Crossing the Line (The Cross Creek Series Book 2)

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “I’m all for going whole hog when it’s necessary,” Eli said, mostly because she was sure to give him a healthy dose of crap if he didn’t. “But don’t you get tired, going so fast all the time?”

  Scarlett’s laughter sent a shot of surprise all the way up his spine. “Oh, I get exhausted. That’s part of the thrill, though. There’s never a shortage of places to go snap pictures of, and I love it enough to do it till I drop.”

  “And you don’t worry you’ll miss that perfect shot because you’re constantly running around at Mach 3?” Okay, so his brain-to-mouth filter had decided to malfunction on that one. But he’d hung the question out on the line. No sense in trying to back his way out of things now. “I mean, Clarabelle here weighs about twelve hundred pounds and you nearly missed seein’ her.”

  “I might move fast, but I’m not blind,” Scarlett said with a shrug. “I’d have found her eventually. What I worry about more is what I’d miss if I weren’t moving at all.”

  A smirk twitched hard at the corners of his mouth, and ah, the comeback was too good to pass up. “Sorry, does that ever happen?”

  She pressed her lips together, but not before he’d caught sight of the sassy-sweet smile that had bloomed there. “Funny. And while it’s true I might not have seen Clarabelle at first”—Scarlett paused to offer the cow an apologetic smile and an extra pat behind the ears—“if I’d decided to rest on my laurels in New York rather than hauling my cookies down here to Millhaven, I never would’ve seen her, period. That seems like the bigger shame of the two.”

  Cue up a whole lot of whoa. “Guess I never thought of it like that,” Eli admitted.

  “Most people don’t. But I belong behind the camera. If I have to be busy in order to make that happen . . .”

  She trailed off with a fluid lift and lower of one shoulder. Eli knew he wouldn’t get a more seamless shot at a subject change—for Pete’s sake, the ability to dodge and deflect when it came to the topic of belonging was practically stamped into his DNA.

  So it was really freaking weird when, instead of dropping the subject like the thermonuclear potato that it was, he asked, “So how did you figure out you belonged behind the camera?”

  “Oh.” She blinked, but only once before keeping up the pace with both her brush and his question. “Well, I obviously moved around a lot before I was adopted. All my foster homes were within New York City limits, but I was still in a new place every year.”

  “I can’t even imagine that,” Eli said, and Jesus, could he jam his size twelve any farther into his cakehole? “Sorry. It’s just that—”

  “You’ve lived in Millhaven your whole life, and the concept of all that moving around without a place to call home seems weird to you?” Scarlett gave up a look so open and honest, he had no choice but to nod. “Believe me, small-town upbringing or no, you’re not the first person to think my circumstances are strange. Don’t worry.”

  Eli lifted the hand that wasn’t busy brushing Clarabelle, and Scarlett continued with ease. “When I went to go live with my dads, I had a hard time adjusting. Even though Bryan and Miguel were fantastic—and still are—I didn’t really feel like I belonged with them. Not all the way, anyhow.”

  The words struck swift and deep, like a sucker punch right to the chin. Cover it up, jackass. “With how much you moved from place to place before they adopted you, I suppose it makes sense you’d have a hard time feeling at home,” Eli managed.

  She nodded. “I actually moved around a lot after they adopted me, too. My dads both work for a humanitarian aid organization, so we spent a lot of time in other countries.”

  “Wow.” The idea seemed so foreign, yet something oddly exciting turned over in Eli’s chest. “How did you go to school?”

  “I was home-schooled. We did most of it on the road. I actually got my high school diploma when we were in Peru,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the universe, and hell if that didn’t explain her obvious wanderlust. Along with her difficulty finding a place to belong. “Don’t get me wrong, I was probably more comfortable traveling all over the place than most kids would’ve been, but I still never felt quite like I’d found a place that was perfect for me. Of course, like most dads, mine worried.”

  “They sound like good parents,” he said, and Scarlett’s smile answered before she’d even spoken a word.

  “They’re the best. They wanted me to find something I loved so I’d feel like I fit in better, so we went the activities route.”

