“Really? You don’t say. I never would have guessed.”
The semi-playful, more than semi-smartass jibe was out before Greyson could grab it back. But then Marley laughed, making something deep and undefined move in his gut, daring him to say all the things that would make her laugh again.
“Okay, Cat Whisperer,” she said. “What’s your first piece of advice, then?”
“You can start by petting her,” he offered, although he purposely let Marley make the first move toward him, along with all the moves after that.
To his surprise, she did, walking forward until she faced both him and the loudly purring cat still reclined lazily in the crook of his arm.
“So just pet her,” Marley said, looking at the cat as if she were covered in spikes and scales. “Like this?”
Greyson watched her run a stiff hand over the cat’s head a couple of times and tried not to wince. “That’s…a start.”
A tinge of color pinked Marley’s cheeks, made more obvious by the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. “You’re supposed to be helping.”
“Okay, you’re right.” Gesturing down at her hand, he looked at her in an unspoken request for permission to take it, which she granted with a small nod. “The first thing you want to do is let her get to know you. Cats do that with their noses. Then you can get down to petting her.”
He took Marley’s fingers and held them up for the cat’s approval. “There, see?” he continued when the cat rubbed her nose against the thumb side of Marley’s palm a few seconds later. “Not so bad.”
“I guess not,” Marley agreed, her stance loosening slightly and her touch growing more fluid as she curved her fingers over the cat’s head, then repeated the process, again and again. The cat—who really needed a name, Greyson decided—rumbled out a rusty purr as she went lax against his chest and arm, preening under Marley’s attention.
“Hey, she likes you. You want to take her?” he asked, shifting to make the transfer, but just like that, Marley’s hand snapped back to her side.
“No. I’m good. She looks, um, really comfortable with you. But thanks for the tip.”
Before he could protest, and oh, part of him really fucking wanted to, she’d moved back to the empty cage she’d started to clean, picking up the task with renewed focus. Greyson inhaled, ready to call her out on the exhale. But then he had a thought that stopped the words short in his throat.
Marley was pushing first so he’d push back, and then she could push away. It was a move he’d used thousands of times, and one he knew by heart. Shit, he’d practically scribbled his signature on it in permanent ink a decade ago.
He’d just never seen anyone else use it.
“You’re welcome,” he finally managed, putting the cat back in her cage and turning back to his job. As usual, Louis had given them plenty to do, and, as usual, they fell into a steady rhythm to get the tasks knocked off, one by one. Finally, after the last bag of kitty litter had been inventoried and stacked on a shelf in the newly reorganized storage closet, they switched off all the lights and headed out of the building, locking the door behind them. Greyson’s muscles practically threw confetti over the fact that they’d get a little bit of rest soon, and he flipped his keys against his palm as he headed for his truck.
It took him a couple of beats to realize Marley had reduced her pace to snail status. “Aren’t you heading out?” he asked, pointing to her car.
Her eyes went wide, just a quick flare of roundness before returning to normal. “Oh, um, yeah. Of course. I just need to make a quick call first.”
The manners that had been buried way down beneath his bravado reared up, making him hitch. True, they were out in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t as if anyone would happen along to mess with her. But her car was halfway to the junk pile. What if the thing didn’t start?
And what if aliens start dropping out of the sky? his over-taxed muscles countered. Marley was a big girl, capable and smart. On the off chance that she had car trouble, she’d call one of her brothers to come get her. She had her pick of the three of them, for God’s sake. He needed to worry himself over what was important; namely, getting his ass into bed so he could grab some decent shuteye before having to get up at o’dark-thirty tomorrow.
“Okay,” Greyson said, his manners giving up one last jab as he tugged open the door to his truck. “Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight.”
Marley made a show of taking her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans and thumbing a path over the screen. The light flashed over her face in the shadows that were just beginning to form now that the sun had slid past the tree line to the west, showcasing her serious concentration. Greyson started the Silverado, giving her one last look in his rearview mirror as he trundled down the gravel drive. There was something odd about her expression that he couldn’t place, something just the slightest bit forced. He knew he shouldn’t care—in fact, he shouldn’t even be giving Marley or her car or her expression a second thought.
