Chapter 7
Ethan
Ethan had seen a lot of mess in his time—calving season, a plumbing disaster in January, whatever the hell Melly did with glitter last week—but nothing quite compared to the disaster currently unfolding in his front yard.
Miss Honey Baxter, bureau-certified pain in his ass, was flailing around in a mud puddle like some kind of synchronized swimmer on acid. She was filthy, furious, and still somehow clinging to the idea of dignity.
From the porch steps, Ethan watched with Melly held in his arms. He didn’t see a need to rush. The woman was clearly losing the battle, but by the look on her face, she’d come out swinging and he sure didn’t want to miss that.
The snake, thankfully small and now thoroughly traumatized, slithered off.
“Young lady,” Honey scolded Brooke, who lay in the grass looking far too pleased for her damsel in distress act. “That’s the second time you have assaulted me with animals. What on earth were you thinking?”
Assault.
That word landed hard in Ethan’s chest. His gaze flicked to Brooke, whose smirk didn't falter under the weight of the word that made Ethan’s spine straighten.
The bureau didn’t need a reason to look too closely at a kid like Brooke.
He’d go to jail himself before he let anyone twist her wild streak into something ugly.
He’d be having words with her later—firm ones—but right now?
His first instinct was to get between her and the woman in the puddle slinging accusations.
Brooke darted a glance at her dad. “It was just a bull snake.”
“There’s no just when it comes to snakes,” Honey snapped.
Honey got to one knee. She reached for her suitcase for support, planted a foot, and he could see she instantly regretted it. She tugged, but her foot remained firmly suctioned in place.
“Oh, come on,” she muttered, shifting her weight.
With a horrible squelch, her shoe came loose. Her arms pinwheeled, and she teetered in what seemed to be slow motion until she flopped onto her stomach.
A small giggle burst from Brooke.
Honey whipped her head around. “This is not funny.”
“It’s kind of funny,” Ethan said, stopping just short of the edge of the mud puddle. “Pretty sure I told you to leave.”
“I was leaving,” she bit out, “before your children assaulted me.”
Her face was bright red, blotchy with embarrassment, but she still tried to sit up straight and keep lecturing him like she wasn’t dripping farm water and pride.
“Mr. Hale,” she said, her voice clipped. “Were you aware of these repossession proceedings for missed payments?”
He gritted his teeth. “Were you aware that it’s illegal for you to remain on my property after I told you to leave?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “But your daughter just confessed to violating at least two minor bureau codes and possibly one major one because she was desperate and unsupervised. And thanks to my technical trespassing, you’ve narrowly avoided losing the equipment you need for your livelihood.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.”
The nerve of this woman—face-first in his driveway one second, lecturing him about parenting and finances the next. Like she had any idea what it took to keep this place running.
“Be reasonable, Mr. Hale. I don’t expect a thank you or your effusive gratitude. I would just like the permission to do my job.”
She grabbed hold of the handle of her suitcase only for it to pop open, spilling her carefully folded clothes into the mud.
“I’m fine, thank you for asking,” Honey said tightly, pushing herself up with a squish and a groan. “Totally fine.”
Ethan didn’t move at first. He stood there watching this disaster of a woman still trying to hold herself like a bureau official and not a soggy raccoon. There was something almost admirable about it.
Stupid, but admirable.
“Seems so,” he muttered. He set Melly on her feet and held out his hand.
To his surprise, she took it without protest, small fingers cold and trembling in his. He hauled her up like she weighed nothing.
He looked at Brooke, who was now smiling like a cherub. “And you couldn’t tell a bull snake from a rattler?”
Brooke shrugged. He’d known that shrug since she was two. It didn’t fool him then, and it sure as hell didn’t now.
“Brooklyn Rae Hale,” he said, voice dropping into the dad-tone that usually cut through nonsense fast. “Did you do this on purpose?”
Brooke widened her eyes, put on the whole show, but he didn’t believe her for a second.
He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for her to crack.
Not more than a moment later, she did.
“She needed a reason to stay!” Brooke protested, hands thrown up in self-defense. “You weren’t going to let her, and Emma said she needed to talk to her, so I—”
“I didn’t tell you to throw her in a puddle,” Emma cut in, horrified.
“I didn’t know she would freak out that much over a bully!”
“How could you not realize?” Emma threw an arm in Honey’s direction. “I mean, look at her!”
“Hey,” Honey said at the same time Ethan chastised, “Girls.”
All of them fell silent. “You two,” he said, nodding at the older girls, “back in the house. Take your sister with you.”
Emma took Melly’s hand wordlessly.
“I need a word with Ms. Baxter,” he added, then glanced back at the girls. “And then we’re having a family meeting. You too, Ms. Baxter.”
“But Dad—” Brooke started.
“March, young lady.”
Brooke shuffled ahead, muttering something under her breath, but he didn’t ask her to repeat it. He just stood there, arms crossed, waiting until the front door shut behind them.
Only then did he turn to Honey.
Honey spoke before he had a chance. “Believe me, Mr. Hale. I don’t want this any more than you do.”
“Look, I’m sorry my kid knocked you over.”
The words came out gruff, but he meant them. He wasn’t great at apologizing, but watching her stand in front of him in muddy clothes with her pride barely hanging on tugged uncomfortably at something inside him.
“I’m fine,” she said, but the effect was ruined by the shiver that wracked through her.
He sighed, rubbing a hand along his jaw, then let it drop to his side. “Look, I’ve got three daughters. I know what fine means when someone says it like that. It’s the pre-cry kind of fine. The don’t-look-at-me-or-I’ll-lose-it kind.”
She blinked fast. He saw the way her mouth trembled just before she tightened it again. He’d seen that expression too many times. On Brooke, after a hard day. On Emma, when she was pretending not to care. On Melly, when her bottom lip wobbled, but she still insisted she wasn’t tired.
