A sound drifted past her lips, caught somewhere between a sigh and a snort. “Oh. Well, that figures. He never tells me the important stuff.”
The dots lined up, connecting with a snap a second later. “I take it you’re Marley.”
Even Cate, who studiously avoided anything resembling gossip, had heard about Tobias Cross’s long lost twenty four year-old daughter. Not that anyone in town had ever seen her.
“That’s the rumor.” Marley lifted a too-thin shoulder halfway before letting it drop. Her eyes stayed on Cate’s for a heartbeat longer, and then she took a long draw from her coffee cup. “You don’t have to worry about me being in your hair, or whatever, while you work. I might live here for now, but I won’t for much longer. Anyway, I keep to myself.”
“Unless you want coffee,” Cate pointed out, causing Marley’s lips to part.
Shit. Shit, crap, shit! Her nerves seriously knew no bounds today. Cate raced to come up with something—pretty much anything would do at this point—to soften the sarcasm that had launched from her mouth without permission.
But then one corner of Marley’s mouth tilted into an approximation of a smile, and, whoa, for just an instant, she looked exactly like Owen.
“I guess. Anyway, see you around. Maybe.”
As Cate watched Marley walk back down the hallway with her cup, she couldn’t help but wonder what the hell she’d gotten herself into with this job.
4
Three days later, Cate qualified as a walking, talking zombie. But when the manager at The Bar had called and asked if she’d wanted the Wednesday shift in addition to her already-scheduled Tuesday night slot, she couldn’t say no. Picking up the additional hours had meant back-to-back eight A.M. to eleven P.M. workdays, but it had also meant extra money.
Not that she’d have nearly enough by bright and early Monday morning, which was when she’d promised the bank manager she’d have that mortgage payment ready to go.
“One train wreck at a time,” Cate whispered to herself. Rolling over in her bed, she sucked it up and finally let herself squint at the clock on her bedside table.
5:42 A.M.
A tiny part of her was tempted to yank the blankets over her head and try like mad to go back to sleep. But since that trick had never once worked despite all of her truest efforts, she decided to forfeit her nice, warm bed in favor of the only part of her house that would soothe her under-rested body and her over-active mind.
Destination: kitchen.
Pausing only for a quick trip to the bathroom and a tango with her toothbrush, Cate pulled her hair into a low-slung ponytail and sock-footed herself to her kitchen. The room was the size of a Lego, but still. It was hers. At least, for now.
She opened the cupboard above the coffeepot. Flour, sugar, salt…everything she needed was there. Cate took out each ingredient and placed it on the counter. She slid a deep breath into her lungs, ordering the process in her mind and letting it calm her. Okay, yeah. She had just enough to make a double batch of lemon bars before she had to get out the door to Cross Creek.
Her stomach tightened at the reminder of her full-time job. Yes, she’d found a little bit of a rhythm over the last three days, even though there was conservatively ten times more work to be done than she’d imagined. But the thought of working at Cross Creek all day, every day, still made her nauseous. For the last three years, Cate had studiously swerved around anything that hinted at commitment, and for damn good reasons. She might need this job, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Or the serious, scowly man who had hired her.
Now her stomach did something entirely different, and the sensation crept lower, settling warmly between her thighs. Although she’d checked in with Owen twice daily since that first awkward morning in the office, their conversations had been as sparse as possible, mostly containing phrases like, “Do you know where the purchase orders for last June might be?” and “I updated this week’s payroll.” Which was a-okay by her, really. The less chance she had to inadvertently reveal that she was flying by nothing more than intuition and the seat of her Levis, the better.
Even if Owen’s abs did make regular appearances in her mind’s eye when she was drifting off to sleep at night. And in the morning while she drove to the farm. And when things got really slow at The Bar. And…
“Good Lord, girl. Simmer down.” Cate reached for the fridge handle, tugging the thing open with enough force to make the condiments lining the shelf on the door rattle. Yes, Owen’s abs were spectacular. But she had no business daydreaming about them, or any other part of him for that matter. If she wanted to take the edge off her libido, she could use that dating app to find a nice, yet nondescript, guy two towns over in Lockridge like she had last year. Granted, both times she’d done so, the sex had been pretty meh. But at least finding someone for a safe, no-strings-attached night in bed would be better than fantasizing about what that happy trail of Owen’s led to, and exactly how happy he might make a girl with it.
