Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good Man\Promises Under the Peach Tree\Husband by Choice (32 page)

But for now, Nina would stay in Tennessee until the scandal surrounding her business died and she'd liquidated some assets, then she'd figure out where to go next. Her partner had been in charge of the books for their shared bakery venture and she'd drained their account before eloping with a high-profile client on the eve of his wedding.

Big, fat mess.

“I've got it,” one of the movers assured her, sweat dripping off his forehead as he struggled to keep the pie rack off the concrete floor. “We can handle this.”

Telling herself not to micromanage, Nina nodded and took the opportunity to grab a cup of coffee from inside the house. She could smell bacon frying before she reached the screen door.

“Gram!” What was she going to do with her? Even with a cane, her grandmother stood at the stove with a fork in one hand.

Yanking open the screen, Nina hurried to take her place.

“You're just in time for breakfast.” Gram tried shooing her away, her freshly colored blond locks tucked behind one ear. “I can get it, for crying out loud. How do you suppose I ate before you got here?”

“Humor me.” Nina guided her to a padded metal chair from a mismatched bunch of flea-market finds clustered around a butcher block table. “Let me at least serve, okay?”

“Only because I love you and want to make you happy.” Her grandmother kissed her cheek and took a seat, her swollen knuckles clutching the table as she lowered herself slowly. “Just don't get in the habit of waiting on me, dear.”

“Okay.” Nina made quick work of plating the eggs and bacon, her stomach growling the whole time. “But if you're doing well, why does Dad say you should be considering assisted living?”

She'd been surprised by his tersely worded email urging Nina to convince his mother to move into a new place where she would have someone checking on her.

“Because he doesn't want to be bothered by phone calls from his mother.” Gram winked at her over the rim of her coffee cup, but Nina didn't think she was joking.

She peered over the white ruffled café curtains on one window to check on the movers' progress in the barn and then took a seat at the table.

“I know he's selfish, Gram.” He'd never inconvenienced himself for them, and Nina doubted he was any different with his second wife or her children—half siblings Nina had met only because she insisted on visiting twice a year to at least make an effort. “But he's never brought up something like assisted living before. Did the doctors voice new concerns to him?”

“I have no idea what any of my doctors would have told him.” Gram rose to refresh her coffee even though she'd hardly taken three sips.

“That sounds...carefully worded.” Nina's eye strayed to the oversize vintage stove that Gram had used since her wedding, a Wedgewood appliance where Nina had learned how to bake.

This kitchen had been a refuge for a child continually shuttled between feuding parents. When she was in Heartache, she wasn't in the crossfire. On the downside, being left here time after time as a child and then permanently when she was ten years old only underscored that she wasn't wanted. “I may have tuned out some of what your father said.” Gram shuffled back to the table, slower this time. Because of the full coffee cup, or did that knee still bother her more than she wanted to admit?

Nina wanted to help, but also didn't want to hover. She watched every cautious step and felt tense inside.

“Would you mind if I followed up with your doctors?” Nina sipped her orange juice and tried to focus on the moment and what needed to be done—and not on Mack Finley.

“You want to talk to my doctors. So they can tell you what? That I'm eighty-four and my bones are brittle?” Gram chuckled and pointed a pink fingernail at her. “We both know that already. I'm being careful. I don't even wear cute shoes anymore.” She stuck out her mint-green-colored tennis sneaker as a reminder. “But if you really want to talk to them, sugar plum, of course you can.”

“Sugar plum?”

Gram smiled and patted her cheek. “I've missed you, pretty girl. You never visit for more than a weekend anymore, and I have a lot of endearments to cram into these days together.”

Guilt pinched, but this time, it mingled with nostalgia.

“I've missed you, too.” She sipped her coffee, her grandmother's brew so strong she wondered if she'd have to hook up her espresso machine after all. “I don't think I realized how much.”

“I knew the bacon would win you over.”

