Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
WILLOW
Turning my pencil around, I rapidly erase the lines I had just drawn.
I’ve been sitting here in the barn for the last two hours trying to decide how I want the inside of the store to look, and I can’t get it right.
Every line I draw doesn’t feel right and I end up erasing it.
A warm, soft burst of air drifts across the top of my head, pulling my attention away from my drawing.
“Hey, Scooter,” I murmur, turning to look up at my brother’s horse. She blows another warm breath across my face. I was originally sitting across the aisle on a bale of hay in front of my horse’s stall, but Ace kept trying to eat my hair.
My hand connects with the velvety skin of her nose, drifting farther up the front of her face as I give her a scratch. She sniffs the side of my face, lightly brushing her nose against my temple before she backs into her stall and turns away from me.
“There you are,” Noah says as he comes striding into the barn with Otto on his heels.
“What’s going on?”
He walks closer to me, brushing his hands on the front of his jeans as his eyebrows tug together. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing at the paper on the clipboard in my lap.
“My plans for the store.” I look past him, glancing out toward the barn door. “What’s up?”
“Oh, yeah,” he says, leaning down to hand me something. “Try one of these.”
I hold my hand out and Noah drops a small piece of wrapped candy into my palm. “What’s this?”
“I wanted to try a maple taffy instead of just hard candies.” He stares down at me as I twist the ends of the paper and pop out the small soft, caramel circle.
Lifting it to my mouth, I open the paper and pop it in.
The sweetness on my tongue is instant. After letting me take a moment to roll it all around my mouth and across my tongue, Noah says, “I feel like it’s missing something. ”
“Hmm,” I murmur, slowly pushing the candy between my molars as I sink them into the soft, chewy taffy. “I don’t think it’s missing anything,” I say, letting the sweet dissolve in my mouth. “I think it tastes really good.”
Noah’s eyebrows lift with hopefulness. “Really? You don’t think it needs more vanilla or something?”
Shaking my head, I chew the remaining bits and swallow them down. “Not at all. I think if you were to add anything more, it would ruin it. The maple flavor is exactly how it should taste.”
He lets out a sigh of relief, his shoulders immediately sagging. “Oh, thank God. I lost count of how many different times I tried adjusting it. I think I was starting to lose my mind and everything was beginning to taste the same.”
“No, no,” I say, rising to my feet while I shake my head. “This is good. Really good, actually.”
A smile crooks his lips. “Want to sell them at the store?”
I raise an eyebrow at my brother. “Does Finn know about this?”
He chuckles, his head shifting back and forth. “Nope,” he says, popping the P. “The store is supposed to be your thing now, but it would be a great place to sell these.”
“I agree. I think everyone would love them.”
“I’ll send you a box on the down low then,” he says with a wink. His gaze drops down to the paper in my hand and he tilts his head to the side. “Do you need any help with that?”
“No,” I pull the paper away, cradling it against my chest. “You’ll see it when it’s finished.”
Noah frowns, half pouting as my phone vibrates in my pocket. “Fine, I’ll wait.”
Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I see my best friend Mia’s name flashing on the screen. I glance up at my brother. “I gotta take this,” I say. “It’s Mia.”
“I’ll catch up with you later. Thanks for trying the taffy for me.”
“Of course.” I smile at my brother, sliding my finger across my phone screen before lifting it up to my ear. “Hey, girl.”
Noah heads back out of the barn and I meander away from the stalls, making my way over to the doors.
“Hey! What are you doing? Are you busy?”
“Never!” I let out a soft laugh. “Noah was making me taste his newest maple invention. It was actually pretty good.”
“What was it?”
“Maple taffy,” I say, stepping through the barn doors, watching as an old red truck comes down the lane, kicking up a cloud of dust. I would know that truck anywhere.
Jace.
“What is he doing here?”
“Who’s there?” Mia asks, her voice inquisitive. “I can’t tell if we’re happy or mad about whomever it is showing up unannounced.”
Mia has been my best friend since our freshman year of college.
We shared a dorm room and hit it off the day we first met.
We were inseparable after that, until our lives went in different directions.
Mia lives in Aston now, where she’s officially settled down with a single dad, who her father coaches.
Talk about a plot twist.
They’re very adorable together and his daughter is a fiery little girl who keeps them both on their toes. I’ve never seen Mia more happy than she is with him and I know he treats her well. I’m happy for her. Mia Landry deserves nothing but the best and I think it’s safe to say that she’s found it.
“Um… Jace.”
Mia’s silent for a second. “Your brother’s friend? The one you said you had a crush on when you were younger, right?”
I suck in a deep breath and blow it out in a rush. “That would be the one.” I pause, swallowing roughly as I watch him pull his truck up by the house. “Can we not talk about that crush though? I’ve moved on from that.”
