Cream of the Crop

  “My father played football—never was a star, mind you, but played in the NFL for almost five years. Third string for Indiana, then half a season in Detroit, and he played out his last season close to his family home in Green Bay. When his contract wasn’t renewed, he moved us all to the farm and worked with his father at the dairy they owned.”

  A family of dairymen; interesting.

  “But football was still part of his life, all of our lives. I played, my brothers played, he coached, and if we weren’t out working the cows or milking them in the barn, we were on the field.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I replied when he seemed to stall in his story.

  He nodded with a faraway look. “It was. As we got older, it wasn’t as much fun. I loved football, loved the game, the sport, the community, all of it. But if you were good, and I was, it could take over everything else. That’s what happened for me and my brothers. Everything became about training, everything became about the game that weekend, what plays we could have run better, what block could have been harder, what tackle should have been a sack. We literally ate and slept and breathed football. When the season ended, we kept on drilling at home, year-round.”

  He paused somewhere in the middle of Oak Street, scrubbing at his face. “He wanted us to have that edge, to be better than anyone else. It started to not be so fun anymore.”

  “Did you ever want to quit?” I asked, and he shook his head immediately.

  “Not an option—quitting is never an option. Eventually, it became just such a part of everything that it seemed normal. We were a football family, and that’s what we all did. Even my mom—she ran the boosters, organized bake sales when we needed new uniforms, all that.”

  “Family business,” I mused, and he squeezed my shoulder.

  “That’s exactly right. My older brother, he ended up getting a partial scholarship to a regional school there in Wisconsin. He played for four years, and that was it. But me, I started getting scouted when I was a sophomore in high school. I was really good, and my family knew if it was going to happen, it was going to happen for me.”

  “Were you still working for the dairy?”

  “Yup, football and cows, that was literally my life.”

  “And Missy,” I said quietly, knowing that by now in this timeline, she’d made an appearance.

  “And Missy,” he agreed. “She was as much a part as everything was back then. She was a cheerleader, she was right here for every game, on the sidelines or with my parents. We used to sit out back at nighttime, in one of the pastures, and talk about what things would be like when we were older. I’d play professional, I knew that now, and I knew I’d be afforded a life that I couldn’t turn down. No one from a tiny town in Wisconsin whose only other prospect was a lifetime at a dairy wouldn’t go for it guns blazing.”

  I kept quiet, sensing that there was a turn coming in this tale.

  “My knee started acting up my senior year at USC. At first I thought it was nothing; we all got banged up pretty good each game. My knee held, we were winning games right and left, and it was all starting to fall into place. After graduation, I got drafted, Missy and I got married right after that, and we were off for Dallas. To this day, I’ve never seen my dad more proud.”

  He chewed on his lower lip, lost in thought.

  “And then?” I prodded, and he cleared his throat.

  “And then it was just how life was. We bought a house, we started talking about kids, I was playing, it was all good. Then my knee started getting really bad, but I thought, I really thought, I’d be able to stick it out. But . . . seventh game of the season, I was driving hard and the turf was loose. I went one way, my leg the other, and I could literally hear my knee pop. Worst pain I’ve ever felt.”

  “Oh, Oscar.” I sighed, leaning my head on his strong arm, feeling the power that was still there, humming beneath the surface. So strong.

  “Anyway, that was it. I had the surgery, went to rehab, tried liked hell to not see the signs that were so clear, but in the end it was obvious, I was done.”

  “I bet that was rough.”

  “You know what?” His expression lightened surprisingly. “It was rough, but it was kind of a relief. I couldn’t play anymore, so I could actually breathe for a bit, think about what else I wanted to do. Neither one of us wanted to stay in Dallas; big cities were never our thing. So we went home. I’d saved most of my signing bonus, and money went much further in rural Wisconsin than it did in the big city, so we went home and started over.”

  “And that’s where the cheese comes in?”

  “Exactly. I knew an old guy who lived in town, made cheddar. He used to buy his milk from our dairy, and I’d been interested in the process. I started working with him, learning the business, and when Missy and I talked about what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives, we started thinking about where else in the country we might like to live. She’d always wanted to live somewhere different—and it’s crazy when an idea takes hold, how fast things can change.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not crazy, it’s just you. Anyone who can overcome an injury like that is tough. You’re determined as hell, Oscar. I’m not at all surprised you figured out a way through it.”

  He blushed a bit, shrugging his shoulders. “Anyway, that’s how we ended up here. There was a farm for sale, there were several outbuildings on the property for me to get my ­cheese-making thing going; it was almost too easy. But once we got here and settled in, things changed.”

  “Between you and Missy?”

  “Yep. Away from family and friends, away from everything we’d always thought we’d do together, we started to . . . I don’t know . . . drift apart, I guess? Not right away, but luckily it happened before we had any kids. So when the split came, it was clean.”

  “And she didn’t go back home.”

  “Oh no, she loved the area. She lives in the next town over, as you know. I admit, I didn’t get to know many people here when we first moved. You might have noticed I tend to be a little . . . standoffish?”

