by Amberlee Day
“Hi, everybody. My name is Freddie Prescott, I’m Brenda Lee Mitford’s manager.”
The crowd gave mild applause. What was he going to do, just tell them who she was? No, he said he’d distract them. Maybe he meant for her to get rid of the ice cream? Desperately, she looked around for a place to dump it.
“I just wanted to take a minute to talk about how impressed we’ve been at your wonderful town, especially your obvious love for dogs.” He waited while the crowd applauded again. “I’ve heard people say that the abundance of these beautiful fur friends in town is thanks to the Love at Home books. And while that may be true, it begs the question: were you inspired by Brenda Lee Mitford, or was she inspired by you?”
When the applause died down, Freddie kept talking while Kate scrambled. Was there even a trash can nearby? Not in front of her, and with Pumpkin sitting in the way, she couldn’t even see if there was one behind her, or maybe a planter box where she could subtly ...
Had Freddie said dogs?
Pumpkin had scooted closer to Kate, and the dog’s eyes were fixed on Kate’s plate. A heavy thread of drool dropped down from the otherwise delicate canine mouth.
From the microphone, Freddie’s voice boomed. “Look now, all around you, at all the beautiful dogs in your midst, right now.”
Now? Now! Kate picked up the ice cream the fastest way she could think of, with her hand, and slipped it back to Pumpkin. The dog licked Kate’s hand with passionate gusto.
“Now we’ll see who’s your favorite human,” Kate muttered under her breath, which caught the English teacher’s attention and earned Kate an odd look. With her free hand, Kate gobbled up the portion of her peach pie that hadn’t touched ice cream—which was probably delicious, but she forgot to pay attention to it.
Freddie, meanwhile, kept going on and on about dogs. He seemed to be finished with his random but popular speech about dogs about the same time Pumpkin finished the ice cream. Kate did her best to wipe her hand on her napkin, but ice cream and dog saliva proved to be a sticky combination. Oh well, she’d made it through the crisis.
Somehow, Audrey had the microphone back. “Alright, looks like our judges had a nice taste of our peach pie finalist. Now on to a local favorite, blueberry pie. And don’t fret, Mrs. Mitford, you’ll be pleased to know we have plenty more cinnamon ice cream where that came from.”
Panic hit her in the chest again, but Freddie met her eyes with a determined set to his mouth and twinkle in his eye. He went for the microphone again, just as the plates were passed out. “One more thing I forgot to mention about your lovely city here,” he said, his voice as personable and velvety as that wonderful old Cary Grant, only missing the actor’s upper-crust, mid-Atlantic accent. Freddie pointed behind the crowd, toward town. “The architecture of your church, over yonder. If you’ll turn your attention to the far end here—yes, that building with the steeple, for you who are visitors in this town like I am—you’ll see an example of the fine workmanship that Harvest Ranch is founded on.”
Holy cow, he was stretching things, but nobody had to tell her twice. For the second time, Kate twisted to block her neighbor’s view and grabbed her scoop of cinnamon ice cream in her fist. She slipped it to Pumpkin, who had practically put her head in Kate’s lap to get closer. While the situation was still a sticky one with who knew how many pieces of pie and scoops of ice cream to come, two good things were emerging from this mess—three if she’d been able to enjoy the delicious pies, which she couldn’t.
First, Pumpkin was finally warming up to her, thanks to the cinnamon ice cream. And two, watching Freddie entertain and distract a crowd of two hundred people, getting them all to look this way and that at his mere request, was an absolute delight. She almost hoped they would bring her twenty plates of ice cream to dispose of ... almost.
Chapter 9
Freddie inspected one of Kate’s many discard boxes scattered through the lobby. He picked up a set of autumn-colored tassels. “Good decision to toss these. Some of this stuff looks like it’s thirty years old.”
“Try sixty,” she laughed. “But it’s not the age that’s the problem. It’s that they’re so out of date, and ... well, even in their prime I think they were probably a little tacky.”
