by Melissa Tagg
If she stayed.
“Nigel,” she began, but when she turned it was to see an empty space in the doorframe and to hear every groan of the hardwood floor as he retreated to the front door. Should she follow him?
She stared at the tablecloth, half whisked off the table after Nigel had brushed past, until an acrid scent yanked her into action. The bread! She snatched the sheet from the oven, the blackened surface of the bread registering through a swell of smoke.
Tears stung her eyes as she coughed.
At a rapping on the back door, she nearly dropped the pan. Instead, it rattled to the counter as she stalked across the room and flung open the door usually only used by family.
Beckett. So not who she wanted to see right now. Not after Nigel. Not after Saturday night. “What?”
He blinked. “You okay? What’s burning?”
“Nothing anymore. Do you need something?”
His brown eyes bore into hers. “Yes. A job.”
5
It’d been thirty-eight hours and a handful of minutes since Beckett had stood in Kit’s grandparents’ kitchen and made his case. Begged for a job.
One in which he worked for free.
This being Maple Valley, word had already spread through town that the mayor was petitioning Kit to stay, keep the orchard open. Suddenly, he’d had his answer. Way he saw it, four or five weeks of volunteering at the orchard and he could have his community service done before his JAG interview in September.
That is, if Kit said yes.
And if he could convince the firm to give him a personal leave of absence. Hence the yelling in his ear at the moment.
“Are you even listening to me, Walker?”
Beckett held his phone a good inch away from his ear, the first cool breeze in days skimming over his face as he passed under a flapping striped awning and made his way toward Coffee Coffee. Raegan had assured him it was one of the best additions in town since he’d moved away. Second to Seth’s restaurant, of course, which his cousin had opened just last year.
Tuesday night he’d brought Kit a five-pound bag of candy corn to cushion his request. Yesterday morning he’d had donuts delivered to the farmhouse. Maybe caffeine would work better than sugar.
“Of course I’m listening, Elliott, but there’s really no cause to lecture me about responsibility and my role at the firm. I promise I wouldn’t be asking for this if it weren’t important.” Across the street and down a grassy slope, the Blaine River jostled against its banks.
“Of course there’s reason to lecture. We’ve rescheduled two depositions and Carol’s been working until ten each night to get the paperwork for the Bleckley case filed.” The junior partner at Louder, Boyce & Shillinger, son of Elliott Boyce, Sr., spoke with all the grace of a gong. “A one-week vacation midsummer? Fine, okay. But a month and a half?”
“Maybe only a month.” He’d just have to work crazy-long hours at the orchard.
“There isn’t room for ‘maybes’ on our schedule. Who do you think you work for? A hokey backwoods firm repping mom and pop shops? We have some of the biggest corporate clients in the country and they expect us to be fully staffed.”
Mosaic-topped metal tables dotted the sidewalk in front of Coffee Coffee, and the lilt of some old crooner’s song drifted from inside.
“Be glad you’re talking to me on the phone, not in person, Elliott. Because if you’d just dissed mom ’n’ pop stores out loud in Maple Valley, you’d have started a riot.”
This town thrived on local business with a side of seasonal tourism—the heritage railroad and museum Dad had taken over when they moved back to Iowa and Kit’s orchard being the main autumn draws.
After walking away from Kit Saturday night, never would he have expected to find himself back at the Danby house so soon. To be asking to spend the coming month working alongside the woman who’d once called him reckless and impulsive.
It’d stung because it was true.
He clenched his jaw against the memory. If he wanted to make it through the next month or more, he’d have to completely close himself off to thoughts of her wedding night, that’s all there was to it. Besides, what was the point in remembering? He had to focus on the present, the future. Despite everything that’d gone wrong between him and Kit, they could help each other now.
“This is all beside the point, anyway,” Elliott said—flatly, firmly. “You missed a meeting yesterday, Beckett. Stanley Oil.”
