Keepsake: True North #2

“Do me a favor?” I asked May. “Don’t be good tonight. Be naughty.”

  “We’ll see,” May said coyly. “Don’t leave tomorrow until I get a chance to say goodbye.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  After she left, Zach waited at least a whole minute before he asked me to come outside and see his truck. “I’ve never bought anything expensive before. It caused me almost physical pain to write that check.”

  “Sure. Let’s go outside.”

  On the way to the tractor shed where he’d parked it, I stopped at my car and grabbed the box from inside.

  “What’s that?” Zach asked.

  “Your present.”

  “Aren’t you wearing my present?”

  “You’ll have to verify that later. But this is something that’s really for you.”

  He patted his coat pocket. “Okay. I have yours right here, too. But first…”

  The truck was black and looked to me like every other truck on the road. Even so, I made all the right sounds of admiration. Zach had taken this risk because he wanted to be able to see me, and that was the sexiest thing in the world.

  I opened the passenger-side door and climbed in, putting my box up on the dash. “Do you have to do a lot of work on it?” I asked after Zach climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “Some. I got a great deal because it failed its emissions test, and the elderly man who drove it just didn’t want to bother with fixing it up. But if I do the repairs myself, it won’t be very expensive. I just can’t drive it until I can fix the hoses and tune up the engine. Are you cold?” he asked, rubbing his hands together. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “A little.” I moved closer to him on the seat. “Let’s snuggle.”

  “Twist my arm.” He pulled me closer to his body. “I love the idea of you being in Hanover. That’s about…thirty miles?”

  “At least. But I could live in Norwich or somewhere on the Vermont side of the river. Lots of people commute into Hanover.”

  Zach put a tender kiss on my temple. “Doesn’t matter. I’d drive all night to see you.”

  Those words sent a happy little shimmy through me. “If we’re lucky, it won’t come to that. I’m going to write a really good application to this program. And the dean said they had a couple of part-time jobs opening up—organizing research data—stuff like that. I told him I’d love to consider that job even before they made their application decisions. I was an eager little beaver. Now open my present. I want to see if you like it.”

  “Of course I’ll like it.” He took the box I handed him and loosened the ribbon. After unwrapping it, I watched him smile when he lifted the lid. “This is nice.” His fingers stroked the fabric of the shirt I’d bought him—it was flannel, but insulated with fleece. “And warm.”

  “That was the point. Every morning when I wake up, I think of you out in the dairy barn in the cold. And I wonder if you are wearing the right clothes.”

  Zach lifted the box and the shirt back onto the dash, then hugged me, burying his face in my hair. “Thank you.”

  “I hope it fits.”

  “It will,” he whispered, kissing my neck. “Thank you for thinking of me when you wake up in the morning.”

  “Of course I’m thinking about you! I’m wishing you were there so I could rip off your clothes.”

  He chuckled, his lips teasing my ear. “It’s more than that. I’m not used to anyone looking after me. I like it.”

  I drew back and forced him to look me in the eye. “So many people look after you. You have a big fan club, Zachariah Holtz. And I’m the president.”

  “Sometimes I forget, though,” he mumbled. “People treat you like garbage for nineteen years, it takes a while to get past it.”

  “I think you’re almost there.”

  He kissed me. “Now open my present.” He fished something out of his coat pocket—a small box. “I went with Daphne and Ruth to a craft fair in Hanover, and I found something there that made me think of you.”

  The little box was made of wood, with a single gold ribbon around it. I tugged the ribbon off gleefully. When it fell away, I lifted the lid.

  Inside, a silver pendant and chain lay on a felted cushion. The pendant was an artist’s representation of an apple. In pure silver, the jeweler had captured the unmistakable curve of the fruit’s shape. But the form wasn’t symmetrical. Like a real apple—and God knows we’d both handled thousands of those—it was uneven, its stem bowed. Yet the metal had been burnished to a beautiful bright texture, and it glowed with an uncanny likeness to the real thing.

