Crossing Promises

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Hunter said, his grin multiplying exponentially as Emerson headed over to the island to give him a mostly chaste kiss.

  “Sweet talker.”

  “Hey, I’m just telling it like it is, Miss Montgomery.”

  “Ugh.” The disapproving grunt sounded off from the entryway to the kitchen, where Marley stood in a pair of ripped jeans, a black T-shirt with the word NOPE printed across the front in big block letters, and the mother of all scowls. “I get that you’re all engaged and stuff, but is the PDA a moral imperative?”

  Owen’s shoulders went instantly rigid, but Hunter didn’t skip so much as a beat. “Yep. ’Fraid so.”

  “Awesome,” Marley said, her tone painting the word with the same brush someone would use on a phrase like please drag me over a bed of tangled barbed wire. She took a few steps into the kitchen, but stopped at the edge of the counter, her stare studiously avoiding the spot where their father sat at the table even though he’d clearly looked up with interest when she’d entered the room.

  Owen frowned. “Marley. I didn’t think you’d be joining us for dinner.”

  She worked a lot of evenings at some clothing store in Lockridge, and she hadn’t graced them with her presence at a family dinner since January. Maybe before.

  “Hunter told me I had to.” She gave up half a shrug, like she couldn’t even be bothered to go for the full shot of apathy. “Plus, there’s food.”

  “I didn’t say you had to,” Hunter said gently, and Christ, his brother really ought to be sainted for his unending patience. “I said it’s important.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Well, it’s right nice to see you, Marley,” their father said. A pulse of silence followed, thick enough to spread over corn bread, before Marley crossed her arms over her chest and made it clear she wasn’t going to reply.

  Oh, hell no. Owen opened his mouth to launch his irritation. His sister might still be angry about their father’s promise to Marley’s mother not to contact them for all these years, but he hadn’t just blown her, or her mother, off. He’d made sure Marley was provided for. So she hated that he’d kept her mother’s secret and stayed away. That didn’t mean she had to be so hurtful. Hell, they were all thrown by the change in their family dynamic, and their old man was genuinely trying to connect with her now.

  As if he sensed where Owen was headed, his father locked eyes with him, giving up the smallest shake of his head. “Dinner smells great. Those the plum tomatoes you canned at the end of the summer, Owen?”

  “Mmm hmm.” Clamping down on his bottom lip even though he really didn’t want to, he turned his attention back to the stock pot, and yeah, it wasn’t tough to let the produce adjust his attitude a little. “We should have a really nice crop of heirlooms this season, too.”

  “You sure planted enough,” Hunter joked. “You can’t swing a cat by its tail in the greenhouse without hitting at least three different kinds.”

  Owen scowled. “The demand for specialty produce spiked by over three hundred percent last season, you know.” Of course, much of that demand had been driven by making the more unique varieties readily available in the first place—something Owen had been busting his ass on for a year now.

  “Well, I’m happy to hear that,” Emerson said, giving Hunter a healthy dose of side eye even though there was little heat in the gesture. “Those Cherokee purples you grew last year were my favorite.”

  “You have better taste in produce than you do men,” Owen said, managing to crack a smile as he dodged the balled up paper towel Hunter tossed in his direction. “And I’m glad you liked ’em, because I added Cherokee chocolates to this year’s rotation.”

  Emerson’s blue eyes went as wide as her grin. “Stop.”

  Owen held up one hand in a nonverbal oath before draining the spaghetti that had been boiling away next to the pot of sauce. “So far, they’re coming in great. They’re known for their high yield anyway, but I’m thinking they might be our top seller for heirlooms once the farmer’s market gets going next weekend.”

  “I like the sound of that,” his father said. For a few minutes, they all got lost in the din of getting the table set and the pasta, salad, and garlic bread into serving bowls. The five of them settled in around the farmhouse table, with his father at the head of the table (as usual) and Marley as far away from him as possible, two seats down and to the left (as usual). The seat at the other end, opposite their father, always remained unoccupied. For Owen, and for Hunter, too, he suspected, leaving it that way was largely habit. They just always had. But for their old man, Owen had a feeling it was more bittersweet nostalgia than anything else.

