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Chapter One:
“I just can’t believe you sold Steeple Ridge.” Missy Marino reached for the roll of packing tape, her auburn braid falling over her shoulder as she secured another box.
Jamie sighed but didn’t otherwise respond. Missy tucked her thoughts about the sale of the farm into the back of her mind, though they kept escaping. She’d known for a year that Jamie was going to sell the forty-acre horse farm. But that didn’t make the reality of it any easier, and with every book she loaded into another box, every plate she wrapped in paper, every trip she made to Jamie’s truck with more of her belongings, Missy’s blood felt like someone had poured cement into it and it was now hardening in her veins.
With everything loaded and a professional maid service arriving within the hour, Jamie pulled Missy into a tight hug. The same tight, motherly hug Missy had enjoyed since she was a tween, when she’d first come to Steeple Ridge to learn to ride. She’d experienced this hug after she’d fallen off her horse, after she successfully got her steed to jump the rails, after she’d won championships, and after she’d come in third or fourth.
Jamie Gill had been part of her life for two decades, and Missy’s throat tightened so much that she gasped for air. “I’m going to miss you,” she said, not even bothering to conceal the wounded tone, the absolute agony.
The older woman released her and cupped Missy’s face in her hands. “I wish I could’ve sold you the farm, the way we always planned.”
Missy shook her head, already too emotionally exhausted to think about why that hadn’t worked out. But her mind flashed through her brief three-year marriage—and the mountain of debt she had to show for it.
“You’ll like the new owner.”
Missy made a face. “Some city guy from New York? I doubt it.”
“He needs your help.” Jamie gave her a smile as she dug in her jacket pocket for her keys. At nearly noon, with the sun overhead, the day was shaping up to be exactly what the weatherman had predicted—the warmest day in April so far. And yet Missy felt chilled all the way to the bone.
“I told him you were indispensable.” Jamie pinned her with a stern look. “Don’t make a liar out of me in my old age.”
An unbidden smile sprang to Missy’s face at the familiar banter. “Go on then. I’ll take care of things around here.”
Jamie sobered and nodded. “I’m counting on it. I’ll call you when I get to Phoenix.” She opened the door and climbed into her truck, the engine roaring to life in such a way that made Missy wonder if the old beast would even make it to Arizona. After all, it wasn’t just a day trip from Vermont to the Southwest. Jamie was staying with her adult children as she made her way to her new home in Phoenix, where her youngest daughter lived. Missy was happy for her; truly, she was.
Missy lifted her hand in farewell as her boss, mentor, and oldest friend drove away from Steeple Ridge Farm. She turned back to the house. Two stories tall and clapboard white, it had enchanted Missy on first sight. She’d spent many lunches at Jamie’s counter and had slept in the basement when the winter weather kept her from getting back to Burlington, a city about twenty-five minutes from Island Park where the farm was located.
She lived only a hop, skip, and jump from Steeple Ridge now, literally down the lane and around the corner, in her own single-story cottage. She and Jamie had painted the house a robin egg blue the previous summer.
Stuffing her emotions down as far as they would go, she rounded the house, which sat on the back end of the farm, away from the public entrance. There were no riding lessons today—Jamie had made sure of that. All Missy needed to do was attend to the thirty-three horses they housed. The farm owned a dozen of their own for lessons and training. The other twenty-one were boarders, but Missy loved each as if it were her own.
With summer almost upon them, she needed to finalize the brochures for their summer camps and the two horse shows Steeple Ridge was hosting that year and schedule the fertilization of the hay fields. Jamie had included her in every operation at Steeple Ridge, and another pang of regret that she hadn’t been able to purchase the farm sang through Missy.
Inside the main barn, the office waited, its list of tasks long and overwhelming. Missy bypassed it in favor of the horse stalls in the front, where she opened the door to Diamond King’s stall. The tall quarter horse nickered a hello, and Missy ran her hands down his nose, searching for the comfort Diamond had always been able to bring her.
She led him to the wash stall, calling to Fritz, her golden retriever, to come with them. Fritz hobbled in like the old man he was and flopped onto the ground near the door while Missy lashed Diamond to the lines and got the water going. Diamond probably didn’t need a bath, but there was something soothing about the methodical way Missy needed to work to get his light, taupe-colored coat glistening to a shine.
His black mane, markings, and tail made him Missy’s favorite—and the fact that she’d won in jumping with him last year. With the sale of the farm, Missy wasn’t competing this year, though she still had eight kids to see through to the end of the competition season.
With that weighing heavily on her mind, she finished brushing down Diamond and led him out to the pasture. It was mid-April; there hadn’t been a storm in several days, and the ground was snow-free and mostly dry. Missy loved spring in Vermont, and she took an extra few seconds to take a deep breath and find her center.
