“Okay. This is the last of them.”

Cate pulled the cookie sheet loaded with snickerdoodles out of Owen’s oven, placing it carefully over the wire rack on the island before letting out a sigh of relief. She’d planned her preparations carefully over the last three days, and having one farmers’ market under her belt already, she’d at least had an idea of how long certain tasks would take. Still, there were no less than a thousand potential pitfalls in going from concept to reality. With T-minus fifteen hours to go, it was nice to at least have all the baking done.

“They smell unbelievable,” Owen said hopefully, and she slid a cinnamon and sugar-crusted cookie off the baking sheet that had come out ten minutes before its brethren.

Ah, perfect. “One,” she replied, trying—and failing—to give him a stern look as she broke the cookie in half and passed part over to Owen before popping the other part into her mouth.

The pleasured noise that came from the back of his throat made Cate’s belly flood with heat of the non-kitchen variety. “Damn, and they’re still warm?” He chewed, and the noise turned into a moan. “It doesn’t get much better.”

“Oh, it can always get better.” She’d tweaked even her most reliable recipes for years.

Owen, however? Didn’t seem to be buying it. “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘don’t mess with perfection’?”

“Right.” Cate started to package up the cookies that had fully cooled into the cellophane bags sitting in wait on the counter, her smile as inevitable as the sunset in a couple of hours. The cookies had come out as soft and cinnamon-sweet as she’d hoped, but still… “Like you ever stop messing with soil compositions and planting schedules. Oh, and crop rotations—”

“Okay, okay! Point taken.” His laugh ended quickly as he turned to look at the windows lining the back of the kitchen. “I just wish we hadn’t lost so much time today because of the weather.”

An unexpected stretch of storms had started blowing through at lunch time, making steady outdoor work all but impossible between the overly wet conditions from the bouts of heavy rain and the threat of lightning. The storms had been persistent and unpredictable enough that the Crosses had finally just called it a day a couple of hours ago, after three rounds of harried stop/start.

“I know the farm is important to you,” Cate said, because, God, it was the pure truth. “But you really only lost a couple of hours, right?”

She pointed to the clock on the microwave, which read nearly five PM. She’d finished up all the bookkeeping early so she could focus on a few more batches of cookies for tomorrow’s farmers’ market. Between her and Owen, they’d found a system this afternoon that had been efficient and fun. Not that baking ever felt like work to her, but having an extra set of hands had made all the difference in getting things done both quickly and well.

“Yeah.” Owen nodded, but that seriousness he always wore when it came to the farm didn’t budge from his eyes. “Anyway, the rain seems to have finally tapered off now. I was going to head to the greenhouse to see if there are any last-minute heirloom tomatoes or greens we could pack up for the market tomorrow. They’re so perishable, I’d hate to see any go to waste just because we missed ’em.”

“Workaholic,” Cate teased, and damn it, one day she’d learn to brace herself for that sexy half-smile of his before it took a potshot at her composure.

He stepped in front of her, taking the cellophane bag out of her fingers and placing it carefully on the island. “Takes one to know one.”

After a slow kiss she felt in a lot more places than her mouth, Owen pulled back just far enough to murmur, “I really do need to head on down there for a quick trip, though.”

“Mmm.” Cate laughed. She couldn’t really blame him for being ambitious. For loving what he did, right down to his boot heels? Even less. “Far be it for me to stand in your way, then.”

But rather than stepping back as she expected him to, his arms remained solid around her rib cage. “It’s not far. Truth be told, I was going to walk it. Now that you’re done in here, you could come with me. I mean, it might be kind of boring for you, but…”

“Right. Because watching me mix the batter for half a dozen strawberry-lemon quick breads was riveting for you, I’m sure.” Especially since it had been more like nine loaves, and three huge batches of cookies. “Am I okay to go like this?”

She gestured to her light green sundress, which had been perfect for the warm spring weather that had dominated the first half of the day. At least she’d had the wherewithal to throw on her Keds this morning instead of a pair of flimsy sandals, although now that she thought about it, her sandals were still upstairs in Owen’s room, right where she’d left them two days ago.