  Family and farm.

  “So,” Hunter started slowly, and Owen’s warning flags went on instant red alert. His brother spent so much time being legitimately laid back that when his nerves actually made a rare showing, you could see the signs from the next county over. “Now that we’re all together, Emerson and I wanted to talk to you all about the wedding.”

  “Alright.” Their father, who could read Hunter as well as Owen, put down the bowl of salad without serving himself.

  Hunter took a visible breath, scooping up Emerson’s hand. “We’ve been thinking about it a lot, and the thing is, we don’t want to wait to get married. Neither of us is really a big-ceremony kind of person, and we’d rather go small, surrounded by the people who are most important to us.”

  “That makes sense,” Owen said, the weird jumble of nerves in his gut easing a little. They didn’t have a whole ton of family; really, it was just the five of them. Why have a big to-do?

  “We’re really glad you think so.” The tension fell away from Hunter’s expression, and wait… “Because we’d like to have the wedding here on the farm. In five weeks.”

  Holy. Shit. “I’m sorry. Did you say five weeks?” His brother had to have lost every last one of his faculties. It was the growing season, for Chrissake!

  “I get that it sounds a little crazy and the timing could be better,” Hunter said quickly. “But we’ve already done the legwork.”

  Emerson took the conversational baton and ran. “Daisy and my mother agreed to coordinate all the details so none of you would have to do a thing, and, of course, we’ll go around the farm’s schedule. We’d like to have both the ceremony and the reception right here behind the main house, so the setup would be out of the way of operations, and we’d do it on a Saturday anyway, which would provide plenty of time for cleanup. It might be a bit crazy in the main house for a day or two.” She cast an apologetic glance toward the head of the table, then at Marley, who—surprise, surprise—had a frown etched deeply over her face. “But, truly, this farm means everything to Hunter, and it’s come to mean so much to me, too. We can’t imagine a better place to start the rest of our lives together.”

  Hunter’s face grew serious, and he looked from Owen to their old man, whose expression was damn near impossible to read. “I know you need me here now more than ever, and I intend to honor all the work that needs done,” Hunter said. “Emerson and I would postpone our honeymoon until after the last harvest in October, and even then, Eli said he and Scarlett will be stateside for a while at the end of the year. He promised to come help out while I’m gone.”

  “So, Eli knows about this?” Surprise and unease tag-teamed to form a heavy lump in Owen’s stomach. “And Daisy and Emerson’s parents, too?” Not that he didn’t like Emerson’s best friend, but she wasn’t even technically family. How could he be so out of the loop?

  “Well, yeah,” Hunter said apologetically. “Eli’s schedule is pretty unpredictable, so we wanted to be sure he could be here for both the wedding and after the harvest before we even thought about moving forward. And, obviously, we don’t want anything about this wedding to interfere with Cross Creek’s operations. So we had to be sure we could make that happen before we came to you three with the idea.”

  At that, the fork Marley had been gripping lower
ed to her plate with a clatter. “You mean those two.” She gestured down the table at Owen and their father, who sat right next to him. “I don’t have a say in this.”

  Hunter shook his head, adamant. “You’re family. Of course, you do.”

  “I’m just living here for now,” she insisted, her blue stare turning steely and cold. “No, I don’t.”

  The lump in Owen’s stomach doubled, then tripled at the flicker of emotion that whisked through their father’s eyes at the words. “Is this really the best time to argue semantics?”

  “No.” The single word from his father made the rest of Owen’s argument fade in his throat. “I don’t reckon it’s the best time to do anything other than plan a wedding.”

  “Really?” Emerson asked, her gaze lit with hope, and the old man sealed the deal with a nod of his graying head.

