Chapter Seven
Damian slept very little before his phone alarm pulled him out of a bleary slumber at nearly five in the morning. After pulling Kendall into his arms and making love to her again, because he’d finally admitted to himself that’s what it had been, love, he tucked her into his side and stroked her hair until her breaths grew deeper and evened out. He hadn’t wanted to wake her after exhausting her both mentally and physically, so he’d done his tossing and turning in his head and not in the bed.
He loved his work on the farm, enjoyed the goats and even managing the shop and warehouse staff. But if he was ever going to take a morning off to lie around in bed it would be that very Monday morning. Before last night he had planned on teaching Kendall the ropes that day, but after her fall, their sexing, and then the emotional aftermath he decided to sneak out of bed and let her sleep.
Emerging from the en-suite bathroom, changed and groomed, he noticed the Kendall-sized indentation in his bed covers, but no Kendall. Making his way into the kitchen, he discovered her pouring coffee. Smiling almost shyly she handed him a steaming cup, along with a bowl of yogurt and some blueberries with granola.
“Still like your coffee black like an old man?” she teased. And he was struck, like a punch to his chest, at the yearning nostalgia that ran through him. This was the way it was, the way it was supposed to be, before everything went sideways.
“Still trying to kill me with your hippie food?” he teased back.
“Ironic coming from the goat-farming, soap-making dude with the beard and a flannel.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Hey, if the hipster farmer fits…”
He took a bite of his breakfast. “Ha. Ha.”
She rinsed her bowl in the sink and set it in the dishwasher. “That granola is really good… Where’d you get it? It looks homemade.”
“Delilah.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. He knew she barely kept in touch with her former best friend. That Delilah had felt just as abandoned by Kendall as he had.
“She bought the old diner with her brother after Helena retired last year and moved to Montana to be with her niece’s family.”
“Oh,” she said hiding her face and the blush he could see staining her cheeks. This time from embarrassment and not sex. But he left it at that, figuring he’d pushed her enough for one day. He let the silence settle in around them, enjoying the comfortable quiet and—though he didn’t want to admit—her in his kitchen. After cleaning up her cup, Kendall moved to the front door and pulled on her boots.
He made a silent note to get them to town later that afternoon to buy her some proper farm boots. Although today, she should probably take it easy and stay in the house. As he was about to tell her exactly that she held up her hand and said, “Before you say anything, cowboy, forget it. I mean it. I’m here to help and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“First off, cowgirl, I’m the boss. Second, you hurt your ankle last night. One day off lounging around in the cabin isn’t going to kill you, Kendall.” He took the few steps toward her erasing the space between them and reached around her, watching her eyes widen and her pupils dilate until he grabbed his hat off the rack and plopped it on his head. “Sit your pretty little ass down on the couch. Drink coffee, read your books, and I’ll be back later.” And he left her staring open-mouthed after him as he turned and went out the front door, stomped down the steps, and made his way to the goat enclosure.
He shouldn’t have been surprised that fewer than ten minutes later Kendall came up behind him and without a word started filling the feed receptacles and changing the water out for the goats.
“Kendall, I told you…”
Much to the chagrin of the five goats waiting to be fed she stopped scooping their food, and looked him straight in the eye, her chin jutting out as if preparing for a fight, and she pulled up her jeans to expose her wrapped ankle. It didn’t appear swollen, but he did notice she was wearing running shoes and not boots. “I’m really okay. And I’ll take it easy. I need to be out here, Damian. I promise I’ll stop if my ankle hurts. I know you have no reason to believe me but try to trust me.”
He stared at her face trying to ascertain what she was not telling him. Why was this so important to her? Why was she nearly begging him to believe her? Instead of asking, in the end he just nodded. “The minute you flinch or look like you’re in pain I’m going to pick you up, throw you over my shoulder, and take you back to the cottage myself.” Surprise swept across her features before she schooled them.
