Chapter 5 Sierra #2
“He told me to expect you,” he adds, eyes sparkling.
I shuffle a little deeper into the room, unsure. Afternoon? Is he kidding? There’s a lot of sunshine coming off this man, above and beyond the light pouring through the windows behind him, so it’s hard to tell if he’s fucking with me or just being friendly.
He’s smiling a lot.
“Okay . . .” I clear the frog from my throat, side-eyeing his natural glow with suspicion. “Are we sure you’re related to Mason?”
He laughs easily. “Pretty damn sure. I look like Mom, he looks like Dad, and I’ve been told by the ladies that we have identical asses.”
My face flushes as red as the tomato he’s now slicing as I do everything in my power not to look at his ass.
“I’m Layne,” he introduces himself.
Fuck me. Even his name is sexy. I’d call all my single girlfriends and tell them to come here, stat, if I had any.
And if I had a phone.
“Cool. I’m Sierra. Uh, what time is it, Layne?”
“Just past noon,” he says pleasantly. I watch as he constructs sandwiches—which I now realize are lunch and not breakfast—with the back bacon, plump basil leaves that look freshly plucked from a nearby garden, slices of that bright-red succulent tomato, and fresh, squishy-looking bakery bread, my stomach churning.
“If you’re hungry, you’re welcome to join us. I’m just making lunch for—”
“Hi.” A young girl pops out of nowhere, startling the hell out of me.
“Shit.” I think she almost startled the puke right out of me. I press a hand to my mouth and swallow, hard.
She frowns. “Sorry.” She appears to be in early tweendom, with wavy dark hair almost to her waist and wide, dark eyes.
Which explains the Hermione toothbrush I glimpsed in the bathroom.
“No worries.” I take a breath. “I’m just a little . . . out of it. Hi.”
She’s holding a big glass bottle of what looks like apple juice.
On second thought, I think she popped out of the pantry.
She shakes up the bottle in both hands, vigorously, then goes over to the butcher-block island and pops off the top.
Definitely apple juice. The label has a golden apple on it and says Sea Haven Cidery.
“This is my daughter, Kaylie,” Layne says.
“I’m ten and a half,” Kaylie informs me as her bottom lands on a barstool and she pours herself a glass of juice. She eyes my Blackpink T-shirt and adds, “I like your shirt,” which I imagine is one of the highest forms of praise one can hope for from a ten-year-old girl.
She’s wearing a kid-sized Nirvana T-shirt that I have to assume her dad or her uncle picked out for her. “I’m Sierra. I like your shirt, too.”
Her eyes light up, and I’m pretty sure this means we’re friends now.
“Do you have a son, too?” I ask Layne.
“No. Why?”
“The room I slept in. I just wondered . . .”
“That’s Uncle Mason’s room,” Kaylie provides.
Mason’s room . . . as in, the one he slept in when he was a teenage boy? The sobering dots gradually connect in my head. “Oh. Did he grow up here?”
“Yup. Are you staying for lunch?” she asks me.
Hell, no. This is awkward enough.
“I really can’t. I’m not feeling so well.” It’s not just the mild nausea and dehydration and pounding headache that are bothering me. Sophie was supposed to arrive in Orchard Cove this morning. Past noon. Yikes. “Thank you for the invitation, but I should really get going . . .”
“You can have some juice.” Kaylie slides the second glass she’s just poured toward me. It looks refreshing as hell, and I am almost thirsty enough to drink toilet water right now.
So I thank her and down the whole thing in a few gulps. Before I’m finished, a gray-haired man has walked in the back door. He sees me, stops, and stares. He wears work jeans and a flannel shirt, and looks very much like a several-decades-older version of Layne.
“Hey Grandpa, this is Sierra,” Layne says. “She’s a friend of Mason’s.”
The man grunts a hello.
My cheeks must be bright pink. They’re burning.
“This is my grandpa, Tommy,” Layne tells me.
Tommy. The grandpa Mason’s friends warned me about. Even grumpier than his grandson, Jace said.
“Hello,” I say. “Sierra Daniels. Nice to meet you.” I can’t believe I’m meeting the entire extended family of my ridiculous one-night stand that wasn’t even a one-night stand because we didn’t have sex but they don’t know that.
“Uh, where is Mason?” I ask, edging toward the door.
“I’d love to thank him for helping me out last night. ”
“Oh, he’s gone,” Layne says casually. “He may have gone down to the bar. Or to pick up supplies for the renos. He has a lot to do.” He doesn’t actually say especially since he met you yesterday, then vanished.
But there’s a teasing implication in his tone that I hope goes right over his daughter’s head.
His grandfather follows the conversation like a hawk.
“Uncle Mason never misses breakfast with me,” Kaylie informs me, and it’s clear she’s picking up on something the adults aren’t saying. “We’re not sleep-in people.”
“I’m sorry if he missed breakfast this morning,” I tell her, again trying to slink toward the door. “It’s totally my fault. I kept him up late last night.”
Mason’s grandfather makes a grouchy hmmm sound. Even if Jace hadn’t warned me, it’s quite obvious he’s the grumpy type, and when he frowns, I can totally see the family resemblance to Mason. “And how do you know my grandson?” he asks me.
