by Teri Wilson
He sighed, put the phone down and then picked it back up again just in case.
Still nothing. Damn it.
He did his best to ignore the fact that he was acting like a lovesick teenager and jabbed at the power button of the high-end espresso machine his father had imported from Europe. You could take Maximilian Crawford out of the big city, but you couldn’t take the big city out of Maximilian.
“There you are,” the older man said as he strolled into view.
Speak of the devil. “Hello, Dad.”
Finn flipped a switch, and dark, aromatic liquid began to fill his cup. Black, like his mood.
“Where have you been, son?” Maximilian jammed his hands on his hips. “Viv Dalton has been trying to get ahold of you all day.”
Finn was well aware of the fact that the matchmaker/wedding planner had been trying to reach him. She’d been blowing his phone up all morning, hence the missed call notifications.
“I had meetings all day in Billings. I have a job, remember?” He sipped his coffee, then arched a brow at his father. “And contrary to whatever you’ve started to believe, it doesn’t involve carrying on the family name.”
That’s what his five brothers were for.
Maximilian glared at Finn’s phone, sitting quietly on the marble countertop. “You need to call her back. She’s set up a date for you this evening.”
Just as Finn suspected. Ordinarily, this bit of news would have taken the edge off his stormy mood. Now, not so much.
“No.” Finn shook his head.
“What do you mean, no?” Maximilian looked at him as if he’d just sprouted two heads.
Finn didn’t really blame him. He’d nearly surprised himself, as well. “I mean, no. I can’t.”
Can’t was a stretch. Won’t was more like it. After recently spending the day with Avery, he just didn’t have it in him for another date with another total stranger. Frankly, the idea didn’t sound appealing at all.
What the heck had gotten into him?
Avery’s spur-of-the-moment kiss, that’s what.
Finn cleared his throat and took another scalding gulp of coffee.
“Balderdash.” Maximilian waved a dismissive hand. “Viv has been going the extra mile to line up these dates for you. Unless you have other plans, you’ll go.”
Much to his dismay, Finn had zero plans. Avery had agreed to see him again, but he’d been trying to give her some space, since she’d seemed so rattled by the kiss. He thought it best to let her contact him instead of the other way around.
He just hadn’t bargained on it taking so long...or that waiting for her call would make him feel like an insecure kid hoping for an invitation to prom.
“I do have other plans, actually.” He set down his coffee cup with a little too much force, picked up his phone and tucked it into his pocket as he strode toward the door.
“Since when?” a disbelieving Maximilian said to his back.
Since now.
* * *
“Finn.” Avery wrapped her arms around her middle and glanced back and forth between the father of her baby and Old Gene, sitting across from one another at the big farm table in the kitchen of the boarding house. “I didn’t realize you were here.”
“I gave Melba a shout upstairs and asked her to send you down.” Old Gene shrugged.
The baby goat was snuggled in his lap with its spindly legs tucked beneath itself. What must Finn think? He lived on that massive log cabin estate out at the Ambling A, and their kitchen looked like a scene out of Green Acres.
She blinked.
Their kitchen?
You don’t actually live here, remember. This is temporary.
“Yes, you did holler for me to send Avery to the kitchen.” Melba bustled into the room behind Avery and paused, hands on her sturdy hips. “But you didn’t mention we had company.”
Finn pushed back from the table and stood. “Hello, Mrs. Strickland.” He set amused eyes on Avery. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Her face went warm, suddenly bashful to be interacting with Finn in front of the Stricklands, which was patently ridiculous. They weren’t kids, after all.
But Melba and Old Gene were nurturing in a way that Avery’s parents had never been. Not only was it making her think long and hard about what sort of mother she hoped to be, but it was also making her fall more in love with Rust Creek Falls every day.
Of course the fact that there was currently a handsome cowboy smiling at her didn’t hurt, either.
“What brings you by, Mr. Crawford?” Melba, apparently the only woman in Montana impervious to Finn’s charms, crossed her arms.
“I thought Avery might like to take a ride out to the maple syrup farm.” He winked at Avery—just a quick, nearly imperceptible flutter of his lashes, but all the air in the room seemed to gather in her lungs. She was breathless all of a sudden. “If that’s okay with you folks, of course.”
Avery bit back a smile. He was asking Melba and Old Gene for permission to take her on a date, which was kind of adorable. Too adorable to resist, actually.
“Well, I don’t know,” Melba said.
“Don’t be silly, dear.” Old Gene stood. “It’s fine. Avery would probably love it out there. It’s so colorful this time of year.”
The goat bleated its agreement. Melba, outnumbered, sighed.
“I’ll go get changed.” Avery pulled her T-shirt down in an effort to more fully cover her midsection. She was still wearing yoga pants, and chances were they showed off an entirely different body than the one Finn had seen naked a few months ago.
“It’s a farm.” Finn tilted his head and looked Avery up and down. “You’re not planning on slipping into one of your pencil skirts, are you?”
She laughed a little too loud. Her days of fitting into a pencil skirt were over. For five months, minimum. “No, just something cozy.”
Translation: something baggy enough to hide her rapidly expanding baby bump.
