Coffee was critical. And I peered into the old tea tin someone had given me once (it had been filled with tea, but I’d fixed that right away), only to find I was out. Because of course I was. And what the hell was that tapping noise outside? It was half-past barely the buttcrack of dawn. And I had no coffee, an increasingly bad attitude, and a growing irritation for woodpeckers. If that was actually a woodpecker. Was he pecking on something metal? Stupid bird. I squinted out the cheap broken blinds over the dinette, but didn’t see anything except trees. Because that was one thing I wasn’t short on up here in the place to which I’d been relegated. There were plenty of trees. Tap, tap, tap. And persistent birds. I really hated birds. But I didn’t think that was a bird. The sound was annoying and abrasive, most likely human in origin, I thought. And only one person I knew was capable of inspiring the level of irritation I was feeling. I shuffled across the thin bubbled linoleum floor to the window that looked out the front. A glance out the window confirmed my worst fear. Jack. An ungodly rage filled me at the sight of him, and perhaps I should have taken a breath and given more thought to the situation before acting. But that had never really been my style. I pulled on the thin robe hanging on the back of the door and clattered my way through the tinny space to the front, throwing the flimsy door open to crash loudly against the side of the trailer.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My voice surprised me. It carried all the frustration and annoyance I’d kept bottled up and hidden under my assurances to everyone over the last year that I was fine. “Well, hello, darlin’! You’re a sight, Maddie.” Typical. Ambiguous. Everything Jack said could be interpreted nine different ways, and everything out of his mouth sounded charming, thanks to that lilting Scottish brogue of his. He knew it, too. It was his strategy for staying out of trouble. “Thanks.” “Oh, it’s not a compliment, love.” He gave me his half grin and cocked his head to the side, his waves perfectly styled above his perma-tanned face. God, he was sexy. And God, I hated the bastard. “Don’t call me ‘love’. Or darlin’.” I sputtered. “My thanks was sarcastic.” I knew it wasn’t a compliment. I couldn’t recall the last compliment my bastard of an ex had paid me. But now if he believed I thought that he’d paid me a compliment, I was already losing this conversational battle. This was what happened when I had to talk to Jack before I’d had coffee.

“You’re a gorgeous woman, Maddie, but today you’re really working that mountain woman thing, ya know. The tatty robe, the smudgy black stuff around your eyes …” He motioned to his eyes, as if I wouldn’t be sure where the smudgy black stuff was. And then he laughed. He was smiling, but the venom in his words worked as he’d intended. The smooth Scottish accent did nothing to me now except deepen my desire to kick him in the balls. I tried not to care about his words, but I couldn’t help it. I swiped at my eyes. I didn’t exactly practice perfect makeup maintenance now that I was living on my own. In a trailer. On the side of a mountain. No one was usually around to care. “What are you doing here, Jack?” My plan was to get to the heart of the matter and then get him the hell away from me. “Just doin’ you a wee favor, darlin’.” I stared at the mallet in his hand, and realized that he’d been pounding a sign into the ground in front of the halfframed house that stood next to my trailer. We were actually talking to one another through the non-existent walls of the front room. The front room of my dream house. My ex-dream house. The one I had been building with my ex-husband. Jack. “What’s the deal with the sign?” “What do think the deal with the sign is?” Jack grinned and my blood bubbled hot beneath my skin. “It’s eight a.m. I don’t want to play guessing games.” Jack turned away from me as a car motored slowly up the narrow road and came to a stop behind where he stood. “I think you’re about to find out.” As he said it, he turned back around and winked at me.

The wink threw me over the edge. “Don’t you wink at me, you ***!” I practically screamed it, and as I did, the owner of the car emerged, his head turning my way as he ran a hand through shiny auburn locks. Wow. I suppressed an involuntary shiver and pulled my robe a little closer around me. The car was one of those practical luxury types. A Land Rover or a Land Cruiser or some kind of four-wheeldrive Land thing. I wasn’t an expert in slow, hulking cars. Actually, given that I now found myself living in a trailer next to a half-built reminder of my failed marriage and was working in a diner, it turned out that I was not an expert at anything. Not marriage. Not big cars. And certainly not men. The man who approached the threshold of my trailer, taking in all my terrycloth-robed glory, had an air of practical luxury about him, too. He was tall and broad, his hair glinting with hints of copper in the morning sunlight. It was a little long, a little messy, but clearly some attention was paid to it. He wore aviator sunglasses that hid most of his face. But not his lips. And his lips … his lips were like a sculpture. The kind of lips that would make nuns blush and giggle. They were a little too perfect, maybe. But the guy wore flannel, like most people in this mountain town. And the short stubble covering his jaw gave him a rugged look that inspired in me a wild urge to rub my hand over it. Or better yet, photograph it.