Except for the fact that she didn’t even have cell service out here, Greyson realized with an upward snap of his chin. No one did.
Holy shit. The expression she’d been wearing had been a poker face, and a terrible one, at that. She’d lied about staying behind to make a phone call.
So what was she doing instead?
He’d put the truck in park at the mouth of the driveway before he even knew he would stop. The path was curved enough that Marley wouldn’t see him if he made the trip back to the shelter on foot, which he did with about three minutes and a fair amount of ease. Greyson’s heart thumped faster when he got close enough to put eyes on the parking area. Marley wasn’t where she’d been minutes ago, nor was she in her car, or standing on the rickety, old porch of the shelter.
She was headed toward the fence line with two bags of…wait, were those groceries?
Greyson ducked behind a thick oak tree as Marley swiveled a nervous gaze over the yard, peeking out from behind the massive tree just in time to catch sight of her making her way past the fence and into the adjacent yard. From where he stood, he could just make out the Becketts’ overgrown yard, the dingy clothesline spanning two crooked wooden posts, and the dilapidated set of steps leading to the back of the trailer. A small laundry basket sat on the top step, just out of the way of the door, and Marley made a beeline for the thing, tucking both bags of groceries securely inside before turning back toward the fence line.
And as Greyson slipped back to his truck, then past the driveway and into the deepening shadows, he wondered if Marley Rallston was ever going to stop doing things that made him want to know more about her.
10
Marley sat back against the red vinyl of the corner booth in Clementine’s Diner and stared a hole in her menu even though she already knew what she’d order the second she’d walked in. It wasn’t that she was in bad company; on the contrary, Owen’s live-in girlfriend and probably soon-to-be-fiancée, if her other brothers’ track record of getting hitched this year was any indication, was one of Marley’s favorite people in Millhaven. And not just because Cate had waited until after the breakfast rush to ask her if she wanted to grab something to eat, when the most popular—okay, only, unless you counted The Bar, which Marley didn’t—place to eat in town was bound to be less crowded. At this point in the day, in the no-man’s-land between breakfast and lunch, most people were already out and about, doing their Saturday thing. Sleeping in was a foreign concept in farming towns, some fancy, far-fetched thing like sushi or craft beer, both of which had been available in abundance on pretty much every street corner in Chicago.
Marley rubbed a hand over her sternum and looked up just in time to see Clementine sidle over to the booth, her smile warm and wide. “Good morning, ladies! Cate, it’s so good to see you.”
Cate stood to give the older woman a hug, and Marley quickly dropped her gaze back to her menu until Cate sat back down across from her, which was silly, she knew. The women wer
e close. Cate used to work here, waiting tables, until she’d taken a full-time position at Cross Creek Farm, balancing the books and making all manner of baked goods for the on-site store and their tent at the farmers’ market. Of course Clementine would hug her. Hugging was normal, for Pete’s sake.
“It’s good to see you, too, Clem,” Cate said. “How are things here?”
Clementine’s smile remained happily in place, her long, sleek braids sliding down her back as she tilted her head. “Oh, you know. Breakfast, lunch, supper. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.” She gestured behind the counter toward the kitchen, where her husband manned the grill and just about everything else. “What can I get for the two of you today?”
“I’d love a cup of coffee, and a ham and cheese omelet,” Cate said, even though she’d never even looked at a menu. “Hash browns—”
“Instead of toast, I know.” Clementine’s eyes remained kind as she shifted her gaze to Marley. “How about you, honey?”
“I’d like a slice of peach pie and the biggest cup of coffee you’ve got,” she said with as much efficiency as she could muster. Small talk had never been her jam, even before she’d gotten stranded here. Now that she was in a town that felt as backward as a field-sobriety alphabet? Even less.
“Pie for breakfast,” Clementine said after a beat of surprise. “You might just be a girl after my own heart. Coffee’ll be right up.”
