Chapter 24 Mercer
MERCER
“What is this supposed to be?”
Not sure why Camille was in the mood to antagonize me with rhetorical questions today. I glanced down at the red berry in her outstretched palm.
“A raspberry,” I said, humoring her.
“It’s practically jam already,” Camille complained, smushing it between her fingers.
Bloodbath. “This isn’t the first time our delivery hasn’t been up to scratch.
Remember our blueberries last week? What’s going on with our supplier?
” She shook the remaining raspberries in the container and they disintegrated further.
I checked the others and they weren’t any better. Finding a new supplier was going to be such a pain in the ass. “I don’t know. You know I use our usual one.”
“This is nowhere near the quality we got at our other stores.” Camille’s gaze drifted to Summer’s corner of the kitchen.
The omega was meticulously slicing gleaming, ruby-red strawberries into heart shapes.
Camille’s elbow jabbed into my side. “Where does she get her fruit?” she asked out of the corner of her mouth.
“I dunno.”
“Ask her.”
“ You ask her.”
Camille began pushing me toward Summer. At least she tried to. She was very small. “You two are ridiculous ,” she griped. “Just go talk to her.”
I dug in my heels. “What if she doesn’t want to tell me?”
“What’s the matter with you?” A hard shove and I was in Summer’s orbit. “Don’t be weird,” Camille hissed.
Great. That’s exactly what I wanted to be told before having a conversation with a beautiful girl I couldn’t stop thinking about. Don’t be weird .
I didn’t know how to behave around Summer with all of our staff around. Everything I did felt like I had a giant spotlight on it. All I wanted to do was fire everyone and eat strawberries off Summer’s body.
Fuck. I had to stop picturing her naked at work.
“Hey…Summer.”
She still had a very large kitchen knife in her hand. Should’ve timed this conversation better. “What is it?” she asked. “You’re all squirrelly.”
“Am not.”
“Practically have nuts stuffed in your cheeks.”
“How? How do I have nuts stuffed in my cheeks?” I said, insulted. This metaphor was downright defamatory.
“Guess it’s just your face.” Summer turned back to her strawberries. I had to get this conversation back on track.
“Who is your fruit supplier?” I blurted.
Summer blinked and set down her knife. “You…wanna know where I get my fruit?” she asked haltingly.
I knew I shouldn’t have asked. “It’s okay. If you don’t want to say that’s fine,” I said, attempting to smooth things over.
“No, it’s not that. I just…thought you would’ve had so many more contacts than me.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and hugged her middle. “I get almost all of my produce from a local farm. Why?”
I showed Summer our mushy raspberries. “We’ve been having some problems with ours.”
She gasped and took one for a closer look.
“You won’t waste these, will you?” She seemed much more concerned over food wastage than our subpar supplier.
“If you don’t want them, I’ll take them,” she offered, nodding enthusiastically.
“Oh my god, I could do a raspberry swirl in my cakes. How yum would that be?”
I promptly scrapped my own plans to make jam-topped scones. “They’re yours,” I said, handing them over just to watch stars sparkle in her eyes.
“Thank you!” she said happily. “Applecloud Farm likes to put on seasonal events and is open all summer for berry-picking. Would you like to come with me and see if you want to work with them?”
“Yes, please,” I said immediately.
“Okay.” Shyness blended with anticipation and made her glow. “Our next day off then.”
I spilled coffee all over the counter the morning of the trip to the farm. I swore under my breath as I cleaned it up. My nerves were getting the better of me.
Lucien and Jae were not helping.
“Is it just me, or is this friends-with-benefits thing working really well?” Jae asked, spreading butter on his toast. “We’re all having fun, and there’s no jealousy.
We should commemorate it with a plaque when we finish the house.
Location of the first ever successful no-strings-attached pack arrangement. ”
Lucien’s mug stopped halfway to his mouth. “A plaque? Where would it go? All the places we hooked up with her?” he asked incredulously.
“Don’t make it weird.”
“It was your idea!”
“Yeah, but you made it weird.”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
Their lighthearted ribbing was overshadowed by the uneasy weight lurching in my stomach. There it was. That feeling I’d been ignoring ever since finding out Summer had been with Lucien and Jae.
They wouldn’t get it. Of course this arrangement was working out great for them. They were alphas. The natural partner for an omega in every way. Physiologically and pheromonally.
