Halfway to her car, Jen heard footsteps behind her. She turned to find Ainsley on the flagstone path, squinting up at her, the sun shrinking the pupils in her bright blue eyes to tiny specks. Aimee said her daughter looked exactly like the thirty-year-old guy who’d gotten Aimee pregnant at nineteen and then took off as soon as he got the news. Jen had just started college then, with Aimee stuck back in Iowa, so Jen had never known the guy. But Ainsley definitely didn’t take after her mom, and Jen wondered how long it had taken Aimee to get used to the everyday reminder of the asshole.

“They’ll be okay, you know,” Ainsley said, shaking her head. “They fight sometimes, but then it’s all good.”

Jen hid a smile. “So you like Owen? Is he good to your mom?”

“Sure, yeah. It’s only when he’s with the guys too much that Mom gets upset. That’s probably what that was about in there.” She looked at her dirty fingernails. “And sometimes things with Melissa don’t let them see each other.”

“Who’s Melissa?”

“His wife.”

“Wait . . . what?”

A serious, stomach-dropping worry swept through Jen. Two peas in a pod. How could Aimee do that, get involved with a married guy, especially after all the crap they’d had to deal with as kids?

She closed her eyes and mouth and breathed carefully through her nose. One problem at a time. Technically, it was Aimee’s problem, but when had Aimee’s issues ever only been her own?

She opened her eyes to find Ainsley tossing the apple core into the herb garden. “Melissa and Owen are still married and they live in the same house. That big old white one over on Catalpa?”

Jen ground the heel of a hand into her eye socket. “And Aimee knows this?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What about Melissa?”

“Oh, she knows, too.”

Jen thought she might be sick.

“T and Lacey say it’s no big deal,” Ainsley said. “So do I.”

Those girls again. “And who are they exactly?”

“Owen and Melissa’s kids. Relax, Aunt Jen.” The girl actually put a hand on Jen’s arm and gave this little bat of her eyelashes that screamed Aimee. “They’re getting divorced. It just hasn’t happened yet. Or maybe it won’t. I don’t know.” Then she shrugged and the kid was back. “Whatever.”

Whatever was right. Jen started to laugh. She couldn’t help it. “Alrighty then. My sister is dating a not-yet-divorced guy who still lives with his wife. Hey, where are you going?”

Ainsley turned from where she’d been heading down the sidewalk, away from downtown. “To Bryan’s. He got a slingshot yesterday.”

As Ainsley walked away, Jen turned to look through the big front window of the Thistle, where she—and anyone else walking by—could plainly see Owen the still-married-but-whatever plumber and her sister making out. What the hell was going on here?

Jen couldn’t help but flash back to so many days of her youth. To the embarrassing, awful, public scenes she’d been forced to witness—and sometimes break up—between her mom and the random women who seemed to know Frank, the live-in boyfriend who wasn’t Jen’s or Aimee’s dad, all too well.

No time for that, she reminded herself with a shake of the head. Now she was working, and the past was the past. First, she had to run back to the rental house and switch out her shoes for something more appropriate to traipsing around fairgrounds.

But when she pulled up to 738 Maple, there was a huge white pickup truck consuming the driveway. MacDougall Landscape Design was stenciled in green on the sides.

Jen sat there clutching the steering wheel and closed her eyes. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Leith—she did; she really did—she just wasn’t ready. She hadn’t prepared herself. Hadn’t thought it all through, as she was so good at doing. For a small, sleepy town, everything was happening so incredibly fast.

Maybe if she opened her eyes slowly, her mind would admit it had played a trick on her and he wouldn’t actually be here right now. She opened them. The truck stared back at her.

And then, there was Leith MacDougall sauntering out of the open garage. He lifted his thick arm to wipe the side of his sweaty face on the shoulder of his stained white T-shirt. The old poster tacked to the vacant store window downtown hadn’t done him justice. That kilt had hidden the true power of his thighs, but the dirty jeans he wore now showed them off like trophies. He was at least thirty pounds bigger than in high school, maybe more. Not ’roided out or disgustingly cut, but firm. Unmistakably strong.

Why was seeing him like this affecting her so much? It had been a high school thing, before either of them could even define the word mature. Nothing more.

Reaching over the side of his truck bed for something unseen, he froze. Turned his head. Saw her sitting there in the car.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Just sat there like a dumbass staring at him through the passenger-side window. Maybe in New York she could’ve gotten away with hitting the gas and peeling away. She could’ve lost herself in the traffic and there’d have been a good chance she’d never run across him again. But here?

She’d never been a coward her whole life, and she wasn’t about to start now.

Opening the car door, she swung her legs out and stood, turning to face him. She smoothed her dress that didn’t need smoothing, then lifted a hand in greeting. He was wearing thick working gloves, and he slowly tugged them off, finger by finger. Then he pulled one of those dark blue handkerchiefs with the white swirls out of his back pocket—the kind she remembered his dad always used to have—and wiped his hands on it.

She started toward him. He didn’t move.

“You were right, Leith. I do love you.” Her palm went damp around the phone.

He didn’t say anything for a long time, but she could hear him breathing and it sounded labored. “Why the fuck are you calling to tell me this now, when you’re half a country away?”

“Because.” She swallowed, and it hurt. “I thought you’d like to know.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I don’t want to know. Not now.”

Jen almost stumbled on the ragged asphalt of the driveway. That had been so long ago, when they’d been kids. And he was sort of smiling at her now. Sort of. Maybe he’d forgotten the crappy way she’d ended it. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. They were both adults.

“Hey, you,” she said, throwing on a smile of her own.

His brown hair had gotten lighter at the ends. A bonus—at least from her point of view—from working outside. It curled around his neck and ears in a way that might have looked like an overdue haircut on any other guy.

He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “So you’re really here.”

She stopped, the heel of one shoe clacking loudly. “You don’t look all that surprised.”

He glanced over her shoulder, down Maple where it dipped and curved around in front of the elementary school. “Small town.” His eyes drifted back. She’d forgotten how intense they were. How he always looked people in the eye. It was that personal attention, that charm, she remembered, that drew people to him. “I was surprised. Yesterday.”

“Ah. Yeah.” She nodded at the sidewalk. “It was a crazy day. To be fair, I had no idea you still lived here until I got into town. And then I was pulled in a million different directions.”

He just looked at her. How did he manage to stand so quietly when such violent tremors were rocketing through her body? She’d always been a fidgety person. Always had to move, to think about her next step—where to go, what to do, what to say. Standing there under this scrutiny, wearing this strange uncertainty, she had no idea where to channel her energy.

Leith was as still as his image on that poster. She knew what he was thinking: You never asked Aimee about me? But then, she also knew that he’d never once asked Aimee about her, so really, weren’t they even?