by Liz Isaacson
“We’ve met,” she finally said. “You’re Colton’s brother. I was at his wedding.”
Cy pulled his hand away, a smile taking over his face. And wow, what a smile….
Stop it, she told herself.
He snapped and said, “That’s right.” He looked up to her hair and down to her feet again. “Your hair is different.”
She automatically reached to touch the ultra-short hair on the back of her neck. “Yeah,” she said. “I changed it.”
“I like it,” he said, but she couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. That was another thing she remember about Cy and…his twin. They didn’t seem to take a whole lot seriously.
“So what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m looking for land,” he said. “I’d like to build my custom motorcycle shop here.”
“In Coral Canyon?”
“Yes.” He cooled considerably, and Patsy told herself she didn’t care. They needed to sell at least half of the orchards. Number one, her father couldn’t keep up with them anymore now that he’d been diagnosed with cancer.
Number two, they needed the money to pay off the debts he’d accumulated throughout the years. Since her mother had shocked everyone when she’d filed for divorce one day and left Coral Canyon the next, her father had been doing a lot of therapy shopping, usually from a television station late at night or early in the morning.
He had boxes from the Home Shopping Network he hadn’t even opened.
Patsy told herself to get over to her dad’s and find everything she could, send it back, and finish her day at the post office. That would put some money back in his pocket too.
But Patsy wouldn’t be ending her day at the post office. She had a ton of work to finish at the lodge, and she’d likely be there until the late hours of the night getting everything ready for the payroll the following week.
Not only that, but Sophia would be gone all of next week, and Patsy had a fill-in chef coming to the lodge. That stressed her out, because she didn’t know how things would go. Her usual fill-in chef hadn’t been available, and Patsy had been on the phone for a couple of hours to find someone else.
The job situation in Coral Canyon meant people could be picky about what they did, and by the time she’d found Tim, she’d been ready to cry. Even now, her chest felt too tight. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done at the lodge and deal with her family.
“Patsy?” Cy asked, and she blinked her way out of her mental to-do list.
“Yes.”
“This looks like an orchard.” He gazed out at the apple trees. “I’m not looking to buy an orchard.”
Patsy joined him a few feet away at the fence. “It is an orchard. It’s my family’s orchard.” Unhappiness filled her as she looked at the trees. They’d opened up this section of the orchard for anyone to come pick the apples, and the season had just started. Usually, Betty worked in the building to the left, and she assigned people to a couple of trees.
“Keep talking,” Cy said. “I feel like I’m losing you every few seconds.”
Patsy drew in a deep breath and looked at him. A smile crossed her face, and it shook a little. “I’m sorry.” She sighed, trying to find her professionalism. She needed to sell this land, and she knew Cy had enough money to buy it.
“The Foxhill Farm has thirty-three-hundred apple trees across fifty acres,” she said, this speech memorized. She’d been giving it for so many years. “We have three varieties for cross-pollination: Snowsweet, Frostbite, and Honeygold.” She paused, the Snowsweet trees in front of her with several apples ready to pick. If someone didn’t bring their baskets and bins to get the apples, they’d fall to the ground and rot, just like they’d been doing for the past couple of years.
“They’ve just come into season,” she said. “And my father is getting older, and he’s sick, and he can’t take care of the orchards anymore. My sister does the best she can, but she has four kids. My brother is going through a divorce, and—” She stopped talking, because Cy didn’t need a Foxhill family history lesson. She actually wished she’d given the history instead of airing their dirty laundry.
She was really losing her touch, and she told herself it was because of stress, not because Cy was as handsome as all of his brothers, even with the long hair. Besides, Patsy liked a little longer hair on a man.
No, you don’t, she told herself, shaking off the last couple of hours. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Bottom line, we need to sell part of the orchard, because we can’t take care of it.”
“And you’re going to lose all the trees?”
Sadness blipped through her, because she’d worked hard in the orchard growing up. It took years—up to a decade—for a tree to produce fruit, and she couldn’t stand the thought of having someone cut them all down to build a warehouse.
“Well,” she said. “We’re hoping that whoever we sell the land to will keep as many as they can.”
“How can they do that, unless they’re just going to take over the orchard?”
“How many acres do you need?” she asked.
“Ideally, four. But I can use three.”
“Three acres?”
“Four, if possible.”
“This half of the orchard is twenty,” she said. “The back third are trees that are less than eight years old, and most of them aren’t even producing fruit yet.” A new hope filled her, and she looked at Cy. “Do you want me to show you?”
He met her eyes too. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
She took her keys out of her pocket and said, “Let’s go.”
“You’re driving?”
She eyed his motorcycle. “Yes, I’m driving.” She headed for the Hummer, and to his credit Cy got in the passenger seat. “I was just in a hurry to get here,” she explained as she backed up and started down the road to Dog Valley. “And Joe is a huge pig, and there was a water bottle that came forward when I braked, and it was just a moment of wondering if I’d be able to stop.”
“Felt like a lifetime,” he said, glancing around. “But I can see what you mean about this thing being a mess.”