She slipped into one of her new flannel purchases, a soft pair of leggings and bouncy sneakers. Melba seemed a little less hostile when she returned to the kitchen. Finn must have really turned on the charm, because when they left for the maple syrup farm, Melba sent them off with a thermos of her special apple cider.
“The Stricklands really seem to enjoy having you around,” Finn said as they passed the Welcome to Rust Creek Falls sign on the outskirts of town.
The smells of cinnamon and spice swirled in the cab of Finn’s truck, wrapping around them like a plush blanket. Avery closed her eyes and took a deep inhale. “Mmm. Melba and Old Gene are the best, aren’t they?”
“They are, but I’m not sure the feeling is mutual, especially where Melba is concerned.”
“She’s just a little protective, that’s all.” Avery nearly gasped at how colorful the trees looked as they moved deeper and deeper into the countryside and farther away from Rust Creek Falls.
Finn shot her a mischievous glance. “Do you think you need protecting from me, Princess?”
Avery thought about the warning Melba had given her about Finn after they’d bumped into him at the general store.
Finn isn’t right for a nice girl like you.
She arched a brow. “You tell me. Do I?”
Finn responded with a wide grin that told her he definitely hadn’t forgotten about the way she thrown herself at him in the pasture at the Ambling A. Maybe Melba had it wrong and he was the one who needed protecting.
Avery straightened in her seat. Finn could smile all he wanted. She intended to take this time together to have a serious discussion with him. There would be no more kissing. Not today, anyway.
Except there was.
Once again, Avery fell completely under the spell of Finn in his natural habitat. Why did he suddenly seem like he belonged on the pages of a hot cowboys ca
lendar rather than in the boardrooms where she usually ran into him back in Texas?
The maple syrup farm was much quieter than she anticipated. She’d expected trees with sap buckets attached and the hum of boilers in the nearby sugarhouse. But as Finn explained, the sapping season usually ran from February until mid-April or so. The farms still had a good number of visitors during autumn, though, due to the spectacular fall colors of the sugar maple trees.
Avery could hardly believe her eyes. After they’d stopped by the farm’s quaint little gift shop and Avery purchased glass bottles of syrup in varying colors of amber, they went for a walk in the sugar bush. The deeper into the woods they wandered, the closer together the trees grew, until she and Finn were surrounded by nothing but blazing red. Crimson leaves floated through the air like radiant snowflakes, and when they came upon a tiny white chapel nestled far into the cluster of maples, Avery was completely and utterly enchanted.
That was her only explanation for what happened next. It was as if the beautiful surroundings had indeed made her fall under a magical spell, because when she looked at Finn in the dappled sunlight of the fiery woods, her canvas bag of maple syrup slipped from her hand and fell to the ground with a soft thud. She wrapped her arms around the father of her baby and kissed him, long and deep. She kissed him so hard that the force of it seemed to shake loose the leaves from the surrounding sugar maples, until at last she had to pull away to catch her breath.
What was happening to her? Why did she keep losing her head like this?
“I’m so sorry,” she said, backing away against the solid trunk of a maple tree. Good. Maybe it would knock some sense into her. “I don’t know why I keep doing that.”
Finn gave her a tender smile that slowly built into a full-wattage grin. Avery’s cheeks burned with heat, and she suspected her face had gone as red as the surrounding foliage.
But like the gentleman that he was, her Texas-businessman-turned-Montana-cowboy spared her the embarrassment of saying anything. He simply bent to pick up her discarded bag, then took her by the hand and walked her back down the forest trail, leaving the kiss behind.
Just another of their secrets.
Chapter Five
Finn returned to the Ambling A after taking Avery back to the boarding house to find his dad and his brother Hunter fully immersed in a craft project with Hunter’s six-year-old daughter, Wren.
The two men looked woefully out of place in their ranch attire while doing something with paper plates full of paint. Finn wasn’t entirely sure what they were trying to accomplish, but Wren seemed as pleased as punch, which he supposed was the objective of the messy affair.
He took it all in with bemused interest and cocked an eyebrow at his father. “This is a surprise. For some reason, I thought you had plans tonight with one of your lady friends.”
It was a logical assumption. On any given Friday night, Maximilian typically had a date. Sometimes two. When he wasn’t preoccupied with meddling into his sons’ love lives, of course.
“I do.” Maximilian ruffled Wren’s fair blond hair. “With this little lady right here.”
Wren gigged and made jazz hands at Finn, her palms and fingers dripping orange paint onto the copies of the Rust Creek Falls Gazette that provided a protective covering for the table. “We’re making handprint leaves, Uncle Finn. Do you want to make one, too?”
Large sheets of manila paper were scattered in front of her, decorated with yellow, orange and red handprints that had been fashioned into leaves with the help of stems and leafy veins drawn in brown magic marker.
“It looks like the three of you have got it covered.” Finn eyed his brother. “Where on earth did you come up with this?”
Hunter shrugged. “Pinterest.”
“Pinterest?” Finn bit back a smile. If anyone actually needed Viv Dalton’s dating service, it was Hunter. Most definitely.
