I thought I had buried my feelings for her, until her daughter looked up and said, “Mommy said you’d come.”...

By morning, the cold front had cleared, leaving behind a sky of crisp, electric blue and a lawn covered in thin white frost.

The structural repair on the drying barn held perfectly through the night. But while the physical wood and iron had survived the storm, the rest of Millbrook Falls was starting to notice my presence at Marsh Orchard.

At eight-thirty, a dark blue Ford F-150 pulled up the gravel drive, kicking up dust before coming to a stop near the main house.

I was at the workbench outside the shed, sharpening the blades on the pruning saws. I recognized the truck before the driver even opened the door. It had a commercial logo painted on the side door: MARSH FREIGHT & LOGISTICS.

The man who stepped out of the truck was tall, broad-shouldered, with slicked-back dark hair and a heavy leather jacket. He looked like Daniel Marsh—because he was Daniel's older brother, Vance Marsh.

Vance had been two years ahead of us in high school. A star linebacker who had never quite outgrown the feeling that the town owed him something.

He slammed the truck door and walked straight toward the main house, ignoring me completely at first. But as he passed the workbench, his eyes caught mine, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

"Well, well," Vance said, his voice dripping with a nasty, condescending smooth tone. "Wesley Hart. I heard a rumor down at the diner that the prodigal handyman had returned."

I set the file down on the workbench. "Hello, Vance."

Vance walked over, putting his hands in his jacket pockets, looking me up and down with a sneer. "What are you doing here, Wesley? I thought you were off building bridges in Texas or wherever the hell you run off to."

"I'm on leave," I said evenly. "Helping June with the harvest."

Vance laughed—a sharp, barking sound. "Helping June? Is that what we're calling it now? You disappear for fifteen years, don't show your face when my brother dies, and now you show up right when the harvest is due, playing farmhand?"

The screen door of the house clicked open, and June stepped out onto the porch. She took one look at Vance's truck and her face hardened.

"Vance," she said, walking down the steps. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to collect the monthly equipment lease payment, June," Vance said, turning away from me and stepping toward her. "The payment on the sorting machine and the cold-storage unit was due on the first. It's now the fifth."

June stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her hands tucked tight into her jacket pockets. "I told you on Monday, Vance. The sorting machine broke down two weeks ago. I had to pay three hundred dollars for a mechanic from the next county just to tell me the motor was fried. I'm not paying rent on a machine that doesn't work."

"That's not how the lease agreement works, June," Vance said, his tone turning hard, predatory. "My brother might have let you run this place into the ground out of sentimentality, but Daniel is gone. The business is mine now. The equipment belongs to Marsh Logistics. You pay the eight hundred dollars for this month, or I load the sorting machine onto my trailer by noon."

"If you take the sorting machine, I can't grade the apples for the commercial distributor!" June yelled, her voice trembling with frustration. "You're cutting my throat!"

"You're cutting your own throat, June," Vance snapped back. "You should have sold this property to the development firm six months ago like I told you to. You could have cleared the debt, taken a little cash, and moved into a nice apartment in town with Ren. But no—you're stubborn. Just like your father was."

I stepped away from the workbench. My boots struck the gravel with heavy, deliberate steps until I was standing between Vance and June.

"She said the machine is broken, Vance," I said quietly.

Vance turned his gaze onto me, his nostrils flaring. "Stay out of this, Hart. This is family business."

"It's a commercial dispute," I corrected him, my voice flat, calm, and dangerous. "And if you pull that sorting machine off this property without giving her thirty days' written notice as required under state commercial lease laws, you're committing an illegal seizure of farm assets during an active harvest."

Vance’s eyes narrowed. "You think you're a lawyer now because you wear a hard hat?"

"No," I said, stepping half an inch closer to him, using my height and frame to shadow him. "I think I'm a man who knows how to read a contract. And I know Daniel's name was on that lease, not yours. Which means the estate has to probate the lease before you can repossess a single bolt."

Vance glared at me, his jaw clenching so hard I could see the muscle ticking in his cheek. He looked over my shoulder at June, then back at me.

"You think you're helping her, don't you?" Vance whispered nastily. "You think you're going to step in, fix up the old farm, and win back the girl you abandoned? Let me tell you something, Hart. Daniel left a paper trail of debt on this land so thick a bulldozer couldn't clear it. The bank owns her. I own her equipment. And in three weeks, when your little vacation is over and you run away again, she's going to be left with nothing."

"Get off the property, Vance," June said, her voice small but steady from behind me.

Vance pointed a finger at me. "By noon on Friday, June. Eight hundred dollars, or I come back with the sheriff and a flatbed trailer. Let's see if your structural engineer can fix that."

He turned on his heel, stomped back to his truck, slammed the door, and sprayed gravel across the drive as he tore out toward the main road.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

June stood behind me, staring at the dust settling in the lane.

"He's right about the sorting machine," she said softly. "Without it, I have to hand-grade every single bushel. It takes four times as long. I'll miss the distributor's deadline on Tuesday."

I turned around to face her. "Where is the sorting machine?"