by Erin Wright
“When did you buy this?” he asked as he helped her pack her groceries in, Maggie Mae settling down onto patio cushions on the front porch with a happy sigh.
“Oh, I haven’t. Just renting,” she said, unlocking her front door and flipping on the lights. Like a good police officer, she actually locked her house up when she left it. She was probably the only one in the county to do so.
“Really? The kids wanted to hang onto it after their dad died?” The Brightbart kids had scattered to the four winds after high school graduation. Wyatt was surprised they were the sentimental type.
“No, it just needs work done to it and they don’t want to bother. There’s some dirt-to-wood contact – the person who installed the back porch oughta be taken out back and shot – and the wiring isn’t up to code.” She shrugged. “It was easier for them to rent than to worry about it, and I get to have a whole house to myself, with no neighbors. It’s kinda nice.”
Just then, a gray-and-white tabby cat came into the kitchen, butting her head up against Abby and then Wyatt’s legs.
“Well, aren’t you a pretty one?” he said, scooping her up into his arms. She rewarded him with a lick across his chin and a loud purr that rumbled through his chest.
“Jasmine,” Abby said with a grin. “And she’s a lover.”
“I can tell,” Wyatt murmured, running his hands over her head and down her back. “How does she like dogs?”
“Hates ‘em. The only good dog is a dead dog.” Abby flashed a smile at him. “She had more than a few cross words for me when I came home smelling like Maggie.”
“She must’ve thought you’d turned traitor.”
“Pretty much. I’ve never been given so many nasty looks in all my life.”
Wyatt looked down at the purring cat in his arms, her eyes at half-mast as she enjoyed his attention.
“Hard to believe she could give someone a nasty look,” he said, stroking through her soft fur. She had these little white paws that made her look like she had white gloves on. She had to be the prettiest cat he’d ever seen. And the nicest.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Abby said, arranging the food on the counter. “As much as she loves you right now? That’s how much she hates dogs.”
That was too damn bad. Wyatt set her down on the floor regretfully and with a mournful meow, Jasmine moved to the corner of the kitchen and began watching the preparations with crossed blue eyes. He turned back to Abby and smiled.
“Okay, now that I’ve broken your cat’s heart by putting her down, what do you need me to do to help you get dinner ready?”
She set him to work chopping veggies for the salad – no nasty tomatoes, thank God – and they began chatting as they worked, about nothing in particular. It was so much damn fun to be around her. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever enjoyed being around someone as much as he did her. He hadn’t felt this at home around someone this quickly before, not even Shelly. It was casual and friendly and…
The sparks between them could very well set her crappy back porch on fire. She felt it too, he knew it. The heightened color on her cheeks. The sparkle in her eyes. The way she sent him sideways glances through her eyelashes, as if wanting to catch a peek of him without him noticing.
Of course he knew just what she was doing, because he was doing it too.
Being around Abby…it just lit him up inside. He hadn’t felt this way around Shelly until a half-dozen dates in.
Stop it, Wyatt. You can’t keep comparing Abby to Shelly. It isn’t fair to either one of them.
He had to let her go – his dead wife. As much as it hurt, as much as the idea held little appeal to him, he knew that if he was ever going to be happy with someone else, he had to let her go. He had to let them both go – his daughter too.
It wasn’t fair to keep comparing and letting ghosts get in the way of his future.
Abby carried plates over to the table. “Wanna grab the glasses?” she asked, jerking her head towards the cupboard. “They’re in there.”
He snagged a couple and a pitcher of juice she’d had him make after the salad was done. Once they carried everything to the table, it was quite the spread. They made a damn good pair in the kitchen.
He ducked his head towards her and then jerked himself short. He’d almost kissed her on the lips. It’d been instinctual – he’d always kissed Shelly on the lips before each meal. His parents had done it growing up, and so he’d picked up the habit once he got married. It just felt right.
But he couldn’t lay one on his probation officer. No how, no way.
She caught the awkward movement and asked, “Are you okay?”
He sent her a pained grin. “Never better.”
They began dishing up the food, and of course, Wyatt had to give her shit about putting nasty-ass tomatoes onto her salad. She just rolled her eyes at him and popped one in her mouth, groaning with fake ecstasy. He couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up inside.
“So I should probably tell you why I hate them so much,” he said, grinning at her.
She rolled her eyes. “No good reason, I’m sure of it.”
“Say what you want, I think it’s a damn good reason.” He put a bite of his steak into his mouth and closed his eyes, chewing ecstatically. It wasn’t a turkey sandwich, thank heavens. After months of eating that for lunch every day, he was quite sure he never wanted to see a turkey again in his life. Dead or alive. “My mom,” he finally said, once he’d swallowed the steak.
“Your mom made you hate tomatoes?” Abby asked, one eyebrow cocked in disbelief.
“My mom was like all gardeners everywhere – her seed catalog was bigger than her ability to can the stuff.”
She giggled, a sound that he realized he loved hearing. It was so much fun. He made a mental note to make her do it again. “Every year, my dad would go out and rototill this huge area – I swear, some years I think my father was trying to start a truck garden. And my mother was no better. She always encouraged him because this year, she was actually going to get everything picked and dried and frozen and canned on time. She never did, of course.”
