Southern Secrets

by Madison, Natasha

  "I told Beau that he should get cameras up," he says. "I’m going to call Casey tomorrow to see."

  "While you are doing that, you should know that her garage password is one, two, three, four," I say, and he hisses out and groans.

  "I thought she was joking," he says. "That kid is her mother’s daughter."

  I smile because as much as I want to agree with him, I see a lot more of Jacob in her than I do Kallie. But I only know Kallie from a handful of times I’ve seen her at the barbecue. "Where are you staying tonight?" he asks, and my stomach burns when I think of the answer.

  "I was going to stay in the truck," I say, "but Amelia said I could stay in her spare bedroom."

  "If you don’t want to stay there," he says, "you can always come and stay with us."

  I look down, the heat rising in my neck, and my stomach rises and falls. "You don’t have to do that."

  "Please," he says. "Listen, Asher, I know you’ve just come into town, and I know you have a great job and position at the farm," he says, "but I’d like to talk to you about your options."

  "My options?" I repeat the words, not sure what he means by this.

  "You ever think of going into law enforcement?" he asks, and I tap the steering wheel. "I’d love to sit down with you and talk to you more about it."

  "I …" I say. "I’d like that."

  "Good," he says. "I’ll call you tomorrow to set up a time and place."

  "Sounds good," I say and disconnect.

  I need to grab my shit and leave, my head screams to me. I can’t stay here. It’s not right.

  I close my eyes and put my head back. The phone in my hand vibrates, and when I look down, I see a text from Amelia.

  Amelia: Got you a burger. It’s in the microwave. Good night.

  "This is not good." I make my way over to her house even though I know I shouldn’t.

  Chapter 8

  Amelia

  The smell of bacon makes me open one eye, and I think I’m dreaming. I’m on my side in the middle of my bed with four pillows all around me and the cover up to my eyes. I turn and slip my hand out of the hot cocoon, grabbing my phone and seeing it’s only six o’clock.

  I groan and put my hands back under the cover and close my eyes. Why does it smell like bacon? I look over at my closed door and smell coffee. What the hell is going on right now? Is my mother here? My head is asking me all these questions, and I know I’m not going to fall back asleep and get those extra forty-five minutes.

  Throwing the cover off me, I get up and see the sun is starting to come up. I walk into the kitchen, and I have to close one eye when I see all the lights on. Asher’s naked back is to me as he stands in front of the stove. "What the hell are you doing?" I ask, standing in the hallway that leads to the kitchen from my bedroom. "It’s six o’clock."

  He looks over his shoulder, and I wish he really wouldn’t. His face has that sleepiness still on it, and his hair is sticking up in certain places, and his smirk just makes my stomach sink. This is not good. I should never have told him to come home with me. I mean, I didn’t really tell him to come with me. I told him he could use my guest bedroom, so there is a difference there. "I’m making you breakfast," he says, grabbing a cup of coffee from beside him on the counter and bringing it to his mouth. "The coffee is ready."

  "Why?" It’s the only thing that can come to my mind, and he turns around and leans against the counter. I see his six-pack is on point, and I wonder what it would be like to be held by him. I picture it so clearly in my head, his arms around mine as I look up at him. It’s a picture I quickly erase before I give it a second thought. "Why are you cooking me breakfast at the ass crack of dawn?"

  He chuckles. "I’m going to say you aren’t a morning person." His smirk irritates me. Not because I don’t like it but because I like it too fucking much.

  "I’m a morning person,” I lie to him. I have never been a morning person in my whole life. You can only talk to me after at least one cup of coffee, and one must ease into it. It’s why Quinn makes me start at eight instead of seven. I fold my arms over my chest. "I just don’t get the whole cooking at six o’clock thing." My feet move on their own as I walk into the kitchen and see the bacon cooking in the cast-iron pan. "Like the sun isn’t even up completely yet." I grab a coffee cup and walk over to the pot, pouring myself a cup. I bring it to my nose and smell it. "Nothing like the smell of coffee in the morning," I say, taking a sip of the hot coffee.