  “Of course. If you two want to get married here at the farm in five weeks, I wouldn’t dream of standin’ in your way. In fact, I’d be honored.”

  Hunter’s grin sent a sharp feeling through Owen that he didn’t recognize and definitely didn’t like.

  “I know it’ll take some juggling to keep everything running smoothly when we get close to the day of the wedding,” Hunter said. “But this really means a lot to me, Pop.” He looked at Emerson, their entwined fingers squeezing tighter. “To us.”

  “It means a lot to me, too, son.”

  Emerson hopped up to hug both Owen and his father, then smiled cautiously at Marley, who at least returned the favor by not frowning. Both Emerson and Hunter chatted happily about some of the wedding logistics as the meal resumed, and Owen did his Sunday best to follow along with the enthusiasm he knew they deserved. Yeah, having a wedding here at the farm during the growing season was going to make life a little crazy, and, yeah again, they were already pretty crazy with the farm stand project set to break ground next week and the upswing in business. But when it came to family and farm, family was first for a reason. This was his brother’s wedding they were talking about here. His put-the-ring-on-her-finger, promise-to-love-and-cherish, say-I-do-forever-and-ever moment. Crazy or not, Owen should be happy as hell for him. No, check that. He was happy for Hunter.

  Even if that feeling in his stomach only got worse as dinner went on.

  Eighteen hours later, Owen was convinced he was either developing an ulcer or becoming a full-fledged hypochondriac. Between the definite ache in his chest and the even stranger heaviness in his gut, his money was sadly behind door number one.

  “Ah, shit.” He looked up at the sky, measuring the position of the sun against the backdrop of the fields and the hay barn in the distance. At least right now, he could blame his physical woes on the fact that noon had come and gone without the courtesy of allowing him a lunch break. But since Owen had zero interest in folding over from low blood sugar, he dusted his hands off and headed for his truck. He had a trillion tasks ahead of him, so he’d have to dine and dash. God, just this once, he’d love to start the weekend ahead of the curve instead of so far away, he couldn’t even see the curve.

  Ordering his afternoon by both urgency and importance, he made his way to the main house. If he could make decent time in the south field and get all of his work done in the greenhouse—which would take some balls-out effort since he’d recently added six different varieties of tomatoes, plus more asparagus, Chinese eggplants, artichokes, and kale—he might, just maybe, be able to leave work on time tonight.

  Right. So you can spend time with whom, exactly?

  The question prompted a fresh set of corkscrews to crank through Owen’s chest. He might not be any closer to finding a pretty woman to spend a bit of time with, but come on. He was thirty-three, not a hundred and three. Anyway, there was work to do. He had to focus on the “farm” part of family and farm right now.

  Putting his F-250 in Park, he got out of his truck and stabbed his boots into the gravel path. Cate’s aging Toyota was parked beside the main house next to Marley’s equally aging car, just as it had been at seven o’clock this morning when he’d driven by on his way to the greenhouse. Like yesterday, Owen had been shocked to see her there so early. But not as shocked as he’d been when he’d looked at her time sheet after she’d left yesterday evening and discovered she’d only clocked in from eight to five, and, now that he thought about it, he should probably remind her to record things accurately. If the work warranted extra hours, they’d pay her as such.

  Owen bypassed the kitchen even though his stomach was giving him what-for and why-not. Moving toward the office, he tugged his baseball hat off to run a hand through the crow’s nest that lay beneath it, replacing the thing just in time to walk over the threshold into the office…

  And into Armageddon.

  “What the hell happened in here?”

  Okay, so he’d bypassed his manners just a little more than was proper. But from baseboard to baseboard, the office floor was plastered with invoices and work orders, with no apparent organization or system to keep them in order. Owen’s pulse went from a steady push to an outright oh-shit slam as he registered the now-empty box labeled Storefront Project sitting in the center of the mess, with Cate perched next to it like nothing-doing.

  “Hello to you, too,” she said wryly, plucking a pencil from the dark brown twist of curls at her nape and scratching out God-knew-what onto the legal pad between the fingers of her free hand.

