by Toni Blake
“Fair enough.”
Mike dipped his head to lick dark cookie crumbs off her chest, making her shiver slightly, and said, “Besides, you know I hate speeders.” The comment reminded her of the car he’d told her he’d heard blasting past the lake when Anna had gone missing—maybe that was why Mike felt so strongly about that particular offense. She listened now as he talked about a couple of high-speed chases he’d engaged in lately, with a souped-up Mustang he thought was stolen.
“There are high-speed chases in Destiny? And stolen cars?” Not only was she surprised, but also a little alarmed. It was one thing for her to go sixty-five in a forty-five, but another altogether for Mike to go ninety-five on the same roads. Her heart constricted.
“Not usually. And I hope never again.” His jaw set and his teeth began to clench. “Stupid asshole,” he muttered.
“Here, have a cookie,” she said to lighten the mood, holding her own up to his mouth. He bit into it and she took it back to eat the rest.
“So, tell me something, Farris,” he said then. “Is Chicago really all that great?”
“Of course,” she answered automatically. “It’s big, and exciting, and there’s always something happening.” But even to her own ears, the words sounded weirdly…hollow. So she added, “And don’t forget about my job. Good money, you know.”
Mike just shrugged, busy twisting the top off another Oreo. “Yeah, well, it’s possible to be happy without a ton of money.” Then he scraped the white filling off with his teeth.
“True, but…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know—you feel responsible for your whole family.”
“Well, as I’ve told you before, living in the city is also about my sense of success,” she argued. “It makes me feel good about myself and the things I’ve achieved.”
“Ya know,” he began thoughtfully, “maybe if that’s what it takes to make you feel good about yourself, you’re trying too hard.”
Ouch. And whoa. She’d never thought about it like that before.
So she simply shot him a look yet decided to ignore the remark. “And about my family, maybe it is a lot to put on myself, but I think you feel responsible for things you shouldn’t, too—so do you really want to go there?”
“Good point,” he said. “And no.”
“That’s what I thought. And just so you know, I do get to enjoy my money, too. I get to shop. And travel.”
“Where have you gone?” He looked sincerely interested, but somehow Rachel felt…a little braggy as she named off places. “New York. Paris. Italy. Spain. Miami.” If she was guessing right, Mike probably hadn’t traveled much, maybe just to Florida to see his parents. “A lot of that is work-related—but sometimes I take trips with friends from Chicago, too.”
“What’s your favorite place? Of everywhere you’ve been.”
“Italy,” she said without hesitation. “It’s amazing.”
“I’d like to go there someday,” he said. “See where my dad’s family came from.”
“Of course,” she added, a bit glum, “who knows if I’ll ever travel anyplace exciting again. I might be losing my job soon.” She scrunched her nose up as she met his eyes, unsure why she suddenly wanted to confide in him about that. Maybe she’d just gotten used to them sharing stuff with each other—and it seemed strange to realize he didn’t know about the big fear in her life right now.
He looked adequately surprised, so she told him all about Pamela. In a way, she didn’t like letting him know she was scared, or intimidated by someone younger than her, but he’d revealed a lot to her, too, so telling him felt…surprisingly okay.
“I can’t believe your bosses would pick anybody over you,” he said. “You’re smart, determined, gorgeous—what more do they want?”
She smiled, truly flattered. At moments, it was hard to believe this was the same guy who’d pulled her over on her way into town. “Sometimes, when business is bad, any business, and the higher-ups are grasping at straws trying to fix whatever’s wrong, they seem to think newer means better. And sometimes they’re even right. But I have to hope my higher-ups decide to stick with the tried and true.”
“What if they don’t?” he asked. “What will you do?”
“Get another job, I hope.”
The cookie package crinkled as Mike reached back inside. “So…you wouldn’t decide to buy Edna’s orchard and move home?”
She lowered her chin teasingly. “Don’t worry—the orchard is still yours to steal from us. Because I love my life the way it is—I really do.” Yet just like before, it sounded oddly as if she was trying too hard to convince them both. And was it bad if she defined success by her career?
