Chapter 25 Pane #2
“Then you finish.”
When he doesn’t say anything, McCauley folds his arms and settles onto the balustrade. “Go on, Ron. Put your money where your mouth is.”
“All right, but you know I hate gossip.”
Isaac and McCauley burst into laughter. “Right you do,” the bartender jokes.
Ron rolls his eyes. “Anyway. Most of this is rumor, but Jennifer heard it from Rowe, who told her because they’re friends.”
“Heard what?” I ask.
Ron pauses, and Isaac gestures at him to keep going. “Don’t stop now. Tell the man the whole thing.”
Ron grimaces. “Well, when Rowe first came back with Luke, everybody liked him.”
“Her dad referred to him as son,” McCauley adds.
“But Luke had them all fooled,” Ron explains, wiping his hands on his apron. “At first he was great, helping around the farm, doing everything that was needed.”
“People were still buying piggycorns then,” Isaac adds. “The Wadleys had a deal with Sally Ray across the street. She’d send business their way, and both families profited. The farm wasn’t run-down then, either. Rowe’s dad worked hard to keep it up and profitable.”
I’m putting pieces together. “So her mom wasn’t hands-on.”
“Not with day-to-day activities. That was all her dad. And then Luke came in, and he took over a lot of those roles,” Isaac explains.
“Ron, are the hot dogs done?” A short woman with long, dark hair steps up onto the porch.
She grabs a beer from the cooler and notices how eerily quiet all of us have gone.
Her eyes narrow in suspicion. “Are y’all gossiping?
” When no one answers, she nods. “Y’all are gossiping.
Don’t let me interrupt.” Her gaze lands on me, and she extends her hand, knuckles up.
“I’m Jennifer. You must be Pane. You’ve been keeping my husband working late. ”
I take the hand she offers. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
“We won’t be late tonight, honey,” he tells her.
“You better not be, or you’ll be sleeping in the spare room.” She kisses Isaac on the cheek. “Great to see you, Isaac, McCauley. Ron”—she eyes him warily—“I’ll see you later.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sighs as she walks off, her rear end swishing from side to side. When she’s out of earshot, he whispers, “She likes to tie me up. It’s the hottest thing ever.”
“Please.” Isaac rolls his eyes. “Do not put images in my head of you with a black ball in your mouth. I would like to enjoy any future sex I might have.”
Ron takes off the apron. “She’s gone, right?”
McCauley’s gaze tracks Jennifer. “She’s not coming back.”
“Good. We can get back to Luke.”
“Right.” Isaac opens a bottle of water and takes a big swig. “It was about six months in, and Rowe’s dad was going downhill fast. That’s when Luke up and announces that he’s leaving her.”
“For Sally Ray,” Ron informs me pointedly.
McCauley grabs a dog and drops it into a bun. “But that wasn’t the worst of it.”
My eyes flare. “There’s more?”
“Oh, there’s more,” he confesses.
When no one speaks, Isaac points his water at Ron. “Go on. Go ahead and be the person who has to stop Pane from storming across the street and destroying Luke.”
I take the last sip of my beer and drop it in the recycling bin. “Guys, you’re not understanding what’s going on between me and Rowe.”
The men pause before bursting into laughter. Isaac wipes tears from his eyes. “Do you even know how you look at her?”
“Like love is a dove in your heart,” Ron says.
“What the hell does that mean?” McCauley asks.
“You know, he looks at her all lovey-dovey.”
Isaac slaps my shoulder. “Don’t worry, she looks at you that way, too.”
“When she looks at you,” McCauley says.
Another pause before the three break up into laughter.
Annoyed, I grind out, “Are you going to tell me or what?”
Ron exhales a breath, shaky from chuckling. When he speaks, it’s just above a whisper. “Rowe got pregnant.”
The world stops spinning, and red fills my vision. She got pregnant? With Luke’s baby? Did he force her to— Stop, Pane. Just stop.
I let out a slow, steadying breath. “Then what happened?”
Isaac looks around to make sure no one’s listening to us. “From what I heard, she lost the baby.”
Ron drops his voice. “But that’s not the worst of it. The worst was that—”
“What’re y’all gossiping about?”
Rowe has magically appeared in front of us, hair pulled back in a French braid, her cheeks red, and her face scrubbed clean. She’s wearing wedge sandals and a strapless sundress that drifts softly around her knees when she walks.
My mouth goes dry at the sight of her.
“We’re not gossiping,” Ron says. “Who says we’re gossiping?”
“Nothing up here but us hot dogs,” Isaac adds. “Oh, look, there’s someone I’ve been wanting to talk to.”
“Me too,” McCauley says.
They scurry off, leaving me and Ron. Ron abandons me with, “This cooking is really getting hard. I need to focus. Sorry, Pane, but you’ll have to excuse me.”
Rowe smiles softly at me. “Come on. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Meet? There’s someone she wants me to meet? She hasn’t spoken to me of her own free will in days, and now she’s introducing me to someone?
She reaches out and tugs on my fingers, and that’s when I know she must be tipsy, because she has also avoided touching me since the kiss.
She leads me to a tall man in his early thirties with dreadlocked hair pulled into a man bun. He has a sculpted beard and wears a linen shirt that’s open to his navel. Braided leather necklaces hang halfway down his chest.
He looks like a sex god, and I instantly feel the bite of competition hitting my veins like adrenaline.
Rowe motions to the man. “Donner Wright, meet Pane Maddox.”
“Nice to meet you, man,” Donner says, shaking my hand. “Rowe tells me that you’re responsible for the renovation.” His gaze sweeps up and down her in way that makes my blood turn to burning lava. “The farm looks great.”
“It’s shaping up,” I say coldly.
Rowe glares at me but smiles at Donner, which really pisses me off. “Donner runs the off-grid yurt community outside of town. He says some of the men out there have been looking for a project to help with.”
“Yeah.” He runs a hand down his sandy beard. “We need supplies, like lumber. We’ll take scraps—and the men are willing to be free labor for it.”
“Off-grid community? How’s that work?”
He chuckles, placing a hand to his flat belly. Skin keeps peeking through his unbuttoned shirt—and Rowe keeps glancing at his chest.
“Well . . .” He runs a hand over his head. Rowe studies his every movement. I can practically see the drool dripping from her mouth. “We’ve been trying to figure out a way to bring in electricity that’s not intrusive to the natural surroundings.”
“So no solar panels.”
“Right, or wind. We’ve just been living without, but the whole point of the community is to live sustainably, and one of the things we want is environmentally friendly power. It’s just taking a while for us to get it.”
Rowe keeps staring at this man’s chest. It’s burning me up. Driving me nuts. She keeps looking, and he keeps smiling at me and at her. It’s maddening.
All I want to do is button up his shirt and send the man packing, but I need bodies to get this project complete.
I fold my arms, nod hard. “Do your guys have building experience?”
“Oh yeah, I do for sure. I’ll bring a few that I know do, too.”
Great. He’s a sex god and a man who can use a hammer. Perfect. Just what I need.
I attempt to tame the scowl that I know is smeared across my face. Rowe keeps pumping her eyebrows at me, silently telling me to put away my mean face.
I do what I can to school it and extend my hand. “We look forward to you helping. There’s only one thing . . .”
Donner shakes my hand, smiling with his set of perfect sex-god teeth. “What’s that?”
“We have a dress code. No open shirts.”
With that, I walk away.