Promises Under the Peach Tree

Behind her, Gram laughed and said something about how Nina could charge more for one cupcake than she could for a whole case of preserves. But seeing Ethan jogging across sun-dappled fields made her think of a long-ago summer when another boy had knocked on the door to pick peaches and asked Nina to join him....

“Excuse me,” a deep voice called to her from the yard and she noticed one of the movers flagging her down. “You’ve got some company.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the moving truck, but she couldn’t see who had pulled up since the eighteen-wheeler took up her whole view.

“Gram, I’d better find out who it is.” She pushed open the screen, her gray tabby cat darting between her feet to join her.

Her instincts hummed as she neared the truck. The brightness made her squint, but she could still see an Eldorado convertible parked behind the movers’ vehicle.

“Need a hand?” Mack stepped around the bumper of the beat-up delivery truck, his gaze trained on the hodgepodge of furniture and boxes stacked precariously inside. “I hadn’t realized you’d have so much going on today or I would have waited to pick up the hay wagons for the Harvest Fest.”

His well-washed gray T-shirt had a green clover with Finleys’ written in script on the front. No matter what else had happened between them, she had to admit he wore a T-shirt incredibly well. For the second day in a row, she kept her eyes north of his jeans. Down that path lay madness.

Mack was very...fit. In school, he’d organized pickup games of basketball or impromptu lacrosse tournaments in the fields behind his house. It seemed he hadn’t lost that love of sports. His body was as toned as an athlete’s.

“It’s okay. The wagons are in the barn by the orchard.” She’d rather have this errand taken care of today than risk seeing him again another day. She couldn’t guarantee how long her eyes would behave. “I can get the key from the house.”

Nodding, he stepped back as the delivery guys juggled an industrial-size mixer. When Taz, Nina’s cat, started to dart across their path, Mack scooped the tabby up with one hand.

“Oh!” Nina reached for the animal, but Taz was already batting at the wristband of Mack’s watch, oblivious to her narrow escape. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Should I bring him up to the house?” He stared down at Taz, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I can ask your grandmother for the key and take care of the wagons myself.”

“Taz is a her, not a him.” Nina plucked the animal from Mack’s arm and the little feline mewed pitifully. “And it’s probably just as well I don’t watch my most prized possessions being stored next to rusty cultivators and plows. I might as well go with you.”

She was a grown-up. She could handle spending a couple of weeks in the same town as Mack. Besides, she wasn’t proud of her testy words the day before. She shouldn’t have accused him of coming to Heartache to rub her nose in her failures.

Worse, her harsh words about Jenny had been out of line. And she didn’t want Mack to think he affected her so much that the mention of his ex-wife would rile her up.

“Fair enough.” He stepped aside, letting her lead the way to a farmhouse even older than the one where he’d been raised.

Sunflowers and phlox stood next to deep purple asters in the overgrown flowerbeds lining the wide, grassy path to the two-story white clapboard structure. The scent of the nearby orchards and freshly mown grass rode the breeze. It was peaceful here, with a quiet so deep she almost had trouble sleeping. She kind of missed the constant din of city traffic and the comfort of busy, anonymous humanity outside her windows.

“It’s weird being back here, isn’t it?” She picked a long stem of grass poking through a bed of bushy yellow flowers she couldn’t identify.

Taz made a swipe for the grass, but Nina tucked the little cat tighter against her chest to be sure she wouldn’t get into any more trouble.

“I slept in the field manager’s quarters last night. So yeah, it’s definitely a strange homecoming.”

Their strides matched one another’s.

“Did you have a falling out with your mom?” Nina tried to keep the question light. She wasn’t sure how much Mrs. Finley had shared with Mack about their final blowout where his mother had accused Nina of ruining Mack’s life. She’d even suggested that he’d change his mind about having kids if she left. It wasn’t that he didn’t want children, she said, he just didn’t want them with Nina.

She’d been blown away about that one.

Knowing about Mrs. Finley’s struggles with bipolar disorder hadn’t eased the sting of her words, since her reasons for why Nina and Mack would never work had been accurate. Nina was a wanderer by nature who threw herself into the moment, for example, while Mack was a grounded guy with big ambition and concrete career goals. Bipolar or not, Mrs. Finley was a sharp woman with Mack’s best interests at heart.

