CHAPTER FIVE
Eli took the slowest possible path to the compost bin behind the main house after dinner, wishing like hell he was anywhere other than Cross Creek even though he’d never been anywhere other than Cross Creek in his entire twenty-eight years. But between the familial fallout from that dumbass bet and the smart-mouthed, sharp-eyed photographer he’d been saddled with as a result, Eli would take a one-way ticket to Timbuktu over his current situation.
Even if, with her wild, platinum-and-dark-blond-streaked hair and her olive-green eyes and her petite-yet-still-plenty-curvy frame, said photographer was hotter than homemade sin.
Turning the corner toward the three-sided alcove that housed the trash cans, the blue plastic recycling tubs, and the compost bin, Eli lifted the lid to the latter, the rough-hewn wood scraping across his palm as he dumped the contents of his bucket in with a thunk. After his showdown with Scarlett in front of the henhouse a few hours ago, he’d gone the deflect-and-forget-about-it route, keeping their tour to just the facts despite the million and two questions she’d asked and the billion and two pictures she’d snapped, then done his level best to park himself as far away from her as possible during dinner. Scarlett had been all business, too, touching her meal only to push her fried chicken and mashed potatoes over her plate as she’d chattered on and on in that heavy New York accent of hers about the endless list of things she wanted to know about and immortalize on film.
The woman seemed allergic to either shutting up or sitting still, and God dammit, being in charge of this stupid project was going to suck up every last ounce of Eli’s time, energy, and sanity. He needed to be working now more than ever, not tasked with the shit job of babysitting a brash blonde with enough nosy questions to sink a fucking battleship—especially not when even money said she was going to hate the very place she was supposed to be promoting and the very place he needed to be working hard to save.
“Guess the look on your face pretty much answers the ‘how’s it going’ question.”
The sound of Hunter’s voice dumped Eli back to the reality of the dusk-covered yard behind the main house, his chin winging up just in time to catch sight of his brother heading toward the alcove with a black plastic trash bag in one hand.
“Hey,” Eli said, slapping his smile together even though it fit about as well as a miniskirt on a moose. “Sorry, I checked the trash before I came out here. The bag wasn’t even half-full.”
Hunter popped the lid on the trash can and swung the suspiciously flabby bag inside. “I know. But I needed an excuse to come out here and see if you’re alright, so . . .”
A hard squeeze worked its way through Eli’s gut. Time to duck and cover. “Damn. A guy finds a serious girlfriend and all of a sudden we’re hugging it out and talking about our feelings around the campfire.”
Hunter grinned, although likely more at the mention of Emerson than at Eli’s humor. “Fuck you. How’s that for feelings?”
“Better.” A genuine laugh fell from Eli’s lips, loosening the tension that had tangled beneath his sternum. “But as cool as she is, I still think living with Emerson has left you addled.”
“Look at you, using the twenty-five-cent words. Frigging brainiac,” Hunter popped back.
Careful, Eli’s pulse warned, and he amped his cocky factor up another notch. “Hey, I can’t help it if smart is the new sexy and I’m the king of both.”
Hunter snorted before slipping his thumb through the belt loop at his hip, looking out over the shadowy outlines of the flower garden that had remained unchanged since their mother’s death twenty-four years ago. “Seriously, though. I know today has been a bit of a bitch. You okay?”
His permanently laid-back tone curved around the question, making it all too easy for Eli to twist the truth in response.
“Yup. I’m right as rain, brother.” He pulled in a deep breath of finally cool evening air, pivoting on his scuffed-and-scarred Red Wings to head back to the house when Hunter stopped his cut and run dead in its tracks.
“I’m not trying to come down on you, E, but this bet you made has the potential to really jam us up.”
Eli’s heart took a whack at no less than four of his ribs before tilting toward his knees. “You don’t need to remind me.”
“Actually, I think I do,” Hunter said. “Look, I get that Greyson was acting like a bucketful of dicks and that you didn’t mean for this to go pear shaped. But it did. And like it or not, you’re gonna have to make it right.”
Oh, for the love of all that was sacred and holy. “I want to make it right, Hunt.” Eli slashed a hand through the air in frustration. “I’d bust my ass to make it right if I could, but I’m going to be too busy playing cruise director for the city girl to get any real work done.”
Hunter stood perfectly still, his face a tough read in the last scraps of daylight and the scant glow being thrown off from the windows on the back of the house. “Like her or not, that city girl could be the key to getting out of this mess.”
