“I work as much as you do, and I’m still having sex,” Hunter pointed out, and Eli—the little turncoat—nodded sagely.
“I’ve been in three different time zones this week alone and I still got lucky last night, man. Sorry-not-sorry.”
Great. This conversation was officially hell. “So, what? You two have formed some elite club now?” Owen asked. He resisted tacking on “you assholes,” but only just.
“Sure have,” Eli said, not skipping so much as a beat or a breath. “It’s called the Get Laid On A Regular Basis Club. You should try it. It’s spectacular.”
That weird feeling Owen had been battling for over a week now came twisting back through his chest in full force. “You’re a dick.”
“No, dude. I’m not, and neither is Hunt. That’s precisely why we’re giving you a hard time. Look”—Eli’s voice canted lower, his face growing unusually serious, and Owen noticed the loaded stare his brothers had exchanged too late—“I get that you love the farm, and that Cross Creek is your legacy. I really do. But work isn’t everything, no matter how much you love it. Even legacies that are meant for you get lonely after awhile, you know?”
Family and farm.
“I guess,” Owen said slowly, because as much as it pained him to admit it, Eli wasn’t entirely wrong. “But Millhaven’s not exactly busting at the seams with available women.”
As usual, Eli pushed his luck and Owen’s buttons. “We found some.”
“You fell for a woman who was only visiting for a series of online articles, and Hunter’s marrying his high school sweetheart.” Owen split a frown between both of his brothers. “It’s hardly the same as me trying to find someone to date in a town where I’ve lived my whole life that’s not even big enough for its own dot on the map.”
“Okay, okay. You might have a point,” Hunter admitted.
“Point or not, you’re still not getting laid,” Eli said, the last of his words turning into an ooof as a flash of light blond hair and a deceptively sweet pixie-like face appeared on the screen.
“Don’t let him harass you, Owen. You’ll find someone in your own time.”
Owen’s mouth twitched with a smile, mostly at the fact that Eli had fallen in love with a woman who put his ass in its place just as often as she got out of bed in the morning. “Hey, Scarlett. Thanks.”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet, honey,” she said, her New York accent toughening up her words. “You might find a woman in your own time, but it’ll almost certainly be the wrong time.”
“Yeah,” Hunter said, and Eli nodded in an agreement trifecta.
Jesus. This just kept getting better and better. “Great. Now that you’re all in agreement on my extra-curriculars—”
“Lack thereof!” Eli interrupted with glee.
Owen rolled his eyes, even though his brother’s statement was painfully accurate. “I’m going to get moving. Today’s going to take forever, and I need to get my chores done early so I can supervise the groundbreaking on the farm stand.” As it was, he’d barely have enough time to review the paperwork before the contractors arrived at nine, and that was if he could find what he needed in the wreckage of the office. Considering the state of the place the last time Owen had seen it, he’d put his chances of success somewhere between slim and none.
Eli surprised him by letting him off the insult-to-injury hook, then again by replacing his usual cocky grin with something a whole lot more genuine. “Okay. Give Clarabelle an extra apple for me, would ya? I miss that old girl.”
“Will do,” Owen said, shaking his head at the irony of a former cattle farmer having a nine-hundred pound Jersey brown as a pet. Lucky for Eli, that cow of his was as sweet as could be.
“Thanks. And, hey, O?”
“Yeah?” He turned around, and funny, Eli’s expression had grown even more serious.
“I know you’re gonna work too hard even if Hunter and I tell you to take it easy, so do me a favor and just don’t forget what I said about bein’ lonely, okay? When the wrong woman shows up at the wrong time, at least give her a chance.”
For a white-hot instant, his mind’s eye was flooded with a spill of rich brown curls, a sharp and sexy mouth he’d alternately cursed and been dying to taste for over a week now, and a set of curves that rivaled every back road Millhaven had to offer. Owen’s pulse kicked, the lowest part of his belly stirring in oh-hell-yes agreement.
Which was totally fucking crazy. The wrong woman at the wrong time was one thing. Beautiful, brash Cate McAllister was entirely another.
Even if he could still describe every nuance of the look on her face when she’d confessed to commandeering their kitchen in the name of some quick bread.
Realizing a few beats had passed and that both of his brothers were certainly waiting for him to speak, or at the very least, move, Owen worked up a sound resembling a soft laugh.
“You got it,” he told Eli, waiting just a second more before being unable to resist adding, “Slacker.”
“Ahhhh, there’s the brother I know.”
Owen said one last goodbye to Eli and Scarlett and lifted his chin at Hunter in parting. Setting his sights on the greenhouse in the distance, he began to order his tasks for the morning although his nerves did their best to submarine his calm. Today was a bigger day than he’d wanted to admit out loud, one he hadn’t been sure would ever come. Of course, Hunter and their old man—and even Eli, in his own way—loved Cross Creek. They all wanted the place to prosper. But Owen had always had visions for the farm that seemed a little different than everyone else’s. Bigger. More modern. Even cutting edge.
The storefront was the first leap in getting them there. If it brought in revenue as projected, the options could be—no, would be—limitless. His brothers might give him shit, and his dick might be increasingly disgruntled at the idea of all work and no play, but he needed to focus on the farm part of his legacy now more than ever.
