Crossing Promises

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Okay, so he still had strides to make in the sense-of-humor department. Still, Marley didn’t chuck the bowl at his head.

  But she didn’t look happy, either. “Only half,” she reminded him, putting the bowl on the butcher block and giving it a vigorous stir.

  “Not to us, Marley.”

  “I know, but I am to me.”

  Irritation flashed in Owen’s veins. He wanted to argue, to tell her blood was blood and she was being ridiculous—in fact, he had his mouth halfway open to do exactly that. Then he saw the glint of pain in her eyes, the one he’d bet his last dollar she’d rather die than admit existed, and he clamped his trap shut.

  He knew that loss. He missed his mother, too. Only, he’d always had his brothers to remind him how important family really was.

  Marley needed a brother, and he needed to give her that. Even if she wasn’t ready to be his sister yet.

  “So.” Owen filled his Thermos to the top, the coffeepot softly clanking as he replaced it on the burner. “Does Cate know you’re trying your hand at baking?”

  “No! Don’t—” Marley’s chin whipped upward, her eyes bright blue and wide. “Could you please not tell her?” she asked quietly. “I’ll probably suck at it.”

  He capped his Thermos with a nod. “I won’t tell her if you don’t want me to. That said, she won’t care if you suck at baking.”

  “How do you know?”

  It was an honest question with an easy answer. “Because I suck at conversational skills, and, miraculously, she still ends up talking to me. Somehow, I have a feeling she’d be fine with you muddling your way through a batch of brownies. She’d probably even think it was cool that you wanted to try it out.”

  Marley paused, long enough that Owen nearly gave up and made his way back out to the greenhouse. But then she asked, “Do you really think so?” and an involuntary smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  “Yeah. I really think so.”

  A glimmer moved through his sister’s expression, and Owen recognized it as mischief two seconds too late. “Oh, my God, you like her.”

  Shit. Shit! “Of course, I like her. She’s”—whip-smart. Totally fucking gorgeous. An insanely good kisser—“uh, nice.”

  “You’re going to want to work on that game face,” Marley said with a snort.

  Owen frowned. “That obvious, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She reached for the bowl, stirring the contents one more time before reaching for one of the two eggs sitting on a dish in the center of the island. “But don’t worry. I won’t blab to Cate that you got all goofy at the mention of her name or anything.”

  He couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Well, I guess I’d better let you get to the rest of your recipe,” he said, waiting until he was most of the way across the kitchen floor before turning back around. “And, hey, if you ever change your mind, the invite to family dinner is always open.”

  “I know,” Marley replied, just as she always did.

  But for the first time since she’d shown up on their doorstep six months ago, she looked like she’d actually consider it.

  Cate hummed a crooked tune under her breath as she entered the last of the payroll data into the system. She hadn’t seen Owen yet today—well, okay, technically, she had seen his silhouette slipping out of bed at 4:45 this morning, and she’d felt the brush of his mouth on her forehead fifteen minutes later when he’d headed out of his bedroom. But she hadn’t seen him face-to-face in the light of what was turning out to be a gorgeous spring day, which meant he was likely up to his elbows, perhaps literally, in work in the greenhouse. She’d slipped in to the main house at a few minutes before eight after a lightning-fast trip home for a shower and change of clothes, and even though she’d still technically been on time, snoozing until the last possible second in Owen’s bed, all warm and soft and smelling of cedar and something that belonged only to Owen himself, had felt nothing short of indulgent.

  Cate couldn’t remember the last time her alarm had woken her. She’d thought it would be weird at first, sleeping in the same bed with someone else after so long. It had ended up being the opposite of weird, though, with Owen just gathering her up in that quiet way of his and the two of them simply slipping off to sleep. No fanfare, no big deal.

  Mmm hmm. Unfettered bliss will do that to a girl.