  “Noooo,” I mocked, and he kissed me on top of the head.

  “But then the cheese started coming together, literally and figuratively, and I’d invested the money I’d earned well enough to really give it a go. And there we are.”

  “And there we are,” I said, stopping on the sidewalk. We’d walked around the town square nearly enough times to wear a path in the concrete. I wrapped both arms around him, leaning into a hug. “And your family?”

  “They’re back home. They do their thing. My dad’s grooming my nephew to be the next Brett Favre.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, Natalie.” He sighed and hugged me back just as tightly.

  So now I knew the story of Oscar.

  I spent the rest of the day with him, helping him move the cows around, enjoying the day, kissing him whenever I could manage it. And when he kissed me good-bye at the train station that night, it was all I could do to not throw my arms around him and stay another night.

  He was under my skin now.

  Chapter 16

  Back in the city, I worked my ass off, spending ten hours a day in the office, focusing my attention on work to keep my mind from wandering to what was waiting for me just a train ride away. But I had work, and work I did.

  The T&T campaign was coming along marvelously, sharp and witty and exactly how I had envisioned it. Dan had made a few suggestions about how to beef up the coverage a bit, including some witty copy that would play really well on the radio ads the client had agreed to purchase.

  The best part of the week? My friend Clara was in town, working on a hotel remodel in the Flatiron District. She traveled all over helping to rebrand hotels, specializing in historic hotels that were on the verge of going under. Sometimes it was as simple as bringing in a new manager, changing out some staff, or brightening
up the rooms, but sometimes it was a complete overhaul. That was the case with the Winchester, a pre-WWI hotel that had hosted presidents and kings, movie stars and countless starlets. It had fallen on hard times, and in a last-ditch effort the family that owned it had hired Clara’s firm to try and rebrand it for the new batch of stars and starlets.

  “You should see the dining room—heaven! It’s still got the original windows, hidden behind miles and miles of awful draperies, but the windows are still there.” Clara was sipping her sparkling water, hands flashing about as she talked a mile a minute. Clara moved almost constantly, her sleek runner’s frame seeming almost incapable of keeping still. Running ten miles a day four days a week (on the fifth day she’d push herself to fifteen if she had a race coming up), she competed in marathons and triathlons around the globe. She traveled a lot, was always on the move, although her schedule had been slowing down of late, as she took more projects that seemed to be based in the United States than abroad as was her norm.

  Which was fine with me, because it meant I got to see her more often. And now that we had Roxie firmly ensconced in upstate New York, we were even all planning a weekend get-together just as soon as we could pin Clara down. Which was proving almost impossible.

  “Mom and I used to have lunch in the tearoom at the Winchester when I was a kid,” I reminisced, thinking back to the wintry Saturdays we’d spend together. “I’d always order the French onion soup, which used to come in these fantastic earthenware crocks, all bubbly and cheesy. I’d always burn the hell out of my tongue because I couldn’t wait, but it was soooo worth it.”

  “Shit, Natalie, if I had a nickel for every story I’ve heard like that, I’d have a lot of nickels! They still have those bowls; I found a bunch of them in a storage room. Trying new things is good, but when you have something you’re known for, like the onion soup? You never take it off the menu.”

  “So will the new Winchester Hotel have onion soup again?” I asked.

  “Hell yes,” she answered, raising a glass in salute. “When the tearoom reopens for the Christmas season.”

  “My favorite time of year.” I sighed, thinking of the department store window displays and crowds, tourists and natives alike. “Do you know where you’ll be this holiday?”

  “Not sure yet; there’s a hotel in Colorado we’ve been in talks with. Over a hundred years old, same family for generations, but really struggling. If we get it, I’m asking to go there.”

  “You know you’re always invited to our house; my parents put on a killer holiday party.”

  “Mm-hmm, I know,” she said, her eyes moving around the restaurant, not quite lighting on anything in particular. She never liked talking about family, or holidays. I only knew the little bit I did know from the few times she’d been pickled enough to talk about it. From what Roxie and I had been able to figure, her childhood hadn’t been a happy one. Never knowing her father, she’d been removed from her mother’s home early for reasons she didn’t talk about, and she’d bounced from one foster family to the next. What was amazing about Clara is having that kind of start in life could have broken her, but instead she’d struck out on her own as soon as she turned eighteen.

  She’d won a scholarship to the Culinary Institute both Roxie and I attended freshman year, and like me, she realized quickly it wasn’t her cup of tea. But she stuck it out until the end of the year, and then applied for financial aid at a traditional four-year school in Boston.

  The three of us had kept in touch through the years, and it was nice having us all on the East Coast again. I invited her year after year to holiday parties with my family, but she always politely declined.

  “You know I appreciate the invitation, right?” she asked now, her voice quiet.

  “You know I’ll always ask, right?” I answered with a question of my own.

  She smiled. “One day I’ll say yes.”

  “Perfect!” I said, patting her hand and changing the subject. “So, this guy I’ve been fucking—”

  The waiter who’d discreetly been trying to peek down my dress all lunch dropped his tray of drinks.

  Clara just held her head in her hands and laughed.