“Or she could make everything worse by turning us into a reality show–style joke,” Eli said, the words launching out before he could pull them back or pretty them up. “She tromped all over the farm in flip-flops, for Chrissake! And don’t even get me started on the sunstroke I’m gonna have to save her from, even though she’ll likely fight me tooth and goddamn nail while I do. She’s bossy, brash, and a pain in the ass, not to mention she’s a disaster waiting to go down with all this hands-on shit she wants to try and pull off for these stories. Hell, she’s a city girl, through and through. She’s probably not even going to like it here. How’s any of that supposed to get us the business we need?”
“I don’t know,” Hunter admitted. But his expression was far from noncommittal as he added, “Here are a few things I am sure of, though. Scarlett’s résumé reads like a Who’s Who of badass publications, and despite her Manhattan zip code, this series she’s shooting for FoodE does have the potential to bring a whole lot of people to our farm stands and pick-your-own fields, not to mention maybe land us some new contracts with distributors.” He held up a hand to stave off the brewing argument that must have been showing on Eli’s face. “You might not agree that Scarlett’s being here at Cross Creek is a good thing, but you sure as shit still need to do whatever it takes not to piss her off so we can make the best of this PR.”
Eli locked his molars together hard enough to make his jaw protest, turning his brother’s words over in his mind even though he hated every last syllable. “You honestly think her buzzing around here at warp speed and asking a billion questions while she airs our personal shit all over the Internet like laundry on a line is going to help Cross Creek?”
“With this bet you made and the fallout we’ll face if we lose, I think we need to do all we can to find out. And that means you”—Hunter paused, pointing at Eli through the twilight for emphasis—“are going to have to stop being pissy and start making Scarlett love it here.”
Eli let out a long, slow breath, his shoulders sagging as he watched Hunter walk back to the main house.
Screw Shakespeare. Eli was going to need an outright miracle to make it through the next month.
Eli stood on the concrete threshold of apartment 4A, blinking the sleep out of his eyes for the fifteenth time since he’d dragged himself out of the sweet haven of his bed as many minutes ago. Not even the day and a half that had passed since he’d walked Scarlett to this very spot and left her with a spare key, his contact information for emergencies, and a clipped-yet-polite “good night” had erased the unease from his gut over this month-long magazine mission.
The sight of Scarlett, her blond-on-blond hair wild from sleep and a bright-red toothbrush centered smack in the middle of her lush, smart mouth? Not fucking helping.
Keep it simple, stupid. You need to charm her, not make her think you’re some sort of backwoods creeper. “Morning,” Eli said, following her into the shoebox-sized apartment that had been Emerson’s only a few short months ago. Damn, Scarlett had moved in quick. Or at least, her mess had. Stacks of books and magazines, errant hoodies and shoes, a laptop splayed open on the coffee table next to two—make that three—notebooks of various sizes and colored pens to match . . . and all that was before he got to the mile-high stack of camera equipment covering the kitchen table. How could one little convertible hold so much stuff?
“Unh,” she replied, padding barefoot through the living space to the tiny, open kitchen. After a quick swish to rinse her mouth and toothbrush, she added, “If you say so, but as far as I’m concerned, if it’s dark outside, nighttime should still apply.”
“Not a morning person, I take it?” Well. At least they had something in common besides both being human. Not even the fact that Eli had been able to spend six blissful hours last night reading Hemingway and writing website updates and ad copy for Cross Creek—albeit under the guise of a freelancer who only existed in his gray matter—could change how hard the crack of dawn smarted in the here and now.
Ever tough, Scarlett lifted a noncommittal shoulder. “I’ll have plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead. I’ll be fine after I caffeinate.” She reached for the space-age-looking travel mug on the counter, cradling the thing like a newborn before taking a long sip.
Eli took in the contents of the now-lowered cup clasped between her palms, absolutely wary. “What on earth is that?”
“Coffee.” A little smudge of foam clung to the indent of her upper lip, and oh hell, Eli wasn’t going to make it past sunup.
“No,” he said, blanking the suggestion from his wayward cock while lifting the dinged and dented Thermos in his grip. “This is coffee. That is . . .” His gaze landed on the commercial-grade coffee maker taking over half the chipped Formica next to the utilitarian kitchen sink. “Where did you even get that thing?”
“Since yesterday was a day off at Cross Creek, I went exploring. I ended up in that little town ninety minutes from here.” Scarlett waved her free hand as if she were already terminally bored with Millhaven. “If I had known that’s where the closest Starbucks is, I’d have packed my cappuccino maker from home. This one doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it’ll do.”