  Her chin hiked, and she spun a brisk gaze around the office as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t, then rolled her eyes at herself two seconds later. Cate wasn’t naïve enough to think that what was happening between her and Owen was truly just sex—if that had been the case, she wouldn’t have spent the last three nights drifting off to dreamland next to him in his bed. But it wasn’t anything to get all panicky about, either. They weren’t picking out china patterns or those cutesy coffee mugs labeled “Mr.” and “Mrs.”. Sure, they enjoyed spending time together, but he’d promised things were casual. Just for now.

  She couldn’t give him the life he ultimately wanted, the family he deserved to have. So, yes. Things had to stay commitment-free in the long run, for both their sakes.

  “Hey.”

  Cate’s heart bolted against her sternum, bumping off no less than four of her ribs before settling back into place. Jeez! Had she really been so lost in thought that she hadn’t heard Owen open the back door and head down the hallway? And, seriously, how could anyone who had just done five hours of manual labor look so freaking sexy?

  “Hey,” she said, her resolve locking into place as Owen crossed the room to drop a kiss over the top of her head. “Owen. We’re at work.”

  Somewhere between thought and action, her protest grew weak. Cate couldn’t blame herself, really. Just the outline of those biceps against his T-shirt sleeves was enough to make her want to swallow her tongue—or, at the very least, do very naughty things to said biceps with it.

  He didn’t help her cause by grinning. “Take a break,” he said, the flash in his eyes all suggestion.

  She knew all three Cross men respected the work she did for them, and, since she respected it, too, she said, “Nope. We agreed.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right.” Owen straightened, taking a step back with a deferent nod. “When we’re at work, we work. Speaking of which, I have a proposition for you.”

  “That doesn’t sound like work.” Cate let a smile play on her lips as she pushed back in her desk chair to arch a brow at him.

  A bolt of heat moved through her when he arched a brow right back. “Get your mind out of the gutter, sweetheart. This proposition is all business.”

  God, that slow and sexy half-smile should be illegal. Or, at the very least, come with a sternly worded warning label. “Okay. What’s on your mind?”

  “I sat down with Hunter and my old man yesterday, and after looking at the numbers, we’d like to offer you a weekly contract to sell your baked goods in our tent at the farmers’ market until we can offer you a permanent placement in our storefront.”

  “You…” The words swirled through Cate’s head on wings, each of them flying just out of her comprehension’s reach. “You don’t want to wait until the storefront opens at the end of the summer?”

  “Nope. We don’t.”

  At her continued silence and the look of pure whaaa that must be slathered all over her face, Owen added, “I know it’s a bit of an unexpected ask, but it wouldn’t be anything we haven’t already done, to both of our success. All we’d do is write up a short-term contract to repeat everything from last weekend until the storefront opens. Cross Creek would take a percentage of your profits to cover the produce used and a portion of the rental fee for the space. We’d also ask that you work the farmers’ market every other Saturday to help with setup and sales since that worked out so well last weekend, but otherwise, that’s pretty much it.”

  Finally, a thought grew clear in her crowded brain. “I’d have to quit working at Clementi
ne’s and The Bar.” She didn’t mind the work, but not even she could be in two places at once.

  “That’s probably true, yes,” Owen said. “We’re happy to pay you competitively.”

  He gave up some numbers that made her knees weak, and she was already sitting down. “That’s”—crazy. Unbelievable. Enough to take a massive chunk out of my debt by the end of the summer—“reasonable. What sort of timetable were you thinking?”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, but…well, now.”

  “Now? As in, today?”

  He nodded, his handsome face perfectly calm. “If we’re going to make this weekend’s farmers’ market, then yes, we’d ideally sign the contract today.”

  Cate’s pulse whooshed in her ears. She’d spent so long thinking her dream was more of a fantasy, the big, out-of-reach kind like winning the lottery or living on your own island. The thought of getting paid to bake, to do what she truly, purely loved…

  A dream like that isn’t for you.

  Owen looked at her, his expression all business. “I know this is more of a commitment than you’re used to, and that you might be hesitant to bake on a regular basis. If you need some time to think about it—”

  “I don’t.”

