“You could have a home here, in Millhaven. I know you’re scared to stay, and you’ve got scars from losing your mother. You’ve got good reasons to guard your heart. But you’ve also got me, and a father and brothers who want you to give them a chance. They want you to be part of their family. We’re all here for you, and we’re not gonna leave. So, what do you say?”
He took her hand and squeezed, hanging on tight. “Will you give this a shot? Will you stay?”
Marley smiled, slow and sweet, squeezing right back. “I trust you, Greyson. If you say it’ll be okay, then I have to believe it’ll be okay. Yes. I’ll stay.”
27
Marley knew there was a giant grab bag of emotions she could be feeling as she rummaged through her room for her car keys. Panic, because she’d had a long day at the storefront and was running late to meet Greyson. Excitement at the fact that they had the next twelve hours to spend together, uninterrupted and, in all likelihood, very naked. Happiness at the decision she’d made to stay in Millhaven, finally letting people past arm’s length and into the heart that had been empty and hurting for an entire year.
Scared, whispered a voice from somewhere way down deep in her chest. Marley stopped her search, flexing her fingers over her dresser mid-reach and curling them into a tight ball to ground herself.
“No.”
The voice retreated, filling her with relief. Yes, the prospect of losing someone close would always scare her. She was human, after all. But Greyson had promised things would be okay, and while Marley might not trust fate (thorny bitch), she did trust him.
Everything would be okay. It had to be.
“Ah, gotcha!” she crowed, her fingers closing over the keys that had been buried beneath the shirt she’d worn yesterday. Putting them in her wristlet, she hit the stairs running, her boots echoing over the hardwood floors. She realized, too late, that Tobias must have been napping on the living room couch, because he snapped to attention, his hair mussed and his expression disoriented, as soon as she reached the landing.
“Oh, crap. I’m so sorry,” she said. He’d been sifting through farm catalogues when she’d gone upstairs to shower and change only thirty minutes ago. They put their orders in on the first Wednesday of every month, which was tomorrow. “I didn’t realize you’d decided to take a nap, otherwise I wouldn’t have been so loud.”
He refocused after a few blinks, placing the Stetson he pretty much always wore back on his head. “No, no. I’m glad you woke me. I’ve got to finalize a few orders yet. I didn’t intend to doze off.”
“Wow. You must have really needed the rest.” Marley’s worry tapped to life, and she opened her mouth to ask him if he was okay. But then he smiled, his blue-gray eyes crinkling at the edges like usual.
“Reckon I must have. Sure did the trick, though.”
Marley smiled back. God, she needed to stop overreacting so much. “Well, I’m glad you got a chance to sneak in a nap, then. I’m going to head to Greyson’s, and I won’t be back ’til tomorrow, since I’m off until Thursday. Can I get you anything before I head out?”
“Actually, I was hopin’ for just a minute of your time.” Tobias’s gaze darted to the front door and back. “As long as you’re not in too big a rush.”
She might be running late, but for this, Greyson would understand. Especially since Tobias looked so serious all of a sudden. “Not at all. What’s up?”
“Well, it’s about that money you owe the hospital.”
“What about it?” Marley asked carefully, her heartbeat speeding up. She’d been able to make the payment with greater ease this month, but she still had eight more of them to go, none of them small.
A fact which Tobias must’ve guessed, because he said, “I’d still like to help you take care of the debt.”
“No.” She kept her expression soft to temper the steel of her determination.
Determination, it seemed, that she’d come by honestly on both sides. “You can call it a loan, if you like.”
“One you won’t let me pay back,” Marley argued, and his non-reply was all the confirmation she needed. “Look, I appreciate the offer. I really do. But I meant what I said a few weeks ago. I don’t want to feel like your obligation. I know you might not feel as if I am,” she qualified. “But this is important to me. I want us to move forward with a clean slate. Even ground, you and me. Okay?”
