Wildflowers from Winter (28 page)

Evan threw a log into the fire, the dry heat from the flames going to war with the damp air in his living room. A cold front had insisted on moving through the area, unconcerned that late May did not usually welcome weather so reminiscent of early spring.

The rain had persisted over the past week, turning the sun into a rare commodity. Evan didn’t mind. He’d just finished planting his corn, and the more it rained, the thicker his hay would grow. After last year’s drought, he’d love to get at least two good cuttings in over the summer with enough to feed his cattle and some left over for profit. He could use all the money he could get, seeing as this might be his last year farming the land.

He jabbed the wrought-iron poker into the flames and watched red flakes materialize from the logs. Nothing was set in stone. Bethany wasn’t going to sell until after harvest. Many things could happen between now and then. Maybe she wouldn’t sell at all. Maybe she’d agree to let him rent the land from her indefinitely.

The burning embers hovered, then floated back down into the fire. He imagined his dreams going with them. Who was he kidding? Bethany keeping the farm was about as likely as Tootsie Rolls becoming Iowa’s next biggest cash crop.

He sat on the carpet, brought his elbows to his knees, and thought about the simplicity life offered last year when Dan was alive. When his livelihood hadn’t depended on the decision of a woman who moved full-steam ahead in whatever direction best suited her needs.

Lord, what am I supposed to do without this farm?

He’d been preparing his heart for the inevitable, even checking a few websites to research the cost of renting local farmland. Prices were higher than he expected, and even if they weren’t, it was this land he wanted, this land he’d fallen in love with. He could always fall back on repairing cars and
farm equipment. Money wasn’t the issue. The life that he loved was. Bethany put his dreams on the end of a stake and threatened to light them on fire.

The flames in the fireplace grew and popped, and an ember landed by his big toe. He jerked his feet back and closed the screen. Maybe it was the weather that had his mood so jumbled. Or maybe it was the fact that tomorrow he’d be thirty-two. He thought by now he’d have a farm of his own and a wife by his side. Kids, even. He never thought he’d be a thirty-two-year-old bachelor who owned nothing but a farmhouse and a bunch of potentially homeless cattle.

Hoping to stop his thoughts from falling into a black hole, he stood from the floor and retrieved his Bible from the end table. He went to the kitchen to make some coffee. As he waited for the brew to percolate, he leaned over the counter and feathered through the thin pages. He scanned the small words until he reached a familiar verse in Jeremiah: “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ ”

Evan rolled the verse through his head several times and poured himself a cup. After his car accident when his buddy died, well-intending church folk would quote that verse at him. His parents even had it hanging somewhere in their living room. But surely, when Jeremiah penned those words, he never intended them to be plastered across coffee mugs. Evan wasn’t an Israelite, and he wasn’t stuck in Babylon.

But the God who prospered a fickle, thoughtless people was the same God who recaptured Evan’s heart and refused to let go. And that gave him immense comfort. He shut the book, rested his palm over the leather cover, and bowed his head. Before he could start his prayer, a knock on the front door echoed in the kitchen.

His head snapped up. He reached for his cup and knocked it over. The spilled liquid raced over the counter, spread around his Bible, and colored
the edges a soggy brown. He scooped up the book and shook it off over the sink. Who would come calling on a Monday evening? Gavin? His younger brother was finally starting to come around. Rejoin the living. Perhaps he was stopping by to wish Evan an early happy birthday.

He snatched a bundle of paper towels, soaked up the spilled coffee, and returned his damp Bible to the counter. A few seconds later he swung the door wide, expecting to see Gavin on the other side.

Instead, Bethany stood with one foot on the porch, the other on the step, as if she couldn’t decide whether to stay or go, the slanting rain soaking through her clothes.

“What are you doing here?”

She turned on her heel, wide eyed and pink cheeked, holding a cake pan in her hands. Her eyes moved up his body before resting on his face. “I’m sorry to interrupt.” She stepped under the awning, out from the rain, and handed him the container, raindrops darkening her long eyelashes. “Robin made cake for your birthday.”

