by Annie Evans
Fritz was waiting when he parked the tractor back inside the barn. He managed to give Eli time to climb down before starting with the questions.
“When did you and the doc hook up?”
Eli winced at the words hook up, even though they fit, and sat down on a stack of leftover lumber. “At the rodeo in Perry.”
“Just somethin’ random?” Fritz asked, propping his shoulder against one of the barn’s support posts.
“Yeah,” Eli said. He grabbed a piece of hay and wrapped it around his finger, unwound it, wrapped it, over and over again. “My typical MO, ya know? Turn on the charm, a little alcohol primer, move in for the kill.”
“But…?”
Fritz had a way of using very few words to get a lot of information. For some strange reason it made it easier to talk to him. Eli loved his brother Sage, but he and Fritz were closer, got along better, now that they were older. He rubbed the inch-long lateral scar on the ball of his chin with his thumb, remembering back three weeks.
“How’d you get the scar?” she asked, her fingertip tracing the pale line.
“The one and only time I got into a fist fight with my brother Fritz.”
“Why was it the only time?”
“He won.”
“But I don’t fucking know what happened.” Eli smiled crookedly. “She gave me this odd fake name when we first met—”
“Clover, I’m guessing?”
He nodded, chuckling at the memory. “And it just got better from there. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was looking to disappear inside a bottle of tequila and I wanted to know why. I never found out because she wasn’t in the mood to talk much. The sex was damn good. Nothing kinky or anything, just…intense. For the first time ever, I didn’t want to grab my shit and get out. Anyway, the next morning I went to get breakfast and when I came back, she was gone. Says she didn’t see the note I left and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It was a one-time thing for her.”
“She thought she’d never see you again.”
“Guess so.”
“And now you want more.” Somehow Fritz’s statement came out lacking an undertone of surprise, even though Eli knew his brother had to be struck dumb by the idea of Eli wanting anything other than sex from a woman. Fritz would never judge or lecture him about his sexual habits. Didn’t matter because Eli was currently doing enough of it for the both of them.
“Yeah, I think I do.”
Fritz grinned. “It’s not a death sentence, brother.”
Eli tossed the strand of hay aside. He’d never believed in that chemistry bullshit people spewed until he saw how happy and right Kai and Fritz were together. And sure, his parents had been married for almost forty years, but times were different when they were young. Farm life was harder and divorces were seldom seen as a way out. Couples stuck with it through rough patches and didn’t give up so easily. It wasn’t like today, where vows were as insubstantial as the paper they were printed on.
That night he spent in Bellamy’s bed, he’d felt something outside of good old-fashioned lust. Damned if he knew what it was, but it had been there, striking matches in his gut. Hoarding every single detail inside his brain.
“Kai told me where Bellamy’s living,” Fritz said.
Eli’s head jerked up. “How would Kai know that?”
“Bellamy’s been in the store a few times. Kai really likes her and I suppose they’ve talked, gotten to know each other a little. When I got home last night, Kai asked if Bellamy was the one who helped deliver the calf. Said she’s living in the old McCoy place on Claxton Dairy Road.”
No wonder she’d gotten to them quickly. Claxton Dairy Road was only about three miles from where they sat. The mental image of the McCoy homestead made him frown. “That place always looks so…abandoned when I drive by.”
His brother’s gaze was steady and shrewd. “Don’t we have a vet bill that needs payin’?”
* * * * *
Eli eased his truck off the asphalt and stopped to make sure he was in the right place.
The galvanized metal mailbox perched at the side of the road was rusty and tilting precariously to the left, but he thought he could make out the word McCoy written down the side in faded black paint. The gate—more decaying metal—had no choice but to stand open, barely held upright by a lone hinge pin that hadn’t given up the fight just yet.
A lane of deep, powdered-clay ruts made a straight shot through the center of an eighty-acre field devoid of trees, but ripe with weeds, briars and wild blackberry bushes. The house itself stood lonesome at the back edge of the property, bordered by woodlands bursting with fall colors, which only seemed to emphasize the starkness of the overall picture.
As he drew nearer, Eli took in the aged condition of the old farmhouse. It was a large two-story structure with a covered porch that circled the entire lower level. More patches of rust and oxidization dotted its mottled tin roof. The white paint once coating the exterior walls was more of a grayish hue now—what hadn’t flaked off altogether with time. Mature live oaks, maples and magnolia trees surrounded the sides and back.
Looking at it made his chest ache for a reason he couldn’t name.
Why are you here, Bellamy?
He parked his truck behind the silver work vehicle she’d driven last night. A small car with fading blue paint sat next to it, a UGA sticker on the back bumper.
When he stepped out, everything smelled familiar—dirt, foliage, a faint tinge of manure in the air from the dairy down the road a ways—but it felt foreign too, like he’d stepped back in time to a place where tractors had to be started by a hand crank.
He headed for the front door.
Weathered wood popped and creaked beneath his booted feet as he stepped up onto the warped porch. The smell of cooking food wafted through the sagging screens in the row of open windows across the front of the house. Country music followed it out. Gauzy white curtains lifted and lowered with the light morning breeze.
