The dashboard GPS spoke up. “In two hundred yards, the destination is on your right.” I sped up. It had been a long two-and-a-half hours in the car.

A moment later, the road turned suddenly from pavement to dirt, taking me by surprise. The little rental car bounced on the rough surface, and I felt a sudden loss of traction. So I slammed on the brakes.

Big mistake.

I skidded, the back of the car swinging its ass over to the right. I experienced a moment of terror as the earth shifted in an unpredictable way. Two seconds later, the car came to a dramatic stop. My teeth knocked together and my seatbelt bit into my shoulder. But I was still clutching the wheel, still vertical. Mostly. The passenger side had dipped into a gully at the side of the road.

Okay. I’m still on one piece. Thank you, baby Jesus.

With shaky hands, I unlatched my seatbelt, opened the door and struggled to climb out of the tilting car. My heart was whirring like a KitchenAid mixer on the highest setting. I had a rush of adrenaline from the loss of control. “Shit!” I swore, standing on wobbly knees on the dirt road.

Trying to get my breathing under control, I eyed the Prius. It wasn’t at that weird of an angle. Maybe I could just drive it out of the ditch.

But when I circled the rear bumper, my heart sank. The back tire was as flat as a fallen soufflé.

Damn it!

And now where was my phone? I opened the car door again to look for my purse. But naturally everything had shifted toward the passenger side and then slid onto the floor. The angle was a bear, so I resorted to lying on the driver’s seat and sort of diving for my bag on the passenger-side floor. I got my hands on it, but of course the bag had been open. So I spent the next couple of minutes grabbing stuff and shoving it back in the bag. Lipsticks. House keys. My phone.

Only when I thought I had everything did I finally heave myself up and out of the car again, ass first. When I spun around, my heart nearly failed. A giant, bearded man was standing in the road behind me, muscular arms crossed over his chest, frowning. “Audrey Kidder?” he growled.

The growly monster knew my name. Wait. I knew that growly monster. “Griffin?” I squeaked. He looked so different. Five years had elapsed since my freshman year at BU, so it hadn’t been that long. He’d been an upperclassman and a football star. I was used to seeing him clean-shaven in football pads or holding a red cup at a frat party.

The man standing in front of me was still just as tall and muscular as the football player I’d once known (biblically). But there the resemblance stopped. This Griff Shipley was tanned and ripped in a different way. He wore a tight T-shirt reading FARM-WAY and a baseball cap with a tractor on it. His work pants were paint-spattered and worn in a way that did not resemble the faux-aging of an Abercrombie pair, but rather seemed weathered from actual work.