  “An apple,” I whispered. “It’s perfect.”

  “It isn’t perfect,” Zach argued. “But I like that. The first day you were here, Griffin gave you his long speech about how the most bitter apples make the best cider. When I saw this, it reminded me of falling in love with you. A lot of bitter things happened to you this year, but without them we wouldn’t be sitting right here.”

  I swallowed hard. “I get that now. Will you put it on me?”

  He took the delicate chain from her fingers, but then hesitated. “There’s one more thing. I was chatting with the woman who made this, and she told me an interesting fact.”

  “I’ll bet she did. That’s probably because you were the most interesting thing she saw all day.”

  Zach teased open the tiny silver clasp. “Unfortunately, much of the world’s silver comes from Central and South America.”

  “Ah,” I said, tilting my head to make his job easier. “I’ll always be dragging a big piece of Guatemala around with me, so what’s one more ounce?” When he was done fastening the chain, I lifted my head and kissed him. A real kiss—right on the mouth.

  “Mmm,” he said with a growl. “Guess we can’t wait for midnight.”

  “Nope,” I agreed, throwing a leg over his and leaning in. Even though it was cold out here in the truck, Zach and I had enough chemistry to heat the eastern seaboard. Tasting him slowly and thoroughly, I forgot about Christmas presents and New Year’s wishes. Kissing was suddenly all I cared to do.

  Okay, not all.

  I slid a hand down to Zach’s zipper, cupping the erection inside his jeans. Then I opened the button. “We need to break in your truck,” I whispered. He groaned as I slid off his lap and bent down to unzip him. I tugged the denim away and reached into the handy fly on his boxers. I untucked his cock, his length in my hand. Leaning in, I began to drop light kisses up and down his shaft. I nuzzled the curly blond hairs at the base of his dick, and won an aroused groan for my troubles.

  But when I began to lick him, he caught my chin. “None of that,” he chided, “or I won’t last.”

  “We have all night,” I argued, getting in one last good lick.

  Zach put a hand on my head. “I know. And I want to spend it inside you.”

  It was a simple statement, spoken in Zach’s understated cadence. But the effect on me was the sort of heat that nearly required one of Griffin’s fire extinguishers. And when Zach’s fingers curled around my hair and tugged me upward, I was ready and willing to go inside the bunkhouse with him.

  “Hey,” I whispered as he tugged himself back together in the dark. “Are those boxers…red?”

  “Of course! I didn’t want to mess up the tradition.”

  I laughed all the way to the bunkhouse. When we entered the guest room, there was something sitting in front of the bed—an ice bucket. A bottle of champagne sat inside it, and there were two champagne glasses on the nightstand. Lastly, a card sat propped up on the pillow. Lark, it read on the outside.

  “Wow. Did you do this?” I asked.

  “Uh, no.”

  I opened the card.

  Lark—

  This is my present to you! I stoked up the fire and chilled the wine. Have a nice night with your man. I’m ecstatic for you both. And it’s great to see you looking so happy.

  Love you always,

  May

  “Aw.”

  “That was
nice of her,” Zach said, reading over my shoulder.

  “It really was.”

  “Want some champagne? It’s not midnight yet, though.”

  I sat down on the bed and reached for the bottle. “Let’s not wait. It took us a long time to get here.”

  Zach sat down on the bed and then moved to kneel behind me. He kissed me on the back of the neck. “You’re worth the wait.” He dropped another soft, open-mouthed kiss on the back of my neck.

  It felt so good that my hands fumbled on the twist of wire holding the champagne cork. “Don’t stop.”

  “I never will.”

  37

  Seven Months Later

  Zach

  It was late on a Tuesday afternoon in July. Also? It was my birthday.

  Nothing had gone exactly as planned today, though. Griff and I had meant to spend the day fixing split-rail fencing. Instead, we’d ended up at The Busy Bean, the coffee shop Zara and Audrey owned. Their power had gone out around noon, and Zara had called Griff in a panic. They were worried about losing the stock in their fridge and freezer and needed help with a generator.