A tiny warning bell jangled in the back of Cate’s brain, but she snuffed it out. Yes, she’d kicked off her sandals at Owen’s bedside and inadvertently left them there the next morning in favor of the ballet flats she’d packed in her overnight bag, but she was hardly moving in with him. In fact, she’d responded with a polite yet firm no thanks when he’d offered to let her keep a toothbrush and some toiletries in his medicine cabinet, preferring instead to haul them back and forth whenever she stayed. She’d just have to be sure to grab her sandals later tonight. No big deal.

“Sure,” he said, bringing her back to the kitchen with a smile. “It’s still plenty warm out despite the rain, and the path is all gravel, so we shouldn’t run into any of the standing water or mud that we had to worry about in the fields.”

“Great. Just let me finish bagging these cookies up and then we can head out.”

A handful of minutes and a dozen or so packages of cookies later, they were headed over the threshold of Owen’s front door. He hadn’t been kidding about the temperature still being more than warm enough for shirtsleeves, and even though the sun was still well-hidden behind a bank of light gray clouds, Cate still twisted her hair into a knot to keep it off her neck in the humid, post-storm air. “Oh, hey,” she said, pausing to run her fingers lightly over the herb garden exploding out of the planter box nearest to the porch railing where she stood. “Your lavender bloomed a ton this week. I’d love to know your secret. I always manage to kill mine.”

Owen spread a hand over the front of his T-shirt in mock horror. “Please tell me you water it.”

“Of course, I water it,” she said, laughing and following him down the porch steps.

“Uh huh. And where do you keep it?”

She bit her lip, knowing he wasn’t going to like her answer. “In a pot in my kitchen, usually.”

One nearly black brow lifted all the way up. “Your kitchen that gets as much natural sunlight as a dungeon, you mean?”

“Point taken.” Cate held up her hands in concession, falling into step beside him on the gravel path leading toward the smaller of Cross Creek’s two greenhouses. “Not everyone can be a natural when it comes to growing things. I think I’m more all thumbs than green thumb.”

“First of all, Mediterranean herbs like lavender and oregano need a ton of sunlight to thrive, and it’s a common mistake to keep them in a spot that’s too shady. Secondly, most of what you need to know to grow things well isn’t inherent. It’s learned.”

“Really?” Surprise worked a path through her chest. “You just seem to have such a knack for farming.” Actually, he seemed to have been pretty much hand-crafted for it. If she recalled properly, he’d worked full-time through the harvest their senior year in high school without missing so much as one assignment.

But Owen simply laughed, one shoulder lifting and lowering in an easy shrug. “After doing it for fifteen years, I reckon I probably do. But I think that’s because I love learning about it more than any sort of predisposition for knowing the land like some sort of plant whisperer.”

Cate’s curiosity perked, good and hard. “Did you always know you wanted to run the farm?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

His answer was so immediate, so immoveable that she pounced. “Always? You never wanted to be an astronaut or a rock star or something wild like that?”

“When I could run the farm instead?” he asked, his tone wrapping the words in a healthy veneer of are you crazy? “No way.”

“Wow.” Her curiosity grew another layer. “That’s some serious devotion.”

They walked a little ways down the path, a breeze cooling the air and rustling through the bright-green stalks of corn that already stood a solid three feet from the wet earth where they were anchored. The silence between them wasn’t awkward—Cate was coming to recognize the V-shaped crease between Owen’s brows and that firm set of his mouth that anyone else would probably call a scowl as his default for deeper thinking. Far be it for her to poke at whatever had him lost in thought before he had the words to answer.

Finally, he said, “It’s not hard being devoted to something you love. Running Cross Creek is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I mean, don’t get me wrong.” He gestured to the landscape around them, which somehow managed to burst with vitality even beneath the gray, gloomy sky. “Some days are pretty hellish. Heat waves, crop infestations. Cattle falling to disease. Any one of those things could break an entire season.”

“But?” Cate supplied, because she knew full well it was coming.

