His pulse did the two-step in his veins, but he took a deep breath of early fall air to counteract the thump-thump-thump. “You’re awful confident,” he said, simultaneously loving the reply of her smirk and wanting to kiss the expression right off her lips.
“I get it from you.”
Damn, he had to give her that one. “Well, I’m glad one of us feels like me getting this job is a slam dunk.”
Her brows shot up toward the gold-blond fall of her bangs. “You don’t?”
And here he was, right back in dicey territory. “I think I can do the job,” Eli said slowly, but oh, screw it. Scarlett would just see right through him if he tried to dodge the truth. What’s more, for the first time in . . . well, ever, he didn’t want to.
He’d been hiding for far too long. Brash or not, it was time to admit the truth.
He was a writer. And he wanted the chance to say so, out loud in front of God and everybody.
“I just really want the job,” Eli admitted. “Guess I’m feelin’ pretty nervous.”
Without slowing her footsteps on the path, Scarlett reached out to wrap her the fingers of her free hand around his. But before she could say anything to accompany the gesture, Eli’s cell phone sounded off in a buzz-and-beep combo that sent his heartbeat through the stratosphere.
“Jeez!” he blurted, stopping short on the path and lowering the egg bucket in his grasp before fumbling the thing out of his back pocket. Oh, shit. “It’s Rafael.”
Scarlett’s eyes went dinner plate wide. “Are you going to answer it?”
“I probably should.” Check that. He really should.
So why the hell couldn’t he make himself press the icon?
“Eli.” Scarlett squeezed his hand—just one quick pulse, but man, it was everything—before stepping back. “Answer the phone.”
“Okay, yeah.” Setting his resolve, he tapped the screen to take the call. “Hello. Eli Cross.”
Time slowed and sped up all at once. Afraid he’d lose the precarious thread of cell coverage he’d managed to Hail Mary his way into in order for the call to reach him in the first place, Eli kept his Red Wings cemented in place on the sun-strewn gravel. His conversation with Rafael turned out to be short and sweet, though, and five minutes later, the call ended as unceremoniously as it had begun.
“Well?” Scarlett asked, making her way back from the spot by the main house where she’d moved to give him some privacy, even though if he knew her at all, it had probably damn near driven her nuts. As soon as Eli looked up at her, her cheeks flushed pink with excitement and her stare bright and wide open with possibility, the reality of what had just happened sank all the way into his brain.
“I got the job.”
There was a split second of silence, and truly, Eli was just as stunned as Scarlett seemed at hearing the words out loud. But then she let out a gleeful whoop, jumping into his arms to kiss his face and laugh that unfettered laugh he felt in his blood and his bones and all his other places besides, and just like that, shit got even more perfect.
“I knew it. I knew it!” Scarlett pressed her grin to his mouth, then his cheek, then back to his mouth again. “Oh my God, congratulations! I’m so happy for you.”
“I’m happy, too,” Eli admitted, trying to steady his hands and his thoughts even though his adrenal gland was making it a tough row to hoe.
She pulled back, but only far enough to look him in the eye. “Have you thought about how you’re going to tell your dad and Owen and Hunter?”
His heart tripped against his sternum. He hadn’t wanted to dwell on it too much, in case Rafael decided to come back with a thanks, but no thanks. “Not really. I mean, I’ll only be gone for a week, and at that point we’ll be done with the final harvest. But we’re not there yet, and there’s still this bet with Greyson to contend with.”
“You deserve to tell them and be happy. You’ve done everything in your power to win the bet and do right by Cross Creek,” Scarlett said, and even though Eli knew she was right, he still shook his head.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna. Look”—he slipped a quick kiss over her lips, mostly for courage—“Don’t get me wrong. I want to tell my father and brothers about this trip right now. I do.”
Her eyes remained steady on his despite the ultra-bright sunshine spilling down over both of them. “So why don’t you?”