“No. But a buffer between me and Mom is usually a good idea. I didn’t want her to be stressed about having company.” He paused at the foot of the stairs to the wide, wraparound porch while Nina jogged up toward the back door. “She asked me to thank you for the pie, by the way.”

Nina seriously doubted that. She opened the door and nudged Taz inside where her pet made a beeline for her water dish. The kitchen was empty again and the table had been cleared. Nina snagged a small red key from a rack of hooks just above the light switch and then closed the door again.

“That was really thoughtful of you to give your mother some space.” She tucked the key to the barn in her pocket as she rejoined him, trying her best to get through this difficult meeting as quickly as possible. “Especially since the field manager’s quarters are awfully cramped, at least they were the last time I saw them—”

Her cheeks flamed hot. Red-sizzle hot. Because the last time she’d been inside that little apartment had been with Mack, and things had gone too far, too fast.

“I remember.” Mack didn’t bother to hide the smile in his voice, damn him.

Her gaze shot his way. A wicked grin stole over his face, an expression she hadn’t seen in a long time. Funny how that warmed her in a different way.

“So. That was awkward.” She resisted the urge to fan her face at the memory of Mack kissing her shoulder and nudging off the strap of her tank top. Undressing her in the daylight had been a novel experience for both of them.

“Not the way I recall it.” His expression grew more serious, making her heart beat faster.

Her eyes stole over him. All of him.

Damn, but he looked better than ever in a pair of jeans.

“What I meant was—”

“I know what you meant.” Mack turned to face her on the path to the barn. “And you’re right. The apartment is cramped.”

Nina folded her arms across a white eyelet tank top. The tank and cutoffs had been comfortable this morning, but suddenly she felt severely underdressed. Then again, she could be wearing riot gear and still feel twitchy and breathless around Mack.

“I just don’t want you to get the impression that I’m flirting with you. Because that comment just leaped out without me even thinking it through.” She wanted to be very clear on that point. She had no intention of getting in the way of Mack’s future.

“Yes, I remember that impulsive streak.” One dark eyebrow arched as he gave her an assessing look. “Remember when you freed the Death Row Chickens on the Johnson farm that first summer you came here?”

“I’m still not sorry about that.” Being a city girl, she’d assumed the chickens were behind bars as a form of punishment, their death imminent. She’d raised a neighborhood campaign to save them, not knowing they were on the farm to give eggs. “Mr. Johnson could have explained about the eggs instead of laughing at me.”

“In all fairness, I don’t think he realized who he was dealing with.” Mack’s eyes met hers. Held.

Her mouth went so dry she had to lick her lips. “Too bad those chickens had no idea what to do with their freedom.”

She forced herself to keep walking. To keep moving. Standing still with Mack this close would be dangerous.

“Mrs. Johnson wasn’t happy to find them roosting in her flower beds after the big jailbreak.” Mack lifted a low-hanging branch on a pine tree, clearing the way for her to walk without ducking.

“You were pretty entertained by the whole thing, though.” Mack had insisted on bringing her back to the Johnson house the next morning where—from the safety of the bushes—she could witness the results of her elaborate plan to set the birds free.

Mack had showed her where to stand so they wouldn’t get caught, keeping an arm around her shoulders to prevent her from running after the chickens and smuggling them off the property.

“Somebody had to keep you safe from trouble.”

“You were always looking out for people.” She’d benefitted from that quality in him for a long time.

Until the day when he’d had others to take care of besides her. His mother. His best friend’s grieving girlfriend. Now, it was his brother. A better woman would have admired him all the more for that. But to Nina, it felt like others had always come first. Maybe she’d been too needy because of the way she’d been brought up. But when she’d fallen for Mack, she’d been all in. He was everything to her. So when she’d learned her spot on his priority list, she’d been deeply hurt.

Mack said nothing while she retrieved the key to the barn and popped the padlock. When she opened the clasp and slid the heavy door aside on the track, she noticed Mack staring back down the hill toward the moving van. The delivery guys dragged a dining room set into the barn.