“What?” Hunter said, as if perusing Pinterest for kids’ craft projects was something all of the Crawford brothers did on a daily basis.
“Nothing.” Finn shook his head. It was actually really sweet how his brother had immersed himself into being both a father and mother to Wren. Not that he’d had much of a choice.
Still, it was pretty amusing seeing his rough-and-tumble brother and father sitting around doing arts and crafts on a Friday night. He was used to them doing things like roping calves and cutting hay, not finger-painting.
“I’m going up to bed. See you all in the morning.” Finn faked a yawn and headed toward the stairs, eager to shut himself in his room before Maximilian had a chance to question him about his whereabouts.
“Hold up there, son.”
Too late.
“Where have you been off to tonight?” Maximilian frowned down at the mess of paint in front of him. Clearly he’d skipped the Pinterest tutorial. “The young woman Viv wanted to introduce you to called here a little while ago and said she hadn’t heard from you.”
Finn’s jaw clenched shut tight. Give it a rest, old man. I’m handling my own love life just fine these days.
And since when had Viv started giving out his phone number?
“I was with Avery Ellington,” he said.
There. Maybe if he threw Maximilian a bone, his father would leave him alone for once.
“Is that right?” Maximilian’s eyebrows furrowed and then released. “Glad to hear it. The Ellington apple seems to have fallen quite far from the tree. You two make a fine couple.”
“Right.” Hunter let out a snort as he drew another stem onto one of Wren’s handprint leaves. “As if Finn is actually serious about her.”
Hunter’s casual dismissal of Finn’s feelings about Avery rubbed him the wrong way, although he wasn’t entirely sure why. She was only in town temporarily, and as Finn himself had reiterated time and again, he wasn’t looking for anything serious.
“He’s seen her more than once. For your brother, that’s serious,” Maximilian said.
Hunter nodded. “Point taken.”
Finn’s chest grew tight. Why had he thought it was ever a good idea to live under the same roof as his family? “Are you two enjoying yourselves?”
“I am.” Wren wiggled in her chair.
“Yes. You are, sweetheart. And I’m glad.” Finn narrowed his gaze at his father. “But you need to calm down. Avery and I are just casually seeing each other until she goes back to Texas. It doesn’t even qualify as a relationship.”
Right... That’s why you can’t stop thinking about her.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, suddenly acutely uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was headed.
“Would it be so awful if she stayed in Montana?” Maximilian pressed his palm into a paper plate full of yellow paint.
Finn couldn’t help wishing he’d accidentally spill it down the front of his snap-button Western shirt. “I’m surprised you’re pressing the issue. Aren’t you and her father are supposed to be mortal enemies?”
“Ellington or not, Avery seems good for you.” Maximilian waved a hand, sending yellow paint splatters flying, much to Wren’s amusement. “Her daddy and I haven’t spoken in years. Maybe all that mess is simply water under the bridge.”
Finn somehow doubted Avery’s dad saw it that way.
“Regardless, I’m not in a relationship with his daughter.” Finn’s head hurt all of a sudden. He sighed. “We’re just...”
Words failed him.
What were they doing? Hell if he knew. Nor did he have any idea why he was still standing around trying to explain it to his meddling father and smart-ass brother.
“You’re just what, exactly?” The twinkle in Maximilian’s eyes was as brilliant as a three-carat diamond engagement ring from Tiffany.
“Never mind. I’m going to bed.” Finn ignored the suggestive smirks aimed his way and headed
to his suite.
He didn’t have the first clue what he and Avery were doing. One minute she was throwing herself at him, and the next she was knocking her head into a tree. It should have been making him crazy. And it was...
But in a good way—a way that had him counting the minutes until he could see her again. The warmth of Avery’s sultry mouth had suddenly become the last thing he thought about before he drifted off to sleep and his first memory upon waking. Because whatever was really going on between them, Finn liked it.
He liked it a whole heck of a lot.
* * *
The third time Finn showed up unannounced at Strickland’s, Avery was ready.
Call it intuition, or chalk it up to wishful thinking—Avery greatly preferred to think of it as the former. Either way, when he showed up bright and early the morning following their trip to the maple syrup farm, no one was surprised. Not her, not Melba, not Old Gene.
Not even the baby goat. The tiny animal woke from her nap on her dog bed by the back door and kicked her little hooves as Melba escorted Finn into the kitchen.
“Look who’s here,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Again.”
Melba seemed to be doing her best to keep up her general dislike of Finn, but the sparkle in her eye told Avery he was wearing her down. The tote bag full of maple syrup in his hands probably didn’t hurt.
“Who wants pancakes?” Finn said, winking at Avery.
The baby goat bleated, and Avery couldn’t help but smile.
Melba narrowed her gaze at Finn. “Pancakes aren’t on the menu this morning.”
Claire had whipped up her famous ham biscuits, which were up for grabs in the dining room. Avery had already eaten one, but she wouldn’t turn down pancakes with real maple syrup. Not when she was eating for two.
“I thought I’d make them.” Finn reached into his bag and extracted a box of organic pancake mix. “Pumpkin spice. Who’s in?”
