by Melissa Tagg
She watched Lucas walk away for a few miserable moments before finally turning toward the school to trail the convoy of people heading inside.
She hadn’t been in the high school gym in years, but she knew what it’d look like—bleachers that slanted up both walls, flags and championship banners, basketball lines on the floor she’d watched Beckett run during countless games. There’d probably be a set of risers in the middle of the floor where the mayor would give one of his usual homilies.
Maybe she should just head back to the orchard. She wasn’t in the mood anymore to be entertained by Maple Valley’s quirkiness. But she needed to return Eric’s umbrella.
She curved around the corner with the last of the crowd only to see the gym dim and hushed and . . . filled with candles? What? Hundreds of them, had to be—they covered every surface, the only glow in the room save for the strands of twinkle lights strung over the metal ceiling beams.
Whoa.
“I was worried you were going to miss it.”
The voice behind her brushed over her ears, and she nearly jumped as she spun. “Beck? What’s going on?”
He placed his finger over her lips. In the candlelight, his dark eyes danced. “Just watch.” He lowered his hand and then used both arms to gently turn her around.
And there, walking across the stage—Colton Greene. And he was saying Kate’s name. And the whole room awwed.
“He’s proposing? During a town meeting?”
“He’s had it planned forever,” Beckett whispered over her shoulder. “He was just waiting for the perfect time. I think it’s the former NFL star in him that had to do it all public and showy.”
But then, just as Colton was going down on one knee, a shrill beeping blared from above. And on its heels, a whoosh—water sprayed from the ceiling as the gym filled with squeals of surprise.
The candles. The fire alarm. The sprinkler system.
Kit’s shriek was half scream, half laugh as she took in Beckett’s lack of surprise. Water streamed over his hair and down his cheeks, caught in his eyelashes. “I tried to warn him. Told him I went to school here, I know how ultra-sensitive the fire alarms are. At least once a week we all had to file out to the lawn when the alarm went off ’cause someone made toast in the teachers’ lounge.”
“Or messed up a chemistry experiment.” She had to shout over the noise of the gym.
“On accident.”
“On purpose and you know it.”
“Think Kate will still say yes?”
She looked to the stage, to where Kate had jumped into Colton’s arms and was laughing as he spun her around. “I think it’s safe to say she will.”
But when she turned back to Beckett, he wasn’t watching his sister—but her. His gaze was a swirl of uncertainty and desire, and it released a fiery arrow straight into her heart.
Until he snatched the arrow back in a blink and a cough. “Kit, I have to tell you—”
Finally. “I know.”
“Know what?” He shook wet, matted hair out of his face.
“I know you’re applying to the JAG Corps. I know you’re going to leave to go off and be an Army lawyer. What I don’t know is why you didn’t tell me.”
His mouth gaped. “Are you mad?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.” All of the above.
Eric walked up then, drenched and laughing. “There you are. My umbrella would’ve come in handy about thirty seconds ago.”
Beckett looked from Eric to the umbrella in Kit’s hands. “You guys came together?”
She couldn’t read the look on his face, but Eric was saying something else, and in the noise of the gym, she had to angle to hear him. By the time she handed Eric his umbrella and turned back around, Beckett had disappeared.
“Aren’t you supposed to be helping me?”
Webster’s non-emotive shell made it impossible to tell if the kid was serious or joking—nearly as impossible as it was to focus tonight, despite the calm atmosphere of Coffee Coffee. Too much swirled in his brain—Dad and the test results they were still waiting on. His unfinished JAG Corps application. The fact that he still hadn’t heard back from the FSO office about rescheduling his interview.
And Kit. She knew. Had known for days, apparently. And he had no clue what to do with that information.
“Maybe the reason you’re not helping me is you actually don’t know a thing about—” Webster glanced down at the open textbook on the counter in front of him. “The complex ramifications of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.”
“Um, not that complex. Pretty sure I can sum up the ramifications in three words: World War I.” Megan set a mug down in front of Beckett with a thud. “Chai tea. Which, if you ask me, is way too girly of a drink for you.”
