by Kasey Lane
In just a few months, Kendall Kelly the punk rock cowgirl, had gone from celebrated crossover artist to tabloid fodder. And, man, had the press been vicious. How they loved to tear down someone they’d helped build up.
Now she was here, his runaway wife, asking him to buy her out of the farm and sign the divorce papers. He glanced down at his desk, glaring at the folder containing those damned documents. Why hadn’t he signed them yet? He’d wanted to carve her from his mind for so long. But now he had the ability to do that and he couldn’t quite pull the trigger.
Why?
Not because he still loved her, that was for fucking sure. And not because he held out some ridiculously romantic notion that she was still the one when she clearly wasn’t. Moving to the door and grabbing his hat before he moved out onto his deck, he looked out on the watercolor horizon and took a deep breath. The purple- and pink-tinged clouds hung along the mountain backdrop, highlighting the green treetops growing dark with the thinning light.
God, he loved this place. Loved it with all that was left of his shattered heart. Why couldn’t she have been happy here? With him? Maybe he was the problem and not Blackberry Cove?
His eyes dropped to the back porch of the main house across the wide yard from his smaller cottage as the screen door slammed and the silhouette of a woman, an angry woman, barreled toward him.
He wouldn’t have to go to her this time. Taking a moment to admire her deliberate step and the long pink braid flying behind her, he noticed she’d changed from her dress to a pair of old loose jeans and a fitted plaid shirt. For a moment, he was reminded of the day they’d run off and gotten married in Las Vegas. Her eighteenth birthday. They’d been so young and though he was only a few years older, he felt like he’d been waiting forever for her. That day she’d skipped from the main house to his smaller guesthouse and jumped into his arms. She’d kissed the side of his neck and said, “Let’s go get married, cowboy.” And they had been happy for a while. Before she’d ripped out his heart and run off to Los Angeles. Before she’d become a star and then a national laughing stock.
“Damian,” she yelled just before hitting his deck. “I’m ready to talk now.” Her pink cheeks practically vibrated with rage.
Tough. He sat down on his old Adirondack chair and gestured to the swing across from him, the swing they’d had their first kiss on. “Talk then.”
Kendall crossed her legs primly, if a little awkwardly, on the old, unstable swing and smoothed her hands over her hair before clasping them tightly in her lap.
“I need you to buy me out. And I need you to sign the papers.” She took a deep breath and then with a look reminiscent of the old Kendall she added, “Please, Damian.”
“As much as I’d like you to be gone, I can’t buy you out. Not yet anyway.”
“Why not yet?”
“Have you bothered to look around? Kelly Family Farms is a working farm…a profitable working farm. We have a healthy CSA business going, as well as goat milk products…a whole bath and body line we sell locally and online. This isn’t the same dirt patch you ran away from, Kendall.”
Awareness lit her face as she looked around. It was getting too dark to see much, and most of the crew had already left. They’d been on short staff and even shorter hours due to the memorial, but she could see well enough that the landscape of the farm had changed. Transformed. She would see the condition of his cottage had altered drastically since she’d left, that it was nearly twice as big and a dozen times nicer.
“I didn’t know,” she answered quietly as she ran her foot over the stained wood of the deck. “The cottage…”
“We got a loan. Made some investments in equipment, built a new barn, bought some goats, hired staff.”
When he mentioned the goats she tried to hide her smile by ducking her head, but he saw it nonetheless. For a moment, it softened his jagged edges, made him not hate her. So much. Took him back to the afternoon they’d sat on this very porch and made plans for the farm. Kendall had strummed her guitar while they talked about their future, their plan for the farm once her grandmother gave them a stake in it. Kendall had wanted goats even back then and he’d laughed, teasing her that she’d be a big country music star one day. She denied it, and made him promise that one day they’d have a whole bunch of them. “Goats,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.”
They sat quietly for several minutes while she looked over his shoulder as the sun made its dramatic exit and the sky began to fill with stars. He never tired of how bright the stars were out here in the country.
“If you got a loan then why can’t you buy me out? You don’t want me here, Damian. I know you don’t. And I don’t belong here.”
He sighed, probably a little more dramatically than he’d meant to. “That’s not it. I just made a bulk loan payment and until some of our receivables come due and we sell off some of our inventory I won’t be in a position to buy you out.”
“How long?”
“What’s the hurry, Kendall?” he asked, taunting her.
“You’ve seen the news?” He nodded, and she looked into her lap at her hands twisted tightly together. What he wouldn’t do to erase the tension she held like a trophy. Having her trembling in his arms earlier that day had released him from his own angst and the memories of love lost for just a little while.
“It’s worse than that.” She looked up into his eyes. The light had come on over his door, bathing the porch in a soft glow. Without the makeup she’d had on earlier, he could suddenly see the dark circles under her eyes. And more…more sadness than he’d seen etched on her beautiful face ever. Why was his default to comfort her even after she was solely responsible for his misery the last four years?
“How?”
“I owe my label because I pulled out of my last recording project. But I don’t have the money. My business manager took it…mismanaged everything. Contractually I’m responsible though. I have to pay it back.”