“So when do you leave Destiny?” he asked, sounding nonchalant as he focused on the cookie wrapper.
“The Tuesday after the apple festival.”
Was she mistaken or did Mike’s jaw clench again—just slightly? “That’s coming up quick.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly, glancing down toward their feet, under the covers. The festival was next weekend, in fact. It had seemed so far in the future the whole time she’d been in town, but now it lay just around the corner. She’d decided staying ’til Tuesday would give her time to help clean up, pack her bags, and spend a little time with her friends before taking off. Feeling awkward, not quite knowing what else to say, she pursed her lips, then let out a sigh.
“So,” Mike finally said. “If you’re leaving that soon, we should probably, uh, quit wasting time talking and let me show you some more outrageous.”
Feeling a familiar tingle race down her spine, and relieved the uncomfortable moment had passed, Rachel gave him her sexiest grin. “I could go for some more outrageous.”
It was on Monday that Edna informed Rachel, while they picked apples, that they were in trouble. “Remember when Mike said to let him know if I needed anything? Well, I think I’m gonna have to let him know. Because me, you, and Brian—we’re not gonna make it.”
Rachel practically spun on her ladder to face Edna, stunned. “What do you mean?” They’d been working so hard.
“Four days left, and that’s includin’ set-up for the festival.” She shook her head. “Nope, if we don’t call in some extra help, we’re gonna have apples go bad in these trees. More than any day-trippers can pick over the next few weeks. And more than I can store, even if we picked ’em afterwards. And bad apples is lost money, somethin’ I can’t afford. I thought I could make it without the usual hired hands this year, but looks like I thought wrong.”
Edna sounded matter-of-fact, like this was an everyday conversation, but her troubled look told Rachel how hard it was for her to break down and ask for Mike’s help—since even if she liked him and might consider selling him the orchard, he was a Romo. She instinctively understood that, for Edna, asking family for help was one thing, but going outside the family was like asking for a handout. It hit Rachel all over again how much Edna really had needed her this year—and made her so glad she’d come.
And the truth was—Rachel didn’t even know how Mike could solve the problem, but she still asked, “Do you want me to call him?” thinking that would be easier on Edna.
Edna just nodded.
So that night, Rachel got Mike on his cell. He was on duty, but offered to meet her at Dolly’s for a piece of pie.
“I don’t know what you can do, if anything, but Edna seemed to think you could help,” she said, sitting next to him at one of the small café tables. The place was mostly quiet—it was after dark, considered late by Destiny standards.
“Woulda been nice to know about this a week ago,” he said, digging his fork into a piece of pumpkin pie, “before things got this drastic.”
She nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. But I had no idea until she told me this afternoon.” As for her pie, she was just staring at it, fiddling with her fork handle.
He reached out to cover her hand, stilling it on the fork. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
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br /> She met his gaze and found herself responding honestly, again no longer concerned with being bold, brave Rachel with Mike. “I guess I am. I mean, if the apples go to waste, I can supplement Edna’s income through the winter. But I see that as a last resort. I’m glad I have the means to help her—but I think she’d hate if it came to that.” Despite Rachel’s plans to provide for Edna if needed, this was the first time she’d thought through it realistically and factored Edna’s pride into the equation. Some people could accept money graciously and others, not so much. Suddenly, Rachel was pretty sure Edna fell into the latter category.
“We’ll get the apples harvested,” he said. That simple. Like it was a done deal.
So she just slanted him a doubtful look. “How?”
He squeezed her hand. “You just leave that to me, Farris,” he said, then leaned over and kissed her.
On Thursday morning, Rachel and Edna peeked out the window to see a line of cars and pickup trucks come driving across the bridge.
“What the hell?” Rachel asked, squinting to see.
