Marley’s frown deepened. “I’m twenty-four. I don’t need parenting, thanks.”
Shit. Shit. Why didn’t he hear his words before they came out? “I didn’t mean—”
“And in case you didn’t notice,” Marley interrupted, breaking off a huge chunk of the pound cake to pop it into her mouth. “This cake is really good, so yes. I am totally having it for dinner. In my room.”
“Awesome,” Owen said under his breath as she turned on her heel and marched out of the kitchen, the admittedly awkward invitation to go grab a burger at Clementine’s Diner disappearing from his lips. A burst of odd emotion pressed up from his chest, and he turned to grab his keys from the spot where they sat on the counter. He was done fumbling his way through conversations. He might not be able to fix his mess of a relationship with his sister—God knew that wasn’t going to happen in a night. But there was something he could go fix.
And he was going to do it right now, come hell or high tide.
Owen knocked on Cate’s door hard enough to make his knuckles sing. He knew turning up on her threshold unannounced, wearing dirt-streaked jeans, a T-shirt that had seen months’ worth of better days, and a look of sheer determination was just shy of crazy. But he also knew Marley was right—he wasn’t going to get any answers unless he had the balls to ask for them.
If Cate shut him down, so be it.
She opened the door, her dark brown curls loose around her face and her bare feet peeking out from beneath the cuffs of her faded, body-hugging jeans, and for the love of Christmas, how did she manage to look prettier every fucking time he saw her?
“Um, hi?” Cate’s whiskey-brown eyes went wide, but not even her obvious shock was enough to deter him.
“Hi. I want to know what’s bugging you.”
She made a small noise of heightened surprise, but nope. Owen had come all this way. She might slam the door in his face when he was done, but he wasn’t going to stop until he’d aired out everything he’d come to say.
“Look, we agreed we were going to be honest with each other, so that’s what I’m going to do. I know you work at Cross Creek, and the last thing I want is for you to feel uncomfortable there. With me. Because we kissed. And then I asked you to dinner.”
He paused long enough for her to—thank God—shake her head. “Good. Okay. So, what happened between us over the weekend wasn’t very conventional, or planned, or anything, but I thought we had a good time together, and I really enjoyed our dinner. Clearly, I did something to mess with that, and I’m not sure what, and we have this honesty policy, like you said, so I came out here to find out what’s bothering you.”
Owen’s words kept pouring out in an artless rush, and, what the hell, he was already in for a penny. Might as well go for the whole goddamned pound. “Look, if you’re not interested, that’s okay. It won’t stand in the way of us working together. But spending that time with you at my place, and those talks we had…I liked that. I like you. And now you’re barely speaking to me unless you have to, so if I did something to upset you, I just want to know.”
The quiet that followed was punctuated by the persistent whump-whump-whump of his pulse against his eardrums. The longer it drew out, the faster the rhythm became, until finally, Cate stepped back to swing the door open wide.
“Come in.”
“Thank you,” Owen said. About two steps over the threshold, he realized that, while he’d known where she lived for over a decade—hello, benefits of small-town living—he’d never actually been inside the place. Between the limited square footage and the sparse furnishings, taking in the foyer/living room was a two-second job. Although meticulously clean, everything from the carpet to the curtains easily dated back to the year he’d gotten his driver’s license. Cate led him deeper into the house, not surprisingly stopping in her galley kitchen, where an aging laptop and a Styrofoam cup of instant noodles sat on the slim stretch of chipped Formica that served as a breakfast bar.
“Oh.” A pang of guilt stabbed at Owen. Of course, he’d probably interrupted her dinner. It was six o’clock, for God’s sake. “I apologize.”
Cate followed his gaze to the cup a few feet away, and she waved off his worry with one hand. “Oh, please don’t. That stuff isn’t all too great, and, anyway, I was pretty much done.” She clicked her laptop closed, clearing the remnants of the soup to the single-bowl sink before gesturing to the dining area off the back of the kitchen. “We should probably sit.”
“Okay.” Owen waited for Cate to pull out a chair at the four-person table that took up ninety-percent of the space before origami-ing himself into the seat across from her. As much as he’d run off at the mouth after she’d opened the door, something cautioned him to give her some breathing room right now, so even though it damn near killed him, he waited out the handful of seconds before she finally spoke.
“I didn’t want to come work at Cross Creek, at first.”
Okay, so not what he’d been expecting. “But you offered,” he said, and Cate nodded in agreement.
“I know, and please don’t misunderstand. I’m really grateful for the job.”
The flash of genuine emotion in her stare backed up the claim one hundred percent, so Owen waited for her to continue without protest.
“I told you, not everything about my marriage was what it looked like,” Cate said. “We had—have—a lot of debt I didn’t really know about until after the accident. Brian didn’t want me working outside of our house. It was really important to him that I be here for Lily all the time. So much so that he maxed out a home equity line of credit he opened without my knowledge, along with all of our credit cards.”
Oh, hell. “I’m so sorry,” Owen said, because it was the only thing he could come up with that was both true and appropriate. Her former marriage was none of his business, but damn. No wonder she was so insistent on honesty now.
