Keepsake: True North #2

  The moon was nearly full, which made it fairly easy to navigate across the grass. I’d gotten braver since coming to the farm last month. I could cross between the buildings at night without feeling panicky and unmoored. See? Even if progress was slow, I was behaving a little less like a head case.

  “Zach?” I called when I reached the open door to the barn.

  “Right here,” said a gruff voice just as the overhead lights went out, leaving only dim lighting near the ceiling.

  I watched the darkened figure of Zach walk toward me, patting the rump of a Jersey cow or two on his way. “Something wrong?” he asked, not quite meeting my eyes.

  “Well…” I leaned against the door frame, wondering what to say. Was I overreacting? “I think I screwed up tonight. If that kiss made you uncomfortable, then I’m really sorry. I’ll never do it again. It was overstepping. Maybe I offended you.”

  “Offended me,” he echoed. When he finally lifted his chin, the heat in his expression was not what I’d expected.

  “Y-yeah,” I stammered.

  Zach stepped into my personal space so quickly I didn’t have any time to react. My backside collided with barn wood at the same moment his hand cupped my cheek. In the nanosecond before he kissed me, I took a fast breath and inhaled the scent of hay and clean flannel. Then his hungry mouth took mine.

  Oh.

  Oh, wow.

  My senses were overwhelmed with all things Zach—his sunshine scent and the rough pad of his thumb on my cheek. And his taste, which was like beer and hunger. His kiss was impatient with me. His lips caressed mine, demanding to be tasted. My shock abated all at once, and I sagged against the wall, tilting my face toward his, looking for more.

  And he provided. As his big hands encircled my waist, he touched my lip with his tongue. I opened for him faster than a hungry baby bird. The first taste of his hunger was magic, setting off an electrical charge throughout my body.

  I made a funny little noise of surprise as every one of my dormant nerve endings woke up at once and saluted him. My hands found their way onto his chest, my fingers gripping his flannel shirt. His tongue slid against mine. And when he made a low sound of approval, I felt it everywhere.

  “Zach?” someone called. The voice was Griff’s.

  We broke apart on a gasp, our gazes locking.

  “Everything okay?” Griff called out from the opposite end of the darkened barn.

  After a beat, Zach yelled “Fine!” in a voice too rough to sound like his own.

  “Was it the timer again?”

  Zach opened his mouth and then closed it again. He took a half step back from me. I would have had to be blind to miss how conflicted he was in that moment. And while there was no earthly reason why Griff needed to discuss the cows’ nightlights at midnight on a Friday, I didn’t want to be the reason he blew off his boss.

  So I made a quick decision and removed myself from the situation. Slipping out from the space between Zach and the barn door, I headed across the moonlit lawn alone. I felt Zach’s eyes on me, but I hurried on my way.

  12

  Zach

  As one of the Shipleys might say, holy shit.

  I stumbled through a conversation about barn lighting with Griff before finally making my excuses and heading back to the bunkhouse.

  Lark’s door was closed, with no strip of light beneath it. But that was for the best. I needed a little time for my head to clear, so I could figure out what the hell had happened tonight.

  Kissing Lark was not something I’d ever meant to do. Griff had said very clearly that the girl is off limits. But, hey—she started it. The kiss at the bar had taken both of us by surprise. The way her hands gripped me as the kiss went on? That was not my imagination. Neither was the flush on her face afterward.

  She felt it. But still—that didn’t justify my audacity. I could have left it alone.

  Stewing over it, I brushed my teeth on autopilot and got into bed. Griff came in, joking with Kieran. They wondered where Kyle might be staying tonight.

  “I hope that girl was not a serial killer,” Kieran mused.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if he read the situation wrong?” Griff asked. “Maybe she only wanted to try to convert him to another religion.”

  “Or sell him a time-share property in Boca.”

  The two of them broke up laughing.