But when she realized the last vehicle in the caravan was Mike’s truck, she understood. She simply looked at Edna. “I believe the cavalry has just arrived.” They’d spent the last two days picking apples like maniacs and hoping for the best. Rachel hadn’t heard from Mike and had begun to wonder if he would come through, but now she was sorry she’d doubted him.
Walking out the back door, she found Logan, Adam, Tessa, Sue Ann, and some other people she didn’t even know, all getting out of their vehicles, all dressed in sweatshirts and jeans for the cooler weather that had blown in this week. She just stared at Mike, mouth gaping.
He slammed his door and came over to lower a small kiss to her shocked mouth. “Sorry I didn’t warn you about this—there wasn’t time. I’ve been busy rearranging my schedule and everybody else’s so we could all get here on the same day. We’ve got more people coming later—Sue Ann enlisted Jenny and Mick when they both get off work, and Jeff’ll be here then, too. Your buddy Amy is gonna close the bookstore early and head over. And those guys”—he pointed to some of the people she didn’t recognize—“work for Adam’s landscaping company and agreed to help. Between all of us, I figure we can kick some apple-picking ass today.”
Rachel just stood there. She couldn’t believe it. It was a simple enough solution, she supposed—but it just hadn’t occurred to her to go around asking their friends. Yet here they all were, ready and willing to help. If Rachel had been the type of girl to cry, it would have brought tears to her eyes. But since she’d firmly decided her recent tears in front of Mike had to be her last, she instead just threw her arms around his neck and whispered, “Thank you.”
Just then, the back screen door slammed and they looked up to see Edna. “Mike, I do believe you’re a prince among men, and I officially take back every bad word I ever said about the Romos. Except maybe Giovanni. But otherwise, I take it all back.”
“I’d say that’s more than fair, Edna,” Mike told her with just a hint of a smile.
“Well, you’d best put us to work, Edna,” Logan said. “We’re burning daylight.”
“Damn straight we are,” Edna replied, then turned into her drill-sergeant self. “Rachel, you take Sue Ann and Tessa and work on separatin’ what we picked yesterday. You know how many to store for winter and the rest are for the festival. I’ll take the rest of these fellas out to the far grove and get ’em started. When you girls are done with that chore, we need to go back over the front groves to get the late apples just now turnin’.”
After that, they all worked like mad. A couple of the guys had brought boom boxes, which blared out the seventies and eighties hits played by the only radio station Destiny received, and though Rachel normally liked the peacefulness of the orchard, today the music fit the mood and kept them all moving. And the whole time, Rachel’s heart filled with the knowledge that it was Mike who had pulled this all together. Five or six weeks ago, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but maybe this made it official—the Farris/Romo feud was over.
Edna clearly saw her job today as taking care of the troops and providing provisions. At lunchtime, she came out with trays of sandwiches and cans of soda, making sure everyone got fed.
A few hours after that, as promised, more people arrived and Edna set them to work, too—and by late afternoon, everyone was laboring vigorously in the front orchard, finding those just-ripened apples hidden deep within the trees. Even Tessa, who promised Rachel she felt fine today, was enjoying a burst of energy. Jenny’s husband, Mick, brought a couple of guys he worked with building homes in a new subdivision across town, and Amy provided a few teenagers she’d recruited from the bookstore after school. Everyone talked and laughed the whole time, and somehow, by the end of the day, Sue Ann even ended up renting Logan a cottage on Blue Valley Lake that had recently been vacated by one of her relatives.
When the sun began to dip slightly toward the horizon, Edna called Rachel inside to help her fry up some chicken and bake a few apple pies for their helpers. She put Rachel to work on mashed potatoes and corn on the cob.
“How about all this!” Edna said, beaming as she quickly crimped the edges on three pies before sliding them into the oven. “Mike really came through, didn’t he?”
Rachel returned her grandmother’s smile. “He really did,” she admitted as a fresh sense of relief rolled through her. “We’re gonna make it. And now we can spend all day tomorrow setting up our booth and getting ready for Saturday.”
“Gives ya a good feelin’, don’t it?”