Jumping up from his chair, a wave of irrational rage broke over him. That was the last jackass she’d been with. At least, that’s what the tabloids had reported. In less than two strides he reached her. He wanted to put his hands on her shoulders, shake her, get the asshole’s name and beat him to a pulp. Instead he fisted his hands at his sides. “Well, make your jerkoff of a business manager pay it back.”
“I can’t. No one can find him. I wasn’t the only one he screwed. Figuratively, of course.”
Of course. Well, no, not of course. She had had well-publicized liaisons with actors and other musicians since she’d been gone even though she’d technically been married to him. How the hell could he know what was real and what wasn’t? So over the years he’d just tortured himself and assumed they were all true.
Pacing back across the porch, he wondered how smart it was to have her around the farm now. His Helen of Troy. But what could it hurt for her to stick around for a while? Punish her for her betrayal? She could do some real work for once and, at the same time, hide from the press until the drama of her implosion became just another story.
“Why don’t you just make the record?”
Kendall lifted her shoulder. “My last one didn’t sell that well, to be honest. And…my heart’s just not in it anymore.”
Damian didn’t know what to do with her admission. Did that mean she’d left him, their marriage, for a career that she’d lost interest in? Or did it mean something else altogether?
“Stay. For a few weeks. Get away from the tabloids. You can help me work the farm, get your grandmother’s house purged and updated, and then I’ll buy you out. You can move on to where ever it is you’re going next.” For reasons he wasn’t ready to define, Damian found himself hoping she’d say yes. Hoping she’d stay and maybe they could find some kind of peace between them before she moved on again. And this time it would be over for good and he could take his life back.
She stared out at the horizon as the last hue of pink disappeared into the darkness behind
the hills. The entire time she tapped her bracelet. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Or, in Kendall’s case, probably overthinking. Because that was her way. She always used to say that he was her quiet place, that he helped slow the chaos in her head. But that had been a long time ago. The job was no longer his.
“Okay.” But she didn’t smile when she looked up at him, though she somberly nodded before walking back toward the main house.
Chapter Three
It’s a well-known fact that the lifestyle of a rock star by definition is not conducive to early mornings as it usually entails a lot of late nights and even more sleeping in. Unfortunately for Kendall, a farmer’s lifestyle entails just the opposite: early mornings followed by a boatload of hard work. By the time she’d made her way back to her grandmother’s house the night before and then cleaned up her old room well enough to sleep in, it had been past midnight. Which is why it hurt to peel her eyes open at—she peered over at the clock—five in the morning.
“It’s Sunday,” she croaked to the blurry form of a man standing over her. “And you’re in my bedroom.”
“I am still your husband,” he said sternly but she sensed the amusement in his tone. “And this is a twenty-four-hour, year-round working farm, sweetheart. Get your ass up and let’s get to work.”
“Ugh,” she groaned and pulled the sheet back over her head. Her eyes flew open when cold air hit her body like a sheet of ice. Damian stood above her clutching the sheet in his hand, his eyes wide staring at her body with undisguised want in his eyes. Suddenly he dropped the material and dragged his hand down his jaw.
“Jesus, Kendall.” His face colored and his eyes turned dark before he forcibly closed them and turned his back to her.
It had been so long since anybody had made her feel like an attractive woman. Sure, men hit on her constantly, but she was either a trophy to them or just another notch on the old belt. Damian looked at her with a dirty kind of reverence laced with just a bit of pain. And that giant hole inside her chest pulsed with…want or need or regret. Or all of the above. Damian hated her for the way she’d left and never looked back, but she couldn’t help craving the way his gaze ate at her and the way he made her body throb. She liked it. She liked it a lot.
“Prude. It’s not like I’m naked.” She bit back a laugh as she sat up.
“No, but your tiny nightshirt doesn’t leave much to the imagination. I’m trying to be a gentleman.”
She laughed as she threw on a pair of old jeans and a sweatshirt. “Oh really? Since when? Besides I’m decent now.” She wasn’t ready to bring up their interlude in the entryway the day before. Damian turned slowly, his eyes burning across her body, burning her raw from the outside in.
“I need to freshen up, wash my face, and I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes.” Yeah, she was exhausted, but she wasn’t letting him get under her skin. She needed to send some emails and get the snarling pack of wolves off her back. But she’d get to those that evening. And once that was done, she’d do her time on the farm and get the hell out.
And go where?
Well, where didn’t matter. Anywhere but Blackberry Cove and over one hundred miles away from Damian Sloane was the correct answer. Because for the first time since her early childhood she didn’t know what the next step would be. When she was little she went where her mother dragged her, from one man to the next until she’d been left on Nana’s broken old deck. Shortly after that she met Delilah and they had each other.
Around that same time she’d discovered an old acoustic guitar and some classic country sheet music in some forgotten corner of the attic. She’d carefully dusted the grime off the instrument and taught herself those songs from videos on the Internet. The music had been her salvation, her entertainment, and her gift. She improved so quickly Nana had stopped belittling her when she played and was, for once, thankfully silent. Making music changed everything. Not in any obvious way. Music created its magic inside of her. Made her feel taller, prettier, smarter. And not so lonely.
