Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Scarlett
I’ve interviewed a sitting senator, a man who trafficked women, and a pop star mid-breakdown. I’ve sat for interviews after my own breakdown. None of that made my hands sweat the way this gravel driveway does.
Doug rides between us the whole way to the Haven family farm, panting like he’s run a marathon, drool roping off his jowls onto my thigh, vibrating with the unshakable conviction that dinner is close and getting closer.
Every few seconds he lets out a low, urgent whine, as if he’s worried we might forget where we’re going.
“Does he ever stop drooling?”
Dean glances over, a smirk twisting his lips. “Thought you didn’t mind drool.”
Touché.
“I don’t mind a little drool,” I clarify, wiping a fresh strand off my knee. “But this is a biblical flood.”
Dean snorts. It’s not quite a laugh, but it’s close enough that I mark it as a win. “You said the D-word. Now you live with the consequences.” He returns his attention to the road. “He’ll level out once he’s fed and go back to the lazy beast we all know and tolerate.”
The truck rattles up the gravel road, the engine growling through a pothole that jolts Doug sideways into my ribs. He doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are fixed on the windshield with the fervent devotion of a pilgrim approaching Mecca, and a fresh rope of drool connects his jowl to my thigh.
“We’re almost there, buddy,” Dean tells him.
Almost there.
Great.
I should be thrilled. I’ll get to meet the Havens and maybe hear their take on the feud and the treasure.
But the closer we get to the farm, the tighter my chest goes. Why am I nervous?
Dean turns up a gravel drive, and the Haven place spreads out in front of us. Red barn, white farmhouse, fields rolling down to water.
Dean cuts the engine.
Doug immediately scrambles across my lap, claws digging in, and hurls himself out the door the second Dean opens it, gone toward the house at a dead waddle.
“Doug—” Dean sighs and slides out from behind the wheel, but makes no attempt to follow his dog. Instead, he circles the truck’s hood and waits for me to get out.
I don’t move.
I stare at the farmhouse. It is so pretty. I didn’t know places like this existed outside of the b-roll we’d cut into segments about small-town America. I always assumed someone built those places for the camera.
Flowers. I should have brought flowers.
Or maybe wine.
“Coming?” Dean’s standing by the truck, watching me with that unreadable expression of his.
I grab my bag and step out. The gravel crunches under my heels—the wrong shoes, always the wrong shoes—and the smell hits me. Hay. Animals. Something cooking that makes my stomach clench with hunger I didn’t know I had.
I smooth my jacket, tuck my hair behind my ears, and take one step forward…
And a white, feathered ball of fury comes around the corner of the barn and streaks toward me. It hits me at knee height with the force of a linebacker.
“Oh—” I stumble backward, one heel sinking into gravel, and my arms pinwheel for a second before I catch myself against the truck’s fender.
The goose doesn’t stop. It circles back, wings spread wide, neck extended to full, terrifying length, and comes at me again.
“Noodle,” Dean scolds. “No.”
Noodle? I think, a delirious laugh caught in my throat. The Havens have a demon goose, and they call it… Noodle?
The goose’s beak snaps at the air three inches from my shin, and I press myself flat against the truck door. My heart is hammering, which is embarrassing, because it’s a goose and I have faced down much more dangerous things in both my career and my life.
“Dean…” I hate the whimper in my voice.
“Just walk toward the house. He won’t actually bite you.”
“He looks like he’s going to actually bite me.”
“He looks like that at everyone. Noodle!” To my surprise, he steps between the goose and me, which is either heroic or insane. “Back off or I’m putting you on the menu for the next family dinner.”
Noodle pulls up short, wings still half-raised, and fixes one beady eye on Dean. A long, low hiss escapes its throat, the sound of pure, undiluted offense.
“I’m sorry,” I manage, pressing myself against the truck. “Did I—did I do something wrong?”
“You exist on his property.” Dean doesn’t take his eyes off the goose. “That’s enough.”
Noodle hisses again, louder this time, and takes a menacing step forward. Dean takes a matching step back, and I feel the truck shift as he leans against it beside me. We’re shoulder to shoulder now, staring down an angry fifteen-pound ball of feathers and rage.
I shoot him a sideways glance while keeping one eye on the bird. “What happened to ‘walk toward the house. He won’t bite you’?”
“I lied. Henry!” he calls toward the house. “Call off your damn bird!”
The screen door bangs open, and a man steps onto the porch, drying his hands on a dish towel.
“Noodle.” His voice is easy, unbothered. “Enough.”
The goose gives me one last look, then turns and waddles off toward the barn.