Eli’s laughter emerged on a heavy huff of disbelief. “That little town ninety minutes from here? Do you mean Lockridge?” It had one of the highest populations in the Shenandoah Valley, for pity’s sake.
“Mmm-hmm, that’s the one,” Scarlett said. “Cute place. And thankfully for my caffeine addiction, they have a supercenter.”
She took another sip of her coffee (although the jury was still out on whether or not there was really any coffee underneath all that frilly, foamy stuff) wrinkling her nose and grabbing a carton of milk from the counter. Adding a splash to her drink, Scarlett handed over the carton before snapping the lid on the mug and turning to make her way back into the living room.
“I just have to grab my shoes and my equipment and I’ll be ready to go. Help yourself if you’re thirsty.”
“Soy milk?” Eli dropped the carton back to the counter faster than if it’d been chock-full of rattlesnakes. At least those, he’d know what the fuck to do with.
Scarlett paused, midstep over the carpet. “Oh, yeah. Actually, I’m sort of vegan.”
“You’re what?” No way had he heard her properly, because he could have sworn she’d just said—
“Vegan,” Scarlett confirmed, finishing her trip to the living room to scoop up her camera bag. “It means I don’t consume any animals or animal products.”
He resisted the urge to rub his suddenly pounding temples, although barely. “I’ve worked on a farm for my entire life. I know what vegan means. I’ve just never met anybody who actually is one.” Guess that explained all the food maneuvering she’d done Saturday night at dinner. But seriously? No cheeseburgers? No butter? Christ, no bacon?
Who did that?
One platinum-blond brow arched. “I know this will shock you,” she said, the beads around her wrist clacking together as she splayed her fingers wide against one hip. “But we vegans aren’t all tree-hugging hippies who run around chanting and naked and smelling like patchouli.”
Do not picture her naked, do not picture her naked, DO NOT . . .
An image of Scarlett, her creamy skin flushed with desire and her pretty, pink nipples begging to be tasted like summer fruit ripped through his mind’s eye, and sweet Christmas Jesus.
Too late.
“Ooookay!” Eli barked out, gripping his keys hard enough to feel the metallic bite against his palm. “We need to go, or we’re going to be late.”
Scarlett blinked, but thankfully didn’t question the swerve in subject. “I told you. Shoes and gear. I’m ready.”
Tamping down the good-morning-to-you message coming from his dick, Eli looked at her more closely. “You’re wearing that?”
“On the list of top ten things a woman will punch you for, that question is easily number three,” she said, her stare as frosty as her words.
Shit. So much for not pissing her off. But the cherry-red Converse low-tops she’d just slipped into looked about as sturdy as a sapling, and while today she was actually wearing jeans, rolling them up to midshin and pairing them with a cut-to-there T-shirt didn’t rate too high on the scale of one to practical. “All I meant was I’m not sure you’re going to be comfortable.”
“You said jeans, sleeves, and better shoes,” Scarlett reminded him as she lifted her camera bag over her shoulder, and outstanding. Not only did her shirt reveal more of her chest than it covered, but it was also short enough to show off a sliver of skin between the hem and the waistband of her jeans.
Although it took effort, Eli stuffed back the argument brewing in his chest. While her feet might be crying uncle by lunchtime, nothing about today’s outfit was an outright liability like those flip-flops, and anyway, they were already halfway to late. With how much work he’d need to bang out today to get a jump-start on this bet, he didn’t have time to argue.
“Have it your way,” he murmured. When she turned to lift another equally big, equally bulky camera bag, Eli’s surprise took charge of his mouth. “Wait. How much stuff are you bringing, exactly?”
Scarlett dipped a look over her shoulder. “Oh. Well, any photographer worth her salt wouldn’t be caught dead without a backup camera. Plus, it’s a pain in the ass to switch up lenses all the time, so I prefer to work with two cameras at once. That way I can go back and forth, depending on what the shot calls for.”
“You have two cameras?”
“Nope,” she said, her smile going deep and wide and weirdly beautiful. “I’m taking two cameras with me today. And if you think that’s a lot, I don’t even want to tell you how much glass I brought from home.”
“Glass,” he repeated, and Scarlett gave her head a little shake.
“Sorry. It’s photographer-speak. Lenses.” She pointed to the kitchen table over his shoulder. “Most people think it’s the cameras that matter, but in truth, it’s the lenses we get all geeky for. Well, unless you’re talking about a Hasselblad or something, but everything about one of those babies is totally outer limits.”
