by Deb Kastner
“Avery, you can’t—”
“I can and I will,” she cut in, glaring at him with a red-streaked face with blotches of mascara lingering at the corners of her glassy eyes. “Just watch me. Doesn’t it bother you that you’re hurting people when you make such major changes in their towns? You’re not just knocking down one cabin to build a resort. You’re knocking down businesses that have been here for decades. Family businesses. For some reason you are blind to the fact that individuals and families have their whole lives here. Marston Enterprises will change that, and I don’t care what you say, it’s not all good, or even mostly good. You want to come here and make major changes? Well, you can’t. There are zoning laws.”
“I’m aware of that. That’s why I’m here.”
“Well...well...” she stammered, obviously trying to come up with another threat that would work for her. “There’s...”
He waited, but she didn’t say more. Not surprising, really, since at the end of the day, there wasn’t any legitimate way for her to fight him and his company.
The worst part was, he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d never before come up against such a situation, where he felt personally involved with what was going on. He’d always landed in a small town, worked out the kinks in whatever laws the municipality might have against building a large resort and left without a hitch.
Sure, he’d spent time with some of the people, especially those on the town councils, but he’d never felt anything. And that was the problem now.
His emotions were going haywire.
Now he felt as if he was driving his Mustang too fast on one of those dirt roads so common around here, bumping all over the place and fishtailing like crazy, barely able to keep a hold of the steering wheel to keep from crashing. If only there was some way to solve Avery’s problem and still do the job he’d been sent in to do.
But that was impossible.
Because it was personal. Avery hadn’t even made it just about her bed-and-breakfast. Now she was defending the whole town of Whispering Pines.
Her town.
And he had a job to do—a job he was suddenly loath to do.
Suddenly Jake heard a couple of male voices along with the clunking sound of boots at the front door.
Avery glanced in that direction, appearing relieved at the sound. “Sharpe. Frost,” she called, her voice cracking under the strain of her emotions. “In the kitchen.”
Jake had seen Avery’s brothers at church and around town a few times, but he’d only been briefly introduced to them once. He’d never really spoken to them. They seemed like nice enough guys, but when they entered the kitchen, their gazes quickly moved from their sister’s glassy eyes and tear-streaked face to Jake, who was now standing on the opposite side of the counter.
Their expressions went from pleasant to angry and intimidating in a nanosecond.
Jake was a large man who worked out regularly, and not many men could threaten him, but Avery’s brothers were likewise tall and muscular, and he had no doubt he’d be toast if they tried to take him two on one. If he didn’t defuse this situation pronto he could be in real trouble here.
Frost, who had blond hair and compelling silver eyes that matched his name, moved around next to Jake, leaning his elbows on the counter and never taking his concerned gaze from Jake. Sharpe, a dark-haired man, narrowed his blue eyes on Jake, leaned his shoulder against the door frame and crossed his arms in an intimidating fashion.
“Avery? Sweetheart? Are you okay?” Frost asked in a deceptively mild tone. “What’s going on?”
Avery glared at Jake, then scoffed and shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Are you sure?” asked Sharpe. “This doesn’t look like nothing to me. Is this guy giving you trouble? It looks as if you’ve been—”
“No worries,” Avery cut in before Sharpe could finish. “We’re just busy making sandwiches for a picnic. Jake’s mom and his daughter are down at the picnic area by the creek, and they’re waiting for us. Nothing to see here.”
“If you say so,” said Frost, turning toward Jake. “You go ahead and finish making your sandwiches.”
“Frost,” Avery protested. “Leave it.”
“But just so you know, Jake,” said Sharpe, punching the air with his words, “we have our eyes on you.”
“No kidding,” Jake said under his breath. He could definitely feel their glares and the emphasis on his name was enough to make him tense his muscles.
“Please, guys,” she protested. “You don’t have to go all protective on me. I can handle my own problems.”
“So, he is a problem, then.” Sharpe stepped deeper into the room and stood on the opposite side of Jake, who was itching to walk away before things got really fired up. “If you hurt our sister, you’ll answer to us.”
It was good the way Sharpe and Frost took care of their sister. He appreciated the way Avery’s family closed ranks to protect her. He only wished it wasn’t on him.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Avery said, and then quickly changed the subject. “Can I make you guys a sandwich?”
“Yeah, of course. Like you even have to ask?” Frost said, grinning at his sister.
Jake breathed a silent sigh of relief, thankful that Avery was able to distract her brothers with food.
“Two for me,” said Sharpe. “Loaded with everything.”
When Avery met Jake’s gaze, he could see she’d tucked her emotions away and was in total control again. Her face was expressionless, and somewhere along the way she’d wiped the tears and mascara blotches off her face. “Please finish making the lemonade, will you, Jake?”
“I... Sure thing,” he said, thrown off by the way she’d been able to switch gears so rapidly. Her voice was, if not friendly, then at least calm.
