Smothered and Covered (Raven Peak Ranch #2)

Chapter 1

Bouquets of flowers varying in colors, shapes, and sizes fill my booth. Saturday mornings are my favorite here in Goldspur Ridge. Especially when it’s filled with the hustle and bustle of the farmers market.

Sometimes when Mawmaw has more than enough herbs, she’ll join me and share my booth space. Today isn’t one of those days though, RPR Blooms only has blooms today. Overflowing with them actually, blues, violets, reds, pinks, and so much green.

It’s been a year since Levi’s death shook up my life, and I’ve come to realize that I didn’t truly know him. We didn’t date that long, but I really liked him for the short time we’d been together. Too bad he turned out to be the worst kind of human.

My brother found the love of his life though, which makes me confident that maybe I can too. My niece, Briar, waves at the other end of the market. Bounding toward my booth, she smiles and throws her arms open.

“Aunt Loo!” She hums beside my ear. “Your booth is so full!”

I laugh, squeezing her again until she pushes me away with a roll of her eyes.

People start to trickle in, regulars that visit the market every weekend, the ones I know by name.

Like Mrs. Peter who always buys a whole bushel of white hydrangeas.

I’ve gotten used to keeping them wrapped and ready for her every Saturday.

Briar talks ol’ Mr. Fishell into letting her build a bouquet for him, and I have to admit, she’s pretty good at it. Watching her pull stems from the buckets I have laced with water and copper pennies, putting stems together and looking at it before putting the bloom back and picking another.

Briar’s yellow dress is open in the back, showing off the freckled skin she inherited from her father–my brother, Spencer. We share the same colors, her and I. Where Spencer tends to be paler, Briar and I have an olive complexion that makes our freckles pop once we get good into sunny weather.

The end of May brings the beginning buds of summer, longer days, hotter weather, and a whole lot of time with my niece.

Since she’s turning a year older on her way to adult life, I’m soaking up all the time I can get with her.

Her senior year is right around the corner and I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep it together once she graduates.

I’ve helped Spencer raise her since she was an infant, and then when Pearl passed, I became even more involved. Bless her mother, she was one of the sweetest women I know, without her I’d never have known the love of Briar Tritt.

“Loo, why are your eyes so glossy?” She asks, looking over her shoulder and then back at me. “Oh no, don’t tell me it’s that baby comin’ through here again, you know one day her parents are gonna–”

“It’s not the baby,” I cut her off, and squint my eyes. “Wait, there’s nothin’ wrong with givin’ a baby more attention than payin’ customers, she’s too cute.”

“Mhmm,” she gives me some serious side eye and greets another customer.

On and on the day goes, when the booth is half empty, I head to the truck to gather the rest. Our fields are producing more than they have in a long time.

I think it has more to do with the cowboy-turned-farmhand my brother married, than anything I’ve been doing.

Heath spends a lot of his time tending to the gardens, mawmaw’s herbs, the cattle, and of course Briar. They’re like the picture perfect family, Spencer, Heath, and Briar. I only hope one day I can have that too–with someone who isn’t a total prick.

Towing the cart back from my vintage chevy, loaded down with more blooms, I make sure not to run over any toes on my way to the booth. Briar’s leaning against the counter, talking to a familiar figure who’s been hanging around more often ever since Valentine’s day.

Zachariah Baker’s tall lanky form leans against the display of my booth.

“Colt,” I nod, using the nickname Spencer gave him, and giving my niece a knowing smile.

She blushes deeply and walks around the display, almost knocking over a few of the buckets hanging there.

“Careful,” I giggle, watching her grab Colt, tuck tail, and practically run to the other side of the train station-turned-market.

People float through, some pausing to run their fingers over the petals of my flowers. My booth’s near empty by the time Marshall rounds the corner with a large smile on his face.

He’s an older man with graying hair that’s never combed, always wild on his head.

His thin frame is clothed in a t-shirt and bathing suit shorts.

He owns the old train station, and felt like the town needed a better place to sell their wares other than the side of the highway, so he turned it into the market.

“Hi, Marshy,” I smile when he wraps his arms around my shoulders, and crushes me to his chest. You wouldn’t know it looking at him, but he’s strong for such a thin man.

“Hello beauty,” he chuckles, looking around at my nearly empty booth. “Looks like another successful Saturday!”

“It was,” I confirm, looking around at what’s left so I can morph it together to deliver bundles to local businesses. What I don’t sell, if it’s not a lot, always goes back into the community. “Thank you again for hosting this, it’s always nice to see everyone.”