  I smiled to myself as the room went dark. This was typical bunkhouse behavior, juiced up with Friday night’s usual combination of beer and sexual frustration. This was my version of home. It would look strange to someone else, but it was normal to me.

  As I began to get drowsy, I said a silent prayer in the hopes that Lark would stay asleep tonight. Getting into her bed right now would be a horrible idea. If she touched me, I’d probably burst into flames.

  Griff began to snore first, and it wasn’t long until I followed him.

  * * *

  On Saturday I woke up in my own bed. Shutting off my watch alarm, I hauled myself into a vertical position, got dressed and went out to the barn where Dylan and I began the milking in sleepy silence.

  It was Kieran’s day to sleep in, but twenty minutes into morning chores he showed up anyway. “What are you doing here?” I asked him as I hooked up a Jersey named Becky to the milking machine.

  “Covering my brother,” he muttered. “Lord knows when he’ll turn up.” Kieran even took the shovel and began to clean out the gutter.

  That was big of him. Though I’d known the Shipleys for years now, I was still astonished at their generosity toward one another. No wonder I was still dragging my feet on coming up with Plan B. There wasn’t anywhere I wanted to be other than here.

  “Kyle really ought to be on shit patrol today,” Dylan pointed out.

  “You can punish him tomorrow,” I suggested.

  “Hey, Chewie?” Griff called to me from outside the barn. “Got a second?”

  “Sure.” I followed him out into the morning sunlight. Music could be heard coming from the farmhouse kitchen, and I wondered if Lark was in there yet, making breakfast with Ruth and May.

  Just the thought of her made my stomach flip over. In an hour we’d be headed for the Norwich market together. The car ride could be interesting.

  “I got a question for you,” Griff said, startling me out of my thoughts. “What’s up with Lark?”

  “Uh…” The question set off alarm bells in my head. I hadn’t meant to kiss Lark. I was fighting a powerful urge to lie about my feelings for her.

  “Is she all right, do you think?” Griff asked while I panicked.

  It took me a moment to realize that his query had nothing to do with a kiss in the barn. “You mean…because she has bad dreams?”

  He nodded. “Looks like PTSD, doesn’t it? Just like Zara’s other brother—Damien. Did you know he did two tours in Afghanistan?”

  I nodded. Damien turned up at the Gin Mill sometimes, and I’d seen his dog tags.

  “The guy didn’t sleep right for two years after he came home. Told me he still sleepwalks sometimes. He woke up once on his couch, holding a kitchen knife.”

  Yikes. “I can’t see Lark going all Hurt Locker on us.”

  Griffin snorted. “I’m not afraid of her, Zach. I just don’t want to be the guy who brushes aside her issues because I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “It’s not like that!”

  Griff’s bushy eyebrows shot upward even as the irritation in my voice echoed between us. Heck, I don’t think I’d ever argued with Griff over anything before. Not even pizza toppings. “How is it like, then?” he asked quietly.

  I took a deep breath and tried to be calm. If Griff made a big deal about Lark’s problems, it would only piss her off. It also might send her away, my subconscious prodded. The truth was that I liked being the one helping her. The only one.

  Was I screwing things up just so I could be the one she hugged when she was scared?

  “What if we gave her just a little more time to feel bet
ter?” I suggested. “It hasn’t been very long since she got back. She came to Vermont to get out of her parents’ way because they were too worried to give her some space.”

  Griff rubbed his beard. “I hear you. And I asked her about it myself, and she said she was doing okay. But then she looked jumpy at the bar last night. Does she do okay at the market?”

  “Yeah,” I said quickly. “She does all right most of the time.” Unless it’s really hot or crowded. Or loud.

  “What, uh…” Griff shifted his weight. “Did she tell you much about what happened in Guatemala?”

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck, as it did every time I wondered the same thing. “She told me she watched somebody die.”

  Griff flinched. “That all?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” I asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  “Sure,” Griff said slowly. “I just worry there’s more to the story, and maybe I’m sending her off to do work that’s hard on her.”