For a second, Tobias said nothing, and she straightened her shoulders, prepared to go for a gentle-but-firm round two. Then he surprised her with, “Alright, then. Clean slate.”
“Thank you.”
“Now go on and get. And do your old man a favor and be careful.”
“I will,” Marley said, grinning. She opened the door to head out, but the presence of a figure, up-close and hand lifted to knock, stopped her short.
“Whoa!” She stepped back, brows shooting up, and what the... “Doc Sanders?”
“Oh! Marley.” The doctor’s eyes widened before darting over Marley’s shoulder, as if she were searching for something. “I, ah. I was expecting…well, you startled me.”
“What are you doing here?” Marley asked, thoroughly confused for just a second before biting her tongue. “Ugh, I apologize. I didn’t mean it like that.”
The doctor smiled, although the expression didn’t quite stick. “That’s okay. I was just passing by and I thought I’d drop these off for your father.”
Tobias appeared behind Marley. “Hi, there, Doc.”
“Tobias.” The doctor dropped her chin slightly, not quite meeting Tobias’s eyes. “I brought by those vitamins I was telling you about at your appointment last week.” She held up a white paper bag, the pills inside rattling along with Marley’s pulse.
“You had an appointment last week?” she asked.
Tobias’s expression, which had been unreadable this whole time, didn’t change. “Just a check-up. Doc Sanders here is the best around. She likes to keep us all in tip-top shape.”
“Oh.” Marley took a breath. She was being silly. The whole thing made perfect sense. Even though the doctor still had an odd look on her face, and the bag holding those vitamins was pretty huge. “Okay. As long as everything’s good.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing. Everything is right as rain,” Tobias said.
Marley repeated the saying all the way down the steps and to her car, but somehow, she couldn’t quite convince herself that they were true.
Greyson pulled the baking dish of barbecue chicken out of his oven, feeling like a goddamn rock star. True, the chicken hadn’t been that hard to make, with the marinade having done nearly all of the work and the oven doing the rest, and the potatoes and green beans he’d grabbed to go with it had been five-ingredient wonders. But between the meal and the fact that Marley was due to arrive at any second—not to mention that he absolutely planned to have her instead of dessert, tonight and every night for the foreseeable future—life was pretty freaking stellar.
A knock sounded off on his front door, and speak of the devil. “Hey,” Greyson said, opening the door and stepping forward to wrap an arm around Marley’s waist. “I hope you’re hungry, because…” He stopped short, his stomach squeezing with unease. “What’s wrong?”
One dark brow rose as far as it could go. “Who says anything’s wrong?”
Greyson pulled her over the threshold and into his apartment, closing the door behind her. “Well, let’s see. Should I start right here, with the crease on your forehead?” He brushed a finger over the delicate furrow until it smoothed a little. “Or maybe the frown you’ve got going right here.” Unable to help it, he slipped a kiss across her lips, soft and quick. “Or how about this tension, in these shoulders of yours?” His fingers traveled up, pressing into her knotted muscles. “You’ve never been one to hide what you’re feeling, Marley. And right now, I can tell something’s troubling you. Talk to me.”
“It’s probably nothing,” she said, although between her tone and the look on her face, Gr
eyson knew she didn’t believe that.
Still, he wanted to erase the worry from her face as fast as possible, so he said, “That may be, but you’ll probably feel better once you air it out.”
“I think Tobias is sick.”
“Okay.” Greyson took a second to process her words. “Do you think he’s got the flu or something?”
Marley shook her head, her words unleashing like a torrent. “No, not like that. I think there’s something wrong. He’s had two doctor’s appointments in the last month, and he looks tired. He naps all the time even though he’s cut back on his hours at Cross Creek, and just now, Doc Sanders came to the house to hand-deliver medicine, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down,” Greyson said. It was rare that he was the voice of reason—in fact, this might be one for the history books. But Marley was clearly upset. She needed reassurance, and fast. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for all of this. Let’s just start at the beginning.”