“You didn’t tell me he was back in Sugar Hill.”
Taking a step back, I move out of sight and duck inside the barn. “It must have slipped my mind.”
Mia and I haven’t really had much time to catch up since I got home. Caleb took her on a trip and she just got back late last night. Our communication has really only been through text and I was waiting until we spoke on the phone to tell her everything. Not that much has happened, but still.
“I was waiting until we had the chance to talk on the phone.”
“Well, we’re on the phone now.” Mia lets out a soft laugh. “So, spill. I need all the updates.”
Jace climbs out of the truck and pauses by its side. My breath catches in my throat and my lungs momentarily forget how to work. He stares at the barn, directly through the doorway to my left. I don’t know if he saw me or not when he came down the driveway.
“Hello?” Mia’s voice through the phone brings me back to what I was doing..
“Sorry, I’m here.”
Jace lingers beside his truck for another moment, his gaze still trained on the barn doors. Finn steps out of the house, calling Jace’s name, pulling his attention away. He turns to find my brother on the front porch, then heads over to him and they disappear into the house.
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Curiosity washes over me and I can’t help but wonder what he’s doing here.
“Sorry, I had to make sure he wasn’t coming into the barn,” I say, dropping my voice lower. “There’s honestly not that much to tell. I ran into him in town when I was dropping Finn’s dog off at the vet.”
“I heard about his early retirement.”
My lips part as I’m about to ask her how she knows, but then I remember. The man she’s dating is a professional hockey player and her father coaches the team. Of course she would know.
“Yeah. Jace isn’t really forthcoming with anything personal, so he hasn’t said much about it. Not that I’ve been around him that much,” I add in a rush.
“Yeah, okay.”
“I really haven’t. He came over for dinner the other night and my brothers had a fire and we all hung out.
” I pause, chewing on the inside of my cheek as I glance back through the doorway, noting that the coast is clear.
I slowly step under the threshold, walking back through the barnyard.
“Then I ran into him at the hardware store and we made a deal to help each other.”
“Oh my gosh. Tell me more about this deal.”
“He’s going to help me at the shop and I’m going to help him…some way.”
Mia lets out a low whistle. “Some way?”
“Not like that,” I laugh, shaking my head. “He’s going to figure out what I can do to pay him back. It’s just transactional.”
I walk across the yard, making my way over to the front porch. There are no signs of Finn or Jace, although his truck is still here. Instead of going inside, I sit down on the third to last porch step.
“Is he single?” she asks, her voice hopeful. “You know, we never did find your future husband at any hockey games. Perhaps we weren’t looking in the right places.”
“Oh, please,” I laugh, shaking my head as I roll my eyes.
“That ship sailed. I don’t think I’m looking for a future husband anymore.
A good fuck would suffice at this point.
” The floorboards behind me groan and my spine stiffens, my entire body immediately falling rigid.
My lungs constrict, my heart pounding faster inside my chest. Oh my god. “I’ll call you back, Mia.”
Her voice still comes through the speaker when I pull the phone away from my ear. “Oh my goodness, he heard you, didn’t—”
I hit the red button to end the call, cutting her off. My lungs refuse to cooperate and my heart is a thumping mess inside my chest. It takes everything in me to force myself to turn my torso and look over my shoulder.
Of course it’s him.
Jace stands at the edge of the porch, his head cocked to the side. His lips part as if he’s going to say something, but instead he shuts them.
“I don’t know how much you heard, but let’s just pretend you didn’t hear a word.”
The corners of his mouth twitch. “If that’s what you want, Will.”
I swallow roughly, ignoring the heat that creeps up my neck. “Thank you.”
Each step Jace takes down the steps reverberates through my body, loud and purposeful. At the bottom, he pauses and turns to face me. “How does tomorrow look for you?”
My eyes slowly widen and my stomach flips. “What?”
His forehead creases. “To work in the shop.” He pauses again and clears his throat. “Remember, you said you’d let me know?”
If the ground was ever going to open up and swallow me whole, now would be the perfect time. “Right,” I say in a rush, shaking my head to dismiss the train of dirty thoughts that had begun to barrel through my mind, no thanks to Mia. “Tomorrow is perfect.”
“Awesome,” he dips his chin. His lips stretch across his teeth, the dimples deepening in his cheeks and his eyes shimmer. “See you in the morning, Will.”
“See you then.”
His eyes linger for a moment and then he’s turning around, and walking back to his truck. I don’t know why he stopped by, but I’m beginning to wonder if this deal was a bad idea. Everywhere I seem to turn, Jace Miller is there.
And working together means it’s only going to get worse.
What am I getting myself into?