The wind off the north ridge howled, rattling the corrugated metal roof of the arena office like a sheet of tinfoil. I sat at the center of the chaos, a single desk lamp illuminating the stacks of color-coded contracts and vendor agreements that stood between me and tomorrow’s opening day. Outside, the October thunderstorm was rapidly downgrading from a heavy squall to a full-blown deluge.
My phone buzzed on the desk, vibrating against a stack of safety protocols. The caller ID flashed Nina’s name.
“Tell me the funnel cake tents are still anchored,” I answered, pressing the phone to my ear as I highlighted a line on the livestock feed manifest.
“They are, but barely,” Nina said, her voice crackling through a burst of static. “The vendors are panicking, Maeve. I just had to talk the barbecue guys off a ledge because the mud is creeping up to their trailer axles. I pushed out an update on the socials saying we’re monitoring the weather, but the mentions are going crazy.”
I rubbed my temple, grateful for the hundredth time that my twenty-seven-year-old assistant handled the digital chaos I barely understood. Nina was a lifesaver, bringing a sharp, digital-native efficiency to a fairgrounds that still ran mostly on carbon copies and handshake deals.
“You did exactly the right thing, Nina,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Tell them Darius is bringing out the extra sandbags to the lower tier. The storm is supposed to peak in an hour, and then it’ll blow over.”
“Are you sure?” Nina asked, a slight hesitation in her usually rapid-fire delivery. “Because I just checked the radar app, and it looks like a giant red angry blob sitting right on top of Peach & Pine. You shouldn’t be out there alone.”
“I’m not leaving until the main contract is locked down,” I said, my gaze shifting to the thick manila folder sitting dead center on my blotter. The rodeo and fall festival depended entirely on that single document. “Go home, Nina. Make sure your parents’ bakery didn’t take on water. I’ll see you at dawn.”
“Okay, boss. Be safe.”
The line went dead. I set the phone down just as my office landline blinked with a new voicemail. I hit speaker. It was a town council member, his voice tight and nasal. “Maeve, we need verbal confirmation that the orchard backers’ consultant has signed the master agreement. If that paperwork isn’t executed by morning, the council is pulling the liability insurance. Call me back.”
I let out a slow breath, jingling my master keyring against my thigh—a nervous habit I hadn’t shaken since I was a teenager sweeping these very grandstands. The fairgrounds were my entire life. I had poured everything into keeping this place afloat, sacrificing weekends, holidays, and any semblance of a personal life to ensure the county had a place to gather. I wasn’t going to let a storm and a missing signature tear it down.
The lights above me flickered, buzzed violently, and held.
I pulled the manila folder closer, smoothing my hand over the damp-warped cardboard. I would stay in this office all night if I had to. I would personally shepherd this high-stakes contract through, no matter who this mysterious new consultant was, and I wouldn’t leave this desk until the ink was dry.
A crack of thunder shook the floorboards, so loud it felt like it had struck the arena dirt right outside my window.
And then, the lights went out.
The sudden darkness was absolute, save for the blue-white flashes of lightning slicing through the smeared glass of my window. I fumbled in the dark, my hand brushing past my lukewarm coffee mug until my fingers found the heavy plastic handle of the battery lantern I always kept on standby. I clicked it on.
A stark, white glow flooded the small room, casting long, eerie shadows against the filing cabinets. I exhaled, turning my attention back to the desk.
Then, I heard it. The heavy, deliberate strike of boots on the wooden planks of the hallway.
My pulse spiked. Darius was supposed to be down at the 4-H barns, and everyone else had evacuated. I stood up, my hand instinctively dropping to the heavy metal flashlight on my hip.
The doorknob turned. The door pushed open, groaning on its hinges.
Lightning flashed outside, throwing a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette into sharp relief against the doorframe. The man stepped into the lantern light, rain dripping from the brim of his dark Stetson, his denim jacket soaked through and clinging to his frame.
My breath caught in my throat. The floor seemed to drop out from under me.
“Hello, Maeve,” he said.
His voice was a low, unhurried drawl that bypassed my ears and settled directly in my chest. Ten years. It had been ten years since Luke Harrington had stood in front of me, asking me to leave everything behind and run away with him on the rodeo circuit. Ten years since I had frozen, too terrified of letting my father and the town down, and watched him walk out the door.
He took off his hat, revealing dark hair plastered to his forehead and those same piercing eyes that had haunted a decade of my dreams. He rolled his right shoulder—a subtle grimace tightening his jaw, a phantom echo of the brutal accident I had only heard about through town gossip.
“Luke,” I managed to whisper, my voice cracking. “What are you doing here?”
Before he could answer, my cell phone rang again, the shrill tone shattering the heavy silence between us. I grabbed it blindly.