“Okay.” She took a breath, resting a hand over the front of her tank top. “Last month, after I had breakfast with Cate at Clementine’s Diner, I saw Tobias coming out of Doc Sanders’s office. But then today, he told me he’d just had another appointment this week.”
Greyson thought about it for a second. “Maybe she just wanted to re-test something as a precaution. No big deal.”
Marley looked unconvinced, but didn’t argue. “He’s tired, though. Like, all the time.”
“Yeah, but you know how tough working on a farm can be,” Greyson pointed out. “And you’re running the storefront. Not that it’s not hard work, but there’s even more manual labor that goes into operations, and Tobias has been doing it every day for over thirty years.” Christ, Greyson loved farming the same way he loved to breathe air, and even he was exhausted just thinking about it.
Marley bit her lip. “Okay, then how do you explain Doc Sanders showing up at the house just now?”
That one was a tiny bit strange. Still… “I don’t know. How did she explain it?”
“She said she was on her way home and wanted to drop off some vitamins they’d talked about at his checkup.”
“That doesn’t sound so crazy,” Greyson said. “I mean, this is Millhaven. House calls, especially for something routine like that, aren’t entirely unheard of.”
Concern dashed through Marley’s eyes, making them glint in the light streaming in past the curtains. “Maybe not, but she looked strange. Uncomfortable. Not at all like the first time I met her.”
A light bulb went off in Greyson’s head. “Doc Sanders takes her job real serious. Maybe she just wanted to protect Tobias’s privacy and wasn’t comfortable talking about his appointment in front of you.” He wouldn’t put that past the doc. In fact, he’d be shocked if she didn’t protect a patient’s privacy with all that she had.
“Oh,” Marley whispered, some of the tension easing from her face. “Well, I never thought of it that way.”
“Look, if you’re that worried about it, you should ask Tobias. But truly, I don’t think this is anything to be worried about,” Greyson said.
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.” He inhaled, a feeling he’d known for far too long swirling in his chest. “You’ve got a great chance to know Tobias and to be a family. In fact, I’m a little jealous. I wish…” Greyson paused, but this was Marley. She trusted him. Cared about him, just as he was. “I wish I had that with my old man. I wish I’d had a chance to make the effort so he and I could start fresh.”
“You still could,” Marley said. “If I can mend things with Tobias, anyone can.”
Rather than express his doubt and kill the lightening mood, Greyson pulled her close and dropped his forehead to hers. “We’re a hell of a pair, huh?”
Her laugh wasn’t loud or strong, but God, it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard as it chased his unease away. “We are.”
He cupped her face, kissing her once, then twice. And as Marley deepened the kiss in soft, needful strokes and he picked her up to carry her to bed, dinner be damned, Greyson knew that as long as she was by his side and he was by hers, everything would turn out just fine.
28
“Helllllllooooooo?” Marley dropped her keys on the table in the foyer of the main house, closing the door behind her. Quiet was the only thing to greet her, signaling that her brothers and Tobias were all out in the fields. Cate’s car hadn’t been in the side lot, and Marley belatedly remembered that she was attending a daylong seminar on maximizing the efficiency of the bookkeeping software they’d started using earlier this year. Having the house to herself was odd, to be sure, but maybe she’d head on down to the greenhouse to see what kind of berries Owen had on-hand. She’d thrown blueberries into her peach cobbler recipe last week. Maybe she could grab some blackberries today. Those would go over great in a jam, too. If she worked really hard, she could probably get a few jars on the shelf by as early as next week.
Marley laughed, the sound floating through the empty house. Her mood was considerably lighter than it had been when she’d left seventeen hours ago. But between the reassurance of Greyson’s words and the slow, sexy comfort he’d given her in bed, not once, but twice, she knew he was right.
He’d promised her everything would be fine. It was time for her to start believing him. It was time to be with him, be with her family, without being scared.
Once and for all.
