CHAPTER EIGHT
“Scarlett!”
Eli’s pulse hammered the word from his throat, and he moved out of pure, undiluted instinct. Stabbing his boots into the soft, uneven grass beneath the apple tree, he surged forward, his arms shooting out just in time for Scarlett to crash into them in a tangle of jerky motions and top-shelf curse words. The force made him stagger despite the crush of adrenaline sending his muscles into lockdown, and he squeezed his arms even more tightly around Scarlett’s body as he fought to regain his balance.
“Camera,” she gasped, her body curled in over the equipment still hanging by a miracle around her neck.
“Screw the camera,” Eli bit out, but she struggled hard enough in search of the damned thing that he had to either relent or lose the footing he’d just fucking gained. “Okay, okay. Let’s get clear of the tree so we can take a look.” That he’d be looking at her just as closely as she’d surely look at the camera was beside the point. But shit, she had to have been stung at least once or twice, and no way had she fallen from that high without tagging a couple of branches on the way down.
If he hadn’t caught her . . .
“Right.” He smashed the thought before it could fully form. Setting her down in the grass about ten paces from the tree, he scanned her from head to heels for any obvious injuries, relief skidding through him when he found none. “Did you get stung?”
“I . . . um. Yeah, I think on my back.” Scarlett’s rapid-fire blink told him her adrenaline had kicked in nice and hard, but her voice stayed steady, tough. “I’m not allergic or anything, though. I’m fine.”
Yeah, no. “You’re not fine. Let me take a look.”
She opened her mouth, and if past experience was any indicator at all, it was to protest. But Eli cut her off before she could even start.
“You fell ten feet out of a goddamn tree and got stung by some of the nastiest insects going. I know you’re tough, Scarlett, but you’re not indestructible. If you’re hurt, you need to let me help you.”
After a microsecond’s worth of a pause, she nodded, and Eli would bet the concession smarted as much as the yellow jacket stings. Still, he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for her to change her mind. He moved over the grass to kneel behind her, gently placing one hand on her shoulder and the other at the hem of her flowy black-and-white-striped top.
“Oh, ow,” Scarlett cried out, arching away from his touch a mere second after his fingers skimmed up to make contact with the middle of her cotton-covered back. With good goddamn reason, too, Eli realized as he shifted her shirt away from her skin to get a better look.
“Jesus.” Eli winced at the trio of furious red welts on the back of her rib cage, then again at the cluster of scratches below them, closer to her spine. “A yellow jacket must’ve flown under your shirt,” he said, eyeballing the loose armholes beneath her short sleeves. “They’re vicious bastards, good for multiple stings when they’ve got a mind for it. Looks like you banged into a branch on the way down, too.”
“Great,” she said, and although her toughness took center stage with that set of her chin over her shoulder, the way she had her lips pressed together betrayed the truth.
She was hurting, and not a little.
“Alright,” Eli said, his gut going for a full corkscrew before his resolve took over. “We’ve got to get this scrape cleaned up and the welts treated with some baking soda before they get too swollen. Your back’s probably going to ache like crazy for a day or two, but the good news is, I promise you’ll live.”
“Oh, no. I don’t need all that first aid. Really, I’m fine.” Scarlett shifted her weight over the grass, likely in an effort to stand up and prove it. “The light right now is perfect, and—” He’d moved back in front of her before his brain had fully registered the command to go. But she’d gotten hurt on his watch. Superficial or not, he was going to make damned sure her injury was taken care of. “And the longer we argue, the longer the first aid will take. Is your camera okay?”
She looked down to the equipment she hadn’t let go of since the second Eli had put her down. “I think so. Yes.”
“Good. Then we can get right back to business when we’re done. But first, I’m taking you to the house to patch you up. Now are you coming, or do I have to carry you?”
Whether it was the dead certainty he’d pinned to the words or the promise to get straight back to work after he’d cleaned up her cuts, Eli couldn’t be sure. But something propelled Scarlett to give in with a nod.