  "You drink it black?" he asks, grabbing the fork and flipping the bacon over.

  "Yeah, I ran out of milk one day, and well, it just stuck," I say. "Besides, that means I never have to be disappointed." I take another sip.

  "How do you like your eggs?" he asks, and I look at him.

  "Cooked." I laugh at my own joke, and he fake laughs, walking to my fridge and taking out the eggs. The way he does it makes it seem as if he’s been doing this for a long time. I don’t know why this bothers me so much. The last thing I want is to expect him to do it for me. Did that once and never going to do that again.

  I learned a while ago that you can never count on anyone but yourself. I’ve also learned to never expect anyone to do anything for you. "You don’t have to do all of this." I point at the stove, and I suddenly get a whiff of something baking. "What’s in the oven?"

  "You had some biscuits in the freezer," he says, opening the oven, and I can see they are golden and almost ready. "It’s the least I could do. Not only did you give me a place to sleep but you also bought me dinner."

  "That’s where you are wrong." I point at him. "I picked up dinner for myself and bought you one because you busted your ass for me."

  "You can spin it any way you want to," he says, grabbing the empty plate beside him with paper towels on it. He places the bacon in the middle of the plate and turns back to grab another pan to do the eggs in. "The fact is you did me a huge favor last night, actually all day, and this is the only way I know to repay you."

  I can think of something else you can do, my head says, and I bring the cup to my mouth to make sure I don’t vocalize that thought. "Well, I guess I should say thank you." He just nods his head. "Where did you learn to cook?" I could go and sit down on one of the stools at the island. I could sit at the table, but instead, I choose to stand beside him as he leans against the counter, listening to him talk.

  "When I turned sixteen, I was hired as a busboy for a small diner," he says, cracking the eggs in a bowl. "Busboy soon turned to cook when he showed up and was drunk." He shakes his head. He comes over, grabbing my hip as he reaches for a paper towel. My hip feels like it’s been scorched by his touch.

  "Really?" I ask, and I find myself always entranced by his stories. I always want more. I could sit and listen to his stories for hours. Last night I was dead tired to the bone, but I sat down, and I wanted to hear more of the story. I wanted to ask him what he did after that. I wanted to ask him where he slept the next day. I wanted to know it all, and that fact in itself scared me straight to my core.

  "Yeah, he stumbled in there," he says, adding milk to the eggs, "and then fell on his ass when he walked into the kitchen." He laughs. "I was shocked because he was a big man, but instead of getting up, he lay there in the middle of the kitchen snoring." He opens the drawers, looking for something; I watch the muscles in his arm flex every time he pulls a drawer out.

  I’m like a fucking schoolgirl. I avoid looking at him and look out the window to see that the sun has officially risen. Two birds fly together into the trees. "No one knew what to do." I turn back to Asher and see him whisking the eggs. "Waitress asked me if I knew how to cook eggs. I lied and said yes." He pours the eggs into the pan and slowly whisks them. "I had no fucking idea how to cook shit. The most I knew how to do was pour water into a ramen cup." He takes his time whisking. "So I learned pretty fast, and apparently, the eggs were not horrible, so they hired me to be the morning cook."

  "Why did you stop?" I ask, and he looks over at me.


  "The diner wasn’t in the best part of the city, and the dealers would use it as their office at night. There was a drive-by shooting, and well, when I went back in the morning, nothing was left."

  My mouth hangs in shock. "You could have died?" I say, and he just shrugs.

  "If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go regardless of where I am," he says as he turns to get the oven mitt. He opens the oven and takes out the pan of biscuits. He put the hot tray on top of the stove. "It could have happened at five a.m. instead of eleven p.m." He grabs two plates. "The good thing is that I was able to get a job not too long after in the kitchen." He smiles. "So everything worked out."

  I watch him place two scoops of fluffy eggs onto a plate and then place two slices of bacon with two biscuits side by side. "Do you want more?" he asks, holding the plate in front of me.

