Finding Ever After

by Pepper Basham

  “Sorry.” Emma shook her head. There was no sense in dredging it up. She was perfectly happy with her brownstone in another part of the country. Far from the gas stations and grocery stores where she might run into him. Far from the little ice cream shop downtown where they used to go back in high school.

  Sawyer never looked away. “You want to talk about last night?” He slipped his left hand into the pocket of his chinos.

  I never want to talk about last night with anyone but the Lord, thank you.

  She’d spent half the night trying to forget it by binge watching Masterpiece. When she finally fell asleep, she’d dreamed she was married to Ross Poldark and then became the queen of England.

  Emma reached into the cabinet for a mug to make herself a cup of tea. “I thought I was clear last night,” she spoke over her shoulder. “What happened was a mistake. A gross lapse of judgment. And as far as I’m concerned, I’d like to pretend it never happened.”

  He walked back over to the pan and began to slice the pieces. “Cinnamon roll?”

  This was going to be impossible. He was impossible.

  He set one on a plate. “Look, can we be frank? In my mind, there will be no forgetting that kiss. And I suspect the same holds true for you.”

  Emma set a teabag in her mug and poured in some water, then placed it in the microwave. Didn’t matter if he were right or wrong—she was not discussing that topic. “You think too highly of yourself, Sawyer.”

  “Say what you want to, Em. I’m not buying it.” He pushed up the elbows of his navy sweater, and her pulse quickened at his words. “But I realize that in your mind, our past is a deal breaker. No matter how many times I apologize, I can never go back and change things—and that’s what really bothers you. That’s what we can’t recover from.”

  Emma’s mouth went dry. His perception held startling accuracy. She hadn’t realized it before now, but yes, he was right. Absolutely. Because he had practically abandoned her back in college—definitely abandoned their dream—and ruined every plan she had for a happily-ever-after with a husband who followed through with his promises.

  She would love him for the rest of her life. So it was no surprise how his kiss last night stole her breath away and haunted her dreams. But she would never see him, hope in him, as she once had—back when she was so young and naïve.

  “I realize you hate me. Truth be told, I don’t trust you either. But like it or not, I am living here to help your family. I have been helping them, in fact, long before you waltzed back into town. And there’s much more work to be done than you realize. So can we agree to… I don’t know… coexist for the next few weeks?” Sawyer held out the plate toward her. “Consider this a peace offering.”

  Emma bit down on her bottom lip. If they were going to be forced into such close quarters, she really didn’t have a choice, did she?

  She took the plate from his hand. Raising the warm cinnamon bun to her lips, she tasted the dangerous mingling of sugar and spice. So good, and yet with enough of these, her jeans wouldn’t fit anymore. Dangerous, just like the man who made them.

  “After breakfast, we can make a list of everything that needs to be repaired or spruced up.”

  “You really think we can be civil for three weeks?” The microwave beeped, and she removed her tea.

  “I’ve always been up for a challenge.” He pulled a piece from his cinnamon roll and dropped it between his lips.

  That’s exactly what worries me.

  Emma balanced her plate in one hand and her tea in the other as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Normally she’d eat out on the back porch, but thanks to Sawyer, that was out of the question.

  Her pulse was still pounding from his nearness—because he smelled like cedar and cinnamon and looked so perfect in her parents’ kitchen. That was the problem. Looks could be deceiving.

  Emma set her breakfast down at the little table by her bay widow. Once that was settled, she changed into a jeans-and-sweater combo and curled her hair. She’d told Sawyer she was taking a working breakfast while he came up with the list of repairs downstairs. There was no need to be around him any more than absolutely necessary. His presence unraveled her willpower with the strength of Ben & Jerry’s.

  She plugged in her laptop, then cozied up with it in the plush chair beside the window. Time with her characters would serve her well. It always did.

