1. Heidi

CHAPTER 1

Heidi

I sigh as a sense of satisfaction moves through me. This is what I've been working towards since my very messy divorce a year ago. A place that feels like home, a good job and the perfect place for my daughter and I to relax and settle into our new lives together.

A huge man moves into view and I growl under my breath. Micah fucking Reese. He's the only fly in the ointment of my new life.

Ever since I started working at Wildwood Construction two months ago he's' been driving me nuts. I'm fully capable of handling myself on the job site. My dad worked in construction until the day he died eight years ago and as a single dad he took me around more than he should have. To the point that I started working with him when I graduated from high school. I didn't want to go away to college. I wanted to stay with him. It was just the way we lived. Even if I was just sitting in his little office in the trailer that was usually on the job sites he worked on and I was working on my homework for whatever place I was currently going to school, we were together and I loved it. I had coffee every morning with him after I started working with him in that office.

I lost my mom when I was nine years old. A hard age for a little girl to all of a sudden find the only feminine anchor in her life gone. I was on the cusp of maturity and I needed her.

My dad almost lost his mind and I think I was the only thing that kept him going. She was the love of his life. They saw each other for the first time when she was in college and he was working on a job site. Both of them loved to tell me the story and my mother's eyes would meet his, soft with love and happiness. Her parents hated my dad and when they got together, they wanted nothing to do with our family. Just shut us all out of their lives.

But mom never regretted it. The way she told it…she was on her way to class on her first day of her senior year of college and she walked past where they were building a new office on the campus. The old one was damaged by a water leak so bad that it couldn't be saved.

But it didn't matter. What mattered was when she first saw him, his blue eyes met her green eyes and the whole world stopped. She didn't hear the birds in the trees, the chatter of the other kids on their way to class, nothing. All she saw was this gorgeous guy, tanned to a deep brown, muscles flexing in the sun and a smile on his lips.

Until he dropped the board he was holding for another guy and it dropped on the guy's hand.

She couldn't stop laughing when the guy was yelling at him. But he just smiled and walked over to her and asked her out. Right then and there.

He said he knew she was meant to be his as soon as he saw her. They got married six months later but he insisted that she finish school. She was a teacher and the two of them had the best life.

Until she got cancer when I was eight and we watched her slowly shrink into herself, the disease eating her away until, by the time she passed away she was practically a shell of herself.

But she never went a day without a smile and I lost track of the number of days that I saw my dad just sitting, staring at her with tears in his eyes while she slept. But when she woke up, he would smile for her. Always. They were always holding hands and touching each other. Like they couldn't stand to be even one centimeter away from each other.

When she died, his smile died with her. He loved me. I know he did and he worked his ass off to take care of me. But he never looked at another woman. She was his one and only love and I think that his heart died with her.

Not that he didn't hug me, didn't love me. He did. I just don't know how much of his heart he had left after she died.

I shake my head, my heart hurting when I think of him. His death was even more of a shock. A car accident. Just driving to work when an old lady had a heart attack and her car went left of center hitting him head-on. Nothing anybody could do about any of it. Fate is a cruel mistress sometimes.

Honestly, I think he was probably happy to be home with my mom. I firmly believe that they found each other wherever they were. They loved each other too much not to.

But it left me alone. And I didn't like that feeling. Which is probably how it was so easy for Josh to worm his way into my life. I won't say my heart. I'm not sure if I ever loved the son of a bitch. And if I did, he destroyed those feelings a long time ago. The first time he yelled and hit me. The first time he called me fat and made me feel like I was worthless.

It was hard to admit that I made a mistake and get an attorney but it had to be done and I did it. I got my divorce and full custody of our six-year-old daughter. He didn't want anything to do with her. I actually didn't care about that. It was better for her if she wasn't around all his vitriol and nasty, cutting words.

We've moved round this last year a lot but two months ago, I drove through this little place in my truck and I saw the bustling family-owned stores but yet the quiet streets, the way Wildwood Mountain looked soaring overhead in the background and I felt it. Felt my first feelings of home in years.

And I'll be damned if Micah fucking Reese is going to drive me out of my home.