Part 7 (2/2)
She shook her head as she slid her fingers over the work-made calluses on his thumb. ”I'm gossip fodder, Hunter. In fact, I bet Amber Ca.s.sidy is probably itching to tell the entire universe that we're holding hands right now.”
Emerson's eyes darted to his left like a lightning strike, and sure enough, Amber was doing some high-grade whispering into Kelsey Lambert's ear across the sunny pavement of Town Street.
But Hunter didn't care. He curled his fingers around Emerson's without so much as a nanosecond's hesitation, pulling her close enough that their forearms touched, warm skin on skin.
”Then I guess she'll come d.a.m.n near close to hives when she sees us having lunch together later.”
”What?” Emerson's breath coasted over his cheek in a puff of hot surprise, but again, he didn't hesitate.
”Look, beating around the bush isn't really my style. I like things simple, so I'm gonna cut right to the truth. You said you think you're an outsider here, but I disagree, and I'd like the chance to prove you wrong.”
”You want me to go to lunch with you to prove that I still fit in after being gone all this time?”
Ah h.e.l.l. Maybe taking the no-bulls.h.i.+t approach wasn't the very best idea he'd ever sprouted. But he'd already let the words fly.
Now it was time to take action and back them up.
”I want to show you that you're not too far from home. So what do you say? Are you going to let me give it my best shot, or not?”
”I've got to hand it to you, brother. You are one lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
Fifteen minutes had pa.s.sed since Hunter and Eli had walked away from Daisy's tent, yet neither Hunter's s.h.i.+t-eating grin nor Eli's merciless ribbing had let up, even for a minute.
”Who, me?” Hunter asked, hooking a thumb in the direction of his chest. ”I don't know what you're talking about. You got the exact same treatment I did, hand ma.s.sage and all.”
Fair being fair, Emerson had corralled Eli for his turn with his lavender-scented softer side as soon as she'd finished Hunter's hand ma.s.sage. Of course, that'd been after she'd agreed to meet Hunter at Cross Creek's tent during her lunch break in three hours.
Okay, fine. He really was a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
Eli held up his hands, flipping them from palms to knuckles, then back again. ”I told you the lotion sounded kinda nice. That lavender smells relaxing, and the chamomile . . . anyway.” He returned to the topic just in time to head off the gigantic raft of s.h.i.+t Hunter had been thiiiiis close to heaping on him. ”You know exactly what I'm talking about, you sly dog. You're going on a date with Emerson Montgomery.”
Hunter's boots tripped to a graceless halt. ”It's not a date,” he said, his smile evaporating and his heartbeat working out a solid hey now beneath his white T-s.h.i.+rt. Sure, he and Emerson had flirted a little, and maybe asking her to meet him later had been a touch more impulsive than his usual MO. There was certainly no way he could deny that she was s.e.xier now than ever-for Chrissake, he wasn't blind, dead, or stupid. But walking around the Watermelon Festival for an hour to reacquaint her with the town was still a far cry from a date.
s.e.xy or not, Emerson had turned his heart into finger paint once. He couldn't let that happen again.
Eli's expression said he wasn't buying Hunter's veto, but at least his brother had the wherewithal to keep his thoughts on the matter to himself. ”Whatever you say, man.”
”Good, because I say it's not a date.”
Hunter pulled in a slow, steady breath, nailing his calm back into place. He and Eli retraced their steps over Town Street, walking past the multicolored tables and tents now packing the thoroughfare with no room to spare. s.h.i.+t. They'd been gone longer than Hunter had realized or intended.
”We're gonna have to haul b.a.l.l.s to get back with enough time to finish setting up,” he said. Eli lifted one shoulder but nodded in agreement and picked up the pace. Two minutes of solid hoofing it had them back at Cross Creek's tent, where Owen and their father looked to be setting out the last few crates of watermelons and summer squash.
”Hey, there you are. I tried both of your cell phones.” Sure enough, the words had barely crossed Owen's lips when both Hunter and Eli's back pockets chirped with incoming text messages. The spotty-on-a-good-day cell service they got out here in the sticks was pretty much the only thing Hunter didn't love about Millhaven. h.e.l.l, two steps in any given direction could turn even the fanciest cell phone into a sleek silver paperweight.
Eli shook his head, sliding his phone from his banged-up Wranglers to silence it with a quick tap. ”That's service in the boonies for you.”
”We could've used your help hauling all the rest of these crates. Where'd you run off to, anyway?” Owen asked, his chin lifting a few inches as Eli sauntered by him to grab a bottle of water from the cooler by the cash box. ”And what's that smell?”
”Ah, it's Daisy Halstead's new lavender and chamomile hand lotion,” Eli said, his brows waggling beneath his faded red baseball hat. ”Free hand ma.s.sages to anyone who gives it a try. I'm totally going back later for seconds.”
A muscle in Owen's jaw hardened beneath his dark stubble. ”Seriously? We're three minutes from the start of the Watermelon Festival, and instead of working like you're supposed to, you're wandering around hitting on Daisy Halstead? She's one of the nicest people in Millhaven, for Chrissake.”
