Page 43 of Where You're Planted

Tansy let her daughter tow her past Jack but pulled her hand free as Briar splashed back into the water, shrieking with delight, not alarm. “Dig your toes under the sand,” Briar told her, rooting her own feet under the water. “It feels so weird!”

Tansy shot a sidelong glare at Jack. He had the decency to look contrite even before she hissed, too quiet for Briar to hear, “You don’t take a kid down a ravine without their mother’s permission.”

“Sorry.”

“Never mind the fact that, after everything, she isterrifiedof this creek.”

His gaze swung slowly to Briar, who was shuffling through the creek bed, churning up clouds of sand. The water was slow-moving and shallow, more brown than clear. He kept his voice low. “Is she?”

“Yes. For God’s sake, she will only take a bath one time out of ten. I had to cut her hair short because she wouldn’t let me wash and detangle it for weeks after—” She cut herself off. “This stupid creek is the source of the worst thing that ever happened to her, and you just threw her right in it.”

“The worst thing to happen toher?” he asked. “Or toyou?”

Tansy floundered for a response, indignation burning in her chest. He didn’t know the first thing about her or Briaror what their lives had been like these last several months. And yet, she didn’t have an answer to his question. She had blamed this creek for those awful days of flooding and Briar’s heightened anxiety since, but here Briar was, seemingly unfazed by it. If she wasn’t locked into a fight with this man, Tansy would have rejoiced.

“You shouldn’t have brought her down here. Not without my permission. It’s dangerous, and you had no idea how she might have reacted.”

Briar threw two fistfuls of colorful, polished pebbles in the air, laughing as they rained down near the far bank. “Mom, there’s, like, a million pretty rocks in here. Rainbow colors. I already picked my favorites.” Her pockets, Tansy noticed now, were bulging.

“She wasn’t scared,” Jack murmured, close to Tansy’s ear. “She asked to go in. For what it’s worth.”

Tansy’s eyes snagged on his and then on a wild, loose wisp of his hair blowing in the soft breeze. It danced across his cheek, catching in his beard. She wanted to tuck it back. He was too loose, too unkempt.

His eyes remained steady on her. He nodded, wordlessly insisting that she look again at her daughter, who, no, was not scared, wasn’t even the slightest bit agitated. Tansy expelled the breath she’d had lodged in her throat since that shriek.

“I’m still mad,” she told him, but the anger had drained from her voice and from her muscles.

“Come in.” His big hand wrapped around her wrist and tugged.

She looked at his hold on her, startled by the touch, but also intrigued by the little rush of warmth it injected into her veins. She hopped on one foot to reach down for her sandal and then switched feet. Stepping in, she hissed, “Holy sh—shoot.”

Just ahead of her, Jack’s shoulders shook with his low chuckle, that rockslide rumble. “Your toes will go numb in a minute and then you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t want my toes to go numb,” she argued, hugging her sandals to her chest and shivering pathetically.

But he was right. Soon, the stabbing pain from the cold leveled off, and she waded into a sunny spot where the murky water glimmered in the bright midday light. The sunshine warmed the back of her neck and her bare arms. Her heartbeat remained slightly frenzied—first in response to her child going missing and then in response to something less tangible, something related, she was sure, to the fact thatthis creek had destroyed everything. But she drew in slow breaths and felt her throbbing pulse settle.

At the sound of a distinctcaw, she looked up to see a big black crow soaring along the length of the creek. “We have crows here?” She couldn’t remember ever seeing one in town, only the disconcerting, scragglier grackles that invaded the Walmart parking lot like a Hitchcock movie.

“Yep,” Jack answered.

She’d lost tabs on him for a few minutes, focusing all her nervous attention on Briar. With his pants rolled up under his knees, she now knew that in addition to beautiful forearms, he had defined calves covered in dark hair. It fit with his rugged aesthetic. She remembered Kai suggesting he probably bathed in this creek, and her mind immediately supplied images of an equally furry chest. She wasn’t sure when she’d become someone who found beards and chest hair attractive.

“I’m going to make friends with a crow one day,” Briar declared. “They have really good memories. They’ll bring you presents if you feed them.”

“I’ve heard that,” Jack said, picking up a rock andskipping it upstream. And that was another unfairly, bafflingly sexy thing, the loose, nonchalant way he sidearmed that rock across the surface.

Tansy didn’t care about brawny muscles or wilderness skills. Her romantic fantasies included smart conversation, doing the crossword over breakfast with someone, and reading before bed under matching his-and-hers bedside table lamps. Not that she’d ever really had that before. Charlie was always a night owl and late to rise, and in the last stretch of their relationship, they’d gone entire days without talking.

“Will you show me how?” Briar asked, peering curiously at Jack’s handful of flat rocks.

Tansy watched him wordlessly position Briar’s fingers around the curve of the rock, guide her through a few practice swings, and then stand back.

Briar’s rock skipped twice, and you’d think she’d won Olympic gold for the enthusiastic cheer that Tansy let out. In her excitement, she dropped the sandals she was still hugging to her chest, lunged to retrieve them, and slipped, catching herself somewhere between downward dog and a bear crawl. Her skirt dipped into the water, and her hands and feet were too far apart to simply push herself back up, her fingers and toes sinking slowly into the sandy creek bed.

Jack’s arm looped under her stomach and hoisted her upright. “My God, watch your step,” he grunted, his front pressed way too close to her back as the water eddied around her calves. He’d caught her sandals and offered them to her.

“I’mindoorsy,” she defended with a huff.

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