“Sorry,” she said, but it wasn’t her SUV she needed to apologize for. She made a turn onto an unmarked road and started bumping down the dirt path. “It’s about a mile and a half back.”
“Easy enough on a paved road,” he said. “But it will be quiet back here, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Patsy said. “Behind our orchards is a stream that runs into Prospect Lake, and those are the nearest neighbors.”
“How far?”
“Oh, probably four or five miles.” She glanced at him. “And there’s nobody going north until the outskirts of Dog Valley.”
“Hm,” Cy said, but she knew he was thinking something.
“So, are you relocating here because of your brothers?”
“Gray mentioned this place was growing, yes,” Cy said. “And I, uh, lost my building in California.”
“You lost it?”
“It was sold to someone else,” he said. “And they didn’t want to extend my lease.”
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I build custom motorcycles,” he said.
Patsy dang near drove the SUV into an apple tree. She jerked the wheel back, and Cy said, “Whoa. Hey,” and reached for the handle above the door.
She straightened the vehicle out, now at war with herself.
“You don’t want my shop here,” he said.
“It’s not that,” she said carefully.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Cy said, his voice as cold as a Wyoming winter day, and Patsy had experienced some that had literally frozen the breath in her lungs. Maybe not literally, but it got mighty cold in Wyoming in the winter.
Patsy clenched the wheel in her fingers. Her jaw tightened too.
“There’s no point in showing me the land if you’re not going to sell it to me,” Cy said.
She kept dr
iving, because they really did need to sell the orchard. Who cared what Cy did with the land?
“I’m fine with motorcycles,” she said, though she’d never ridden one.
“Is that right?” he asked, plenty of sarcasm in his voice. “Have you even ridden one?”
“I’ve ridden plenty of horses,” she shot back. “How different can it be?”
Cy burst out laughing, but Patsy wasn’t sure it only contained happiness. He was definitely mocking her too. “Sweetheart, a horse and a motorcycle are two completely different things.”
She bristled at the word sweetheart. “How would you know?”
“I grew up on a farm,” he said. “In fact, I live on a farm right now. Trust me, they’re different. So different, they’re not even on the same planet.”
“Funny how horses and motorcycles exist on this planet.” She threw him a look, but he just shook his head. Thankfully, the trees started to get shorter and shorter, and Patsy slowed down. “Here we are,” she said. “These trees haven’t produced fruit yet, so they’d be the easiest to take out. There’s probably five or six acres back here.”
“Can we get out?” he asked.
“Sure.” Patsy went a little farther before stopping the Hummer. They got out, and Cy looked around, even going so far as to walk over to an apple tree and knock on the trunk. Patsy stayed by the SUV, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought the man was talking to himself.
He came back toward her, and she said, “Well? What do you think?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
Cy looked around again, and she wasn’t sure what he saw. She saw trees that hadn’t been pruned properly and were thus not growing ideally for apple picking. Troughs that hadn’t been hoed right, and mud from the rain. She saw neglect, and she saw what the orchards would become if she didn’t do something about it.
The problem was, Patsy was the youngest in her family, and no one had ever listened to her. She’d gone to college for a few years, and she’d returned to Coral Canyon and started working in administrative roles. She was organized, and thoughtful, and she could’ve been running the orchards with the precision needed to keep them in the family for a long time.
Her father hadn’t wanted her to. Joe had resisted. Betty was the oldest, and she’d technically inherited the farm, but her focus was somewhere else entirely.
She’s going to lose it all, Patsy thought. While she’d walked away from the orchard a long time ago, it still held a place in her heart. Losing it would leave a blight on her soul she’d never get rid of.
The rain started to fall again, and Patsy moved toward the driver’s door. “Let’s talk inside,” she said.
Cy took a few extra seconds to join her, and when he did, he looked at her with resignation on his face. “Well, I’ve had a good long argument with the Lord, but He’s insisting this is the place for me. So.” He blew out his breath as if he were truly unhappy. “How much for the entire thing?”
“The entire thing?”
“Everything on this half,” he said. “You said it was half, right?”
“It’s twenty acres on this side of the highway,” she said, her mind barely able to process what he’d said. “Thirty on the other side, where the house is.”
“How much for the twenty acres?”
“You want to buy all twenty acres?” She looked at him, because they weren’t moving. She suddenly felt cold on the inside, and it was very unsettling.
“Depends,” he said, his dark eyes taking on a glint of impatience. “On how much it is.”
Patsy didn’t know what to say. In her mind, the land was priceless. “I’d need to talk to my father.”
Cy sighed like she was being difficult on purpose, and her irritation with him grew. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be in town for a couple of days. Can I give you my number, or should I expect Betty to call me?”
He was a complete answer to her prayers—in more ways than one. Betty would probably be fine taking care of this, but Patsy wanted his number….
“Give it to me,” she said. “I’ll call you for sure by tomorrow.”
Cy smiled at her, and wow, that was downright devastating to her health. “Is this your phone?” He picked up her device from the cup holder, and started tapping. “I’ll put my number in.”