And hell, if he was honest, he’d seen it on himself. In the bathroom mirror. In the tractor window. In all those quiet moments when it all felt like too much.
“I miss the city,” she said after a moment, so quietly he almost didn’t catch it. “It’s been less than a day, and I already miss honking taxis and the subway rumbling beneath my feet. I just want to be home with my fleece-lined socks, my weighted blanket, and a perfectly made cup of chamomile tea.”
Ethan shifted, unsure what to do with this admission. He hadn’t asked for this kind of honesty. And damn if it didn’t make him feel worse than if she’d just yelled at him.
“I’ll be frank with you,” she said. “You’ve been a very difficult man with wild children and feral animals, and I don’t particularly like it here. There’s nothing but open space, thick air, and grass that makes my ankles itch.”
As if summoned, Cluck Norris came strutting by and flapped its wings right near her feet. Honey startled like she’d been zapped.
That was the thing that tipped her. Not the mud. Not his children or him slamming the door in her face.
The chicken.
She pressed her lips together hard and stared back at Ethan. And Ethan—who didn’t like strangers, didn’t like bureau people poking around, and definitely didn’t like her—stood there, watching a muddy, miserable woman try not to fall apart in his yard, and felt something unexpected.
Damn it.
He looked at her for a beat, then said softly, “You want me to go get the chicken so you can write it a citation?”
Her lips parted, a confused huff of air escaping before she realized he was teasing.
“I really was going to leave,” she said after a moment. The words spilled out. “I have spreadsheets, Mr. Hale. I make lists. I’m an auditor, not a…” She searched for the word. “Farm person. And this is—this is just—too much.”
He could see she was trying hard not to cry.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “So, you’ve hit your limit. Fair enough. No shame in it.”
He let that sit there for a moment. Let her breathe.
“Hell,” he added, “I’ve been there. I nearly lost it when Melly learned to open the goat gate last year. You ever try catching three goats and a toddler at the same time?”
She shook her head, and to his surprise, a small smile snuck past her defenses.
“There you go,” he said gently. “That’s better.”
Without thinking too hard about it, he reached out and wiped a smear of mud from her cheek with the edge of his sleeve. It was a stupid move, but she didn’t flinch. She just blinked at him, still looking stunned.
He cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“I said thank you. For the extension on the shaker.”
“Your daughter was very distraught over it,” she replied, watching his expression shift.
“I know.” He dragged a hand down his face, suddenly bone-tired. “She’s gotten really invested in the orchard lately.”
He didn’t explain why. He didn’t mention how hard Emma had been trying to help lately, how quiet she got when he sat down to pay bills, or how she’d started doing things like reading old books about grafting apple trees when she thought no one was watching.
Honey hesitated, and he braced himself for a lecture about boundaries or responsibility or whatever else bureau people liked to say when they weren’t the ones raising kids alone.
But she didn’t.
“She mentioned it’s vital to your operation here,” Honey said.
“It is.”
“And you sell wholesale to grocery stores, I surmise?”
“Correct.”
“And is that profitable?” she asked.
He stiffened. “I thought you were here only for the well. Why the interest in my orchard?”
“Just curiosity,” she said, hands raised. “I have no official interest in your orchard. I am solely an auditor with the Bureau of Magical Compliance.”
“So this really is just about the well then?”
She frowned. “What else would it be about?”
He didn’t answer right away. His jaw worked as he stared toward the house, toward the window where he half-expected to see the girls’ noses pressed to the glass.
“She’s been asking questions,” he said finally, voice low. “About her mother. I thought maybe she’d…thought to ask you.”
“I don’t know her mother, do I?”
Of course, she didn’t know Leticia. It wasn’t her department that rolled up in a black sedan in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. One minute he’d been juggling a baby and a bottle and two toddlers fighting over a bear, and the next, she was just gone.
He hadn’t even put the baby down.
He’d hated himself for that. That when his wife got taken away, he froze. The house had gone quiet afterward, except for the crying, and his own heartbeat pounding like a hammer in his throat.
This woman standing in front of him now, with her big eyes and her perfect posture, she didn’t look like the people who took Leticia, but she carried the same energy. The same calm detachment. The same scent of intrusion disguised as help.
He knew it wasn’t fair. Hell, he knew nothing about her. But all his body seemed to know was that someone from the bureau had just walked onto his land again. Asking questions. Looking around. Opening up wounds that had barely scabbed over.
He swallowed the memory down. “Well, what did she ask you then?”
“She didn’t exactly ask me anything.”
Ethan stepped in closer, the protective part of him flaring up again. “What are you not saying?”
“She admitted something.”
His whole body tensed. “What kind of something? You won’t report whatever it is she said.”
“Relax, Mr. Hale. She did not do anything criminal. And I’m not in the habit of arresting children.”
He let out a short breath. He didn’t trust anyone from the bureau. Not even the nice, fussy ones who cried over chickens and admitted they were in over their heads. She didn’t look like she was lying, and hell, he was tired of suspecting everyone.
“You can change your clothes,” he said after a beat. “We’ll talk about it inside, and then I’ll call you a ride.”
It was a small thing, but he meant it. Sometimes kindness was the only damn thing you could afford to give.
She must have sensed the shift in him because when he turned to head back to the house, she reached out and touched his arm. “She’s been using the well, Mr. Hale. Your kids are using magic. And it hasn’t been formally audited in two decades, so it’s not safe.”
His brows pulled together.
“You deserve to know what’s happening in your home,” she added. “But I want to be clear, I’m here to audit your well, not dismantle your life.”
He turned away, heading toward the porch. His hand hovered over the railing like he needed something to steady himself. Truth was…he did. “I’m afraid you already have.”