Chapter 13
Honey
A light tapping sound jolted Honey from what may have been the most restful sleep of her adult life.
Instinct took over. Her arm flailed toward the nightstand, reaching for the canister of pepper spray she kept in her top drawer. Instead, she grabbed air and a handful of stuffed bear. She opened her eyes and took in her surroundings.
Right.
She was not in her city apartment, braced to defend herself against a would-be intruder with surprisingly good manners. She was in the Hale family farmhouse, in a bedroom painted an alarming shade of pink, with something warm and faintly hay-scented curled against her side.
“Don’t let me disturb your rest,” Honey said to the goat.
The tapping came again.
“Coming,” Honey called out as she threw the covers aside and gathered Pickles in her arms. He bleated once in protest.
She padded across the carpet to the door, feeling the baby goat’s warmth against her chest. She opened the door just as Ethan raised his hand to knock again. He stood there, holding a basket of laundry.
He blinked once, then spun around so fast she nearly dropped the goat. “Jesus, Baxter!”
Honey looked down, wondering why he was reacting so strongly to a woman in her pajamas. He had three children, for goodness’ sake.
Oh no.
No no no no no.
Undershirt was generous. This was a camisole, with straps far too flimsy and fabric that clung in all the wrong places. And her underwear—god help her…
She slammed the door with an audible thwack.
“I’m sorry,” she called out. “I don’t have anything clean.”
Honey had forgotten she hadn’t yet dealt with the laundry situation, and the rest of her clothing was hardly suitable for sleeping in after her long day working at the wishing well.
It was a failure on every level. Honey prided herself on her professionalism and her preparedness. She kept backup tights in her glove compartment. She had lint rollers in every purse. And she never ever answered her door unless she was completely dressed.
But apparently, the orchard had broken her.
“I—uh…I have your things here.” His voice sounded muffled, like he was still facing away even though the door was shut. “Some of it was beyond saving, so I got you a couple shirts. I didn’t know your size. So, anyway. I’ll just leave this out here.”
There was a soft thunk as the basket hit the floor, then the quiet retreat of his footsteps.
For a moment, Honey pressed her forehead against the door. Her face burned. Her chest burned. Even the goat in her arms seemed to be judging her, ears flicking back and nostrils flaring in disapproval.
“Well…” she muttered.
She cracked the door open and pulled the basket inside, setting the goat down gently as she examined the contents.
On top were three soft, new cotton T-shirts, tags still attached, in varying sizes and colors—white, navy, heather gray.
All simple, but clearly chosen with care.
Beneath them, her clothes had been laundered and neatly folded with surprisingly crisp lines.
Even her socks were paired. Her bras and underwear were tucked discreetly at the bottom, bundled in a shirt, like he’d tried to give her a measure of privacy.
Honey stared at the basket longer than was strictly necessary.
The thought of him handling her undergarments should have horrified her. But it didn’t. Not exactly.
She shook her head to clear it.
“Get a grip,” she whispered to herself. “This is unacceptable.”
Still, she chose the softest of the shirts—navy, oversized—and paired it with a pair of pants. She twisted her hair up into a bun and gave herself a brisk nod in the mirror.
“Professional. Detached. Collected.”
She stepped into the kitchen to find Ethan sitting alone at the table, already sipping from a mug that said World’s Okayest Farmer in peeling block letters.
He looked up at her, did a quick once-over, and—bless him—said nothing about the earlier incident.
Honey, however, was acutely aware of the fact that she was wearing a shirt he had chosen. That he had folded her underwear. That, for one split second this morning, he had seen so much of her.
But she smiled anyway.
She cleared her throat. “Your goat is, frankly, a menace.” She set him down on the floor, and he trotted away, his little hooves clicking on the tile.
“So are you.” Ethan narrowed his eyes at her over his coffee. “Brooke told me that you were teaching them how to wish ‘properly.’”
“I merely reminded her that magic requires precision,” Honey said primly, brushing goat hair off her pants.
He grinned, and her stomach did a slow, traitorous flip.
Honey recognized the sensation immediately—an inconvenient rush of warmth followed by the mental scramble to contain it.
She’d felt something like it once before, years ago, when she was still in training and had nearly approved a wish for a widower who smiled the same way Ethan just had.
Back then, she’d written herself up for “emotional compromise.” She imagined the phrase still printed in neat ink on her personnel record.
Mr. Aldridge, still a senior auditor at the time, had advised her that “compassion clouds judgment, Miss Baxter. Best to keep feelings separate.” He hadn’t said it unkindly—he never did—but the disappointment in his tone had stayed with her longer than the reprimand itself.
This, she thought, was the same category of problem: the kind that started with empathy and ended with paperwork. She crossed her arms across her middle.
“Where are the girls?”
“Off to school,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Hope the ruckus this morning didn’t wake you.”
There was something startlingly tender in his words.
He’d folded her clothes. He’d wanted her to sleep well.
Honey knew her standards were ridiculously low, but still, she felt like a stranger in a very familiar scene, as if she’d been given a temporary backstage pass into someone else’s life. Someone else's family.
“Well, I better get to work.”
“Let me make you a cup,” Ethan offered, already reaching for the cabinet beside the microwave, where the coffee mugs used to be. After he opened the cabinet, he paused, hand hovering midair.
His brow furrowed.
The cabinet door remained ajar as he opened the one next to it. Then another. And another. His movements grew more clipped with each swing of a door until, finally, he found the mugs directly above the coffeepot.
A much more logical choice, in Honey’s opinion.