Beckett stopped a few paces from the coffee shop’s entrance. Ohhh, Beck, you didn’t. He dropped into a chair at one of the tables outside Coffee Coffee, brunt realization buckling him. Months ago, he’d practically begged for the chance to take the lead on the potential client acquisition. He’d done the legwork, met multiple times with the oil company’s rep, finally scheduled a meeting between the Stanley Oil board officers and the law partners.
How in the world could he have forgotten?
“I am so—”
“Look, there’s nothing more to say. I hate that I’m the one they’re making do this, but as the lowest partner on the totem pole . . .”
Searing August heat clawed at him. Too, a suffocating dread.
“I should’ve just told you first thing. The partners voted last night to let you go, Beckett.”
No. No.
“Elliott—”
“It wasn’t entirely their choice.”
“Don’t you mean your choice? You’re a partner, too.”
“I abstained from the vote due to our college friendship.” A friendship that was the only reason Beckett had landed an internship and later a job in the first place. “The officers from Stanley were offended by you not being there, I guess. Like, really offended.”
“So firing me is a strategic move.” Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Elliott’s silence bulleted from the other end of the call.
Somehow, minutes later, he ended up in the coffee shop, standing in line like a zombie. Shocked. Numb. He’d been fired. Fired. The clutter of voices around him, the gurgle of coffee machines, it all felt distant, muted.
Until a sharp voice and a baby’s cry plunged into his haze.
“Well?”
His gaze snapped to the girl behind Coffee Coffee’s counter. She looked ready to lose it as she attempted to calm the infant pressed against her in some kind of sling. But the wailing only grew louder.
“Well?” she demanded again. Her dark eyeliner matched her jet-black hair, which was pushed back on one side to reveal piercings all the way up her ear. “There’s a line behind you, if you haven’t noticed.”
At the cashier’s annoyed words, he glanced over his shoulder. A group of teens, a man reading a book, a girl with a neon green backpack.
He turned back to the counter. “Sorry, I’m still deciding—”
“Order now or forever hold your peace.”
Did she have to choose those words? Her nametag peeked out from the sling—Megan. She tried hushing her baby again. The noise of the infant’s cries, the rising voices of the teenagers behind him, the annoyingly smooth song playing over the speakers . . . all of it like scraping glass shards over top the grating realization of what had just happened.
He’d lost his job. His income. His safety net if the JAG thing didn’t work out.
“You know there’s such a thing as a babysitter.” Great, and now he was taking it out on the barista.
“And there’s such a thing as having compassion for single mothers trying to run a business.”
“You run this place?” Hold up, Kate had told him about this girl. His older sister had sort of taken Megan under her wing last year, become the girl’s friend last year when she’d needed it most. Kate had forgotten to mention the part about her sardonic edge.
“You think you can do better?” Megan reached into her sling and pulled out her baby. “Here, go ahead, give it a try.” She lifted the baby over the counter.
“I—”
“Go on, Mr. Know-it-all.”
And because he didn’t know what else to do, because no one else seemed to be weirded out by the fact that the pushy young woman who was apparently the manager of this place was thrusting her child at him, he took the baby. Obviously a she, obviously not more than a few months old. She wore a green onesie and a wrinkled expression until . . .
Until the second her head landed against his chest.
Just like that, her cries faded. Her kicking legs stilled.
Megan stared, mouth agape as her straight hair fell over one eye. “I don’t believe it.”
The fuzzy head tucked into his cotton tee made a sound of contentment. “I don’t either.”
“You some kind of baby whisperer or something?”
“Does this mean my coffee’s on the house?” In his periphery, he noted the details he’d missed when he’d walked in dazed—the exposed brick wall on one side, the eclectic collection of furniture and tables with multicolored chairs, the backsplash behind the counter.
“And a scone too if you want it.” She looked in wonderment from Beckett to the baby nestled against him and then back to him. “Her name’s Delia, by the way.”
He patted the baby’s back, ordered a plain back coffee for himself and an Americano for Kit.
“You’re a Walker, aren’t you?”
“Family resemblance that obvious?” Something—someone—jostled behind him and his grip on Megan’s baby tightened. He threw a glance over his shoulder. “Careful, guys—”
But the teens in line behind him clearly didn’t even notice he was there. It was the biggest of the three that’d bumped into him, the other two laughing.
