Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
Keeley turned up the driveway to the big house, tires crunching over the thin layer of snow from the night before that had mostly melted, and parked her mother’s car. The “big house” was how everyone referred to the two-story farmhouse that was the heart of Cider Mill Farm. It was barely nine o’clock, but apparently everyone was up and around.
After breakfast, she’d texted Delaney, her bff since fifth grade, a brief message.
Keeley: I had a flat coming up the mountain last night and Owen came and got me.
She figured when they actually talked, she’d fill in Delaney with the details. Which hadn’t accounted for the whole bff thing because her simple text set off a whole flurry of excited texts.
BFF: WHAT!!! Owen finally made his move?
Keeley: Umm, what move? Nvm. I need to make him thank-you pie.
BFF: Pie? This is more serious than I thought. Give me a minute .
Shortly after, in a group text that included Delaney’s sisters, Emery and Cam, Delaney called an emergency brunch meeting at the cabin she shared with her husband, Walker, at Cider Mill Farm.
Cam had responded, suggesting everyone come to the big house where she lived with her husband, Sawyer, telling Keeley she was welcome to use the larger kitchen to make Owen’s pie.
Keeley bit back a sigh. Without a doubt, she would be facing an inquisition.
So much had changed for Delaney in the past couple years. Her one-time love, the wild and broody Walker McGrath, had returned to Sisters at about the same time a predator from their past had resurfaced. The whole thing had been scary, but had also pushed them together.
Then there was the story of Delaney’s grandmother, Clara, searching for her lost granddaughters, Delaney’s half-sisters they’d never known existed.
That quest had resulted in Emery and Cam’s addition to the family.
Delaney’s family owned the rustic and charming Cider Mill Farm, which had been the perfect venue for a whole slew of recent weddings.
First had been Delaney and Walker’s. Walker had been so handsome in his suit, but still with a not-at-all-tamed look. Keeley’d had to choke back big, fat tears when her friend, escorted by her grandmother, had come down the aisle wearing a gorgeous off-shoulder dress.
Then last fall Emery married her hot cowboy, Shane Keller, from the nearby Lone Pine Ranch. That had been so much fun, especially with Emery’s twin brothers, the flaxen-haired teenagers who’d set up a treasure hunt on the farm for the younger guests.
Most recently Sawyer, Walker’s brother, had tied the knot with Cameron, having fallen fast and hard for her even when Cam had been living at the farm using a fake identity. Their wedding had been smaller and more intimate. Keeley thought Sawyer’d been close to ditching the wedding entirely in lieu of whisking his bride off to his camper for their honeymoon trip to visit national parks in the West.
Her friends getting their happily-ever-afters had been the kick in the pants Keeley’d needed to make a dating profile and get herself out there. Her ovaries weren’t getting any younger, and her own HEA wasn’t gonna happen if she didn’t do something to find that special someone.
She wound her scarf around her neck and lugged her full grocery bags across the wide wraparound porch. She so wanted to be able to box up her winter clothes and put them in the garage.
The door opened before she could knock.
Cam, looking shabby chic in baggy pants and an oversize sweater, her blonde hair loose over her shoulders, held her tiny Morkie, Willa, under one arm and hooked one of the bags with the other. “Here, let me get that for you.” She looked inside and she gave a quick smile. “Seems strange to bring apples to the apple farm.”
“ If apples were in season, I wouldn’t have dreamed of it.”
They put the bags on the island as Delaney, curly black hair in a messy bun on top of her head, rose from her stool to give Keeley a hug.
Keeley squeezed back. “Hey, I’m sorry about Callie.” The old pointer had died quietly in her sleep the previous week. “It’s strange for her not to be at the door.”
“ I know. Walker and Sawyer buried her out back. There’s a little area surrounded by stones where family pets are buried. Callie lived a good life, and she’s resting in a good spot.” Delaney stepped back and sniffed back the tears. “Okay.” She cleared her throat and forced a smile. “I’m under Emery’s strict orders not to let you say anything until she gets here.”
Keeley unpacked her bags, leaning her recipe card against a mason jar holding sprigs of dried lavender, then she organized the ingredients on the island. “I don’t get it. Why is a flat tire such a big deal? ”
“ It’s not the flat tire that’s a big deal. It’s Owen.” Delaney mimed zipping her lips. “But we can’t talk about it even though I’m dying of curiosity. I promised.”
Cam set Willa in her little bed with a chew ring. She put up her hands when Keeley turned to her. “Don’t look at me. I just live here.” She picked up the recipe card, then set it back against the jar. “Solid recipe, my friend. Want me to make the crust?”
“ Oh, thank goodness. Yes, please. My pie filling is superb, but pie crusts are not my forte.” With Cam being the baker for the Cider Mill Farm café and bakery, Owen’s pie was now guaranteed to be the best.
