Even partnerships that might be becoming something more.
Even small mountain towns where past and present collided like weather fronts, creating storms that cleared the air for whatever came next.
Chapter Nine
Saturday morning slipped into Dylan’s apartment like silk through fingers—soft, inevitable, impossible to hold. She’d been awake since four, watching November darkness fade to the pearl gray that preceded dawn, her mind circling the same territory it had worn smooth over three sleepless nights. Victoria Pemberton had arrived in Laurel Valley like winter itself—beautiful, cold, and capable of changing everything with her presence.
The drive to the O’Hara ranch wound through a valley still drowsing under frost, each surface transformed to crystal, catching early light like the earth had been dressed in diamonds for some celebration Dylan hadn’t been invited to. The ranch gates stood open as always, a testament to the O’Haras’ bone-deep confidence that what was theirs would remain so—a certainty Dylan envied with an ache that sat just behind her ribs.
She found Aidan waiting at the family cemetery entrance, two thermoses steaming in the cold air, his expression carrying the weight of someone who’d been building toward difficult words.
“Thought you might not come,” he said, offering her coffee that smelled like comfort and complicated futures.
“Said I would.”
“You’ve said a lot of things this week. Also avoided saying a lot of things.” His green eyes held hers with an intensity that made her want to inventory everything she’d ever done wrong. “Talk to me, Dylan. Is this about Victoria?”
The directness of it—so unlike their usual tap dance around feelings—caught her unprepared. “I’ve been busy with the restoration shop.”
“Dylan.” Just her name, but weighted with three days of her strategic absences, of taking lunch at odd hours, of finding urgent tasks whenever he appeared.
“Sophie saw her going into The Pinnacle yesterday afternoon.”
His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in a way she’d learned meant he was choosing words carefully. “She stopped by. Wanted to discuss investment opportunities. I told her we weren’t interested and that I had actual work to do.”
“And?”
“And nothing. She left. That’s where it ended.”
“Is it?”
He moved closer, bringing that intoxicating mixture of pine soap and possibility that had been undermining her defenses for five years. “Yes. Victoria is my past—a choice I made when I thought life was about what looked right rather than what felt right. You’re my present. Hopefully my future, if you’ll stop running long enough to let it happen.”
The words settled over her like snow—soft, transformative, impossible to brush away without leaving evidence of their touch.
They entered the cemetery through gates that sang hymns to the wind, the O’Hara family plot occupying the highest ground like even in death they claimed the best views. Generations rested here in clusters that suggested affection transcending mortality, the oldest stones worn smooth as river rocks, their names more memory than fact.
Margaret O’Hara’s granite marker stood beside Patrick’s, elegant in its simplicity, the dates telling a love story in numbers—fifty-six years together before she passed.
“The clue should be here somewhere,” Aidan said, examining the area with the focus he usually reserved for stubborn engine problems. “But Grandda was in his seventies. He couldn’t have done anything too physical.”
Dylan’s eye caught on an ornate iron cross standing between the headstones—Victorian elaborate, the kind of memorial wealthy families commissioned when death was dressed in poetry rather than avoided in silence. But something about its base seemed wrong. Newer.
“There,” she said, kneeling to examine it closer.
They found what Patrick intended—a bronze plaque that appeared decorative but opened on hidden hinges, revealing another clue wrapped in waterproof cloth.
Where love was witnessed by the stars, / And sacred vows were made, / Not in the chapel or the church, / But where the moonlight played. / The garden holds its secrets still, / Though roses bloom no more, / Find the sundial’s shadow when / The clock strikes exactly four.
“Grandma’s moon garden,” Aidan said immediately, his voice carrying the resonance of memory made physical. “She planted it their first year of marriage—all white flowers that bloomed at night, designed to be beautiful in moonlight.”
They left the cemetery with appropriate reverence, walking back toward where the ranch vehicles were kept. The morning had warmed enough to make Dylan’s jacket unnecessary, and she felt Aidan watching as she tied it around her waist, his gaze carrying weight that had nothing to do with outdoor apparel.
“We could walk to the garden,” he suggested. “But it’s two miles of rough trail. Or we could take the ATVs.”
“Let’s ride.”
The barn smelled of hay and machine oil, horse and history. Dylan immediately moved to the newer ATV, checking it over with professional interest that made Aidan smile.