  Griff had said to me, “You can hook up a generator, right?”

  “Sure,” I’d said. But what I should have said was, “Sure, if you have all the right parts.”

  Two hours later I had the thing going, but I spent another couple of hours calling HVAC companies to try to get someone to look at the air conditioner behind the building, because I was pretty sure a faulty capacitor had caused the problem in the first place.

  After fetching a lot of ice for Audrey and Zara, Griff had left me at the coffee shop. “You’re doing important work here, man,” he’d said. “If it gets late in the day, I’ll just see you tomorrow, okay?

  “Yep! Later.”

  I liked tinkering with systems, and I loved fixing things for my friends. When we’d arrived, Zara had been pacing the cafe, her copper-haired one-year-old in her arms, a worried look on her face.

  Even after Zara’s mother had arrived to take little Nicole off her hands, her mood didn’t improve until I got the refrigerators humming.

  “You are a prince among men,” Zara gushed then. But I had to break it to her that her troubles might not be over unless the AC unit was fixed.

  “We’ll be fine,” Audrey had insisted. “And we really appreciate all you did for us today. And on your birthday! Let me give you a treat.”

  “After I make these calls,” I’d insisted. Tomorrow was supposed to be a scorcher and I didn’t want them turning the AC back on until I found somebody look at it.

  By four thirty I’d found a repairman who’d help them first thing tomorrow. After I’d washed most of the grease out from under my fingernails, Audrey sat me down at a cafe table with a plate of cookies. And Zara made me one of her famous lattes. It was served in a bowl, with a swirl of cinnamon on top.

  Heaven on earth, I swear.

  I texted Griff to let him know what I’d accomplished, and he replied with an offer of dinner. I’ll see you tomorrow, I told him. Lark has something planned for tonight.

  I’ll bet she does, was Griff’s snarky comment. It came with a wink emoji. Go home to your girl.

  Okay, I’m heading home soon. See you tomorrow. The old me would have rushed back to the farm for an hour of fence repair instead of enjoying a moment here in the cafe. I still loved working for Griff, but I didn’t need to work the longest hours or stay the latest to prove that I cared.

  He already knew.

  I was so busy with these thoughts that I almost missed an interesting customer in the coffee shop.

  Audrey was tidying up while Zara served the day’s last few caffeine junkies. A man I didn’t recognize walked in and began to glance around the place. People did that, because the interior of The Busy Bean was quirky. The posts and beams had been painted with a chalkboard surface onto which Audrey and Zara had written some of their favorite quotes. The furniture was homey but mismatched and upholstered in bright colors.

  I didn’t form an opinion of the unfamiliar customer until I glimpsed Zara’s expression. She and the newcomer were face to face, but she’d gone white as a sheet.

  “Hey, no way!” the guy said, his back to me. “I’m back in town, and I looked for you at the Mountain Goat. Didn’t know you worked here now. We should exchange numbers.”

  Zara stared at him for a long beat. Her mouth had fallen open. “Do you…have a b-business card?” she’d finally asked.

  Zara’s freaked-out expression was so unlike her that I took a closer look at the man. He was a big, muscular guy in jeans and a faded T-shirt. On his feet he wore hiking boots. That was pretty much all I could tell about him from the back. Except for one detail that really set him apart from the other men I knew around here.

  His hair was a very distinctive shade of coppery red.

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either. Audrey stood a few feet away from Zara, a sponge in one hand and a startled look on her face.

  The red-haired man dug a wallet out of his back pocket and fished out a card, which he handed to Zara. She took it, then mumbled an excuse of some kind.

  Then she fled the room.

  Audrey recovered. “What can I get you?” she asked the stranger.

  But the man had turned to watch the door where Zara had just disappeared, a frown settling over his features. “Um, a coffee. Black. Thanks,” he said.

  Two minutes later he was gone.

  Audrey came around the counter and plunked herself into the chair in front of me. “That was…”

  “Really odd,” I said, finishing her sentence. Then we both laughed.