  Her words startled her a little, but, oh, they felt so good in her mouth, the way she imagined a French truffle would, decadent and delicious.

  “You don’t.” Owen’s answer wasn’t a question, but Cate nodded anyway. Yes, she was here when Brian and Lily weren’t, and, no, that ache probably wouldn’t ever ease all the way. But a dream like this was for her. It always had been. She owed it to her daughter’s memory to be strong and go after the goals she’d pushed aside for far too long.

  Starting right now.

  “I don’t need to think about it,” she said with a smile. “I’d love to accept your offer.”

  21

  “Okay. This is the last of them.”

  Cate pulled the cookie sheet loaded with snickerdoodles out of Owen’s oven, placing it carefully over the wire rack on the island before letting out a sigh of relief. She’d planned her preparations carefully over the last three days, and having one farmers’ market under her belt already, she’d at least had an idea of how long certain tasks would take. Still, there were no less than a thousand potential pitfalls in going from concept to reality. With T-minus fifteen hours to go, it was nice to at least have all the baking done.

  “They smell unbelievable,” Owen said hopefully, and she slid a cinnamon and sugar-crusted cookie off the baking sheet that had come out ten minutes before its brethren.

  Ah, perfect. “One,” she replied, trying—and failing—to give him a stern look as she broke the cookie in half and passed part over to Owen before popping the other part into her mouth.

  The pleasured noise that came from the back of his throat made Cate’s belly flood with heat of the non-kitchen variety. “Damn, and they’re still warm?” He chewed, and the noise turned into a moan. “It doesn’t get much better.”

  “Oh, it can always get better.” She’d tweaked even her most reliable recipes for years.

  Owen, however? Didn’t seem to be buying it. “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘don’t mess with perfection’?”

  “Right.” Cate started to package up the cookies that had fully cooled into the cellophane bags sitting in wait on the counter, her smile as inevitable as the sunset in a couple of hours. The cookies had come out as soft and cinnamon-sweet as she’d hoped, but still… “Like you ever stop messing with soil compositions and planting schedules. Oh, and crop rotations—”

  “Okay, okay! Point taken.” His laugh ended quickly as he turned to look at the windows lining the back of the kitchen. “I just wish we hadn’t lost so much time today because of the weather.”

  An unexpected stretch of storms had started blowing through at lunch time, making steady outdoor work all but impossible between the overly wet conditions from the bouts of heavy rain and the threat of lightning. The storms had been persistent and unpredictable enough that the Crosses had finally just called it a day a couple of hours ago, after three rounds of harried stop/start.

  “I know the farm is important to you,” Cate said, because, God, it was the pure truth. “But you really only lost a couple of hours, right?”

  She pointed to the clock on the microwave, which read nearly five PM. She’d finished up all the bookkeeping early so she could focus on a few more batches of cookies for tomorrow’s farmers’ market. Between her and Owen, they’d found a system this afternoon that had been efficient and fun. Not that baking ever felt like work to her, but having an extra set of hands had made all the difference in getting things done both quickly and well.

  “Yeah.” Owen nodded, but that seriousness he always wore when it came to the farm didn’t budge from his eyes. “Anyway, the rain seems to have finally tapered off now. I was going to head to the greenhouse to see if there are any last-minute heirloom tomatoes or greens we could pack up for the market tomorrow. They’re so perishable, I’d hate to see any go to waste just because we missed ’em.”

  “Workaholic,” Cate teased, and damn it, one day she’d learn to brace herself for that sexy half-smile of his before it took a potshot at her composure.

  He stepped in front of her, taking the cellophane bag out of her fingers and placing it carefully on the island. “Takes one to know one.”

  After a slow kiss she felt in a lot more places than her mouth, Owen pulled back just far enough to murmur, “I really do need to head on down there for a quick trip, though.”

