by Cat Johnson
Meanwhile, I watched the water level with a sick feeling in my gut, waiting for when it would me my turn to scramble to save my own supplies and equipment.
But the water never reached the other side of the street. It sloshed along Main Street but never jumped the curb or made it into the bakery.
Still, it was the most stressful night of my life and that was saying something since some of my time spent in foster care had been pretty bad.
Finally, the rain stopped. The sun rose, chasing away the dark and making things feel moderately less ominous.
And the river lowered.
For the first time in what felt like days, we all allowed ourselves a moment to breathe—and dry off.
Standing in Agnes’s kitchen, cradling a mug of hot tea because my stomach couldn’t handle another ounce of coffee after the gallon I’d consumed in the past twenty-four hours, I felt dead on my feet.
The room was quiet, which might have been a first for this group. Red, Harper and I were too darn tired to chat the way we usually did.
A door slammed somewhere in the house and I jumped.
Shell-shocked. That was the only way to describe my zombie-like state.
Agnes entered the kitchen, somehow looking perfect, and perfectly fine, in spite of the night we’d all had, her included.
Seventy years old, if she was a day, and she’d been right there next to us, carrying commercial-sized bags of sugar and rice up the flight of stairs of my building, and fighting off anyone who tried to take the burden from her.
High dark green rubber boots came to her knees, covering her brown leggings. An ivory-colored chunky cardigan, worn open over a brown T-shirt topped off her outfit.
Dressed as she was, she could just as easily attend a polo match with Martha Stewart as fight flood waters in Mudville. But that was Agnes.
“What’s this?” Agnes asked, glancing between us. “Why does everyone look like someone died? We won, ladies. That old Muddy River challenged us and Mudville came out victorious.”
Red cocked up a brow. “There’s still water in the basement of my shop.”
“And since you were smart and prepared, there’s nothing else down there but water because you moved everything upstairs. Right?” Agnes cocked a brow in challenge.
“Yes, ma’am.” Looking unhappy at the censure Red shot Harper a glance.
Harper lifted a shoulder, obviously not going to argue with her aunt, who was also the woman who provided a place for her to live.
I wasn’t going to contradict Agnes either. It would be rude and she was right anyway. We’d all been lucky. It could have been so much worse.
“I invited that nice man from the diner here to shower and get some sleep.”
“Um, what?” My eyes popped wide. As exhausted as I was, that woke me right up.
“Brandon something or other. He spent all day yesterday helping the Morgans with the sandbags, but he mentioned he didn’t get a hotel room because he wanted to stay at the diner and keep an eye on things. Poor man needs a dry place to get cleaned up and lay his head so I invited him here. Lord knows, I have the room.”
Red and Harper’s gazes settled on me as Agnes spoke.
“Speaking of rooms, I need to go make sure there are fresh towels in the guest bathroom for him.” Agnes spun on her LL Bean rubber boots and hiked out of the kitchen.
“So, how are things between you and the hot new diner owner?” Red asked, her lips twitching with a smile.
I drew in a breath. My knee jerk reaction was and always had been to keep things of the personal nature to myself, even from my girlfriends.
That hadn’t worked out so well when it came to Brandon.
It might not hurt to talk to them. I was too confused to be rational about him.
“I . . . don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? What’s exactly the problem?” Red asked.
“You said he didn’t have a girlfriend when he was kissing you at the hotel, right?” Harper asked.
How could Harper talk about my getting tipsy and kissing a stranger in his hotel room so casually?
Doing that had been huge for me. I’d never done anything like that before. And I would have preferred if no other living person knew I’d done it with him.
“He really does seem nice. And Agnes is right. He spent all day and night helping out,” Red said.
“And I don’t think he would have bought you a sump pump for your bakery if he was hoping to run you out of business, like you thought. He could have just hoped Mother Nature did it for him,” Harper pointed out.
I let out a breath as they made an indisputable case for Brandon.
I’d had him in the role of a villain since running out of his suite that night over a month ago while thinking he was a cheater. It was hard to swallow how wrong I’d been about him as he kept proving himself a hero.
My friends were relentless. I knew they wouldn’t let this topic rest until we discussed it to death. But maybe talking would help me get my head on straight when it came to him.
I sighed. “Okay. I’ll agree he is a nice guy when it comes to certain things. Last night he caught that stray cat that’s been hanging around Main Street. He made a bed for him inside a box in the diner. Gave him a bowl of milk. Even named him.
“Save the cat,” Harper whispered. Or at least I thought that was what she said.
“Hmm?” I asked, not understanding.
She shook her head. “Sorry. Save the Cat is a plot device. An author can get readers to root for a character, even a questionable one, as long as she shows him doing something nice. Such as, for example, saving a cat. That’s where the device gets its name. In this case, Brandon actually saved a cat and you went from viewing him as a bad guy to considering he might actually be good.”
It had to be more complicated than that. We were talking about my life, my career . . . my heart. I refused to think everything could be reduced to a simple plot device like Harper described.
“Wow.” Red breathed out. “That’s pretty surreal. He like literally saved a cat.”
