She was talking to herself, as he’d spied her doing last night through the kitchen window. She was utterly absorbed, her hands moving like she was conversing with a colleague. There was something endearing about it, but something also equally frustrating, because she wasn’t back in some office in New York. She was in a barn. In Gleann. With him. And though he wasn’t expecting a laughfest or the immediate comfort they’d had ten years ago, he didn’t think he’d be on her pay-no-mind list.

She was perusing the back corner when she made a sound of surprise.

“What is it?” he called.

“Come take a look.”

He wove around disorganized piles of, well, crap to join her in the corner. There, tucked between some crates, was a dirty blanket, filthy pillow, a red baseball cap with a partially unraveled potato chip logo, and an empty pack of cigarettes.

“Homeless person?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe.” The valley did have a few.

She wandered back to her purse and pulled out a slim, light laptop, plopping it down on a nearby crate. He liked the way she curled her hair behind her ear and tilted her head so it wouldn’t hang in her face. He liked how the movement exposed her neck. He even liked her animated expressions as her fingers flew across the keyboard.

Singularly focused, that was Jen. And right now, her focus wasn’t anywhere near him. Not that he’d expected it to be.

He leaned his back against the barn door and turned his head to look out at the field again. That ragged expanse of grass and gravel cupped many of his memories in its dips and rises, but perhaps none as strong as Jen’s last night in Gleann. It had been a cloudy, hot night, and they’d spread a blanket right there in the center, where no house or town lights reached. Just them.

“Can I come say goodbye before I leave tomorrow?”

Her words struck his back as he stomped across the fairgrounds, the Cadillac parked crookedly on the other side of the gate.

“Don’t bother,” he shouted into the darkness. “Sounds like you’re taking care of that tonight.”

Maybe that’s why he’d never been able to give his heart away to anyone else over the past ten years: because it was still here where Jen had smacked it down, and every time someone walked or drove across the field, they ground it deeper into the dirt.

Since he’d steered her through the fairground gates, she hadn’t even looked in the direction of that scene. Not even a single glance. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. Once upon a time he’d been the one to start everything, and look how they’d ended up. Besides, did it even matter anymore?

Leaving the laptop as though she’d heard his thoughts, she walked past him out of the barn. She stood staring out at the empty fairgrounds for what seemed like an hour. His heart picked up its rhythm. He couldn’t see her face and he was dying to see her reaction, to watch the memories come back to her, but he didn’t want to seem obvious.

When she turned around with her brow wrinkled, her breath hitched as though she was preparing to say something. He pushed away from the door, expectant.

Instead, she circled around him, heading in the opposite direction of that fateful patch of grass. She peered around the corner of the barn, to where a narrow drive shot past the splintered, angled posts of Loughlin’s cattle pasture and emptied into the vast, empty parking lot surrounding the vacant Hemmertex building.

She turned back around, her eyes as brilliant as the grass. “What do you know about the Hemmertex land over there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does Loughlin own that, too?”

He looked over at Loughlin’s rotting fences and decaying properties. “No, he sold that parcel. I know the company who owns it now; it’s not Hemmertex.”

“You do?”

“Um, yeah.” He cringed. “Don’t be influenced by what you see now, but I did all that landscaping.”

Her eyes popped wide and he caught a faint smile as she turned back around to survey the work he’d done—and that had since gone to weed and overgrowth—years and years ago. Sweeping lawns surrounded the building. The CEO had once thrown company picnics there. Leith had constructed a small amphitheater near the cafeteria door, where on some Fridays there had been musicians. Chris had played his fiddle there once or twice.

“I’m good,” he felt the need to add. “Better than corporate, better than that. Go take a look at some of the huge homes up in the hills, if you want.”

He told himself that the slow, sly smile she threw him over her shoulder had no heat in it. None whatsoever.

“I believe you,” she said. “Can you get me contact info for the Hemmertex landowners?”

He’d have to dig out his computer from storage. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

As she turned back around, her appearance—the shoulders-back confidence, the stunning, mature beauty—sent a blast of such powerful desire through him, he actually took a step back.