“Nah, really?” He held up a smiling banana head mask complete with sunglasses. When Kate laughed, delicious warmth filled his chest. Making her laugh was probably the thing he liked best about Harvest Ranch.
“Goof. We need to get some work done.”
“Yes, I see.” She’d placed a yellow notebook with the words “Project Cornucopia” on a side table. “I take it you have a lot of work planned.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” But before she could elaborate, a family of five arrived, pushing through the revolving doors.
Swoosh. Pumpkin, lying on the floor near Freddie’s feet, whined. She really didn’t like that door.
“Do you need to help them?” Freddie asked Kate. He hadn’t spent much time in the lobby, but so far he hadn’t heard the woman sitting behind the desk speak. Not a good sign in an employee. In fact, she’d only glanced at Freddie when he’d come in, not even giving him a smile.
“Maybe,” Kate murmured. “Her name’s Vanna. She was here when I got back from the pie judging, but I’ve been out back since then. I haven’t seen her helping anyone yet, but Virgil and Vernon recommended her. She’s their sister.”
“Wow.” Unlike the brothers’ crew cuts and receding hairlines, the fifty-ish woman had an impressive full head of red hair—not the Brenda Lee wig type; he’d guess this was real, except maybe the color. He hadn’t seen her smile yet, either. He leaned closer to Kate’s ear so he could keep his voice low. “And Virgil and Vernon recommending her is a good thing?”
“I think so.” But she frowned while they listened in.
The wife of the newly arrived family stepped up to the desk. “I made a reservation on your website earlier today, for Jensen. We heard this is where the Love at Home author is staying during the festival?”
“How did she know?” Kate whispered.
Freddie shrugged. “Maybe McGee already has the word out?” Or maybe Freddie had tweeted it out on Brenda Lee’s Twitter account, but he didn’t need to tell Kate that. He didn’t want her to think he was turning soft and small-town helpful. It was kind of fun that she thought of him as a self-centered cad.
Vanna’s voice, when it came, could have been mistaken for that of the lady boss on Monsters, Inc., and Freddie had to swallow hard to keep from laughing. And as Kate’s arm gently brushed his, he could feel her silent laughter, too.
“Welcome to the Cornucopia, Mr. and Mrs. Jensen,” came Vanna’s scratchy, monotone voice from behind the desk. She did sort of smile at them. “I can neither confirm nor deny about the author, but I do see your reservation. I have you down as staying in cabin number twenty.”
Kate stood straighter. “Cabin twenty?”
The two of them had pretty much been standing still like two chameleons trying to blend into their surroundings while they watched the newcomers. Freddie was taken off guard when Kate suddenly rushed forward in her overalls with quick, energetic steps, right around to the other side of the desk. She leaned over Vanna’s shoulder, which the new receptionist didn’t seem to like.
“Is everything alright, Miss O’Halloran?” came Vanna’s craggy voice.
“I just wanted to check something,” he could just hear Kate say lightly. “We don’t normally put people in the outer cabins unless ...”
But suddenly her eyes lit up. Her smile spread across her pretty face, and he could see her eyes sparkle from across the room. What was going on? He had no idea, but just watching her put a smile on his face. Whatever she saw on the computer, she was happy about it.
“No problem at all,” she told Vanna, and she welcomed the guests before hurrying back over to Freddie. “You’re not going to—”
She was almost to him when she tripped over a box of orange and gold silk fl
owers, but he was already there to catch her. And maybe he held her in his arms a moment longer than necessary, just so he could look into those pretty brown eyes for a moment. In a quiet voice, he teased, “This is getting to be a habit.”
She smirked at him and got back on her feet, but that crackly electricity that sparked between them flashed through his veins. “Thank you for saving me again,” she said. “You’re never going to believe it ... we’re nearly booked for the next few days!”
“Really? That’s terrific, Kate.” And he really was happy for her. In fact, he could sit and watch the happiness on her face for longer, if she let him. Which he quickly found out she wasn’t going to let him do.
“Okay,” she said, clapping her hands and looking around her, “let’s get to work. I need to get the rest of these things off the wall, and then we can start painting.”