“I know. It’s crazy. Right?” Harper turned from Red to me. “But see? Maybe you were wrong about him. He is actually a good guy.”
I hated to be told what to do and what to think, especially by my friends, but in this case, I couldn’t fight them.
“There’s more,” I began, kind of embarrassed to admit I’d been holding this piece of information back. They were going to find out eventually so I said, “The diner offered to buy all their baked goods from me.”
“Oh my God. That’s huge.” Red’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, I guess,” I reluctantly agreed.
Meanwhile, Harper pressed her lips tight as she shook her head. “I see what’s going on. You, woman, are a commitment-phobe. You’re trying to make a perfectly nice man into a bad guy because you don’t want to like him.”
“Or because she’s embarrassed she actually let herself cut loose that one night and kissed him,” Red added.
Harper nodded. “That too. She’s so strait-laced and serious all the time, I don’t think she’s ever allowed herself to let loose and have any real fun.”
“Come to think of it, I’ve never seen her with a boyfriend since I’ve known her. You’re not secretly a thirty-year-old virgin, are you?” Red pinned me with a stare.
“Ooo, I hadn’t thought of that. If you are, I’m totally writing that into a book. The virgin baker and the billionaire. It’s perfect.” Harper looked excited enough I feared she might actually write it.
I had to nip this in the bud. “Stop. Both of you. I’m not a virgin.”
At that exact moment, right as I loudly proclaimed myself not a virgin, the door to the back stairs swung wide and Stone stood in the doorway. But it wasn’t Stone I cared so much about as the man I could see standing just behind him.
Brandon.
I’d said it loud and clear and I had no doubt the men in the doorway had heard every word.
> Brandon, smirk firmly in place said, “Good to know.”
Yup. He’d heard, all right.
My cheeks were on fire. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Cash looked past Brandon’s shoulder. “Who’s a virgin? And why are we all bottlenecked in the doorway?”
The question finally spurred Stone into action. With a glance at me, he made a beeline for Harper, allowing the others to come into the room.
“I can tell you, at this point any virgins are gonna have to wait because I’m starving. I’d kill for a couple of fried eggs,” Boone said from his position behind Cash.
“What’s this now? Who’s a virgin?” Impossibly, the situation went from bad to worse as Deputy Sherriff Carson pushed through the door and glanced around.
Agnes’s back doorway was like a never ending clown car of the hottest men in Mudville. They just kept coming and coming and they’d all heard that word.
Virgin.
Possibly the most embarrassing word on the planet, and it had not only been heard by everyone, but also repeated. More than once.
I dared to raise my gaze to meet Brandon’s and saw his amused expression.
Wonderful.
I had reached peak humiliation. No doubt about it.
Then I saw Brandon was making his way across the kitchen toward me and I realized I’d been wrong because now I was going to have to talk to him.
I was already backed up against the counter and had nowhere to go. My chest felt tight with panic but I soon realized he wasn’t after me. He was just looking to put down the pound of ground coffee he’d carried in.
“From the diner,” he said to me, as if I needed an explanation. He set it on the counter then turned and faced the group with a grin. “And have I said how much I absolutely love all you people?”
“Glad you do,” I mumbled because I wasn’t loving my friends all that much right now.
They’d started the ridiculous virgin discussion in Agnes’s kitchen for all three Morgan brothers, Carson and, worst of all, Brandon to hear.
This was like something out of my nightmares but everyone else seemed to be having a good old time.
“Anyone hungry?” Agnes asked as she came into the room, preventing any further discussion of my love life, or lack thereof.
The hands of all three brothers shot up in response to Agnes’s question.
Carson, a bit more subdued, or perhaps just more polite, said, “Yes, ma’am.”
In any case, the subject of virgins had been dropped in favor of food. Thank God for that. I could have kissed Agnes for providing the interruption. And her feeding us breakfast wouldn’t be so bad either.
“The girls laying, Agnes? I’d love a couple of your eggs.” Boone leaned against the counter on one side of me, bracketing me between him and Brandon.
The kitchen, even with as large as it was, was at full capacity at the moment and space was at a premium. I was pinned in. There was no escape.
Harper humphed. “Of course, the girls are laying. They barely slowed down during the winter because I feed them crushed eggshells and dried mealworms every day for calcium and protein.”
“Most spoiled chickens in the county, they are.” Stone snorted.
Harper narrowed her eyes at him. “They deserve to be spoiled. They work very hard laying all those eggs every day.”
“It’s only one each,” Stone mumbled.
“Fresh eggs?” Brandon’s eyes widened. “From your own chickens?”
“Yup. You ever have?” Cash asked.
“Never.” Brandon shook his head, apparently all chummy with all the Morgan males now after bonding during their fight against the Muddy River.
“Then you’re in for a treat.” Agnes moved toward the pot rack where the collection of her mother’s vintage cast iron skillets hung. “How you like ’em? Scrambled, fried, poached?”
“Egg in a hole? You got any bread for that?” Boone asked, looking as hopeful as a little boy on Christmas morning.