Gathering her backpack and spare camera took less than a minute, and the trip to his truck was equally short. After a quick drive back to the now (thankfully) empty main house, they got situated at the kitchen table, with Scarlett sitting backward in one of the Windsor chairs and Eli behind her, first aid kit in hand. Shifting forward, she dropped her hands down low to lift the hem of her T-shirt. But now that Eli’s adrenal gland had slid back out of the stratosphere, he realized Scarlett would have to reveal a not-small amount of skin in order for him to treat her stings and scrapes, and whoa, yeah, that was definitely a bunch of petal-pink satin and lace wrapped high around her rib cage.
“Uh,” Eli blurted, a bolt of heat laddering down his spine as he forced his focus to the cream-and-tan pattern of the kitchen tiles. “I can get you a towel or something. You know, to wrap around your shoulders if you want.”
“I’m not uncomfortable, if that’s what you mean. Not about that, anyway.” She tucked the bottom edge of her shirt under her bra, baring the middle of her back down to the top of her jeans but effectively covering everything else.
“Yeah, I know the yellow jacket stings hurt,” he said, slipping to the sink to wash his hands. Between the apples and the handful of different berries they’d taken to growing in higher quantities over the last decade, yellow jacket stings tended to be an occupational hazard around Cross Creek. Still, they hurt something fierce. Uncomfortable was probably an understatement.
Scarlett huffed out a laugh, humorless and soft, as she rested her arms and upper body over the back of the chair in front of her. “I didn’t mean that, either. You can go ahead and say it.”
“Say what?” Eli asked, moving back in behind her at the table.
The brows-up look she sent over her shoulder clearly outlined her disbelief. “I told you so.”
Eli matched her laugh, only his was actually genuine. “And what’s that going to get me, exactly? If I say I told you so, is that gonna make you any less hurt? Little burn,” he added, spraying the scrape on her back with the antiseptic from the first aid kit.
“Ow! Mother f—” Scarlett’s muscles flexed as her spine went bowstring tight, and she sucked in a breath on an audible inhale. “No,” she said after a second. “It’s not going to make me any less hurt. But climbing the tree was stupid. Obviously.”
“Climbing the tree was impulsive,” he corrected, an unwelcome pang arrowing deep into his gut at the fresh memory of her falling from the branches. “But saying I told you so won’t change the fact that you did it. Seems like the only thing it would do is add insult to injury, and I’m fairly certain you won’t leap before you look again. At least, not where apple trees are concerned.”
“I won’t.” She tucked her chin to her chest, not even flinching as Eli dabbed at the welts on her back, even though by now, they’d damn near doubled in size. “I just . . . Mallory’s my best friend. FoodE means everything to her. I came here to get her a blockbuster story that will bolster her business, and I wanted the perfect shot.”
“I get that,” Eli said, and as fucked up as the admission was, he did.
“Really?” Clearly, she was as shocked about the whole thing as he was. But whether it was her straight-up honesty or the uncharacteristic softness in her voice, something pushed the truth out of his mouth and into the space between them.
“Last week I bet a rival farmer five thousand dollars that Cross Creek would make more money than his family’s farm this harvest.”
Scarlett turned to stare at him over her shoulder, realization beginning to spread out over the surprise on her face. “Is that why you’ve been working like a madman? To try and make good on a bet?”
Eli’s gut knotted, but since he wasn’t about to get gabby about the love/hate thing he had going on with his brother—or anything else, really—he went with, “That’s most of the reason, yeah. It’s kind of a long story. Anyway, I get where you’re coming from, wanting that perfect shot. I’d love a perfect solution right about now, myself. I can’t really blame you for throwing your all into trying to get that. Although”—he paused with his hands halfway over the first aid kit, hardening his tone by just enough to hammer his next words home—“you do something impulsive that could put you in harm’s way again, me and you are gonna have words, and they won’t be ‘happy birthday.’ There’s a thousand different ways to get hurt around here, and I’m none too interested in showing you any more of ’em firsthand. You got it?”
“Yeah.” Scarlett gave up a small nod. “I’ve got it. I promise.”
