“I’ll try, but I have to supervise the movers. How about I copy off your notes instead?” She arched an eyebrow at him before heading into the shadows of the barn. “Just like in high school.”
“Suit yourself. If I could copy off someone else’s notes, believe me, I’d ditch this committee gathering, too. But if you’re not going to be there, you should set up some appointments to talk to some of the local restaurant owners to see how they can contribute.” He followed her into the cool, musty depths of the barn. “I’m supposed to be meeting a couple of guys here who will be picking up the wagons. We can pull them out when they get here.”
“Okay.” She stalked to the back of one wagon, and leaned down to check a tire. “I just wanted to make sure there aren’t any flats. I’m sure there’s an air compressor here somewhere—”
“We’ll be fine.” As much as he wanted to patch up their relationship, he wasn’t ready to test it in the confines of a dark barn just yet.
He still saw that pink bra strap when he closed his eyes.
“Okay.” She straightened. “If anyone comes to the house I’ll send them back here.”
“The kid who cuts your grandmother’s grass is one of the people I’m expecting. Ethan Brady.”
“Right.” She snapped her fingers. “I met him this morning. He was going to pick peaches after he mowed the lawn, so I’m guessing he’s in the orchard.”
Peaches. Orchard.
Mack was right back on a blanket beneath the stars on a long, hot summer night. He closed his eyes to shut out the mental images of their first time together, but new images crowded with the old ones.
Nina’s throaty laugh. The pink strap. Her flushed cheeks when she remembered the day they’d fooled around in that little vacant apartment...
“Mack?” Her voice was close to his ear.
He opened his eyes. Shook his head.
“Are you okay?” She stood just a couple of feet away.
It was dark and hard to see in the barn, but she was close enough that he could smell the fragrance of her shampoo.
“I’m fine.” His voice was a heavy rasp of sound, his heart thudding in his chest. “Allergies,” he explained. “From the hay.”
“Oh.” She stepped away, the delicate curve of her bare collarbone still close enough he could have cupped her shoulder there. “Maybe we should step out of the barn.”
“Good idea.” He stalked away from her toward the sunlight, needing to breathe air that didn’t carry a hint of her fragrance.
Or ripe fruit.
Had he really told her they should try to be friends? Damn, but coming home had messed with his head.
“Hey, isn’t that the boy you were looking for?” Nina stretched an arm out, pointing toward the south with one long, bare arm. “Ethan?”
Mack followed her gaze and saw a hint of a blue shirt between the trees in the orchard beyond the field.
“Probably.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll shoot him a text and remind him to meet me over here.”
She nodded absently, her eyes still on the figure in the distance.
“It’s been years since I picked peaches.” Her words hung in the air.
A gauntlet dropped.
His gaze went to hers, but her gray eyes gave away nothing. Did she realize she was killing him?
His fingers froze, hovering above the screen of his phone while he wrestled with how to respond to that.
But then, her eyes slid toward him. A sly smile curved her full lips. She turned on her heel and sauntered away.
Damn. Her.
This friendship thing was going to be the death of him.
ALLY FINLEY’S HEART skipped a beat when she spotted the only thing tying her to crappy Heartache, Tennessee. The small town was suffocating her as surely as her parents’ angry silences and the cold lack of love in her house. She had one, just one bright spot in her life these days.
Ethan Brady.
She watched him walk up the path toward her from her seat on one of the ladders used for picking. His broad shoulders rolled with his easy walk. Everything about Ethan was low-key. Fun. He never stressed about school or let a bad grade ruin his whole week, and he knew the location of every swimming hole in the county. Bonus? He was totally gorgeous.
From his light hazel eyes and ready smile to the lock of hair that tended to fall over one eye, he was the boy at school all the girls wanted. He’d never been a player, though. He told her once that too many people dated “like a recreational sport.” And while she thought she got what he meant, she worried that those kinds of confidences meant he’d lumped her in the “friends only” category forever.
“It took you long enough,” Ally called out to him as he drew closer. “I could have slept a whole hour more if I’d known you wouldn’t be here until after ten.”
She’d been in love with him since he moved to town when she was in eighth grade, but he’d never paid attention to her until last spring when they were paired up in a remedial math class. Ethan had been failing the class and she’d let her grades slip because poor marks were a way to get back at her parents for making her life hell lately.
After that class, Ethan had finally seemed aware of her existence. But he still looked at her in a “friend” way, which sucked.
“No one twisted your arm,” Ethan muttered, setting down a bushel basket beside an old wooden ladder propped up against a peach tree.
Ally tried not to let that sting. She’d stayed up late to paint her fingernails and woken before the sun rose to hang out with him today. But he was either totally uninterested or...
God, she hoped there was another explanation, even though nothing came to mind. Maybe he was just in a bad mood, but since when was Ethan ever a downer like that? She was usually the one with a black cloud hanging over her head.
“You’re right. Guess I’m starting to let the perpetual bitch-mode at my house infect me.” She zipped her lip and went to work picking some low-hanging fruit on the tree next to Ethan’s.
She’d gotten good at giving the silent treatment, a ploy her parents used so often her house was a mausoleum most of the time. But anything she said would only reveal how much she was crushing on Ethan. Besides, she could use the quiet to gather her thoughts and study him.
Lanky and tall since ninth grade, he’d gotten bigger muscles last year. His dark hair brushed his eyebrows as he worked, his profile stark and serious.
Hot.
“I had to milk my parents’ cows,” Ethan said finally, the look of disgust on his face so dark and surly that it made her laugh.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” He started to pick the fruit faster, his tone sharp and aggravated.
“Sorry. Uh—that is, you don’t like milking cows?” There hadn’t been a lot of working farms in Heartache even a few years ago, but recently, some hipster families had moved into the old places to try and revive them with new, organic techniques.
Ethan’s farm was one of those. His parents gave