“Do I have any bread?” Agnes frowned him. “Humph. Of course, I have bread. This isn’t one of those keto households. Here we eat it all. Real sugar. Real flour. And real cream-line milk, because it’s the cream in the milk that makes it good.”
Shaking his head, Brandon let out a laugh. “God, I love it here.”
Again, the man had managed to surprise me. Covered in mud, and dressed more like a farmer than a financier, maybe he would fit in here in this town.
And yes, maybe I had been completely wrong about him.
There’d been a lot of water under the Muddy River Bridge. What if it was too late? Had I ruined everything and missed my chance?
That thought was as scary as the alternative, that I hadn’t blown it and might actually have a chance with him. Because having the chance to be with him also meant I had the chance of losing him.
I’d spent my whole life protecting my heart. I wasn’t all that willing to open the door and let a man in just so he could break it now.
But if I were to let anyone in, Brandon—with his fancy job and his home in the city—was probably the last man in the world I should do it with.
TWENTY
Brandon
I loved Agnes and her incredible house. I was amazed at how welcoming everyone had been to me. But even so, Sunday afternoon, when I woke from a few hours’ sleep in the guestroom, I was feeling restless and I had Bethany on my mind.
After that discussion in the kitchen I’d walked in on, how could she not be on my mind?
Her friends were nosy and loud and intrusive and completely wonderful.
Even the deputy was friendly as he kicked back with us in front of the fireplace in Agnes’s wood paneled dining room over bacon and eggs.
But today, after the water level finally dropped and we could finally start to relax, I would have been happy if every one of the people who’d been so nice to me disappeared so I could be alone with Bethany.
We clearly had unfinished business between us. And for the first time since seeing me here in Mudville, it felt like she was ready to explore that. And so was I.
Yeah, I didn’t understand or easily accept how she’d gotten such a bad impression of me, but I had to think we’d moved past that now. At least I could move past her accusations, if she could move past her suspicions.
But again, we needed some time alone without the full complement of her Mudville entourage.
That hour we had alone at the diner eating fries was too fraught with worry over the flooding to move the needle on this thing between us. But now, the crowd of people at Agnes’s was gone.
The house had been empty of everyone except Agnes and Harper when I’d gone to the guest room to try to sleep.
Now that I was awake from my little daytime snooze, it still sounded quiet downstairs.
Good time to go seek out Bethany.
Two things stood in my way. She had been as sleep deprived as I had so she could be sleeping still. Possibly out for the night.
And, more importantly, I still didn’t know where the hell she lived. I felt a bit like a stalker but I really needed to correct that.
What I really wanted to do, before I went to work on my borderline stalker recon, was check on the diner. Make sure things hadn’t gotten worse while I slept.
Hell, taking a weekend off had proved to be a hell of a lot more work than if I’d just stayed at the office. I was exhausted, but at the same time I’d never felt so invigorated.
I’d showered before my nap so now all I had to do was find something in my bag that wasn’t wet or muddy to put on. Luckily there was one clean shirt and another pair of pants.
The house was silent as I found my way down the sweeping main staircase and to the empty kitchen. Everyone else must be sleeping.
It had been a long night. I didn’t blame them.
At some point, once the water had started to rise, I’d moved my car and parked it on the street behind the community house to keep it from getting flooded in th
e diner lot.
I’d gotten a ride here in Stone’s truck so I was currently without wheels, but that wasn’t a problem. Everything in town was walking distance. I could walk to the diner, check everything was okay, retrieve my car and then worry about how to find Bethany later.
Eventually I would have to get back to the city but perhaps that didn’t have to be today. I had an open invitation to spend the night. I could stay at Agnes’s and head back first thing in the morning.
It wasn’t lost on me how in past I couldn’t get back to work fast enough and now I was trying to buy myself any extra hour I could here in Mudville. If Josh could see me now.
The back door of the house had been unlocked when I’d arrived with Stone earlier and it was still unlocked now. I loved that this was the kind of town where people just left their doors open.
After pulling on my still damp jacket, I quietly let myself out, overnight bag in hand just in case I didn’t end up returning.
I left the door unlocked as I’d found it. That would allow me to get back inside without waking anyone if I decided to come back later.
Outside on Main Street I found life had resumed, if not gotten quite back to normal.
Cars rather than water moved slowly up and down Main Street. People worked to cleanse the town of the dirt left by the receding water. Doors and windows were open to dry out the buildings affected.
I held my breath as I unlocked and opened the back door of the diner and flipped on the light. A blur of fur ran inside, through the open door, almost knocking me off balance. The cat circled back to rub, purring, against my legs.
“Muddy.” I bent and ran a hand over his back. “Where have you been?”
He’d run out last night when we’d had the door propped open and were carrying half of my provisions to Stone’s truck to be moved to higher ground across the street. My guess was he’d hid from the rain and rising waters inside his favorite haunt—the dumpster. That was where I’d found him in the first place.
That he let me pet him proved he wasn’t as feral as I’d feared. Or that he was just really hungry.
“Come on, buddy. I’ll get you some milk.” Hopefully the refrigerator was still operating, for both our sakes.
