“Mornin’, Emerson,” came Tobias’s voice from the doorway of the mudroom, followed by a tip of that caramel-colored hat he was nearly never without. “Boys,” he added, nodding across the kitchen at Eli, Hunter, and Owen. His gaze screeched to a halt when it got to Marley, widening for just a split second before darting away.
“Good morning, Marley. Can’t say I expected to see you down here,” Tobias said quietly. His tone was impossible to read—God, it always was—but she read between the lines well enough.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Owen made a sound of irritation, which was his default reaction to this bob and weave she and Tobias had been doing ever since she’d come here to fulfill her mother’s dying wish of meeting the man face-to-face. But Tobias shook his head, almost imperceptibly, as he ignored the barb, and hell if that wasn’t his default to the whole fucked up situation, too.
Second verse, same as the first. Hell, at this point, they might as well have a script.
“Well,” the old man finally said a beat later, running a palm over the front of the plain gray T-shirt he’d tucked into his jeans. “I s’pose we should get to work on that hay before it gets too hot out.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Hunter agreed, likely in an effort to smooth over the sinkhole full of awkward Marley had inserted into the otherwise lovely conversation.
Emerson nodded, following his lead. “I need to get into town, myself. Mrs. Ellersby has a nine thirty appointment for physical therapy, and as sweet as the old woman is, I don’t want to put Doc Sanders out by making her wait.”
“Ah. You be sure to tell the doc hello from all of us,” Tobias said with a smile.
“Sure thing.” Kissing Hunter’s cheek, Emerson murmured goodbyes to everyone, and Eli grabbed his laptop from the kitchen table.
“I’m going to head home to check on Scarlett and work for a bit, too. I’ll walk you out.”
Everyone began to scatter, Marley included, but Owen pinned her back into place with a stormy blue-gray stare. “I’ll meet you in the north field in a minute,” he said to Tobias and Hunter, although—oh, goody—he didn’t budge his gaze from hers. “I’ve got something to take care of here first.”
Tobias’s pause surprised her, although Hunter’s didn’t. “Okay,” Hunter said slowly, moving toward the mudroom only after Tobias had turned to pave the way. Lucy’s tags sounded off in a muted jingle, the back door clapping shut a few heartbeats later, and Marley didn’t wait to go on the defensive.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she told Owen, and yep, that serious-as-sin-on-Sunday crease tugging his dark brows into a V made her guess official.
Owen crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “Then why do I have to keep saying it?”
“You don’t,” she pointed out, but her brother wasn’t having it.
“Apparently, I do, because it’s not getting through. You’ve been here for nine months, Marley. When are you going to give him a chance to get to know you?”
Never. I am never giving him a chance.
The answer surged up from behind her sternum, burning on her tongue and begging to be said. It wasn’t just that she was angry and didn’t want to, although both were so, so accurate. But even more than the fact that she didn’t want to give Tobias a chance was the raw, real truth that she simply couldn’t give Tobias a chance.
Just like she couldn’t keep having this conversation. God, she needed to get out of here, out of this kitchen and out of this house and out of fucking Millhaven, as fast as humanly possible.
“My being here is temporary,” Marley said. She hadn’t shared the how or why of her being stranded in town with her brothers. If they knew about her debt to the hospital, they’d only try to help her pay it, and trading one debt for another wasn’t on her list of “oh, goody, please, sign me up”. Plus, it wasn’t their burden to right. Lorraine had been her mother, not theirs.
Owen dropped his voice, low and quiet. “It doesn’t have to be temporary. Look, I know”—he broke off—“I know losing your mom was hard for you. But you don’t have to leave. You don’t have to lose us, too.”
Annnnd this conversation was officially over. “I’m not losing anything. I’m just not staying. And I’m damn sure not giving Tobias a chance. It’s far too late for amends.”
With that, Marley turned toward the stairs, knotting her arms over the front of her sleep shirt to cover up her wildly beating heart and locking down her resolve to pay her debt so she could hurry up and get gone.