“Because shooting my mouth off without thinking of the consequences is what got me into this mess with Greyson in the first place, and I can’t make that mistake twice. If I tell my family I want to leave now, chances are, they’ll be happy for me.” He brushed off the silent I hope whispering down from the back hallway of his brain. He’d get to that worry soon enough. “But they’ll be distracted by it, too, and I can’t do that to them as we head into the last three days of the harvest. Especially not with so much on the line.”
Scarlett tipped her head in concession. “Telling them isn’t going to be a small deal.”
“I know I have a lot to figure out in terms of how I’m going to work this. Still, saying anything before Fall Fling just doesn’t feel right. It’s only a few more days, and I’ve already put in a rush request for my passport.” It was the first thing he’d done when he and Scarlett had gotten back from the cabin. “I’m ready to tell my family I’m a writer. I just have to do it on my own terms.”
“Okay,” she said, and Eli’s surprise took control of his mouth in one fell swoop.
“You’re not going to try to convince me to go all in and just tell them now?”
Scarlett simply shrugged. “If you’re asking me if I wish you’d make the leap and be who you are, then the answer is yes. But how you do that—and when—isn’t up to me.” An odd, nameless emotion pulled at her features, gone before Eli could even bet good money he’d seen it. “As long you’re not having second thoughts.”
“What? No.” The words flew past his lips, automatic and hot. “No,” he repeated, this time with more control. “I’m not having second thoughts.”
“Alright. Then you’ll tell them when you’re ready, and I won’t say anything until you do.”
Scarlett pressed up to kiss him one last time before picking up the bucket she’d temporarily abandoned beside the dirt-and-gravel path. Eli bent down to mirror the gesture, and they made their way toward the henhouse, side by side. Although his gut churned with so many emotions that he couldn’t pin one down for love or money, he felt oddly light, as if a boulder he hadn’t known he’d been carrying had suddenly been lifted from across his shoulders.
Funny, the sensation was suddenly nothing compared with what went whipping through him as he watched Scarlett approach the grassy area surrounding the faded-red henhouse.
“Good morning, Parsley! Hello, Lavender,” she cooed as the chickens all chattered their way over to her, ruffling their feathers and pecking happily at the air. “Oh, don’t shove, Thyme. It’s not ladylike. Yes, Buttercup, I see you, too. Good morning, sweetheart.”
Eli stared, unable to check his surprise. “You named the chickens?”
“Of course,” she said, greeting a few more of the birds, who were now conversing in a series of soft squawks, as happy as girls in a schoolyard. “They’re my ladies. Anyway, you named Clarabelle.”
“Yeah, but there’s only one of her.” The henhouse held upward of fifty chickens, for Pete’s sake. Not that that little nugget seemed to be any sort of roadblock for Scarlett.
“I know you guys have the birds tagged and numbered to keep track of everybody, but I see them every day. Calling them by number felt totally impersonal. Well, except for Nine over here, because she likes it. Don’t you, sugar?” Scarlett asked, pausing to kneel down and slide her hand deftly over the back of a gray-and-white hybrid who clucked her pleasure at the attention. “Seriously, I had no idea these beauties had so much personality. They even give hugs!”
He barked out a laugh, much to the dismay of the chickens gathered around Scarlett’s crazy, c
olorful boots. “Did you get into the stash of moonshine Owen keeps in the top kitchen cupboard in the main house?”
“No,” Scarlett said, attempting what she’d probably meant as a frown, except the pure honesty on her face turned it into a smirk at best. “I’m absolutely serious.”
“Oh, so am I,” Eli promised. “Rumor has it old Harley Martin makes that stuff right in his bathtub. It’s a complete out-of-body experience. Right up till you start prayin’ for death, anyway.”
Not even Scarlett’s sigh could make a dent in her pretty factor. “I see the girls and I are just going to have to prove you wrong, cowboy.” She handed over her camera, waiting for Eli to loop the thing around his neck before she waggled her brows and moved a few more steps through the shade of the chicken yard. Squatting down beside an old tree stump, she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Come here, Buttercup. Of course, you want some sugar, don’t you? You’re such a love.”