“He does that.” The man comes down the steps, tucking the towel into his back pocket. Hair gone mostly gray, blue-gray eyes with deep creases at the corners. “My late wife, Lana, brought him home as a gosling. He’s outlived his welcome by about nineteen years.”
“Then why keep him?”
“Because she brought him home. She loved him, so now I love him for her.” He extends a hand. “Henry Haven.”
“Scarlett Crawford.”
“Welcome to our home, Scarlett.” His handshake is firm, calloused, then he glances past me at Dean, still leaning against the truck. “You let a goose tree you against your own vehicle?”
“I was managing the situation.”
“Sure you were.” Henry claps him on the shoulder, and Dean lets it happen. Doesn’t shrug it off, doesn’t step away. It’s the first time all day I’ve seen anyone touch him without him going rigid. “Well, both of you come on inside. Wren’s done something with a pie that’ll make you cry.”
I follow Henry up the porch steps, my heels catching between the boards, and Dean falls into step behind me. The screen door creaks open, and the smell hits me full force—something rich and herby and delicious.
Inside, the kitchen is chaos. Steam rising from three pots. Counters buried under bowls and cutting boards. A radio playing something twangy underneath the human noise—shouting, laughing, someone singing along badly and without shame. Doug is already underfoot, nose the floor for scraps.
“Ah, you’re here.” Mimi appears with a wooden spoon and a streak of something red across her jacket. “Everybody shut up for a second. This is Scarlett. Malcolm’s reporter, yes, but she’s got spine and a decent sense of humor, so we’re keeping her. Scarlett, this is everyone.”
She points the spoon around the room like a baton.
“Shea, running the kitchen like the general she is. Piper, hiding behind that book. Wren, who is supposed to be setting the table instead of staring at that damn phone. Colter, who is somehow both helping and making everything worse.”
“I resent that,” Colter says, coming into the kitchen juggling an armful of potatoes.
“You resemble that,” Wren corrects, not looking up from her phone.
The tall woman at the stove—Shea—turns and gives me a warm smile. She wears her light brown hair in a practical ponytail with a dish towel over one shoulder. “Ignore all of them.” She points her spoon at a cutting board. “Can you chop?”
“I can chop.”
“Good. Rescue those potatoes from Colter and dice them up.”
“Hey,” Colter protests.
And that’s it. That’s the whole vetting process. She hands me a knife and turns back to her pot, and the relief of having something to do with my hands nearly buckles my knees.
At lunch today, Malcolm sat me at a table set with crystal and china and asked about my follower demographics between courses.
Here, a woman I’ve known for forty seconds has handed me a knife.
I chop potatoes.
Piper puts down her book—a romance novel, based on the cover—and wanders over. She’s pretty in an understated way—dark hair loose around her shoulders, freckles, big blue eyes behind her cat-eye glasses.
“Hi,” she says, and there’s a shyness in it that instantly makes me want to stand between her and the world. “Don’t mind us. We’re always like this.”
“Loud?”
“Chaotic.” She considers. “But the good kind. Mostly.”
Wren appears from the dining room, phone still in hand, and gives me a grin with nothing guarded in it at all.
Early twenties, with the same lighter coloring as Shea.
But she’s wired differently than both of her sisters, antsy like someone who hasn’t figured out how to sit still and isn’t planning to learn.
“Are you the one Dean jumped in the harbor for?”
Heat climbs my neck. “That’s me.”
“He never jumps in the harbor. Ever. Not even for tourists who fall in. Last summer a guy went in off the ferry ramp and Dean threw him a line and made him swim it.” Her grin widens. “He likes you.”
“Uh, no. He hates me.”
“Same thing, with Dean.” She’s gone before I can respond, hollering into the dining room. “Colter! Hazel’s got the napkins again!”
Colter sets another load of potatoes down next to my cutting board and sticks out a hand and gives a smile that could light a runway. “Colter. That’s my chaos gremlin with the napkins. Hazel! Come say hi to Dean’s friend.”
“I’m not his friend.”
A small blur in crooked pigtails materializes from under the kitchen table, purple smudged on one cheek, and stares up at me with enormous blue-gray eyes.
“You’re pretty.”
“Thank you. So are you.”
She tilts her head. “Are you famous?”
The kitchen goes quiet for half a second. Not awkward. Just everyone holding still to hear how I answer a five-year-old.
“I used to be. On TV. Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Hazel.” Colter crouches beside her. “Remember? Some questions are for later.”
“But, Daddy, she has sad eyes.” Hazel points directly at my face with the total conviction of someone who hasn’t learned that adults prefer their sadness unremarked upon. “See? Right there. Aunt Piper says people with sad eyes have stories.”