Rachel gave a sincere and cheerful nod, then refocused on peeling potatoes.
“Goes to show ya—sometimes there’s more to life than glitz and excitement. Sometimes it’s about the simple things—like a man who’ll take care of ya.”
At this, though, Rachel stopped peeling and narrowed her gaze on Edna. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to get what she was driving at. So she pointed out, “Mike’s here for you, not me. Remember, he’s a decent guy, just like you told me.”
Edna cast a quick sideways glance before returning her gaze to the pies. “If you think Mike’s here for me, you think again, Rachel Marie Farris.”
Rachel took in the words, the idea, and almost didn’t know what to do with it. Was that true? Had Mike organized all this for her? And if it was true, did it make her happy? Or did it just make her…sad to be leaving in a few days?
She didn’t know the answer, but she refused to let Edna see any emotion on her face, or to even reply at all. So she kept peeling potatoes, and instead said, “Maybe this would be a good time for more of your story about Giovanni. I still don’t know what happened when he came back to Destiny.”
Short letters arrived from Giovanni on a regular basis, but the entire winter passed without his coming home. Home, though, Edna had decided, was getting to be a hard thing to define. Giovanni’s farm truly felt like her home now—she’d come to love it more and more. Yet was it really Giovanni’s home, or was his heart in Italy?
The more time that passed, the more their summer together began to seem like something she’d made up, like a fairytale she’d told herself. It had been so perfect, but ended so abruptly. And though she’d written to tell him about her illness afterward, the fact that he’d entirely missed something so traumatic and frightening in her life made her feel disconnected from him. A simple letter, after all, couldn’t express how truly grim her battle with the flu had been. And his return letters merely said things like: So sorry you were ill, my fiore..
As the winter months crept by, Edna’s energy was slow to return, but she eventually regained her strength as spring approached. Her brothers frowned on how much time she spent with Eddie, even though she explained she felt only friendship toward him. And how could she not feel a certain attachment to the person who, to her way of thinking, had literally saved her life? She reminded Wally and Dell more than once that it had been Eddie who’d stayed by her side i
n those dark days.
It was a sunny April morning when Eddie invited her on a walk through the apple grove, the orchard suddenly bright white with apple blossoms. They fluttered down like snow when the wind blew and Eddie plucked them from her hair.
She was truly shocked, though, when Eddie grabbed her hand and leaned in to kiss her. So she pulled away, saying, “You know I’m engaged!” Ever since her fever had broken, she’d been sure she’d just imagined Eddie saying he loved her, but now…well, maybe she hadn’t imagined it at all.
“Yep,” Eddie replied boldly, “but he’s not here, and I am. And I believe you care for me, too, Edna. I believe it with my whole heart.”
Oh Lord.
It was in that moment that a dam broke inside her. And she let her soul fill up…with Eddie. With his kindness. With his generosity. With his sweet smile and simple goodness. With the memory of how he’d been there for her, day and night, without fail, when she’d needed someone.
Her soul also filled with something else in those moments—a warm and easy desire. It felt right, natural, to kiss him back. And maybe it had felt right all winter long, but she’d been trying so hard to be true to Giovanni that she’d refused to let herself see it. There was no denying it now, though—now they were wrapping their arms around each other amid a flurry of blossoms dancing in the breeze and kissing, again and again. Being in his arms felt…safe.
Of course, she was still promised to Giovanni, and her feelings for him hadn’t suddenly vanished. In fact, she realized with horror—even as she pressed her body against Eddie’s—that she was in love with two men. One who was well-off and worldly—and another who was just as poor as her but who understood her so very well.
She turned that over in her head lying in bed that night. She compared the two men in other ways, as well. While Giovanni’s kisses were confident, sensual, seductive, Eddie’s were sweet, gentle, and loving. Where Giovanni seemed exotic, exciting, Eddie came from simple beginnings, just like her. And while Giovanni was older and had always seemed like a commanding, self-assured man, she’d watched Eddie transform from a friendly boy to a capable man himself over these past months.