Page 38 of Last Chance Love

“Okay,” I said as I heard a door open down the hallway. “Would it be too late to say I’d like to get to know you again?”

“It’s a little late, but nottoolate,” he said, looking down and his smile fading. “I can’t exactly say I’m not as equally responsible for us not reconnecting. I’ve been just as distant.”

“Okay, so let’s try to make things less distant.”

“I think I could manage that,” he said, and where I expected a smile, I could only see that troubled expression.

“I…look, if it’s too much trouble, or you don’t want to, I wouldn’t blame you,” I said quickly.

He looked up, blinking before the expression on his face cleared, and he smiled at me. “No, sorry. Just realized we’ve been standing around shooting the shit, and if I don’t get you introduced to things, Alice is going to have my balls nailed to the wall.”

“Well, let’s not keep the tour waiting,” I said with a shrug. “It’s not like I don’t have the time today. I’m all yours.”

“Yeah, did you see the schedule?”

“For the next couple of weeks, actually. Quite a few things got rotated around, and it seems like you and I will see a lot of one another.”

“Sothat’swhy you decided to try to reconnect?”

“I…well, not exactly that. Well, notjustthat,” I said with a wince. I had been surprised to see the changes, and I had realized something had to give if I was going to be forced into proximity with Reed for the next couple of weeks. It had been a while since the last time they had changed rotations that much, and I wondered if this was Mona having one of her random moments of whimsy or if this was going to stick. Either way, it made sense that I should try to bridge some of the gap between Reed and me.

“You’re just as bad at lying now as you were back then,” he said, nudging me. “C’mon, I’ll give you the proper tour and lay some things out. And while you get your feet wet, we can start the same way we did all those years ago when you kissed me.”

“How so?” I wondered, brain stuttering at the memory.

“A little at a time,” he said and pushed me.

I supposed I could live with that.

REED

I would forever envy people who lived in parts of the country where the approach of October meant something impressive or meaningful, where you could count on the weather becoming almost comfortable and enjoyable. You could watch trees change colors, accompanying cider and hot drinks to fight the chill.

If someone tried to hand me a hot drink right now, I’d have no choice but to take that as an attempt on my life and react accordingly. The sun might not be as overbearing as a couple of months ago, but that didn’t stop it from being a burning circle of absolute hell as it tried to bake everything under its unrelenting gaze.

“I think I’m having a stroke,” I said, leaning back to take a deep breath. “I’m beginning to think like a mid-nineteenth-century novel.”

“Is that so?” Leon asked from beside me, looking amused.

Which was probably easy for him, the absolute bastard. I had never considered myself weak, butdamn, I’d been spoiled working in the clinic. After the first couple of weeks with Leon working alongside me, the schedule flipped around. We were still working alongside each other a handful of days a week, but now I was dealing with his job instead of the other way around.

That meant helping with the groundwork for expanding parts of the ranch. The ranch was several acres, but only about half was actually used. The rest was just hard, sunbaked earth that nature was allowed to keep. Every now and then, though, the ranch was expanded, which meant several hands on deck to help.

That boiled down to a whole lot of digging and building foundations. I had no idea what the expansion was for, considering we still had room in the barns for animals, plenty of storage, and unused cabins. I wasn’t going to argue, but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy working my ass off in the blazing sun.

“Maybe early twentieth century, I don’t know. I think my brain is baked,” I said, wiping my brow and eyeing the nearby tent. One of many brought out for the work crew. There, you could get shade from the sun and water from the coolers filled with ice. “Hey, uh, there goes Elliot again.”

Leon spun around, his smirk disappearing and his lighthearted tone replaced by a firmer one. “Elliot! Don’t even think about it!”

“I think he already thought about it,” I muttered with a chuckle as Elliot froze, his hand reaching toward the small spigot at the base of one of the coolers. He had tried to dump the melted ice on other people and himself.

“C’mon! I’ll be okay. It’s for me!” Elliot protested.

“No, it’s not,” came a grumpy call from the other side of a half-built wall. I didn’t need to see the shock of red hair and the scowl to know it was Reno.

“Yes, it is!” Elliot complained. “I’m roasting!”

“We’re all roasting,” Leon called.

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