There couldn’t be a worse time for a woman to walk into his life.
Owen took a deep breath and stared down the door to the main house. He was T-minus fifty-seven minutes from the contractors coming to literally dig in to the biggest construction project Cross Creek had seen in more years than he could count on one hand. Even then, that had been when they’d built his cottage on one side of the property and Hunter’s on the other. That work had been a big deal, sure, but it hadn’t impacted operations like the expansion they’d begin today. From the business plan to the floor plan, this on-site storefront had taken no less than thousands of hours of brain power and determination. Owen had dreamed about it. He’d worked himself senseless to coax it from concept to reality, and now, finally, after years of effort and research and planning, they were breaking ground.
Well, they would be as soon as he got his mitts on all the paperwork, anyway. And after the sinkhole Cate had made of the office last Friday, that was really going to be one hell of an endeavor. Yeah, she’d promised to right the ship by today, but come on. She might be fierce (and smart. And damn, so sexy), but unless she dealt in miracles, there was no way in hell she’d been able to get that promise out of the wishful-thinking stage.
Brushing the dust off his Wranglers, Owen palmed the doorknob and made his way into the house. Cate’s car was parked outside in all its Wednesday-morning glory, and he straightened his shoulders as he headed for the back of the house, fully preparing himself to have to sift through a huge mess of papers for the handful of ones he needed to review.
But the office was spotless.
“What…what happened in here?” he stammered, his face—and a few other, less-than-proper parts of his anatomy—heating at the sight of the brassy, sassy smile on Cate’s heart-shaped mouth.
“First, you don’t like the mess, then you miss it when it’s gone?” She sat back in her desk chair, her warm brown stare pinning him into place at the edge of the area rug.
He shook his head, partly in response and partly to clear his mind from the very unexpected, ver
y wicked thoughts that had just run through it. “I don’t miss the clutter,” Owen managed, a new round of surprise blooming in his rib cage as he caught sight of the wide-open space by the window that had, up until a few days ago, held a six-foot stack of boxes. “You didn’t, ah, throw it all out, did you?”
“Funny.” Cate backed up the claim with a laugh that replaced the surprise in Owen’s chest. “Of course, I didn’t throw it all out, although I have to admit, I was tempted a couple of times.”
“Okay,” he said, his tone marking the word as more question than anything else. “So, what did you do with all the boxes that were in here?”
“The boxes are in storage. Hunter showed me where to put them. But the information”—she gestured to the computer sitting on the now-tidy desk in front of her—“is all in a new software program.”
“A new software program,” Owen repeated. He was pretty sure his expression was as dumbfounded as the rest of him.
But Cate simply nodded and said, “Mmm hmm. The whole thing is pretty streamlined. Well, it is now,” she self-corrected. “After I ran updates on your computer and backed up your existing records—which you really should do more often, by the way—I saw that the latest version of the software you’d been using has some really great new options for payroll, invoices, tax information, you name it. I was able to organize everything by category, season, and year, scan and enter the data into the new system, and merge it with the already-existing records, so now all of your bookkeeping is right here online. I still have a few more boxes of the older records and past invoices to go”—she pointed to the neatly stacked trio of boxes tucked beside the desk—“but I should have it all scanned in by the beginning of next week.”
Owen blinked, and nnnnnope. His shock hadn’t budged. “So, what about all the plans and contracts for the storefront?”
“They’re all right here, too. I did those first since I knew you’d need them this week.” Cate navigated confidently through a few screens that pretty much looked like they’d been written in Sanskrit for all he knew. “Once you click on the projects tab right here, you can use the menu to find whatever you need. Plans, work orders, materials, budget proposals…I divided everything up into categories, and we can add new ones or merge others if we need to down the line.”
“And the software just does that automatically?” he asked, skeptical. They’d had the same bookkeeping program for years, and more than one or two. Granted, Cate hadn’t been wrong about them needing to update it, but could the answer to getting everything organized really have been right there in front of him the whole damned time?
“Yep,” she confirmed. “It’s pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it.”
“I’m not so sure that’s accurate.”
Cate’s face fell, her spine snapping into a rigid line against the back of the desk chair. “I thought this would be a better way to manage all the bookkeeping. I know it’s not what you’re used to, but frankly, you guys were stuck in the dark ages with all those hard copies, and—”
“No, no.” Ah, shit. Owen closed his eyes, wishing like hell that just once, he could work up some charm like one of his brothers, or even enough of his father’s bottomless patience to muddle through his chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease. “I didn’t mean it like that. This is, ah, helpful.”
“It’s what you hired me for,” she said quickly, and his heart beat faster at the spark in her eyes, like bourbon going over ice.
“Yes, but—”
“You didn’t think I could do it, did you?” Cate cut him off without a breath of notice, and dammit, he answered in the exact same manner.
“After Friday? To be honest, no. I didn’t.”
“I see.” She pressed her lips together, and the deep breath that lifted the front of her sheer white blouse did nothing to help Owen regain his composure or put the right words in his mouth. “Well, then. I’m not sure if I should say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I told you so’.”
