“Honey.”
Eli’s voice layered over hers as they spoke at the same time, and Scarlett let go of a laugh as her eyes fluttered open to look at him.
“Okay. So what are the rules for picking them?”
“Lucky for us, there are only a few out-and-out rules, and the hardest one is to wait till they’re in season. We’re comin’ up on the very beginning of fall, and the crops tend to change pretty quick. We’ve still got a week or two left of sweet corn and blackberries, but these apples here are just coming in.”
He proceeded to show her—and the camera—a couple of easy tips for discovering whether an apple was ripe enough to be picked, along with how to twist the fruit from the branches to preserve the growth buds rather than going for a straight-up tug that might damage the tree. After liberating about a dozen apples from the branches in front of them and giving one a taste test at Eli’s flirty insistence, Scarlett slid out of the frame to grab the crate, asking questions all the way. Eli sat back against the stepladder, his shoulders loose and his words even looser as he told her about everything from how to graft and bud apple trees for maximum fruit growth to what hours Cross Creek would be open next week in case local folks wanted to come pick their own or shop for already-picked produce at their roadside farm stand. Finally, she turned off the camera and put it back in the insulated safety of her bag, pivoting on the heel of her Converse to hit him with a smile that came up from her toes.
“Come on, admit it,” Scarlett teased as she walked back over to the swath of shade being cast down by the apple tree. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“It was better than getting stung by a yellow jacket,” Eli flipped back, his easy grin taking any heat out of the words.
She did her best to work up a glower, but funny, she couldn’t make it stick. “You’re hilarious. Really. You should take that show on the road.”
“And miss all the glamour of farm life? Not a chance.”
Pushing up from the stepladder, Eli grabbed the rough-hewn crate Scarlett had used to collect her apples, methodically adding to the pile. She slipped beneath the branches a few feet from him to use her newfound skill set to start picking the apples that were ready, finding a comfortable rhythm as she alternated between scanning the branches and liberating the fruit. Tiny pops of sunlight filtered through the thick umbrella of apples and foliage, sending flashes of green and gold rippling over the grass, and Scarlett felt so at ease that her thoughts took the bullet train right out of her mouth.
“So do you have any writing experience?”
“No. None. Why do you ask?”
Eli’s speed-of-light answer took her by surprise. “I didn’t mean it as a bad thing,” she qualified. “It’s just that you’re a bit of a natural with words.”
The fact that he’d popped off with misnomer in casual conversation was brow-raising enough. That he’d done it in such an easygoing way that anyone listening would A) instantly grab the meaning if they weren’t familiar with the word, and B) not find his use of heightened vocabulary either forced or pretentious in the least? Yeah, that was pretty freaking impressive.
His shoulders rolled like a lazy ocean tide, lifting and lowering beneath his faded-red T-shirt as if they’d been born for the maneuver. “Nah. I’m just making it up as I go. Today must have been my lucky day, is all. Or maybe it was my on-screen company. You weren’t so bad yourself.”
Scarlett’s brows took a one-way trip up. “Nice try, smooth talker. But the way you owned that segment was way more than luck.”
“If you say so, bumblebee,” he answered, prompting yet another round of warmth to bloom over her cheekbones.
“I’m not getting rid of that one, am I?”
Eli lowered a handful of apples into the crate at their feet before shaking his head. “Not a chance. Anyhow, did you still want that shot?”
“What shot?” Her brain did one of those rewind-playback-type deals in an effort to follow the conversational boomerang, and he pointed up to the softly rustling leaves overhead.
“The one you climbed the tree to try and get. In case you think it’d be a good match for the video.”
Scarlett tried—she really did—to keep the shock from her face, but it was a complete and utter no-go, because first of all, he was right, a panoramic shot of the apple grove would be a perfect complement to the segment they’d just filmed. But more importantly . . . “I thought you said no more dangerous stuff.”
“I said no more impulsive stuff that could get you hurt,” he corrected, but her shock, it seemed, wasn’t done taking control of her mouth.
“You were pretty clear that tree climbing applies.”