“Ahh,” he waves a hand in front of his face and continues, “It’s nothin’, this old place needed some life.”

He’s never charged booth rent, not to anyone who wants to come sell, the only thing he requires is a clean space, and a kind attitude. He won’t tolerate any hatefulness or disrespectful behavior toward anyone.

“Well, I’d say you’ve made that happen,” I rib, elbowing him in the side.

His eyes scan the space, bright sunlight filters through the open arches of brick.

A slight breeze ruffles the leaves of some of my flowers, and the smell of cheese, and baked goodies flow through the space.

Like sugar and salt, the best blend of the kitchen.

“I think Mabel would be proud, you know–”

Just then, a large man lumbers over the concrete space, his boots making contact with a harsh thud. His shoulders are wide, and people eye him with open curiosity. Even Marshall stopped his trail of words to look at the man.

He’s out of place, someone everyone in town would know if he was from here. His dark eyes scan the paper in his hand, and when he looks up, his scowl is on my booth.

“Where the hell–” Marshal starts and stops as the tremendous stranger walks over to my booth and picks up a bundle of marigold flowers. He twists them in his giant hand and then his eyes flick to mine.

“These for sale?” He asks in a deep southern accent that rivals my own. His voice is smooth, like dark chocolate and the highest quality bourbon.

I nod, unable to form words. He’s unfairly pretty, like a statue made from marble come to life. His dark blue eyes, almost the color of the night sky, burn straight through my own and I lose all rational thought.

Something about him feels familiar, the harsh cut of his jaw, the way his eyes are laser focused. One side of his lips tip up, revealing strikingly white teeth against rough tan skin and stubble.

“Miss?” He prompts, but my mind still can’t comprehend words to respond. “If these aren’t for sale, I’m sure one of the others will be fine too.”

Marshall bumps my shoulder, as if that will push the words out of me. Luckily it helps and I clear my head.

“Yeah, uh–Of course, that’ll be twenty,” I tell the stranger, grabbing the bundle to wrap in some brown butcher paper to make it easier to carry.

“Do you take credit?” His question throws me off, because of course I do. I don’t like to, because the wifi’s spotty and it charges a fee that the customers end up paying when I have to raise prices. “I forgot most places like this only take cash, and I was in a hurry.”

“Yeah, I do,” I say automatically as if my brain’s on auto pilot and the rest of me is just watching from the backseat.

Withdrawing his wallet from his back pocket, he produces his card and slides it through the reader I can attach to my phone. The first swipe doesn’t work, of course because the internet goes out.

“Sorry, the wifi in here is spotty, it’ll just be a second,” I promise, waiting for the signal to show back up and the system to stop spinning.

“Could I just leave the card here and come back later to get it? I’m runnin’ late as it is,” he doesn’t sound irritated, as if it’s my fault the wifi isn’t working. Instead it’s more pleading, as he looks down at the phone in his palm, which I hadn’t realized he was even holding.

“You’d just leave your credit card with a stranger?” I ask, before I can gobble the words back down. Great, now my brain wants to connect to my mouth.

He smiles, and a slight chuckle vibrates out of him, “Well, I’d like to pay you, so I’d like to think in return, you wouldn’t steal my information.”

I would never, but he doesn’t know that. I could be a con artist or someone who doesn’t care about morals and the possibility of jail.

“I hate to dump this on you,” he says, a sense of urgency to his words. “But I really need to go or my mother will eat me alive. I’ll come back for that later, Goldie.”

I nod, holding on to the card he offered, and watch him walk out of the market along with everyone else.

It’s so quiet, that I can hear the popcorn machine popping the last bit of caramel corn it’s got left, and I glance around.

Everyone’s staring, looking at each other with equally confused expressions.

It doesn’t dawn on me, until Marshall says something about him knowing when to come back and get his card, that I’ve still got the small piece of plastic in my hand.

Flipping the card over, I stop, letting it fall from my grasp to the counter, as if it’d burned me.

For all my brain knows, it might have.

His name is in raised letters, plain as day, and that’s when I know God’s got a sense of humor, because the name on the card can only be one person. The one person in the world I never thought I’d meet.

Reese Walker, the four-time national bull riding champion. The undeniably gorgeous, older brother of my dead boyfriend, just bought flowers from me, left his credit card, and I have to see him again to give it back.

Shit.