“Aw, Webster doesn’t like talking about summer school,” one of the shorter ones taunted. “He can play football, but he can’t pass basic algebra—”
Beckett realized what was about to happen a second too late. With an angry grunt, the tall kid jutted both arms forward, barreling into both of the others at the same time.
“Hey!”
Megan’s outburst was lost in the noise of the brawl. One of the kids fell against an empty chair, the other took a swing at the one they’d called Webster.
It only took a moment for Beckett to hand Delia back to Megan, push his way into the middle of the fray. “Guys, break it up.” He managed to pull one of the instigators off Webster, but he missed the flying fist coming from the other direction. Webster’s jab landed on his cheek just as another authoritative voice barreled in.
“What’s going on here?”
The whole thing was over in seconds. Everyone in the shop had gone silent save for the jazz tempo coming from the speakers. One hand to his cheek, Beckett took in the identity of the other fight breaker-upper. Colton? Kate’s boyfriend, the ex-NFL quarterback. He hadn’t even noticed the guy in the shop.
“Web, what are you thinking?” Apparently Colton knew the tall kid. He turned to the others. “And you two. You don’t have anything better to do than pick fights?”
Colton’s NFL size and disapproving stare down—or maybe his air of celebrity—was enough to send them skulking. And the taller kid, the one named Webster, hung his head. “Sorry, Colt, they just—”
“They just nothing. You should’ve ignored them.”
A patron picked up the couple chairs the teens had knocked over, and with an annoyed huff, Megan disappeared into the kitchen. Colton exchanged a few more words with Webster before turning to Beckett.
“You should probably get some ice on that.”
“Already taken care of.” Megan had reappeared behind the counter, Delia once again perched in her sling—asleep and apparently oblivious to all that’d just happened. Megan handed him a bunched-up towel around a handful of ice. “Closest thing I’ve got to an ice pack.”
“Thanks.”
While she went back to preparing his drinks, Colton lingered. Why did he get the sense the guy was studying him? Shouldn’t Beckett be the one giving his sister’s boyfriend a careful once-over?
Not that Colton needed his approval. All of an hour in Colton and Kate’s presence his first night home had made their “perfect for each other” status clear.
“Okay, so we’re obviously sizing each other up and that’s fine, but once we’re done, can we talk?” Colton paid for Beckett’s drinks before he could protest. “ ’Cause I’ve got a favor to ask you. You’re going to be in town for a while, yeah?”
It was a distinct possibility before. Now, with no job left to return to, it was a cold, hard certainty.
Somehow Kit had to find the words to thank the financial advisor who’d spent two hours of his Thursday morning with her reviewing the Valley Orchard’s financial standing. But how was she supposed to dredge up words of gratitude after the horrifying numbers he’d just laid out for her?
They sat side by side in the lean-to Grandpa had always used as an office. No larger than a garden shed, really, but there was room enough for a corner desk beside an ample window. The office was connected to the orchard store. An oscillating desk fan exhaled feeble breaths of tepid air.
Jenson Barrow lifted the glass of lemonade she’d handed him earlier, a ring of condensation wetting the desk where it’d sat. His thin, wire-rimmed glasses perched low on his nose. “Everything make sense?”
Unfortunately, yes. The spreadsheet on the widescreen monitor taunted her. “I think so. Can’t promise I won’t call you with more questions later, though.”
Jenson swallowed the last of his lemonade with a hearty gulp, then replaced the sweating glass on the desk. “The good thing is, the bulk of your regular bills are set up for auto-pay. But that includes the mortgage, which as you saw is no small amount. So you’ll need to watch your spending and make sure you keep enough in that main account.”
Except if she was understanding everything correctly, their main account was a flimsy little rowboat barely staying afloat on a thirsty river. Might tip, might swamp, might run into a craggy rock.
Nigel’s skepticism echoed. “Unless you’ve got a storehouse of money somewhere I don’t know about, I don’t see how you could possibly afford to make something of this place.”
