“The more the merrier, Ethan.” Gram waved at the boy but didn’t stand...a sure sign her knee was hurting. “I’ve got some reinforcements this week to help me with my last batch of jam now that the peach season is almost over. Nina, this is Ethan Brady. He’s the grandson of the gentleman who bought the dairy farm where the Hendersons used to live.”
“Nina Spencer.” Nina shook the teen’s hand. “I’m visiting my grandmother for a couple of weeks. Did you need help with the picking?” She peered out the door behind the boy toward the orchards in the distance, but couldn’t tell if the trees were loaded with fruit or not.
“No, thank you.” He looked like he might be hiding a smile. “I can handle it. I wouldn’t want to take Mrs. Spencer’s company away.”
“I don’t mind.” She hadn’t questioned how her grandmother was doing financially, but maybe she would welcome the extra jam and jelly sales while Nina was home to help her. For that matter, maybe she shouldn’t be helping her grandmother give away those peach pies when she should be charging for them. “I’ll just grab some gloves in the barn—”
“No, really,” Ethan protested, stepping off the small porch and backing away. “My gramp gave me strict instructions to take care of the picking myself because he owes Mrs. Spencer a favor,” he called through the screen. “And he said to tell you that the town of Heartache loves cupcakes.” The teen shrugged his shoulders awkwardly. “No clue what the means.”
Spinning on his heel, he darted through the tall grasses of an open meadow with his bushel basket and headed toward the orchards.
Behind her, Gram laughed and said something about how Nina could charge more for one cupcake than she could for a whole case of preserves. But seeing Ethan jogging across sun-dappled fields made her think of a long-ago summer when another boy had knocked on the door to pick peaches and asked Nina to join him....
“Excuse me,” a deep voice called to her from the yard and she noticed one of the movers flagging her down. “You’ve got some company.”
He jerked his head in the direction of the moving truck, but she couldn’t see who had pulled up since the eighteen-wheeler took up her whole view.
“Gram, I’d better find out who it is.” She pushed open the screen, her gray tabby cat darting between her feet to join her.
Her instincts hummed as she neared the truck. The brightness made her squint, but she could still see an Eldorado convertible parked behind the movers’ vehicle.
“Need a hand?” Mack stepped around the bumper of the beat-up delivery truck, his gaze trained on the hodgepodge of furniture and boxes stacked precariously inside. “I hadn’t realized you’d have so much going on today or I would have waited to pick up the hay wagons for the Harvest Fest.”
His well-washed gray T-shirt had a green clover with Finleys’ written in script on the front. No matter what else had happened between them, she had to admit he wore a T-shirt incredibly well. For the second day in a row, she kept her eyes north of his jeans. Down that path lay madness.
Mack was very...fit. In school, he’d organized pickup games of basketball or impromptu lacrosse tournaments in the fields behind his house. It seemed he hadn’t lost that love of sports. His body was as toned as an athlete’s.
“It’s okay. The wagons are in the barn by the orchard.” She’d rather have this errand taken care of today than risk seeing him again another day. She couldn’t guarantee how long her eyes would behave. “I can get the key from the house.”
Nodding, he stepped back as the delivery guys juggled an industrial-size mixer. When Taz, Nina’s cat, started to dart across their path, Mack scooped the tabby up with one hand.
“Oh!” Nina reached for the animal, but Taz was already batting at the wristband of Mack’s watch, oblivious to her narrow escape. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Should I bring him up to the house?” He stared down at Taz, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I can ask your grandmother for the key and take care of the wagons myself.”
“Taz is a her, not a him.” Nina plucked the animal from Mack’s arm and the little feline mewed pitifully. “And it’s probably just as well I don’t watch my most prized possessions being stored next to rusty cultivators and plows. I might as well go with you.”
She was a grown-up. She could handle spending a couple of weeks in the same town as Mack. Besides, she wasn’t proud of her testy words the day before. She shouldn’t have accused him of coming to Heartache to rub her nose in her failures.
Worse, her harsh words about Jenny had been out of line. And she didn’t want Mack to think he affected her so much that the mention of his ex-wife would rile her up.
“Fair enough.” He stepped aside, letting her lead the way to a farmhouse even older than the one where he’d been raised.
Sunflowers and phlox stood next to deep purple asters in the overgrown flowerbeds lining the wide, grassy path to the two-story white clapboard structure. The scent of the nearby orchards and freshly mown grass rode the breeze. It was peaceful here, with a quiet so deep she almost had trouble sleeping. She kind of missed the constant din of city traffic and the comfort of busy, anonymous humanity outside her windows.
“It’s weird being back here, isn’t it?” She picked a long stem of grass poking through a bed of bushy yellow flowers she couldn’t identify.
Taz made a swipe for the grass, but Nina tucked the little cat tighter against her chest to be sure she wouldn’t get into any more trouble.
“I slept in the field manager’s quarters last night. So yeah, it’s definitely a strange homecoming.”
Their strides matched one another’s.
“Did you have a falling out with your mom?” Nina tried to keep the question light. She wasn’t sure how much Mrs. Finley had shared with Mack about their final blowout where his mother had accused Nina of ruining Mack’s life. She’d even suggested that he’d change his mind about having kids if she left. It wasn’t that he didn’t want children, she said, he just didn’t want them with Nina.
She’d been blown away about that one.
Knowing about Mrs. Finley’s struggles with bipolar disorder hadn’t eased the sting of her words, since her reasons for why Nina and Mack would never work had been accurate. Nina was a wanderer by nature who threw herself into the moment, for example, while Mack was a grounded guy with big ambition and concrete career goals. Bipolar or not, Mrs. Finley was a sharp woman with Mack’s best interests at heart.
“No. But a buffer between me and Mom is usually a good idea. I didn’t want her to be stressed about having company.” He paused at the foot of the stairs to the wide, wraparound porch while Nina jogged up toward the back door. “She asked me to thank you for the pie, by the way.”
Nina seriously doubted that. She opened the door and nudged Taz inside where her pet made a beeline for her water dish. The kitchen was empty again and the table had been cleared. Nina snagged a small red key from a rack of hooks just above the light switch and then closed the door again.
“That was really thoughtful of you to give your mother some space.” She tucked the key to the barn in her pocket as she rejoined him, trying her best to get through this difficult meeting as quickly as possible. “Especially since the field manager’s quarters are awfully cramped, at least they were the last time I saw them—”
Her cheeks flamed hot. Red-sizzle hot. Because the last time she’d been inside that little apartment had been with Mack, and things had gone too far, too fast.
“I remember.” Mack didn’t bother to hide the smile in his voice, damn him.
Her gaze shot his way. A wicked grin stole over his face, an expression she hadn’t seen in