He eyed the cup with his own dose of skepticism. “Yeah, but Kit’s been telling me for weeks if I’d give tea a chance, I might actually like it.”
And every time she did, he’d tell her she’d spent too many years living in England. Then she’d tell him to stop being so close-minded about his beverage choices.
Why he’d gone and ordered tea tonight—especially one doctored up with a bunch of cream and who knew what else—he didn’t know. Just when he’d stood at the counter and Megan said, “You’re usual French roast?” all he could think of was Kit standing in that high school gym, drenched and laughing and . . .
Too many synonyms crammed through his mind all at once—adorable, alluring, perfect.
And he was an idiot. An idiot who’d sworn he’d never let himself look at Kit like that again. An idiot who’d had the irrational urge to ask Eric Hampton why he felt the need to hang around all the time.
An idiot who was supposed to be helping Webster and, oh yeah, somehow breaking it to the teen that he still hadn’t made any progress on finding his friend. At least he’d called the social worker. But Webster wasn’t going to like what he’d found out.
“Well?” Megan tapped dark purple nails on the counter. “Aren’t you going to try it?”
He sipped, winced. Way too sweet.
“Told you.” Megan straightened. “I’ll get you a coffee. On the house.”
“You can’t keep giving me free coffee, Meg. That’s no way to run a business.”
She grinned. Shocker, that. Maybe Raegan hadn’t entirely been seeing things. In which case, maybe he would’ve been smart to pick a different tutoring locale tonight. But he liked the coffee here and the girl who served it. She was her own person—snarky and stubborn. He had a feeling underneath the tough-girl act, she had a sensitive heart. But he’d hate to unintentionally encourage anything he shouldn’t.
Webster’s heels kicked against the barstool base underneath him. “Look, if we’re not going to study—”
“Sorry, Web. My focus is off tonight.”
The boy twisted his napkin into a ball. “Don’t know why I should care about any of this anyway. It happened decades ago. Doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
Beckett mustered a smirk. “I think history teachers everywhere might go into a collective faint if they heard you say that.”
“I’ve got enough going on in my own life. Why do I care about a war that started because some dude in Europe was assassinated?”
Beckett took another drink of the tea before remembering he didn’t like it. He pushed the cup away. “There’s a little more to it than that.”
“Whatever.” Webster clapped his textbook closed. “Look, the only real reason I came tonight was to find out if . . .” Hesitant expectancy idled in his unfinished thought.
Beckett wasn’t going to get a better opening than that. “I tried, Web. I really did.”
The teenager’s face, usually such a mask of disinterest, turned transparent. He dropped his balled-up napkin, shoulders slumping.
“I called your social worker, and the most I could get out of her is that Amber—”
“Amanda!” Webster slid off his stool. “You can’t even remember her name?”
; “Amanda, sorry. But the social worker said Amanda is no longer part of her caseload. That’s the most she’d tell me.”
But Webster was already stuffing books into his backpack and then yanking on its zipper.
“Webster, are you sure it’s something to be this upset about? Friends drift apart sometimes.”
Webster slung his backpack over his shoulders. “It’s not like that with us.”
“Is there more you’re not telling me?”
“I need to get home for supper.”
“Web—”
“I get it. You tried.”
He turned and was out the door before Beckett could carve out an argument or at least something encouraging, something to revive Webster’s hope. But how fair would that be, anyway, considering the likelihood of his making any further progress on the search?
“Did you really try that hard?” Megan had paused halfway down the counter, rag in hand.
“Of course I did. I argued with the social worker for a good fifteen minutes. Then I talked to a law school friend who’s handled a bunch of custody cases, but he said confidentiality—especially with minors—isn’t something you can usually get around.”
Megan’s eyebrows dipped into a disbelieving V.
“I tried,” he said again, but it came out slight, unconvincing.
“As hard as you tried to drink that chai?” She cast a glance at his neglected tea.