  I walked back to work after lunch, with kisses and hugs from Clara and a promise to come over for dinner next week sometime when she was back in town. I’d picked a restaurant only a few blocks away from the office, and I took the long way back so I could walk a little longer. I wasn’t quite ready to go back to work yet. I was restless, I could feel it in my bones.

  Oscar had been slowly driving me mad this week with his texts. His first came in Sunday night, before I’d even gotten to bed. Once again, I’d caught the last train home from Poughkeepsie, and was just turning the key in my front door when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Standing in the entryway, I read his text and his words made me flush scarlet almost instantly.

  My bed still smells like you.

  The next bubble was even better.

  I still smell like you.

  But the last bubble was my favorite.

  Get your great comma big ass back up here, Pinup.

  I did love a guy who didn’t need a thigh gap.

  The texts continued all week, some flirty, some dirty, all designed to drive me crazy. We talked each night around nine, him going to bed so much earlier than I did since the cock crowed before dawn. Thank goodness that on weekends, he had some of the local 4-H kids come around to take care of the animals, affording him a rare Saturday or Sunday morning sleep-in.

  Sleep-ins that I’d gotten to take advantage of the last few weekends. But I couldn’t possibly go up again this weekend; there was no reason to. I had what I needed to get started on the Bailey Falls campaign, and my mother would put out an APB for me if I ditched brunch again. Still, when he started telling me all about the Halloween harvest festival that was going on that weekend . . .

  “I can’t, I just can’t! I’ve spent the last few weekends up there as it is, my city needs me! I can’t disappear again,” I teased, lying on my bed with my feet propped up on the headboard Thursday night, listening as Oscar made a case for why it was imperative that I get my great comma big ass back up there this weekend.

  “I’ve even got people covering my stall at the farmers’ market this weekend. That’s how big this festival is,” he replied, his voice extra low and sexy tonight. Maybe it was just that it’d been four days since I’d had a hit of Oscar, and my body was literally craving it.

  “You’re not going to be in the city Saturday?” I asked, disappointed. I’d planned on stopping by, going through our normal “Brie” conversation, pretending I didn’t know him at all but just still had a crush, but making sure to wear something extremely low-cut to torture him with.

  “Nope, I’ll be at Maxwell Farms Friday night helping them get set up, and will probably spend all Saturday there. Leo’s setting up a corn maze.”

  There was a new club opening in Gramercy that I’d been invited to, two dinners with friends I hadn’t seen for a few weeks, and a fund-raiser for a friend of my mother’s on a yacht on the Hudson. All places at which I’d planned on making an appearance.

  But nowhere on my island was there a corn maze.

  As I turned onto Forty-eighth Street I saw a subway poster advertising Grand Central as the weekend getaway hub.

  No, universe! No, no, no! No weekend getaways. No taking the train. No going back to Bailey Falls for the weekend just for a corn maze.

  But it wouldn’t be just for the corn maze . . . there’d be dick involved.

  I packed an overnight bag that evening, and this time instead of asking Roxie to pick me up at the Poughkeepsie station, I asked Oscar. He agreed instantly, and then spent ten minutes describing exactly what he planned to do to me in his truck on our way into town. To be fair, some of them couldn’t realistically be done while driving, but it didn’t really matter . . .

>   Friday evening, I walked off the train platform and headed for the parking lot, knowing Oscar would be waiting there for me. But instead, he surprised me by actually sitting inside the station, in the beautiful old lobby. For a second, I had an overwhelming urge to drop my bag and go running across the lobby, throwing myself into his arms, and letting him spin me silly while laying a big wet kiss on me. I walked quickly toward him, fighting the urge.

  He met me halfway, walking rather quickly himself, and did indeed spin me around while giving me the biggest kiss of my life. The only deviation from the Disney version in my head was that one of his hands was splayed across my ass.

  “Wow,” was all I could manage when he finally set me down.

  “Was that too much?” he asked, the grin on his face unstoppable.

  “Hell, I’m too much,” I replied, my grin matching his. “That was just right.”

  He scooped up my bag and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, guiding me out to the parking lot.

  “So, I’ve been thinking about all those things you wanted to do to me on the way home, and I think I figured out a way you can do them and not get arrested—or both of us splattered across the road.”

  “Natalie, listen, I—”

  “There’s that old turnoff, right by the old state highway? Roxie said it used to be one of the roads up to Bryant Mountain House, but it isn’t used anymore. So I was thinking we should go use it.”

  “We can definitely do that, but not—”

  I hurried toward his truck, eager for the weekend to start. “Come on, let’s go. If I sit next to you, I can slip my hand inside your jeans and lean down to— What the hell?”

  Missy was sitting inside Oscar’s truck.

  “Hi, Natalie.” She waved. I waved back, looking at Oscar with questions all over my face.

  “Her car broke down,” he said as he stowed my bag in the back of the truck. Opening the passenger door for me, he had the decency to blush slightly. Considering what I’d been saying as we walked up, and knowing full well she must have heard my indecent proposal, a slight blush shouldn’t be enough. And did he look amused?