“Even the coffee is better here.” Everything tasted better at home. Maybe it was because she'd learned all that she knew about cooking and baking from the woman seated next to her. “I'm actually dying to cook in this kitchen again. I forgot how much I loved the stove. And I've been so focused on baking the last few years that I haven't spent much time on other kinds of dishes.”

“You cook all you want. I'd rather have you in the kitchen than playing sleuth at my doctor's office.” Gram frowned and tapped her newly manicured nails against her coffee cup for a moment before she met Nina's gaze. “I don't want to give up my independence or this house, hon. So, please, make sure your father doesn't try and pull a fast one on me to get me out of here, okay?”

Worry made Nina's stomach clench. Her grandmother had always seemed invincible. She'd carved out a living for herself in a big old empty farmhouse after her husband died when he'd been fifty-five. Gram had been on her own ever since, living frugally and selling off pieces of land and equipment to supplement odd jobs like canning and making jellies for a local farm store. Not until recently had she ever spent a nickel on herself, and that was only because Nina had given her a year's worth of salon services for Christmas last year. Gram was crafty and cagey. A survivor. And it sent a sharp pain through Nina to hear a note of fear in this strong woman's voice.

“Of course.” As soon as she made the promise, though, she wondered how she would keep it if she ended up moving home to New York. “I mean, I'll talk to Dad and clear things with your doctors since obviously, we all want you to be safe, too. But you look great to me.”

Gram quirked an eyebrow, clearly hearing the backpedaling.

A sharp rap on the kitchen door startled her and saved her from digging herself any deeper into a hole.

“It's Ethan, Mrs. Spencer,” a young man's voice called through the closed door.

“Ethan?” Nina looked to her grandmother to enlighten her as she stood.

“A neighbor boy,” she explained to Nina just before she opened the door. “Well, hello there, young man.”

“Morning, Mrs. Spencer. I finished mowing the lawn and I wanted to see if you'd like me to pick some peaches or nectarines for you.” A shaggy-headed, dark-haired teenager held an empty bushel basket under one arm, his rumpled T-shirt and jeans covered with bits of hay suggesting he'd already been working for a while.

“The more the merrier, Ethan.” Gram waved at the boy but didn't stand...a sure sign her knee was hurting. “I've got some reinforcements this week to help me with my last batch of jam now that the peach season is almost over. Nina, this is Ethan Brady. He's the grandson of the gentleman who bought the dairy farm where the Hendersons used to live.”

“Nina Spencer.” Nina shook the teen's hand. “I'm visiting my grandmother for a couple of weeks. Did you need help with the picking?” She peered out the door behind the boy toward the orchards in the distance, but couldn't tell if the trees were loaded with fruit or not.

“No, thank you.” He looked like he might be hiding a smile. “I can handle it. I wouldn't want to take Mrs. Spencer's company away.”

“I don't mind.” She hadn't questioned how her grandmother was doing financially, but maybe she would welcome the extra jam and jelly sales while Nina was home to help her. For that matter, maybe she shouldn't be helping her grandmother give away those peach pies when she should be charging for them. “I'll just grab some gloves in the barn—”

“No, really,” Ethan protested, stepping off the small porch and backing away. “My gramp gave me strict instructions to take care of the picking myself because he owes Mrs. Spencer a favor,” he called through the screen. “And he said to tell you that the town of Heartache loves cupcakes.” The teen shrugged his shoulders awkwardly. “No clue what the means.”

Spinning on his heel, he darted through the tall grasses of an open meadow with his bushel basket and headed toward the orchards.

Behind her, Gram laughed and said something about how Nina could charge more for one cupcake than she could for a whole case of preserves. But seeing Ethan jogging across sun-dappled fields made her think of a long-ago summer when another boy had knocked on the door to pick peaches and asked Nina to join him....

“Excuse me,” a deep voice called to her from the yard and she noticed one of the movers flagging her down. “You've got some company.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the moving truck, but she couldn't see who had pulled up since the eighteen-wheeler took up her whole view.

“Gram, I'd better find out who it is.” She pushed open the screen, her gray tabby cat darting between her feet to join her.