Behind her in the barn, Fritz barked, but Missy ignored him. The cleaning service had probably arrived. “Go on,” she told Diamond. “There’s enough grass for lunch.” She needed to get inside and feed the rest of the horses, and her own stomach growled for the want of food.
Fritz continued to bark, the sound grating on Missy’s already frayed nerves. At ten years old, he didn’t normally get all worked up when someone arrived at the farm. His excitement piqued her interest, and she followed the sound of his growls and barks through the barn to the house behind it.
Sure enough, a truck sat there, but it didn’t bear the insignia Missy expected. This was not the maid service, and she glanced around the farm, her heart suddenly cantering through her chest. No one could be in the main barn behind her. The back barn sat serenely in the sunshine; the outdoor arena lay empty.
“Fritz!” she called, and the dog stopped barking for a moment. Then he tore around the corner, his golden retriever smile infectious. He skidded to a stop in front of her, barked, and sprinted back the way he’d come. Missy followed him, her steps purposeful as she anticipated meeting the new owner of Steeple Ridge Farm.
She eyed the black behemoth of a truck as she passed it. She’d need a ladder just to get in that thing, and it would be perpetually dusty in the summertime. Shaking her head and steeling her nerves, she entered the front yard, where Fritz ran in circles around a tall, dark-haired man with more muscles in his body than sand on the seashore.
Missy’s step faltered as she drank in the glorious sight before her. She should call off her dog, but she couldn’t quite get her voice to work. Was this the new owner of Steeple Ridge? Why hadn’t Jamie warned her his good looks would make Missy go stupid?
He stood his ground, keeping his face toward Fritz as the dog barked and barked and ran in a tight circle. His fingers flexed and released, and Missy wondered what had possessed him to wear khaki slacks, brown loafers, and a light-blue dress shirt to a farm.
City slicker, she thought, as a self-satisfied smile formed on her face. She folded her arms as she observed the squareness of his jaw, the way his scruff seemed to have scruff, and the determination in his dark eyes. Determination she could see from thirty feet away, which spoke volumes.
“Fritz!” she called. “Come.”
The dog veered toward her at the same time the man did. He didn’t seem to be frozen by her good looks—and why would he be? At barely five feet three inches, Missy certainly didn’t intimidate or inspire. She always wore her auburn hair in a braid, and almost always covered that with a hat. She owned two dresses and three skirts for church, and everything else in her closet was denim or cotton for working on the farm.
He strode toward her, his height more impressive with every step he took. “Is that your dog?”
“Yes.” Missy reached down and scratched Fritz behind the ears. “He didn’t know you were coming today.”
“Oh, so you give him an itinerary of who’s coming and then he doesn’t swarm them?”
Missy tipped her head back and laughed. “Swarm?” She scanned him from head to toe, trying not to appreciate his physique so much. “There was one of him. I think, by definition, a swarm is more than one.” She stuck out her hand, though she was simultaneously repulsed and intrigued by the thought of touching him. “You must be Tucker Jenkins.”
He frowned and put his hand in hers, pumping it twice. A bit hard, in her opinion, but her dog had just swarmed him, so she let it pass. “And you must be Missy Marino.”
“At your service.”
His eyes sharpened, but he switched his gaze to the house behind her and the land surrounding that. “So this must be it.”
“If you’re looking for Steeple Ridge Farm, yes, this is it.” Something struck her right between the ribs. “Wait. You’ve never been here before?”
“This would be the first time.”
Disbelief snaked through her. “So let me get this straight. You bought a horse farm in the middle of northern Vermont without even looking at it first?”
Tucker appraised her, his search almost scathing. “There were pictures online.”
Missy couldn’t help the scoff that burst from her mouth. “Right. Pictures online.” She glanced down at Fritz. “You do know there are thirty-three live horses here, don’t you?”
He swallowed, the movement visible and absolutely disconcerting. “I didn’t know the exact number.”
“Sometimes we get up to forty,” she said. “That’s our maximum capacity.”
A tremor ran across his shoulders, possibly from the spring breeze that had kicked up. “Sounds great.”
Missy rolled her eyes, but she hid it as she turned back to the farm. “Well, do you want a tour?”
* * *
Tucker needed to find his jacket before the tour. And maybe his sanity. Honestly, what had he been thinking when he’d bought this place? At least it came with a beautiful stable manager.
He quickly shelved the thought. He hadn’t bought Steeple Ridge Farm to find a woman. Hadn’t even known it came with a woman until the day he signed the paperwork. Then, the previous owner, Jamie Gill, had said her stable manager was absolutely the best and was part of the deal. It was even in the sales contract that Tucker couldn’t replace Missy for the first twelve months he owned the farm.
“So this is the house.” Missy indicated the white, two-story building that had first captured his attention as he’d looked at properties online. He’d never lived in a house that didn’t share a wall or a floor or a ceiling with another person, and this country house had charmed him from the moment he laid eyes on it.
