to.”
Olivia cleared her throat and looked at Luke meaningfully. Which he seemed to miss entirely. “I don’t know that I would be welcome,” she said, finally.
“Come on. It’s been at least...six months since Wyatt has run anyone off the property with a shotgun.”
Olivia sighed. “You’re a pain—do you know that?”
“Now, is that any way to talk to your roadside savior?”
“Normally, I would agree, but I suspect that you’re trying to irritate me on purpose. Otherwise, you would have just answered my question.” She settled back into the bench seat, looking down at the floor mats that were encrusted in mud. She had no idea why Luke had mats on the floor of his truck at all. It seemed ridiculous when the whole thing was covered in a fine layer of dust and small bits of hay.
She felt woeful on behalf of her black pencil skirt.
“You caught me,” he said, sounding not at all contrite. “I am absolutely trying to irritate you. I would say that I’m succeeding, too. You do know how to make a man feel accomplished, Olivia.”
“And you know how to make a woman feel feral, Luke.”
“You and I both know you’ve never felt feral a day in your life, honey.”
She wanted to argue with him. Except he had a point. But she was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. Instead, she sniffed and looked out the window as they crossed into the town’s city limits and drove down Main Street.
The redbrick gold rush era buildings that lined the streets were picturesque, and whenever her friends from college came in from out of town they commented on them. To her they were simply buildings, rather than charming relics that looked as though they could have come out of an Old West movie. To her, having lived in Gold Valley her entire life, it was home.
Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to see the town for the first time. With fresh eyes. To see it as something unique, rather than something that simply was.
The Logan family, founders of Logan County, had been the first settlers in the area, after coming from the East Coast on the Oregon Trail.
As they paused at the four-way stop she took a moment to look at the faded, painted advertisement on the side of Gold Valley Saloon. She couldn’t quite make out what it said, and it was one of those things she had never really bothered to try to do, because it was something else that was simply there.
It was early in the day so the saloon sign—the only lighted sign allowed on Main Street, and only because it was a classic neon sign that had first been put up in the 1950s—wasn’t turned on at such an early hour, and there was a large Closed sign propped up in the window. In fact, most of the businesses on Main were closed at this hour.
The coffeehouses were open already—three of them all within walking distance of each other—because if there was one thing Oregonians liked more than craft beer or wine, it was definitely coffee. The little greasy spoon café that had been there since the middle of the last century was probably packed full of people getting their daily hash browns and bacon.
They started driving again and that cut off her ruminations as they headed out of town and down the highway toward the winery.
“What business do you have down this far?” she asked.
“I was headed down to Tolowa to hit up the Fred Meyer. Got to grab a few things.”
That was Luke. A man of few words until he wasn’t, and then they were annoying ones.
“I see,” she said.
“I didn’t see Bennett this morning,” he added. “Since you were wondering.”
“Right. Well.” And that made her wonder if he had been there. Or if he had spent the night somewhere else—which made her stomach feel like acid. All things considered, Bennett was probably happy that she had cut him loose. She of the self-inflicted metaphorical chastity belt, who had been making him wait to be intimate until he had proposed to her.
But now he was free.
She sniffed again.
She and Luke lapsed into silence as they continued down the winding road. Finally, Luke turned off the main road and onto the long, dirt drive that led up to the winery.
“This parking lot,” she said, gesturing to the paved lot on the left.
The road forked there, and the right turn would have taken them up to Lindy Parker’s house. Lindy owned the winery and lived on the grounds. The unintentional parting gift of her cheating husband after their divorce.
She hopped out of the red truck as quickly and delicately as possible, but even so, her skirt hiked itself up a few inches above her knees. She hurriedly pulled it down, and when she chanced a look back at Luke, she saw that he was looking at her a bit avidly. He smiled, and that same flipping sensation she had felt in her stomach when she had first spotted his truck made an irritating return.
“I still have your number from the beach trip,” he said, referencing a time over the summer when a group of them had driven in a caravan over to the coast for a beach barbecue that she had ultimately found a bit too sandy to enjoy. “I’ll text you. Let you know how things go with your car.”
“Thank you,” she said, trying to avoid sounding wooden and uptight, both things she had been accused of being several times over.
He was actually being nice, even if he was mixing some annoyance with it.
“You are very welcome.” He reached up, grabbed the brim of his hat and tipped it slightly, and she felt something inside of her tip in response.
“I’ll look for that text.” She gripped her bag tightly and walked quickly toward the refurbished barn that was now a rustic but elegant dining room.
When she walked in, both Lindy Parker and her ex-sister-in-law, Sabrina Leighton, were standing at the window, staring out of it, and then turned to look at her with curious expressions on their faces.
“What?” Olivia asked, blinking.
“Who was that?”
“No one,” Olivia said, and then suddenly realized how all of it looked. Her denial hadn’t helped. “I got a flat tire.”
Lindy only stared, and Sabrina’s mouth quirked upward at the corner. “And you hitchhiked here?”
“No. I know him. I mean, he did pick me up on the side of the road. But, he’s...a family friend.” Of Bennett’s family, but she didn’t add that last part. Because it only underscored just how tangled up her life was with Bennett Dodge, and the whole rest of the Dodge family. That Luke was embroiled in her life simply because she had spent so much time at the dude ranch growing up.
Because her father and Bennett’s father had always been so close, and because Olivia had carried a torch for Bennett for her entire childhood, all through high school, and then finally, that torch had become something real after college.
Her memories, her connections... She had so few that weren’t involved in the Dodge family in some way. And now she wasn’t really involved with them anymore.
Her thoughts had gone off track, and she had a feeling that Lindy and Sabrina were interpreting her silence to mean something different.
Lindy’s follow-up question confirmed that. “A family friend?”
“Yes. He rescued me and is going to fix my car. Which seems really nice, but since he was on his way to Tolowa, it was actually just logical.”
“Okay,” Lindy said, clearly disbelieving.
Olivia sighed, and then her eye caught sight of something glittering on Sabrina’s finger. “Sabrina. What is that?”
Sabrina curled her hands into fists. “We don’t have to talk about it, not if you