“Because I want to move the games over there,” she said.

Leith hissed through his teeth and shook his head. “Gleann doesn’t do so well with change.”

She shrugged in a manner that said she was used to getting her way. “They’re going to have to, if they don’t want to lose this.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive. Change is good. Change is the answer.”

A hundred different confrontations sprouted in his mind. He pictured Jen holding one of those fake swords DeeDee loved so much and standing in the center of Gleann fighting off angry townspeople, Mayor Sue wielding a pitchfork.

She advanced toward him predatorily. “Are you expensive?”

He coughed. “Excuse me?”

“Landscaping. Maintenance.”

He ran a palm down his scruff and eyed the land in the distance, where his carefully selected shrubs and native grasses now resembled an old trailer park off I-93. “I used to charge a pretty penny. Back when I could.”

“Give me a ballpark figure. For cleaning all that up back there.”

He lowered his chin, trapped her eyes with his. “You want to hire me?”

There it was again. That glint of something more on her face. That hint that beneath her professional facade, there was an actual woman who remembered what had happened between them, and who, quite possibly, was still affected by it.

“Maybe.” Her eyebrow twitched. “If the price is right.”

He rattled off a number. She haggled it down, of course. He’d already started low and he didn’t care. Chris could do most of the work while he was running around scouting new locations, and he could pitch in when he felt the need to get on top of a mower or wave around a Weedwacker. It was income. Then he could pay Chris, who needed it far more than Leith did.

Jen gave him a blazing smile that had him picturing her in her underwear and glasses again. That made him back away, because what she was getting out of this situation was entirely different from what he was, and he hated how uneven it felt. Again. He was never balanced around her.

He ambled back to the barn. “So we done here?”

“I wasn’t aware there was a ‘we,’” she said, “but yes.”

Of course there wasn’t a “we.” He did not look over at the center of the field.

Tapping on her computer, she went right back to work, her fingers blurry, her delicious bottom lip caught between her teeth. The sight of her drew him forward until he looked over her shoulder at the screen.

The open document was titled “Changes.” Other programs made a patchwork of the screen—spreadsheets and graphs and a website or two. She moved between them with lightning speed. Then, suddenly, she snapped the laptop shut, shoved it into her purse, and straightened. She jumped when she finally realized how close Leith had gotten. She swallowed, glanced down his body and back up to find his eyes again. Selfishly, he was more than a little happy he’d managed to disarm her. Or maybe it was he who was unarmed and defenseless, because the urge to push her against the crates and kiss her suddenly overtook him.

“Um.” She held her purse strap in a death grip. “I have to head over to Town Hall now.”

“Meeting with Mayor Sue?” He still didn’t move, even though he blocked the door.

“I refuse to call her that. That woman made my life miserable five summers running. It’s bad enough she’s my boss again.”

“Miserable? Really?” He didn’t remember that, didn’t remember Jen ever being affected by criticism or bad air. It was strange for him to hear, when he thought he’d known her so well.

Jen blew a piece of hair off her forehead. “She’s predisposed to hate anything I do. I’m always running uphill with her. I’m surprised she let me do this.”

“Let you? They’re not paying you?”

“No. I took vacation.”

Dumbfounded, Leith cocked his head and planted his hands on his hips. The girl had worked at least two jobs every summer she’d been here. She’d checked her bank balance nearly every day. All she’d ever talked about was being someone, being a success. Work, work, work. What else didn’t he know about her? What else had he gotten wrong?

“So why are you doing this?” he asked, voice soft. “Really. This doesn’t . . . seem like you.”

Her facial features tensed. “You can’t say that.”

He had to look away because the urge to want to know her was building and building, and he wasn’t sure if he should let it. “You’re absolutely right.”

She cleared her throat but said nothing.

“So.” He stepped closer, even though there was scant space left for him to erase. A little cloud of dust rose between them where he’d scuffed the dirt with his boot. She had to tilt her head back to look at him, and he tried not to remember that this was exactly how she’d looked with her back against the Stone Pub wall the night of their first kiss. “Is this who you are now? Is this what you do? Save small town festivals?”