Chapter 18 Hayden
Chapter eighteen
Hayden
SWEET AS CHERRY PIE
After helping wrangle the cows this morning, I ducked back to the cabin to check my work emails and found my boss had sent out a brief to all staff about a missing millionaire, some heir to a giant company that hasn’t been seen in over a decade.
The site I write for is all about reviews, so they want us to pull old pieces and write new work that connects to any of the sighting claims being made to try to drive views.
Coby, one of the writers for the travel reviews, replied, claiming he had a lead on a legit sighting in a small town in Massachusetts a few years ago, though I think the sightings in Bora Bora hold more merit.
I scrolled through the posts my boss linked, looking for any connections with my restaurant, bar, and cafe reviews, then one particular post caught my eye, an article read that this missing heir is wanted for questioning relating to a string of unsolved murders, and claims his family sent him away to a non-extradition country.
And just like that, I had an amazing idea for my novel.
I typed out a quick character bio, then adjusted my outline to work in the specifics. By the time Wendy was out of the shower, having fallen ass-first into a cowpat, I was another chapter deep with no signs of slowing.
“We have the cuddle session in twenty minutes,” she explained as she pulled on her boots.
“I know, but I can’t stop yet. I’ll come over as soon as I get this part done,” I told her, with no idea how long “this part” would actually take.
***
“Are you still going?” Wendy asks, coming through the door with a thermos in hand.
“I…what?”
“Have you been writing this whole time?”
“Yeah, why? What time is it?”
“Half twelve, they’re getting set up for our pie-making class up at the house. Here, I grabbed you this,” she says, passing me the thermos.
“Thanks,” I reply, and the delicious scent of hot chocolate fills my nose.
“It’s almond milk,” she says when she spots me hesitating to take a sip. I’ve almost run out of dairy tablets, being on the ranch. There are so many yummy dairy products to be had. I take a sip, the warm chocolaty goodness coating my throat and warming me to my core.
“Connor missed you at the cove,” she says, stripping off her coat and shirt, no care in the world for me being right there.
Even if I weren’t gay, I don’t think she’d care.
Wendy has always been this larger-than-life personality, never afraid of anything, except maybe her dysfunctional family, though they even scare me.
“I really did plan to come.”
“I told Connor you were writing.”
“It was the best session I’ve had at the computer in forever. I got in four chapters and then wrote half of my review article, too.”
“Is that a lot?” she asks, pulling on a dark blue band shirt for Julius Rising that we got at a concert last year. It’s got a cat wearing a space helmet floating through outer space on it with the band name diagonally behind it in block letters. I have the same shirt in black.
“Seeing as the most I’ve written of my novel in a single session in the past five years was a single chapter and that took hours to get down, yeah, it’s a lot.
Since coming here, I’ve had three great sessions, now, and I’m almost a third of the way through the story.
At this rate I could be done by New Years. ”
“That’s great. So do you need me to leave so you can do more?”
“No,” I reply, closing the screen of the laptop and standing, stretching out the ache in my back, careful not to spill the thermos of hot chocolate as I bring my hands up over my head. “I’m done for now.”
“So when do I get to read it?” she asks, reaching out for the thermos.
I take a final sip and hand it over. “When it’s done, maybe. It’s rough, spelling errors and missed punctuation all over the place. It would hurt your eyes to see it the way it is now, trust me.”
“I’m sure it’s amazing even with all those things, but I’m happy to wait until you’re ready.”
“I should probably change if we’re pie making,” I say, grabbing a change of clothes and heading into the bathroom.
Wendy might be totally fine changing in front of me, but I’m far shyer, except when I’m in the bedroom with Connor.
Then, this confident personality emerges.
I dreamed of him last night. It was him and me in that large shower of his, me working him open with my fingers before fucking him senseless.
I’m glad that the writing spark hit now and not tonight when I’m supposed to meet him.
I’m not sure I could have had the restraint to stay away from him even if the muse was calling.
We get up to the house, and the other guests are already tying aprons around themselves, and Sally-May hands us two frilly pink ones.
“Did I miss it?” Atlas asks, barreling through the kitchen door.
“No, but you get the last apron, no complaints,” she says, tossing him one with a print on it. As he ties it around himself, I have to laugh. Printed on the front is the bare chest of a very hairy, muscled man, and from the waist, he’s wearing only a cowboy hat held over his groin.
Someone whistles, and he blushes but puffs his chest out a little with a smirk, clearly a fan of the attention.
“Okay, find a place,” Sally-May instructs as we maneuver around the large kitchen island.
It’s tight in here with all of us, but we somehow make it work.