Eli rapped his knuckles on the frame of the battered screen door and waited.
Nothing.
So he did it again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
He listened closely, trying to locate the origin of the music in relation to where he stood. When he figured out it was coming from a back corner of the house, he followed the porch around, his boots echoing on the wood, matching the tempo of his heart.
Several boards were broken or missing, the dirt ground below visible through the gaps. Spider webs clung to the underside of the eaves in frothy gray clusters. Leaves that fall had bitten from the tree limbs were nestling themselves in corners to finish dying.
The backyard held a listing shed he’d seen a thousand times all over farm country. Same pitched, rusted tin roof, same dark, decaying wood, same square doors welded shut by time and Mother Nature. Usually they housed long-abandoned tractors under their broad eaves, rats and snakes, and ancient farming implements forgotten inside. This one was no different.
Twin ropes hung from the fat, swooping limb of a live oak tree that was a hundred years old if it was a day. They’d been there for so long the gnarled bark had swallowed them up. He followed them down to where the broken seat of a swing wavered in the morning air, smoky beards of Spanish moss dripping from the limbs above it.
Nothing Eli saw was particularly new to him. He was raised on a working farm in rural Georgia, grew up with clay between his toes and corn dust in his hair, earning every dime of spending money he made with his hands and back and a work ethic bred into him through generations. He loved where he lived, took a tremendous amount of pride in his heritage.
But something about this wasn’t right.
He took it all in with a fist of worry clenched around his heart and a knot the size of a cantaloupe lodged in his throat. Bellamy didn’t belong in a house that spoke its age with every footfall, set far enough back from the road that no one would notice if something was wrong or she needed help. With a gate that didn’
t close to lock out strangers.
He rounded the corner of the porch and caught a flash of her through one of the windows. The music was so loud now he could decipher words and the voice—classic Dolly—and Bellamy was singing along at the top of her lungs. He smiled and eased closer to the back door. Best he could tell, she was in the kitchen.
When he reached the door, he could see her standing at the stove cooking, framed in side profile between a parted set of white curtains. Her hair was twisted into a messy knot at the back of her head, exposing the long line of her throat. If he kissed that soft expanse, she would shiver for him and her nipples would tighten to hard peaks.
She wore a pair of striped green pajama bottoms that hung low on her waist, seemingly held in place only by the bow tied beneath her bellybutton. The soft fabric draped over the rounded cheeks of her ass, and even from where he stood watching like a pervert, he could tell she wasn’t wearing underwear beneath them. Her top was a plain white undershirt that looked like it belonged on a ten-year-old boy, not a woman with perfect breasts like Bellamy. Thin cotton molded to every curve and the flat plane of her abdomen. There was a wide strip of skin showing between the two garments just above the jut of her hipbones, another region of her body he longed to revisit.
Her hips swayed with the rhythm of the song, making him recall the warm feeling of her pressed against him as they’d slow danced that night in Perry. The soft sigh that slipped from her throat when their bodies met for the first time. The troubled look in her pretty green eyes when he said he’d lost her again to her thoughts.
It mattered, Bellamy.
She turned from the stove, a pancake balanced on the end of a spatula, saw him standing there and screamed. The pancake hit the floor. When she bent double at the waist, hands braced on her knees, Eli didn’t wait for a formal invitation.
“Sorry,” he said as he pushed through the door, closing it behind him. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He ripped a paper towel from a roll on the counter, scooped up the ruined pancake, and tossed it into a trashcan he found next to the fridge. By the time he turned around, she’d recovered from the shock he’d given her, turned off the radio and was leaning back against the sink, her arms crossed over her chest, spatula still clutched in one hand. It would serve him right if she whacked him on the head with it.
Her eyes narrowed. “Eli, what are you doing here?”
He fished the folded money from his shirt pocket and held it up. “I brought your payment for last night.” Then he tucked it beneath a Mason jar filled with fresh wildflowers. The farm table they sat on occupied the center of the big kitchen. “Nice table.”
The thing stretched for a mile, its surface scratched and marred from years of use and aged to a fine dark patina. The legs were simple squares that narrowed as they reached the floor. He’d bet if the table could talk, it would have some interesting stories to tell of both hard times and good times.
She ignored the furniture compliment. “I didn’t even send you a bill yet.”
Eli shrugged. “I guessed at it. If it’s too much, consider the extra a tip for the late service call.”
She pushed away from the sink to stir her pancake batter. A small plate of cooked link sausages sat on the counter next to the stove. He’d interrupted her breakfast.
“The charge for an after-hours service call is factored into the amount of the bill. Vets don’t get tips. How did you find me?”
He propped a hip against the counter. “Fritz is engaged to Kai Donnelly. When he got home last night after pullin’ the calf, she asked if you were the vet who helped us out. She mentioned you were living here.”
She shot him a quick glance, but said nothing more than, “Ah.”
“Are you related somehow to the McCoy family?”
He watched her pour a scoop of batter into the hot pan. “The McCoys were my maternal grandparents. My mother is the youngest of five girls—one of those deals where they kept trying for a boy, but one never came, so they finally gave up.”