He knew she was putting on a good show for her brothers, but he also knew this conversation wasn’t over. As much as he admired Avery, or maybe because he recognized his attraction to Avery, the best course of action for him was to focus, get his work done in Whispering Pines and get out as fast as possible.
He hadn’t felt this kind of chemistry with a woman since his wife’s death. In all honesty, he’d thought he’d never feel such things again.
How could he?
The guilt was still there. It never left him, not for a second, digging into his gut at random times when he least expected it. Whenever he thought about his last moments with his pregnant wife Amber, how they’d been fighting, how he hadn’t settled anything between them when he left for a business trip, it was almost more than he could bear.
He’d thought it might get better with time, but it hadn’t.
There was no resolution to the problem because Amber was gone, and he couldn’t tell her he was sorry.
For everything.
While he was walking away, getting in his car, driving to the airport, getting on the airplane, he’d known better.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.
He’d not only done that, but he hadn’t called her once in the week he was gone. Instead, he’d stewed silently in his anger alone in his hotel room.
And then he returned home believing everything would be fine and they would be able to just talk it out like they always did whenever they argued. Instead, he’d found her lying unconscious, having lost her balance somehow and landed with her head hitting the hard concrete, the annuals she’d intended to plant by the side of the walkway scattered around her.
He’d called 9-1-1. He had ridden in the back of the ambulance with her, holding her limp hand. He’d stayed by her bedside in the hospital for days as doctors worked hard to wake her from her coma.
She’d never opened her eyes again.
Through God’s grace, Lottie had been safely born through cesarean section, but her epilepsy—
That was all on him.
He was certain Lottie’s epilepsy was due to her mother being in a coma for so many days before the doctors had made the decision to deliver her via C-section. If only he had gotten home earlier...
After that tragedy, he never imagined another woman would make him feel again. What was happening between him and Avery, the sparks that exploded so ferociously whenever they clashed, was gut-wrenching and frightening in their intensity.
Which was yet another reason for him to tie things up here in Whispering Pines at the earliest possible moment and flee town as fast as he could.
Far, far away from Avery Winslow and the things she did to his mind and heart.
Chapter Six
Avery unlatched the first of two gates and allowed everyone through into what was essentially a holding pen. She closed the first gate before opening the second one, which led into the petting zoo. The petting zoo was her sister Molly and her husband Logan’s brainchild and was a big draw to the farm.
Landscaping customers often enjoyed visiting with the animals after they’d finished their shopping, but it wasn’t as crowded this time of year as it was around Christmas, when everyone was looking for the perfect tree. In December, they kept all the animals out on a rotational basis, and the petting zoo was nearly always full of laughing children and curious parents.
The rest of the year, they kept a few animals out in the pen for prospective customers to visit, but today she’d asked Ruby and Frost to put all of them out so Lottie would have the full petting-zoo experience.
Frost was their main man where the farm animals were concerned. He had a matched pair of gray Percherons he used to give Saturday sleigh rides in the winter and hayrack rides in the summer. He also took care of everything in the barn and had happily let out all the animals.
Fortunately, he’d done that before he’d met up with Jake in the kitchen. Otherwise, he might not have been quite as willing to help.
Avery and Jake hadn’t spoken much since their discussion—if it could be called that—in the kitchen. They’d brought the sandwiches, bags of chips and the pitcher of lemonade to the picnic area and enjoyed lunch together by the creek. It was a little cool and crisp, and they all had kept on their winter jackets as they ate, but it wasn’t bad for the end of winter. Spring would soon be here, with green grass and colorful wildflowers peeking out from under the snow.
Winslow’s Woodlands was a sight to behold year-round, and Avery was proud of the business her parents had created, and what she and her siblings had done with it since they’d grown up and brought their own work and ideas. And now with Molly and Logan’s addition of the petting zoo, even visiting children were delighted no matter what time of year they came.
Avery and Jake had let Lottie do most of the talking as they ate. If Jake’s mom noticed the wall of ice between the two of them, she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she chatted on merrily with Lottie and directed the general conversation onto neutral ground.
Avery had suddenly found she wasn’t too hungry and had quickly set her sandwich aside, choosing instead to nibble on a few chips and sip on her glass of lemonade.
As they entered the petting-zoo enclosure, Jake, who had Lottie’s hand firmly in his, approached the feed machine, which doled out handfuls of grain pellets for a quarter. Avery had planned in advance and had a pocketful of quarters in her jeans for just this purpose. She took a couple out and helped Lottie and Elaine get their grain pellets.
Two black-and-white-spotted pygmy goats with curved horns bumped their way through the pack of mismatched animals to the front of the line, and Jake crouched next to Lottie to help her hold her grain pellets so one of the goats didn’t steal them all away, which he appeared eager to do. The other goat nudged Jake’s leg and bit at the denim of his jeans, pressing for a snack.
Jake laughed at the little goat’s antics, and Lottie giggled.
“He’s funny, Daddy,” she said. “Can we feed him?”
Avery’s heart clenched as she watched the domestic scene, Jake helping Lottie flatten her palm so the goat could nibble off it.
