Her only familiarity with country house parties came from reading English novels, but the farmhouse was distinctly American with its wide front porch and arrangements of multicolored pumpkins, corn sheaves, mums, and pots of ornamental kale at the top of the steps. A set of wooden rocking chairs with orange and brown cushions sat on each side of a hunter-green front door where a natural wreath of leaves, seedpods, and small gourds hung. It all belonged on a magazine cover.

A middle-aged housekeeper in jeans and a white T-shirt rescued her from an unfamiliar sense of yearning. “Everyone is out riding now,” the housekeeper said as she showed Piper her room, “but they should be back soon. Feel free to explore.”

Since she’d been sitting most of the day, she was happy to poke around the barn and the outbuildings. The housekeeper had told her that the farm grew corn, soybeans, and some wheat, but there was also a sizable vegetable garden where a few pumpkins remained on the vines, along with some cabbage, broccoli, and Swiss chard, a vegetable she wouldn’t have recognized if Coop hadn’t pointed it out in his garden. In the stable, three empty stalls filled with fresh beds of straw waited for their occupants to return.

She saw them before they saw her. Deidre rode a lively roan mare between Noah and Coop, who was on a dappled gray. With her upright carriage, dark hair knotted at the nape of her neck, riding hat, and breeches, she looked ready for a horse show. As for Coop . . . Piper had never seen him more comfortable. His body moved in perfect synchronicity with his mount, and she once again pondered how someone who so clearly belonged in the country was so at home in the big city.

As Piper stood inside the doorway, the stable hand who’d been listening to Lil Wayne in the corner got up to go to work. Coop dismounted as gracefully as he dodged defensive ends. Piper watched the way the denim tightened around his thighs and then made herself not watch.

After Deidre dismounted, Coop looped an arm across her shoulders. He looked like a man in love. Rumpled hair. Easy laugh. A dirty bomb exploded in Piper’s heart.

He finally spotted her and released the arm he’d thrown around Deidre—not out of guilt but to pass the reins over to the stable hand. “You should have gotten here earlier, Pipe. We had a great ride.”

“You’re a natural, Cooper.” Deidre’s praise was straightforward, without a hint of girlishness. “I can tell you spent a lot of time on horseback when you were a kid.”

“I never learned to ride pretty,” he said, “but I got the job done.”

Deidre gave him an open smile. “I think you ride very pretty.”

Piper wanted to barf.

For the first time, she noticed Noah. His high-end suede jacket and ironed denim shirt suggested he’d have been much happier behind a desk.

It quickly became apparent that Deidre had planned a very small house party—only the four of them. Piper didn’t need her detective skills to figure out that Deidre was playing matchmaker. Maybe she simply enjoyed fixing people up, or maybe she was hoping that Piper and Noah would hit it off so she’d have a clear path to Coop. But a relationship between Piper and Noah Parks would never happen. He was intelligent, and his squared-off profile wasn’t unattractive, but he didn’t seem to possess a shred of humor.

Coop gestured toward the field behind the garden. “How did your wheat do with all the rain this summer, Deidre?”

“I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know. We have a tenant who farms the place. When my husband was alive, he knew everything that happened here, but I only ride and relax.”

“Sam loved the farm,” Noah said. “It was in his family for three generations.”

As they left the stable behind, Deidre talked about how she and her late husband had torn down the old farmhouse to build the new one. She spoke of Sam matter-of-factly. Deidre Joss was a woman who held her emotions close to her chest.

Noah fell in step next to Piper, and she did some not-so-subtle probing. “It has to be hard for Deidre. Losing her husband at such a young age. Snowmobile accident, right?”

“Driving too fast.”

“What was he like?”

“Sam? Easygoing, fun to be around. A little irresponsible. Everybody liked him. Hard not to. They were only married five years.”

“A good marriage?”

She expected Noah to freeze her out, but he didn’t. “They were crazy about each other, but she was the one who had to do the heavy lifting.”

They’d reached the house, and Deidre announced cocktails in an hour on the patio. “Coop, let me show you your room.”

Which wouldn’t be anyplace near Piper’s.

She washed her face and put on a little makeup but didn’t change from the slacks and sweater she’d worn to the Stars Complex. As she reached for her messenger bag to check her phone, she remembered she’d left it in her car and went downstairs to get it.

A light breeze ruffled the tree branches near the house. The smell of fall was hard in the air, a smell she loved. It was nearly dark, and the floodlights mounted on the corner of the barn shone on her Sonata, Coop’s Tesla, and the Lexus. As she walked toward the cars, she noted the Lexus’s license plate. ararat.

Overhead, an owl hooted and swooped toward a stand of trees beyond the barn. A wisp of memory tantalized her but wouldn’t take shape. She reclaimed her bag and texted Jen to find out if she’d returned Eric’s call. Then she made her way to the back of the house.

The three of them were seated around a blazing, stone fire pit. The patio had an outdoor kitchen with a built-in grill, a sink, and a tiled countertop. Garden torches illuminated the perimeter and cast a faint light over a swimming pool covered for the season. Noah was cross-examining Coop. “. . . and you’ve also gotten too much bad publicity. Forgive me for being blunt, but that’s a sign of bad management.”

“It’s a sign of bad luck,” Coop countered.

“You know I’ve been opposed to this from the beginning,” Noah said. “I’ve never liked the idea of trusting this large an investment to the whims of professional athletes who already have more money than they can spend. Yourself excluded, of course.”

“If that’s what the plan was, you’d be right, Noah. But you keep missing the point. Athletes retire young. Sure, some of them are more than happy to spend their time going through their money, but those aren’t the guys I’m after. I want the ones who are smart, ambitious, and out for a new challenge but not willing to bankroll themselves. There are a lot of them.”