Eli had a smart-assed retort all cued up and ready for launch . . . but then the words stopped cold in his throat. The big, tawny-colored Rhode Island Red she’d greeted a minute ago came strutting across the grass, fluttering her way up to the low, flat plane of the tree stump. For a minute, Scarlett simply sat there, with her knees pressed against the soft earth and her arms outstretched in a loose, empty circle. But then the chicken moved closer, as if drawn to the lilt of Scarlett’s encouraging murmurs, and Eli’s brows took a one-way trip up.
“There you go,” came Scarlett’s near whisper, her voice sliding out like honey over oven-fresh cornbread, warm and rich and so damn sweet. “Come give me a hug.”
She waited for a beat, then two, for the hen to settle into the cradle of her arms. Closing her embrace ever so slowly, Scarlett rested her fingertips on the bird’s back, running a soft touch all the way down her wings before lifting her hands to repeat the process. The chicken leaned into Scarlett’s embrace, pressing her feathered belly even closer against Scarlett’s shoulder with each stroke.
But what floored Eli most wasn’t that she was actually hugging a chicken, or even that she’d grown so comfortable, so perfectly at home at Cross Creek over the last month, that she’d realized chicken hugging could even be a thing.
No, it was the look on Scarlett’s face that was doing him in, so wide open and unabashedly beautiful that he couldn’t have taken his eyes off her if the world were burning down around them. Eli’s heart folded in half, putting the air in his lungs at a premium. He knew—Christ, he knew—the feeling commandeering every last part of his common sense should scare the hell out of him.
But instead, he found himself wanting every reckless, crazy, beautiful thing about Scarlett, and in that moment, with his boots in the grass and his heart in his throat, Eli knew he was falling in love with her.
Although biding her time for the rest of the day had nearly driven her around the bend, Scarlett waited until Eli had headed out to help Hunter bale the last of the hay in the west field before she made her way back to Cross Creek’s main house. Aside from one more set of photos that she’d promised Mallory from the Fall Fling festivities, her work at Cross Creek was done in the official sense. FoodE had seen a steady increase in traffic, subscriptions, and advertising dollars, and the numbers had continued to grow stronger with each published article and every passing day. Likewise, Cross Creek had seen its busiest farmers’ market in three seasons last Saturday, along with having added yet another local contract for greenhouse produce to their books. Scarlett had found herself just as giddy about the farm’s success as she felt for Mallory’s saved business—there was no way one could’ve gone down without the other in either direction, really—so she’d come up with a little surprise to thank the Crosses for letting her elbow her way into their lives for the month.
“Okay. Time to make some magic,” Scarlett murmured, shifting her weight from one foot to the other on the porch boards as she nudged the front door open with care, pausing first to listen, then to toe out of her dusty (but super cute) work boots before crossing the threshold into the house.
“Hello?” she called out, tacking on an, “Anybody here?” just to be sure she wasn’t sneaking up on anyone, or worse yet, intruding where she didn’t belong. The comfortable quiet she got in reply told her she was good on both counts, though, so she tiptoed past the foyer and into the Crosses’ small, formal living room. Kneeling down, she slipped her fingers beneath the sofa, reaching around until she hit pay dirt, aka the stack of slim, silver picture frames she’d snuck in to the house and stashed there earlier this morning.
Scarlett glanced at the window, wishing like hell she could do that mind-meld, what-time-is-it thing with the sun that all four Cross men seemed to have ingrained in their DNA. As it stood, she was left to stare down the lacy pattern of golden light drifting in through the curtains and pull her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans for a time check.
Three-thirty. Right. Time to act fast.
Working with quick fingers, she removed the back of the first picture frame, then reached into the padded envelope she’d slipped beneath the sofa along with the frames. A tiny bit of trimming with the portable cutting blade she’d brought from her apartment for this very purpose, and yessss.
Scarlett grinned. Flipped the frame over to inspect the fit of the double-matted black-and-white photograph. Grinned even bigger.
“Perfect.”
