Chapter 8
HONEY
“I haven’t been in this cottage for years,” he says, toweling off his hair then running his hand through it. The T-shirt is way too small, but he’s wearing it anyway, owning it like a champ, and it’s hugging every gorgeous muscle.
“I forgot about these built-ins.” He runs a hand over the shelves running along one side of the wall.”
“Danni said they still have some planned renovations on this cottage. I hope they keep the built-ins and the exposed beams.”
“They will.”
I point up at the clerestory windows, tucked close to the sloping ceiling.
“These are my favorite part of the cottage. That one fills the cottage with the morning sun.” I shift and point toward the other wall.
“And that one paints a gorgeous sunset on the wall every evening. There’s another clerestory window in my bedroom facing the pine forest. When the sky is clear at night, the stars twinkle through the pine boughs.
” I’m talking too much. And, specifically, I’m talking too much about me.
I snap my lips closed. If I open up too much, even if it’s just one small crack at a time—like how I’m a sucker for sunsets and sunrises—eventually the cracks will burst open and I’ll be telling him every little thing about me.
I turn abruptly and walk to the fridge as if my life depends on it.
“How long have you worked at May Ranch?” I ask.
He joins me at the counter. “After ten years in the military, most of it in a combat zone, I joined Bear here. He needed help at the ranch, and I missed ranching like a fish misses water.”
“Does Ava like living on a ranch?”
“Ava?”
My head’s stuck in the fridge, looking for the feta. I pull it out and glance over at him. “Yeah, Ava.” I laugh. “Your daughter. I wasn’t imagining her, was I?”
“Ava’s not my daughter.”
“Oh.” I blink at him. “I’m sorry. You two get along so well, I just assumed…”
“Skye, the owner of Seventh Heaven, the secondhand shop downtown, she’s Ava’s mother. Skye just signed the adoption paperwork. You know that whole ‘it takes a village’ thing? When Skye decided to go the foster to adopt route, me and some of my friends told her we were going to help her.”
I set the knife down and look at him.
“We take it seriously. It doesn’t hurt that Ava’s a sweet kid. She’s funny and smart as well.” He takes the knife from my hands. “You want me to chop these?”
“Please.”
“Not as much of an ass as you thought, huh, Tiny?”
He dices the tomatoes while I watch, smiling despite the nickname. “You’re checking out my abs while I do this, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“We have an ass at May Ranch. A real one. Name’s Bert.
Big ears, puppy-dog eyes. Everybody loves him.
” He dumps the tomatoes onto the salad. “He’s a real chill guy until a coyote jumps the fence and tries to get near one of our horses or calves.
Then he’ll kick the crud out of that coyote.
He’ll die before anything hurts the horses and calves he protects.
” He moves to the sink and turns it on before I have a chance to figure out how to respond.
He washes the cutting board and knife while I finish the salad, whipping up a vinaigrette and tossing in olives and feta. I’m trying not to think too much about how nice it is preparing a meal with someone else, even if it’s just pizza and salad.
He pulls two plates and salad bowls from the cabinet and sets them at the bar in front of the barstools. “Is this okay?” he asks.
“Perfect. I usually eat here or out on the front porch. Or the clawfoot bathtub, my other favorite part of the house.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m trying to scrape them back in.
“We could eat in the bathtub. Your choice.” His lips quirk up.
I place the salad bowl on the bar, trying real hard not to picture us in the bathtub together sharing more than just a meal.
He slides two pieces of pizza onto each plate, then squints around the room until his eyes land on a vase of wildflowers I picked earlier.
He shifts a book next to one of the place settings, over to the middle of the bar, then he does a double take, picks it back up and thumbs through it. “You like reading about World War Two?”
“I love reading almost anything, but especially anything history. That was on one of those shelves.”
“I might want to borrow this… when you’re done.”
“Okay.” I grab some glasses from the cabinet then realize that the only thing I have is water. “I’d offer you a beer, but I don’t have any.”
“Don’t need one.”
The realization hits me. I don’t need one either.
This is the first time in over two years that I haven’t sat down for dinner and hadn’t had, at the very least, a fleeting desire to have a beer or a glass of wine.
Or four or five or six glasses, to deaden the pain I felt after Cain and Trudi’s death.