Freddie held the ladder while Kate climbed up and took down the apple-themed cuckoo clock and the fruit-shaped letters spelling out HAPPY HARVEST. It was a nice spot to be in, but Freddie was a gentleman and didn’t stare at her backside, much.
Soon they were busy painting the walls, while more and more guests checked into the hotel. With the courtyard door propped open and several fans keeping the area ventilated, they rolled a layer of paint on that wall of the lobby.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Freddie admitted when they were getting close to finished.
“You sound surprised.”
“Well, when you said we were painting the room orange ...”
She gave him a patient look, as if he were a child who should know better. “It’s not orange, Freddie. It’s autumn orange. You make it sound like something you’d find on a traffic cone.”
“My apologies, ma’am,” he said as seriously as he could. “I guess I’m just not educated when it comes to orange.”
“See how it has hints of brown? The orange tone is just to warm it up a bit.”
“And are any of the doodads in the ‘keep’ boxes meant to go back up when the paint is dry?”
Kate wrinkled her nose at him. “Maybe a few. Not all of it’s bad. Mostly it’s just too many.”
“No comment,” he said, more to tease her than anything. “What about the breakfast area?”
She looked that way. The door was closed, since the donuts and bagels apparently weren’t available after midmorning. “I’ll paint in there, too, but not today. This lobby was just bothering me, and I thought ...”
“You thought you’d feel better if it wasn’t so ugly? I totally get that.”
“No.” She flicked a drip rag at him, but he was glad to see a hint of a smile, too. She didn’t say any more about it, but as he worked near the breakfast room door, it made him think of food. His stomach rumbled.
“Do you have any good barbecue places in town?” he asked her. He kept his voice down, as another couple was checking in at the desk. “I looked at the list that Virgil or Vernon—whichever one is the night man—gave me that first evening, but nothing looked exclusively barbecue.”
“Freddie’s a carnivore, huh?”
He rolled his head back, shaking it at the ceiling. “I suppose you’re a vegetarian?”
“No, just ... barbecue makes me think carnivore.”
“Naturally.”
“But no, come to think of it, I don’t think we have anyplace like that in town. You’re talking more than burgers, right? Because we do have burgers.”
He just grunted back, like he’d been joking the whole time. What did it matter, anyway? It didn’t. Except that a tiny something sparked in his chest, and a thought he hadn’t had in a long time unexpectedly popped in his head—something from when he was a teenager spending the summer with relatives in North Carolina, when for five minutes he’d been absolutely sure what he wanted to do when he grew up.
It hadn’t mattered. Working with his dad at the agency had been his destiny since birth.
Still, he knocked on the drywall next to him, past the space the breakfast area would have taken up, and thought. What was behind that part of the wall?
While they worked and talked, Freddie learned some fun, random facts about Kate. For instance, she’d once been obsessed with identifying and labeling jelly bean flavors. The shortest job she ever held was fifteen minutes doing telemarketing, when she called someone back to chastise them for swearing at her and hanging up. When he asked if she had any hidden birthmarks, she blushed. She felt guilty that she’d forgotten to vote in the last election. And she’d made a promise to herself when she was eleven that she’d never kill a spider.
“Why?” He’d been in the country four days, and he’d already killed at least ten spiders.
“Because they’re harmless, really, and they help us. They trap and eat insects that would otherwise take over the world.”
“I see.”
“Also,” she confessed, her eyes widening even as she drew near him and sent his heart rate careening, “what if part of the afterlife is that every spider you ever killed gets to touch you? Just the thought of it freaks me out.”
He couldn’t stop smiling at that logic.
They were just completing part of a second wall when two housekeepers came in. He’d seen them before, a forty-ish blond woman and a petite Hispanic woman.
“Did your parents say you could do that?” the blonde asked, like she was ready to get Kate into trouble. She bumped a toe at a box of decorations marked “discard.” “Getting rid of more collectibles, I see. This stuff’s vintage, you know.”
“It’s a surprise,” Freddie jumped in to say, grinning at Kate. Who wouldn’t think this was an improvement, especially if the knickknacks didn’t go back up?