And just because he was ornery, just because something about this evening—from Kit to Webster to Megan’s skepticism now—had him disconcerted and off-balance, he lifted the mug and in a sequence of determined gulps, downed the whole thing.
Megan went back to wiping down the counter. “I’m just saying, you could go talk to the social worker in person. Do that Walker charm thing. I never wanted to be Kate’s friend, but she won me over by showing up on my doorstep when I was sick as a dog and making me soup. A few minutes on the phone so would not have had the same effect.”
Show up on her doorstep. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Maybe because he’d been more concerned with Dad and the orchard and his own stalled plans than keeping a hastily made promise to a kid he barely knew.
But watching Megan now, understanding the impact his older sister had made on her life, it awakened something in him—a desire to be that for someone else. Obviously Webster already had Colton in his life. His adoptive parents, too. But for some reason he’d reached out to Beckett for help on this one thing.
What would it hurt to drive over to Ames, see if he could wrangle some information from the social worker in person?
Megan cleaned the length of the counter, then shook her rag over a garbage can before tossing it in a stainless steel sink. He waited until she faced him again to speak. “You know you’re actually kind of a genius?”
She rolled her eyes, removed his empty cup. “Just for that, I’ll get you that coffee I promised.”
There was that smile again. More of a smirk, but still. Raegan’s admonition rebounded, reminding him to be careful. “Hey, Meg, just so you know . . .” Man, this was going to be awkward. But he had to say something, didn’t he? Wasn’t that the right thing to do? “I don’t come here expecting free coffee or . . . like, expecting or looking for anything else. I mean, you’re great, but—”
She froze, coffee pot in midair. “You are not actually serious.”
“I just don’t want you to think—”
She plunked the coffee pot back under the machine. “You think I . . . you . . .” She pointed back and forth between them, eyes going wider with each word. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re old.”
Um, not what he’d expected. “I’m what, seven or eight years older than you?”
“You’re starting to get those crow’s feet things by the corners of your eyes.”
“Some girls might call that charming.”
“And even if I was into older guys, which I’m not, you don’t have a job.” She took off her apron and slapped it on the counter. “You’re living with your dad. Technically, you’re a convict.”
“You really know how to make a guy feel good about himself, you know that?”
“I don’t give you free coffee because I think you’re my knight on a white horse or something. I give you free coffee because apparently motherhood has made me soft, and I hate making a guy pay when I know he doesn’t currently have an income.” She reached for the pot once more, poured a cup, and set it in front of him with a clunk. “Then there’s the fact that you’re holding a grudge against your dad, who, far as I can tell, is just about the greatest guy to walk the earth.”
At the pitch of his eyebrows, she nodded. “Yeah, Kate and I talk. She says you’re mad at all of them, too.”
“I’m not mad.” His fingers closed around the coffee mug.
“Well, she says it’s been weird in the house ever since you found out about the tumor. It’s probably why Colt proposed today, so Kate can hurry up and marry him and get out from under the same roof as her brooding brother.”
He took a long drink of the bitter brew. It scorched his throat.
Megan pushed a chunk of black hair behind her ear. “Sorry. I was a little harsh on that last part.”
“Just the last part?” He never should have started this conversation. It’d gone from awkward to amusing to biting. No, Megan hadn’t meant to claw at him. But he felt scraped and raw and exposed all the same. He’d been less than composed Saturday at the hospital, sure, but he thought he’d done an okay job appearing fine in the days since. He’d gone with Dad to Iowa City earlier in the week. Conversation might have been a little stilted, but he’d tried.
But clearly trying wasn’t good enough lately. Not with Webster. Not with his family.
“Beckett, I—”
“It’s okay, Meg.” His phone buzzed.
“You’re really lucky to have the family you do.” Dark eyeliner couldn’t hide the softness in her eyes. “If I have a crush on anything, it’s the entire Walker clan. I like you guys.” She reached for her bunched-up apron atop the counter. “In a completely innocent, platonic way. Okay?”