  “I don’t think you are. If you really want to be sure, offer to send someone else to Norwich today. See what she says.”

  “All right. She seems to trust you.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “But let me know if there are any problems.”

  “Okay,” I grunted.

  “Quite the kiss she gave you last night.”

  My gut tightened. “That was just a joke.” It was supposed to be, anyway.

  Griff chuckled. “The best jokes have a basis in the truth. Looked pretty realistic if you ask me.”

  I felt my neck begin to heat. “Are we gonna load the truck for Norwich or stand here yapping all morning?”

  His smile only grew. “Aw, I think you like her. Make sure you let my sister Daphne down easy.”

  “Griff! Jesus.”

  My boss’s grin only widened. “You took the lord’s name in vain? Looks like I hit a nerve.”

  And now I was done with this confusing conversation. “Gotta load the truck,” I muttered. Then I turned my back and stomped away from Griff Shipley for the first time in my life, my pulse hammering in my throat. As a hurried toward the cider house, I expected him to call out and stop me.

  He didn’t, though.

  13

  Lark

  I was in the farmhouse kitchen when the flatbed truck pulled up outside the kitchen. In a hurry, I tucked two of Ruth’s pumpkin muffins into a plastic container and slapped the lids onto two travel mugs of coffee.

  “Have a good one,” May said from the griddle, where she was scrambling eggs. “Looks like good weather for a change.”

  “Thanks, babe! Study hard so we can watch a movie tonight.”

  “I will.”

  I took the muffins and coffee outside, balancing the cups on the container as I eased the back door shut.

  “Let me help you with that,” Zach muttered, whisking the cups away so that I was no longer performing a risky balancing act.

  “Thanks,” I said, walking around the truck to get into the passenger’s seat. As I climbed up and slammed the door, I wondered how things would be between us this morning. Awkward, potentially.

  I’d woken up this morning remembering our moment in the barn. And at the bar. I didn’t know I was so easy to impress. But two kisses had me walking around trying to keep the dreamy look off my face.

  Though it wasn’t clear there’d be more of those kisses in my future. And now we had five hundred pounds of apples to sell in four hours. I was fastening my seatbelt when I spotted Griff waving at us. “Hey, the boss is flagging you down,” I said just as Zach let his foot off the brake.

  The truck stopped again and I rolled down my window as Griff jogged up. “Hey, Lark. You feel like selling apples again today? Because if you’d rather kick around here instead, I could send Dylan for a change.”

  I looked into Griff’s wide brown eyes and tried to figure out why he was asking me that. “Are you trying to keep me away from the cider donuts in Norwich?”

  “Not at all, Wild Child.”

  “Good. Because I’ll fight you for ’em.”

  Griff chuckled. Then he leaned in to ask Zach a question, too. “You got the sweet cider I put in the lower cooler?”

  “Of course,” Zach said stiffly.

  Griff’s smile slid off. “Everything okay?”

  Zach’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I’m good.”

  “Okay, then.” Griff took off his baseball cap and waved us on. “Go forth and sell the season’s first Honeycrisps.”

  Checking Zach’s face as we began to roll down the driveway, I saw tension there. “Everything okay?” I hazarded.

  “Yep,” he said, and it wasn’t entirely convincing. He was stressed out about something, and I wasn’t vain enough to assume it was me.

  “I brought coffee and muffins.”

  “Awesome.” His eyes didn’t leave the road, and he gave his head a little shake. “I could really use the coffee this morning.”

  As soon as we turned onto the road, I handed him the travel cup, and he took a deep drink of it. “Thank you for this manna from heaven.”

  “Didn’t sleep well? Because I slept great.” Maybe that was laying it on a little thick, but if he had any regrets about our kiss in the barn, I wanted him to know that everything was okay on my end. I valued his friendship far too much to let things get weird.

  But, hey, if he wanted to try it again, I’d probably hurl myself into his arms. It had been a long time since anyone made me feel such hunger and optimism all rolled together.