Cate’s smile was bittersweet. “I’m sorry, too. I went from high school to marriage to motherhood so quickly. I loved my daughter.” Her voice caught, the sound jabbing into a part of Owen he couldn’t quite name, and it took every ounce of his willpower not to reach out and grab her hand. “But I don’t exactly have a lot of career skills, so when I first scraped up the courage to ask you for a job, I was really nervous. In fact, I was pretty sure you’d fire me before the week was out.”
“You’re wrong,” Owen said, and, yeah, so much for his gruffness going on any sort of sabbatical. “You have plenty of career skills.”
She laughed in a soft, humorless huff. “And not a lot of social skills, as it turns out. I like spending time with you, too. You’re the only person who treats me like me no matter what the topic of conversation is, and I shouldn’t have pushed you away without at least telling you why.”
“Is it work?” he asked, unable to keep the concern tamped down. “Because if it is, we can—”
“No.” Cate reached over the small section of the table that separated them, her fingers wrapping around his forearm in enough of a squeeze to tell him she really meant it. “Owen, we kissed on our own time, and it would’ve happened regardless of whether I work at Cross Creek or not.” Looking down, she withdrew her hand, but rested it on the table instead of back at her side. “It’s just that long-term commitments are…a big leap for me.”
He paused. Retraced his steps through the conversation they’d had at his place the other night.
And promptly wanted to bitch-slap himself.
“God, I’m kind of an idiot,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. Cate might have clearly grieved the loss of her husband and be ready to move on, but that didn’t mean she wanted to jump into another relationship with both feet first. Of course, all that talk about weddings and serious girlfriends had probably rattled her. Hell, in its own weird way, the idea still rattled him, too.
Cate’s laugh surprised him, but it also took the steely edges off the unease that had opened up in his rib cage. “You’re not an idiot, Owen. There’s nothing wrong
with you wanting a serious relationship. But it was hard enough for me to take a full-time job with you. A commitment like a relationship…”
She trailed off, leaving Owen to fill in the blanks. The topic was loaded with conversational potholes, each of which had the potential to torpedo him and his ingrained gruffness in less than a second. He hadn’t come this far to scale back now, though, so he took a deep breath and a giant fucking leap.
“Look, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I’m up for that, either. Don’t get me wrong—I meant what I said the other night. I don’t want to be alone,” he clarified. “But the idea of going from zero to married with someone, especially for the sake of settling down, isn’t really appealing, either. I guess I just want to find someone who I like hanging out with and see how it goes.”
One slender brow arched, quickly accompanied by a smirk that had enough brass for a marching band. “Unless you want to end up hitched to Lane, you might want to narrow that game plan down.”
Yeah, serious topic or not, if she was going to flirt with him, there was a zero percent chance Owen wasn’t flirting back. He leaned forward in his chair, just slightly, until his hand was two inches away from hers. “Mmm. Lane’s a cool guy and all, but he’s sort of taken now that he and Daisy are seeing each other. Plus, he’s not really my type.”
“Ah.” Cate shifted, and now only an inch separated their fingers. “And what is your type, exactly?”
“Female, for starters. Smart. Likes to bake. Dark hair. Very pretty eyes.” He let his stare linger on hers for just a beat before his half-smile took over. “Unbelievably brash mouth. You know anyone who fits the bill?”
The blush that stained her cheeks made Owen want to taste every part of her just to keep it there. “This is going to get complicated,” Cate said softly. But she didn’t pull away—in fact, she angled even closer—and, God, he didn’t even think twice. With one finger, he traced a line over the back of her hand from her knuckle to her wrist, and even though his darker, baser instincts screamed for more contact, more heat, more everything, he lifted his hand from hers, letting it hover over her skin after only the one slight touch.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “And here’s why. If we do this, we’re going to be honest with each other. Straight up. No bullshit. Everything on the table. When we’re at Cross Creek, we work.”
“Of course, work should stay separate.” She paused, her pupils dilating and her voice taking on a breathy quality that traveled directly to his cock. “But what about when we’re not there?”
With careful control, Owen leaned in just a fraction closer. “That ball is in your court, Cate. I promised not to tiptoe around you, so I’m going to give it to you straight. I think you’re sexy as hell, and I’d love to spend more time with you. If that’s not what you want, I’ll understand, no harm done. But if you do want it”—Owen smiled, and even though it took every ounce of willpower he owned, he forced himself to get up from the table—“you’re going to have to come and get it. In the meantime, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
15
Cate stared at the financial projections she was entering into Cross Creek’s system even though she didn’t see a thing. Actually, scratch that. She did see something. But since she was certain Owen’s sexy, steel-gray stare wasn’t going to get these notes on the next phase of the storefront project put into the system, she should probably blink a few times and move the hell on.
The only problem was, she’d tried that trick sixty times in the last six hours to no avail, and the longer she sat there all hot and bothered, the more obvious the truth became.
She wanted Owen so badly she could taste it, feel it in every heartbeat like a living, breathing, carnally wild thing.
And as dangerous as Cate knew that was for both of them, it was getting harder and harder to deny.