Yes, well, she didn’t understand how he could expect her to just walk away from her home, give up on the land she loved, not to mention her missing brother. So maybe they were even. The knowledge did little to ease the sting of their breakup, though.
And now she couldn’t help wondering, what if she’d walked away from that relationship all for the sake of a doomed venture?
“Hold unswervingly to the hope . . .”
The words trickled through her mind, and it took a moment to place them. Right, one of Grandma’s recipe cards taped to the inside of a cupboard. Only instead of ingredients, this one bore a Bible verse. Something from Hebrews, wasn’t it?
Somehow, that was what she needed to do. Hold on to hope.
“You’ll want to learn to use Quickbooks,” Jenson was saying now. “Or you could hire someone for the bookkeeping, but of course you’d need to cut expenses elsewhere.”
The fan’s whir shook the desktop, causing the pooled liquid from Jenson’s glass on the desk to dribble down the side. Kit swiped at it with her palm. “I have to admit, this is daunting. Seeing the numbers, grasping the constraints of this business.”
Jenson stood. “Yes, but it’s a little like farming. A lot of upfront spending, but if it’s a good crop, you see the return later.”
Problem was that tiny little word: if.
She walked with Jenson to his car, gaze lifting to the company of clouds moving in a slow march across the sky. The heat and humidity had been relentless since Saturday, but she could feel the impending break humming over her skin. Cooling rain, a wind to push away the gray canopy overhead and set free the muggy air trapped below. By midafternoon, if she guessed right.
“Mr. Barrow—”
“Didn’t we establish you’re old enough now to call me Jenson?”
She found a grin underneath her numbers-fatigue. Jenson had been
one of Grandpa’s oldest friends. Not as constant around the orchard as Willa, but a regular on Friday nights when he and his wife joined her grandparents for game night in the farmhouse kitchen.
“Grandma was always such a stickler for manners, though. She drilled the ‘Mr. and Mrs.’ thing into us right alongside ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”
Jenson chuckled as they reached his burgundy Buick—aged but polished to a sun-streaked gleam. “I miss your grandparents dearly, Kit, as does Margaret. Though I suppose that’d be Mrs. Barrow to you.”
“I miss them, too.” More than she could say. From the age of ten on, they’d been the one constant in her life. Alongside Beckett, that is. “I wanted to ask you, though, Mr.—Jenson, the barn Grandpa started to build . . . do you see any kind of leeway in the orchard budget to resume that project?”
Jenson’s kindly eyes turned toward the slat of cement and bare bones of a structure set back from the parking lot. “I wish I did, I truly do. Did you know it was my urging that prompted Henry to take on that project? I kept telling him if he really wanted to improve his financial situation, he needed to diversify his revenue stream. A small event center in a pretty setting like this could do so well. But challenge after challenge rose up in front of him, starting with that hailstorm, and I think he just never had the heart to get back to it.”
“I wish I could find a way to complete it. It’d be such a nice tribute to them.”
Jenson gave her a consoling pat on the shoulder, then made her promise to call if she ran into any accounting snags in the coming weeks.
Just as Jenson’s vehicle disappeared down the lane, another passed under the orchard’s welcome sign. Kit lifted her hand to shield her eyes from an errant shaft of sun breaking through a paunchy cloud and tried to make out the form behind the windshield.
Seconds later, Raegan Walker emerged from the car. Her jaunt was carefree and in her hands, two covered coffee cups. “I’m playing delivery girl.” Her purple Converse All Stars crunched over the gravel lot as she approached.
“You brought coffee?” Kit hooked her thumbs under the straps of the denim overalls she’d found in her bedroom. Baggy enough they still fit and barely faded. If she was going to run a rural operation, she might as well look the part. She’d completed the look with a white tank top underneath and red handkerchief over her ponytail. “Bless you. I was almost late meeting our accountant this morning, which means I missed my coffee. All I’ve had is a glass of lemonade, and let me tell you, the effect is nowhere near the same.”