Okay, I didn’t have a stupid knot and it was getting to me. I’d happily go down on her for hours, but if she wanted more, I knew I was going to clam up. Then she was going to think it was because of her instead of me , when that was the farthest thing from the truth.
What a shitstorm. And I’d done it to myself.
“Just don’t get any ideas about it lasting beyond the summer,” Lucien warned. Typical. Always looking for ways we could get hurt.
Jae huffed dismissively. “Yes, we know. That’s why it’s working so well.”
I skipped breakfast and went to finish getting ready.
Summer met me at the front door, dressed in a daisy-printed number. She was always so beautiful. Every graceful step made her skirt flounce and expose more of her tan thighs.
“Come on,” I said, not meeting her eyes. Not thinking about the implications of her outfit choice. “We better hit the road or we’ll be late.”
“Can I put on my playlist?” she asked as I held open the car door for her.
“Of course.”
Summer flashed her teeth menacingly. “You are going to regret that.”
I rolled my eyes as I shut the door but couldn’t stop the smile tugging at my lips.
Summer sang the entire way. From the minute I pulled out of our drive right up until I was crunching along Applecloud Farm’s gravel road.
“I can’t believe that concert experience was free,” I remarked as I cut the engine.
Seeing how much fun she was having was the best part. But I kept that to myself.
“What was your favorite bit? My vocal runs? My backup-singer dance moves?”
“All of it. Any chance of an encore on the way home?”
She shoved my arm. “Hah. I almost believe you.”
Her hand found mine easily as we headed inside.
“This place is huge,” I commented, spotting an apple orchard and a corn maze.
Summer nodded. “They’ve really found a good balance with tourism and supplying to local businesses. I don’t get everything I need from them—like, no mango is going to survive out here—but I like working my sweets menu around what they have in season.”
Summer was a natural at this. And she never gave herself enough credit for how well she was doing with her new business. Lord knows, when I first opened, I was busy learning from all my mistakes.
“That’s how I do it as well,” I said before realizing it no longer rang true.
I’d ignored the drop in quality from my supplier until Camille forced me to deal with it.
Thank fuck I had a safety net of good people around me.
“At least, I was supposed to,” I admitted.
“I’m realizing now that as I scale, I need to remember all the reasons why it worked when it was just me in that first store. ”
The back of her hand bumped my thigh reassuringly. “If you had lost touch with that we wouldn’t be here.”
Maybe. But I knew that I’d pushed myself hard in the last few years.
Trying to meet the demand. Trying to grow my business.
People wanted it, and the money was rolling in, so that’s what I had to do, right?
I should’ve taken the time to think about whether it was even what I wanted to be doing.
Asking myself what level of success would satisfy the void inside me.
Picking Starlight Grove was not an accident.
I finally felt like I could come back. On paper, it was to prove that my business model could work outside a big city.
But in my heart, I wanted to show the town that I was more than the son of the alpha who ruined so many lives.
To see if the one place where I’d been embraced wholeheartedly would accept me again.
So far so good. As long as I replaced the rotting raspberries.
I followed Summer toward the white wooden farmhouse sitting in the shade of an ancient oak.
The whole thing resembled a postcard, and I could picture Applecloud Farm in sprawling text across the sky above.
An older gray-haired woman emerged from the adjacent barn, waved to Summer, and introduced herself as Florence.
She wore her years of outdoor work in freckles and uneven tan lines.
“Summer tells me you need raspberries that aren’t mush?”
I laughed at her frankness. “Yes, please. Seems like you’re the one to help with that.”
“Sure am. Let me show you around first and then I’ll take you down to the vines.”
Florence’s encyclopedic knowledge of Applecloud’s operations unfolded as she led us on a tour of the property on her ancient golf cart.
Everything from the sustainable farming practices to knowing every staff member who worked in her packing shed.
She humored me when I was distracted by a perfect blooming patch of pink daisies and picked one to tuck behind Summer’s ear.
“Was I not pretty enough before?” Summer asked, crestfallen.
I squeezed her waist warningly, aware that we had an audience. “Why are you like this?” I hissed. Alarmingly, a vision surfaced of her bare ass reddened by my hand.
Summer squished my cheeks. “Thank you, Mercer. I really love it,” she said sincerely.
“You’re welcome. I think.”