Chapter 12
Luna
“Tomorrow morning, perfect. Thank you, Chloe. Honestly, thank you so much.”
I end the call and slide the phone back into the pocket of my shorts.
For a second I just stand there in the middle of the row. The sun beats down on the back of my neck, warm and heavy through the leaves, and the knot that’s been wedged behind my sternum since I checked my email this morning finally lets go.
Crisis: handled. I drag a steadying breath through my fingers and bite the inside of my cheek to keep my grin small. No need to tempt fate.
And yet, somewhere under all that relief, something tugs the wrong way... like I’m packing the wrong bag or something.
Nope. I shake my head, hard. Not entertaining this. I’ve been looking forward to this retreat for months. I can always come back here after.
I turn back to my tree and reach for the cluster I was working on—apples the size of an alpha’s fist, deep red, heavier than they look. Beside me, Jenna’s shears tick away at the next branch.
“Good news?” she asks, eyes on her branch.
“Very good news. I got my spot back.”
“Oh,” Jenna lowers the shears and turns, her whole face crinkling. “That’s amazing.” She gives me a one-shouldered squeeze and goes back to picking, humming.
I roll my neck. Let the sun get at the back of it. With this handled, I guess there’s nothing preventing me from getting back to the tree in front of me.
I stare at it for a beat. Jenna and I have been picking from this same tree for, what, two and a half hours? Three? And the upper third is still loaded, every branch sagging. At my feet, seven crates wait to go to the cooler. Seven crates. For one tree. And we’re far from finished.
I look up the row, down the row, past Jenna. Trees and trees and trees, every one of them as fat as the one in front of me, and basically nobody to tend to them.
I turn to Jenna. “Where is everyone?”
She glances over. “Hm?”
“I mean—we’re not even a third done with this one tree, and there’s, like, six of us in this whole stretch. At this pace we’ll be picking into November. By then half the apples will be on the ground.”
Jenna lets out a long breath through her nose and leans her shoulder against the trunk. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” I ask.
“There should be more of us.” She shrugs and twists another apple free. “Well, you saw the orchard. You can see Bram, Ash, and Reed aren’t exactly rolling in cash this season.”
Well, I did notice the place is a little... beat down.
“What do they all actually do?” I ask. “I mean, Bram seems to be the one giving orders, but aside from that...”
“They actually do more than meets the eye.” Jenna twists another stem free. “Bram does harvest timing. He decides which trees we hit on which day, which ones are ripe, how to stage the labor. All of that lives in his head.”
She drops the apple. “Reed runs logistics. If something breaks, and something breaks almost every other day, he fixes it. He coordinates the client trucks that come to pick up what they sell in bulk. Reed schedules when they arrive, which loading docks they use, and makes sure the right bins are staged for each one.”
A picture starts to assemble. The Miller brothers, slightly less than three delicious-smelling alphas.
“And Ash?”
“Ash is the money.” Jenna picks another apple.
“He’s the one who goes out and finds buyers and investors.
They need advance payments to even get the harvest off the trees—labor, fuel, cooler power.
All of it takes cash they don’t have on hand.
He’s also been trying to sell more of their own product lines like their cider, an apple butter thing and some apple dessert vinegar.
He’s been hunting wholesale deals on those. ”
I twist another apple free. Drop it.
“He actually went out a few days back for a deal,” Jenna says. “A big one. It was supposed to keep us above water this season.”
My hand stops on the next apple.
“He didn’t get it.” She winces.
“Oh,” I say.
She drops another apple in her bag. “And apparently, he didn’t even come back that night.
Or the next morning. He didn’t roll in until the following late afternoon.
” She glances at me, then away. “I think he needed a little time. He couldn’t bring himself to drive back and tell his brothers he didn’t land the deal. ”
My hand finds another apple on the branch. Twists. Drops it in the bag.
Wait. Does that mean—
“Where was the meeting?” I ask.
“Some fancy resort. Evergreen Peak.”
The apple in my bag suddenly weighs about forty pounds.
Evergreen Peak Resort.
The math is not difficult. I met Ash two nights ago, which means by the time Ash was buying me a drink, he was already done. He’d already lost the deal...
I press the heel of my hand against my forehead. Oh, no.
Of course, after he’d been carrying that around, I—We—
—the thought collapses, because my body, helpfully reminded, takes over. A slow, embarrassing pulse rolls down the center of me. Fresh slick.
Oh my god, Luna, read the room. The man lost his deal, got zero reciprocation in bed, and then I kicked him out of my room. Getting horny now is a terrible way to show sympathy.
“Anyway,” Jenna says, a smile tugging at her lips. “Care to explain how a girl goes from squatting a cabin to being invited in the owners’ guest room? And all that under twenty-four hours?”
My face goes a color it has no business going. “It’s not like that. They just offered me a room.”
“Mmhm. Of course.” She points her shears down the row. “Well, speak of the devils.”
