Page 3

“Not by me.”

I pulled up the internship agreement on my phone and scrolled to section four. Then I held it out to him.

He took it. He read the line about housing being provided by the host for the length of the internship, and then he read it again. A muscle moved in his jaw.

“I didn’t read that far,” he said.

“It’s on page two.”

He handed the phone back and rubbed a hand over his face. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything at all.

“There’s an apartment over the shop,” he finally said. “It’s full of boxes.”

“I’m good with boxes.”

“The oven doesn’t work. The hot water takes ten minutes.”

“That’s okay.”

“It isn’t okay. It’s just what there is.” He looked at me then, really looked, from my braid down to my paint-splattered boots. “You won’t last the season.”

He didn’t say it to be cruel. He said it like it was simply true.

It hurt. I hated that it hurt, coming from a man I’d known for ten minutes.

I’d been hearing some version of that my whole life. Usually it came in a nice voice, with a smile and a “just in case.” Nobody had ever said it straight to my face before.

I smiled at him. “Where are the stairs?”

He pointed with his chin toward a set of wooden steps along the back wall.

I went out to my car and opened the passenger door. The bags I’d crammed onto the seat slid toward me, and I caught them with my knee and hauled the biggest one onto my shoulder. When I swung the door closed, it stuck. I bumped it shut with my hip.

When I turned around, he was standing in the barn doorway, watching me.

I carried the bag past him and up the stairs.

He was wrong. I was going to last the whole season, and I was going to make him admit it.

Chapter Two

Shepherd

“You can wait in the shop,” I said, staring at the dusty cardboard boxes that held God knew what.

“I’m not going to sit downstairs and watch you carry all this.” She already had one in her arms. “Where do these go?”

“I’ll get them.”

“You’ll get the next one.” She stepped around me and started down the stairs. “Where?”

“Back wall. By the lumber.”

She climbed down the stairs. I stood in the doorway of the apartment and looked at what I’d let happen to it.

Six years of boxes. Most of them I’d carried up the week I came back to Ridgewood Falls and never opened again. Over the years, I had added to them. Old invoices. Brushes I didn’t use anymore. Then there were drop cloths over furniture I’d forgotten about. I’d told myself I’d sort through it all eventually. After a while I’d stopped coming up the stairs at all.

She came back up for another box before I’d picked up my first one. Time to get my ass into gear.