6. Brooks #2
I stop mid-swallow. I slowly lower the coffee mug to my knee and look at her. “You bought the goats like a week ago.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve never made cheese.”
“Not technically, no.”
“You watched two videos on the internet and read half an article while you were waiting for the caulk to dry, didn’t you?”
“I read most of an article, thank you very much,” she says, tossing her head so her curls dance. “And I took notes. On a napkin.”
I let out a low grunt, rubbing the back of my neck where the skin is hot from the sun. “Ember.”
“Brooks.”
“You can’t just wake up and decide to become an artisanal cheesemaker because you have a goat named Kevin.”
She gasps dramatically. “Tell that to the pioneers.”
“The pioneers probably knew what they were doing.”
“The pioneers absolutely did not know what they were doing,” she counters instantly, leaning forward. “That’s why half of history is just a series of well-documented disasters. It’s about the spirit of adventure.”
“You’re going to poison somebody,” I say flatly. “Probably me.”
“I am not.”
“You’re going to create a biological weapon.”
“Rude.”
“You’re going to accidentally invent a new, aggressive life form in a mason jar.”
“Even ruder.”
She slides a little closer to me on the wooden step, her hip brushing my uniform pants. “I’ll have you know that in six months, people will be driving from three counties over to taste my goat cheese. It’s going to be a culinary awakening.”
I snort. “In six months, I’ll be driving you to the county hospital after you try to pasteurize dairy with a hair dryer.”
“Your utter lack of faith is honestly heartbreaking, hot neighbor.”
“My faith died when I watched you try to use a power drill backwards on a drywall anchor.”
“That happened one time!”
“It happened four times, Ember. I counted.”
“Details,” she waves a hand dismissively. She leans in, her voice dropping into a playful, mocking purr. “Mark my words, Fire Chief. I am going to make the best goat cheese you’ve ever tasted in your life.”
I fold my arms across my chest, looking down at her. “That’s a bold claim for a woman who just glued a caulk gun to a piece of cardboard.”
“Not a claim. A promise,” she says, her eyes locked onto mine. “You’ll eat it.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll love it.”
“We’ll see.”
“And then you’ll thank me,” she whispers, a triumphant, wicked little smile spreading across her face. “A lot.”
I stare at her. My jaw clenches as a sudden, heavy wave of heat hits my gut, thick and demanding.
I look at the stubborn tilt of her chin, the bright, dangerous invitation in her eyes, and the way her lips part slightly as she waits for me to snap back with another sarcastic retort.
The bickering flies right out of my head.
Every practical, logical thought I have is drowned out by a need to lean across the six inches of air separating us, wrap my hand around the back of her neck, and find out exactly what that lip gloss tastes like.
Fuck the cheese. I don’t give a damn about the creamery, or the kitchen floor, or the farm.
I just want to taste her.
I want to press her back against the wood of this porch until she’s making a completely different kind of sound.
I swallow hard, forcing my hands to stay flat on my knees, my knuckles aching with the effort to keep my distance.
“You’re impossible,” I mutter, my voice dropping an octave.
“I prefer ambitious,” she murmurs.
“You prefer chaos.”
“That too.” She beams, completely unbothered by the heavy, sudden tension vibrating between us.
She stands up, dusting a few stray crumbs off her thighs, her light energy returning in a flash. “I can already see the label. The Gilded Goat Creamery. Sophisticated. Elegant. Award-winning.”
“Delusional,” I say, though my voice is still entirely too thick.
“Visionary.”
“Dangerous.”
“Gifted.”
I shake my head, looking down at my boots as I try to get my heart rate back under control. “Why do I even bother arguing with you?”
“Because you secretly enjoy it,” she says, backing toward her front door with a victorious laugh. “Just wait, Brooks. One day you’ll be eating my cheese and admitting I was right about everything.”
I watch her go, my eyes tracking the line of her back, the slight sway of her hips in the white denim. The sunlight frames her in gold as she reaches for the screen door, looking back over her shoulder like she’s personally declared war on my sanity.
The cheese is the absolute last thing on my mind.
“Yeah,” I say under my breath, a slow, tight smile finally breaking through as the heat in my chest refuses to cool down. “We’ll see, Ember.”
My phone vibrates violently against my thigh. I pull it out, seeing the caller ID.
I hit accept immediately. “Hey. Everything okay?”
“Hey, Brooks!” Lauren’s voice comes through the speaker.
“Yeah, everything is awesome! We just passed the world’s largest ball of twine and Mark almost ran into a ditch trying to take a selfie.
Listen, I’m just calling because I realized I left Sophie’s little green dinosaur sweater at your house, not in her backpack.
Can you make sure she has it for preschool on Monday?
You know how she gets if her ‘dino-power’ isn’t fully charged. ”
“I’ll look for the sweater on the couch when I get home, Lauren,” I say, a small, easy smile softening my face. “Have fun at the lake.”
“We will! Don’t let Soph eat too much sugar! Bye!”
I hang up the phone, sliding it back into my pocket. I turn back to Ember to tell her I need to pack up my tools, but the words freeze in my throat.
Ember is staring at me.
Her face has gone completely, starkly pale beneath her golden-brown curls. Her wide, dark eyes are fixed on my face with an expression of absolute, horrified shock.
“Ember?” I ask, pulling my brows together. “What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost.”
She swallows hard, her throat bobbing as she takes a step back from me on the porch, my house clearly visible just four hundred feet away, her hands gripping the wooden railing until her knuckles turn white.
“You… you have a wife,” she whispers, her voice completely stripped of its usual playful lilt.
I blink, thoroughly confused. “A what?”
“A wife,” she repeats, her voice rising slightly, laced with a sudden, sharp edge of panic. “Lauren. You were just talking to a Lauren. You told her—you had that whole domestic conversation about a lake and a sweater, and… oh my God.”
The horror on her face is immediate and absolute.
Like she’d rather fling herself directly into traffic than flirt with a married man.
She drops her head into her hands, a low, miserable groan escaping her chest. “Oh my God, I’ve been flirting with a married man. I’m a home-wrecker. I’m a city cliché. I came into this town and started batting my eyelashes at the local fire chief while his wife was somewhere. I’m going to hell.”
She says it with genuine devastation.
Which, irrationally, makes me like her even more.
I sit on the steps, staring at her as she paces back and forth on the narrow porch, her hands wildly gesturing in the air as she spirals into a panic attack.