  Though one of the perks of being a writer was the work flexibility, she’d need to be sure she budgeted enough time for her projects. She had one grant to begin and a ghostwritten romance novel to complete. Then there was the story she hadn’t told about… a romance under her own name.

  Microsoft Word was already open on her laptop. The curser blinked at her like a plea. Emma pulled off a piece of the cinnamon roll and skimmed through the last chapter she’d written of her own novel. The goal was to finish it in the next few weeks, then send it off to some editors she’d met through her ghostwriting. One had already expressed interest, but Emma’s hopes were guarded. Publishing was not exactly an easy industry.

  Emma checked the time on her computer and took a sip of her tea. The leaves had come from The Wistful Teacup and hit the spot after the week she was having. I’ll just spend fifteen minutes on this, and then I need to get back to my real work.

  She rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands as she read her previous chapter. Something about the hero was off. Lacking. She just couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Emma took another sip of her tea. Her characters needed a first kiss soon. Maybe writing that scene would help spark some ideas to make the hero more interesting.

  She set her fingertips on the keys and began to type.

  The moonlight was different as the clouds shifted from the glow. And something else shifted too as he sat down beside her on the porch swing.

  Emma’s eyes widened, and she pulled her fingers from the keyboard faster than a cat on a hot tin roof.

  What. Was. She. Doing?

  She quickly shut her laptop. This was not good. Not good at all. Reality had never crossed into her fictional world before. Her characters were a safe place full of predictability and perfectly-timed kisses. Where promises made meant promises kept, with Hallmark Channel reliability.

  Her characters did not draw inspiration from Sawyer. They saved her, time and again, from the sad ending of her own story-that-could-have-been.

  Something near the front porch caught Emma’s gaze through the bay window. She leaned up from her chair and saw Sawyer. He had changed into jeans and a T-shirt and stood on the base of a shovel, using his weight to heave it into the ground. He’d already filled a wheelbarrow full of weeds and had apparently moved on to the scrubby bushes near the flowerbed that needed replacing.

  For the briefest moment, he looked like he belonged on an English countryside in one of those shows on Masterpiece.

  Emma blinked.

  That was it. The final straw. She needed to come back to reality.

  She stood up, pushed the little table away from the window, and moved her chair to face the opposite side of the room.

  Time to work on grant writing.

  6

  Emma rolled her shoulders back and took one final sip of her now-cold tea. She’d finished a good portion of the grant proposal to help fund new heaters for the Boston Humane Society, and was feeling rather satisfied with the morning’s productivity when a new e-mail appeared on her screen with the subject line “URGENT.”

  Wait. Why was the prospective buyer reaching out?

  Emma leaned closer to the computer and clicked to open the e-mail. She crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her hands up and down her forearms for warmth. The farmhouse may be lovely, but it was also old, and the upstairs got drafty.

  She murmured as she read the e-mail aloud to herself.

  Dear Emma,

  I regret to say my plans have changed, and I need to rush our scheduled showing. Are you available
to show me the farm next week? Say, Tuesday? If not, I’ll need to move forward on another property. –Jackson

  Emma reread the e-mail. Her mind raced as she tried to process all this would mean. Tuesday. That gave her… what? Seven days.

  She looked around her old bedroom. The crown molding needed painting. Several areas of the hardwood needed repairing. And the old doorknob jammed unless you shimmied it just the right way.

  She’d known all along that selling the property would mean moving from the property. It was the entire reason she’d come home. But what she did not anticipate was the sudden whoosh that hollowed out her heart at the thought of her bedroom being empty.

  One week.

  The sense of loss came alongside another feeling. Generalized panic. She needed to find Sawyer, and quickly.

  Emma hurried down the stairwell and through the front door.

  While she was working, Sawyer had replaced the scrubby bushes by the flowerbed at the front of the house with a row of rose bushes. The red flowers contrasted beautifully with the white porch and looked like something from a magazine.