“Maeve,” Caroline Pine’s voice came through, crisp and measured despite the crackling connection. “I assume our new consultant has arrived?”
I stared at Luke, my mind struggling to process the words. “Consultant?”
“Luke Harrington,” Caroline said smoothly. “He’s the rodeo’s new operations consultant, representing the orchard’s interests. I know it’s a surprise, honey, but he’s the required co-signer on that manila folder sitting on your desk. The deal depends on the two of you finalizing it tonight. I need you both to play nice and get it done.”
I gripped the edge of the desk, the polished wood digging into my palms. The man who had broken my heart—the man whose heart I had broken—was the one holding the keys to the fairgrounds’ survival.
“I understand, Caroline,” I said, forcing a brittle, polite mask into place. “We’ll handle it.”
I hung up and looked at Luke. He was watching me, his expression guarded, his jaw set. The air in the tiny office felt impossibly thick, suffocating under the weight of a thousand unsaid words.
“Well,” I said, my voice shaking only a fraction. “Welcome to the chaos, Luke. It looks like we’re stuck working together tonight.”
Luke tossed his damp hat onto the filing cabinet and stepped further into the room. “Looks like it.”
The rain hammered the metal roof with renewed fury, sounding like a stampede of wild horses directly overhead. Water was already pooling beyond the grandstands, the muddy torrent creeping up the access roads and turning the fairgrounds into an island.
My phone buzzed again—a text from Darius. “Lower access road is washed out. Creek breached the banks. Nobody in or out until morning.”
I read the text aloud to Luke. He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. “I saw the water rising on my way in. We aren’t going anywhere.”
I swallowed hard, gesturing to the narrow desk. “Then we better get started. The council wants this signed before dawn, and Caroline made it clear this is nonnegotiable.”
Luke moved around the desk, invading my space. The office was too small for him. He smelled of rain, leather, and that faint, familiar scent of cedar that immediately dragged me back to late nights in the arena bleachers, back when we were young and reckless and thought love was enough to conquer the world.
He stopped right next to me, so close I could feel the heat radiating from his damp clothes. He reached for the manila folder at the exact same moment I did.
Our hands collided.
A jolt of electricity shot up my arm. I gasped, trying to pull back, but Luke shifted, his large, calloused hand sliding over mine, pinning it to the damp cardboard of the folder. He didn’t let go.
“Maeve,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave, rough and desperate.
I looked up. His face was inches from mine, his eyes dark and stormy in the lantern light. The careful, professional boundary I had tried to build shattered instantly. All the loneliness, the regret, the sheer, agonizing want of the last ten years flared to life in my blood.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t hesitate. Luke’s other hand came up, his fingers tangling in my hair, gripping the back of my neck, and he pulled me to him.
His mouth crashed down on mine, hungry and demanding. I made a soft, helpless sound in the back of my throat, my hands flying up to grip the lapels of his soaked denim jacket. The kiss was a collision of ten years of starved longing, hot and desperate. His lips parted mine, his tongue sweeping inside, tasting of rain and heat. I clung to him, my body pressing flush against his solid chest, feeling the heavy, frantic thud of his heart against my own.
He backed me up a step, my thighs hitting the edge of the desk. His hands slid down to grip my waist, his thumbs pressing hard into my sides, pulling me closer, closer, until there was absolutely no space between us. A heavy, pooling warmth ignited in my core, a primal ache that only he had ever been able to wake in me. I dragged my hands under his jacket, my palms flattening against the warm, hard muscles of his chest through his damp shirt. He groaned into my mouth, the sound vibrating through my entire body.
But just as his hand slid up my ribs, brushing the side of my breast, a violent crack of thunder rattled the very foundation of the office.
The building shook. A sharp gust of wind slammed against the window, threatening to shatter the glass.
Reality crashed back down on us.
We broke apart, both of us gasping for air, chests heaving. Luke took a step back, his eyes blown wide, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He ran a shaking hand through his damp hair, his gaze dropping to the floor before slowly lifting back to me. The raw vulnerability in his expression made my heart ache.
“The contract,” I whispered, my voice trembling. I turned back to the desk, my hands shaking so badly I could barely grip my keys. I dragged the manila folder toward me, pinning the damp, water-ringed signature page beneath my jingling master keys.
I forced myself to breathe, to push the overwhelming surge of desire and panic down into a tight box. The survival of the town, the fairgrounds, and everything I had built rested on this desk.
As thunder rattled the smeared office window and rain drummed on the metal roof, I looked up at Luke across the narrow desk, and heard myself say, far more steadily than I felt, “All right. Let’s get through this night,” even as my pulse hammered with the unspoken question of whether we could survive what the fine print would stir up between us.