She repeated the process with the other picture frames, filling them one by one until only a single photograph remained in the envelope. Pushing to her feet, she padded over the cream-colored area rug, carefully lifting the one silver frame she hadn’t brought with her from its resting spot on the side table. The snap of the frame fasteners and the rustle of the aging photo paper that had been pressed against the glass became the backdrop for her swiftly moving heartbeat, a low, bittersweet ache centering itself between her ribs as she finished her task and placed the frame back on the table, then arranged all the others around it.
Scarlett looked at the photos, the squeeze in her chest going for a double as her mind tumbled back to all the Cross family breakfasts and dinners—the ones she’d found so foreign at first. Of course, that had been before she’d grown accustomed to the way Eli always razzed Owen about his cooking and Hunter never forgot to cut a few flowers for the table because Emerson had remarked—just once—how pretty they were. With a bittersweet sigh, Scarlett let her gaze linger on the photographs; the natural smiles, the embraces, the support and belonging so effortlessly shared in each simple glance.
She’d been mistaken a minute ago, when she’d thought the first photograph was perfect. As flawless as the composition was, with just the right ratio of shadows and light, of subject and background, she hadn’t realized the one thing that had been missing.
That photo had been by itself on the table. But now that it was with all the others, exactly where it belonged?
Now it was perfect.
“Well, now. This is a right nice surprise.”
Tobias’s voice dumped Scarlett back to the living room, shock kicking through her in a hard burst despite the slow, smooth cadence of his accent.
“Oh, jeez!” Her chin whipped up, one hand clapping over the front of her mostly clean T-shirt to keep her heart from vaulting right out of her chest. “Mr. Cross, you took me by surprise.”
“Sorry ’bout that. Didn’t know anyone was up here just yet.” He tipped his Stetson at her, his smile reaching all the way up to the sun-weathered creases around his eyes. “You workin’ on some business for Miss Parsons?”
Scarlett steadied herself with an inhale. “Actually, I was working on something for you.”
“Were you now?” His surprise showed only in the slight lift of his salt-and-pepper brows, but she countered it with a definitive nod.
“I wanted to thank you for letting me come to Cross Creek and take all these photos and videos,” she said. “You’ve all been so kind, but I know it couldn’t have been easy to have a stran
ger in your midst all month.”
“I don’t reckon any of us think of you as a stranger. Least of all, Eli.”
The mention of Eli’s name was enough to send a flutter of happiness through Scarlett’s belly, and she had no choice but to let loose with the smile winding its way over her mouth. “I suppose not. But still, I wanted to do something to thank you, so”—she stepped aside, revealing the frames she’d lined up over the side table—“I chose some of the portraits and candid photos I took and made you an album of sorts.”
Her excitement grew along with her smile, and she gestured to the picture frames as Tobias stepped closer, the surprise on his face plain. “There are photos of each of you individually, and then a few of everyone in pairs or small groups. I included Emerson, too,” Scarlett said, because in truth, it had seemed terribly wrong not to. “But I have to admit, the picture of you with Owen, Hunter, and Eli is my favorite.”
Okay, so it was an understatement. She’d let out a God’s honest gasp when she’d first seen the shot of the Cross men standing on the porch steps, their arms thrown around one another and their faces caught up in candid laughter. They looked so happy, so much like a family, that she’d known in that instant how to thank them for their hospitality.
“You’ve got a mighty fine eye,” Tobias said, the compliment sending a flush of warmth over Scarlett’s cheeks.
“Thank you. You’ve got a mighty fine family.”
Shifting back, she watched as his gaze lingered over each photograph, her palms growing slick at her sides when he reached the very last one in the row.
“I took the liberty of scanning the picture of you and Mrs. Cross that you already had in here,” Scarlett said, and oh God. Borrowing the photo, even for the few minutes it had taken to scan the image for some digital sharpening and reprinting, had been a really brash move. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds. I know the picture must mean a lot to you, and I didn’t alter the original. It’s right there in the frame, behind the one I reprinted. And it’s a lovely shot. The original, I mean. But I . . .”
Crossing the Line (The Cross Creek Series Book 2) Page 26
