“The construction guys?” Grant asked, confused and still suspicious, standing when we did. He put his impressive frame between Jo and the man he clearly saw as an intruder and folded his arms.
Jo rolled her eyes and swatted his arm, stepping around him. “Oh, quit it. He’s not here for me.”
He looked down at her, quietly smirking. “Better safe than sorry.”
She laughed and tucked into his side.
“What does it matter which brother shows up to work on the barn renovation?” he asked, turning his attention back to Keaton’s truck.
“It doesn’t,” I noted. “They’re just being silly.”
I did my best not to look silly as I tightened my bun, very aware that I had on very short shorts and no robe to hide my braless boobs. I folded my arms across them instead, because the second I thought about said boobs, my nipples announced themselves.
“And what makes this brother worthy of all … this?”
“See for yourself,” Jo answered, but I barely heard her.
Because out of the truck he climbed in all his glory.
I’d seen him just a few days ago on Main Street, but for the stretching of time he inspired, you’d think I’d never seen him in my life. He looked like he’d walked out of a Chevrolet commercial for the manliest truck in their inventory. Or like a social media thirst trap on his way to chop wood with no shirt on. Except those men knew exactly what they were doing. Keaton had no idea.
You could tell in the way he held himself, as if his life was filled with hard work that he reveled in. It was in the way his eyes pierced me all the way through, with full and complete presence and absolute honesty, all while maintaining impassable distance. He was an island surrounded by lava surrounded by desert surrounded by hurricanes, guarded by a thunder of dragons.
He held no interest in the female gaze. What he wanted was to be left alone.
Which made it even worse when Poppy called, “Look at that, Daisy—a Keaton Meyer sighting twice in the same week. We’d better buy lotto tickets.”
“Mornin’,” he said with the thump of the truck door. “Cole had an emergency this morning, so he sent me over. I need to check in on the guys, if you’d be so kind as to point me in the direction of the barn.”
“Well, I hope everything’s all right with Cole,” Mama answered without asking questions. But we all wondered about Cole, the Meyer brother who ended up gossip fodder more often than not. “So if you go down past the house—” Mama started, turning in the direction she was about to send him, but Poppy interrupted.
By interrupted, I meant she practically shoved me down the stairs.
“Daisy will take you,” she said, sugary sweet. “Won’t you, Daisy?”
Manners dictated the walls of her trap. All I could do was smile past the flush in my cheeks and say, “Sure, just let me grab a sweatshirt.”
“Oh, it’s not even cold,” Jo chided from Grant’s side. Poppy blocked my way up the stairs. Mama made a face at them but didn’t come to my rescue.
I offered Poppy a smile that promised swift payment when I got back, and she volleyed a smile of her own that said it’d be worth it.
“Come on,” I said as I walked down the last two steps. “I’ll show you back there.”
When I looked up, his gaze weighed a thousand pounds. I faltered, bare feet in the grass in front of his truck, instantly and deeply aware of my appearance, dirty hair and all.
God, was Poppy gonna get it.
With a curt nod, his eyes cast to the ground, releasing me long enough to climb in next to him. The silence in the cab was deafening. When he turned the engine over, I’d never been so grateful for the sound.
I had no good reason to be affected by him this way, not more than any other hot-blooded hetero woman. He was older than me, a senior when I was a freshman in high school. I remembered seeing him on the field at football games. In the hallways at school, laughing with Mandy up against her locker. I remembered the size of her mum the year they won homecoming king and queen, the massive flower and ribbons and bells so heavy, she had to wear it around her neck instead of pinning it to her shirt, lest it tear a hole in the fabric.
Mama was right—I hadn’t seen that boy in a long, long time. This strange version of Keaton was shrouded in brooding silence and mystery.
Silence that he maintained as he backed away from the house.
“Just head that way, past the stables and into the woods a bit,” I said.
Another nod, his eyes trained on the strip of grass in the middle of the dirt road he ambled down. There might have been some secret of the universe written there, a message from God, maybe the cure for world hunger for as likely as he was to look away.
Careful to keep one arm in front of my chest, I fiddled with my bangs in a blind effort to fix them, not even knowing whether they were a mess, though it was a safe assumption.
“So,” I started, desperate to break the silence, “how are your brothers?”
“Fine, thank you.”
I put on a smile and kept trying. “Well, that’s good to hear.” A pause. “Are you gonna be out at the barn all day?”
“Just long enough to make sure all’s well. The crew hasn’t been a bother, have they?”
“Not at all. They use one of the back gates, so all we’ve heard is some sawing when the wind switches direction.”
“Good. Let me know if that changes.”
“We will.”
Another dead end. I kept the small smile on my face as my brain scrambled for something else to say, but all I could think about was how the inside of the truck smelled like leather and campfires, with a crisp undertone of soap and a hint of rubber. Why that was tantalizing, I did not know.
“Sorry to surprise you this morning,” he said, startling me out of my thoughts.
“Oh, that’s all right. I hope Cole was able to get everything squared away.”
“He was. Thank you.”
At least this time when the conversation died, the turn-off to the barn was in sight. “Turn just up there, past the reflector.”
He did. I picked another topic and tried again.
“Well, I have to say—I never knew Main Street could look so good until you got ahold of it. Y’all did the impossible.”
Bingo.
Something in him lightened, bringing the smallest of smiles to his lips. A smile I watched as he spoke about the Main Street restoration, but I was too busy tracing the strong line of his profile with my gaze—from his brow to the bridge of his nose to the cut of his jaw—to listen. The slight crinkling at the corner of his eyes belied his stoicism, marking a time when his smiles were free.
“—had me build custom tables for inside the store, so I used all reclaimed materials we found in Mr. McMahon’s barn after we tore it down. Been hanging on to that wood for a year. Glad to use it for the town. I don’t like the thought of all that history being lost. Now it gets a new story.”
“A new story,” I mused. “I like that.”
He glanced at me, still almost smiling, his eyes alight. I didn’t remember seeing him like this, not in a long time. Since we were in school.
“Everything abandoned deserves a new story,” he said. “Otherwise, what’s the point to all this?”