Peaches & Cream (The Men of Haven Grove #1)

1. Hudson Riggs

Chapter 1

The familiar notification sound from ClickC*ck brought my phone to life on the bar. I picked it up and tapped out a reply as my brother, Henry, rolled his eyes.

“What?” I asked around a mouthful of burger. “I can multi-task,” I said with a grin as I ate my lunch on a break from work.

Henry’s bar—The Riggs Family Roadhouse—had been in our family for nearly forty years, and he did a great job running it. Good food, good beer, even better cocktails—Henry was a master mixologist—and a great, easy atmosphere. I helped a few shifts a week as I could and often found myself there on weekends as well.

Although, recently, with taking over The Juicy Peach, time hadn’t been as plentiful. The family’s peach orchard and general store needed some major revitalization. Little did any of us know that our uncle, Billy Riggs, had not only drunk himself to death, but he’d also nearly run the business into the ground with no hope of recovery. But the Riggs name meant something to me, and The Juicy Peach was where I’d spent my childhood and teen years, I wasn’t going to let it go without a fight.

I maybe wasn’t an expert, but I was smart and determined. I planned to give it a thousand percent and hope the peach orchard and little store pulled through. Both were cornerstones in the small Midwestern town of Haven Grove—as was The Roadhouse—and I wasn’t going down without a fight.

“You really need some damn app to find yourself a man?” Henry asked, his usual gruff personality alive and well. He was actually one of the best people you’d ever meet—loyal, hardworking, protective, and caring, a big softie if I was being honest—but my older brother, even with his soft voice and sparkling eyes, gave off a stay back, I’m a grump type vibe on even the best of days.

Smirking at him, I said, “Yeah, you’re doing a bang-up job without an app, huh? Got a date tonight? Last night?” I knew my brother hadn’t been involved with anyone in a very long time. He was stand-offish and kept everything close to his chest when it came to anyone other than family.

“Me and my right hand are doing just fine, thanks,” Henry groused, a flare of pink splashing his cheeks above his beard. “You really think you’re going to find something serious on that thing?”

I popped an onion ring in my mouth. “Ah, see, there’s the misconception.” I pointed to my phone. “ClickC*ck isn’t for anything serious. I don’t do serious. Quick and easy is all I’m looking for.”

Henry frowned. “I just don’t get that. Why put time and effort into something you know is just going to end?”

Shrugging, I finished off my burger, washing it down with a long swig of water. “Rather put minimal energy into something I know is going to end than my whole heart into something I want to last—only to have them walk away in the end.”

My brother shook his head. “They don’t all leave, Hudson,” he said quietly.

“She did,” I bit out. “Look, I’m not getting into this again. She left. Period. The one guy I tried to date in high school left. Everyone leaves. So, it’s easier to just do random hookups than try to date.” I waved my phone as I continued. “Haven Grove isn’t exactly a mecca of single, gay men, so I use this. It’s not your way and I respect that. Do me the favor of doing the same.”

Henry looked as if he wanted to say more, but he just grabbed a cloth and started wiping down the bar. It was an argument we had often. Our mother left when we were little. She and Dad got together very young and ended up having Henry when they were barely eighteen. My dad, Casey Joe, didn’t want to get married, but Missy talked him into it—she was convincing when she set her mind to it if the stories were to be believed. Two years after Henry, I came along.

By the time she’d been a small-town mom of two boys for four years, Missy was done with it all. Done with being a mother, done with being married, done with the small town. She walked out on the three of us—not before causing some drama between Billy and Casey Joe which they never really got over—and we never heard a peep from her.

At thirty-five and thirty-three, Henry and I both still held hurt and anger, but we dealt with it differently. I was hurt and just never got serious about anyone. If I didn’t want or expect them to stay, it didn’t hurt when they walked away.

Henry, on the other hand, did more of a shut himself off from everyone type thing. After Missy left, as Henry got older, he took on the role of looking after me and our dad—not that Dad expected him to, Henry had just always been a caretaker. So, he took care of his family and kept everyone else at a distance.

As my brother and I continued chatting, I checked my ClickC*ck messages. Henry refilled my water and took away my empty plate.

“How are the trees?” he asked.

I glanced around the bar, not wanting to announce the possible demise of The Juicy Peach and the Riggs Family Orchard—both provided decent jobs in Haven Grove, and both were a huge part of the town. Seeing the place was pretty much empty, which was why I usually tried to take my lunch break later than the average Joe, I shrugged.

“From what I can gather, the bacterial spot was only on a handful of the trees. I had that guy from Georgia stop by on his way up to Wisconsin to visit his mother in the fall. He took a look at the whole farm and said it was a mild case and we’d caught it in time. Told me to use copper-based fungicide spray. Guess now, we just wait and see.”

“The blooms are damn nice,” Henry said, referring to the gorgeous pale pink flowers covering the entire orchard.

“Yeah, they should start to fall pretty soon and then we’ll see how the fruit comes on,” I said, glancing at the incoming message on my phone.

