Rather, what was left of it. One side of the coop seemed to have collapsed under the weight of a tin roof, and a spindly tree had taken up root inside the coop, pushing through a hole in the roof.

“So … chicken coop rebuild,” Ivy said aloud. Her bargain farmhouse was seeming like less and less of a good buy every day. According to what she’d read online, her chicks would probably outgrow their cardboard crate within two or three weeks. They needed a real coop, with room to run around in, perches to sleep on, and nesting boxes. She could already feel her bank account shrinking.

She was walking back toward the house when she heard what sounded like hammering—coming from the house.

“Punkin! Here, boy. Punkin!” She whistled, and the dog raced back to her side, tail wagging, tongue lolling. His sleek white coat was dotted with burrs and leaves and mud and he looked supremely happy.

Ivy spotted the black Jeep in the driveway as she rounded the side of the house. There was a man on the front porch, and he seemed intent on hammering something into her door.

“Hello?”

Ezra Wheeler looked up from his project. He wore a leather tool belt around his waist and had a screwdriver jammed beneath the front doorknob.

“Oh hey,” he said easily. “I wondered where you’d gotten to.”

“What exactly are you doing?” Ivy demanded.

“You mentioned the lock needed to be replaced. I had some time to kill today, so I thought I’d stop by and take a look. The screws on this doorknob are stripped. Good thing I picked up a new knob, just in case.”

“You bought me a new lock and now you’re installing it? Is that the kind of thing you do for all your clients?”

He shrugged. “Just the ones who buy a house online without ever actually seeing what the property looks like. Guess I’m feeling a little guilty that you got sucked into this big of a fixer-upper.”

“Oh, I get it,” Ivy said. “You feel sorry for the poor dumb city girl. But I assure you, I entered into this transaction fully aware of what I was buying.”

“No!” Ezra protested. “Yesterday, you asked if I knew a handyman. I do. Me. Look, why do you want to make a whole big deal of this?”

Ivy looked at him. His warm brown eyes seemed earnest.

“I’m just not used to strangers doing me favors,” she admitted. “First you moved out all that old furniture, and now you show up to fix my front door.”

“It’s no biggie,” he said. “Also, I’m not a stranger. I’m actually your neighbor.”

“What? Where do you live?”

“Half a mile down the road here,” Ezra said, pointing south. “That’s how I got this listing. I’d been driving past this place since I moved to Tarburton, and I was wondering who owned it. It’s a gorgeous piece of property, as you’ve probably figured out by now. I looked up the tax records and contacted James Heywood and asked if he was interested in selling the place. He said people had been asking about buying it for years, but he wasn’t quite ready to let it go. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”