  Frustration rising, Owen tried again. “What are you doing?”

  “Playing Tiddly Winks with manhole covers.” Cate looked up just enough for him to catch the arch of her brow that piggybacked her answer. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It looks like you’re making an unholy mess,” Owen said, the words pumping out unchecked.

  Cate looked up from her legal pad, but funny, she continued to be unfazed. “You mean I’m bailing you out of your unholy mess.”

  “That’s not what it looks like from here.” For Chrissake, she had every single piece of paper on the giant make-or-break project they were about to start scattered to the four goddamn winds of the place.

  Her spine unfolded, her shoulders forming a rigid line beneath her body-hugging black top. “I’m creating a system. One you need pretty badly,” she added.

  Whether it was the stress of the project itself looming so closely on the horizon, the toppling nature of his list of things to get done before said project began, or the ache still lodged firmly behind his sternum even as he stood here in the doorway of the office, Owen couldn’t be certain. But all of it balled together, and the next thing he knew, he heard himself say, “Dumping everything into a giant pile is hardly creating a system. We’re breaking ground on this project in less than a week, Cate. How am I supposed to find anything in this tornado you’ve created?”

  “I told you, I’ve got everything under control. I guarantee that by the time the first shovel hits the dirt for your storefront, you’ll be able to find anything you need far faster and easier than ever before.”

  “But—”

  “No. No buts.” Cate stood, leaving both her pencil and the legal pad at her feet so she could knot her arms over her chest. Her brown eyes blazed with both confidence and heat, and for a split second, Owen couldn’t tell if he was more angry or aroused. “You hired me to get a handle on your books, and that’s what I’m doing. Either you trust me to do the job or you don’t, Owen. What’s it going to be?”

  The sassy, no-holds-barred ultimatum was one he hadn’t expected, and it stunned him into silence. Drawing a slow, deep breath, Owen shifted back on the only non-papered section of the floorboards and made his very best effort to scrape up some patience. Not that it was easy; or, hell, anything less than an earth-moving effort. He needed this level of stress like he needed a punch in the face right now.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to undo the mess she’d created, which meant he needed Cate more. No matter how much of a cluster fuck she was currently making out of his books.

  �
�Fine. But I’m going to hold you to your word.”

  Rather than backing down, or even batting so much as a pretty, chocolate-brown eyelash, Cate simply slid her hands from her ribcage to her hips.

  “Well, that works out perfectly, because I intend to live up to it. Now was there anything else you needed? Because, like you said last week at Clementine’s, these books of yours aren’t going to balance themselves.”

  6

  Cate was ninety percent full of shit and the other ten was pure moxie. At least she’d managed—although barely—to wait until Owen had about-faced his way out of the office before letting her exhale escape in a whoosh of relief.

  He hadn’t called her bluff. She was still employed.

  Also, about as on-edge as an industrial-sized roll of razor wire.

  Framing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, she pressed at the headache starting to form behind her eyes. She’d been up to her two front teeth in Cross Creek’s books for nearly a week, and God, she’d barely made a dent in getting things organized. But despite feeling overwhelmed (read: terrified) by the sheer volume of work, Cate hadn’t been blatantly lying to Owen. She was creating a system, and that system was allowing for progress, slow and steady.

  The problem was, slow clearly wasn’t going to keep her employed, and damn it, damn it, damn it! She couldn’t think with all this pressure banding around her rib cage, threatening to squeeze her senseless. She needed space. She needed to be able to breathe, to shake some of the horrible stress in her chest and get her thoughts organized.

  She needed to bake something.

  “Wishful freaking thinking,” Cate muttered under her breath. She’d had to make the rock/hard place decision not to pay her gas bill on time and to forego more than twenty dollars in her grocery budget for the week in order to scratch together enough money to cover her mortgage. No way could she afford to have anyone come out to do something as extravagant as fix her oven.