User54321: I’ll be in the area for a bit if you’re interested in meeting up.

Me: Sure.

The guy only had a half-face picture for his profile—along with some shots of his abs, thighs, and back—but the little thumbnail image showed a beard, and I was an absolute slut for beards. I had to admit, the days’ worth of back-and-forth messages we’d sent had me wondering about the guy. He had one of the most generic usernames possible and he sent fully punctuated and grammatically correct messages. Don’t get me wrong, I mostly did the same, but a lot of users texted in such shorthand and acronyms it was difficult to decipher at times. The bit of silver in his beard, and the fact he didn’t appear to subscribe to text-speak, made me think he was at least my age. Likely older.

And mmmmm, the thought of a bearded silver fox did delicious things to me.

I absolutely had every intention of meeting up with him.

We’d been texting since a few days before when his location dinged my app and I’d found myself enjoying the bit of chatter rather than the immediate down to fuck and demand for me to host since they were just traveling through. I didn’t mind hosting. I had a decent little place near the orchard, but some of the guys came across as damned entitled. I usually did a little digging to find out if they were in our little town with a family—wives, kids, or girlfriends were a hard no for me, I wasn’t looking to ruin any families.

But this guy had been different from the start. Easy to chat with. Not demanding. Add in the beard and possible age gap, and I was sold.

“Sounds like you did the right thing with the trees,” Henry was saying, pulling me from my thoughts. “How’s the store?”

I ran a hand through my sandy blond hair knowing my brother would see deceit in my blue eyes if I tried to hide anything. “Let’s just say, we’re lucky to have that money socked away to fall back on for a while. Billy just let the whole thing go there at the end. Now that I think I have the books in order, we need to get stock built up, and do a little something creative to get people buzzing about shopping there again.”

Henry shrugged. “Once you say the word, we’ll talk it up in here. Half this town has always done most of their shopping at Juicy, they’re not going to stop now.”

“Yeah,” I said, wanting to believe him. “We have location and history on our side, I just want to get everything back in tip-top shape. Right now, it’s pretty embarrassing to have the locals come in for their staples. And I’m glad we’re not getting very many tourists for a while.”

“You’ll get ’er done, no doubt. That’s why I felt best about you taking over instead of Dad.”

I snorted. “Dad is in no shape to take on the orchard and store.”

Casey Joe had never really been the same since Missy left us. He put on a good face, pretty much took care of us the best he could, and was known by Haven Grove as a decent guy. But he’d never gotten over Missy leaving.

Well, in all actuality, he’d never really gotten over Missy seducing Billy into bed before she left. Casey Joe had found her goodbye note, gone straight to his brother’s place—distraught and in need of his family—and walked in on Missy getting dressed while a drunk Billy slept it off. The fight between the brothers was ugly enough to land them both in the county jail for a day or two. The feud ranged from mild to severe over the years since then, only really ending when Billy drank himself to death about six months ago.

Dad never recovered from Missy leaving or his brother’s betrayal, but more than anything, the decades-long feud had been the worst. Casey Joe may have hated what Missy started between him and his brother—and hated even more that Billy let himself be pulled into her game—but mostly, I think Dad just missed his brother.

And now Billy was dead and Casey Joe wasn’t taking it all that well.

Henry had taken over the bar for Dad back when he’d turned twenty-one. He was good at his job, enjoyed it, and kept the family’s nest egg growing fat while giving a few locals steady jobs.

As a child, I’d spent most of my time between the orchard, The Juicy Peach general store, and the roadhouse—playing, doing homework, doing chores. During my teen years, I’d officially worked in the orchard and store. Unofficially, I’d also gotten paid on the side for part-time work at the roadhouse.

My adult years found me working at all three family businesses in addition to being the handyman of Haven Grove. I’d recently added massage services to my repertoire—mostly advertising my availability on sites populated by gay men, but also putting up a standard entry in the Haven Grove and surrounding area’s business directory. Yes, I offered the standard run-of-the-mill relaxing and completely innocent massages to a wide variety of clients.

But for my male clients, I also offered the both-of-us-are-getting-a-happy-ending type of massage. And why not? Getting paid to give a massage, while having the added bonus of sex if the client opted into it, was easy and enjoyable money. Everything was consensual and agreed upon ahead of time, and I made sure my clients knew I was very serious about safety all around.

All of that to say, I had a lot going on. But that was fine by me because I liked to stay busy. Downtime wasn’t something I really knew what to do with. If I wasn’t working on something, I felt like I was wasting time.

So, adding the orchard and the general store to my list of things to do hadn’t exactly been in my plan, but what was I supposed to do?

When Billy died, Dad had basically said good riddance and wanted to sell the orchard and The Juicy Peach. Dad wasn’t doing all that great. He wasn’t sick—at least, not physically. He’d kinda let himself go and his mental health wasn’t fabulous. But mostly, I didn’t think he could reliably take over either business his brother had been running—albeit poorly most recently—for decades. Not because Dad wasn’t capable, just because I didn’t think his heart was in it.