He tried to get out a thank-you, but his tongue wouldn’t cooperate. She took a quick step away, back toward the rain. Without thinking, he grabbed her elbow with his unoccupied hand. A simple gesture to keep her in place. But the muscles in his chest did a funny twist. He let go, brought his hand to his side, to the top of the cake container, then pushed it inside his pocket. “You’re leaving?”

He didn’t know why he wanted her to stay. He didn’t know why his hopes lifted with her on his front porch. Only that on such a rainy day, after so many hours keeping company with cows and seed, some human conversation would be nice. Even if it was with the woman who held his precarious future in her manicured hand.

She blinked away the spitting rain, her body as still as a statue.

“You’re just going to bring me a cake and not wish me happy birthday?”

“Your birthday is tomorrow.”

He fought back a smile. “So why’d you bring me a cake tonight?”

The pink staining her cheeks darkened to red.

He cocked his head. “And while we’re at it, why did
you
bring it, if Robin made it?”

“Robin asked me to. And I had some information to relay about the café.”

Of course. All business
. “Why do you look so ready to leave, then?”

“You looked”—she motioned to his flannel pajama bottoms and Fruit of the Loom undershirt—“ready for bed.”

Evan couldn’t help it. The smile he’d attempted to suppress broke through. Bethany was embarrassed about catching him in his pajamas. It was cute. He stepped back and held the door wide. “Come on in. My bedtime isn’t for another couple hours.”

She hesitated.

“Come on, Bethany. I promise I won’t bite.” He held up the treat in his hands. “We can have some cake.” This seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Too personal, he guessed, because she shifted away. He scrambled to erase his mistake. “It’ll give us a chance to talk shop.”

He left the door wide open and walked toward the kitchen. She stepped inside the foyer and shut the door, blocking out the patter of rain against the walkway. He set the cake on the counter, took off the lid, and breathed in the richness of peanut butter and chocolate. “Nobody can bake a cake like Robin.”

Bethany followed him into the kitchen and placed her purse on the table. “I think she’s the only person who still makes them from scratch.”

Evan took out a cutting knife, sliced two pieces, plunked them onto paper plates, and handed one to her. She didn’t take it. Instead, she stared at the mess on the counter. A glob of half-brown, half-white paper towels sat near his Bible.

He snatched the clump of coffee-soaked towels and threw them in the trash. He grabbed another mug from the cupboard, poured two cups of coffee, and jerked his head to the drawer by the sink. “Forks are in there.”

“I know. I used to live here, remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

He took the plates in one hand and worked on getting the coffee mugs in the other. Bethany sighed. “Here, let me.” She set a fork on each plate and picked up the mugs.

“Why, thank you, Bethany.”

She rolled her eyes.

Evan smiled and walked into the living room. He set the plates on the coffee table while Bethany cleared her throat, standing half in and half out of the kitchen, like she wasn’t sure having cake and coffee on the couch in front of a crackling fire was the best idea.

“I discussed the plans for the kitchen with the owner of Roland and Sons.”

Evan met her in the doorway and took the mugs.

Bethany swallowed. “They’re going to start building tomorrow and should be finished in two weeks. They said we can work around them if we’d like.”

He brought the coffee to the cake and sat on the couch.

“So I was thinking about ripping out the east wall. The sooner we get that done, the sooner we can start—”

“Bethany.” He interrupted her monologue and patted the cushion next to his own.

She stood in the doorway, the embodiment of a professional, eying his invitation as if it might rear back and kick her. His mind wandered to New Year’s Eve, out on the balcony of Shorney’s Terrace, then later on the dance floor, when she’d let go and given him two minutes of her trust. Her unguarded smile when he dipped her had taken his breath away. He felt like
interacting with
that
Bethany tonight—the vulnerable, slightly mysterious Bethany. Not the businesswoman standing in his house, relaying information about the café with all the emotion of a fence post.

“I can’t stay,” she said.

“Not even for birthday cake?”

“I don’t like cake.”

His lips twitched. Of course she didn’t. He lifted his mug into the air. “Then stay for the coffee.”

She eyed the rising steam. “At night?”

“It’s decaf.”