Eli shook his head, trying to process. “And you just haul all of it around with you?” She couldn’t be a hair over five foot four, for Chrissake.
Apparently, moxie counted double. “Of course.” Scarlett shifted the bags on either hip, clearly comfortable despite the fact that, judging by the pull of muscles in both her biceps and her forearms, they couldn’t be even close to light. “I’m not about to miss a shot because I couldn’t carry my weight. Literally.”
“We’re going to be doing an awful lot of moving around,” Eli said, because it was as diplomatic as he could get under the circumstances. Hell, some days in the busy season, it took all he had to drag himself around the farm.
But Scarlett just laughed. “This isn’t my first rodeo, cowboy. I’ll be just fine.”
“Great,” Eli mumbled. He crossed the carpet, holding the front door open for her as they made their way over the threshold and across the Twin Pines parking lot. Switching gears, he channeled his mental energy into organizing the tasks in front of him. God, there were no less than a hundred, and that was just what he could come up with off the top of his walnut.
As if she could see the wheels turning in his brain, Scarlett asked, “So what are we up to today?”
Eli popped the locks on his F-150, the truck’s running lights flashing bright yellow in the predawn shadows of the parking lot. “There are a handful of daily chores that always have to get done no matter what. Those keep us busy for the first hour or so, and then my brothers and old man and I will hook up at the main house for breakfast to discuss the rest. And I, uh, guess you’ll come, too,” he tacked on.
What she’d eat would be a mystery, since bacon and eggs were a definite negative on the bound-to-impress-her list. Which was a crying shame, really, because for as much as Eli liked to rattle Owen’s cage, the guy’s culinary skills were seriously on point.
Scarlett didn’t seem to give it a second thought, though. “Daily chores,” she prompted, pulling an iPad out of one of her camera bags as she got situated in the passenger seat.
He gave the thing three hours before it overheated or she flat-out busted it, but hey, whatever blew her skirt up. “Checking the henhouse, inventory in the greenhouse. Pulling orders with all the local businesses we supply to prep them for processing. Making sure the equipment and irrigation systems are a go before we harvest hay, soybeans, and corn. Stuff like that.”
Scarlett’s fingers became a backlit blur over the screen. “. . . annnd hay, soybeans, and corn. Got it.” She sat quietly for a second, sipping her coffee while Eli turned onto the road leading out to Cross Creek. Without looking up from her iPad, she asked, “So how come you don’t live on the farm like everyone else?”
“What?” Shock made his brain logjam on the question, but Scarlett dove back in without pause.
“The other night, Emerson mentioned that both Owen and Hunter live in cottages on the property, and that she lives with Hunter. I was just curious as to why you don’t live at Cross Creek, too.”
Fuck. He needed something stronger than coffee for this.
Deflect and forget it. Eli dug deep into his arsenal, pulling out his most charming smile. “Because I live here instead.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” Scarlett said, apparently immune to his smile and hip to his dodging the subject. Figured she’d be as brazen about this as she was everything else. “But you guys have like miles and miles of land, right? Wouldn’t it be easier to build another place at Cross Creek and be done with it?”
“No.”
“No?”
Eli held steady as he flipped the tables on her in yet another evasive maneuver. “What about you? Do you live near your family?”
“Oh.” Scarlett blinked through the scant light in the truck, and look at that. He’d managed to throw her. “Well, I’m not actually in New York all that much, but yes. My fathers live in Brooklyn, and I have a place in Manhattan.”
Thankfully, there was so much about that he could tackle, and all of it would keep her busy talking about herself. “Your fathers?” he asked after a mental coin-flip. “As in, two?”
“Yes.” Scarlett straightened against the passenger seat, her chin hiking up as she pegged him with a stare he could feel even though his eyes were mostly on the road in front of them. “I was raised by two men, who just so happen to be wildly in love and married to each other.”
While a small part of him was tempted to take offense at her obvious assumption that he’d disapprove of her family, Eli worked up an answer that was as easy as hers had been defensive. After all, he needed to charm her. If he could keep the focus off his own family dynamic while he was at it? Triple-word score.
“You say that like you think I’m going to have something against the fact that your fathers are gay.”
She paused for a heartbeat, then another, but man, that chin of hers didn’t budge a millimeter. “Some people do.”
“Well, I’m not one of them,” Eli said, and he meant it. “It’s far better to be curious than judgmental.”
Her brows shot up for a single second before snapping together in a tight “V.” “Did you just quote Walt Whitman?”