“Jamie said a cleaning crew would be here today, so you can probably move in tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’m not going to live in the house,” he said, some of his earlier frustration and embarrassment at being corralled by a dog ebbing away. He opened the back door of his truck and lifted his windbreaker from the seat. After shrugging into it, he relaxed.
Without exhaust fumes, honking cars, and the pressures of running his multi-billion-dollar technology firm, relaxing had become infinitely easier. Which was why he’d bought Steeple Ridge Farm in the first place.
Somewhere to start over, he thought as Missy gaped at him.
“You’re not going to live in the house?”
“I bought a place in town.” He didn’t need to explain himself, not to her.
“You did?” She blinked, her long lashes distracting him. “Why would you buy a place in town when there’s a house here?”
Or maybe he did need to explain himself. Maybe everyone in town would ask the same question. “I wanted to live in town,” he said. “I knew there was a house here, but I figured I might not want to live on a farm.”
She stared at him like he’d just sprouted horns. “Why’d you buy the farm then?”
“I wanted it.” He gazed steadily back at her, almost daring her to ask him another question. Something intimate flowed between them, and he found he couldn’t look away from the smattering of freckles across her cheekbones, the intensity in her seafoam eyes, the beauty in the lines of her face.
She half coughed, half scoffed and stepped back, breaking the moment between them. He exhaled, not quite sure when he’d started holding his breath.
“Anyway.” She indicated the barn on his right. “That’s the back barn. There are twenty matted box stalls there, two tack rooms, and some storage areas.”
He said, “Mm hm,” like he knew what a matted box stall was. He didn’t, but he’d brought his laptop, and as soon as he could get on the Internet, he’d figure it out. That was what Tucker Jenkins always did—he figured things out. That’s why he’d founded a company while he was still in college that had grown into the second-largest developer of digital apps. It’s why his software—a program he’d written and developed from his apartment in New York City—sold almost a billion dollars annually to video game companies, phone conglomerates, and online retailers.
Not your company anymore, Tucker, he told himself. After ten years, a failed marriage, and more stress than any thirty-two-year-old should have to endure, he’d sold everything he’d thought he ever wanted—and bought a farm in rural Vermont.
He was only five or six hours away from the city—he could go back and get his fix of the fast life any time he wanted. His company also had a branch in Montreal, and that was only two hours north of Island Park, his new home in the middle of nowhere. He’d been to Montreal many times and found the town quaint, and charming, and slow.
Slow was what he really wanted. He craved slow. Wanted to wake up when he woke up, maybe ride a horse, get lunch at a diner that served breakfast all day, and drive on roads that frequently got blocked by two trucks that had been going in opposite directions when their drivers stopped to chat.
Of course, Tucker had never ridden a horse before, or driven a truck until last week, or even eaten breakfast in the past five years.
But all that was about to change. He took a deep breath of air scented like grass and sunshine and . . . he glanced at Missy. Flowers. She smelled like flowers and soap. He caught himself gazing at her mere moments before she slid him a look out of the corner of her eye.
“Did you want to see the horses?” she asked, a glint in her light-green eyes. That sparkle said she knew exactly who he was—someone who’d never seen a horse in real life, if he didn’t count the police horses he’d glimpsed in Times Square. And he didn’t count those.
“Definitely,” he said with too much confidence. “You said we have thirty-three right now?”
“We’ll start with one,” she said. “He’s mine. He’s a quarter horse mixed with an Appaloosa, and his name is Diamond King.”
“Diamond King,” Tucker said, finally able to focus on the conversation, the farm, the woman. He needed to leave his past in the past. Needed to find a way to be happy again. As he followed Missy through the barn and out into the open land, he wondered if simply owning a horse farm would be enough.
She stopped and leaned up against a white board fence and called to the beautiful creature grazing a hundred yards away. The horse lifted its head and came plodding toward her. The closer it got, the more Tucker wanted to retreat. After all, the dog now snoozing at Missy’s feet had caged him in a corner of the yard in seconds—what would this horse do?
Missy turned and laughed at him. “Come on, City Boy. He won’t bite.”
Tucker realized he had backed up a few steps, and embarrassment raced through him. “City Boy?” he asked as he rejoined her. He towered a foot taller than her and probably could’ve snapped her in half with his bare hands. Yet she possessed a quiet strength that interested him—called to him a way nothing had for years.
She nudged him in the chest with her shoulder as she fondled the horse’s mane. “Don’t worry, Tucker. We’ll get you countried right up. Won’t we, boy?”
At her playful tone, a spring of desire for Missy began to bubble in Tucker’s chest. He reached out to touch the horse. When the animal didn’t rear up and snap at him, he relaxed all the way, maybe for the first time since he’d graduated from high school.
It felt nice. Real nice.
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