  Ah. Eli ran a palm over Clarabelle’s warm, sturdy body one last time before stepping back to return his brush to the shelf. Pulling a pocketknife from its well-worn spot in his Levi’s, he grabbed one of the apples he’d freed from the stash he and Scarlett had picked earlier, slicing through the fruit with a soft snick.

  “Let me guess.” He handed half of the apple to Scarlett, flattening his palm to offer the other half to Clarabelle. “You picked photography.”

  “Nope,” came her quick reply, and God, leave it to his partner in crime to keep him on his damned toes. “Actually, at first it was piano, which was a huge crash and burn, then dance, where I discovered my distinct lack of both rhythm and coordination. Should I just feed her the whole thing?” Scarlett dipped her chin at Clarabelle, who had unceremoniously finished the half of the apple Eli had just given her and was nosing her way toward Scarlett in a very obvious search for seconds.

  He nodded. “Her digestive system is made to handle the core. Just don’t curl your fingers when you feed her, or she’ll think they’re part of the deal.”

  “Got it.” Passing over her brush so she could cradle the apple between both palms, Scarlett extended her hands, and the throaty laugh that worked its way past her lips did nothing to keep his pulse in line or his dick in check.

  Eli cleared his throat in an effort to get his brain—and his other, more southerly parts—back online. “I’ve gotta say, I feel you on the no-dancing thing,” he told her, pointing to the spot where his Red Wings met the hay scattered over the floor of the stall. “Even though my boots say otherwise, I’m pretty sure both of my feet are lefties.”

  Scarlett stepped back from Clarabelle, tucking a strand of wayward hair behind the row of tiny silver hoops and studs climbing halfway up her ear as she slid back to the topic with ease. “After piano and dance were both a no go for me, I didn’t really want to try anything else. Once bitten, and all. But then when I was thirteen, I picked up a camera, just on a whim. It was just one of those PHD deals—”

  At the look of confusion he must have been broadcasting in hi-definition, she added, “Push Here, Dummy. Complete point and shoot, not a whole lot of skill required. Anyway, after two days with that thing, about a hundred and fifty still-life shots of everything from our fruit bowl to our front stoop in Brooklyn, and far too much cash for one-hour developing, I was a goner. I’ve been all in ever since.”

  “You were all in at thirteen?” Eli asked, although God, he probably shouldn’t be surprised.

  “Oh yeah. I worked my butt and most of my other parts off for all four years to get into the fine arts program at Yale.”

  Just when he’d been certain there was no more shock to be had from this woman, his what-the-fuck barometer exploded. “As in, Yale University. In New Haven. The third oldest institution of higher learning in the entire nation.” Christ, no wonder she’d been able to bust him quoting Walt Whitman.

  “Mmm-hmm. That’s the one.” If Scarlett’s nod was any sort of gauge, she was completely unfazed by both Eli’s reaction and her wildly impressive Ivy League alma mater. “They have the best photography program in the United States, and I didn’t see any point in anything other than going big.” She paused. “Did you go to college?”

  Every last one of his warning bells clanged, and he supersized his smile as he selected his words with near-surgical precision. “Operating a farm is more of a hands-on kind of thing.”

  “So none of you have gone?” she asked.


  Eli grabbed the out and ran like hell. “Hunter had the chance to go away to college—he was a hell of a running back in high school. He could’ve gotten any one of a half dozen scholarships to about as many schools. But Cross Creek is a family business, and he’s never wanted anything other than to stay here.”

  “I get that. This is where his passion is,” Scarlett said. She waited until Eli had emptied the gallon of fresh water into the trough on the far side of Clarabelle’s stall before adding on, “Most people feel like they belong in a place, I think. I’m just the odd man out because my place doesn’t stand still.”

  His heart went for broke in his chest. He needed to shut up, or wink or smirk or dish up some flirty little innuendo. Most of all, he need not to ask . . . “Doesn’t being the odd man out make you doubt what you picked?”

  A tiny crease appeared between her brows, but only for a second. “Not really, no. I’m used to making my own normal, and while I love my dads, the only place I’ve ever felt really, truly at home is behind the camera. So while I might have come from all over the place, it’s cool. I belong all over the place, too.”