  “I’m not going to jump to any conclusions,” Audrey said, a thoughtful look on her face.

  “Me neither.”

  But then our eyes met, and we both cracked up. “Okay, I’m going to jump to all kinds of conclusions,” Audrey admitted. “But privately.”

  I mimed turning a key in front of my mouth and tossing it away. “I’m a vault.”

  “I know.” She jumped out of her seat and came close, grabbing me into a hug. “Happy birthday! I love you!”

  “Love you, too,” I said easily, giving her a big squeeze right back. Lark had changed me into someone who could do that. I was a world-class hugger these days.

  “Now go home,” she said, slapping me on the back. “Kiss Lark for me. And I’ll see you both tomorrow night, right? For the concert on the Hanover green?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’re bringing wine and dessert,” she said, pushing in her chair. “I’m bringing a picnic feast.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said, and it was the truth. Then I thanked her again for the killer cookies and made my way outside.

  Humming, I got into my old truck and started the engine, letting it warm up, and listening for problems. Over the six months I’d owned it, this vehicle had kept me busy with repairs. I’d had a string of bad luck, first with the exhaust and then the transmission.

  Today everything sounded fine. Fineish. So I pulled out my phone and tapped Lark’s number.

  “Hi!” she said cheerily. “I’m walking home from work. Are you on your way?”

  “Leaving now. Give me forty minutes.” My commute wasn’t the greatest, but I loved the people on either end of it, so I wasn’t complaining.

  “You hungry yet?” she asked.

  “Not for food,” I said slowly.

  Lark cackled. “Come home, birthday boy. Let the celebration begin.”

  We hung up and I hit the road, getting on highway 89 southbound. After Lark secured a job with the professor at Dartmouth, we’d started looking around for somewhere for her to live. Chasing down leads, I’d met an elderly couple—Lionel and Millicent Bern—in Norwich who wanted to rent out the cottage behind their farmhouse to someone who could help take care of the property.

  And on their property? An old apple orchard. It was only five hundred trees, but the Berns couldn’t care for it themselves anymore.

/>   So I got that job with no trouble. Griff was my reference, of course. But they were all too happy to meet a young guy who would look after their apple trees. “They’re like our children,” Mr. Bern explained. “These last couple years we couldn’t harvest much. We let a group of school children come to pick apples, but so many just fell to the ground and rotted. It killed me.”

  That was how Lark and I came to live together barely six months after we met. And every day we had together was a blessing.

  We paid very low rent plus utilities for a little cottage behind the farmhouse. It had a creaky little kitchen and an office nook, as well as our bedroom and a living room with a woodstove against a pretty brick chimney.

  “It’ll probably be drafty as hell in the winter,” I’d pointed out, wary of the single-paned leaded windows everywhere.

  “I don’t care,” Lark had said, putting her foot down. “It’s adorable. And it’s on the Vermont side of the river, but just a few miles from Hanover. And it’s cheap as hell, Zach! If it’s cold in here, we’ll just snuggle.”

  That plan worked for me. Lots of snuggling happened in our little house, even in warm weather.

  So now I had a few different jobs. I worked for Griff, but not quite so many hours. I did maintenance on the Bern’s property—landscaping and orchard work. Griff actually drove down once every two or three weeks or so to help me with that. He always knew what to do for the problem trees.

  It was going to be a decent harvest, and the Berns had already told me that I could sell off the crop this fall. “I want two bushels of the best ones,” Millicent had said. “The rest you two can use to build up your rainy day fund.”

  My third occupation was a new one for me—student. This fall I’d be taking classes at one of the many branches of the Community College of Vermont. I hadn’t decided what degree to pursue—a B.A. or something more technical. Everyone told me not to worry, that I could figure it out later.

  “You don’t know what kind of student you are until you get back into the classroom,” Lark pointed out. “We have enough money to live like this for a while. Your job, my job, my trust fund. I’ll get fellowship money for the PhD program. You don’t have to figure everything out at once.”