Eli’s palms went slick over the F-150’s steering wheel, his brain bouncing back and forth between a state of panic and a very strange, very serious shot of arousal. “I dunno, did I?” he drawled, leaning hard on his small-town country accent in an effort to cover his ass. “All I meant was that there’s better stuff to be interested in than other people’s business. Seems simple to me, but maybe . . . who was it? Walt Whitman? Maybe he felt the same.”
Much to his relief, she shook her head. “Weird coincidence, I guess. And I’m sorry I assumed you’d judge. It’s just that sometimes I get a lot of side-eye from people when I tell them I was adopted by two men.”
“The only thing I judge a person by is whether or not he’s an asshole,” Eli said, the back of his neck instantly heating at the swear word he’d let slip. He was supposed to be winning this woman over, for Chrissake. “’Scuse my language.”
Scarlett laughed, the throaty sound filling the truck. “Eli, we’re going to be spending the next four weeks together, so please. Do me a favor. Unless the video camera is rolling, feel free to swear as much as you fucking like.”
Shock arrowed through his chest, forcing his own laughter up and out. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh for the love of . . .” She broke off, her arms threading into a tight knot over the spot where her seatbelt crossed her chest. “Scarlett. My name is Scarlett.”
He knew—he knew—he should just let her protest go and call her by her first name from now on like she preferred. But something deep in his belly put a mischievous smile on his face instead. “You know, ’round here we call those manners.”
Eli hung the words with just enough levity, and wait for it . . . wait for it . . .
Gotcha. Scarlett’s exhale was pure surprise. “You’re not calling me ‘ma’am’ to bust my chops?”
“Nope.” Okay, so it was only 85 percent true, but he wasn’t about to split hairs. “Calling women ‘ma’am’ is just what we do here in Millhaven, whether they’re eight or eighty.”
“And no one finds it a little sexist?” she asked. But rather than being pushy or accusatory, her tone was genuinely curious, and hell if that didn’t make Eli stop and think about the question all the more.
After a minute, he said, “No. I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I don’t think using ‘ma’am’ is meant to be sexist at all. We tend to throw ‘yes, sir’ around just as much for men, and they’re both terms of respect. Same goes for me not swearing in front of you. It’s not that I don’t think you can handle me dropping the F-bomb.” She was a New Yorker, for God’s sake. He was pretty sure they’d invented the F-bomb. “Guess I just believe language is powerful, is all.”
Scarlett nodded slowly. “‘Ma’am’ makes me think of mothers. Which is pretty weird, seeing as I’ve never had one.”
“Everybody’s got a mother.”
“I don’t,” she reiterated, her words growing steam but not teeth.
But two could square-dance to that song, and Eli had known the moves since he’d been four years old. “Yeah, you do,” he said, unease strumming its way back between his ribs, slowly sticking him from the inside out. “Everyone comes from somewhere, just like everyone belongs somewhere.”
Of course, Scarlett didn’t budge. “Not me. I come from nowhere, and I belong all over the place.” She turned to face him a little more fully, and even the small glimpse of her in his peripheral vision slipped right under his skin. “Anyway, what about you? What happened to your mother?”
Eli’s pulse rushed in his ears, the hard, rapid thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump completely at odds with the sleepy pink-and-purple sunrise coloring the horizon through the windshield. Nope. Absolutely not. He’d suck up a lot of things to get off the Cross Creek hot seat and into Scarlett’s good graces for the PR, but not this.
He wasn’t about to tell some photographer who was there to show God and everybody with a connection to the Internet that his mother had died of breast cancer at only thirty-seven, devastating his father and leaving the man to raise three young boys on his own, and he damn sure wasn’t going to tell her that the reason for his nondisclosure had more to do with the cold, hard truth than any warm, fuzzy emotions.
After all, it was tough to talk about a woman you knew you should love but couldn’t even remember.
Oh, screw this. Eli needed to dodge, deflect, and forget about everything other than showing Scarlett the farm and only the farm.
He fixed her with a smile, as plain and polite and free of emotion as he could make it. “Where I live and what happened to my mother—hell, what color boxer shorts I pulled on this morning—none of that has anything to do with the magazine layouts you’re going to shoot. We’ll do best if we remember that and focus on what you came here for.”
Her chin did that stubborn-lift thing again, and for a split second, Eli was certain she’d argue.
But then she set her shoulders, turning her attention back to her iPad as if the thing were far more fascinating than anything else in the county. “You’re absolutely right. I came here to work. That’s all that matters.”
They spent the rest of the drive to Cross Creek in silence.