Jack pulled the navy thermal shirt over his shoulders and shook out his damp hair. The floor creaked as he padded through the living room where Walker was still passed out on the couch from the night before. Luke, he assumed, was asleep upstairs. It wasn’t even dawn. As ranchers they’d always woken early, but they could usually stay in bed until at least sunrise.
Yet several years of living in the city hadn’t done a thing to give Jack a restful night’s sleep.
Besides, there was work to be done, and the sooner he did it, the sooner—what? Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? Once he and his brothers got the vineyard in shape for a potential harvest, what the hell came next?
He didn’t have much time to think about it because the second he pulled on his work boots and stepped outside, he was greeted by blinding headlights rolling up the drive. By the time his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out Ava’s red Jeep.
He stood, arms crossed, waiting for her to emerge. And when she did, he was grateful both for the sliver of predawn light and the cover of darkness. Because damn she was a sight for weary eyes, and he wasn’t prepared for how much he’d wanted to see her until she was right there in front of him.
He could tell himself again and again that they were going to take things slow, but the surprise of her presence blew logic out the window. All he wanted now was to be near her. To run his hands through her hair. To trace a pattern from one freckle to the next.
He licked his lips, suddenly parched.
“What are you doing up so early?” he asked as she strode toward him with two to-go cups of coffee in her hands. “You’re not supposed to be here for at least two more hours.”
Her long-sleeved T-shirt hugged her curves atop snug-fitting jeans. As she came closer, he could see how the green scarf around her neck brought out her eyes—eyes that narrowed at him before responding to his question.
“You were never much of a sleeper,” she said, offering him one of the cups. He took it. “I was a little restless myself. Figured I’d take a chance you were up, too.”
“What about Owen?” The name still felt strange on his tongue.
“He slept at my parents’ house. They’ll get him to the bus today,” she told him, pressing her palms to the cup. Her sleeves had those holes for her thumbs, so she wore them like fingerless gloves.
He watched a shiver run through her body.
“You’re cold,” he said, stating the obvious. But what else could he do? He hadn’t brought a jacket. It wasn’t like he could pull her to him and let body heat do the trick, no matter how much he wanted to. They’d both agreed to step back, that there was more at stake here than their physical attraction. So despite wanting to warm her body with his own, he stood there, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, the other occupied with the coffee.
She shrugged and took a careful sip from her cup. “That’s what this is for,” she said, smiling. “I’ll warm up once we get working.”
“If Owen slept by your folks, that means they know where you are today?”
She nodded. “They know.” But she didn’t offer much else.
He cleared his throat. “Speaking of working…What are we actually doing today?”
She glanced back at her Jeep, which was now blocking his truck. Then her eyes rested on his again.
“Hop in, and I’ll show you.”
He shook his head. “Give me the keys.”
She hummed out a laugh but pulled her keys from her pocket and pressed them against his chest. “Does the big, bad cowboy need to be in control at all times?”
Despite the chill in the air, her fingers were warm on his chest. He took the keys. “Behind the wheel? Always.”
She gave him a pointed look. “Says the man whose terrible curbside manner forced me off the road as soon as he got back to town.”
He ground his teeth together, steadied his breathing, and decided not to dignify her very accurate recollection with any sort of response. The truth was, he had lost control that day. Just seeing her house and letting the memory of their past seep into his conscious thought had thrown him off-kilter. Then everything that came after? Yeah, it was safe to say that after the events of that day, he’d been using any means necessary to stay in as much control as he could.
“Let’s go,” he said, then headed for the driver’s side of her car. He climbed in behind the wheel and let out a long breath before depositing his coffee into the cup holder. Glancing toward the back of the vehicle, he found a copy of Sports Illustrated open to an article about the new pitcher who’d just been drafted by the Dodgers.
Ava’s door opened and she slid in beside him.
“He’s reading Sports Illustrated?” Jack asked, reaching for the magazine. He turned on the interior light and started skimming the article. “This new kid is really good,” he continued.
“Kid?” Ava asked with a soft laugh. “Last time I checked, twenty-eight wasn’t that old. And yeah, Owen’s a great reader. I’ve tried to get him into Harry Potter, you know? Something we can read together. But I cannot pry the sports magazine from his little hands.” She sighed wistfully. “His hands aren’t so little anymore.”
Jack’s jaw tightened, and he shut off the light and tossed the magazine back on the seat. He didn’t say anything else as he started the Jeep and reversed down the driveway.
They rolled quietly along Oak Bluff Way, where every shop and local eatery was dark except for Baker’s Bluff, the town’s bakery, and judging by the logo stamped on their coffee cups, a place Ava had already been before showing up in his driveway.
“You’re quiet this morning,” she finally said.
“It’s early,” he grumbled.
“You don’t sleep,” she reminded him.
Just because that was true, though, didn’t mean he was a morning person.
“You haven’t touched your coffee,” she pointed out, and he opened his mouth to say something but then thought better of it. Or maybe it was simply that he wasn’t sure what the hell to say.
“Are you—always this much of an asshole before dawn?” she asked.
When he didn’t take her bait, she settled into her seat and sipped her coffee. It wasn’t until he parked along the street lining the vineyard and let his head fall back against his own seat that he was able to put words to why he was being an asshole. Because she was right. He was.
“You’re good at it,” he said softly, eyes trained on the car’s closed sunroof.