“I don’t think either is necessary,” he said, but, of course, the damage was done.
“Great,” Cate replied tightly. “Now that we got that out of the way, was there something you needed?”
“I was just going to go over the plans for the storefront one last time before the contractors get here,” he said. Maybe he could still smooth this over.
Or not. “I printed them out for you. Since I knew you were breaking ground today.” She nodded crisply and handed over a sheaf of papers, tucked neatly into a file folder. “Everything is already in the system, of course. But I know you like hard copies.”
“Right. Okay, then.”
Some voice deep inside of him screamed that he should thank her six ways to Sunday for the incredible job she’d done, to humbly apologize for not believing her when she’d promised to get things straight in time for the groundbreaking, to let her know she’d singlehandedly done something in five days that would’ve taken him five freaking months to figure out. But, as always, his brain couldn’t form the right words, so Owen relied on what he did best.
He walked out of the office with his sights set on the farm, even though for the first time in his life, he was torn between work and something else.
Because it turned out, the answer had been right there in front of him the whole time, and right words or not, he needed to do something other than nothing.
Otherwise he was going to lose it.
8
Cate stared down at the screen on her laptop, reviewing the numbers and columns and ratios one last time, even though she’d memorized them after the fourth pass. Tomorrow was her first payday as a Cross Creek employee, and as much as the full-time commitment part of things still made her consider throwing up, the deposit that was set to arrive in her bank account at midnight definitely didn’t suck.
Scrolling down to the window she’d hidden at the bottom of the screen, she hovered over the bright red submit payment button, her common sense forcing her to click the damned thing before her heart could intervene. Of course, Cate knew her gas bill—tardy as it was—outranked getting her oven fixed. But she also couldn’t deny that between last Friday’s ill-advised kitchen takeover at Cross Creek and the less clandestine, yet not as much fun, griddle duty Clementine had put her on for half of the following Sunday’s shift, she’d found enough of a groove to whip the books at the farm into tip-top shape.
Much to her insanely handsome, insanely tight-lipped employer’s surprise.
Cate exhaled, forcing herself to ignore the warmth that had been making a very inconvenient habit of forming between her thighs every time she thought of Owen Cross. For God’s sake, he was blunt enough to border on being churlish. She had no reason to find his gruff demeanor so freaking attractive.
Except, damn it, she did find it attractive. The truth was, while most people probably found Owen’s personality overly curt, Cate kind of found his honesty refreshing. Maybe not yesterday, when he’d told her he hadn’t believed she could do the job he’d hired her for. That one had kind of pinched. But she hadn’t entirely believed she’d balance those books in the beginning, either, and she had told him to treat her like a regular person.
He’d been the only person to actually do that in over three years.
A knock sounded off on her front door, rattling her pulse. She didn’t live too far from the main road, but everything was pretty much off the beaten path out here in Millhaven. She certainly wasn’t expecting anybody at five-forty on a Thursday night.
Creeping to the door, she asked, “Who is it?”
“Hey, Cate,” came a slightly familiar voice. “It’s Mike Porter. I heard you need your oven looked at.”
Cate unlatched the front door, even though nothing Mike had said—other than his name, anyway—had made a lick of sense. “Hey, Moonpie.” She paused to bite her lip at letting the guy’s elementary school nickname slip, but he waved off her obvious chagrin with a smile. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“I heard you need your oven looked at,” he repeated, holding up the tool box Cate just noticed he had in his grasp. Mike worked for a contracting company that specialized in appliance repair, mostly on the bigger, newer houses in Camden Valley and Lockridge, but he did his fair share of fix-it jobs in Millhaven, too. Only, how the hell he’d gotten the news flash about her oven being broken, she had no clue.
“You did,” Cate replied slowly.
“Yep. Owen Cross mentioned it.”
At her continued stare, Mike added, “Yesterday evening, when I saw him making a delivery at The Corner Market. He told me your oven wasn’t working and asked if I’d come fix it for you.”
Cate’s cheeks prickled, but at this point, she had to choose disclosure over dignity. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you do that. I can’t pay you.”
“You don’t have to.” Mike shook his head. “Owen took care of it.”
Shock merged with something a whole lot less identifiable, both of them settling low in her belly. “He…what?”
“The job’s paid for. Labor and parts,” Mike said, holding up an invoice that was—sure enough—emblazoned with the words PAID IN FULL across the bottom.
So much for Owen treating her like a regular person. “I’m not letting Owen Cross pay you to fix my oven.”
Funny, Mike didn’t look surprised by her answer. “He said you might say that. So he wanted me to tell you”—Mike shifted his tool box to his left hand, removing his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans with his right—“And I quote, ‘There’s a difference between sympathy and kindness. Consider this a bonus for the great job you did on the books. Now, let Mike fix your damned oven. Please’.”
A minute slid off the clock, then another, before Cate could process what had just happened. Her sledgehammer-serious boss, who hadn’t strung together more than sixteen syllables in her presence since she’d shown him the new bookkeeping software yesterday, had gone out of his way to help her get her oven fixed, and he hadn’t done it out of pity. He’d done it out of gratitude. In his own brusque way, Owen was treating her like a regular person.
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