7
Greyson shifted back on his boots and watched the post-dawn sunlight filter over the corn field he stood in front of. Leaning against the barn at his back, he let his eyes linger on the slender green stalks, memorizing the way they whispered and swayed in the breeze. Calm spread through him, the sort that could only come from this, and he pulled it in like a deep, vital breath. There was a chill in the air that wouldn’t last, but for now, it made the canvas jacket he’d thrown on over his T-shirt comfortable and the warmth of the travel mug of coffee between his palms a welcome sensation. He hadn’t had time to go into Camden Valley for any other welcome sensations like he’d planned to a few days ago—hell, he’d barely had time to shower before collapsing into bed for the past two nights. Not that busting his ass to stay on top of things had made him more tired in the long run. Greyson didn’t exactly hate the work, and by that, he meant that he was honestly made for it. But with this community service looming like summer storm clouds on the horizon, he’d had to get forward so he wouldn’t get behind.
Because getting behind wasn’t an option. He loved this land far too much to treat it with complacency.
Sometimes, the apple did fall far from the tree after all.
The sound of approaching footsteps captured Greyson’s attention, and oh, the fucking irony. “You set for today?” he asked as soon as his old man was close enough to be in earshot, although he didn’t take his eyes from the softly sunlit corn field in front of them, as if the visual could anchor him in the shit-storm that was about to go down.
His father grunted dismissively. “You didn’t give me much choice, now did you?”
Greyson exhaled, wishing he’d thrown something stronger than coffee into his travel mug. Whiskey. Moonshine. Turpentine. At this point, he wasn’t goddamn picky. “The community service is just temporary, Pop.”
“Two hundred hours hardly seems temporary,” his father said, his frown hanging heavy in his voice. “Kelsey said the Cross girl’s got a mouth on her, too,” he continued with a snort. “You got yourself into a hell of a jam, didn’t you, boy?”
Greyson’s molars came together with a clack, the calm he’d cultivated doing a complete mic drop/peace out. “I didn’t get myself into a jam with her. And thanks for the news flash.”
The verbal jab was just enough to get his father off his back without making the old man want to counter, and hell if Greyson wasn’t a master at finding that sweet spot after all this time.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I’m going to finish up in the orchards and check in with the cattle managers to make sure they’ve got what they need for next week before I head out. The farmhands left for the market in Camden Valley a little while ago. They’ll bring the box truck and whatever doesn’t sell back at two.”
He’d been irritated not to be able to spend at least part of the day at the farmers’ market like he usually did on Saturdays during the season. Their farmhands knew the schedule, sure, and they were capable enough. But Greyson liked to be as hands-on as possible when it came to putting Whittaker Hollow’s produce into people’s hands. Chalk up reason number four hundred and sixty-two why this community service was going to be an epic pain in his ass.
“Guess you’ve got it all figured out, then, huh?” his father asked, and it was all Greyson had not to point out that one of them fucking had to.
“Yep,” he said instead. He didn’t have time for this. There was work to be done. “I’m hea
ded down to the orchards. I’ll see you Monday.”
His father made a noise that Greyson supposed was meant to be an acknowledgment, only it lacked the conviction it needed to be anything other than a non-verbal “whatever”. But since it wasn’t a fight Greyson had the time or energy to pick well enough to win, he went about the rest of what needed to be done, making sure Whittaker Hollow was set for the long, hot day ahead before grabbing the keys to his truck from the hook in the off-set garage where he usually hung them.
He didn’t usually set foot in the ungracefully aging two-story farmhouse where his parents both lived and where he’d spent the bulk of his life. He had moved out of the place three days shy of his twentieth birthday, and while he’d step over the threshold if the occasion absolutely called for it, he always hated every second he had to spend there. In fact, he didn’t even live on the property, having never bought a small parcel of the land from his old man the way he’d intended to when he’d graduated high school and he, his father, and his uncle had planned to run Whittaker Hollow together, the three of them.