“At being a morning person?” She barked out a laugh. “I’m only conscious because I couldn’t sleep last night. If you tried to wake me this early on a normal morning, I’d have turned into a dementor and sucked out your soul.”
He looked at her, brows drawn together.
She groaned. “Harry Potter.”
“You really want him to read those books,” he said.
“I really do.”
She smiled, and he felt an unexpected warmth rush through him.
“And I wasn’t talking about being a morning person,” he said. “Even though I admit I’m not.” He glanced around the car, nodding toward the back seat. “I mean this.”
Her mouth opened to say something, and her brows rose. He could tell she was still confused. Christ, that made two of them.
“You’re good—at being his mom,” he told her. He was certain of this. Where the confusion came in was how she’d done it.
Her green-eyed gaze softened on his. She lifted her hand as if she was going to reach for him but dropped it just as quickly.
“I’ve had almost a decade to work on it,” she said, then laughed. “It’s not like I held this tiny bundle in my arms at eighteen and had any sort of clue what the hell to do.”
His chest ached at the thought of her going through the birth without a partner.
She kept talking, the smile on her face enough to tell him she didn’t know her recollections had any effect on him. “And you’ve only seen a tiny snapshot of my parenting skills. You missed me bathing the kitchen floor in my morning coffee the other day when I was scrambling for Owen not to miss the bus. Or that time I forgot I was on snack duty for his baseball game last year and had to divide up three Larabars and a box of Wheat Thins among ten sweaty, hungry boys.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and she shrugged. “I don’t get a lot of sit-down meals,” she said. “My car stash has saved my life more than once.”
He raised his brows and let his eyes trail from hers toward the other recesses of the vehicle.
She backhanded him on the shoulder. “My snacks are safely stowed in the trunk. And yes, I’ve got us covered for breakfast.”
The realization of what she was saying damn near floored him. With all that she’d had to do on her own these past ten years—with all she did on a daily basis—she’d still thought of him this morning in a way no one else had in a long time. Possibly ever.
He pulled the keys from the ignition and laid them in her open palm.
“Thanks,” he said. “For letting me take the wheel…and for the coffee.”
“It was nothing,” she said, her voice soft and sweet. It wasn’t the voice he remembered exactly, but it was Ava. And though he couldn’t put words to it, he knew she was wrong. Whatever was happening between them, it was something.
Ava bit the tag off a pair of men’s work gloves and handed them to Jack. After he pulled them on, she reached back into her bag of tricks to pull out a rubber-handled tool, which she effectively slapped into his palm.
“Pruning shears,” she said.
“Yeah. I guessed.”
The sun was finally peeking between the few scattered clouds, illuminating her face so he could connect the dots with each and every one of her freckles if he wanted. And yeah. He wanted. Despite their agreement, he reacted to her in ways that, in his own imagination, weren’t stepping back at all.
“Today’s lesson is on spur pruning,” she said. Then she pulled off her scarf, revealing her long, slender neck. His eyes dropped to the V-neck of her top, and as they trailed back up to her face, he watched as a soft flush followed the same path all the way up to her cheeks.
Looked like he wasn’t the only one with an active imagination.
She busied herself tugging on her own work gloves and grabbing a second pair of shears.
“Not cold anymore?” he teased, though he fought to keep his expression unreadable.
She cleared her throat. “Coffee did its job. Plus, the sun’s up.”
He nodded. “All right, Teach. Show me what you want me to do.”
Ava took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She lifted her hand to the opened trunk, and Jack stepped out of the way so she could lower it. They walked in silence from the road to the nearest row of vines.
“This,” she said, grabbing what to Jack looked like a random branch growing upward, “is a spur. And this”—she stroked her hand across the plant’s longer, thicker, horizontal stalk—“is the cordon. We’ll need to take a look at both eventually, but today we’re only focusing on the spurs. Because the vines have been left unattended, most likely since your father purchased the property, you’ve got too many buds per spur fighting for nourishment.”
“Too many mouths to feed,” Jack said with a slow nod, the words escaping his lips with a bitter tone he hadn’t intended.
She pressed her lips together and forced a smile. “Yeah. Exactly. So, we need to cut them back. Anything more than three of these stalks growing from a spur”—she gripped the thick, wooden base from which each of the thinner branches grew—“needs to go.”
“Sounds easy enough.”
“It is. All you have to do is clip it right here at the base.” She demonstrated and then smiled. “And that’s it.”
His eyes widened as he stared down the rows upon rows of plants.
She laughed. “We’ll do as much as we can today, and that will help us determine how long it will take to finish the job. Once you show Luke and Walker, you guys will get it done in no time. You’ll all be vintners before you know it.” She dropped her gaze back to the spur she was pruning and clipped another branch. “I mean they will. I know you have a job to go back to.”
He didn’t respond because what would he say? He did have a job to go back to. In New York. He was supposed to come home to tie up loose ends and give himself the closure he needed here in Oak Bluff. Instead he’d found unexpected doors opened, doors he was both terrified to walk through as well as slam the hell shut.
So instead of saying anything else, he watched in silence as she deftly went to work. And then he moved from her side to the next row of plants and started on his own.
He was used to his ghosts. They’d been his company for the better part of ten years. What he wasn’t prepared for was the pull from the land of the living.
His brothers.
This woman.
His son.
He hadn’t planned on wanting anything in a place that hadn’t felt like home for the majority of his life. A place that had taught him all the things he never wanted to be.
But most surprising was the ache in his gut at what saying good-bye to it would mean this time around.