He walks to the windows, facing away from me, his arms crossed, staring out the window at the silvery sheets of rain slicing through the darkness. “Only getting worse out there,” he murmurs.
I place a couple candles on the counter, next to the vase.
I light them, then immediately regret it.
We might as well be in the bathtub. With the flowers, it’s too much, like I’m thinking this is a date.
I quickly snuff the candles out and stash them, still smoking, in the cabinet before he turns back around.
Maybe you should just put a hard, ugly lump of coal there instead of the candle, Honey. Would that be dreary enough?
He joins me at the counter, pulling a big set of keys out of his pocket, and setting them next to his plate. He slides onto a barstool. “Decided against the candles?”
Does the man have eyes on the back of his head?
“I figured I should save them in case the power goes out,” I lie.
He pops an olive in his mouth before devouring one of the slices of pizza on his plate, just in the time it takes me to take two small bites. He dabs at his lips. “I’m trying to eat like a gentleman.”
“I appreciate it.”
“How long are you staying in Heaven?”
“Not sure yet.” I fiddle with my napkin, then tuck it on my lap and smile. “Tell me about you. What exactly does a Florida rancher do besides wrangle cows, ride bucking broncos, and wear cowboy hats?”
“I usually stay far away from bucking broncos.” He slides another slice of pizza onto his plate, then adds one to mine even though I’ve barely started on the one in my hand.
“We’re a cattle ranch. Beef cattle. For the next week, there’ll be storm cleanup.
It seems like we just recovered from the last hurricane.
It was a brutal one. We lost some cattle, and we had to”—he winks—” wrangle some cows that got through the broken fence lines and wandered into the forest and Billie’s Marsh.
” He rubs his finger over his keychain—rubbed bronze with a four-leaf clover in clear plastic.
“And as far as wearing a cowboy hat, you should try one instead of that floppy sunhat you wear. Cowboy hats are not just good for horse riding.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Do you have horses at May Ranch?”
“We have work horses. I have three and Bear and Lacy have a handful between them. And there are some extras for the men to use. All of them are well cared for. Lacy, Bear’s sister, who’s been horse crazy since she was seven, wants more.
She’s pushing to expand the stables and rent some stalls out.
” He takes a sip of water. “But she knows what she’s doing.
” He smiles, and I can see the pride shining in his eyes.
“I was horse crazy for a while. Of course, if I could have ridden a unicorn instead, that would have been even better. My parents sent me to an overnight horse camp when I was fifteen. No unicorns, but I swear it was the best few weeks of my childhood…” Until it wasn’t.
“Until you found out there weren’t any unicorns in the stables?”
I smile weakly. “Yeah.”
“I was raised on a ranch. My parents were struggling financially, turned it into a dude ranch for rich people for a couple years. Then when that didn’t take, as a last-ditch effort, they turned it into a horse camp for kids.
Probably like the one you went to. That didn’t last for long.
My dad got sick, and they had to sell the land for condos.
” He glowers at the table. Obviously still a touchy subject.
“Fortunately, it was right when I was graduating from high school. I joined the military the second I could instead of moving into their house in the suburbs. I loved them, and they had no other choice, but it hit me hard when they sold our ranch. The Lucky Clover Ranch had been in our family for several generations.” He rubs a finger over his key ring again.
“Wait, what was the name of your ranch?”
A crack of lightning flashes through the room just as hard and fast as the name of his family’s ranch—The Lucky Clover Ranch—hits my brain, along with the realization that John Fox might possibly be my first crush.
The electricity pops off, and the room is startling silent.
The deep black of the night grabs me and pulls me down, into a memory.
I’m in Trey’s car, after the accident. Trey is looming over me, his eyes fierce—the only thing I can see in the darkness.
“If you say one word, I swear to you, Honey, I’ll make sure everyone thinks you were drinking and driving.
Even if nobody can prove it, I will destroy you.
Nobody cares about proof. They just care about money. ”
A crash on the far side of the room yanks me back to the present. John cusses in more than a few different ways. “Kicked something over,” he mumbles.
The electricity switches back on, washing the room in a barrage of light. I wrap my arms around my chest, trying to silence the panic inside of me. My whole body is shaking.