Maybe…
Something on the paper in front of her snagged her attention, yanking her from the impulsive thought. She read the passage, then read it again before going for a three-peat. But even though the words that marched across the page in Owen’s tidy, precise handwriting made sense, as far as the whole subject-verb-object thing went, they might as well have been written in Cantonese for how much actual sense they made.
Unless—
Before she could think twice, Cate had scooped up the two-way radio sitting in the charging station in the corner of the office. Owen, Hunter, and Mr. Cross used the walkie-talkie-like devices to communicate on the farm since cell service wasn’t always reliable, and they always left one on in the office during working hours. Owen had shown her how to operate the controls on her first day, just in case. She’d figured she’d only ever use the thing in case of an emergency, and while no one was breaking in or bleeding out up here at the main house, the paperwork in front of her was enough to make her press the “talk” button without so much as a heartbeat’s worth of a pause.
“Owen, this is Cate, over,” she said, having overheard enough conversations from the unit that stayed in the office to know the correct protocol. “Do you copy?”
“Yes, ma’am,” came the serious and seriously unreadable reply. “Everything okay at the main house, over?”
Well, shit. Hunter and Mr. Cross were some of the nicest folks in Millhaven, and both of them were probably listening to this exchange. If she answered in the negative, there was no way in hell all three Cross men wouldn’t drop whatever they were doing like a red-hot poker to come barreling up to the house.
“Everything’s fine,” Cate borderline lied. “I’ve got some, um, information in front of me on the storefront project that doesn’t quite add up and I was hoping we could talk about it, over.”
“Copy that. I’ll be at the house in five. Out.”
Despite her very best efforts, her hands shook as she replaced the two-way in the base. She had to be calm about this. Rational. Smart. She paced over the area rug to offset the adrenaline riding through her veins, elongating her breaths to a slow, controlled in and out and slowing her pulse to a nice, steady rhythm.
A steadiness that vanished the instant Owen opened the back door to the house and made his way into the office.
“Have you lost your mind?” Cate asked briskly, her heart making the involuntary climb toward her throat.
The noise that came out of him was part shock, part barked-out laughter. “Not that I’m aware, although something tells me you’ve got a different opinion on the matter.”
Nope. Not even that sexy little half-smile was going to save his equally sexy ass now. “What is this?”
He looked at the sheaf of papers she’d just snapped up off her desk. “That is the list of local business owners we’d like to partner with once we get to the next phase of the storefront project.”
“And why is my name on this list?”
“Actually, it’s at the top of the list,” Owen said, pointing to the page in her hand, and Christ on a cupcake, he was insane.
“Yes, I can see that,” Cate said, sending each syllable through her teeth. “What I’d like to know is why.”
Owen took a few steps farther into the office, but he didn’t break eye contact with her. “Because we’d like to offer your baked goods to our customers once the storefront is open for business.”
“No.” The word vaulted out of her mouth despite the whisper of a yes that had stirred in her chest.
A muscle in Owen’s jaw tightened. “Why not?”
“Because,” she said, slowly, to buy time. “It’s crazy.”
“It was your suggestion to add vendors with unique products to entice new customers,” he pointed out. His reply was low and perfectly controlled, yet definitely still an argument, and damn it, she should have known better than to think he’d let her off the hook with a simple protest.
Too bad for him, she could stand her ground like a champ. “Okay, but I didn’t mean me. I’m not a vendor.”
“But you could be.”
“No, I really can’t.”
&
nbsp; Where Owen’s logic had grown stronger with each assertion, Cate’s had faltered, and her heart kicked so fast, surely he was able to see it from the spot where he stood in front of her.
“Yes, you really can. Look”—his hands went to his hips, each of his words chipping away at her resolve—“I’m not asking for something outrageous, like a kidney, here. All I’m suggesting is that we give this a try.”
An image of the trivet hidden away among the dish towels in her kitchen sailed into her, stealing her air. “It’s not a good idea,” she managed.
Something shifted in his stare, turning it one degree softer and surprising the hell out of her. “Actually, it’s a great idea,” Owen said quietly. “And I can prove it before the next phase of the project even starts.”
Cate stepped back in shock. “How?”
“With a test run at the farmers’ market this weekend.”
“Owen—”
“Jesus, Cate. Would you at least hear me out before you say no?”
Although the words were technically a question, they came out with enough of a demand to pin her into place. Something deep in her belly made her acquiesce in spite of her defenses, and a flash of surprise added more gray than blue to Owen’s eyes as he registered her lack of protest.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “I’ll advance you the money to make and package as many baked goods as you’re able between now and Saturday morning. It’s an advance, not charity,” he reiterated, turning her brewing argument to stone. “You can pay it back with your profits. You’ll also have Cross Creek’s produce at your disposal for baking. Right now, there’s a decent crop of strawberries in the greenhouse and a ton of fresh herbs if you want to make savory bread. I’ve also got more eggs in our henhouse than I know what to do with.”
Ah, hell. Using Cross Creek’s produce would not only ensure top-notch quality in the baked goods, but it was a stroke of marketing genius on Owen’s part. Still… “That’s a lot of baking in the next two days.”
Crossing Promises Page 14