His Hometown Girl. Karen Rock

      “It’s so good to see you.” She stepped back at last and admired Aunt Grace’s soft pink blouse and gray slacks.

      “I’ve waited a long time for this, Jodi.” Her aunt’s brown eyes, set behind skin folds and creases, were still as piercing as ever. “Wish you’d come home under better circumstances.”

      “A visit with you is the best circumstance.” And it was.

      “I agree. If only your parents would come back from Arizona, too.” Aunt Grace wrapped an arm around her and led her toward the garden beds surrounding her porch. “How are you, Daniel? Would you like to come inside for some tea?”

      “I think Jodi’s had enough of me, Grace, but thanks.” His eyes lingered on Jodi’s for a long minute before he headed back to the truck, his movements easy and athletic.

      No sooner had he grabbed their suitcases than he dropped them again to lunge after a bolting Tyler. A tern, Tyler’s target, squawked and flew from Aunt Grace’s dock directly behind her small house.

      Jodi clutched her chest, grabbing the locket containing Tyler’s baby picture, her heart beating like the frantic bird’s wings. If not for Daniel’s lightning reflexes, Tyler might have ended up in the water, or worse, on the rocks that flashed just above the surface before the lake bed dropped off. She’d been so fixed on watching Daniel that she’d missed her son’s dash. Her “Bad Mother” marquee flashed on again.

      “Daniel, thank you,” she said when he deposited Tyler in her arms. Her son kicked and protested until Grace offered him a cookie and led him inside.

      Daniel’s face creased. “No need to thank me. It’s what neighbors do, Jodi. Help each other.”

      And just like that her gratitude dissolved into irritation. She pushed back the strands a lake breeze blew in her face.

      “Neighbors in cities support one another, too. My neighbor has been taking care of Tyler until—”

      Daniel’s biceps flexed as he carried her suitcases and placed them at her feet. “Until...?”

      Her hands curled. Why did she forget herself so often around him? “Until he starts day care.” There. It was the truth without saying anything that would connect it to her real reason for being here. Daniel needed to see her as a strong opponent, not a mother who was struggling to provide for her child.

      He stared intently at her, then passed her a small bag. “You’ll be glad to go back soon. Even if it is empty-handed.”

      “I agree with half that statement.” Daniel had charm and contacts, but she had the drive of needing something badly.

      Daniel hopped up on his running board. “Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that.”

      She raised an eyebrow. “It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. We’re not playing on the same team anymore.”

      “Have we ever?”

      Their eyes locked for a breathless moment, both recalling when they had.

      “This is different.”

      He studied her for a long minute, then waved before sliding inside. “I know.”

      As he began backing out of her aunt’s driveway, his eyes on her, she heard him shout, “This is war!”

      CHAPTER THREE

      AND WAR IT was, regardless of the fact that Jodi had been on his mind nonstop during his afternoon chores, his ever-present retriever, Goldie, at his heels. He could fool himself. Think he was strategizing. But the truth was he kept picturing the smile she’d given him when he’d rescued Tyler. And the way her blue eyes had warmed to him—even for a short while.

      He cranked off the engine on his feed blower, stepped out and pulled off his hat, letting the fans sweep his damp hair away from his forehead. Who was he kidding fantasizing about Jodi? Their short-lived relationship had left scars. She’d been right to accuse him of pitying her. He had felt bad about what’d happened to her family. It was the reason he’d put a stop to their rivalry and started being nice to her.

      But when their truce had turned to romance, it’d been hard to separate those feelings. To know where one emotion ended and the other began. When she’d asked him if he’d dated her out of pity, he’d struggled to express himself clearly.

      Looking back, he understood that he hadn’t been mature enough to handle the situation. It’d been complicated, and she’d run off, quit, before he’d figured out how to explain without offending her or revealing his own family’s secrets.

      Her father’s accident had left Daniel’s family in a bad place financially. Replacing the skid loader her father had broken had pushed Daniel’s cash-strapped family over the edge. That was the real reason he’d convinced her to keep their romance a secret—he didn’t want to give his parents another excuse to argue. After all, she’d been the source of his family’s strain. He rubbed the back of his tense neck. But that was a long time ago; they weren’t teenagers anymore.

      In fact, like Jodi, he’d moved on. He had dated other women, although none as seriously. He had too many things to focus on before settling down, his updated farm being one of them. He looked on with pride at the orderly rows of newly widened stalls. Brown jersey cows stuck out their heads and nipped at his homegrown organic silage, their lowing filling the barn. Besides sunrise, this was his favorite time of the day, when the last of his herd had exited the mechanized, circular milking parlor and returned to stalls heaped with sweet straw bedding, their eyes drooping from a long day at pasture, many on their knees already.

      “All set there, Daniel?” A gawky young man waved at him from farther down the center aisle. His hired hand was a decent guy who mostly kept to himself. Hopefully, this one would last out a full year. Colton was one of the best workers he’d found in a while.

      “Pretty much. I’m about to head up. Are you coming for supper?”

      “Yeah, if you don’t mind. I’ve got to set the timer on the mister and change out of these.” He plucked at his tan coveralls.

      “Sounds good. We’ll hold the meal for you.”

      A striped barn cat wound its way through Daniel’s legs and touched noses with a tail-wagging Goldie. Cat and dog. Natural enemies. Yet they’d found a way to get along. Would he and Jodi ever find that peace? He gritted his teeth. Only if she saw the light—like the mellow gold shafts striping the sawdust-covered floors. No business office could compete with this. It was majestic.

      And Jodi shared that quality. It had made her his fiercest enemy growing up, and the subject of many boyhood dreams—one of which had briefly come true. He paused to look at a mound of hay in the same place as the one where they’d kissed ten years ago. It was a memory best forgotten, especially now that they were locked in this “winner take all” battle.

      If she had her way, his jerseys wouldn’t be brushed nightly, given hours of outdoor time or slipped a carrot when they looked a little off, because yes, despite having three hundred head, he knew them all that well. Had birthed them and named them himself. They were a family of sorts and he never could look at them as pure dollar signs.

      He slopped milk into a trough left out for the cats. The orange tabby had already been joined by three calicoes, a gray short hair, a tailless Manx, and a rag-doll cat he couldn’t resist picking up and letting flop across his forearm. He rubbed its belly fast before its claws came out, then put it down where it shoved its way into the growing crowd. He noticed a Persian hanging back. Huh. He’d never seen it before. Must have been another midnight drop-off from a regretful pet owner.

      The skittish cat raced from him as he approached, but in minutes he had it cornered and in a pet carrier. He strode up the small knoll to his gray, plank-sided, two-story farmhouse where the smell of pot roast and onions made his stomach growl. For a moment he imagined what it’d be like to have Jodi there, waiting for him, but