Hometown Hope: A Small Town Romance Anthology

by Zoe York

  “Pleased to meet you,” Ethan said.

  Emma was graceful like Olivia and had long, wavy hair. She shook their hands.

  “Emma’s taking over the All You line for the family firm,” Olivia explained.

  “Olivia thinks that going to school, having a baby, designing wedding dresses for Ginger’s clients and taking care of a whole new product line is too much,” her sister said with a laugh. “So here I am! I have to start learning all she does so I can take over the harvesting of valerian for our new all-natural products.”

  “That’s cool,” Ethan said, feeling the need to fill the quiet.

  “We launch the products next year.”

  Ethan noted a tremor of uncertainty in Emma’s smile, but it was Lily’s flat, “Congratulations,” that really caught his attention.

  She looked a bit tired, more drawn, and he stepped a little closer, worried she was working too hard. Maybe they could take a weekend away somewhere. Do something other than work.

  “Do you two have any kids?” Emma asked.

  “Us?” Lily asked, her surprise obvious.

  “We just got married last month,” Ethan explained.

  “Are you married?” Lily asked Emma.

  “I think she has a crush on someone, but she won’t say who,” Olivia mused. Emma, Ethan noted, didn’t meet her sister’s eyes.

  “Well, we were just going for a walk,” Ethan said, extracting them from the conversation. “We’ll let you continue with your quest to rape the land.”

  Devon grinned at the joke meant to ruffle his feathers, and gave him a brotherly shove.

  Laughing, Ethan steered Lily away and continued walking.

  “Do you want kids?” Lily asked, once they were out of earshot of the others.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too. But not—you know…”

  With him. She wasn’t envisioning kids with him. Was that what she was going to say?

  He snagged her hand as they approached a bench near the rolling hills that led higher into the mountains, the trail eventually ending at an aquamarine lake. He pulled her down beside him on the seat, worried he was losing her.

  “You doing okay?”

  “Fine,” she answered immediately. “And you?”

  He’d absently begun massaging his knee. “Yeah, the usual.”

  “You were good for a week,” she said, pointing to his leg.

  It had been a darn fine week, too. One he’d like to repeat on several levels. Many of them involving his wife.

  “You should try cutting out wheat and other inflammatory foods. It might help your joints.”

  “Okay.” He had a suspicion that it might be either wheat or dairy, if anything. But those were often staples in Lily’s recipes when she wasn’t making stir-frys, which, in his mind, involved a fair amount of prep. She had been working hard, learning both businesses, and he didn’t feel it was fair to inhibit her cooking with possible dietary restrictions as he tried to figure out which foods gave him issue through the process of painstaking elimination. Especially with wheat and dairy, which were found in practically everything.

  “Want me to try stir-frys again?” she offered.

  “I don’t want to put you out.” He stood, ready to prove himself on the daunting trail that led ahead. But Lily turned back toward town.

  “Where are you going?”

  Her gaze landed on his knee and the look hit him like a punch. She was returning home because she didn’t think he could make the hike. She was being held back by him.

  And that was about the worst thing he could think of.

  Lily wanted last week back. The one where she and Ethan had made love and kissed like crazy and didn’t dodge each other.

  She slapped five more ham sandwiches onto a tray for the town hall meeting and grumbled to herself, wallowing in her own anger.

  It didn’t help that Dani had made herself at home in Ethan’s office that morning. They were going over her site together, and every time Lily glanced in there was a big, beautiful shot of Dani on Ethan’s screen. Perfect. Womanly.

  Sexy.

  And even worse was that the real deal was sitting right there beside her husband, laughing and acting coy. She’d had Lily’s cat in her lap while she’d stretched out all languid and tempting on the futon, which had finally arrived. Every time Lily peeked in to see if they were hungry, Ethan would click out of whatever program he was working in as if he had something to hide, making Dani’s image vanish from his monitors.

  Lily hated it.

  Plus she was pretty confident it was something in his diet making his joints sore, and when she’d suggested she could cook for him, he’d said he didn’t want to put her out.

  He was her husband. She loved to cook. How could something like that possibly put her out—especially if it helped him and allowed him to move more freely?

  So she hadn’t cooked. And he’d been happy about it, making his own dairy-and-wheat-free breakfast.

  Lily slapped the last of the sandwiches onto a plastic tray in the back of Mandy’s café, and walked them over to the town hall. She wished she could expand her restaurant’s kitchen so she had enough space to do her catering prep there instead of mooch space off of Mandy. Next, she headed to her restaurant, where she discovered the fryer wasn’t working.

  “How much is a new one?” she asked Quinlan, her sous-chef.

  Leif had enjoyed his week off for his eye surgery and had decided to tack on a week’s vacation, as well. She was beginning to think the man was never coming back and that she’d have to continue juggling everything on her own indefinitely. It was hard to believe she’d once wished she’d had the kitchen and its responsibilities all to herself.

  Quinlan pondered her question about the fryer for a long minute before shrugging. “Five hundred? A few grand?”

  She didn’t have a few grand. Or a few hundred. She’d just sent what she had to her father in hopes that he’d be able to start taking his blood pressure meds again.