Butter. Eggs. Flour. Lemon juice.
Right. Now.
Inhaling a much-needed breath of cool air from the fridge, Cate slid two sticks of butter from the top shelf and shut the door. Her kitchen was small, little more than a six by eight galley, lined on both sides by slim stretches of scuffed countertops and appliances that had been manufactured the same year she’d graduated high school. She set the butter on the counter to soften, taking out the square ceramic baking dish she’d picked up last year at the Salvation Army’s annual yard sale. With motions as familiar and vital as breathing, Cate pulled a stainless steel bowl and her ancient hand mixer from the over-stuffed cupboard next to the sink. She opened the drawer above it to liberate one of the three kitchen towels she kept on a steady rotation, but a flash of bright blue and purple made her fumble to a stop, mid-reach.
The sight of the ceramic trivet shouldn’t be a shock; after all, it had been nestled in the same drawer for three years now. For one sharp, impulsive second, Cate was tempted to take it out, to trace the indent of the kindergartener-sized handprint with her own, much bigger fingers, to read the uneven print of the letters that made up Lily’s name, squeezed in tightly at the end of the inscription because she’d misjudged the print to space ratio like most five-year-olds did.
TO MOMMY, LOVE, LILY.
Cate shut the drawer with a wood-on-wood clap. The trivet was the only item in her kitchen that never got used. That hadn’t always been the case, but now the trivet was exactly where it belonged and exactly where it would stay.
Because it had to.
Turning toward the oven, she reached for the button that had once been labeled “bake” but had long since lost its lettering. Cate tapped the up arrow until the display read 375 degrees, busying herself with greasing the baking dish. The familiar whir of the mixer smoothed the sandpaper-edges of her nerves as she creamed the butter and sugar, then added enough flour and salt to form the dough for the crust. Her shoulder muscles, which had been holding her neck hostage since she’d pulled herself out of bed, relaxed further as she pressed the dough evenly into the baking dish. Things might not be turning out the way she’d hoped or wanted, or even planned. But if Cate knew anything, it was how to be pragmatic and land on her feet. She had a solution. She could save her bank account by working at Cross Creek, and she could save her sanity by baking.
“Wait a second…” Cate frowned, peering into her oven. The light had popped on just like always as soon as she’d opened the door. But the way the interior temperature felt no different than the air in the kitchen around her, and the ominously dark heating coils that usually glowed orange-red when the oven was good to go?
Those were definitely new developments. And not good ones.
“Okay, okay. Think.” Placing the baking dish on the counter beside the oven, she fiddled with the settings, going from bake to broil and back, and trying a handful of different temperature settings with the oven door open, then closed, before the dread in her belly spread out to he
r bones.
Nothing was working. Her oven was broken.
She pressed the button to turn the thing off—for all the damned good it would do—and dropped her chin over the neckline of her night shirt. The emotion of her week rushed up in her chest, threatening to break free and spill over. The debt, the commitment of a full-time job, and now this? Her oven? Her fucking sanctuary?
No. No, no, no, no, no.
Cate closed her eyes before the tears that wanted to fall could fully form. Swallowing the scream in her throat, she flattened her hands on the cool surface of the countertop, metering her breath against the rattling of her heart until both were controlled.
Standing here on the verge of a breakdown wasn’t helping anything. She needed to do something. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t bake, and she couldn’t stay here, where the options that weren’t options would taunt her at every turn. A glance at the digital clock on the microwave told her it was a few minutes after six, which—damn it!—took every place in Millhaven off the table.
Except one.
