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?”