“Was your mom one of those people who went around and snuck zucchini into the backseats of cars?” Abby asked, laughing. The joke had always been that people in town only locked their car doors when zucchini season hit, so as to keep all of the unwanted squash out of their vehicles.
There was more than a little truth to that joke, which was of course why it was funny.
“Nope. That would require that she actually pick the zukes and deliver them somewhere. My mom rarely got to that point. She’d start out strong but once the heat of summer hit, she’d just wilt out in the sun. She didn’t want to be out there, pulling weeds and watering, and us kids were always helping Dad with the farm chores. So she’d eventually just give up on it all and let it turn into a jungle of overgrown tomato plants, intermixed with the pumpkin vines that were sprawling out everywhere but never produced a damn thing.”
“It’s too cool up here for pumpkins,” Abby said with a small laugh and shake of the head. “You can’t grow a pumpkin up in the mountains.”
“I know, but my mom was hopelessly optimistic. She kept trying every year; wanted to grow a pumpkin for Halloween. Never got one, not once.”
“So how did all of that make you hate tomatoes?” Abby asked, a crease between her brow.
“Well, when fall hit and it was time to take care of the garden bed for the year, my dad was always too busy out in the fields, harvesting our wheat or oats or whatever it was that we were growing that year. My mom was just a little thing, and couldn’t manhandle the rototiller – it weighed a ton – so as the oldest, it became my job to rototill everything under every fall. There I am, hot, sweaty, and smelling rotten tomatoes and zucchinis and green beans that were never picked, but I tell you what, the smell of rotten tomatoes is the worst smell of all. A fall or two of that would put anyone off their tomatoes.”
Abby looked at him, grimacing, and then
down at her plate. “Thanks. You don’t think you could’ve told me that story when we were done eating?”
He shrugged unrepentantly. “At least now you know why I hate ‘em.”
“Anything else that your mom ruined you for life on?”
“Nope! Just rotten, black, stinking, mushy tomatoes.”
She glared at him. “Now you’re just trying to be a jackass.”
“Totally possible.” He sent her an innocent grin. “It’s hard to imagine someone like me trying to be a jackass, but if I strain real hard, I guess I can see where you’re coming from.”
She bit her lip, trying to hold back her laughter, and then it spilled out of her, a gorgeous cascade of sound. He settled back into his chair, content to hear that sound for the rest of his life.
And if that wasn’t just the damndest thought he’d ever had.
Chapter 20
Abby
After Abby picked the tomatoes off her salad and forced herself to eat every last one of them as if they were the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted, mock-glaring at Wyatt all the while, they began to chat about their childhoods. It was surprising to Abby to hear the similarities in their past; they had both lost their moms, and their dads…
Well, Abby got along better with her father than Wyatt had with his, but listening to him talk about his dad, there was still pride and love in his voice. They may’ve knocked heads over things, but there was still love there.
“Abby, I haven’t ever told you about that night in the bar.”
She shot him a wide-eyed look, surprised. She hadn’t realized that he went out drinking, not after…
“No, not after Shelly and Sierra…not then,” he said, reading her expression for exactly what it was. “Way back when your dad owned my place and lost it to the bank.”
She nodded slowly, not sure what to say so she didn’t say anything at all, just let him talk his piece.
“Well, it got around that I’d talked shit about your dad that night; that I told my buddies that I was going to show him how to run a farm.” She nodded even more slowly this time. What could he possibly be driving at? That comment had deeply hurt her father’s pride at a time when it was already in pieces. Losing a livelihood like that would destroy a smaller man than her father. Having the new owner spit in his face publicly just made it that much worse.
“I wasn’t talking about him.”
The silence dropped into the room, crushing everything else. She just stared at him, surprised, not able to really think through it. What he’d said. How was that…But everyone had said…
“I don’t know who said it; I don’t know how that got started. I was with two buddies from high school at the time, and they swear up, down, and sideways that it wasn’t them. They know what I really said. Well—” He looked flustered. “I did say that, but I didn’t mean your dad. That’d be just downright shitty, talking shit about a man who’d just lost his farm to the bank. No one needs that, not even your dad, and I think we all know we are never gonna be best buds.”
She cracked a small smile at that, but it quickly faded. She just wanted to know the truth, after all this time.
“I was talking about my own dad. We butted heads big time – I just told you that. Now, years later, I think that it was because we were too much alike. My dad was kinda ornery, and I’m sure that you haven’t noticed that character trait in me, but it’s possible that others might have.” She let out a belly laugh at that one and he grinned back in response, his first smile since he’d brought this topic up.
“We fought about everything, but mostly about those damn cows that Stetson brought back to the place. He’d talked my dad into it without even discussing it with me, and that farm was supposed to be mine. I’m the oldest, and…” He gulped. “Anyway, so there’s my younger brother, mucking things up like he always did, bringing those cows onto the place; cows that had to be fed and watered and vaccinated and then they up and die on you without a moment’s notice and they’re dumber than a pile of rocks…
“I don’t know of anyone who likes cows, not even cowboys. I’m a farmer – I like my wheat. It doesn’t argue with me, break a leg in a hole, or escape through a pasture fence when you’re not lookin’.” She laughed again at that, but he was on a roll and she wasn’t going to interrupt. This was something that had bothered him for a long time, and she was going to let him get it off his chest.
