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Benji gives me a funny look.

“You okay?”

I can’t answer him. I can’t speak right now.

“Bannings and Jones are just two people, David. It’s nothing to get freaked out over.”

“It’s not…that,” I manage to say.

His forehead furrows, but it’s impossible for me to explain everything swirling in my brain right now.

Aiden Jones. Tyler Bannings.

Two guys who don’t seem to get along on the surface but must be storing up all that friction just to strike sparks off each other in private, like flint against steel.

And my mind is racing, churning through a whole load of things.

My body’s reaction to having Benji pressed against me in the hedge.

Years of bickering over stock rotation schedules and water rights and his organic farming experiments that somehow worked better than they had any right to, every argument feeling like practice for something else entirely.

The fact that I currently have eight heritage varieties of tomatoes growing in my glasshouse after Benji once mentioned he liked the old heirloom breeds.

Personally, I don’t even really like tomatoes. Unless they’re in one of the sauces Benji makes.

Memories of fresh-baked fruit loaves left cooling in the sun and a freezer filled with dinners he’s made me.

The fact that, between his cooking and baking, Benji has been feeding me for the past few years.

The time my tractor broke down during hay baling and Benji showed up without being asked, spending the whole afternoon helping me finish before the rain hit. And he never mentioned how I’d told him the week before that his fancy automated baling system was a waste of money.

How he showed up every morning for a week after Dad died, quietly doing my milking while I dealt with the funeral arrangements.

And when he caught a nasty flu last winter, I found myself dropping by twice a day to check on him, telling myself it was just because his dogs needed feeding. Ended up reading him theFarming Weeklywhile he dozed on the couch.

And how having him pressed against me felt like discovering a new paddock I never knew existed on my own land.

My mind works through it all slowly.

Too slowly.

By the time I’ve realized what it all means, Benji’s stalking across the paddock, having spotted a familiar black-and-white spotted face peering out from behind my oldest poplar tree. The missing lamb is standing under the branches, looking about as guilty as a lamb can look, which it turns out isn’t very much.

“Here’s Pepper,” he calls back triumphantly.

I want to growl at him that I don’t name my pet lambs, but the words remain lodged in my throat as I stumble after him.

He tilts his head to his side to regard me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He’s standing in my paddock like he belongs there, one hand absently scratching Pepper behind the ears. There’s thistle fluff caught in his hair that’s catching the sunlight like a halo.

“Yeah, I think I will be,” I finally say.

ChapterFour

David

I’ve never courted anyone before.