Greta
True to her word, a man had never been among those things. But damned if she didn’t get goose bumps when she heard Oliver Owens whistle. When the back kitchen door opened, there he stood in his tall green Wellies, a goofy grin plastered across his tanned face as he held out his latest offering.
“Gosh, sorry!” he said.
“I’ve got it,” she said, bending to retrieve it. When she stood, Oliver was holding out a new one, inches from her mouth.
“Taste?”
Greta blinked. Her lips parted, and Oliver deposited the pea pod gently on her tongue.
His eyes narrowed as she crunched.
Oliver Owens gardened with the fervor of a doting new parent.
He’d once told her he hated to wear gloves because he needed to feel the earth, the tender shoots between his fingers, the shape of a warm tomato in his palm.
No one had spoken to her like this before, this language of love for the food he grew.
Greta knew this language. She also knew this love.
Now, the sweet bright taste only a June pea could proffer flooded her senses. Unconsciously Greta closed her eyes and smiled.
Oliver laughed, delighted. “My thoughts exactly.”
When she opened her eyes, he was already halfway out the door, whistling once more. The screen door slapped shut, and Oliver disappeared around the corner.
In the silence that followed, Greta stared at the basket of vegetables he’d left on the butcher block counter. She was in trouble.
That night’s dinner menu was printed. Her coworker Linus would come huffing in any second to run through reservations and complain about one dish or other.
Guests would arrive laden with luggage and looking for a cocktail.
The dining room and porch would hum with hungry diners clamoring for chowder.
After all she’d been through in her young life, none of that spelled trouble for Greta Nyqvist. The real trouble had just walked out the door.