  “Less than what you owe for the fridge that doesn’t work properly,” Gloria stated.

  “What?” Lily turned to the waitress.

  “The walk-in fridge? The guy came by and said he’s gonna sue you if you don’t pay for it.”

  Lily gave her a confused look. She didn’t see that as an outstanding liability on any of the documents she’d been given.

  “Ethan refuses to pay the bill since it turns off all the time,” Gloria said.

  “So it is faulty?”

  Gloria gave her a dry look.

  She was more confused than ever.

  “I’ll talk to him.” Later. The fryer problem had to be solved now. “Maybe we can fix this thing.” She knelt on the floor and popped open its side panel. Wires hung loose. “Look at this.”

  Quinlan got down beside her. He smelled of garlic and radishes. “Someone damaged the wiring harness.”

  Lily stood and turned to face the mostly empty kitchen. “Who? Who did this?” She turned to Quinlan. “Did you do this? Is this because I’m new? Because I’m the boss? Because you don’t want me to fit in and belong?”

  He gave her an uncomfortable look and she realized just how irrational she sounded. She needed to get a grip.

  “We lost fifteen orders this morning because of the fryer,” Gloria stated. “We should get a new one. Want me to call Ethan?”

  “No. I’m the boss. I can handle this.”

  She sucked in a breath. It wasn’t a big deal. It was fixable.

  But who was doing this to her? And why?

  She sniffed and watched as her cook fiddled around with the wiring from his spot on the floor. “Try the on switch,” he suggested.

  She flicked the switch with vigor.

  “Ow!” He swore a blue streak as he leaped away from the fryer. “Turn it off!”

  She hit the switch again as a popping sound cracked the air, followed by the scent of smoke filling her nostrils.

  That couldn’t be good.
r />   Quinlan was sucking the tip of his thumb and he pulled it from his mouth to look at it.

  “Are you okay?” Her foul mood dissipated as she realized he was hurt. “Let me see.” He already had a blister on the end of his thumb from an electrical shock. “Quinlan...”

  “It’ll be fine.” He went to the ice maker and wrapped a cube in a damp cloth, applying it to his thumb. “Not the first time I’ve been burned.”

  Lily looked at the staff who had gathered in the kitchen. She couldn’t imagine any of them doing this. None of the cameras that had been installed by Ethan or Logan would help pinpoint who had damaged the fryer seeing as none of them were in the kitchen and so many people had come and gone through the building between last night and this morning. Waitstaff, cooks, dishwashers, cleaning staff.

  “When did stuff like this begin to happen?” Lily asked.

  “A few weeks before you came along,” Gloria stated.

  That meant it had less to do with her and more to do with Ethan. How was she supposed to fix that?

  Quinlan was staring at his thumb and Lily edged him to the side and began prepping the vegetables for the day’s soup. “Go. Take care of your injury.”

  “You need help in here.”

  “And you need to deal with that burn.”

  “You’re a stubborn woman.”

  “I know.”

  “Leif always says Ethan’s lucky to have you.”

  “Well, someone tell him that.”

  Quinlan grinned. “Want me to call my uncle?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s an electrician.”

  “Yeah, okay. Sure.”

  Quinlan left her in the kitchen, down a chef and a sous-chef. Just what she’d wanted when she’d started.

  She rolled her shoulders, building herself back up again. She wouldn’t let this get to her. She was stronger than this. It was her turn at bat and all she needed was to put an efficient system into place so she could take a break between the lunch and supper rush to rest—definitely not to hurry home and check on her husband.

  Love had to prevail, and the less interference from her right now, the better.

  But she was definitely going to go check on her husband.

  Hours later, Lily dragged herself home for a break before the supper rush. She’d been putting out proverbial fires all day and it felt nice to breathe air that wasn’t laced with grease. She would have been tempted to quit today if it weren’t for the knowledge that the place would soon be hers.

  She let herself into the house, letting in Igor who’d been sitting on the step, and found Ethan dozing on the couch. His long lashes brushed his cheek and his hair was damp. Gramps sitting in the backyard with his paper. She was fairly certain it was the same paper he’d been reading for a week, but he was happy, wearing pants and staying out of trouble.

  On the coffee table in front of Ethan was a coffee mug, key chain and signed glossy headshot of the one and only Dani Demare.

  Disgusting.

  Lily shook Ethan awake. “Who keeps messing with the restaurant?”

  “What?” He stretched. “Mmm. I had the best massage.”

  “Massage?” It was three in the afternoon. He was napping and had had a massage, while she’d been dealing with restaurant issues of his creation. Any sympathy she felt for him went out the window.

  “I feel great.”

  “Someone ripped the wiring out of the fryer today.”

  “What?” He propped himself up, the hair at the back of his head sticking out.

  “I said―”

  “I heard you.” He rubbed his face.

  “Who did you tick off, Ethan?”

  “I haven’t ticked off anyone.”

  “Absolutely no one, thanks to that sunny disposition of yours?”

  His growing scowl deepened.

  “Because unless you tell them to leave the place alone, the deal’s off.”

  “What?” He swung his legs over the side of the couch. That had his attention.