She chuckled, her voice low and smoky, much too sexy for five o’clock in the morning. “That’s not really a threat, cowboy.” She laughed again and turned back to her work, cooing to the mean old donkey and talking to the goats.
He watched her for a moment, struck again at how easily she fit into life on the farm. How easy it would be to forgive her and ask her to stay. But she probably wanted to get back on the road and play her music. Her life wasn’t here any longer and the sooner he got that through his thick skull the better it would be for both of them.
The morning passed quickly, and Kendall showed a tenacious interest in all of the farm work Damian introduced her to—from cleaning out the milking stations to feeding the animals to harvesting the vegetables—and charmed all of his employees from the farmhands to the part-time college students who ran production and the shop. She showed special interest in how the different body products such as soaps and lotions were formulated and productized for distribution.
Damian was surprised at a couple of interesting marketing ideas Kendall put forth regarding selling his products on their website and rebranding the small shop at the front of the property. But of course, he shouldn’t be surprised at her business savvy. She’d spent the last four years turning herself into a product and marketing machine. Everything with Kendall’s punk rock cowgirl image was branding, branding, branding. She’d taken a wild child from the other side of the tracks with a penchant for singing and a talent for poetry and created a crossover star.
When a pair of battered and mud-covered shoes appeared in his vision as he pounded in the last nail on a broken fence enclosure, he looked up. Kendall stood above him with the midday sun blazing a golden halo bright against the clear sky. She looked angelic, like she did in his dreams some nights when he was too beat up and too exhausted to remember to hold on to his bitterness. He stood up and wiped the sweat and dirt from his forehead with the bottom of his shirt, not missing the burn of heat in her eyes or the way she bit down on the side of her lip.
She thrust a paper plate with a sandwich and cluster of grapes, and a water bottle into his hands. “I brought you lunch.” She shrugged her shoulder and looked almost shy as she glanced away and then back at him. “Thought you might be hungry.”
He motioned to the back of the truck and pulled the gate down before hopping up. “Join me.”
She shook her head, her hair shiny and in a loose braid. “I already ate.”
“Sit anyway.” He patted the spot next to him and she scooted up on the gate. Why was he making this harder on himself by pulling her closer and closer? It was time to figure out what the hell he was doing and how he could get himself to stop doing it. This woman was trouble. But after last night he wasn’t sure he could go back to the way he had been. Not that he could fall back into being with Kendall again, but though he’d felt dead inside for years now, he realized he wasn’t actually dead. And the more time he spent around her, the more alive he became.
But what did that mean for them? For him? He’d promised to buy her out, promised to give her the divorce she’d wanted for years. But what did he want? Aside from the anger, the bitterness, what did he want from her? He’d spent so many years yearning for her and then stewing in his own cynicism that he’d stopped thinking about what he wanted. Sure, he thought a lot about what had been and the future he felt Kendall had stolen from them. But he hadn’t done a whole lot of thinking about now. Or the not-so-distant future.
He bit off a chunk of the ham and cheese sandwich and surveyed the land around him filled with goats, a large vegetable garden and covered greenhouse off to the right of the property. His two farmhands were moving a herd of goats from one field to another as a large brown delivery truck pulled to a stop in front of the entrance to the farm where the shop sat. Kelly Family Farms was a growing, successful, busy business. He’d loved farming from the first time he’d helped his mom in her kitchen garden after school, but really took to it after Kendall’s grandma had hired him to work on the property the summer after his senior year in high school.
Once the next round of receivables cycled through he had plans to expand their product distribution a little further out, maybe hit some of the areas farther north up in Oregon where natural products were growing in popularity.
“Good?” Kendall’s soft voice broke him out of his ruminations. “The sandwich…is it good?”
He smiled. “It’s my favorite.”
The edges of her glossy lips tipped up. She remembered.
Blowing out a long breath she leaned her head back and raised her face to the sun. “It smells so good out here. Like ocean and fresh grass and dirt. I forgot how much I missed it.”