“So when I told my buddies that I was going to show ‘him’ how to run a place, I meant my dad. And yeah, I probably shouldn’t have said that about my dad either, but it was long past time for me to move onto my own place when your dad’s farm hit the…market.” She was sure he was about to say “auction block,” and she appreciated his thoughtfulness in choosing a more kind phrasing. “I was chafing, wanting to get out onto my own, and my relationship with my father was spiraling down, the more we butted heads. He always did spoil Stetson rotten. He came along as a surprise – did you know that?”
“I don’t know that anyone ever came right out and said it, but based on the big age difference between him and Declan, I rather figured as much.”
“Yeah, Mom and Dad thought they were done – they had Dec and I and things were great. And then along came this squalling little baby, and he was truly the baby of the family, in more ways than one. He got whatever he wanted, and in the end, that meant he got the Miller Family Farm too. Over 130 years in the Miller family, and my dad up and wills the damn thing to Stetson. And then the dumbass almost loses it to the bank. I don’t know what I would’ve done if Jennifer hadn’t come along and helped him save it.”
Abby nodded. That had been the gossip of the town for months – first, that Stetson had gotten so far behind on his payments that he almost lost the family farm, and then that Jennifer, an outsider and from a bank, no less, had been the one to figure out what to do to save it.
She guessed that Stetson didn’t mind in the end, since he’d married her and they were expecting a baby this spring but she could see how Wyatt might not take that as a consolation. A family didn’t hold onto a farm for over a hundred years and then not care if they lost it to foreclosure.
Her dad could attest to that one.
“I appreciate the information, Wyatt,” she said softly, stroking his hand resting on the table. She probably shouldn’t be touching him; she probably shouldn’t be having this meal with him, but right then, all of the “probablies” in the world didn’t matter. “That makes a lot of sense. Have you tried to talk to my dad about it?”
“Oh yeah. Once. He didn’t want to hear me out. He walked away and…well, I’m not the kind of man who will try twice. If you’re going to spit on my attempt to reach out to you, I don’t have much use for ya.”
She nodded. It was true; he’d swallowed his pride to even try once. She wasn’t surprised to hear that her father wouldn’t listen. He wasn’t the kind of guy to listen much, ever, but certainly not to someone he hated.
“Well, I appreciate you telling me, really. That means a lot to me.”
She was surprised by just how much it did mean to her, actually. She thought she’d let that go a long time ago, but hearing the reasoning and knowing that Wyatt hadn’t intended to be a jackass that night…
It was nice to hear.
He smiled at her then, and it wasn’t one of his teasing grins or snarky grins or…
It was a sexy grin. A heart-stopping grin. A panty-melting grin.
The butterflies took up twerking again and this time, she couldn’t even manage to dredge up the willpower to tell them to stop. Or even want them to stop. Wyatt, looking at her like she was dessert?
She swallowed hard and his eyes darkened more. The world stopped – she stopped, he stopped, they just stared at each other and she felt herself drifting towards him, infinitesimally closer, and–
“Meow!” Jasmine said, wrapping herself around Abby’s leg. She jerked back and stared down at Jasmine in shock. Jasmine looked back up at her, huge crossed blu
e eyes clearly begging for a plate to clean.
“Oh Lordy, child,” Abby said with a groan. She looked back at Wyatt but the mood was broken. He was standing up from the table, carrying his plate to the sink. Abby normally let Jasmine lick her plate clean every night, but tonight? Nope. If Abby wasn’t going to get any action, then neither was Jasmine.
It was the first time that Abby had ill thoughts towards her cat since the night Jasmine had jumped down from the windowsill above her bed and landed right on her face, her back paw digging into her eye socket. She had more than a few choice words for Jasmine that night, too.
Abby stood up from the table and together, in a silence only growing more awkward the longer it lingered, they cleared off the table and loaded the ancient olive green dishwasher. Finally finished and still not a word had passed between them. Abby wiped her hands on her jeans, her mouth dry.
“Well, goodnight!” she said, overly cheerful and loud and oh heavens, she sounded like an idiot and she knew it.
“Goodnight,” Wyatt said, sticking out his hand to shake just as she went in for a hug, so they did this awkward-as-could-be hug/handshake combo that probably looked as ridiculous as it felt. He pulled back and said, “I’ll let myself out,” and then he was gone, out the door and into the winter night.
She shut the door behind him and slumped against it. Then slowly, methodically, she whacked her head backwards, once, twice, three times.
“Abby Connelly, you are a first-class idiot.”
Jasmine sat down in front of her, looking at her quizzically. “Meowww…”
Abby sent her a death glare. “And you, young lady! No plates from the dinner table for…for a week!” She felt ridiculous threatening her cat that way, but then again, wasn’t that just this whole evening rolled up into one word? Ridiculous?
Who invited their prisoner over for dinner? And laughed with him? And made googly eyes at him?
Not a county police officer, that’s for damn sure.