  “I’m glad you slept through the night,” he said softly. “I want that for you.”

  I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. So I picked up my iPod and put on a playlist. Eddie Vedder began to sing “Black,” and I relaxed against the headrest. When the Chili Peppers inevitably came on, I smiled at the ceiling of the Shipley truck. “Thank you for requesting that music last night when I was feeling a little edgy. That was really nice of you.”

  “No problem.”

  More silence.

  Hmm.

  I watched the Vermont countryside roll by. There was corn still standing in the fields, unharvested. And fat rolls of hay in stacks, with white plastic covering them for winter. They looked like giant balls of fresh mozzarella cheese, making me wish for a giant tomato and a wheelbarrow full of balsamic vinegar…

  The radio played on, and even a tense Zach was easier company than most anyone else. I always felt relaxed with him, because he already knew I was a wreck. I didn’t have to pretend. And he seemed to like me anyway.

  He liked me a little more than he wished he did, I was pretty sure.

  I opened the container of muffins and broke one carefully into quarters. It was still warm, filling the cab with the comfortable scent of pumpkin and nutmeg. “Open sesame,” I said, reaching over toward his side of the seat with a chunk of muffin. I raised it toward his mouth.

  He opened up and I fed him the bite. Then he grabbed my hand and kissed the palm. It was just a quick gesture. But somehow there was more sweetness in it than should have been possible. My skin prickled with awareness where he’d touched me. And when I dropped my hand back into my lap, I found myself inspecting it, as if the explanation for the sudden change in the air between us might be written there.

  Chemistry was something I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was even nicer than I remembered.

  * * *

  For once we were going to have stunning market weather. Not only was the sun out, but the temperature climbed to a comfortable temperature and then kept right on rising. By noon it felt more like July than September. People lingered over their purchases and chatted up their neighbors, and I had to shed my sweatshirt even though we were in the shade.

  I didn’t miss Zach’s appreciative glance at my tank top. Luckily we were too busy to talk or even think too much about our extracurricular activities last night.

  In the center of the market square a little acoustic band was playing. I didn??
?t have a direct line of sight, but strains of a banjo and a fiddle punctuated all my transactions.

  I was feeling quite relaxed for nearly the whole time until Leah popped by to ask Zach a question, “You have Maeve, right?”

  Zach’s hands froze on the half-gallons of cider he’d pulled from the ice bin. “I haven’t seen her all morning.”

  “Oh,” Leah whispered. She turned around fast, her eyes scanning. And Zach practically vaulted out of our booth to help her look.

  “Maeve?” Leah called, her voice wavering. “Where’d you go, sweetie?”

  Zach cupped his hands and called her name. Then he walked a couple of yards and did it again.

  I had a customer to ring up, but my attention was shattered. I put her bag of apples on the scale and weighed it. But it took me three tries to multiply the weight by the price and charge the customer the right amount. My fingers were dumb on the calculator buttons until the customer finally just blurted out the correct amount.

  “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, making change for a ten. I didn’t hear the response, though, because my pulse was pounding in my ears. And my eyes kept leaving my work to search the crowd for a little girl with chubby arms in an Apostate Farm T-shirt.

  “Maeve!” Zach’s voice called from somewhere beyond my line of vision. It was echoed by Leah’s.

  I shivered, even though there was sweat running down my back now. A prickly hot wave of fear consumed me.

  “Maeve!” the voices called again, and I held my breath, straining to hear a little voice answer.

  But it didn’t.

  Another customer stepped up to the scales and set her apples down, but now I couldn’t seem to focus my eyes on the readout on the scale. The edges of my vision bled yellow, and the soundtrack of the market seemed distant.

  “Are you okay?” someone asked from far away. “Miss? Maybe you oughta sit down?”

  That sounded like a great idea. I grabbed the edge of the table with both hands and sort of eased myself downward. My ass hit the ground, and then everything went black.