Brooks
By Willa’s third morning at Calder Cider, I have learned that she is dangerous in every environment.
Put her in front of customers, and she sells coffee like she invented autumn.
Put her behind a tasting bar, and she makes them feel like choosing cider is less a purchase and more a personality revelation.
Put her in my orchard?
Apparently, she becomes a threat to my sanity and my insurance premiums.
She steps out of the tasting room after the lunch rush, untying the Calder Cider apron she’s been pretending not to care about wearing.
Her hair is pulled back in a loose braid, but half of it has escaped around her face, catching the afternoon light in soft brown-gold strands.
There’s a flush on her cheeks from hours of talking, moving, smiling.
A real flush. Not the polished, hostess version of Willa Hartley. The working version.
The version I’m starting to think about too much.
She lifts her travel mug when she sees me waiting near the porch steps.
“Before you say anything,” she says, “I brought my own coffee today.”
I glance at the faded Hartley & Sons lettering on the side. “Scared of liking mine too much?”
“Scared of dependency.”
“On coffee?”
“On witchcraft.”
I smile despite myself. “Ready to work the orchard this afternoon?”
Her expression changes before she can stop it. Not dramatically. Just a flicker of interest under all that pride. “You trust me with your apples?”
“Trust is a strong word.”
“Ah, so you’re a coward.”
“More like…strategic operator,” I correct. “Besides, it’s not like I’m bringing you in to see any of our secret brew recipes.”
That earns me the smallest smile, the kind she tries to hide and fails at because her eyes give her away before the rest of her does. It shouldn't feel like winning. It does anyway.
The orchard still holds the heat of the day when we start down the first row, the grass dry now beneath our boots except in the low places where shade has protected the morning dew.
Sunlight slants across the trees in thick golden bands, catching on red apples and turning the leaves translucent at their edges.
The air smells like warm fruit, cut grass, and dust, with that faint yeasty sweetness from windfalls beginning to soften under the trees.
Willa walks beside me with her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket, taking everything in with the same intensity she brought to the tasting room yesterday.
She doesn’t just look at the trees. She studies them.
The angle of a branch. The spread of fruit.
The groundcover beneath. Her eyes move fast, intelligent and hungry, as if every detail is a sentence and she intends to read the whole damn book.
“You planted these too close,” she says finally.
I glance at her. “Good afternoon, Brooks. Your orchard is lovely. Thank you for this tour.”
“It is lovely,” she says, not missing a beat. “And the rows are too tight.”
“They’re high-density.”
“They’re going to shade each other if you let the canopy get away from you.”
“Well then, I won’t let the canopy get away from me.”
She looks at me then, sharp and amused. “That sounds dangerously close to arrogance.”
“I would say it was confidence.”
“Oh good. That’s much less irritating.”
I stop beside one of the Honeycrisp rows and reach up, turning an apple gently in my hand to check the underside. “Are you always this generous with professional feedback?”
“You haven’t paid for the nice version.”
“I paid in coffee.”
She shakes her Hartley & Sons to go mug. “Not today you didn’t.”
I laugh, and the sound catches me off guard. Out here, it feels different. Less contained than in the tasting room. The orchard opens around us—wind slipping through leaves, bees humming low near the late clover, the heavy sweetness of ripe apples pressing into the afternoon air.
Somewhere beyond the trees, Jace is arguing with the tractor again, his voice rising and falling with the kind of confidence only a man losing an argument with machinery can have.
Willa hears it too. Her lips twitch. “Is he always like that?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“Also yes.”
She steps toward the tree and reaches up, her fingers closing around one of the apples I’d just inspected.
She twists it free with the kind of practiced motion that makes something in me tighten.
No wasted movement. No hesitation. She knows this work in her bones, the way some people know songs from childhood.
She holds the apple up between us. “This one’s ready.”
“It is.”
“You should’ve picked it before the sun hit this side too hard.”
“Now you’re just showing off.” Her only response is a smirk. I take the apple from her, our fingers brushing.
The contact lasts less than a second, but it lingers. Her hand is warm from the afternoon, strong from work, a little rougher than expected and somehow more intimate because of it. Willa turns away quickly like the next tree has suddenly become fascinating.
We continue working our way down the row with crates and ladders, falling into a rhythm.
She argues with me about my picking order.
I tell her she’s wrong. She proves she isn’t.
I pretend not to be impressed. She pretends not to enjoy proving me wrong.
The whole thing should feel like a problem, and maybe it is, but it also feels extremely close to easy.
Too easy.
By the time we reach the higher branches, the afternoon has gone thick and bright, warm enough that Willa shrugs out of her flannel and ties it around her waist. She climbs the ladder before I can tell her I’ll take the upper fruit, one boot on the rung, one hand gripping the side rail as she reaches into the leaves.
“Careful,” I say.
She glances down, brows lifted. “Did you just tell an orchard owner to be careful on a ladder?”
“I told a stubborn woman to be careful on my ladder at my orchard where I pay the insurance premiums.”
She snorts and reaches higher.
The branch above her sways under the weight of late fruit, leaves scattering light across her face in flickers of gold and green.
For a second I forget to breathe. She looks like she belongs to the orchard, all determination and sunlight and sharp edges, beautiful in a way that feels less like something to admire and more like something to survive.
Then her boot slips, the ladder wobbling beneath her. There’s a startled gasp, a flash of wide eyes—and then she’s falling.
My body reacts before thought catches up and I catch her just as she’s going down.
Not gracefully. Not planned. Just instinct and momentum as she tumbles backwards into me, arms flinging around my shoulders while mine wrap tight around her ribs and beneath her knees to keep her from hitting the ground.
The impact knocks the breath out of both of us, her weight solid and real against my chest as I stagger back a step to steady us.