I longed to dart back inside for my camera, but I already looked like a loon. A robe-wearing loon with a camera would definitely not be better. The man stepped around the car, gazing up at the half-built house, and I chastised myself for staring. My fascination, beyond his movie-hunk looks, was that this man was clearly different from the other people I’d seen up here, but he still managed to fit in. Something I hadn’t mastered. “How much?” the man asked, speaking to Jack. “How much what?” I asked, my voice bordering on a high-pitched scream. What was going on here? Jack ignored me. “I guess given the state, and the fact that winter’s not far out, the better question is what’s it worth to you?” The man walked around the house, stepping into rooms, and testing structural beams with his hands and his body weight. While he wandered around inside my house, I stepped down the front step of the trailer and stomped through the dust in my pink slippers to where Jack stood with his arms crossed. “What is going on?” I hissed. Jack raised an eyebrow as he looked me, his eyes sliding down to my chest. “Is that the teddy from our wedding night?”

I glanced down, horrified to see a flash of leopard-print silk exposed in the deep V-neck of the robe. “No.” But of course it was. He was right. My humiliation was practically complete. “You can take the girl out of the city …” Jack grinned, shaking his head. I pulled the robe tighter. So what if I still wore my expensive lingerie to bed? I deserved nice things. Even if Jack had taken most of them from me. “What the hell are you doing?” “Selling the house for you.” “For me?” “Thought you’d appreciate the help.” “I don’t want your help, you cheating ***!” The man had stopped examining the house and was looking toward me now, a tilt to his head and a half-smile on those sculpted lips. I wished he’d take off those damned shades so I could see what he thought of this whole exchange, which he had surely overheard. I didn’t know why I cared. “This is my house, Jack. Maybe you forgot. Maybe you’re so overwhelmed by the details of managing your own house—the one that has actual walls and a roof and working plumbing and sits on a nice street in a real city—Maybe that’s all so overwhelming that you forgot this heap is mine.” Jack had the grace to drop my gaze for a split second. But then the smile appeared again. So freakin’ confident. “I didn’t think you really wanted it. Wouldn’t you rather have the cash?” I might, but definitely not with his help. “Isn’t that for me to decide?”

“You’ve been sitting on it for four months, love. It’s gonna rain and snow and blow up here before much longer. If someone’s gonna build some walls, they need to do it now. Not good for the frame to sit out exposed like this for so long.” “That’s not really your concern. And since when are you a construction expert?” Jack took my elbow in a conciliatory gesture, and I wrenched out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me!” He offered me his most condescending smile, the one reserved for willful children and, of course, for me. “This gentleman is serious. He called as soon as the ad went live. He’s got money. Wants to pay cash. I still care about you, Maddie, and I’m trying to help. ” I sniffed. His platitudes would do very little to ease my burning desire to see him foundering in a pit of venomous pythons or drowning in a giant vat of scalding pea soup. “I’ll tell you what would help me then. Talk to my lawyer next time she calls instead of dodging her! Give me what you owe me and then get out of my life, stay out of it, and get the hell off my property.” I raised my chin and pointed it toward the strapping stranger who’d gone back to testing the foundation. “Both of you! Get off my property! It is not for sale!” I leveled my gaze at Jack again. “And take down whatever listing you put up!”

I marched over and grasped the sides of the For Sale sign that Jack had planted and gave it a mighty tug. Naturally it wouldn’t budge, and both men were staring at me as I pulled on the thing, squatting down low in my robe and slippers so I could put some back into it. I tugged again, like a Sumo wrestler lifting an opponent (did they even do that?) but the thing was stuck. I let out an unintentional grunt with my third failed attempt and then winced in shame. The entire world was conspiring to ensure that I looked like a complete idiot whenever possible. I bent my knees once more and really put my body into it, pulling as hard as I could, but the sign was planted like a Sugar Pine, roots deep and wrapped around granite. “Let me give you a hand.” The voice that rolled over my shoulder was low and smooth. Not Jack. The stranger. Before I had time to respond, two strong hands reached around the sides of me, grasping the sign below my hands. He was standing directly behind me, practically hugging me. As if things weren’t awkward enough. And he was close enough that I could smell him—some distracting combination of the woods and baked goods seemed to waft off of him. “On three,” he said. “One, two …” We pulled together and the sign popped out of the ground. The sudden release sent me backwards, of course, right into the solid chest of this complete stranger who had just been sizing up the irritating relic of my former life. I practically bounced off him in an effort to get some space between us, and then pulled my robe back together, glancing up at him.

