Kiara Gill flew into Montana as her best friend Emma’s maid of honor and found Harold Brandt waiting instead—Emma’s father, twice Kiara’s age, with the truck seat already moved back for her legs. By Tuesday night, three days before the wedding, neither of them had said out loud what was happening.

***

Harold knelt at the headgate with both hands in the ditch. The water came down from the mountain so cold it hurt, and he let it. He held his hands under until the ache reached his elbows. It did nothing for the rest of him.

After the divorce, he had thrown himself into the ranch and hadn’t even thought about a relationship. His body, which had stayed quiet all this while, had picked this week to remember everything.

She was twenty-three. He was forty-eight. She was less than half his age. She had been ten feet from him all day, legs and laugh included.

His daughter’s best friend. He said it aloud to the water, the way a man reads out the terms of a contract before he signs it. Emma’s best friend. Emma’s maid of honor. Emma’s wedding on Saturday, in a barn he had built for it with his own hands.

The water did not argue.

He stood. His knees cracked. He walked back toward the house through the last of the smoky light, telling himself he would eat supper, read, and go to bed like a man with sense.

At nine he lit the fire under the tub.

For the cold, he told himself. The nights got cold.

***

He had built the tub out of cedar left over from a job in Big Sky. It sat behind the barn on a plank deck, round and dark, steam lifting off the water into a sky so full of stars it looked spilled.

“Twenty thousand dollars of cedar the homeowner didn’t want,” he said.

“So it’s stolen.”

“Salvaged.”

“Stolen.”

Kiara stood on the deck in her black one-piece and a towel and did not want to get in. She wanted to get in so badly her knees had gone weak. Harold was already in the water, an arm along the rim, wearing a pair of old cutoffs and nothing else.

She dropped the towel and stepped over the rim. The water closed around her, hot enough to sting.

They sat at opposite sides of the tub.

“I need to say something,” he said, and paused. “I’ve been not looking at you since the graduation lawn.”

“I noticed you not looking.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not good at it.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

Neither of them moved. The steam moved. The stove ticked. Every value she had been raised on cleared its throat, and she let it finish.

Kiara crossed the tub.

The water sloshed as she rose. He rose too, and it was strange to tilt her chin up to a man’s face. She put her hands on his chest. His heart hit her palm like a fist on a door.

He kissed her.

He kissed like he did everything else, thoroughly, one big hand cradling the back of her skull. His mouth was hot and tasted of rye.

“I want your hands,” she said against his mouth. “Everywhere.”

He gave her one, spread across the small of her back. His cock pressed thick and hard against her stomach through the soaked denim.

She rocked against it once and heard him hiss.

Continue the story in Maid of Dishonor.

All images are AI generated and do not depict any real person.