Atlas shuffles between me and one of the sisters from cabin seven.
They’re always taking photos and videos of themselves and the animals and posting online, they asked if they could tag me in a video they took on the ride the other day, I agreed, but when I checked out the post later, you see me for all of a split second as the younger of the sisters pans to Atlas’s ass bouncing up and down in the saddle on his horse.
“If I have to wear clothes, at least this gives me the illusion of freedom,” Atlas jokes, nudging my side. “What do you think about a nudist weekend?”
“With you?” I ask, taken aback, but he bursts out laughing.
“Not specifically, but here, on the ranch. It would be fun, right?” he asks, and Sally-May waves a spatula in his face.
“No recruiting the guests into your lifestyle, you’re here to learn to make pie.”
“Sorry,” he replies with a wink my way that makes me think he is anything but sorry.
We mix up our dough, Sally-May checking each for consistency before we roll them out and fold over our pie trays.
“You would have to do it in summer,” I say to Atlas as his pie crust breaks when he flips it onto his base, and he grudgingly bunches it into a ball to roll out again.
“Spring would probably be better, summer on the ranch can get pretty hot, and leather saddles and sweat aren’t so good.”
“You’ve really thought this through, huh?”
“I’ll convince Dean one of these days. I just have to catch him at a weak point.”
“So it’s up to Dean what you guys put on here?” I ask.
He shrugs. “He and Nial run the place, but you’ve probably noticed Dean is the responsible one. If it were only up to Nial, I probably would have a whole month dedicated to nudists.”
“Would not,” Sally-May interjects, slapping his hand and taking over to finish his rolling and then lifts his dough over the pie shell, shaking her head as she moves on to check the others.
“What about this Christmas thing? Was that Dean, too?”
“Actually, it was Skye. He’s obsessed with Christmas,” he replies, and I remember the red and green overalls he was wearing the day before last.
“It’s a good idea. The ranch is really beautiful, covered in snow.”
“You will have to come back to see it in the spring. It’s even better, the grass is green, flowers bloom through the surrounding land, and we get an influx of babies.”
“Connor must love that.”
“Yeah, he’s obsessed with the little ones. It took him a while to get on board with the bigger cattle, though.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, well, his experience is all in young cattle, plus the minis, dwarf breeds, you know, the ones he has at the cove.”
“So he’s trained as like a cow pediatrician?”
He shrugs.
“Actually, I’m not sure what his qualifications actually are. He knows his stuff, though.”
“And he just showed up here one day with a baby cow in his arms?”
“Yeah, it was the night of one of the biggest storms in the state. He flipped his truck, swerving to miss the thing, and we were the closest lights he could see, so he just picked it up and carried it here.”
“And then stayed?”
“That’s what happens on the Beaker Brothers Ranch. It’s a magnet for creatures big and small that need a place to fit in.”
“You needed fitting in?” I ask, and Wendy shushes me.
“I’m trying to listen,” she whispers, and I turn my attention to Sally-May, and she goes through the filling options she’s partially prepared for us already. I choose cherry, because it’s in a jar she’d made a few summers ago, and the cherries look plump pushed up against the glass.
“Apple for me, please,” Atlas asks, but Sally-May hands him a jar of peaches in either juice or syrup with the same style handmade label on the jar as my cherries.
“Apple is all gone. You should have been listening,” she chastises, and I stifle a laugh.
“Sorry,” I say, but he shrugs.
“Everyone loves a nice furry peach.”
One of the sisters giggles, whispering to the other.
I try twice to open and lift the sealed top on the jar but the fucker won’t budge.
“I thought these things had screw tops,” I say, and Atlas takes the jar.
“There’s a trick to these,” he says, grabbing a small knife from the middle of the table that he used to trim his pie edges, and then slides it under the rim until we hear a soft “pop.”
“Thanks,” I say as he hands it back, and I get my first whiff of the delicious cherries inside. “Wow.”
“That was a particularly good batch,” Sally-May says, handing me a teaspoon. “Go on, have a taste.”
I dip the spoon in the dark red liquid pooling over the spoon like blood, just as Connor walks in the back door.
I slip the spoon under one of the cherries and bring it up to my mouth, salivating in anticipation, then lock my gaze on Connor as I pop it slowly into my mouth.
The delicious tart and sweetness hit my tongue, and my eyes flutter closed as a soft moan escapes my lips before I swallow and return my gaze to him.
“So good.”
Everyone tastes their chosen filling, chatting about how amazing each one is, as Connor walks around the table, I turn with the jar still in my hands.
“You look like you enjoyed that,” he says with a smirk.
“It was the second-best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”