“Thanks,” I muttered. He handed me the sign. I took it while looking up at his face, but I still couldn’t read him. Damned sunglasses. All I could see was a reflection of myself. Brown curls flying in every direction, pink robe barely covering the ridiculous teddy I’d slept in. “If you change your mind, why don’t you give me a call?” he said. Then he handed me a card that he seemed to produce from thin air. This guy was either charming or eerie. I hadn’t had time to decide which. “I won’t.” I put the card in the pocket of my robe without looking at it. Unfortunately, that pocket had come unstitched a month ago when I’d caught it on the handle of the bathroom door, so the card fell to the ground at my feet. The man scooped it up and leaned forward, holding it out to me. “Maybe the other pocket?” I took it and tucked it into the pocket on the other side of my robe. As he walked away, a lingering scent of pine and cinnamon floated by. He smelled like the mountains. And like coffee cake. I just stared. Because pretty much every last vestige of dignity I’d imagined myself to have that morning had dropped with the card to the dusty ground through the stupid hole in my pocket. “Well then,” I said. “If we’re all done here.” I turned and marched back up the rickety stairs of my trailer and slammed the dinky door. It barely made a sound.

As I made coffee with the previous day’s grounds, I heard both cars drive away. When I was sure they were gone, I pulled open the shades and stared out into the wall of dark green trees across the road from my lot. Alone again. Really, truly alone. Just me and my stupid unfinished house and my stupid trashy trailer. Living my stupid, stupid life.

I probably should have just stayed away. After all, I had a house in Kings Grove already, and it wasn’t exactly my policy to run around introducing myself to people. I liked my privacy. I worked hard to maintain it. It was part of why I lived in a remote village in the high Sequoias in the first place. That, and the fact that of all the places I’d been in the world, Kings Grove was the only place that had ever really meant anything to me. And that particular property? I knew it was ridiculous, but owning that actual piece of land would be like coming full circle, closing a loop. But when I’d spoken to the guy on the phone—what was his name? Jack something?—the Scottish brogue didn’t charm me. I could feel when someone was disingenuous from miles away. And this guy was smarmy AF. That said, I’d been willing to meet with him to take a look at the property, see the state of the house. I just hadn’t expected her. I’d seen the trailer there the few times I’d driven by, but I’d never seen the woman with the wild curls and the fiery eyes. I would have remembered. The woman next to the trailer should have been comical, maybe pitiable. But instead, as I watched her —Maddie, I think the Scotsman called her—march around in her terrycloth bathrobe, railing at her ex-husband, I didn’t pity her. I couldn’t help but admire her. In fact, if anything, I was drawn to her.

First of all, no one had yelled at me in years, and when she’d screamed at us both to get off her property, a little thrill went through me at being treated like a regular person, like a nobody, even. When you’re famous, people tend to be nice to you even if you’re a complete fucktard. And I was pretty sick of that. But besides her anger, Maddie was beautiful. Her flying curls and those light brown eyes pulled at something inside me. And couple her beauty with the fiery glint of her anger, her indomitable spirit . . . I didn’t care about the house anymore, or the property. I just wanted to see Maddie again. “Get off my property! It is not for sale!” She had said emphatically, her small pointed chin raised in defiance. I couldn’t help but move closer to help her remove the For Sale sign. And when I leaned in over her shoulder and stood behind her, nearly embracing her and inhaling the floral scent of her shampoo, an electric charge filled the space between us, and I wondered if she felt it too.

Then again, I suppose it could have been considered pretty fucking creepy to get up right behind her like that and help tug the thing out of the ground. But I didn’t always do the right thing around other people. I was bad at peopling. I was a writer. That’s all I was good at. Imaginary peopling. I didn’t make a habit of giving out my card, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself, practically shoving it into her hand before she managed to disappear from my life again. As I’d climbed into my car to drive back down the rutted one-lane roads through the residential village of Kings Grove, I found I no longer really cared about buying the property. I didn’t want it nearly as much as I wanted her. Of course, there were a few other things standing between us, not the least of which was that I was currently being investigated by the police. But maybe once that blew over. Maybe.

When the morning’s excitement was over, and I’d had three or four cups of almost-coffee, I felt prepared to move forward with the day. Which, for me, meant pulling a long shift at the diner in town. Kings Grove was actually a wide spot in the road at just over six thousand feet up a California mountain. We had the necessities—a post office, a market, a library, a restaurant, and a hardware store. There was an old lodge, and the town saw its fair share of tourists, thanks to the towering trees that clustered in thousand-year-old groves to watch over us like sentinels.