  Maybe having his help wasn’t such a bad thing. Actually, she was going to need a whole lot more of his assistance to get the property ready by next week.

  “Sawyer?” Emma glanced around the wraparound porch then wandered down the steps toward the rows of pecan trees.

  She heard the hum of the pruning arm before she saw him—high in the air between two rows of trees. He held a long saw from the outstretched bucket of the pruning arm, like a lineman in a bucket truck fixing the power.

  Emma had always wanted to go up in the bucket to help her dad when she was a kid, but she was afraid of heights and had been too spooked to actually do it.

  Sawyer, on the other hand, never had been afraid of falling.

  A dead limb hit the ground with a thud, and Sawyer noticed her. He directed the arm of the bucket back down to the ground and turned off the machinery.

  “Everything okay?” He stepped back onto the soil and wiped the dirt from his hands onto his jeans.

  Emma shook her head.

  “What’s going on?” Sawyer reached for the limbs he’d trimmed from the top of the tree and stacked them neatly.

  “Nice of you to help with this, Sawyer.” Emma looked up at the trees. The pruning was almost done. He must’ve been at this for days, maybe weeks. She was only now beginning to realize just how much work he’d done around here. “Did you prune all of these?”

  He scratched his jaw. “It’s really no problem. I had to trim our own trees too, so what’s a few more?” He winked when he said this, as if he knew the ease with which he weakened her resolve. “So what’s up?”

  Emma scrunched the loose curls in her hair.

  “You’re fidgeting.”

  “Am not.” Emma dropped her hands from her hair and pulled at the hem of her sweater.

  Sawyer raised one eyebrow. “You only fidget when you’re nervous.” He glanced back up at the pecan tree, his eyes scanning for more branches to prune, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “The buyer wants to see the property next week.”

  His gaze snapped to her own. “Next week?”

  Emma nodded, shuffling her shoes back and forth in the dirt beneath the trees.

  “Well, that’s two weeks less than expected.” Sawyer crossed his arms over his chest and looked back toward the farmhouse. “But I’m almost done with the pruning. The orchard is in good shape, so we just need to focus our attention on the house.”

  He looked into her eyes, and she swallowed hard at the thought she may only have seven days left with him. Her parents would move next week. She may never see Sawyer again. That’s what she’d wanted… wasn’t it?

  “I think we can do it.” Sawyer nodded. “If we work together, I mean.”

  Emma breathed a sigh of relief. If Sawyer said they could do it, for some reason, she believed him. He reached out and touched her shoulder. His hand was warm as the fireplace on Christmas Eve, and despite herself, she wished he wouldn’t move. “Let me get these limbs picked up, and I’ll meet you inside the house, okay?”

  Emma nodded. She started to turn toward the porch but hesitated. “Sawyer?”

  He tossed another little limb into the pile and turned to her. “Em?”

  She moistened her lips. “Why are you helping me?”

  “I told you.” He kicked the pile of branches so none fell out. “I want you to sell the place to me.”

  Emma reached to scrunch her curls again but stopped her hand before he could catch what she was doing. “Yes, but why are you really helping me?”

  He hesitated, then turned to fully face her. They must have been ten feet from each other, but even from here, she could feel his magnetism—as if the two of them were suspended together between the endless rows of neatly-lined pecan trees. “Why do you think?”

  Her heart skipped two beats. It was the last thing Emma expected to hear. And she almost believed him.

  An hour later, Emma and Sawyer had moved the furniture away from the walls of the sitting room, laid down a drop cloth, and begun painting the trim when the front door opened.

  Mama screamed.

  “What in the name of all that is holy are you two doing?” She set several shopping bags down in the entry as Grandma Dorothea closed the front door. Clearly Starbucks wasn’t the only stop they made in Foley. Mama never could pass up an outlet store.

  Sawyer climbed up the ladder positioned in the corner of the room and began painting the line between the wall and the plaster ceiling. “We’re painting.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” Mama’s attention went to the windows, which they had remembered to open in the nick of time to keep her beloved floral from absorbing any fumes. She looked to Emma for an explanation. “But why?”