  “Mmm.” Cate laughed. She couldn’t really blame him for being ambitious. For loving what he did, right down to his boot heels? Even less. “Far be it for me to stand in your way, then.”

  But rather than stepping back as she expected him to, his arms remained solid around her rib cage. “It’s not far. Truth be told, I was going to walk it. Now that you’re done in here, you could come with me. I mean, it might be kind of boring for you, but…”

  “Right. Because watching me mix the batter for half a dozen strawberry-lemon quick breads was riveting for you, I’m sure.” Especially since it had been more like nine loaves, and three huge batches of cookies. “Am I okay to go like this?”

  She gestured to her light green sundress, which had been perfect for the warm spring weather that had dominated the first half of the day. At least she’d had the wherewithal to throw on her Keds this morning instead of a pair of flimsy sandals, although now that she thought about it, her sandals were still upstairs in Owen’s room, right where she’d left them two days ago.

  A tiny warning bell jangled in the back of Cate’s brain, but she snuffed it out. Yes, she’d kicked off her sandals at Owen’s bedside and inadvertently left them there the next morning in favor of the ballet flats she’d packed in her overnight bag, but she was hardly moving in with him. In fact, she’d responded with a polite yet firm no thanks when he’d offered to let her keep a toothbrush and some toiletries in his medicine cabinet, preferring instead to haul them back and forth whenever she stayed. She’d just have to be sure to grab her sandals later tonight. No big deal.

  “Sure,” he said, bringing her back to the kitchen with a smile. “It’s still plenty warm out despite the rain, and the path is all gravel, so we shouldn’t run into any of the standing water or mud that we had to worry about in the fields.”

  “Great. Just let me finish bagging these cookies up and then we can head out.”

  A handful of minutes and a dozen or so packages of cookies later, they were headed over the threshold of Owen’s front door. He hadn’t been kidding about the temperature still being more than warm enough for shirtsleeves, and even though the sun was still well-hidden behind a bank of light gray clouds, Cate still twisted her hair into a knot to keep it off her neck in the humid, post-storm air. “Oh, hey,” she said, pausing to run her fingers lightly over the herb garden exploding out of the planter box nearest to the porch railing where she stoo
d. “Your lavender bloomed a ton this week. I’d love to know your secret. I always manage to kill mine.”

  Owen spread a hand over the front of his T-shirt in mock horror. “Please tell me you water it.”

  “Of course, I water it,” she said, laughing and following him down the porch steps.

  “Uh huh. And where do you keep it?”

  She bit her lip, knowing he wasn’t going to like her answer. “In a pot in my kitchen, usually.”

  One nearly black brow lifted all the way up. “Your kitchen that gets as much natural sunlight as a dungeon, you mean?”

  “Point taken.” Cate held up her hands in concession, falling into step beside him on the gravel path leading toward the smaller of Cross Creek’s two greenhouses. “Not everyone can be a natural when it comes to growing things. I think I’m more all thumbs than green thumb.”

  “First of all, Mediterranean herbs like lavender and oregano need a ton of sunlight to thrive, and it’s a common mistake to keep them in a spot that’s too shady. Secondly, most of what you need to know to grow things well isn’t inherent. It’s learned.”

  “Really?” Surprise worked a path through her chest. “You just seem to have such a knack for farming.” Actually, he seemed to have been pretty much hand-crafted for it. If she recalled properly, he’d worked full-time through the harvest their senior year in high school without missing so much as one assignment.

  But Owen simply laughed, one shoulder lifting and lowering in an easy shrug. “After doing it for fifteen years, I reckon I probably do. But I think that’s because I love learning about it more than any sort of predisposition for knowing the land like some sort of plant whisperer.”

  Cate’s curiosity perked, good and hard. “Did you always know you wanted to run the farm?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  His answer was so immediate, so immoveable that she pounced. “Always? You never wanted to be an astronaut or a rock star or something wild like that?”

  “When I could run the farm instead?” he asked, his tone wrapping the words in a healthy veneer of are you crazy? “No way.”