Chance of Rain

by Lin, Amber

  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.

  Her head was tilted, looking faintly curious. “It’s okay. Sometimes heights freak me out too.”

  He frowned. “I’m not freaked out.”

  “All right,” she said, but her expression said she knew what she knew.

  “And I’m not afraid of heights.”

  “My mistake,” she said brightly. “I’ll go get washed up for dinner.”

  He stared after her, bemused. He had once traversed the goddamn Hindu Kush Mountains with a couple of wayward missionaries in tow. He had scaled the southern face of the Cheekha Dar with insurgents on his tail. Him, afraid of heights?

  He snorted. Women: can’t live with ’em, can’t fuck them over the railing.

  Chapter Six

  Natalie stepped into the bathroom on her way downstairs to wash her face, and also to make sure her nose hadn’t grown twice its length, because boy had she lied. She considered herself an honest person. That was how her Gram had raised her. But she didn’t want him to know she’d been tearing up over a bare album with a complete set of class photos and a few pictures of a thin young boy, alone and solemn. Neither could she explain to Sawyer why she’d stopped checking the phone.

  It had been right around the time she’d brought him a snack. He’d been sweaty, covered in dirt and so handsome her insides had turned to liquid. When she’d handed him the apple, he’d given her this strange look and drawled, “Thank you kindly, Ms. Bouchard,” and what could she do? Good manners had always been a turn-on.

  She’d thought she could stay the rest of the day without fretting about leaving. She wasn’t getting in the way of his farm work, and it was clear he was in way over his head with the household chores. She liked being here. She loved the diner too, but it was the idea that kept her going, the history, the tenuous thread of family running through the puce vinyl booths. Being here with him was purely for her.

  So she’d stopped checking the phone line. No big deal. It wasn’t as if she’d unplugged the phone and hidden the cable, though the idea had occurred to her.

  It wasn’t only that she wanted to be near him. At least part of the reason she’d brought him food so often was a sense of lingering unease. All day he had been stoic. But last night—something had been wrong. She didn’t want to think about him like that, alone, if she hadn’t driven here before the storm hit. What if she left today and he was back in the barn, with no one to comfort him? No. She would stay.

  Downstairs, she served the meal she’d prepared, a savory ratatouille with garlic bread. She was really quite proud of herself for concocting a hearty meal out of some soft vegetables and spices of questionable expiration date. His kitchen had been sparse, not counting the entire wall of canned beans that filled the pantry. At least they wouldn’t starve. There was rice and beans, there was refried. There was even a selection of canned chili, and not a single one of them looked appealing.

  She spooned a generous helping of ratatouille onto Sawyer’s plate, ignoring his amused look. She knew he thought this was all too domestic, that she was presuming a permanence here that wouldn’t happen. No doubt he would have been more comfortable had they heated up a can of pinto beans with jalapeño flavoring over a campfire or maybe snacked on some MREs as if in a military camp with his team.

  Serving good food, making people feel at home—even if it was their own home—was what she did. And pampering such a strong, self-sufficient man didn’t diminish him, it made her feel powerful. A sense of satisfaction filled her as she watched him devour her meal.

  He slowed during the second plateful and launched into some story about scaling a 5,000-foot rock face without a lead, which seemed weird, because he’d been so tight-lipped about his missions that she thought it was against the rules or something. Until she realized he was talking about a vacation where he’d gone rock climbing in Yosemite with his buddies.

  “Good lord, that would have scared me half to death. I can’t believe you did all that for fun,” she said, because a) it was true and b) she didn’t want him to feel bad about his fear of heights when he had expended so much effort overcompensating for it.

  She should have realized that suggesting Sawyer, a Navy SEAL, was afraid of heights was about as big a faux pas as suggesting a cowboy couldn’t ride. That reminded her of last night, when she had noticed the empty barn.

  “Are you going to buy a horse?” she asked. “If you’re planning on a harvest this year, that’d really help. I think the Mallorys have some nice stock for sale.”

  He looked bemused. “Do you know everything that happens around here?”

  “The diner,” she reminded him. “Many a sale has been facilitated through me. I should probably have taken a cut all this time. I could’ve been rich.”

  He got that funny look again, which she was beginning to understand was embarrassment and concern. “You do okay at the diner, though...right?”

  “Oh, sure. I mean, I charge a dollar for coffee and there are only like three hundred people t
otal in the tri-county area, so I probably won’t be able to afford Jimmy Choos anytime soon, but I get by.”

  He grunted and took a bite of chicken.

  “So, the horses?” she prodded.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “A horse is a big commitment.”

  It was true. A horse was a big commitment, but the way he said it was almost directed at her—defensive when he didn’t need to be. “I understand. Cattle can take a lot of work.”

  He frowned, not seeming to appreciate her attempt at peacemaking. “I don’t mind hard work. I just don’t know if I’m going to be around in a few weeks, let alone a whole year.”

  Her eyes narrowed, because they really weren’t talking about the farm anymore. “Then why are you putting all this work into the farm?”

  He put his fork down. “Maybe I like the farm. Maybe I’m having a good time, and I thought the farm was having a good time, so why does it have to be more than that?”

  “The farm is having a good time?”

  He looked strained. “What farm doesn’t like a good mucking?”

  She burst out laughing, and after a second, he did too. When she caught her breath, she said, “I really was talking about horses. It wasn’t a veiled marriage proposal, you conceited ass. I know the score.”

  He tilted his head quizzically. “Oh, yeah, what’s that?”

  “You’re a sailor. I’m a port.”

  His amusement faded. “Yeah. A sailor.”

  She didn’t like the sad light in his eyes, so she teased him. “I can’t believe you threatened to muck me.”

  “Don’t think I won’t,” he mock-growled.

  This was much better, with a playful quirk to his lips and a slightly predatory gleam in his eye. And the one thing never to do with a predator was...to run. She slipped from her chair and made it out of the room before he’d even gotten up, but he tackled her a few feet from the stairs. His back hit the floor with an oof a second before she landed on top of him.