The dining room at The Spruce was warm with the smell of coffee and bacon, but Grace lingered at the bottom of the stairs longer than she should have. Every stool was already taken except one—the one beside Kaleb.
She froze, her fingers tightening around the banister. Of all the men in this valley, it had to be him.
Kaleb. The man who barely looked at her without a scowl. The man who carried the weight of the wilderness in his shoulders and the chill of a winter storm in his eyes. And worse—the man who had seen her at her most vulnerable, who knew truths about her she wasn’t ready for anyone else to know.
Her gaze flickered to the broad line of his back, the flannel shirt stretched across muscles she tried not to remember beneath moonlight. Heat surged in her chest, a memory flashing un
