T O U C H T H E S K Y
The first time I met her, Jacinthe Gauthier-Laframboise was running screaming after an escaped donkey while covered in manure.
It wasn’t exactly a meet-cute, but luckily, I’m not looking for a relationship.
Dating has been on the backburner ever since life threw a wrench and left me to raise my daughter on my own.
I’m finally finding my feet again, and they’ve led me to the charming small town of La Cloche. It’s the perfect place to grow my business as a farrier and create some stability for me and my kid.
Unfortunately, Jacinthe makes me feel anything but stable.
She’s a chaotic whirlwind of a woman who doesn’t know the meaning of the word quiet, but somehow, I can’t get her out of my head.
Or my house.
She’s my new landlady’s daughter, and living on the same farm together means there’s no escape: not from her devious dark eyes, her surprising moments of softness, or the way she’s cracking open my heart just as fast as she’s falling into my fantasies.
Letting her in means risking my new life, but letting her go means giving up what might just be the very best thing in this town.
I’ve gotten used to making tough choices, but this could be the most impossible one of all.
E X C E R P T
“Salut, Jacinthe,” Maman says, still beaming.
She at least seems to be in a good mood, even though it’s my fault she had to leave her bed.
“There’s someone you need to meet,” she adds in English.
Before I can ask what she’s talking about, the clip-clop sound of hooves on the cement aisle inside the barn fills the air. A second later, Nana, our oldest and gentlest mare, emerges into the sunlight. Despite being well into her teens, her creamy white mane and buttery palomino coat still dazzle enough to make her look like she should have a unicorn horn jutting out of her head.
My gaze slips past her pretty face and gentle brown eyes to land on the person holding her lead rope.
That person is not Léon.
The woman lifts her free hand to shield her eyes as she brings Nana closer. There isn’t a cloud in the crisp blue September sky, and the woman coming towards us seems temporarily blinded as she waits for her eyes to adjust from the dimness of the barn, which gives me a couple seconds to look her over.
She’s taller than me. My friends would tease me and say that’s nothing special since almost everyone is taller than me, but this woman isn’t just physically tall; she has tall energy, like she has no problem taking up all the space in the world as she waltzes out here with my horse, like there’s nothing weird about a random butch I’ve never seen before showing up out of nowhere when I was expecting the same grumpy old Frenchman who’s been shoeing for our farm since long before I was born.
There’s no way she’s not gay, not with that kind of swagger. The baggy jeans and faded Dickie’s t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up over her bulging shoulders are just a bonus.
“I’ve checked her over,” she says, still blinking at the sunlight. “I’m all good to get started.”
She’s got no trace of a Québécois accent, which explains why Maman is speaking in English.
“Is there somewhere you—oh.” She comes to a stop when she spots me, Nana lumbering to a halt at her side. “Hey.”
She has one of those short on the sides and long on the top haircuts. A few dark strands of her wispy bangs are falling into her eyes.
I tried getting a haircut like that the summer after I graduated high school. That was a decade ago, and I made the mistake of going to a salon instead of a barber shop. The hair stylist kept insisting what I wanted was too ‘boyish’ and that I’d look better with a ‘cute pixie cut just like Michelle Williams.’
I don’t know what pictures of Michelle Williams she was looking at, but I ended up more like a deranged rock troll than a cute pixie. I’ve stuck with a plain, simple, can’t-possibly-fuck-this-up bob ever since.
“You must be…Jacinthe?”
She stumbles over the pronunciation of my name in that annoying way all the tourists do, and then she lifts the corner of her mouth in an apologetic grin.
It’s a cute grin, a little goofy even, and it seems to take a few years off her face. She can’t be much older than me, but she’s got slight crow’s feet fanning out in dainty little creases from the corners of her eyes. Now that she’s standing closer, I can see the purple half moons of someone who hasn’t been sleeping well for a long time.
I blink and then clear my throat.