He pulled one out, slowly, and stared into the perfectly aligned rows of drink ware. Mugs sorted by size. Handles all facing the same direction.
Still looking into the cabinet, he asked, “What did you do?”
“I had some extra time, so I thought I could help—”
He shut the cabinet with a little more force than necessary, then closed his eyes for a long breath. When he opened them again, his tone had cooled.
“Ms. Baxter,” he said evenly, “this is my home. You’re here because I need that well shut down. That’s it. That’s the job.”
She blinked, thrown by the sudden change in tone.
“I didn’t ask for your input on how my kitchen runs, or how my family does. I didn’t ask you to reorganize my life while I was sleeping. I don’t care if you think it makes more sense. That’s not what this is. This isn’t your place. There are boundaries.”
She pulled back. “Right. Of course. I’m—”
“Forget it. I have to check the trees. There’s leftover stew in the fridge if you’re hungry for lunch. Otherwise, Poppy’s number is on the fridge, and he can take you into town to get something.”
Before Honey could apologize or thank him for his thoughtfulness, the door slammed behind him.
Honey stood in the center of the kitchen, the goat long gone, the cabinets all gaping open like they were just as embarrassed as she was.
This was how it always happened.
She was charming at first. Quirky. Endearing even. People liked that she “helped.” That she fixed things. Until it stopped being helpful and started being invasive. Until a stressful night or a misplaced sock drawer or an “improvement” no one asked for cracked the foundation.
Admittedly, this had happened quicker than usual.
She stared at the mug he’d left empty on the counter for her. She hadn’t meant to overstep. But she had. She always did.
She should be grateful it happened so quickly. It should be enough to quash any silly notions about his hands folding her underwear, or whether he had the same dimple his daughters did.
An apology was in order. She poured some coffee into her mug and swallowed it black. Then, she shut each of the cabinets, trying to steady her thoughts.
Maybe she could make the girls a healthy snack this afternoon to apologize. Something simple. Maybe her honey wheat flax muffins. Growing bodies couldn’t subsist on boxed mac and cheese, no matter how colorful the packaging. They needed omegas. Fiber. Warmth—
She caught herself mid-rummage in the pantry.
No.
She would apologize and maintain professional distance. She would audit the well and nothing else.
After gulping down the rest of her coffee, she rinsed her mug in the sink and placed it in the dishwasher. She resisted the urge to rearrange the dishes already in there for maximum cleanliness.
After a quick stop to Melly’s room to retrieve her computer, she slipped on her shoes and trudged outside.
Honey made it exactly seven minutes before she meddled again.
She’d been on her way to the wishing well, laptop tucked under her arm, and mind focused on work and only work.
But as she passed the orchard, something caught her eye near the back of the barn.
Thick green vines wound themselves around the body of a bicycle.
A perfectly good bicycle at that. Her fingers twitched with the need to intervene.
It would only take a minute to fix. Maybe two.
She set her laptop down and crouched beside the bike, carefully tugging at the vines. The stems were thick and shiny, and the leaves were three-pronged.
She wiped sweat from her forehead and grunted as she wrestled the vine from the gears. She heard the small pitter-patter of little feet coming over, and she looked over to see Pickle’s approach. He stopped just short of her feet, bleated once, and stared pointedly.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Honey said, grimacing. “I was not meddling. I was simply…”
She gave the vine another tug, and something gave way. With a startled yelp, Honey toppled backward. She let out a small “oof” as the wind rushed out of her lungs.
Footsteps crunched over the gravel path. Marlene rounded the corner, her arms crossed, lips twitching like she was trying very hard not to laugh.
“Not sure you should mess with that, hun.”
“I’m not messing.” She groaned. “I’m just freeing a perfectly good bicycle from nature’s hostile takeover.”
Marlene snorted. “Some people need to learn the hard way.”
“What does that mean?”
Ethan rounded the corner, a coil of fencing slung over one shoulder, and immediately frowned when he saw her. “What did you do?”
“I don’t like the way you phrased that.”
He raised an eyebrow. When Honey didn’t say anything, he looked to Marlene.
“Don’t look at me,” Marlene said. “I try not to get in everyone’s business.”
That earned the smallest breath of a laugh from Ethan. “Fine. You two figure it out. I’ve got work to do.”
“I wasn’t doing anything,” Honey said. “I was just on my way to the wishing well—”
“The well is that way. Seems inefficient to come off the path.”
“Maybe I meandered over here to admire the foliage.”
“This is ridiculous. You’d rather risk doing injury to yourself than admit you were doing the one thing I asked you not to.”
“I was not meddling,” she shot back. “Besides, don’t you have work to do?”
Marlene made a low oooh noise under her breath.
“Oh, please. You just can’t help yourself.” He got closer until the toes of his boots were inches from hers. Honey’s heart gave a traitorous thump.
“Marlene,” Ethan said, not taking his eyes off Honey. “You can go. I’ve got this.”
Marlene smirked. “Yeah, you do.”
“I’ve got to get back to the well,” Honey said as Marlene backed away.
“Enough,” Ethan said.
That tone. It went straight down her spine.
Crisp. Authoritative. Decided. The kind of voice that would make people in a boardroom snap to attention.
She’d been conditioned to respect that tone.
Her muscles tightened with the urge to follow the order, not because she had to, but because something in her wanted to.
She exhaled slowly. Damn it. She liked rules. She liked structure and order and well-defined roles. And Ethan, maddeningly stubborn as he was, fit that mold a little too well when he told her what to do like that.
“Get in the house, Ms. Baxter.”