last summer. A few times she paused to toss fulminating glares over her shoulder. Everything about her shouted at him to go the hell away. But he wasn’t ready to leave her just yet. He had a feeling people were too inclined to leave her alone when she had these outbursts because they didn’t see the pain underneath the anger.
At the springs, she climbed up on one of the flat rocks, fisting her hands and staring at the water as if she was contemplating jumping in. He just took a seat and waited in silence. He was a farmer. He knew patience.
“Why are you here, Logan?”
“Because you’re upset, and it’s something to do with me. Maybe if you tell me, I can do something to fix it.”
Bitter laughter scraped over his skin like sandpaper. “Got a time machine?”
He wondered if she wished she could go back in time to stop herself from getting involved with the douche who cheated on her.
“Can you go back and stop my mom from leaving or my dad from the drug overdose that institutionalized him when I was twelve?”
Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t that. As the question was rhetorical, he waited to see if she’d elaborate or tell him to go to hell.
She heaved a heart-heavy sigh.
“My parents were high school sweethearts. Got married right after graduation. Dad’s grandparents were getting on in years, so they retired and gave my parents the farm as a wedding present. My mom wasn’t what you could call excited about this development. She wanted bigger things than Eden’s Ridge. But it was a roof over their heads and a living. Daddy wanted so much to be a farmer. He had this whole deal about wanting to be connected to the land. But he was just…bad at it. I think it was okay for the first few years. But farming is hard, risky work.” She shot him a glance. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
He shook his head.
“I came along about the time the new wore off on their marriage. Then came the drought. It burned everything to a crisp and cracked the land. The next year was incessant rains that drowned and rotted the crops. And on and on it went. Every year was a new disaster. Every year they went deeper into debt.”
That was pretty much Logan’s worst nightmare. The idea that everything he’d built would be yanked away by the vagaries of Mother Nature.
“Eventually, when I was about eight, my mother gave him an ultimatum. Sell the farm and go get a more stable job or she was leaving. He wasn’t willing to give up what he saw as his family legacy. So she left. And it was…well, it was what it was.” She jerked her shoulders, shrugging off her mother’s defection as just another one of those things. “I was Daddy’s girl and he worked his ass off to make sure I didn’t feel the loss too much. I took on too much responsibility too soon, but we got by. Just the two of us.”
She went quiet, her throat working, the muscles of her face tightening as she fought not to cry.
“He had some good years. And then he had some more bad. He had to let some of the farm hands go, do more of it himself. What I didn’t know at the time was he’d started using amphetamines to get through all that extra work. Just to keep him going because he couldn’t bear to let go of the land that was slowly killing him. I got pulled out of class and talked to by the school counselor. She was concerned about the fact that I was falling asleep in class. Missing school. She wanted me to talk to somebody about the stress. So I did. And the next thing I know, a social worker’s telling me to pack a bag and taking me away from my dad.”
“That’s how you ended up with Joan.”
“Yeah. It was supposed to be temporary. But Daddy…he ended up in the hospital from an overdose. Whatever he took that last time wasn’t pure. It was mixed with…God knows what. The doctors never did. Whatever it was essentially destroyed his brain. I was left without a father, the bank took the farm, and I never got to go home.”
Until he’d taken her there.
Every instinct he had urged him to cross over and take her into his arms. But he didn’t move. He understood her well enough to know she wouldn’t want to be touched. But God, he ached for the little girl she’d been. He didn’t know how to feel about her confession. There were too many layers to process just yet. He just knew he wanted to help, wanted to banish those shadows from her eyes and make her feel…better. Which was precisely the reason he’d gone into psychology in the first place.
And that turned out so well.
She finally turned to face him, her expression dialed somewhere between surprise and confusion. “I don’t know why I just told you all that.”
No way in hell was he admitting he’d gone to grad school to be a therapist. Athena Reynolds was the type who wouldn’t trust shrinks. Why should she? They’d helped take her away. “I get that a lot.” He hesitated. “That was your room with the stars.”
She gave a jerky nod. “I’m sorry I flipped my shit.” On a heavy sigh, she folded down to the rock beneath her, as if she simply couldn’t stand anymore beneath the weight of what she carried. “Thanks for coming to my rescue last night.”
Deflection. She didn’t want to talk about her past anymore, and he couldn’t blame her. He suspected that was more than she’d said about it to anyone, except probably her sisters, since it had happened.
“Anytime.”
“What exactly did I say to you? Because it’s all kinda fuzzy.”
“It was pretty rambling, but the gist I got was that your boyfriend cheated on you with your sous chef and somehow that imploded your career.”
She closed her eyes. Obviously that was another sore point. “Please don’t say anything to my family. I haven’t told them yet.”
He lifted a hand. “I’m sorry, I have to document this momentous occasion. You actually said please.”
The corner of her mouth twitched.
He sobered. “Of course, I’ll keep it to myself. Are you okay? Or as okay as you can be right now?”
“Yeah.”
She wanted solitude, and he wasn’t the one to deny her.
“All right then. Unless you need anything else, I need to be getting on back to the farm.”
“Go. Work. Thanks for listening.”
“I’ve got two good ears and a shoulder if you ever need them.”
She nodded and laid her head on her
up-drawn knees.
He left her there, reluctantly climbing back up the ridge to his truck and work. But he couldn’t help but wonder the whole way back about the fact that he was the one she’d confided in.
Athena held out for two days, recovering from the mutant hangover and the simple, earth-shattering shock of finding out Logan now owned her family’s farm. She’d pulled out impressive avoidance tactics, even for her, to keep from discussing anything about him, the farm, or the mess in Chicago with her sisters. But by the time Maggie’s name flashed across her phone—again—she understood her time was up. The options were to talk to Maggie or become the object of a family intervention.
She answered the phone. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Color me surprised. Pru told me about the farm. How are you feeling about all that?”
Her shoulders hunched up around her ears. “You know I hate the F word.”
“Don’t make me come out there.”
She would, if she thought it necessary. But Maggie had already flown back to Tennessee so many times the past year—in the aftermath of Mom’s death, all the insanity around custody of Ari, Kennedy and Xander’s wedding, Ari’s adoption, the holidays, and Pru and Flynn’s wedding. Athena knew she’d be in hot water with her boss if she took more leave anytime soon.
She blew out a breath. “I’m…I don’t know what I am.”
“The word you’re probably looking for is ‘upset’. That thing you like to pretend you never are.”
“Okay, fine. I’m upset. It really threw me for a loop.” Understatement of the year. But she wasn’t about to admit she’d been shaken to her very foundation by something so simple as waking up in her childhood bedroom.
“What’s bothering you the most about this? You had to know it would’ve been sold to someone, the land worked by someone.”