“Good.” Eli turned back toward the supplies laid out over the table. Patching her up the rest of the way took only a few quick moves; after all, baking soda and water might be an old-fashioned remedy for swelling, but it was an easy fix that worked the same as all those fancy drugstore creams. With a few gauze pads and some well-placed medical tape, she was good to go.
“All set,” he said, taking a step back and reaching for the discarded packaging littering the table’s worn, honey-colored surface.
But as quickly as he’d created the space between them, Scarlett stood up and closed it. “We could help each other out, you know. I understand that you think getting in front of the camera is a bad idea,” she added before he could cut her off with a thanks, but no thanks. “But it sounds as if you need the word of mouth, and I damn sure need something more to send to Mallory. I don’t want to sensationalize what you do, or turn farming into a joke. I really am here to make Cross Creek look good.”
Eli’s thoughts winged back to the shots she’d taken of his old man in the kitchen, realization working a path through his brain. “I know.”
“You do.” Her reply was little bit question and a lot more disbelief, but he looked her in the eye to cancel out both.
“I do.”
“Then take a leap of faith and trust me to do my job. Let me film you in a video segment. Nice and easy, just an introduction to you and Cross Creek. What do you say?”
Ah. There was the Scarlett he knew, brash and bold and right goddamn to it. But the more Eli tumbled her request around in his head, the less he could make his refusal stick. The truth was, he needed more than hard work to get ahead of this bet. He needed a risk.
He needed Scarlett.
“If we do this”—he crossed his arms over his chest, staring at her through the overbright sunlight spilling in through the kitchen windows—“then I have a couple of conditions.”
“Name them,” she said, knotting her own arms without so much as a blink even though, considering her recent injury, the move had to hurt.
Hell if that didn’t make Eli’s respect for her double. “I get that you want a connection to the farm, but I’m not talking about anything really personal. If it doesn’t have to do with Cross Creek at least a little, my answer is ‘No comment.’”
“Fair enough,” she said, and although he got the feeling she’d probably push the envelope right up to the seal on that one, he’d fight the specific battles as they came. “Next?”
His heart gave up a yank, good and deep, but still, he didn’t stand down. “I want to keep my old man’s health scare out of the spotlight. He’s made a full recovery, and he takes precautions to stay safe in the heat. No reason to remind anyone he wasn’t less than a hundred percent.”
“Oh.” Scarlett’s brows tugged in for a brief second before she answered with noticeably less moxie. “Of course. Anything else?”
Eli paused, but fuck it. If she could go all in, so could he. “Just one more thing. I’m not talking about this bet. Not on video, not in articles. Not on the record in any way.”
Her white-blond brows shot up high enough to disappear beneath the long swoop of her bangs. “Oh, come on! We don’t have to make it into a cheesy throwdown or anything, but two rival farms going head-to-head? It’s click-me catnip.”
Which was precisely why Eli refused to give it airtime. Bad enough that between Amber Cassidy and Billy Masterson, everyone in Millhaven already knew about the bet. But hanging the specifics out there for the whole Internet to see? Eli might need the win—more than a little bit, even—but he was going to get it fair and freaking square. No sensationalism. No cheating.
“The bet doesn’t have anything to do with the farm, proper. You’ll have to find your blockbuster someplace else.”
“And you’re going to let me?” Scarlett challenged.
Unease crept into Eli’s chest, but only for a breath. Being in front of the camera, talking about a livelihood he didn’t love and a farm where he didn’t belong, wasn’t ideal—or hell, even something he wanted a little bit. But he’d been hiding in plain sight at Cross Creek for years. Shit, he was the high lord of the dodge and deflect.
He was also fresh out of other options. Fall Fling was three weeks and one day away, and he needed to draw people’s attention to the farm so they could sell as much produce as humanly possible and out-earn Whittaker Hollow. He needed to win this bet.
So Eli did the only thing he could.
With his very best cocky smile perfectly in place, he said, “Absolutely, darlin’. In fact, why don’t we go ahead and knock the first one out right now? If we’re gonna scratch each other’s backs, there’s really no time like the present.”