God knew it wasn’t for lack of wanting to live on the land that bore his family’s name. But that dream was more ghost now than anything else, and Greyson couldn’t chase it.
Not unless he wanted to let it break him.
Thrusting the thought and the bitterness that accompanied it aside, Greyson drove to the far edge of town, where Louis Kerrigan ran the local animal shelter. The place stood on a road more rural than most, which, for Millhaven, was saying something. Aside from a few tin-can trailers and very old, just as decrepit single-story houses dotted on either side of the barely paved asphalt, there was nothing that qualified as actual civilization this far from Town Street. Just wide, sprawling fields of tall grass and weeds parading as wildflowers, tall, thickly trunked oak trees lush and loaded with foliage, and the endless sky stretched out like a fat blue canvas overhead.
Although, like everything else in Millhaven, Greyson had known exactly where the animal shelter was located since about middle school, he’d never had cause to go inside the place, proper. In fact, he’d never even made it past the turnoff for the dirt-clumped gravel driveway. But when he rectified that and took the long, winding drive to its end, he caught sight of a Toyota that looked like it was being held together with a handful of rusty bolts, a pair of rubber bands, and sheer, dumb luck. Marley stood in front of the thing, her eyes hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses and her hands tucked into a pair of olive green cargo shorts that showed off her legs just enough to make Greyson want to bang his head against the Silverado’s steering wheel.
He put the truck in park and slid out, arching a brow at her from beneath his baseball hat. “You waiting for an engraved invitation?”
“No.” She scowled, a gesture that shouldn’t turn Greyson on, yet it so did. “I just got here. And…well, to be honest, I didn’t think I was in the right place, and I didn’t want to just go barging in.”
Do not fuck with her. Do not fuck with her. Seriously. Do not… “Is there someplace else around here you could’ve mixed the place up with?”
Okay, so he was fucking with her. But it really couldn’t be helped. They were smack in the center of nowhere, for Chrissake.
Marley’s frown deepened as she swiveled a gaze over their remote surroundings. “Very funny. But it’s not my fault that nothing around here shows up on my GPS,” she muttered.
“You get cell service out here?” Greyson asked, a pop of shock moving through his chest. She was working some serious voodoo magic if her cell phone was anything other than a high-tech paperweight right now.
“God, no,” she said, waving her phone at him with a scoff. “Why do you think I thought I was lost? This thing is useless in this town.”
As overbold as she was, she also wasn’t wrong. “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Unless you’re on Town Street or near someplace with a hotspot, you’re pretty much out of luck with that.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Marley said with a smile too sweet to be anything other than thoroughly sarcastic, and, hey, if that was the game she wanted to play, he was all fucking in.
“There are these things called maps,” Greyson drawled with a smile to rival hers. “Made out of paper, pretty colors. As it turns out, they’re kind of useful when your phone isn’t.”
Marley flushed, and bingo. “Can we just get this over-with, please?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Greyson hung back for a second to let her move in front of him, because damn it, even though they’d gone toe to toe over the whole ladies-first thing, it really didn’t feel right to barge in front of her. Marley’s black sneakers crunched over the gravel of the parking area—which was big enough to hold his truck and her clunker and not much else—and over the weed-laced walkway leading to the shelter. In hindsight, he couldn’t really blame Marley for wondering if she was in the wrong place. The small, squat building was dilapidated at best, the brown clapboard siding in dire need of a good stripping and painting and the pair of windows facing the drive looking as if they hadn’t seen a cleaning in at least a decade. The sign nailed to the front door read Millhaven Animal Shelter in crooked, hand-painted letters, and okay, yeah, Judge Abernathy might need a check-up from the neck up, but she sure hadn’t been wrong about Louis Kerrigan needing help out here. Christ, if the inside of this place was as bad as the outside, two hundred hours might not even put a dent in things.
Marley paused at the threshold, but only for a second. Setting her shoulders and straightening her spine beneath her black muscle shirt, she pushed her way through the front door, stepping into the cramped, musty lobby and walking to the counter that lined the back of the space.
