Chapter 21 Rowe
Rowe
“What happened to your face?” I ask Pane the next morning when he enters the foyer, a pencil behind his ear, tools threaded to his belt, new boots on his feet, and a tight shirt on his torso.
The man could make a blind woman swoon.
Except for the knuckle-length bruise that runs just under his left cheek.
He touches it and winces. “There may have been an incident at poker last night.”
“An incident?”
He sucks in air through his teeth. “Yes.”
“With whom did you have this ‘incident’?”
“A fist.” His gaze flicks to the driveway, where Cristina’s pulling in. “Ah. Coffee delivery.”
He moves toward the door, but I dart in front of him, pointing my dry paintbrush at his chest. “Not so fast, mister. You’re not getting off that easily. I still want to know what happened to your face.”
“Are you showing concern for me, Sunbeam?”
“No. Yes. I mean, if you get hurt, it’ll ruin our progress.”
Keep telling yourself that all you care about is progress. Maybe you’ll start to believe it.
Inwardly, I sigh, because to be honest, these past few days I’ve learned that Pane Maddox is smart, dependable, and not nearly as snarky as when I first met him.
I do actually like him.
Not like him, like him. But you know what I mean.
He studies me, the corners of his eyes tightening, but all he says is “Right. Me getting hurt will mess up our progress.”
Then Pane sidesteps me and opens the screen door for my best friend.
Did I say something wrong?
But before I can ask him, Pane puts on a big smile. “Cristina, just the woman I wanted to see.”
She enters the house holding a cardboard container full of coffee and looking confused. “Why? Did something happen? Is this about the other night?” Her gaze frantically searches mine. “What did I do? I didn’t try to kiss him, did I?”
A belly laugh rolls out of me. “No, you were a good girl. Except for Jace’s food.”
She groans. “Don’t remind me. But anyway, leaving the past in the past, here’s a salted-caramel mocha for you. Three shots of espresso for you,” she says to Pane. “And a latte for me.”
She takes a long sip and smiles at Pane. “Now that I’m caffeinated, why are you so excited to see me?” Then her eyes pop wide. “And what happened to your face?”
“That’s what I want to know,” I say, folding my arms.
She glances at me. “So you didn’t do this to him?”
“No, of course not.”
Pane pulls the coffee cup from his mouth and pats the air. “Can we please discuss my face later? For now, let’s discuss business.” He looks at me and smiles. My knees wobble. “Do you want to tell her?”
“No, no. It’s your idea.”
“Well, somebody better tell me before I explode. What is it?”
Pane drapes his elbow on the molding leading into the living room. “How would you feel about having your own permanent space for massages, facials, and whatever else you want to do?”
Her gaze swivels from Pane to me. “Rowe, what’s he talking about?”
I gesture to the house, which is covered in drop cloths and lined in painter’s tape. “He’s talking about turning the farm into a spa, a place that caters to couples and girls’ weekends.”
Her jaw drops. “Oh my God. It sounds fabulous. It would be a dream come true. But can you do that? Do you have time?”
Pane nods out the front door, where Ron, Isaac, and McCauley the lawn guy are all in the midst of putting up new fencing. “We have time. We’re only renovating a few rooms downstairs, plus the bathroom, and painting the others.”
Cristina squeals. “Yes! Show me everything.” Then she turns around. “Oh, wait. Your piggies followed me up. They want in, too.”
Ten of them sit in front of the screen door, watching us with dark eyes full of questions and hope—hope that they will once again be able to pile up on quilts at my feet.
Pane thuds over in his heavy boots, shakes his head, and says, “Go on. You aren’t allowed in here.”
“Pane,” I scold.
“What?” He turns and shrugs. “They know the rules.”
They do. In fact, Tallulah leads them off, making a point to lift her tail, showing us her rear end.
Oh yeah, they have an opinion about Pane, all right.
I stifle a laugh before grabbing Cristina by the arm. “Come on. Let me show you what we’re thinking.”
A few minutes later, I’ve gone over Pane’s concept and talked to Cristina about her role in the business. I’ve pitched the nighttime walks and the option for people to play with piggycorns as a stress-relief activity.
“I love it,” she tells me. “It’s absolutely brilliant. Why didn’t you think about it before?”
I rest my shoulder on a doorframe leading into what will become Cristina’s studio. “I don’t know. Maybe because we were too close to all the sadness.”
“These are good things, Rowe. Really good things. So”—her mouth pinches into a tiny O—“how are things with . . .” She nods toward the front of the house, where Pane is working.
“I kissed him,” I whisper.