Turning toward the stairs with her sights set on the shower, she kicked her feet into motion. But a piece of paper stuck between the pages of Tobias’s farm catalogue on the front table caught her eye, a familiar logo freezing her to her spot.
“What the hell?” Marley picked up the catalogue, shaking the single page free. It was a printout of an account summary, with Chicago Memorial Hospital’s crest stamped in the upper right-hand corner. Her name was listed as the account holder, all the information matching the account that she’d been chipping away at for the past year. Except the little box that listed the balance read paid in full, and wait, wait. This couldn’t be right.
How could the debt be paid?
Hands shaking, Marley dialed the number on the printout, accessing her account with her PIN code. After an automated voice confirmed that—holy shit—she did in fact have a zero balance, she hit “0”, at least ten different emotions of equal intensity balling in her gut as she waited for the phone to ring once…twice…
“Accounting department, Darlene speaking.”
Marley tried to calm her voice, but she was pretty sure it was a no-go. “Hi, Darlene, my name is Marley Rallston. I’m looking at my account, and it seems the balance was paid off recently. But I didn’t make the payment.”
“Oh, no,” Darlene said, her tone going brighter by a notch as Marley confirmed her account number and answered the security questions. “I took this call yesterday. I remember it perfectly. It was a lovely gentleman. He said he was a friend of the family. Had kind of a Southern accent? But he was very clear that he wanted the account paid in full.”
“Can he do that? You know, without my permission?”
Darlene’s laugh grew nervous. “Well, when someone calls to pay off an account, we don’t usually argue. The payment cleared without a problem, so...”
Marley cursed internally. “Okay. Can you reverse it?”
“I’m afraid not,” Darlene said. “All payments are final, and the account has been closed.”
She was tempted to argue anyway. But since she knew it would almost certainly get her nowhere, and Darlene wasn’t really the object of her frustration anyway, she thanked the woman and hung up. Why would Tobias go so far out of his way to do something he knew she didn’t want him to? Marley had made it painfully clear, not once, but twice, that she’d wanted to pay the debt herself, and now, she wasn’t struggling to do so. These were all things Tobias knew, because she’d made sure to tell him, so he wouldn’t do something like this.
She spun to grab one of the walkie-talkies from
the office, determined to get the answer straight from the source, when a memory plowed into her, knocking her breath loose. The day her mother had gotten her diagnosis from the oncologist, she’d gone directly to an attorney’s office. Marley had thought the whole thing was insane—there were treatments, chemo and radiation and all sorts of options to fight. But the woman’s advice hadn’t been to set aside any money to pursue those, nor had it been not to worry.
Get your affairs in order, she’d said.
Oh, God. Had Tobias paid off her debt—debt she’d all but begged him not to touch—because he really was sick, and was getting his affairs in order? Was he righting the wrongs of their past and making up for not coming to find her seven years ago?
Was he cleaning their slate, like she’d said she wanted, to end things rather than to start over?
Swallowing her panic, Marley turned back toward the stairs. She had to get far, far away from here, right now. God, how had she been so stupid? She’d known he was sick. She’d known it! But Greyson had convinced her otherwise, pushing her to stay in Millhaven and promising her everything would be okay.
Okay. Marley barked out a bitter laugh. What did he know of okay? Maybe he’d had good intentions when he’d made those promises, but he’d never watched someone he loved desperately waste away, month by month, minute by minute. He’d never had to feed someone ice chips, only to watch that person throw them back up, along with blood and bile and all sorts of other, awful things. He’d never had to watch that person’s hair fall out from all the toxic chemicals being pumped through their failing body, never had to pick out that person’s fucking coffin.
Greyson had thrown the word—the idea of it—around so easily. Okay. He’d never watched anyone he loved die. Instead, he’d convinced her to put her heart on the line and stay. He promised her everything would be fine, that her family would never leave her, that Tobias wasn’t sick, and like a goddamned fool, she’d believed him.
Crossing Hope (Cross Creek Series Book 4) Page 26