Her instincts hummed as she neared the truck. The brightness made her squint, but she could still see an Eldorado convertible parked behind the movers' vehicle.

“Need a hand?” Mack stepped around the bumper of the beat-up delivery truck, his gaze trained on the hodgepodge of furniture and boxes stacked precariously inside. “I hadn't realized you'd have so much going on today or I would have waited to pick up the hay wagons for the Harvest Fest.”

His well-washed gray T-shirt had a green clover with Finleys' written in script on the front. No matter what else had happened between them, she had to admit he wore a T-shirt incredibly well. For the second day in a row, she kept her eyes north of his jeans. Down that path lay madness.

Mack was very...fit. In school, he'd organized pickup games of basketball or impromptu lacrosse tournaments in the fields behind his house. It seemed he hadn't lost that love of sports. His body was as toned as an athlete's.

“It's okay. The wagons are in the barn by the orchard.” She'd rather have this errand taken care of today than risk seeing him again another day. She couldn't guarantee how long her eyes would behave. “I can get the key from the house.”

Nodding, he stepped back as the delivery guys juggled an industrial-size mixer. When Taz, Nina's cat, started to dart across their path, Mack scooped the tabby up with one hand.

“Oh!” Nina reached for the animal, but Taz was already batting at the wristband of Mack's watch, oblivious to her narrow escape. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Should I bring him up to the house?” He stared down at Taz, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I can ask your grandmother for the key and take care of the wagons myself.”

“Taz is a
her,
not a him.” Nina plucked the animal from Mack's arm and the little feline mewed pitifully. “And it's probably just as well I don't watch my most prized possessions being stored next to rusty cultivators and plows. I might as well go with you.”

She was a grown-up. She could handle spending a couple of weeks in the same town as Mack. Besides, she wasn't proud of her testy words the day before. She shouldn't have accused him of coming to Heartache to rub her nose in her failures.

Worse, her harsh words about Jenny had been out of line. And she didn't want Mack to think he affected her so much that the mention of his ex-wife would rile her up.

“Fair enough.” He stepped aside, letting her lead the way to a farmhouse even older than the one where he'd been raised.

Sunflowers and phlox stood next to deep purple asters in the overgrown flowerbeds lining the wide, grassy path to the two-story white clapboard structure. The scent of the nearby orchards and freshly mown grass rode the breeze. It was peaceful here, with a quiet so deep she almost had trouble sleeping. She kind of missed the constant din of city traffic and the comfort of busy, anonymous humanity outside her windows.

“It's weird being back here, isn't it?” She picked a long stem of grass poking through a bed of bushy yellow flowers she couldn't identify.

Taz made a swipe for the grass, but Nina tucked the little cat tighter against her chest to be sure she wouldn't get into any more trouble.

“I slept in the field manager's quarters last night. So yeah, it's definitely a strange homecoming.”

Their strides matched one another's.

“Did you have a falling out with your mom?” Nina tried to keep the question light. She wasn't sure how much Mrs. Finley had shared with Mack about their final blowout where his mother had accused Nina of ruining Mack's life. She'd even suggested that he'd change his mind about having kids if she left. It wasn't that he didn't want children, she said, he just didn't want them with Nina.

She'd been blown away about that one.

Knowing about Mrs. Finley's struggles with bipolar disorder hadn't eased the sting of her words, since her reasons for why Nina and Mack would never work had been accurate. Nina was a wanderer by nature who threw herself into the moment, for example, while Mack was a grounded guy with big ambition and concrete career goals. Bipolar or not, Mrs. Finley was a sharp woman with Mack's best interests at heart.

“No. But a buffer between me and Mom is usually a good idea. I didn't want her to be stressed about having company.” He paused at the foot of the stairs to the wide, wraparound porch while Nina jogged up toward the back door. “She asked me to thank you for the pie, by the way.”

Nina seriously doubted that. She opened the door and nudged Taz inside where her pet made a beeline for her water dish. The kitchen was empty again and the table had been cleared. Nina snagged a small red key from a rack of hooks just above the light switch and then closed the door again.