Owen didn’t disappoint. “But even on the most difficult days, I wouldn’t trade farming for anything. I feel like running Cross Creek is what I was born to do. Like working the land with my family just fits me, and I fit right back.”

His cheeks reddened a breath later, and he gave up a self-deprecating laugh. “Annnnnd that sounded a lot less weird and new-agey in my head. Anyway, running this farm after my old man retires is my family legacy, and it’s one I definitely intend to uphold. Not out of obligation, but because I can’t imagine doing anything else and being truly happy.”

“That’s not weird at all,” she said, an odd sensation laddering down her spine before disappearing with a shiver. She cleared her throat. “So, you inherited your love of the land from your father, then?”

“I did, but truth be told, I think the way I feel about the farm itself came more from my mother.”

Cate nearly tripped over the gravel beneath her feet. “Really?”

“Crazy, right?” Owen asked, and she nodded, all truth.

“Yeah. I mean”—she heard her answer only after it had made a jailbreak, and, God, her lack of filter knew no limits—“your father is the one who inherited Cross Creek from his father, right?”

“Yep. But my mother loved it here just as much as he does.”

He paused again, and Cate considered telling him they could change the subject. Lord knew she got how difficult it could be to talk about people you’d lost. But then Owen continued in that quiet, serious way of his, and she found herself not wanting him to stop talking at all.

“Hunter and Eli were really young when our mom died. I don’t think they remember her very well. In fact, I know Eli doesn’t.” His expression grew wistful, as if he was caught more in memory than thought. “But there are some things I remember like they happened yesterday.”

“I know that feeling,” Cate said softly, because, oh, she did. A sudden chill sent a spray of goose bumps over her arms. Her heart threatened to climb into her throat, but then Owen’s hand was there, wordlessly closing over hers with their fingers threading together, and she was able to breathe.

“My mother might not have been born into farming like my father was, but she still came by it so honestly,” Owen said. “She and my father were both only children, so it was really just the two of them at first, running the place with all the farm hands. But she loved it like he does. She’s the one who planted all the gardens around the main house.”

Cate thought of the rows of blooms, spread out on either side of the main house in colorful starbursts and lush, green thickets, all flowing together so naturally that she’d wondered more than once if they hadn’t simply appeared out of the earth one day rather than been planted or planned. “Your mom must have really loved it, then. They’re beautiful.”

“The farm was important to her,” Owen said, his fingers tightening against Cate’s just enough for her to squeeze back. “Family was even more important, though. She used to tell me all the time, ‘Family and farm, Owen. Never forget’.”

“Your family is pretty tight-knit,” she said. Having never been that close with her parents, or had the sort of love with Brian that she suspected Mr. and Mrs. Cross might’ve shared, or that even Hunter and Emerson seemed to be in, the whole thing seemed so terribly foreign to her, like a lost dialect to a language she didn’t even recognize, let alone know.

Owen huffed out a sound that was equal parts laughter and—oddly—irony. “I hope I’m doing right by her wishes. Anyway, my love of the land might come from my old man, but my love of the farm, of my family legacy and what this place really means? I think that comes from my mother.”

Cate squeezed his hand, and God, despite the gravity of what he was saying and the reminder they couldn’t get any more serious than not serious, it felt so good in hers. She slid a sidelong glance at him, opening her mouth to answer, but the words stopped short before they could reach her lips.

He was frowning. Not the lost-in-thought variety she was coming to know so well, but a full-blown, something’s-not-right frown. “Cate,” he said, at the same time a rumble of thunder echoed loudly through the air.

Her heart began to pound, and holy shit, when had the sky turned so angry and dark? “Owen?”

A streak of lightning split the sky, followed by a rip of thunder that sent her hair on-end. A gust of wind—no wonder she’d had goose bumps a minute ago—sent her dress into a tangle around her ankles and her hair into a much looser knot, and oh, hell, this storm looked downright freaking scary.

“Shit,” Owen muttered, whipping a look over either end of the path. Lightning forked the sky again, this time even closer, with menacing thunder following quickly on its heels. “We need to get inside. If we run, we might be able to make the greenhouse before it starts to rain.”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the sky opened up over their heads.