She swallowed and nodded, telling herself she’d only use it for business. Just business, she thought. Yeah, only business….
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gray had never had such an enjoyable summer, even if Elise did make him mow lawns and weed flowerbeds almost every day. Even if he’d chased Hutch through the park once to get the labradoodle to come back. He was a good dog, but spirited, and Elise loved him with her whole soul, which meant Gray did too.
He’d just put a white shirt and tie in his suitcase when someone called his name from the front of the house he and Hunter had been living in.
Their time in Coral Canyon was up. They were flying to Las Vegas in the morning, and then back to Denver. School started on Tuesday. Hunter would be in junior high, and Gray would be running and working the farm, and Elise was coming back here for a week to pack everything before she and Hutch made the move as well.
Just thinking about it had Gray’s throat stuffed with cotton.
Elise called his name again, much closer this time, and he turned from the suitcase just as she appeared in the doorway, a radiant grin on her face. “Guess what?” She giggled immediately afterward, and Gray thought she was the most amazing and most beautiful person he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing.
He couldn’t keep the smile off his face either. “What?” He moved toward her as she danced toward him.
“We won Yard of the Month.” She laughed as he took her into his arms, her hands moving right around to the back of his neck.
“Yard of the Month?” he asked, gazing down at her.
She was full of light and life, laughter and love, and Gray wanted her in his life for a long, long time. Hunter loved Elise, he knew that. He’d spent plenty of time with his son in the lakes and rivers around Coral Canyon, and Gray hadn’t realized how starved for a mother his son was. He knew he couldn’t be both mother and father, and yet he’d thought he was doing a good enough job.
Elise had proven him wrong. They both needed her in their lives, and his heart started pounding. He still hadn’t bought a ring, because he hadn’t been sure.
Was he sure now?
“Yes,” she said, bringing him back to the present. “Colton’s yard won Yard of the Month for August. The city gives an award, and some prize money, and he gets to display a banner in his front lawn.”
“Oh, wow,” Gray chuckled. “That’s gonna go straight to his head.”
She laughed again and shook her head. “He said he’d give me the money. And it really helped convince him that he had to take Hutch for the next week.”
“Good for him,” Gray said. “He should give you that money and take care of your dog. That man doesn’t know a hedge from a rose bush.”
Elise giggled and stepped out of his arms, backing toward the door. “You’re packing?”
“We leave in the morning,” he said. “Aren’t you packed?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I haven’t been home yet today.”
“Want me to bring dinner up? Hunter would love to visit the horses for a bit.” That was code for, my son will leave us alone so I can kiss you.
They’d taken dinner up to Elise’s cabin several times in the past two months, and Hunter really did like the horses at Whiskey Mountain Lodge. He loved Hutch too, and the dog followed Hunter around like he’d finally found his master.
“Yes,” she said. “Bring dinner up to the cabin.” She smiled at him and took a step out into the hall. Gray followed her into the kitchen, which felt less intimate than his bedroom. She opened his fridge and took out a bottle of water, and Gray just watched her open it and drink almost the whole thing.
She wore a pair of cu
toff shorts and a gray T-shirt that had seen a lot of mud in its time. Tennis shoes and work gloves and her hair in a ponytail often completed her gardening look, and Gray sure did like it.
“Listen, Elise,” he said, clearing his throat. “I was just wondering how you feel about…well, I’m wondering what your thoughts are about marriage.”
She lowered the bottle slowly, her eyes locked on his.
“Dad,” Hunter said, bursting into the house from the backyard. He held up his phone in triumph. “Guess what just happened?”
“What, bud?” Gray tore his gaze from Elise and looked at his son.
“Molly just texted to tell me there’s a back-to-school dance the first Friday.” He shoved the phone into Gray’s hands. “Read it.”
Gray was aware of Elise coming to stand next to him, the scent of sweat and earth coming with her. He swiped on Hunter’s phone and looked at the text from Molly. She had told him about the dance.
“Oh, my,” Elise said, but that wasn’t what Gray was thinking.
He looked up from the text—do you want to go together? Maybe we can dance to a couple of songs—and into his son’s hopeful eyes.
“Can I go?” Hunter asked. “It’s three dollars, Dad, but I have tons of money from working on the farm last summer, and tons from all the yard work this summer too.” He shot a glance at Elise before focusing on Gray again. “Please?”
Gray handed the phone back to him. “Do you know how to dance with a girl?”
Hunter dropped his phone, his expression turning to horror now. “No.”
“Oh, don’t look like that,” Elise said, stepping between Gray and Hunter. “I’ll show you.” She took his hands in hers. “So you’re twelve, so you don’t need to be all handsy, okay? And you’re not a monster, so we’re not doing the Frankenstein dancing.”
She put his left hand on her waist. “This hand goes here.”
Hunter turned white and dropped his hand. She giggled, and said, “Hunt, if you can’t dance with me, you can’t dance with Molly.”
He cleared his throat and put his hand back on her waist. Gray leaned against the counter, grinning at both of them. If he didn’t keep the smile in place, he’d drop to both knees and propose to Elise right then and there.