Keeley pulled a band from her wrist to put her hair back in a ponytail and opened drawers until she found a paring knife. “If you want to do that, I’ll get started peeling and slicing the apples.”
“ Hang on, I’ve got something better. It’ll be a lot less work than using a knife.” Cam went to the walk-in pantry and returned with a contraption she clamped to the edge of the countertop. She took an apple, forced it onto the prongs, and turned the crank.
“ Ooh, that’s clever.” While the apple turned, an angled blade peeled the skin while another sliced the apple into a long spiral.
“ Isn’t it?” Cam nodded. “I got this at Antonia’s store so it’s vintage. All you’ll need to do is chop the apple spirals into pieces.”
Keeley noticed Delaney standing at the window to the backyard, a faraway look in her eyes. In fact, Cam also seemed a little distracted.
The front door opened and a moment later, Emery rushed into the kitchen, her face glowing. “Sorry it took me so long! Did I miss any of the good stuff?”
“ You didn’t miss anything,” Cam assured her.
Delaney pointed a finger at Emery. “Your cheeks are flushed.”
“ I had the heater on in the car.”
“ Uh-uh. That’s not what’s given you that look. I’m thinking you’re late because you and the hot cowboy were engaging in a little morning nookie. ”
Emery’s cheeks flushed even redder. “I couldn’t help it. Shane came back from taking care of the livestock and he’s so damn sexy. And the kitchen counter was right there.” She fanned her cheeks with her hands. “Besides, you can’t tell me you two,” she did her own finger pointing, wagging it between Cam and Delaney, “couldn’t have all the morning nookie you want any day you want it.”
Since Cam and Delaney both wore expressions that said yes, indeed, they’d both gotten morning nookie, Keeley ground out a frustrated breath. “Y’all need to keep reports of morning nookie to yourselves, because there’s someone here who’s mighty jealous.”
“ I bet Owen would be happy to help you with that.” Delaney waggled her eyebrows.
Keeley felt her own cheeks flush. “I don’t know where this sudden Owen obsession of yours is coming from.”
“ Just connecting the dots. I’ve witnessed plenty of hot looks between you two,” Delaney claimed, “but always when the other isn’t looking.”
Keeley tried for a nonchalant shrug. “He’s a handsome guy. Who wouldn’t look?” After gathering peeling scraps and putting them in the bin for compost, she put another apple onto the prongs and turned the crank.
“ I want to know what’s brought us all here this morning,” Emery said as she took a mug from a cupboard. “It better be good if I left my sexy husband when we could’ve gone for nookie round two.”
“ Now you’re bragging.” Cam grinned at her sister as she used a pastry cutter to cut shortening into the flour.
“ All right.” Delaney held up her hand like a kid in school. “Here’s what I have from multiple sources. Well, two sources anyway. Owen got a call last night that our pal Keeley was stranded on the highway halfway up the mountain and flat-out raced to her rescue with a whole ‘my woman’s in danger’ vibe.”
“ Oh no.” Emery turned to Keeley. “What happened? Shane said Owen is coming to the ranch this morning to borrow a trailer. Does that have anything to do with you being stranded?” She filled a kettle with water and set it over a burner on the cooktop.
“ I’ll get to that in a moment because first I need to say Delaney is way overstating Owen’s motivation and actions. Last night he was intense, but he’s always intense. And sure, he rescued me, but he was doing it because he’s a decent man, and because my mom asked.”
She went on. “About the trailer, maybe Owen decided getting to the spare is too big a project and using Shane’s flatbed makes better sense than calling for a tow truck.”
At the questioning look from Emery, Keeley clarified, “I had a flat at an inopportune time.” She proceeded to tell her friends how her belongings were Tetris-fitted into her CRV. “I would’ve changed the tire myself if I could have gotten to the spare.”
“ Those are the basics of the story, but let’s focus on what’s important,” Delaney ordered. “Jen, who’s now assistant manager by the way, says how Owen is working the stick at Easy Money. It’s Friday night, busiest time of the week, and a call comes in and he’s instantly alert. You know how growly sexy he gets. He signs off and shoves his phone in his pocket, points at Jen to tell her she’s in charge and not to burn the place down, and he’s out the door in under a minute.”
“ Ooh, that’s hot. Very hot,” Cam said as she added cold water to the flour mixture.
“ Got that right. Jen said he went from the ‘Friday night chill’ zone to the ‘alpha protector’ vibe in less than two seconds.”
“ What about your other source?” Cam asked.
“ The other source is Mateo, who saw him leaving the parking lot and flooring the Bronco to speed down Main Street. Owen’s always a cautious driver, but last night with Keeley alone on the side of a mountain road, he wasn’t wasting any time getting to her.”
“ This is all nonsense, you know that, right?” Keeley stared at her friends. “I wasn’t in danger, and my mom called Owen .