”I wasn't hitting on her, and I got plenty unloaded before Hunter and I left.” Eli's demeanor turned as subarctic as his voice. ”Anyway, what's that supposed to mean? A nice girl's too good for a guy like me?”
Hunter's gut formed a knot, and he stepped in to fill the s.p.a.ce between his brothers. ”We were just blowing off a little steam and checking out the other vendors, O. If anything, this is my fault.” He'd been the one to beeline for Daisy's tent in the first place.
”No, it's not,” Owen said. ”You were in charge of the schematics and inventory, and both of those got done. That's more than I can say for Eli's share.”
Confusion trickled past Hunter's unease, and wait . . . ”Eli, didn't you unload all the greens before we left?”
He jammed a thumb through his belt loop, his silence extending for just a beat too long. ”Most of 'em. I figured I'd just do the rest when we got back, but I didn't realize we had so much inventory from the greenhouse. Or that we'd cut it so close to the start of the festival.”
Hunter cursed under his breath-dammit, he should've double-checked the inventory list to be sure the work had been done-but Owen cut him off with a curt shake of his head.
”You're hurt, Hunt. No one's blaming you for not being able to haul these crates around. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we need all the hands we can get around here, and instead, Eli's got his own agenda. As freaking usual.”
Although he knew his brother didn't intend any guilt, the reminder of his injury peppered Hunter's chest full of holes. Before he could recover-and before Eli could pop off with the angry retort clearly brewing in his mouth-Owen shook his head in disgust.
”Just forget it. I'm tired of trying to get you to take the farm seriously, Eli. You're going to do whatever you want no matter what anyone says, and there's slack that needs picked up. I'm unloading the last of these crates.” Owen's boot heel sc.r.a.ped in a hard turn over the pavement as he pivoted toward the box truck parked adjacent to the tent and walked away.
”You could use a good hand ma.s.sage. Along with a serious a.s.s kicking. I would've gotten everything off the truck just fine,” Eli muttered under his breath. Shoulders bunched and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tension, he threw his half-empty water bottle into their plastic trash bin with a curse. ”Screw this. He wants the work? He's got it. I'm taking Lucy for a walk. Call me if you need me, Dad.”
Uncharacteristic impulses flared in Hunter's chest. He turned to haul Eli back and remind him that, A) he knew d.a.m.n well they'd need him since now they were behind schedule and everyone and his mother would be at the festival today, and B) calling him when they did would probably be about as useful as a trap door on a frigging canoe with cell service being what it was, but his father stopped him cold.
”Let him go, Hunt,” he said, his gravelly voice low and quiet. ”He'll burn it off and be back quick enough.”
Hunter watched Eli clip Lucy's old red leash to her even older collar before stomping off in the opposite direction from Owen and the truck, and truly, Hunter didn't know how much longer he could hold the two of them off before s.h.i.+t turned into World War III.
”Well, that was fun,” he said, releasing a slow exhale as he looked at his father. He wasn't surprised his old man had remained quiet during the exchange. Letting the three of them duke out their grievances on their own was simply his way. Hunter supposed there were worse things to inherit than the desire not to rock the boat.
”Your brothers have been fixin' to throw down for a while now,” his father agreed, a small frown traveling over his sun-weathered face. ”My guess is they'll get to it soon enough.”
Now it was Hunter's turn to mutter under his breath. ”That's what I'm afraid of.”
His father looked at him from beneath the brim of the caramel-colored Stetson he d.a.m.n near never took off. His eyes flashed with steely gray concern Hunter recognized all too well, but the emotion disappeared quickly, replaced by quiet calm as he straightened the wooden crate full of pickling cuc.u.mbers on the table at his hip. ”How's that shoulder treatin' ya?”
Not wanting to linger on the current topic, anyway, Hunter dropped a glance at the offending joint, rolling it gently beneath his T-s.h.i.+rt before answering with the truth. ”Best day yet, actually. The physical therapy seems to be working.”
His dad lifted one salt-and-pepper brow, just enough for Hunter to notice. ”Sounds like you're in good hands.”
”Three weeks and I'll be better than new,” he said, trying like h.e.l.l to dodge the thought of who those hands belonged to and this morning's impulsive reminder of how warm and sweet they'd felt on his skin. He had enough on his freaking plate as it was. ”For now, guess we'd better get ready to sell some produce.”
Hunter and his father lapsed into comfortable silence, both of them working up a sweat as they finished the last-minute prep for the festival. The simplicity of the food in front of him smoothed the raw edges of Hunter's nerves-round, jewel-green Sugar Baby watermelons, velvety bunches of sweet-scented basil, satiny, fat tomatoes, and brightly ruffled b.u.t.ter lettuce. Sunlight speared down from overhead, tag-teaming Hunter in a vicious combination of heat and humidity despite the limited shade from their canopy tent, and man, the weather had been brutal lately.
”I don't usually mind a little heat, but it's getting to be an inferno out here,” he said, swiping an arm over the moisture already fully formed on his brow and reaching down to palm a pair of water bottles from the battered cooler. ”Even my sweat is starting to sweat.”
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