The blonde harrumphed. “I know you said you were going to fix up the place, Katie, but I thought you meant dings in the walls, that sort of thing. I’m just saying they might not like so many changes at once.”
Kate didn’t look worried. “It’s okay, Dora. If they don’t like it, I’ll just tell them it was your idea.”
“Ha, ha,” the blonde said, leaving Freddie to wonder what Kate and Dora’s relationship was. Dora folded her arms. She narrowed her eyes at Freddie for some reason. “And what about you, mister big-city boy? How come she’s got you helping with the chores?”
“Don’t look at me,” he said, flexing his muscles while raising the roller as evidence. Might as well make light of an uncomfortable situation. “Kate’s just using me for my body.”
“What?” Kate asked, and he loved watching her face flush red before she realized he was teasing. “Very funny. But yes, Dora, I’m taking advantage of Freddie, though he hasn’t fought me on it.”
The blonde—Dora—slumped one shoulder, more subdued. In a softer voice, she said, “Well, I suppose since you lost your job and your fiancé so recently, I’ll let you off the hook.”
Fiancé? Freddie nearly dropped the paint roller.
“Thank you, Dora.” Kate flicked her eyes at Freddie. “Are you and Sostenes all done with the rooms, then?”
“Yes, all done.”
“Good, because we’re finally booking up. You might need to bring in extra help to clean this coming week.”
“I’ll take care of it, but right now we’re on lunch. Come on, Sostenes. Time for Vampire Diaries in the break room.”
At the mention of Vampire Diaries, Dora’s coworker pulled her phone from a pocket, and they headed out the rear door.
“Is it my imagination, or is your employee a little rough on you?” Freddie asked, dodging the fiancé elephant in the room.
“Maybe, but since she’s also my cousin—my older cousin who used to babysit me, and whose favorite pastime has always been to boss me around—it’s not so odd.”
“Ah. That makes sense, then.” They resumed painting in silence before he cautiously trudged ahead with the bigger question. “You had a fiancé? Recently?”
Their eyes met over the can of autumn-orange paint. “No. No fiancé. Not recently, or ever.”
&nb
sp; Well, that was good, anyway. “Okay.”
“It may be that I thought he was a fiancé, or almost one, but that ended.”
“Recently.”
“Very recently. Five days ago. In fact, in the same conversation where he let me go from my job.”
“Ah, no! Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“That’s bad form. Really bad form. I’m sorry that happened to you, Kate.” Not sorry she was available now, but yes, if Kate’s ex were in the room, Freddie would want to hurt him. “You deserve better.”
She didn’t answer, and he found her staring at him, those big brown eyes vulnerable and searching his. Such beautiful eyes, really. “Do I deserve better, Freddie?”
His heart broke a little, then swelled a lot. Looking at Kate, with her old overalls, a speck of orange paint on her cheek, and boxes of ugly decorations scattered behind her, everything about her screamed not the direction you’re going, Prescott. But he couldn’t resist reaching out and touching her cheek. So soft. “You have a bit of paint.” He gently caressed her skin, swallowing down the sudden lump in his throat and the out-of-control heartbeat. “And you do deserve better, Kate. You deserve the best.”
Some invisible tractor beam seemed to be drawing Freddie closer to Kate, or maybe she was moving closer to him, or both. His hand slid softly along the curve of her jaw, his fingertips barely touching her neck. He swallowed. Hopefully, she couldn’t hear his heartbeat, because it felt like it was going to beat out of his chest.
Kate the manager, the annoying woman with a pretty mouth who’d mocked his pocket square and was nothing he’d been taught to look for in a match, suddenly was the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. He’d known her for four days, but his heart pushed him to kiss her. He leaned closer, so close he felt her breath on his lips.
A moaning from the floor put a stop to their near-kiss, and both of them looked down. Pumpkin had been pretty mellow all afternoon, mostly sleeping on the floor while they worked. Now she raised just one eyebrow at them without moving her head, and she groaned.