Cate, who was about as no-nonsense as a tax audit, didn’t waste a single second after Clementine had walked out of earshot to pounce. “So, when are we going to talk about the fact that you got arrested for stealing a bunch of groceries that you and I both know you didn’t need?”
Marley’s heart moved into her throat, and God, so much for giving a girl a little warning. “How about never?” she managed.
Of course, Cate wasn’t so easily dissuaded. “Come on, Marley. You haven’t said so much as a word about it to Owen or Hunter or Eli. You need to talk about it at some point.”
“There’s nothing much to say.” Marley forced herself not to fiddle with the napkin-wrapped silverware or the paper placemat in front of her. Her brothers might let her skate if she got prickly enough, but Cate was a whole different story, and the last thing Marley wanted to do was lie to the woman. Especially since she was terrible at it. And double-especially when Cate skewered her with an I-don’t-buy-it look like she was doing now.
“So, you just decided to swipe a bunch of canned goods for grins?”
“That’s what the court record says,” Marley answered through tight lips. “Anyway, I apologized and I’m doing my penance. Believe me, I won’t get arrested again.” All truths, thank God. Why couldn’t she be bad at something useless, like whistling show tunes or reciting tongue twisters without flubbing the words?
“Hmm.” Cate waited for Clementine to place two oversized cups of coffee on the Formica and depart with the promise that their food would be up soon before continuing. “And how’s that penance of yours going?”
Marley thought of the insane commutes and shortened hours she’d suffered through this week, both of which would translate to a smaller paycheck, and she channeled all of her energy into not frowning. “Fine.”
“Greyson Whittaker can be…”
Cate let the sentence drift, but Marley was all too happy to supply the rest. “A cocky, Casanova pain in my ass?”
“I was going to say a little rough around the edges,” Cate replied, dark brows up and smile far too knowing. “But Casanova? You think he’s good-looking.”
“No.” Marley’s protest came too fast, and damn it, she should’ve slept in and scrounged breakfast at the house. Time to do some damage control and move on. “I think he’s arrogant and bull-headed. But I have to do community service with him, like the judge said, so…”
Marley capped the words with a shrug. There was no reason for Cate—or anyone, really—to know that not only did Marley think Greyson was indeed good-looking (biggest. Euphemism. Ever. Between his shoulders and his smirk, he should seriously be classified as some sort of stupidly sexy stealth weapon) but that he’d frequented her dreams for a week straight.
And every time, he’d been right there. Ready to catch her even though she hadn’t known she was falling. Gotcha…
“I see,” Cate said, stirring some cream and sugar into her coffee, then taking a thoughtful sip. “And it’s working out okay with your job?”
“I guess.” It was another stretch of the truth. Her boss at the boutique, Noémie (who Marley strongly suspected was really a Naomi and just trying too hard to be posh), had already given her a flawlessly lined side-eye at her request for three evenings a week plus Sundays off.
Cate paused, but only for a second before saying, “The reason that I ask is that Owen and I were talking about the storefront, and how much of a natural you are at helping me with the baked goods. You know the products inside and out, and we could really use someone smart to manage that end of things. We were thinking that maybe you might—”
“No.” Marley knotted her hands together to keep them from shaking. But she couldn’t waver. Not on this.
“You didn’t even hear me out,” Cate said quietly. The frown that had tugged at the corners of her mouth with the delivery told Marley she was less than thrilled with her response. But nope. No way. No matter how much Cate frowned, she wasn’t going to budge.
“I don’t need to. I’m not interested in working at the storefront. I’m not part of the family.” Before Cate could call her on the technicality of her genetics, Marley stuck on, “Not like the rest of you are.”
“The only person who feels that way is you,” Cate said, her voice soft enough to remove any accusation from the words, yet strong enough for Marley to know she believed them as the truth.
Which made one of them, anyway. Marley’s fingers tightened so hard they throbbed in time with her clattering pulse. “Tobias chose not to make me his family a long time ago.”