“What?” she shrieks.
I press a finger to my lips and shut the door. “I had no choice in it because that was the day all those cars were honking and coming by.”
“Oh my God!” She grabs my sleeve. “How was it?”
“So good!” I then tell her how he broke away and then kissed me again, and the use of tongue, and then I finish with the whole no-kissing rule.
She exhales in disappointment. “No! Not another rule.”
“It’s fine. We need it. I can’t get attached. He’s leaving.”
“He is, but you can have fun while he’s here.”
I sip my coffee and rest my back against the closed door. “Right now, the best thing is for me to focus on the farm.”
“Well, if you find yourself lonely one night, you might just want to walk out to that shamper. I bet he’d let you in with open arms.”
I smirk. “I’m not going to find out.”
“I don’t know,” she chirps. “I see chemistry. There’s something in the way he looks at you.”
“He’s not looking at me in any way.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Outside, a truck engine rumbles loudly, the noise so jarring that I immediately know who it is.
Luke.
“Sounds like trouble,” Cristina murmurs.
“Agreed.”
We head into the hallway, where Pane’s looking up from the tape measure he’s holding to the foyer floor.
“It’s Luke,” I tell him.
His face darkens as he rises. “I’ll deal with this.”
I frown. “Do you . . . Have you two met?”
“We may have had a run-in.”
My gaze drops to his bruise, and my jaw drops. “That’s not from . . . You didn’t . . . What happened?”
Pane’s jaw clenches and unclenches. “I beat him at poker.”
“Oh, you beat him at— Wait. What?” I can feel a line forming between my brows. “He hit you because you won?”
“Not exactly.”
“Wow,” Cristina chimes in. “Everyone knows he cheats. How’d you win?”
Pane’s face darkens. “I found out his secret.”
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense. How does he do it?” she asks. When I shoot her a hard look, she mutters, “It’s an honest question. We all want to know.”
“He’ll explain later,” I grind out.
Luke exits the truck, jerking his long limbs like he’s trying to shake something off him. Either he’s ticked, or a fire’s been lit under his ass. Thanks to Pane, my bet is that he’s ticked off.
Luke spies all his ex–poker buddies working on the fence, shakes his head in disgust, and approaches the house. He’s wearing his bank clothes—button-down shirt, gray suit pants, hair slicked to the side and his beard oiled.
He’s carrying papers.
His gaze drinks in the new lumber and the mended fence before he takes the porch steps two at a time.
“Morning,” he greets us through the screen door, his attention landing on Pane for all of half a second before he focuses on me.
“Morning,” I say icily.
“May I come in?”
Pane folds his arms over his chest. “No.”
Luke tugs at his collar. “Last I checked, this wasn’t your house, Maddox.”
“Last I checked, it wasn’t yours, either.”
Cristina whispers in my ear, “Is it sexy that they hate each other, or is it just me?”
I shoo her away. “Whatever you want, Luke, you can say it from there.”
Luke waves at the lumber and tools lying around. “Looks like you’re doing some improvements.”
“Um, yes.” I slip my hands into my back pockets. “We’ve got plans for the farm.”
“So I’ve heard. People in town can’t stop talking about what’s going on out here.” Luke cranes his neck to peek inside. Pane steps up and blocks his view. “Looks like it’s going to be nice.”
“Is this an official visit, Luke? Or are you here to grab more furniture?”
He snickers. “Just wanted to have a glance myself to see if Ron and everyone else is telling the truth. Had to make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
The hand holding the papers snaps out. “That you’re in violation of the foreclosure proceedings.”
My mouth dries. “What?”
He nods toward the papers. “In accordance with the contractual terms of foreclosure, there cannot be any major changes to the property during the foreclosure time period. If major changes are witnessed by a bank official—who would be me—then the date wherein which the property returns to the bank is changed.”
“Changed?” Pane opens the door and snatches the papers from his hand. “How is it changed?”
Luke slips his hands in his pockets. “The time period just got cut short by two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” I blurt out. “Luke, you’ve been driving by. You’ve seen that we’ve been working. Why’d you wait—”
Until now to do this, I was going to say. But from the way Pane and Luke are glaring at each other, I know why Luke’s doing this now.
He hates Pane, and Pane hates him.
“As an officer of the bank, it’s my duty to do what’s right,” he tells me.
“Bullshit,” Cristina coughs into her hand.
Luke slowly backs away from the screen door. “Thirty-five days. That’s all you’ve got until the place goes to auction.” He glares at Pane, a victorious sneer slapped across his face. “Good luck.”