For a second, everything stops.
She’s in my arms, fully, completely, like something out of a movie neither of us would admit to watching.
Her braid has come loose, strands of hair falling across her face, her breath warm against my neck.
One of her hands is still gripping my shirt like she’s not entirely convinced I won’t drop her.
“I’m fine,” she says. Even though her voice is steady, her breath is not.
“You sure?”
“Yes,” she nods, her eyes finding mine slowly as she lifts her head. “You can put me down.”
I don’t. Not right away, at least. Because she’s nose to nose with me, her green eyes brighter than they were a moment ago, lips parted like she’s either about to argue or say something that would ruin us both.
The orchard shifts around us—the hush of leaves, the thud of an apple dropping somewhere nearby, Jace’s distant victorious shout as the tractor finally turns over.
My thumbs press lightly against her rib before I catch myself.
Her gaze drops to my mouth, God help me.
I set her down and step back first because one of us has to remember there are rules, even if neither of us turns out to be very good at following them.
“There,” I say, voice rougher than I mean it to be. “Safety inspection complete.”
Her chin lifts, cheeks pink in a way I’m choosing not to attribute entirely to the heat. “You should inspect that ladder of yours.”
“Um, I’m pretty sure my ladder is innocent here.”
“Your ladder conspired.”
“With gravity?”
“Probably.” She grabs one of the rungs, giving it a shake. “See? Rickety.”
“Stop manhandling my ladder,” I say, biting back a smile. “Do you always blame equipment?”
“Only when handsome men get smug about catching me.”
The words land between us and I see the moment she realizes what she said.
For one perfect second, Willa Hartley is speechless.
I look at her. “Handsome, huh?”
She closes her eyes briefly and holds up a hand cutting me off. “Don’t start.”
“I don’t think I can ignore that.”
“You absolutely can.”
I clutch my nonexistent pearls. “I’m being objectified in my own orchard.”
“You’re being insufferable in your own orchard. And don’t pretend you don’t know you’re handsome.”
She reaches past me for another apple, shoulder brushing my chest as she does, and if it’s retaliation, it’s effective.
Her hair smells like cold air and apples and something soft I can’t name.
I turn my head slightly before I can stop myself, chasing it on instinct, but the scent slips away before I can catch it fully.
It’s always like that. Hints. Edges. A world everyone else seems to inhale whole.
I push the thought down before it can surface.
By late afternoon, the sky begins to change.
Not all at once. Just a slow bruising at the edge of the horizon, clouds gathering beyond the western ridge, darker than they were supposed to be this early in the evening. The air shifts with it, dampness sliding under the warmth, the leaves turning their pale undersides toward the wind.
Willa notices before I say anything.
“Rain,” she says.
“The forecast said tonight.”
“Well, the forecast lied.”
I whistle toward Jace, who looks up from across the row. “We need to pull the west block before that hits.”
Willa is already moving. “Which trees?”
I point, and she doesn’t wait for more. She grabs a crate, sets it on her hip, and heads toward the west block like she works here. Like she knows the urgency before I have to explain it. Something opens in my chest, inconvenient and warm and terrifying.
We pick faster, the easy rhythm sharpening into purpose.
Apples thud into crates. Leaves whisper harder overhead.
The tractor rattles between rows, Evan appearing from the storage barn with tarps draped over one shoulder.
Willa argues with him for thirty seconds about which bins should come in first, and somehow, by the end of it, Evan is doing what she suggested.
Jace catches my eye and grins like an idiot, then gives me a thumbs up.
I ignore him.
The first drop of rain hits the back of my neck just as Willa climbs onto the flatbed to help stack the last crate. She turns her face toward the sky, and another drop lands on her cheek, then another. Her lashes flutter. Her mouth curves, not quite a smile, not quite surrender.
For a second she looks happy. Not polite. Not triumphant. Not guarded.
Happy.
Then the sky opens.
Rain spills over the orchard in a sudden silver sheet, soaking leaves and grass and us in seconds. Jace swears. Evan yells something about the tarps. I grab the last crate as Willa reaches for the edge of the flatbed, boots slipping on wet wood.
This time when I catch her, she lands against me.
Full contact.
Chest to chest.
Her hands clutch my shoulders, mine bracket her waist, and rain runs down her temple and along the line of her jaw. She’s laughing, breathless, startled… alive. The sound goes through me like heat.
“You keep falling into me.”
“Because your entire orchard is unsafe,” she retorts, blinking against the rain hitting her lashes.
“Occupational hazard.” My grip tightens without permission.
Her laughter fades as the rain beats around us, loud enough to turn the rest of the world distant. Water darkens her sweater, beads on her lower lip, and I am suddenly, painfully aware of how easy it would be to lean down. How little space there is between want and doing something reckless.
Her eyes hold mine. Wide, bright. Maybe even waiting.
“Brooks!” Evan shouts from somewhere behind us. “Equipment shed. Now.”
The spell snaps, but not cleanly.
Willa steps back, breathing fast. I let her go because I have to, not because I want to.
She tucks wet hair behind her ear and looks toward the shed, then back at me. “Guess the forecast wasn’t the only thing that lied.”
I swallow, still feeling the shape of her beneath my hands. “What else lied?”
Her eyes flick to my mouth. Then away. “My ability to stay out of trouble.”
She jumps down from the flatbed and runs toward the shed through the rain, boots splashing through mud, shoulders shaking with laughter.
I stand there half a second too long, rain soaking through my flannel, watching her go.
The storm rolls overhead, deep and sudden, turning the orchard wild around us.
And all I can think is that the real danger isn’t the weather.
It’s that I almost kissed Willa Hartley in the middle of it.