“ Owen and my parents are friends. He and Dad bonded over their Marine Corps experiences, and Owen’s been a good guy and helped them out a few times.
“ He went looking for me because Mom asked. Before last night he hardly ever talked to me, and if he did, he was always growly and bossy. He was better last night. I’ll give him that. I wouldn’t say he was nice, he was still Owen-intense, which is his default, but he didn’t make me feel like a pain in the butt because he’d had to come get me.”
She gave herself a mental finger-scolding to stop rambling. “Anyway, last night was an anomaly because normally I annoy him more than anything else. Me breathing annoys him. There’s no way he thinks of me as ‘his woman.’ That’s ridiculous.”
She stopped talking and her friends looked at each other, then at her, wide grins breaking out on their faces. Keeley crossed her arms over her chest. “What?”
“ You’re flustered,” Emery observed.
“ I am not. ” She was. Damn it. “Okay, maybe I am. A little bit. And maybe I have a tiny little crush on Owen. A super small, tiny little crush. But I’ve pretty much killed it, and since it’s a one-way kind of thing, it has no bearing on Owen doing a favor for my mom.”
“ I knew it,” Delaney crowed. “I knew you had a crush on Owen. You’d check him out every time we went to Easy Money. Just like he checked you out,” she added with a smirk.
Cam had wiped down a section of the quartz countertop and was now sprinkling it with flour. “I agree. I think he’s into you. But setting that aside, what happened last night when he got there and didn’t make you feel like a pain in his exceptionally fine butt?”
Keeley kept her attention on working the apple peeler-slicer gadget with more focus than was probably necessary. “Nothing happened. I’ll admit he was a bit, um, forceful when he first got there because I’d walked a bit trying to get cell service.
“ Apparently in Owen’s world, that was risky.” She didn’t mention he’d held her hand because it hadn’t meant anything. Or that he’d loaned her his wonderful Owen-scented sweatshirt. As to him being forceful, that was probably more irritation at having his evening disrupted than anything else.
She cleared her throat. “I told him he wouldn’t be able to change the flat tire either, and he gave me this look like ‘Don’t you worry, little lady,’ but then he saw how my car was Tetris fitted and said it could wait until today.”
“ Hmm, I’m with my sisters on this,” Emery chimed in. “Evidence supports Owen having a thing for you.”
“ He was doing a favor for my mom,” Keeley repeated, working to keep the whine out of her voice. “Anyway, he texted this morning to tell me he was taking care of the car. I told him I could do it, because it’s my problem, you know? But he overruled me, and my mom had already given him the spare set of keys. It’s hard to text argue with someone when they respond with like four words. It’s annoying.”
“ You’re nervous. You talk too much when you’re nervous.” Delaney grinned as she poured water into mugs for tea for her and Emery.
“ I’m not.” She totally was.
“ Plus,” Emery bobbed her tea bag in the hot water, “I don’t know Owen very well, but I think what he did last night? That’s his love language.”
“ Doing my mom a favor is his love language?”
“ No, dropping everything to get to you when he thought you might be in danger is. Dealing with your car this morning is.”
Keeley dumped sliced apples into a big yellow mixing bowl and sprinkled carefully measured sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg over them. It wasn’t that she discounted her friends’ assessment, but they hadn’t witnessed Owen’s surliness toward her over the past year or so.
Cam draped the rolled crust over a pie tin and used a sharp knife to trim the excess dough around the edges. “I can verify Owen tracks you whenever our gang has a barbecue or hangs out at Easy Money. As long as you’re not looking at him, he’s got his eyes on you and knows where you are. Then for him to drop everything when you needed rescuing? That’s telling.” She bumped Keeley’s shoulder and shot her a grin. “Since you have that tiny crush, having his attention is a good thing, right?”
“ If he has a thing for me, why doesn’t he ask me out? Instead, he acts like he’s the boss of me, and that’s so not going to fly.” She and Cam worked in tandem. Keeley poured in the apple mixture and Cam carefully placed the top crust over the pie, then used a knife to cut slits. Keeley crimped the edges and slid the pie into the hot oven.
Cam wiped down the countertop while Keeley squirted dish soap and ran hot water into a basin.
“ Thanks for the use of your kitchen, friend,” she said as she set the mixing bowl onto the drainer.
“ Anytime,” Cam murmured.
When the kitchen was back in order, she and Cam sat on stools across the island from Delaney and Emery.
Delaney sipped her hot tea and looked like she was trying not to grimace. Keeley narrowed her eyes, her gaze traveling to each of the women in turn as Delaney raised her mug again, the tag from the tea bag hanging over the side. “You’re drinking tea. You hate tea.” She turned to skewer Emery with a laser-sharp look. “And you, you drink Earl Gray in the morning, but now you’re drinking herbal. In fact,” Keeley turned to Cam to confirm the absence of a coffee cup, “not one of you is drinking anything with caffeine. Are you all pregnant or something?”