While Eli eked out a nod, he also didn’t concede. “Yeah, but me going to grab a nine-foot ladder from the storage shed and holding it steady so you can climb up and get the picture you were after doesn’t.”
Holy. Shit. “You would do that?”
“Of course.” His mischievous grin turned into something a lot softer, but hell if it didn’t arrow right through her anyway. “I told you. I’m not trying to keep you from doing your job, Scarlett. I really do get it.”
“I know,” she said, because as weird and unlikely and downright crazy as it was, she did. “Thank you.”
In a flash, Eli was back. “Don’t thank me yet, bumblebee. See, these CSA orders still need to get filled, and now that I know you have mad apple-picking skills . . .”
Scarlett couldn’t help the laughter welling up from her chest, and what’s more, she didn’t want to. “Go get the rest of the crates, cowboy. But do yourself a favor and hurry up. Like you said, these apples aren’t going to jump off the trees in surrender, and I’ve got a ladder to climb.”
CHAPTER TEN
As much as it chapped his ass to admit it, Eli was having fun. Which was really saying something, considering there was a not-small amount of cow manure in his immediate future. But ever since he and Scarlett had shot that video segment this morning in the apple grove, then laughed and joked their way through the rest of his enormous to-do list and her even bigger to-shoot list afterward, he’d felt oddly at ease. Granted, the spotlight still wasn’t his happy place, but being in front of the camera hadn’t been the worst thing going—at least not after his defenses had impulsively dared him to dare Scarlett into the frame. Their back-and-forth had made it just easy enough to slide into his cocky comfort zone and relax in front of the camera, and while he was never going to forget that the thing was rolling, at least maybe the segments would make up for the Whittakers’ stroke of good luck this week.
Stupid fucking peaches.
“Okay,” Scarlett said, her smile ushering Eli back to reality as she fell into step next to him on the footpath leading to the horse barn. “What’s next?”
Eli laughed. “You know, it’s a good thing I’ve seen your back, otherwise I’d be tempted to look for the battery pack.”
“First of all”—her blond brows arched, but the smile playing on her lips damn near canceled out her sass—“you really need to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with the pot and the kettle if you’re going to give me a raft of crap for working hard.”
Eh. She kind of had him dead to rights there. At least as far as recent events were concerned, anyway. “Fair enough. What’s second?”
“I’m not all work. I took a break five hours ago, right after we got done in the apple grove.”
Her satisfied, take-that smile lasted for all of a heartbeat before Eli met it with a snort.
“A for effort, but no. Going up to the main house to download and send raw video footage to Mallory totally doesn’t count as a breather.”
“Oh, come on!” Scarlett’s shoes crunched over the gravel as she stepped toward him to nudge his shoulder with her own. “I was in the house for ten whole minutes.”
He returned the favor of the nudge, albeit gently because of her yellow jacket stings. “It was more like eight. Still no.”
Scarlett—being Scarlett—went for round two.
“But I had lunch and took a bathroom break while the footage downloaded.”
And Eli—being Eli—met round two with a smirk so good, the thing tasted like cold beer on a Friday night. “Nice try, but no joy. You wolfed down a salad and a protein bar over the kitchen sink,” he pointed out, and she huffed out a sigh that was probably as much concession as he was going to get.
“Okay, so I was excited, and I wanted to get everything to Mallory as soon as possible. But seriously, there’s no way the footage of you talking about apple picking didn’t turn out really well. I think the stills of the grove came out great, too, although I’ll still have to edit those later before I can send them out. And I’ll probably skip e-mailing her the test shots of you scowling.”
“Hey! You said those were just to measure the light,” Eli argued. “And for the record, I don’t scowl.”
He’d meant to deliver the words with conviction, but the soft chuckle that had managed to well up and escape from his chest pretty much trashed the intent. Scarlett’s corresponding laughter filled the warm, dusty air around them along with half the cornfield to their right, sending a handful of sparrows shooting upward from the bright-green stalks. Not that she seemed to care what the sparrows thought of her.
