The Property Line

The dog was in her garden again.

Thea Moreno stood at her kitchen window, coffee mug frozen halfway to her lips, watching a massive golden retriever enthusiastically dig up her newly planted hydrangeas. Dirt flew in graceful arcs. Roots scattered like confetti. Three weeks of careful cultivation, destroyed in approximately forty-five seconds by what appeared to be the happiest dog on the planet.

"Hey!" She slammed out the back door, still in her pajamas—an oversized t-shirt and shorts that had seen better decades. "Hey! Get out of there!"

The dog looked up, tongue lolling, tail wagging with the pure joy of a creature who had never experienced consequences.

"Murphy! Murphy, come!"

The voice came from the other side of the fence. The low, weathered wooden fence that Thea had been told marked the property line. The fence that apparently meant nothing to the chaos agent currently destroying her landscaping.

A man appeared at the gate—if you could call the gap in the fence a gate. Tall. Dark hair that looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. A flannel shirt open over a white t-shirt that clung to shoulders that were, objectively speaking, unfairly broad.

Thea hated him immediately.

"Sorry about that." He didn't sound particularly sorry. He sounded amused. "Murphy gets excited about new smells."

"New smells?" Thea gestured at the carnage. "He excavated my hydrangeas like he was searching for buried treasure."

"To be fair, those were planted pretty close to the property line."

"They were planted in my garden."

The man—her neighbor, presumably, the one who'd been blasting classic rock at six in the morning for the past week—crossed his arms and tilted his head. "Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I had this property surveyed when I moved in five years ago. The actual line is about three feet closer to your house than that fence suggests."

Thea blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Those hydrangeas?" He pointed at the destruction zone. "Technically on my property. So really, Murphy was just doing some unauthorized landscaping on my land."

"That's—" She sputtered. "That's insane."

"It's geometry." He smiled. It was the kind of smile that suggested he found her outrage entertaining rather than valid. "I'm Wes, by the way. Wes Gallagher. Welcome to Millbrook."

"Thea Moreno." She said it like a declaration of war. "And I don't care what survey you think you have. That fence has been there for decades. It's the established boundary."

"Established by whom?"

"By the fence!"

Wes Gallagher laughed. Actually laughed, like she'd told a delightful joke rather than...