Owen had said they started with the roosters, which meant no one’s head was still on the pillow at Cross Creek. The office in the back of the main house wasn’t her first choice of destinations, or really, even her tenth, but it was better than staring down her broken oven and unbaked lemon bars. If only by a freaking thread.
Cate carefully packed up the unbaked dough and put it in the fridge before heading back to her bedroom, then the itty-bitty bathroom attached to it. Her get-ready-and-get-out routine didn’t take terribly long, especially since she’d heeded Owen’s advice and ditched her dressier clothes in favor of jeans and—in today’s case—a light, berry-colored sweater. After filling a travel mug to the brim with the strongest coffee she could afford to brew and still have enough to last the rest of the week, Cate grabbed a can of soup from the cupboard that stunt-doubled as her pantry and made her way out the door.
A chill hung in the still morning air, sending a shiver up her spine on the quick hustle to the carport attached to her house. Her Toyota cooperated for once, the engine turning over on the second try and not sputtering or stalling out on the entire ten-minute drive to Cross Creek. The first floor of the main house was quiet, but unlocked and empty as usual, so Cate headed inside and slipped into the office. Her morning routine kept her mind occupied, and, three hours later, she’d managed to take a small dent out of the latest stack of invoices and temporarily forget both her bills and her broken oven.
But all the stress came winging back into her chest at the unexpected sight of Owen standing in the office doorway.
“Oh, jeez!” She clapped a hand over the front of her sweater, half out of reflex and half because she was certain her heart would slam its way across the floor. “Make some noise next time, would you?”
“Sorry.” He rocked back on the heels of his work boots and stuffed his hands in his pockets, his expression impossible to decipher. “I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“It’s a little late for that, huh?” Cate asked.
If the hard set of Owen’s mouth was anything to go by, her attempt at humor had fallen way short of the mark. “I just wanted to know if you filled out the form for your benefits yet.”
Shit. Speaking of stress. “No, I—”
Cate clamped down on her lower lip, hard. She could not, under any circumstances, admit that she’d never had a full-time job in her life and had no idea how any of this worked. Not to mention that even if she had been able to squeeze in enough time to figure out the fifty two-page benefits booklet Owen had given her to “take a look at”, she probably couldn’t afford any of the options for health care, anyway. “No. I didn’t fill it out.”
His eyes widened in all their long-lashed glory. “Oh. I didn’t mean to pry. You know, if you’ve got…things in place from before Brian…um…”
“Died?” Cate asked after the silence that followed grew to roughly the size of a tour bus. Her nerves jangled, making her rib cage tighten. She didn’t want to put Owen on the spot—really, she didn’t. But between her crushing debt, her busted oven, and her overwhelming unease at the commitment of a full-time job, her heart was pounding triple-time.
Please, God. Please don’t let him do the poor-Cate thing. Not here. Not today.
“Yes.” Owen stared at the edge of the area rug. “I’m sorry. You know what, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
Her composure teetered, right on the brink. “You don’t have to tiptoe around me, you know.”
“I’m not,” he said, but damn it, even his argument came out on cat’s feet, all soft and loaded with pity, and in a white-hot instant, Cate’s calm completely unraveled.
“You might not think so, but you are,” she insisted. If he needed a primer on how to give his argument some backbone, she was more than willing to offer up an example. “It’s been three years since the accident. I might not want to discuss every detail, but it’s not necessary to avoid the truth like some sort of virus.”
“I know.” Again, Owen’s words sounded like charity.
And again, she’d reached her limit. “But you don’t. I’m so tired of everyone in this town feeling sorry for me.” Cate lifted a hand to stop the argument he was clearly putting together, unable to keep her frustration corked. “I get that you think you’re being nice, but you know what would really be nice? If you could treat me like a regular person. Not like poor, sad, widowed Cate who deserves to be pitied. God, for once, I’d really just like to be me.”
Four rapid-fire heartbeats passed, then a fifth before Owen cleared his throat, his gray eyes blazing as he said, “Fine, then. The forms will need to be turned in tomorrow if you want your health insurance to start by the first of the month next week.”