After standing in the opened door frame for a moment longer, she let out a sigh and joined him on the sofa, sitting as close to the opposite armrest as possible.

“Now,” he said, handing her a mug and taking a sip from his own, “when do you want to tear out that wall?”

She fingered the handle. “I’d like to get it done as soon as possible.”

He’d just jumped the daunting hurdle of spring planting, and thanks to the wet weather, his hay would be ready for its first cutting as soon as the rain dried. He had a busy week ahead, with the promise of a short break afterward. “I think I’ll have some time in a week or so.”

She examined the liquid in her mug, took a delicate sip, and made a face before setting it on the end table and scooting to the edge of the sofa. “Then I will call you tomorrow, and we can arrange the details.”

Evan reached out to stop her from standing. When his fingers found the bare skin of her arm, they prickled with warmth. Her line of vision darted toward his hand as if she’d felt it too, but she sprang from the couch and hurried to the door.

He followed her. “Where are you going?”

“I have stuff to get done.”

He stepped in front of the door. “What stuff?”

She dug inside the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her car keys. “Business stuff.”

He crossed his arms in front of his chest, leaned against the door frame, and smirked. “You’re a little on the obsessive side, aren’t you?”

She brought her head up and gave him one of her looks.

“All you ever think about is business.”

“And all you ever think about is farming.”

“Not true. In fact, tonight I was thinking about a lot of things.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”

“A wife and children, actually.”

Crimson spread down her neck and disappeared beneath her jacket. Her hand fluttered to her throat as if to cover the incriminating blush.

Evan’s pulse quickened, then purred as an image of Bethany in this house, not as a guest but as something more, tiptoed around the edges of his imagination. He didn’t know what was more alarming: the idea of Bethany as his wife, or the warmth spreading through his belly when he pictured it.

Silence stretched between them.

Evan didn’t know how to break it, so he twisted the doorknob and invited the patter of the rain back inside his living room. She moved to the door, closer to him. Her hair smelled of vanilla, and he wondered what it might be like to run his hands through it. He reached out and grazed her arm.

Her breath caught.

And like cast iron searing into flesh, passion branded his soul. “Bethany.”

He moved his free hand toward her neck and brushed her hair from her shoulder, and for one glorious moment, the steel in her eyes melted into warm chocolate. His thumb traced over the frenzied tapping of the pulse in her throat. He curled his fingers behind her neck and brought her body closer.

But before he could bring his lips to hers, she ducked beneath him and stepped outside, her eyes no longer melted chocolate but the swirling waters of the Mississippi River. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go.”

She hurried to her car, leaving him on the porch. He didn’t move as she whipped down the drive. He didn’t move when she turned onto the gravel road. He stood, framed in the doorway, left alone with his longing.

When he pictured his future wife, he imagined a woman who loved her family and wanted one of her own. A woman who understood the backbreaking work that came with living on a farm but loved it anyway. A woman who wouldn’t be afraid to get her hands dirty alongside him. Someone easygoing and content. Someone who shared his faith.

How could his heart long for a woman who didn’t fit one part of that description?

TWENTY-EIGHT

B
ethany rushed toward Robin’s house. As soon as she escaped the onslaught of raindrops plummeting from the sky, she closed the door, gulped in a big breath, and pressed her back against the cool mahogany, as if she could melt into it and disappear.

The place where Evan touched her neck hummed with unexplored energy, tingling up her jaw line. She pressed her palm against the spot and released an unsteady breath. Had Evan wanted to kiss her? Had she wanted to kiss him back?

Her mind conjured his chiseled jaw, deep-set eyes, dark waves curling over the tops of his ears. Men who looked like him did not kiss women who looked like her. Men who looked like him kissed women who looked like Robin. Still … the look in his eyes when they stood in the doorway. The timbre of his voice when he spoke her name.

A long-buried desire unfurled from its hiding spot and stretched inside her chest—an inexplicable need to be cherished, to be admired, to be loved. She tried to convince it to close its eyes and go back to sleep. But the memory of Evan’s breath on her cheek—standing so close she could feel the heat of his body—provoked the awakening desire to sit up and face the day.