  Hers too. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it, only that she felt like she was going to get screwed. She could feel it coming in like a storm over the mountains, ready to lay her flat. Standing up for herself would help him treat her seriously and realize that he couldn’t take her for granted, couldn’t screw her over, intentionally or not.

  “Don’t make me repeat myself, Ethan. You heard me just fine. And as for that fridge bill that they’re threatening to sue over? You’re paying it, because otherwise I’ll be on the hook with frozen assets and four grand that wasn’t written into our contract.”

  Ethan stood up, his expression unreadable. “Lily, there’s no way I’m paying for it.”

  “I’m not paying it because they didn’t fix the problem,” Ethan stated, struggling for calm against his anger. “It still turns off, doesn’t it?”

  “You have to pay it,” Lily stated. “They said they found nothing wrong, so the warranty won’t cover the visits. It’s only a few hundred dollars.”

  “For each visit. I’ve had them out five times.”

  “Your stubbornness could impact my ability to run the business.”

  Ethan sighed, realizing she was right. He’d wanted a reason to believe the fridge issue wasn’t in fact his staff turning on him.

  “Fine. I’m sorry. I’ll pay it first thing Monday.” Somehow.

  “Thank you.”

  It was time to make amends and make his wife happy again. He’d fix whatever it was with the fridge and tell her the truth about the outlook of his MRI.

  He’d also tell her he’d terminated the contracts with Dani and her friends, had refunded their deposits even though the sites were almost complete, and had moved on. No more Dani in his life to bother her.

  “Would you like to watch a movie with me?” he asked.

  “I have to work, Ethan. A restaurant, remember?”

  “You can take an evening off.”

  “I can’t keep taking time off with Leif still out, plus Quinlan hurt his thumb.”

  “Staff are insured.”

  “Ethan, you’re missing the point. It’s me at the stove or nobody today.” She looked like she was drowning under the weight of the place.

  It was probably the best time he’d ever have to tell her about the offer. But first he had to get her through the evening shift.

  “I’ll come help.” Ethan stood, expecting to be shut down.

  To his surprise she said, “Fine. See if you can keep up.” She lifted her chin and turned to leave.

  “Oh, I’ll keep up.” Or die trying.

  Half an hour later they were elbow to elbow, having a contest over who could debone a chicken the fastest. She won and he was officially dying. Well, not quite, but he certainly hadn’t let her win. His wife was a ninja with a butcher knife.

  “You seem more spry today,” she said, elbowing him aside to place her chicken pieces in a large pot.

  “You trying to make me feel better about losing?” He moved on to the pile of potatoes she needed peeled.

  She laughed, dishes clinking in the background.

  “I think it’s dairy causing inflammation, by the way,” Ethan announced as he finished peeling the potatoes. He’d been tweaking his diet and was seeing some positive results.

  He trapped her against the counter with an arm on either side of her, not caring if the dishwasher saw them. Lily looked startled and tried to escape his hold. “Are you going to forgive me for whatever’s going on in your head?” he asked softly.

  “You have seminude photos of your ex on your computer.” Lily blushed, looking away, embarrassed.

  “You’re the only seminude I ever want to see on my screen,” he said softly, knowing nobody else would be able to hear them over the sound of the dishwasher working in his corner of the kitchen. Lily rolled her eyes, pushing against him, but he held his ground. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Ethan…” Her tone wasn’t patient. “I said take the contract, not ogle your ex.
”

  He had never expected jealousy or insecurity from Lily. Not just because of their arrangement, but because she was…Lily. Strong. Capable. Sexy as all get-out. She was number one.

  “I canceled the contract with Dani this morning.”

  “What?” Lilly gaped in disbelief, her expression conflicted.

  “It was making you uncomfortable.” He shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal, even though it put him further behind in his goals to repay his dad. He’d had to use his credit card to repay the models, seeing as he’d already given their original deposit to his father. But so what? If those contracts made Lily unhappy, then they made him unhappy, too.

  “I didn’t expect you to let her invade our home,” Lily grumbled, scrubbing her hands in the nearby sink. She dried her hands and turned. Ethan slung his hands around her waist, drawing her close.

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “I don’t.” She tried to shove him away. “And I don’t like you giving up jobs just because I…”

  “Matter to me?”

  She frowned, almost as though forcing herself to find that new hardened Lily who had slipped away almost as soon as they were married.

  “‘Our home.’ That’s the thing I like to hear.”

  “Ethan…”

  He kissed her neck and felt her soften ever so slightly. He believed that she wanted this—them—but there was something holding her back. Something that overrode that flash of the future that kept flickering before them. One where they had it all. Love, health, devotion, companies they enjoyed, even kids.

  “We’re a good pair.” He watched her struggle to sort through her emotions. Was he laying it on too thick? He didn’t want to scare her away and she had been pulling back a bit lately.

  He lightened his tone, releasing her from his embrace and tossing a handful of potato peels into the nearby compost bin. “So let’s enjoy our year together before you go find your Mr. Right.”

  Or see that Ethan might indeed be that man.

  Her eyes flashed with anger.

  Had he dialed it back too far? Maybe it was time to bare it all and show her just how much she’d come to mean to him.