Cate took a long, large breath, mostly so she wouldn’t scream, or—worse yet—cry. “I’ll have them done before I leave today.”
“Great.”
But as he turned to walk out of the office, she couldn’t help but feel about as far from great as she could possibly get.
5
Owen had a very bad feeling about the next hour of his life. On the surface, everything looked normal—the pot of spaghetti sauce bubbling away on the stove, the waning sunlight that said the workday was finally in the past tense, the sight of his old man sitting at the kitchen table, reading the Camden Valley Chronicle with their family mutt, Lucy, at his feet. But Hunter had requested a family dinner on a Thursday of all nights, then specifically came down to the greenhouse to ask him face-to-face if he’d be willing to make a pot of his signature spaghetti sauce for the occasion. Not that Owen minded the cooking. Between the homegrown tomatoes and onions and herbs, the sauce pretty much hit all of his happy places. Still, while his brother might be a lot of things, a dumbass had never been on the list. A family dinner, and a special one at that, on a weeknight?
Something was up, and whatever it was, it wasn’t giving him the warm freaking fuzzies.
Taking a deep breath, Owen reached for the wooden spoon he’d propped over the lip of the stock pot and swirled it through the sauce. Between the billion things on his To Do list and getting all the last-minute details in order for next week’s groundbreaking for the storefront, he’d admittedly been on edge today. Of course, the dressing down he’d received from Cate this morning hadn’t exactly helped matters.
You know what would really be nice? If you could treat me like a regular person.
Owen frowned, a shot of irritation blooming in his veins. He might not be great, or—okay, fine—even passably decent at the whole expressing-himself thing, but he wouldn’t dish up pity for pity’s sake. All right, so maybe he’d treated Cate with kid gloves today, the same way everyone in town had since Brian had died. So sue him for trying to be nice.
Except…
Everyone in Millhaven really did tiptoe around her. No one ever mentioned Brian or Lily’s name if Cate was within a forty-foot radius, and, even now, three years later, a hush tended to ripple ov
er a lot of conversations when Cate was near. Most folks were trying to be kind—what she’d been through couldn’t possibly have been anything less than devastating. But now that Owen thought on it, if that boot was on the other foot, three years of whispered pity would almost certainly drive him bat shit crazy, too, and damn it. For all her prickly delivery and fiery attitude, Cate might have kind of had a little bit of a point when she’d given him what-for.
“Oooooh, that smells great.”
The words—and the genuine smile from his soon-to-be-sister-in-law, Emerson—knocked Owen back to the moment.
“Thanks. How are you feeling?” he asked. Emerson had MS, and while she was fiercely independent about running her own physical therapy practice in town, she’d also come to let Hunter, and by extension, the rest of them, help her out on her not-so-good days.
Family and farm. Always remember…
“A little tired, but overall, I had a pretty good day today,” Emerson said as Owen rubbed a hand over the weird ache that had just spread out behind his sternum. “Can I help with anything?”
He nodded, wondering if all the stress he’d been juggling lately was giving him heartburn. “I could use a taste tester.”
Emerson laughed, the tiny lines around her eyes that marked her fatigue easing. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“He let you off easy,” Hunter said from the spot where he stood at the island, slicing one of the cucumbers Owen had liberated from the greenhouse less than two hours ago. “I’m on full salad duty.”
Heartburn or not, he wasn’t about to pass up a chance to give his brother a good-natured ration of shit. “That’s because Emerson is prettier than you. And she complains less.”
Reaching for the loaf of Italian bread beside the cooktop, he broke off a bite-sized piece and dipped it into the sauce, passing it over to Emerson. Her blissful moan was likely an exaggeration to tease Hunter, too, but it made Owen smile all the same. Right up until he caught the look on his brother’s face as he watched his fiancée wrapped up in pure happiness, and ah hell, Owen was seriously going to need to leave a stash of antacids around here if this heartburn was going to keep up.
Crossing Promises Page 4