  Emma poured more paint into the tray and got her roller ready. She looked at Mama before she started on the wall behind Sawyer. “The prospective buyer contacted me and wants to see the place next week.”

  “Next week? Our house won’t be ready to show by then.” Mama looked to Grandma Dorothea. “Please talk some sense into them.” She gestured toward Emma and Sawyer.

  But Grandma Dorothea just shook her head. “They’re blind in one eye and can’t see out the other. If she wants to try to sell the place so badly, let her do it. No sense in trying to convince her otherwise.”

  “But all the repairs…” Mama put her hands to her jaw, yet somehow managed not to smudge any makeup. “They could take months. We were rushing things with three weeks.”

  Sawyer lowered his paintbrush and looked down from the ladder. “With all due respect, Mrs. Bailey, I’ve made a list of the necessary updates, and I think we can manage them. Emma and I—” He glanced over toward her as the phrase Emma and I danced upon her heart. “—Are planning to work together night and day to make it happen.”

  “Night and day?” Grandma Dorothea said. “Well, doesn’t that arrangement sound cozy?”

  Emma could feel a blush rush to her cheeks. She never should have come here and dredged up the past. Why had this seemed like a good idea?

  But of course she was attracted to Sawyer. That wasn’t a secret. She had eyes, didn’t she? So really, that warm-as-hot-chocolate feeling she’d been getting from him all day was normal. Even healthy.

  Whether or not she acted on her feelings was something else entirely. And she was absolutely not going to do anything to encourage the attraction. Well, except for that little blunder last night on the porch swing.

  Emma’s cheeks flushed all over again at the thought of it. Did Grandma Dorothea see?

  Really, she was only going to be here for one week. If she’d managed to move her life to Boston, surely she could manage to trust her instincts. Because she certainly couldn’t trust his.

  Mama’s attention pinged between Emma and Sawyer. “Did you at least think to put up my monogrammed pillows?”

  Emma smiled as she touched the paint rol
ler to the wall. “Yes, Mama. They’re in the hallway.”

  “Good, because those are heirloom quality, you know, and money doesn’t grow on trees.”

  Unless something else in creation needs monogramming. Emma glanced over her shoulder. “They’re safe, Mama. Don’t worry.”

  “Your paint is dripping,” Grandma Dorothea said. “And you should wear socks so you don’t get that stuff all over your feet. We got you several new pairs at the outlets today.”

  Emma rolled over the drips of paint on the wall to smooth the color, then set the brush down on the tray and walked over to Mama and Grandma Dorothea. “I’m sorry—did you say you bought socks for me?”

  Mama handed her a large bag from Vanity Fair. “Underwear too.”

  Emma choked on the paint fumes. “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll fit. Your grandmother went through your suitcase earlier to see what size you wear now. Hope you like red.”

  Emma was just about to comment when she noticed Sawyer’s grin from across the room. As if this could get any more humiliating.

  “Thank you, Mama.” Emma clutched the handles of the bag. “And Grandma Dorothea. I’ll just take these up to my room.” She glanced toward the front door. “Actually, on second thought, there are a few things I need to pick up from the store.”

  Like my dignity.

  “Don’t stay gone too long.” Mama leaned closer before Emma could escape and murmured to her. “We also got you a little black sweater to wear for dinner tonight that will have that man’s jaw on the floor before you can say Jack Robinson.”

  Perfect. Exactly what Emma needed.

  7

  Several hours after the infamous red underwear incident—which Sawyer would not be forgetting anytime soon—Emma finally returned from her mysterious errands. Her mother and grandmother didn’t stay long after Emma’s departure, leaving him alone in the farmhouse. He had half a mind to call Emma to tell her they were gone, but that would mean explaining why he knew her phone number was the same as years prior.