“Pardon me while I call bullshit,” she said, pointing to the equipment around her neck. “The camera never lies.”
Annnnd reality check. Eli’s knuckles whitened over the plastic gallon jug of water and the pair of apples in his grasp, his heart knocking harder against his ribs at the reminder. Time for the old bob and weave. “Right. Well, we’re not done working just yet, but I did save the best for last.”
“There’s something better than picking apples and harvesting sweet corn?” Scarlett asked, and huh, she actually seemed more serious than sarcastic.
“Yup,” he said, slipping his gaze over the faded-yet-sturdy wood-planked horse barn with a grin.
It took all of three footsteps for Scarlett to cave. “Are you going to tell me what it is, or were you hoping I’d sprout mind-reading abilities in the next two minutes?”
Eli fought the urge to flinch at the mere suggestion of her being able to take a look-see into his melon. “Neither.” He measured out a smile and popped his chin at the open entryway to the horse barn. “How about I show you instead?”
Covering the rest of the distance to the horse barn took less than a minute, and he led the way past the double-wide, ten-foot doors and into the blessedly cooler space. Eli slowed his pace for a few steps, both to allow his eyes the courtesy of adjusting to the barn’s well-shaded interior and to take in the musty-sweet scents of hay and feed.
But Scarlett didn’t so much as pause to bat a single platinum lash. “This is the best part of the day?”
“Mmm-hmm. This here is our horse barn.”
“But there’s nothing in it,” she said, stopping in the center of the aisle in front of the first stall to turn a quick circle.
Eli looked at the rectangular stalls, five on either side of the packed-dirt center aisle. The rafters were a good fifteen feet up, with the wooden half walls dividing each stall measuring in at about his sternum, and for as big as Clarabelle was girthwise, she wasn’t a champ in the height department. Add that to the facts that the cow occupied the very last stall in the horse barn and Scarlett was going at warp speed as usual, and yeah, it wasn’t exactly a shocker that poor Clarabelle had been overlooked.
“There are no horses in here,” he qualified, but again, he didn’t elaborate.
And again, he could’ve counted off Scarlett’s wait time in nanoseconds. “Seems to defeat the purpose of having a horse barn, doesn’t it?”
“We used to keep a few here and there, but horses are expensive to care for, and they don’t serve much functional purpose on the farm like the cattle and chickens. Now we mostly use the space in here to store spare equipment and feed, or to keep a handful of goats from time to time. But the barn isn’t entirely unoccupied.”
Kicking his work-bruised boots into motion, he made his way down the aisle. Although it probably burned her up to no end, Scarlett matched his slow, easy stride, until finally, they reached the last shadowy stall in the barn. Eli’s smile grew at the sight of the cow lazily chewing hay in the corner, and he popped the latch to swing the door wide on its creaky hinges before stepping over the threshold of the stall.
“This is Clarabelle,” he said, turning toward Scarlett.
Only she wasn’t right on his heel, as usual, because she’d screeched to a halt a good five steps behind him.
His heart did a flash-bang in his chest. In truth, Eli hadn’t known how Scarlett would react to the big Jersey brown; after all, if there hadn’t been so much as a goldfish in Scarlett’s past, then she damn sure had probably never clapped eyes on an animal as large as Clarabelle. The cow might be as sweet as Tupelo honey with those huge black eyes and that slow, gentle demeanor of hers, but she wasn’t exactly conventional. Or small. Or . . .
Shit.
“Scarlett?”
A second unglued itself from the clock, then another, and another, and still, Scarlett stood nailed to the dirt floor in front of Clarabelle’s stall. Eli’s brain spun, scrambling for something—Christ, anything even partway decent would do the trick—to back his way out of what had clearly been a spectacular fail of an idea.
And then her entire face lit with pure, uncut happiness, her Christmas-morning smile making a direct hit in the center of his sternum and rendering him 100 percent useless.
“Oh.” Scarlett splayed a hand over the front of her loose black-and-white top, just above where her camera rested over her breastbone. “Oh my God. Eli, she’s so pretty. Can I . . . is it okay if I take some pictures of her?”