  In that moment, with Scarlett standing in a patch of sunshine filtering in from the high, glassless window behind her and giving up a completely unvarnished smile, Eli almost forgot how to breathe. But then her smile shifted, becoming a self-deprecating version of itself, and she stepped back with a soft laugh.

  “Anyway. I’m sure that probably sounds really hokey to you, having been born and raised here at Cross Creek. Of course you belong in one place.”

  The admission that he’d never felt like he belonged on the farm was right there on the tip of his tongue, brashly begging for release. Before he could let the words loose, both Scarlett’s cell phone and the two-way radio at his hip went ballistic.

  “Oh!” she murmured at the same time Eli came out with a muttered curse.

  “What the . . .” With his heart in his windpipe, he unlatched the door to Clarabelle’s stall and ushered Scarlett to the main space of the barn, not wanting the chatter or the static from the two-way to spook the poor animal. “This is Eli. Everything okay?”

  “Copy that. Everything is fine.” Emerson’s voice threaded past the white noise hiss of their radio channel. “But did you place some kind of ad for apple picking that I don’t know about?”

  If there was a blue-ribbon medal for the world’s most bizarre question, Emerson had just won the thing, hands-frickin’-down. “No,” Eli managed past his confusion, moving closer to the empty stalls in the heart of the barn to give Scarlett some privacy to continue her call. “I only just realized we’d be good to go for next week’s pick-your-own this morning. Why?”

  “Because there’s been a ton of buzz about it on the Cross Creek Facebook page over the last couple of hours. Everybody and their mother wants to know when they can come pick apples, and our website hits have gone through the roof since lunch. People keep talking about some video of you.”

  “But that’s impossible.” Eli stared at the two-way in his hand, his brain chock-full of say what? But the sensation took a backseat to the press of his pulse against his ears as he looked across the barn and caught sight of the shell-shock taking over Scarlett’s pretty features.

  After a quick “over and out” to Emerson, he covered the packed-dirt floor between him and Scarlett in only a half dozen strides. “Scarlett? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, I . . .” She held up her cell phone. “That was Mallory.”

  “Okay,” he led, and for once, he was grateful for Scarlett’s jump-right-in tendencies.

  “She thought the video footage was great. Really great. In fact, she loved it so much that she didn’t want to sit on it until Tuesday, when the next set of articles was supposed to go live. So she did the editing and went ahead and posted the segment a couple of hours ago.”

  Eli’s jaw unhinged. “Damn, that was fast.”

  But before Eli could rewind enough to come up with something more eloquent, Scarlett said, “Yeah, hold that thought. Apparently, Mallory felt the biggest personal connection came from the part of the video where you and I were both in-frame together. I had no idea she would even consider doing anything with that footage other than scrapping it, but—”

  “That’s the part she put online? With me and you, goofing around?”

  Scarlett nodded. “Yes. And believe it or not, that isn’t even the most shocking part of what she said.”

  When all he could do was stare, she continued. “I guess some food blogger with a pretty big following happened to catch the link to the video when Mallory posted it on FoodE’s Twitter page. The blogger retweeted the link, and then some other people in her network retweeted it, too, and Mallory said the video is getting, um, a lot of traction.”

  People keep talking about some video of you . . . “Wait,” Eli said, his heart beginning to pound in earnest. “How much traction are we talking about, exactly?”

  Scarlett lifted the phone still pressed to her palm, a smile starting to maneuver past the stunned expression on her face as she held the thing out to show him a screen shot of FoodE’s Twitter page. “I don’t have specific numbers, but it looks like as of ten minutes ago, we were officially trending.”

  “Are you . . .” Eli trailed off, unable to shove the rest of his thoughts past all the shock having a hoedown in his gray matter.

  “Absolutely serious,” Scarlett answered without skipping so much as a breath or a beat. “The video of you and me picking apples is pretty much going viral, Eli. We may have done it inadvertently, but it looks like we found our blockbuster.”