I stop in my tracks. “Oh. I met him at his bar. I was kind of stranded last night, and he was nice enough to let me make some phone calls and then, uh, walk me . . . home.” My face grows hotter as Kaylie stares at me, trying to connect all the dots in her ten-year-old brain.
The dots that her father and great-grandfather have already connected.
Sex.
They definitely think I had sex with Mason last night. In his childhood bedroom, on that little bed.
“Stranded?” Tommy says gruffly. “Why?”
“Uh, just . . . new in town.” While Layne and Kaylie gaze at me curiously, Tommy eyes me with suspicion. Much like his grandson did when I first walked into his bar. “I was trying to get a hold of June Spencer.”
Tommy snorts. “What the hell would you want with that woman?”
Layne says, “Grandpa.”
But the way they’re looking at me, they all seem to be wondering the same thing. It’s clear I’m not standing in the middle of a June Spencer Fan Club meeting.
Same vibe I got when I brought up June’s name to Mason and his friends at the bar last night.
“I was supposed to stay at a cottage on her property. Actually, I should really go find her . . .” Since Mason told me that June’s property is next door, and I have no idea how deep this neighborly feud or whatever it is goes, I should probably clear out of this family’s kitchen and get on with the search.
“You sure you don’t want to eat first?” Layne places a big platter of sandwiches on the island in front of Kaylie, and his grandfather immediately digs in.
“Thank you, but I couldn’t possibly.”
“Okay, then,” Layne says. “We wish you good luck with tracking down June.”
“Yeah,” Kaylie says, selecting a sandwich. “Good luck with that old battle-axe.”
“Kaylie. We don’t call people names.”
“Gramps called her that yesterday!”
“Then maybe Gramps needs to work on his patience.” Layne shoots his grandpa a pointed look, which Tommy ignores. “I’ll show you out, Sierra. Get you headed in the right direction.”
“Oh, great. Thank you.” Embarrassingly, I have no idea what the right direction is. Other than some wobbly memories of moonlit country roads, I have no idea how I got here.
I follow Mason’s brother out the back door, with a quick “So nice to meet you both.”
Kaylie waves, mouth full of sandwich.
Tommy watches me go, not hiding his suspicion. “You take care, Sara.”
I pop my head back in the door. “It’s Sierra.”
“Hmm,” he grumps, gray eyebrows twisting over shrewd blue eyes.
I follow Mason’s brother across the back porch and down the steps to a wide gravel path that meanders through the lush backyard. “Well, that was embarrassing. Your grandfather thinks I’m a strumpet.”
“My grandpa doesn’t take easily to strangers, Ms. Daniels. Especially beautiful ones from the city who distract his grandson from his duties.” He smiles disarmingly.
“It’s Sierra, please.” I smile back tentatively. “I slept with your brother last night, so I think we can skip the formalities.” We’re walking through trees now. They grow tall and lush, bending lazily over the path. “I take it your family and June Spencer aren’t all that . . . amicable?”
“You could say that. Around here, you could also say the older generation likes to hold a grudge.”
“I really didn’t mean to cause trouble. Yesterday was . . . kind of a rough day.”
He considers that. “Better now?”
“Other than the hangover, actually, yes. I think so.”
He stops at a fork in the path, so I do, too. “My brother have anything to do with that?”
My cheeks heat traitorously. “He might.”
I catch the small smile as he looks away. “As you can see, that’s the orchard. You’ll want to follow the path to your left. It’ll take you around the cider house and out to the main drive.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say politely. The orchard consists of row upon row of leafy trees, not much taller than I am, extending across the lush field ahead.
I can’t see what lies beyond, but it seems to go on forever.
“And what’s that?” I point to the quaint cottage that can be glimpsed at the end of the path to the far right, through some more trees.
“That’s my place. Mine and Kaylie’s. As soon as we finish fixing it up.”
“Wow. It’s adorable.” It looks like a scene from a storybook. A stone and cedar A-frame with a green front door, the front porch dripping with flowers that cascade from plant boxes all along the rail. If I were a small-town type, it might be a dreamy place to live.
Since I’m not, it looks more like a nightmare. Living that close to my family? No fucking thanks.
I wonder if it has running water or if he and Kaylie always have to use the bathrooms in the big house.
“Once you get out to the road,” he says, “you’ll see it only goes in one direction, away from the water. Just follow the road to June’s place next door.”
“And how far is it to walk to the town center from here?”
“About ten minutes if you’re slow.” He eyes me. “Maybe fifteen, state you’re in.”
I groan involuntarily, and he smiles again.
“But if you’re really hurting, it’s even faster if you go along the beach.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“You’ll find the beach walk at the bottom of our driveway. Just follow it along the beach northward.”
“And north would be?”
He tips his head, eyeing me like maybe I’m just an ignorant city girl. “Well, we’re in the northern hemisphere and it’s midday, so that big fireball in the sky going east to west will be about due south right now, don’t you think?”
I groan again. “Okay, I deserved that. But come on. I drank a lot of booze last night made by your family, so it’s mostly your fault that I have no idea how to sort out what you just said.”
Layne smirks and points me northward.
“Thank you.” I slide my sunglasses on. “I’ll come back for my suitcase as soon as I can,” I add apologetically.
“No problem.”
“If you see Mason around before I do, please tell him I said thank you. And that his brother is quite a smartass.”
“Will do,” he says, still smiling.