I turn and see the three alphas coming up the dirt path between the trees. Bram in front, hands easy at his sides. Reed beside him, tossing an apple from one palm to the other. Ash, half a step behind, sleeves shoved to the elbow, jeans dusty at the knee.
And it hits me...
The wind, carrying their scent straight down the row.
The dark bite of cedar and chocolate. Worn leather.
Coffee. And underneath all of it, woodsmoke, threaded with something animalistic.
It is the smell of a porch in October, a safe harbor, every single one I have ever invented in my head and never gotten to go to.
A small, quick whine climbs up the back of my throat to call for them and I barely manage to swallow it. I cough. Hard.
Jenna lifts an eyebrow but blessedly says nothing.
“Hey, ladies.” Reed stops a couple feet shy. Those dark green eyes lock onto mine. “How’s our newest apple picker? Trust Jenna showed you the ropes?”
I clear my throat. “She really did. I now know seventeen ways to tell an apple’s ripe. I’m prepared to consult.”
Reed’s grin spreads. “Six hours and you’re already gunning for management.”
“I was thinking VP of fruit.”
“Knew it.” He hooks a thumb through his belt loop. “Bram. See, this is what happens. You leave the new hire unsupervised and she stages a coup for my job.”
“Maybe we should keep the new hire under closer supervision,” Bram says, his eyes darkening.
My eyes drop straight to my picking bag. Bram’s scent thickens at his own words, his leather deepening, all of it rolling toward me, a warm press at the small of my back.
I make myself look past Bram, to Ash, who’s standing with that half-smile in the corner of his mouth.
“On the topic of management,” he says, “we came to collect you. Crew lunch. We always order in for everyone on the second of the month.” His mouth tips at the corner. “And no is not an acceptable answer.”
***
Behind the barn, two long folding tables sit pushed end-to-end in the shade, laden with roast chicken, potatoes glossed with butter, green beans, and tomato salads, pitchers of iced tea sweating onto the wood.
The other pickers wander in with their bags slung over their shoulders, dropping them in a pile by the barn wall.
I take a plate from Ash. Our fingers brush, and the line of my arm goes hot all the way up to the shoulder. His pupils flicker, and I drop my eyes to the chicken.
Come on Luna, control.
We sit. Bench creaks. Bram across from me, Ash on my right, Reed on my left, the three of them of course perfectly positioned to keep me boxed in by scent...
“So.” I clear my throat and move a potato around my plate. I need to plant this flag before I lose the will to do it, because the longer I sit inside this combined scent the dumber my plans are going to get. “I have some news.”
They lean in toward me.
“By all means, tell us more.” Reed sets his elbow on the table, fork loose in his fingers.
I smile. “So Chloe called. Serenity Ridge got my spot back and I leave tomorrow morning.”
“Awesome,” Ash says, smiling. “I was hoping that’d work out for you.”
“That’s wonderful news,” Bram says.
“Told ya it would all work out.” Reed lifts his iced tea in my direction. “To the VP of fruit. May the energetic flow of the retreat be very. You know. Flowy.”
A laugh punches out of me before I can stop it. “Thank you.”
They look happy for me on the surface, but I’ve spent a decade behind a reference desk. You don’t do that job for ten years without learning how to read people. So I can tell that a part of them really is happy for me, but right beneath it, another part isn’t.
“Which means,” I push on, “I want to settle up. For the room, the food, everything. And as I said, I have a few vacation days left after the retreat. I can come back and work them off and this way—”
“No.” Bram. Soft. “You don’t owe us anything.”
“Bram’s right.” Ash leans in, close, his cedar deepening. “We wouldn’t dream of charging you, Luna.”
My face goes hot at both his physical and olfactory proximity.
“Right,” I mutter. “Well... Thank you.”
I chew. Swallow. Force myself to look up again. All three of them, still watching me.
“So.” Casual. I cut a strip of chicken. “What were you guys up to today? You all kind of disappeared this morning.”
Reed’s mouth twitches into a slow, wicked smirk. He shares a brief glance with Bram, who only lifts an eyebrow.
“Oh, you know.” Ash reaches out and tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear, the brush sending a shiver straight down my spine. “Business.”
“Cryptic.”
“Always.” Reed’s gaze drops to my mouth.
I swallow hard. They are so close, all three of them, their scents weaving into something I’m not going to be able to undo, and I wonder if eighteen-ish hours won’t be too long for us to keep our hands to ourselves.
“So.” Reed leans back, that lopsided grin sliding into place. “What’re you doing tonight, VP?”
I lower the glass slowly. “Sleep?”
“We’re heading into town for a drink. Maggie’s. You should come.”
“I—” I look at the three of them. Bram’s watching me, steady. Ash has the half-smile back. Reed waits. “I leave tomorrow morning, guys.”
“All the more reason,” Reed says, leaning in. “This is your last day in the real world. Tomorrow you ascend. We can’t send you off without buying a drink first.”
My brain tries to hold onto the checklist: Pack bags. Sleep. Leave at dawn.
But their mere presence is doing something wicked to me.
“You know what, why not.” I say, smiling.