Henry and I had talked Dad out of selling by appealing to his sense of loyalty to the family name. His desire to have money to live on didn’t hurt either.

That was how I’d agreed to take over where Billy had left off.

And it had been a damn mess.

The Juicy Peach needed repairs, a good cleaning, and major work when it came to keeping up-to-date stock ordered and the shelves filled. The books were a whole other story and kept me in a haze of numbers for several days until I finally felt I had them fairly close to balanced.

The peach orchard itself was our biggest money maker. We sold peaches by the bushel to grocery chains near and far. And we had a steady flow of locals and tourists who came to Haven Grove every year to snatch up pecks of peaches, whether our pre-picked ones or the you-pick variety. Add in all the peach goodies we sold at The Juicy Peach—pies, tarts, crumbles, peach tea, syrups, salsas; you name it, we probably had it—and the orchard was definitely what put the Riggs family on the map.

But when I’d taken over for Billy, I quickly realized that, not only was the store and the orchard a mess in a business sense, but the orchard also had some problems of a natural variety.

Whether Billy had known and didn’t know what to do or just didn’t care, a handful of the trees had bacterial spot. I wasn’t an expert on peach tree diseases before, but I’d read enough since taking over to know bacterial spot had the potential to wipe out an entire orchard.

Luckily, I’d noticed it early enough and acted quickly. There was no guarantee, but I had high hopes the spray I’d used to treat the trees would work and we’d have a bumper crop come summer.

My phone buzzed as I said goodbye to Henry. My brother and I were close—as different as we were the same—we kinda had to be. I mean, I guess we didn’t have to be close, but watching your mom walk away tended to pull two kids together. Henry and I fought, we definitely disagreed on a lot, but in the end, I knew he’d have my back. No questions. And I’d do the same for him.

My brother just rolled his eyes and shook his head as I grinned at the ClickC*ck message from User54321. Henry knew he wasn’t going to change me, but that didn’t mean he’d stop giving me shit for my no-strings-attached random hookup ways.

User54321: How about coffee? Glazed Buns Bakery?

Meeting at a public place was a good sign. Some men were looking for trouble and some were just plain stupid when they offered up a room number at the motel on the outskirts of town or agreed to have someone show up at their home.

The Glazed Buns Bakery was a local place with excellent coffee and amazing baked goods—they used our peaches and supplied us with stock during the season—and I’d quickly be able to size up this guy with the generic username and sexy-as-fuck silver-fox beard.

Me: Sounds good. Can you do 4:00?

Grinning when Username54321 confirmed 4:00, I jumped in my truck and drove like a bat out of hell to the little farmhouse I called home between The Juicy Peach and our sprawling orchard. A quick shower and prep were in order if I lucked out and got this guy to head to the motel with me. Hell, if the vibe was right, I’d bring him to my place—which reminded me, the sheets needed changed—and maybe even let him spend the night before he went on his merry way.

My place was an original build and homey. Wood floors, traditional farmhouse kitchen, gorgeous staircase, and a lot of antique furniture my family had bought decades ago.

I wasn’t much of a decorator, but the place looked pretty nice. And I kept it clean and tidy.

As I stripped the bed, I had a passing thought of what it would be like to meet someone and build a relationship. It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered about seeking something more serious, but every time I thought about trying to create a future with a man I loved, I found myself nearing panic mode.

He’d leave.

Just like my mom.

If I ever gave my heart to someone, he’d rip it from my chest and obliterate it.

I wasn’t good enough to convince Missy to stay.

If my own mother didn’t even love me enough, how could I expect some guy to love me enough to commit to a whole future with me?

No, that was why it was for the best that I just kept things random and casual. No dating, no emotions, no strings.

Quick, easy, no risk of falling in love.

Because loving someone meant getting hurt.

And I’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.

By the time the bed had fresh sheets and I’d cleaned up and prepped, it was nearing four o’clock. I headed out of the gray-blue farmhouse, inhaling deeply of the orchard flowers as I neared my truck and couldn’t help the feeling of contented satisfaction and excitement.

I didn’t need a big city, a flashy car, a top-level corporate job, or a ring on my finger.

I had a great life in Haven Grove. My old truck was sensible and ran just fine. I loved having my brother and my dad so close. I would have hated wearing a suit or working in an office.

Sure, maybe my heart sometimes longed for love, but I knew better than to open up to something that would just end up falling apart.

Glazed Buns was quiet when I made my way to the counter. Two of Haven Grove’s sweetest old women sat in a booth near the window and a teen with one earbud in washed tables. Not seeing anyone who could be Username54321, I headed to the counter and ordered a coffee.

Part of me wanted to get one for my date-who-wasn’t-a-date, but it seemed too date-ish and presumptuous. What if he didn’t care for coffee? Maybe he wanted tea.

As I overthought the situation and sipped my coffee, the bell over the bakery door jingled and my entire world shifted on its axis.

Forget Username54321.

Who needed an anonymous potential hookup when your living, breathing teen-years crush just waltzed back into town?