A sigh crossed Cate’s lips. “You’re going to have to talk to him eventually, you know.”
“No, I’m really not.”
“Your mother asked you to come find your family for a reason, Marley. She wouldn’t want you to feel so alone, and she wouldn’t have told you about Tobias unless it was time to mend that bridge.”
Sadness welled up in Marley’s chest, flattening her lungs and turning her breath into sand. It was farther than any of her brothers had ever gone with her, and damn it, damn it, she should’ve known better than to let herself be caught off guard by Cate’s brevity.
“Don’t,” Marley bit out, and Cate reached across the Formica to touch Marley’s hand.
“I’m not trying to upset you,” she started, but between the words and the touch, Marley had redlined.
“Then stop talking about my mother.” She pulled away, her voice steady even though the rest of her wasn’t. “You didn’t know her. You don’t know what she wanted, or what she was like.”
After a long pause measured by heartbeats and heavy silence, Cate nodded. “You’re right. I didn’t know her, and I guess I shouldn’t presume to know why she asked you to come to Cross Creek after she passed. But whether or not you like it—”
“I don’t,” Marley snapped, aiming the words at her so she’d get mad. Arguing was so much easier, and anyway, it hurt less.
God, Marley was tired of hurting.
Cate’s stare flashed with the color and intensity of a double shot of whiskey, but she finished her sentence with shocking kindness in her tone. “Whether or not you like it, or want to talk about it or even admit it, she did ask you to come here, and your father did take you in. That’s a truth that isn’t going to change.”
Marley remembered, with strange and sudden clarity, the literal moments after her mother had died. The nurses had turned off the sound for the monitors, her mother having signed the DNR form weeks prior, despite Marley’s protests. There had been no ominous beep signaling the end, just a few hard-scrabble br
eaths, and then the realization that it was over. Her mother, the closest person to her, the only person she’d ever loved and confided in and really showed herself to, was gone, yet Marley was still painfully here. A truth that wasn’t going to change.
A truth that meant she couldn’t let Tobias into her life under any circumstances.
“Maybe so,” Marley said, trading the memory for an inhale that cemented her determination to do whatever it took to get out of debt and out of Millhaven as fast as possible. “But my being here is temporary. I never intended to stay. Anyway”—she looked at the door, past ready to make an escape—“I think I’m going to pass on the pie, after all. I have to get back to the house.” Not home. Never home. “I’ve got to work this afternoon, and I really should get ready.”
“Marley—”
“Thanks for the offer,” Marley said, taking out enough cash to cover her coffee and the pie for which she’d abruptly lost her appetite. “I’ll see you later.”
Turning on the heel of one sneaker, she cut a fast path out of the diner, past the gleaming glass door with its cheery bells, down the neatly cobbled walkway lining Town Street. She’d parked a few blocks away—that’s what she got for thinking it was so nice out today, she’d enjoy the walk—and she headed briskly past the barber shop, then the hardware store. Thankfully, The Hair Lair was across the street, although now that Marley thought about it, she wouldn’t put it past Amber Cassidy to bolt through traffic to get a good scoop. She tugged her keys from her wristlet and reached for the handle on the Toyota’s driver’s side door when a flash of something familiar caught her eye from a few feet away.
Make that someone familiar. Tobias was standing in front of Doc Sanders’s office as if he’d just come out of the place. Too stunned to move, Marley battled with her racing pulse, staring even though she knew she shouldn’t. Tobias squinted through the mid-morning sunlight, his eyes shuttered beneath that caramel-colored hat he always wore. They widened as soon as they landed on her, recognition lighting his features. He smiled, just enough to make his eyes crinkle at the edges, and his arm lifted. But then he stopped halfway through the movement, panic streaking over his face as if he’d suddenly realized where he was and what he’d been about to do, and dropped his arm stiffly to his side before averting his gaze. The sting of the rejection forced Marley’s body into gear, fingers to door handle, key to ignition, seatbelt over chest. She needed to get gone, sooner rather than later.
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