Thankfully, Scarlett was so entranced by the sight of Clarabelle that she didn’t seem to notice the fact that his voice box had gone on a complete walkabout with the rest of his faculties. “Uh,” he grunted, and awesome. He was officially a Neanderthal. “Yeah. Yes.” Eli straightened, giving himself one last mental bitch-slap before blinking himself back to the horse barn once and for all. “Of course. She’s actually quite the attention hog.”
As if to prove the claim, Clarabelle shuffled over, lowering her head to brush against his arm in a clear bid for affection, and he had to laugh. “Okay, old girl. Smile for the camera.”
Eli stepped aside, placing the gallon of water in the opposite corner of the stall as Scarlett’s camera sounded off in a series of click-clicks. After a few minutes’ worth of taking photographs from various angles, she straightened, carefully replacing the lens cap and thumbing the power switch to the “off” position. Another couple of moves had her gear stored safely in her candy-apple-red camera bag and the bag placed out of harm’s way on a peg outside the stall.
“I take it we have to feed her and make sure her water and bedding are clean, just like we did with the chickens,” Scarlett said, stepping back over the threshold and tugging the stall door shut.
“Yes and no. Clarabelle spends most of her day grazing in the field adjacent to the henhouse, so she doesn’t need much by way of food or stall cleaning.” Thankfully, their immediate surroundings were remarkably fragrance-free right now, although Eli knew all too well how those circumstances could turn on a dime with nine and a half cents to spare. “But she does need eyes on her every day, along with plenty of water and TLC.”
Scarlett edged closer. “TLC,” she said, and he traded the apples in his hand for the two stiffly bristled brushes sitting on the ledge by his shoulder.
“Yup. You want to help me groom her?”
“Sure.” Reaching out, Scarlett took the brush he’d extended in her direction. “Oh! These bristles are kind of hard. Won’t they hurt her?”
Unable to cage it, he let go of a laugh. “You’ll climb a tree clear to the top with no never mind for your own personal safety, but you’re worried about brushing my cow too hard?”
One platinum-blond brow arched. “Do you want my help or n
ot, cowboy?”
Eli’s laugh lingered, and he ran his free hand over the short, wiry hair on Clarabelle’s back. “No, the brush won’t hurt her. Clarabelle’s skin isn’t thin like a person’s, and life can get pretty dirty out in the pasture, so the sturdy brush is a bit of a necessity.”
“Okay.” Scarlett stood across from him, her olive-green eyes missing nothing as she watched him for a minute before mimicking his movements on Clarabelle’s other side. “Like this?”
Clarabelle chuffed out her approval before Eli could answer, angling toward Scarlett, and at least his lapdog of a cow had good taste. “Look at you,” he teased, tipping his chin at Scarlett’s busy hands. “You’re gettin’ the hang of everything around here. Pretty soon you’ll be ready to run the whole farm.”
“Hardly.” Scarlett scoffed, although the sound wasn’t unkind. “Anyway, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly a stay-in-one-place kind of girl.”
“You’re staying here at Cross Creek for a month,” he pointed out. Hell, he’d stayed here his whole life, even though half the time his mind was in other places.
“Which is actually unusual. I don’t normally stay on location—or anywhere, I guess—for quite so long, but Mallory really needed the help.”
Eli paused, midbrush. Surely she couldn’t mean anywhere, anywhere. “I could see how a month-long shoot would be out of the ordinary, but what about in between jobs? Don’t you stay at home in New York for more than a week or two when you’re not on location? Or when you shoot locally?”
He’d finally sucked it up a few nights ago and checked out her website, and hoo boy, Hunter hadn’t been embellishing when he’d brought up Scarlett’s credentials. A photographer of her caliber had to have a forty-foot list of people interested in hiring her for freelance work. Hell, she could probably stay in New York indefinitely if she really wanted to.
Which clearly, she didn’t, because her next words were, “I don’t really do a ton of local shoots. At least not extended ones. And I’m rarely ever not on location.”
Crossing the Line (The Cross Creek Series Book 2) Page 13