  "No.” I shake my head, grabbing the plate and bringing it to my nose. My fingers tingle from his hands brushing against mine.

  "You smell everything." He laughs at me, and I look at him. "You don’t notice it."

  "No." I shake my head, and I look at him, trying not to let it show that I’m shocked he noticed. No one in my whole life has ever noticed that I do that.

  "You got up, and you smelled your coffee." He turns to plate his own eggs and bacon, leaving two more pieces on the plate. I put my plate down and grab the extra slices and place them on his plate.

  "Who doesn’t smell coffee first thing in the morning?" I counter him. Turning to refill my coffee cup, I walk to his and top his off as well. I ignore the fact that his eyes are watching me. I look over at him when I grab two forks out of the drawer. "Everyone smells their coffee."

  "Okay, but they don’t smell the flowers when they walk into work. Nor do they look up and smell the sky when they get out of their car." I stop moving, trying not to overthink that he watches me when I get to work.

  "I have your fork," I say softly, turning to grab my cup and walking to the table. I sit in the chair I always sit in, and he sits down in front of me. "Thank you for making breakfast," I mumble, not making eye contact with him. "You didn’t have to."

  "I know I didn’t have to," he says, and I can feel that his eyes are on me. "But I wanted to," he says, and I don’t bother looking at him.

  I grab my fork and taste the eggs; the buttery fluffy eggs melt on my tongue. "These are good," I say, still not looking up at him. He doesn’t say anything to me as we eat, and when he gets up to put his plate in the dishwasher, I turn and look at him. "I’ll clean up." He looks over at me. "You cooked, I clean. It’s a universal law." I try to make a joke out of it and look over to see that it’s almost seven and I know he starts at seven. "You better get going; you start in ten minutes."

  He turns the water off and dries his hands. "I guess I’ll see you later," he says, and I watch his back retreating and he stops and turns back to look at me. "I’m sorry if I said something that offended you in any way."

  "You didn’t," I tell him. "This was lovely," I say, and he just nods and turns to walk back into the bedroom. I sit here at the table and I know that I should leave before he comes back out. I put the plate in the sink and walk back to my bedroom.

  I close my door softly behind me and put my back on it, leaning my head back. The sounds of him walking around have me looking out the window to see him leaving with the black bag.

  "It’s for the best," I say out loud. "You have one goal and one goal only,” I remind myself. "And being stupid and in love is not one of those goals."

  Chapter 9

  Asher

  I carry the bag out with me, because no matter how much I want to go back, I’m not going to. I toss the bag in the back seat and get into the truck. The heat already starting to feel thick, I drive toward Casey’s headquarters, not surprised when I see Ethan’s car already there.

  You would never know that in this white tin barn holds the most advanced computer technology in the world. Casey isn’t just a cowboy, he’s a computer tech.

  Getting out of the truck, I pull open the door and come face-to-face with a white room with a desk. No one is behind it. I knock on the closed white metal door and the buzzing starts, I pull open the door and step inside what I call the “war” room.

  The whole back wall is filled with five big screens side by side. Five desks are on each side of the room with full computers on them. The screens in front come to this big square table that sits in front of the big screens. There are screens built into the desk and it’s all touch screen. "Good morning," Ethan says, standing there wearing jeans and a shirt with a cup of coffee in his hand. "I see we went shopping for clothes that fit you." He tries to hide the laugh with his cup.

  "Yeah.” I look down at the blue jeans and white shirt I picked up yesterday before going to the bar.

  "You want coffee?" he asks, walking over to one of the desks and sitting down.

  "No, I just had two cups with breakfast," I say and I want to kick myself when his eyebrows pinch together.

  "I was at the diner this morning with my father and I didn’t see you there," he says, leaning back in his chair.

  "Yeah, I stayed with Amelia. Helped her at the bar last night and she offered me her guest room." I make sure there is nothing in my tone that would make him suspicious even though there was nothing to be suspicious about. "Made breakfast to thank her."