“Hi,” she said carefully to Louis, who hadn’t looked up from the disorganized mountain of paperwork on the desk in front of him even though he’d have to be dead-drunk or legally blind not to have noticed her come in. “We’re, um, here for the community service thing.”
Louis finally fixed Marley, then Greyson, with a beady stare, his desk chair protesting with a loud groan as he shifted back for the full effect. “Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Judge sent me the paperwork.”
The pause that followed weighed approximately seven hundred pounds, and Greyson felt himself slip another notch closer to hell. “Okay,” Marley tried again. “So, did you want us to get started, or…?”
“Rules first,” Louis said, and it didn’t escape Greyson’s notice that the man’s stare had migrated in his direction, as if he expected Greyson to break every last one of them, right out of the gate. “There’s plenty of work to be done ’round here, so I expect y’all to be on time, every time. No cuttin’ corners. No yappin’ on your cell phones while you work. None of them ear bud things, neither. If I call for you, you need to hear me. I only give directions once, so make sure you’re listenin’ the first time. And a job’s only done when I say it’s done good enough. Any questions?”
Greyson bit back the temptation to laugh at the irony. “Nope. That was pretty clear.”
“Good.” Louis narrowed his eyes at them with suspicion. “And no shenanigans between y’all, either. I realize that ain’t likely, what with you bein’ a Cross and you bein’ a Whittaker, but still. I got rules.”
An image of Marley, her head tipped back and her pretty face flushed with pleasure, flared through Greyson’s mind, strong enough to wedge his protest in his throat.
Marley, however? Way quicker on the draw. “That’s so not going to be a problem. And for the record, I’m actually not a Cross. My last name is Rallston. Two l’s.”
“Is Tobias Cross your daddy?” Louis asked as he pegged her with a frown, and damn, Greyson had never seen anyone’s shoulders go so rigid in his life.
“Biologically.” Marley slid the answer through her teeth. “Yes.”
“Then you’re a Cross. At least, ’round here, you are.” Leaning back in his desk chair, Louis hooked a beefy thumb over an equally beefy shoulder. “Yard
needs cleanin’ up. Y’all can start there. Once that’s done, the fence needs mending so I can let these dogs out without worryin’ about them runnin’ off. Supplies are in the shed. That should keep you two busy for the day.”
Yeah, yeah. The work, Greyson could handle. But they needed to focus on the more important stuff. Namely… “Before we get started in the yard, can we talk about the schedule?”
Louis gave him a blank stare. “What about it?”
“Uh, everything?” Greyson asked, his pulse kicking faster in frustration. “I mean, I’ve got a job, so—”
“I got a job, too, son,” Louis snapped. “Judge says y’all are mine for two hundred hours, so that’s what you’ll do. Not a minute less.” He jabbed his finger into the papers in front of him on the desk, and Greyson’s frustration redoubled its efforts.
“I’m not trying to get out of the work,” he said, doing a piss-poor job of not letting his indignation seep into his tone.
Louis laughed without an ounce of humor. “Sure you ain’t. Because a Whittaker would never try to bully his way out of a bad situation.”
Greyson’s fingers turned to fists at his sides, involuntary and tight. “I just want to know about the schedule. Like I said, I’m good for the work.”
“Hmm.” Louis’s grunt conveyed his doubt like a special delivery. “Then you might want to prove it by getting started.” He sent a pointed glare toward the door. “That yard’s not getting any cleaner while you stand here jawin’.”
It was a challenge if Greyson had ever seen one, and he stepped forward, fully prepared to push first and push hard.
But then Marley surprised the crap out of him by lifting a hand and looking at Louis. “As much as it pains me to say this, Greyson’s right. We do need to set some sort of schedule so we can get this community service done in the ninety days the judge allotted. Plus, I have a job, too, and he and I kind of have to know when to be here, since one of your rules was that we arrive on time,” she pointed out.
Crossing Hope (Cross Creek Series Book 4) Page 7