  Her smile became a full-fledged bubble of laughter, and she pushed up to her toes to throw her arms around his neck.

  And out of sheer instinct, he kissed her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Two thoughts filled Eli’s brain as he slanted his mouth over Scarlett’s. The first was that kissing her should feel impulsive and reckless and crazy. The second?

  Was that the first thought could take the direct path to hell, because Scarlett felt fucking flawless in his arms.

  Their lips touched for only a second, two at the most, before Scarlett pulled back slightly to stare at him. Dread trickled into his belly on a reality chaser, and Jesus, Mary, and all the saints, had he seriously just kissed her?

  “God, Scarlett, I apologize.” Eli blinked. “I was out of line. I—”

  Before he could speak or react or even form a scrap of thought, she pressed up to kiss him back.

  For a sliver of a second, Eli stood stock-still, locked into place. Although the connection of their mouths was the same as it had been only seconds ago—just lips on lips, barely moving—this kiss was different. It wasn’t born of shock or excitement or impulse. It stemmed from want. Hot and pure.

  And he wasn’t holding back.

  Eli shifted forward, increasing the contact between their bodies in a hot rush of movement. With a sweep of his tongue, he parted Scarlett’s lips, coaxing them open just enough to capture the taste of her exhale. Her breath drifted out on a sigh that Eli felt against his chest, and yeah, closer.

  He explored her mouth in slow, deliberate strokes. Lowering one hand to the column of her neck and spreading his fingers wide, he hooked his thumb beneath the angle of her jaw to hold her steady while he pushed harder against her lips. Scarlett made a sound in the back of her throat, caught somewhere between a moan and a fierce, feminine growl, sending a relentless ripple of want all the way down Eli’s spine as he kissed and licked and searched.

  Closer.

  As if she’d formed the thought a fraction of a second before him, Scarlett altered her grasp on his shoulders, pressing forward for motion rather than contact. They moved a handful of steps until his back hit a solid surface—barn wall, probably—but at this point, she could’ve backed him up against a bed of flaming barbed wire and he wouldn’t have cared one whit. The only thing that mattered was that Scarlett was still flush against him, her mouth
under his mouth, her firm, full breasts on his chest. He wanted to taste every part of her all at once.

  Starting with that sharp tongue.

  Eli sucked her lower lip into his mouth, teasing the skin there until she opened wider to let him in. She met his every move, her tongue sliding over his in hot strokes, and her teeth nipping and teasing with just enough pressure to make his cock jerk behind the fly of his Levi’s.

  Fuck. Yeah. Closer wasn’t going to be enough.

  “Scarlett.” Eli broke off from her mouth with an exhale that came from deep in his throat. Starting a trail of open-mouthed kisses that got harder as they descended, he coasted his mouth over her jaw, unable to keep from lingering by the soft spot just below her ear before continuing his path over her neck.

  “Ah,” Scarlett moaned, more sound than actual word. “God, do that again,” she demanded, and suddenly, he found himself loving the hell out of the loose neckline of her shirt.

  “You’re bossy.”

  The grin he’d buried in the hollow of her throat doubled as she answered. “You already knew that. Now hurry up and kiss me. Right . . . there.”

  Her fingers closed over the cotton of his T-shirt, forming hot fists at his shoulders, and once again Eli was done holding back. He swiped his tongue over the indent between her collarbones, gripping her hips to maximize the tight, hot connection between their lower bodies. His cock throbbed in response, the friction of Scarlett’s body—so soft and sweet despite the demanding, almost primal push of her hips against his—taking him from desire to reckless need in less than a breath.

  Eli lifted his head, his lips so close to Scarlett’s that he could feel her breath as she let out a tiny moue of frustration.

  “You want me to keep kissing you?” He dropped his gaze to her slightly swollen mouth, his hand sliding from her hip to her rib cage before his brain registered his libido’s command to move.

  Scarlett met his stare with a bold one of her own. “Yes.”

  “Then say it.”

  Her brows edged upward, and she tested him with her silence. But that dark want welled up again to dare his hand higher, his fingers cupping her breast with only enough pressure to tease.