He slid his phone from his pocket, scrounging up the closest thing he had to a good-humored expression. “Okay.” He glanced at his phone screen. The text was from Raegan.
Dad got test results. Wants to talk to all of us together. Come home.
It was time to stop avoiding Sam Ross.
Kit’s searching gaze ambled over the activity of the almost entirely tarp-covered town square. The lawn was a kaleidoscope of colored plastic laid by a troop of community members—a solution to the rain-soaked ground in preparation for tonight’s “Movie on the Green.” Folding chairs were being set up over the tarp, facing the massive screen hanging in the band shell. On the fringe of nightfall, only street lamps and twinkle lights wrapped around the spindly trunks of trees—newly planted since last year’s tornado—lit the grounds.
Surely Sam was around here somewhere, wasn’t he? She’d asked a couple people, but so far, no one had seen him.
“I suppose it didn’t occur to anybody to just move the whole shindig indoors, did it?”
Kit turned to see Drew Renwycke walking toward her with a woman beside him in a maroon knit cap and jean jacket. It was the woman who’d spoken, and Drew was chuckling. “Clearly you aren’t a Maple Valley native, Maren. We don’t like to let weather or circumstances interfere with our fun.” The couple reached Kit. “Hey, Kit, meet my girlfriend, Maren Grant.”
Kit pushed her fluttering hair out of her face and shook Maren’s hand. “Ah, I heard about you—the writer from Minnesota, yeah? Have you met Kate Walker?”
Maren laughed. “Everyone asks me that.”
“Because having two novelists in one little town is big news around here.” Drew circled one arm around her waist. “Kit’s the one whose barn I’m building.”
Maren’s eyes sparkled. “Right, the barn that’s going to be an event center. Adorable idea. Maybe I can do a book-signing
there someday.”
“I’d love that. When’s your next book coming out? Drew here says he can have the building up by mid-October.”
Maren patted Drew’s chest. “If anyone can do it, this guy can.”
Was it Kit’s imagination or did Drew flush at his girlfriend’s praise? This couple might be able to give Kate and Colton a run for their money in the lovestruck category. Or Logan and Amelia. Or Seth and Ava.
Was something in the air around here?
“Back in the day, farmers threw barn-raising parties and put up whole structures in a day. So, a month isn’t all that big of an accomplishment.” Drew pulled Maren closer. “But anyhow, I’ve got a good crew of guys coming out to help on Saturday. And to answer your question, Maren’s next book is out in November, so you should definitely be able to host that signing.”
The cinnamon scent of apple cider drifted in the air, and the crackle of plastic tarp underfoot sounded all around them.
“I hope you know how grateful I am, Drew—not just for taking on the project, but for whatever fancy budget work you did to get the numbers looking so reasonable.” She hadn’t had to borrow as much from Willa as she’d thought. And if others were as quick to book the barn for small events as Maren seemed to be, maybe she’d be able to pay Willa back sooner than planned.
If only her optimism wasn’t so clouded by worry over Dad’s reaction. Had Lucas alerted him already? Would he be angry?
But he shouldn’t have any right to be. She hadn’t used orchard revenue on the project.
Because there isn’t any revenue. Any money they’d made so far this fall had all gone toward payroll and their semi-annual insurance installment. Ending the season with a decent-sized profit was a far-off dream at the moment.
“Hey, I’m just happy to have the work.” Drew interrupted her tense worries. “Owning your own business comes with a whole set of risks and challenges, which of course, you know.”
She did. All except for the actual “owning your own business” part. She was simply managing the orchard on borrowed time.
They chatted a few more minutes before Drew and Maren moved off. People were beginning to claim seats as Kit wandered to a table at the back and bought a cup of hot chocolate. Early autumn tinged the night air, and she burrowed her chin into the collar of the burgundy puff vest she wore over a long-sleeved navy blue shirt. The warmth of her cup seeped through the frayed yarn of her homemade cream-colored mittens—a gift from Grandma a half-dozen Christmases ago.