Eli nodded once, waiting for her to continue the story.
“My grandpa died fifteen years ago, but my grandma continued to live here alone until she grew too feeble to take care of herself, so my mom and my aunts moved her to an assisted-living facility in Americus. She died a year ago. Once she passed, my cousins swooped in like a bunch of buzzards and picked the place clean, even though they hadn’t been to visit her in years. That table is the sole item they left, and I suspect the only reason why is because it’s too big to fit anywhere else.”
He heard the bitterness in her voice at the mention of her cousins’ greed, the disappointment.
“But why are you here, Bellamy?”
She carefully flipped the pancake then her somber gaze met his. “Because it’s mine.”
Chapter Four
Eli’s lips parted but words got hung in his throat. This timeworn, empty farmhouse belonged to Bellamy Haile?
The corners of her mouth curved at his stunned silence before she turned her attention back to the pan. “I spent every summer here as a kid, long weekends, holidays, right up until I started vet school. My grandma taught me how to make biscuits, piecrusts, dumplings, all from scratch at that nice big table. They used to have peach trees out back. Something killed them—blight, root rot, neglect—who knows,” she added absently. “Anyway, to this day I’ve never tasted a better peach pie than the ones my nana used to make.”
“So she left the place to you?”
“Like I said, I was the only grandchild who spent any time with her. I guess you could say I was her favorite, and the feeling was certainly mutual. She left the others a little money as an appeasement, I suppose. Still didn’t stop them from looting the place. And her daughters were married with their own homes to maintain. None of them would’ve wanted the house anyway, so she made it clear before she died that it was to go to me.” She averted her face for a minute, cleared her throat. “Technically, it’s in my name and my mother’s until I decide what to do with it.”
What did she mean—decide what to do with it? She made it sound as though she might not want it. That her stay in Serenity might not be a permanent one.
“But you didn’t grow up here,” he said matter-of-factly. He would’ve known if she had. Serenity was too small and she was close enough in age for him to have remembered someone from school named Bellamy.
“Columbus. My mom and dad met at a high school football game between Serenity and Americus, his hometown. After graduation, they got married and he enlisted in the Army. They didn’t have me until he was stationed back at Fort Benning toward the end of his career. Dad refused to put a child through the constant relocations military life demanded. He’s since retired from the service, but they stayed in Columbus and now he works on base as a part-time civilian instructor. When he’s not working, they travel a lot.”
“You’re an only child?”
“Yep. Since they waited so long to have kids and my mom was thirty-seven when she had me, they stopped at one.” She transferred the perfect pancake onto a cooked stack then looked up at him, her eyes softening. “Have you eaten breakfast?”
Wouldn’t matter if thirty minutes ago he’d eaten enough to choke a horse. He would’ve still said, “No, I haven’t.” Which wasn’t a lie in this case.
She pointed over his shoulder. “Plates are in the cabinet, forks are in the far right drawer. If you look in the cupboard next to the fridge, I have sorghum syrup, molasses and honey.”
“All from Kai’s place, I see.” Since he didn’t know what she preferred, he took all three out and set them on the table next to their plates, then folded napkins and tucked them under the forks.
“I love Homegrown. Everything I’ve tried from there so far has been amazing. Such a fantastic concept too, showcasing local growers, artisan cooks and craftspeople. She seems to be doing well with it.” Bellamy placed the platters of sausage and pancakes on the table
“It’s been a h
uge success. At first it seemed like a risk, but Kai is smart and focused. Web savvy too. My mom is an active partner. She was crucial in helping Kai get set up with all the local folks.”
Bellamy paused in the open door of the refrigerator, realization dawning on her face. “Oh my goodness, Ruby’s your mom?”
Eli smiled. “That’s her.”
“I met her the last time I was in the store. She’s so sweet and helpful. She and Kai really made me feel welcome here.” She withdrew a gallon of milk and a carton of orange juice, holding them up. “I don’t drink coffee. Will one of these be okay?”
“I’ll just have water, thanks. I’ve met my quota of coffee for the day.” Once he left the barn, he’d dicked around in town to kill time before he drove out to her place. Not everyone rose before the roosters like him and his brothers.
She poured herself a glass of milk and him a glass of water, setting them beside their plates. “Sit down,” she said.
Eli waited for her to fix her plate before he stabbed a couple of pancakes and two links of sausage. He drizzled sorghum syrup over everything and dug in. “Damn, that’s good,” he said after he chewed a mouthful and swallowed.
“I know, right?” she said, her eyes gleaming, hand in front of her mouth while she talked around a bite.
She was so damn cute Eli wanted to lean across the table and kiss her syrup-glazed lips. Spread her out on that long farm table, coat every inch of her naked body with something sticky then lick her clean. Behind his fly, his dick gave a pulse of agreement. Given the history of the table though, Bellamy would probably see the act as sacrilegious. And he really wished she’d pulled on a bra this morning because it took a lot of effort not to ogle her small, pert nipples pressing against her t-shirt.
He laughed when she rolled her sausage up in a pancake like a hotdog and dredged it through the puddle of syrup on her plate, then shoved another huge bite into her mouth.