Her eyes snapped open like she hadn’t meant to share that much. Hadn’t meant to let him know she missed her home. Maybe even missed him.
It hit him like a bolt of lightning. A zing of electricity and a sudden sharp focus of energy. No matter how much she denied it, this was her home. She had gone out into the big bad world not because she’d wanted to become a super star, but because she’d felt she had no other choice but to leave and no other skills but singing and playing her guitar.
Kendall Kelly belonged in Blackberry Cove. That was the odd quiet that had settled over her since yesterday. Not sadness, but a calm that she probably hadn’t felt since she left four years before. And hell if Damian had any idea what to do with that realization. So instead of dealing with it or even putting some space between the two of them, he opened his mouth and invited her to go on errands in town with him.
“You do realize that will start the gossip mill churning, don’t you?” she asked with a mischievous smile.
He nodded. “Yep. But no more than me kissing you at the funeral, or you staying out here at the farm. Besides, woman, we’re still married.”
She hesitated and bit her lip for a moment before asking, “What about your dating…women…social life thing?”
Oh yeah. What about that, smartass? “Well, see, the thing is, my date with Carissa was really my first, well second date.”
“In how long?”
He tapped his bottom lip and looked skyward. “Well, let’s see, since you left…uhm, ever.”
Her jaw dropped, and her eyes grew. “You mean…”
“Yep. One other date with a tourist but it didn’t get farther than a good-night kiss on the cheek.”
She mumbled something that sounded a lot like she hadn’t dated either, which was obviously impossible. “What?”
“I said ‘me too’,” she said raising her voice only slightly then lifted her head from where she concentrated on her hands to peer up at him. “I haven’t been with anyone else, Damian. I mean, guys tried, but I just couldn’t. I’m still married.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“So last night.”
He nodded. It had only ever been her. Those big brown eyes lifted and locked with his. And he felt like maybe his chest was filled with crushed glass and that the pieces were sliding around, slicing him up inside, making him raw, making him bleed. He felt exposed. Uncomfortable, but maybe, just maybe, those jagged edges might be smoothing out. Kendall might be sanding all that broken glass down into something softer and more manageable.
“Yeah.” He reached over and brushed her long bangs off her forehead. Up close he could see the amber speckles in her eyes, the little dots that made her eyes glow and dance in the light. He cupped his hand over her jaw and smoothed his thumb along her bottom lip. She gasped, loud enough that he could hear it over the farm noise, but quiet enough that it was all for him. Like she had been and apparently still was. His.
God, he was such a selfish bastard.
“What are we doing?” she whispered, her voice almost a sigh.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I really don’t know. How about we just go with it for the next couple weeks?”
“But what if you can’t forgive me?” The desperation in her voice ate at him, made him want to kiss her fears away. But it wasn’t that easy. Years of regret didn’t just evaporate in one night or with something as simple as a kiss.
“But what if I can? What if you can forgive yourself?”
She shook her head and bit her lip. He tugged it free and leaned over to kiss her.
“Hey, boss,” Coleman, one of the college kids who helped in the store, yelled from behind them. “Thomas from the farm store called. Your order is in.” He stopped in front of the truck apparently oblivious to the sexual tension swirling around them, thick enough to reach out and pluck chunks of it out of the air. “You want me and Sam to run to town?” he asked referring to Samantha, the young woman responsible for mixing most of their body lotions and soaps. Just about everyone on the farm and nearly the entire town knew of Coleman Carter’s crush on his childhood best friend, Samantha Villanueva. Everyone except Sam.
Damian hopped down from the truck and held his hand out to help Kendall down. “Nope. We were heading into town to pick up a few things anyway. Ready to go?”
“To town? Together?”
He nodded. She smiled, a real smile, the kind that lit up her brown eyes and everything else around her. “No time like the present to feed that rumor mill I suppose.”