Lottie was so precious, giggling and squealing at the goat’s lips on her hand. And watching Jake with her almost made Avery forget that they were on opposite sides of a very large fight.
She didn’t know what was worse—knowing what Jake could be, or knowing who he could be. A cutthroat businessman, or a tender father.
For the first time since meeting Jake and his family, she considered the possibility of simply letting it all go, setting aside the cabin of her heart and finding somewhere else to create her bed-and-breakfast. And letting Marston Enterprises win the day and build their resort.
They were going to do it, anyway, weren’t they?
And if she didn’t fight them? What would happen then? What could happen?
Might she and Jake become friends? More than friends?
That was dangerous thinking, and she was going to nip it in the bud right now. Resort or no resort, bed-and-breakfast or not, fighting the big bad corporation or leaving it be, she could not and would not let herself fall for Jake Cutter.
She couldn’t.
Two years ago, she’d been in a serious relationship with a local man, T.J.—or at least she’d thought it was serious. He was a single father with a six-year-old son. Their relationship hadn’t lasted long, less than a year, and frankly she was happy to part ways with T.J. because they didn’t have the same outlook on life. She soon discovered his Christian faith was only surface deep and she knew it would never work out between them in the long run.
Except that even in the short time they’d been together, she’d spent a great deal of time with his son Oliver. And when she and T.J. broken up, she was no longer even allowed to see the boy.
Being parted from Oliver had been far more heartbreaking than splitting up her mediocre relationship with T.J.
And that was why, even if the other problems suddenly disappeared between her and Jake, she could never date him. The attraction she felt for Jake was far too powerful, and it would be far too easy to fall in love with Lottie—and she could even see how simple it would be to develop a close relationship with Elaine. She really liked the woman’s easygoing personality.
No. It was better this way, staying at odds with Jake and letting him and his family leave as they planned.
Avery put in three more quarters and got some more of the grain pellets as the Cutter family moved through the petting zoo, feeding some of the animals and petting others. She’d seen plenty of happy families appreciating the animals, but she’d never enjoyed watching them quite as much as she did with the Cutters. Lottie exclaimed in delight over the sheep’s thick wool and how soft Guapo the alpaca was, laughing when he nuzzled her hair with his long muzzle.
“Guapo means handsome in Spanish,” Avery told them. “It fits this guy quite well, don’t you think? He’s an especially interesting animal. Alpacas are used both for their soft wool and as pack animals in Central and South America.”
Not surprisingly, the pygmy goats were her constant companions no matter where they were in the enclosure, following all of them around and making a general nuisance of themselves.
“These little guys obviously love the grain pellets you’re feeding them,” Avery told the Cutters regarding the goats, “but they’ll eat anything—and I do mean anything. We often let them graze around the farm to keep the grass down. Beats having to pull out a lawnmower to get at the weeds.”
Avery was surprised at how relaxed she was feeling, especially after the way she’d gone head-to-head with Jake in the kitchen earlier. Something about the fresh air and having the blessing of exposing a child to new experiences, especially with the animals she loved, had lifted both her heart and her attitude.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, leaving the petting zoo and heading for the barn. Since the Shetland pony was brand-new to the farm, Frost hadn’t
yet put him out in the pen.
But Avery had made a promise, and she knew the little pony would be the literal star of the show, at least to Lottie.
Shetlands could be mischievous creatures and weren’t always reliable, which was why he wasn’t allowed to wander with the other animals in the petting-zoo enclosure yet, especially because he was so new to the farm and would have to get used to enthusiastic children talking loudly and wanting to pet him.
“Hey, little guy,” Avery said, approaching the pony and running a hand over his muzzle, smiling as she scratched the perfect white star on his forehead. “You’re getting a name blessing today by the sweetest little girl you’ll ever meet,” she said. “What do you think about that?”
It took her less than a minute to halter the Shetland and bring him out to the waiting Cutter family.
“Here he is,” Avery said, surprised at how much enthusiasm was surging through her at the thought of introducing the pony to the little girl. She had always loved giving gifts, especially to children, and this was a special one. “Hey, Lottie. I haven’t told him the secret yet. Do you see his star here? You were the one who picked out his name, so do you want to be the one who gets to tell him what it is?”
Jake scooped the girl into his arms so she could run her fingers across the star on the Shetland’s forehead.
“Your name is Star,” Lottie pronounced, every bit as elegantly as if she were a princess christening a ship.
She really was a sweet little princess. Avery’s heart warmed and swelled in her chest, and she had to swallow hard to keep her emotions under control.
“I think he likes it,” Jake said as Star tossed his head and nickered.
“Can I ride him?” Lottie asked.
Jake and Elaine both turned inquiring gazes on Avery.
Avery realized she should have been prepared for that question, but she wasn’t. Other than knowing Star was fairly young, Avery didn’t know his background, since Frost had been the one who had purchased him. But Frost was an expert with horses and was a mature and responsible man, so she knew he would have gone out of his way to find a gentle animal who wouldn’t easily spook to be part of the petting zoo.