Then Damian had turned her entire world upside down and inside out. She’d learned how to trust and love another human being without the fear of hurt or loss. Even after she’d left him she’d known what direction she was headed.
Now that her music career was over and she had no interest in living in that hellacious machine that chewed up people like her, she had no idea what was next. There probably weren’t a lot of bands willing to take on singer songwriter guitar players with a reputation for not paying her musicians, not to mention her abysmal image in the press. When she’d left Damian that night so many years ago she’d gotten a bus ticket for LA only because she figured she’d be able to land a job as a waitress easily. The bar she’d landed at let her play her guitar when the crowd was thin so she could earn a few dollars in tips. It had just happened. She’d never sought it, never earned it. And embarrassing as it was, she’d never wanted it.
A life with her husband on this farm had been her dream all along. But that hadn’t been the hand she’d been dealt. So she’d take what she could get, she’d focus on these few weeks on this property, with Damian. She’d stay back-breakingly busy and lose herself in the work, the feel of the dirt in her hands.
Kendall quickly completed her business and pulled her hair into a single, messy braid, making it downstairs in under fifteen minutes.
Take that, bossy man.
Damian was standing with his back to her, staring out the big kitchen window, with a halo of soft light outlining his broad body. He wore a thick flannel shirt over a hooded sweatshirt and his black weathered hat sat low on his head. A familiar ache settled into her bones as she grabbed a cup of coffee and added some cream before joining him. The sky was still dark, but the edge of the sun peeked over the rolling hills bordering the eastern half of the property, and a rooster was already crowing because a working farm never waited until daylight for the day to begin. Though it had been years since she’d sent him off to work the farm early in the morning, his silhouette invoked an intimacy so innate she nearly reached for him, but she held on to her cup and shoved her other hand in her jeans pocket.
“So what’s our plan?” she asked, looking up at his strong jawline, the one she could still see through his trimmed beard. There was no denying Damian Sloane was a very good-looking man. The last few years had taken his boyish handsomeness and morphed it into something a little harder, a lot tougher than he’d been, but ruthlessly beautiful nevertheless. In fact, of all the men she’d met in LA, none could hold a candle to his rugged cowboy looks.
Without turning, he spoke. “We have a shorter chore list on Sundays. Usually have a couple hands to help out, but I gave them the rest of the weekend off. We need to feed and milk the goats, hose down the milking stations, and check on the gardens, as well as check on the hens and gather eggs. Normally I’d take more time to show you around, but I have a date tonight. We’ll do the full tour tomorrow.”
That heavy weight in her chest dropped to her belly. He had a date. Because he had a life now that didn’t include her. Maybe one that included a girlfriend. She’d chosen that for both of them, but still couldn’t ignore the stab of discomfort between her ribs. She’d only run from him because she’d had to, not because she’d suddenly stopped loving him or had an insatiable need to play music on a big stage. She’d run because he was going to give up his family, his life for her, because she couldn’t give him the family they’d promised each other. And she couldn’t do that to him. Not then and not now.
She swallowed down the weird little jab, she swallowed down the past, and she swallowed down any feelings about how he’d touched her the evening before and simply nodded. As she turned to set her cup in the sink a huge whitish beige bundle of fur ran in through the back door and bounded into the kitchen, landing in front of two large steel bowls full of food and water she hadn’t noticed. Jumping back to prevent being trampled she screeched. “What the hell is that? A bear?”
The curve of Damian’s m
outh made her want to forget everything she’d resolved to not do and jump into his arms. “Dog. Shrek.” He laughed. “He was supposed to be herd protection…stay outside and protect the goats, but he decided he wanted to be a pet. I had to get another animal for the night watch.”
Her racing heart slowed, and she stared at the giant animal wolfing its food down, before it suddenly ran to her and smothered her hand in slobber. She patted it on the head. “Nice dog.”
“For a country girl, you sure are skittish around animals.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go, cowboy.” What Damian didn’t realize was that Kendall craved the oblivion that physical work provided. She was looking forward to the kind of hard work that would help her perhaps forget about the clouds of doom floating above her head. Maybe she’d even forget the constant empty ache in her chest she felt every time she looked over at the man she was supposed to spend forever with.
Damian handed her a pair of oversized gloves and led her out to the goat pen and animal barn. When Damian unlatched the gate, a flood of goats of different ages and colors scattered out followed by a gray donkey with a decidedly arrogant expression.
“So, a donkey?” she asked.
“Herd protection.” He raised a brow in answer and swept his arm toward the animals.
“Seriously?” In the dusky morning light, she was fascinated by the goats’ funny little sounds, and prancing, playful demeanor. The donkey stood guard over them, walking back and forth but never far from the herd even when he finally dipped his head into his trough to eat. For a moment all she could do was clap her gloved hands together and laugh at their antics. When she looked up her laughter caught in her throat as her gaze snagged on his—intense hazel eyes stripping her bare and leaving her exposed.