  "Did you give her coffee before you spoke to her?" he asks. "She is not a morning person. I remember once we were teasing her and she tried to stab my hand with her fork."

  I laugh thinking about how cranky she was but not knowing that she needed coffee before I spoke to her. "She had coffee."

  "Good.” He brings his cup of coffee to his mouth and takes a sip. "Got your text. My father and I rode out there this morning before I came here. One definitely looks like someone broke it. We looked around a bit, but we didn’t see anything strange."

  "I’m going to run over there this afternoon and change the lights out," I say, and he nods.

  "My father put in an order to put up cameras," Ethan says. "We just didn’t tell Amelia yet." I shake my head. The woman has to be the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met. But then again, she is the most interesting also. She is smart and kind and hardworking and fiercely independent. Everything about her intrigues me and I want to ask her so many questions. "He’s going to swing by today and break it to her."

  "Or you do it during the day when she isn’t there and then see how long it takes for her to notice," I say, and he taps his coffee cup thinking about it.

  "We could and then just blame it on my father." He gets up and grabs his phone. "She can’t hurt him."

  "Okay, if you need me, call," I say, walking out of the room and getting into the truck.

  I do everything I need to do for the barn before grabbing the ladder and making my way over to the bar. It’s almost four thirty when I pull up. I see her car parked there next to another one. Pulling up as close as I can to the door, I get out and unload the ladder and the lights. I place the ladder against the building and the door opens.

  I look toward her and everything inside me stops. I haven’t seen her since this morning and she stands there with her blue jeans and white tank top. Her hair is braided on the side, her eyes a crystal blue. So blue you can drown in them and die happy. "Hey.” She smiles at me. "I was wondering who was out here."

  "I’m going to change the lights." I point up toward the lights. My palms are getting sweaty as my heart beats faster and faster in my chest. "I was going to come out here earlier, but we had to round up a couple of cows that got loose and I had to help your grandfather."

  "That’s okay," she says. "Tuesdays are usually quiet and we don’t have any games on today." She walks over to stand beside me. "How can I help?”

  "You can go back inside," I say, grabbing the lights and walking toward the ladder.

  "I can hand you the lights," she says, grabbing them out of my hands. "And I’ll forget you just said that the next time I po
ur you a drink." She smiles at me and I can tell it’s a fuck you smile.

  I laugh. "Fine." Knowing even if I fight with her, she is just going to do what she wants to do. I climb the ladder, seeing up close that someone must have broken the light with a rock, "Can you go into the truck and get me a rag?”

  "Oh, you need me?" she asks, looking up at me, her hand on her forehead blocking out the sun. "It’s a good thing I didn’t go inside." She turns on her boots and walks toward the truck, opening the back door and grabbing the T-shirt Quinn lent me.

  "I said a rag," I say, and she tosses me the shirt.

  "Are you going to actually wear that shirt again?" she asks me.

  "No, but I was going to give it back to him,” I inform her, holding the shirt in my hand.

  "Trust me, he doesn’t want it back," she says, putting one boot on the last step of the ladder. "No way he can ever wear that shirt. He’ll look like a skinny boy in it."

  I look down at her. "You were checking me out?" I joke with her.

  "Everyone and their mother was checking you out," she says. "Even the guys checked out your package."

  "It wasn’t that bad," I say, and I know it was that bad because I had to pull the seam out of my balls at least ten times. I use the shirt to unscrew the light bulb. I’m about to go down when I feel her stepping on the second step stretching her hand up with the new light.

  "Here, take this and give me the old one," she says. We exchange the bulbs and I screw in the new one.

  I walk down the ladder and look at her. "You can’t just let someone do something for you." I don’t know if I’m so much as asking her as if I’m telling her.

  "It’s not that I can’t let anyone do anything for me," she says, putting the broken light away. "If I can help, why wouldn’t I?" She grabs the new bulb as I move the ladder over to the other light. Going up and seeing that this one, too, has been busted, I take out my phone and take a picture of it before I take it out and replace it.