Cream of the Crop (6 page)

“She's so fucking smart it's a bit scary.” Roxie chuckled, stirring onions and garlic together. “Grab me that basil, will you?”

I walked to the windowsill where she had pots of herbs growing and grabbed a handful. “Do you still add sugar to your sauce?”

“Sometimes I do, if I'm using really fresh tomatoes, but not usually. I'm amazed you still remember that trick.”

“Girl. I did retain a few tidbits of information here and there. And I still have my knives.”

She rolled her eyes. “Which you never use.”

“But they look impressive as hell in my kitchen.” I perched on a stool in the window, watching her add a little pinch of this here, a little dollop of that there.

“I will never understand why the hell you were there in the first place. Especially since you love Manhattan so much—there are incredible culinary schools there, too.” She'd turned around, giving me a pointed look.

I gave her a little smile. “This is good wine.”

“Natalie Grayson, what are you not telling me?”

I felt color rise up into my cheeks, wondering how this conversation had arisen when I'd successfully avoided it for all these years. “I just wanted something different from what I knew.”

“Different how?”

“Different from Thomas,” I said, my voice unexpectedly hollow. I took a breath, took a sip of wine, and saw the reflection of headlights coming up the drive to her farmhouse.

A dusty Jeep came around a bend in the driveway and pulled up beside the house, an enthusiastic ponytail wearer already bounding out of the backseat, calling Roxie's name.

“Hey, I think your farmer's here,” I said, feeling my heart rate begin to return to normal.

My best friend stared me down. “We'll come back to this later,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron and throwing open the back door. I let out a sigh, downed the rest of my wine, and watched as she hopped down the back stairs and right into the arms of her Leo.

She caught Polly into a close hug, too, then the three of them headed for the house. I smiled broadly, happy to meet them—and wondering, not for the first time, if there would ever be someone that glad to see me at the end of the day.

I'd seen Leo out and about in the city in the past, before he'd beat feet upstate for the simple life. But I'd never met him, and I could see why this guy was such a player. Tall, broad shouldered, and strong, but with an easy look about him. There was a warmth in his smile that I hadn't seen before. Most of the city had been worn off, revealing a kindness, a quick laugh. It was easy to see that these two females hung the moon for him, and this guy loved his life.

“I've heard a lot about you,” he said, grinning as he shook my hand.

“Likewise.” I grinned back, tugging on his hand until I got close enough to hug him. “You've been putting it to my best friend for months now, so you're required to hug me.” Surprised but willing, he hugged me back, wrapping his strong arms around me.

“Watch it, that's my guy,” Roxie warned from the corner.

“Nice,” I replied, slipping out of the hug but still keeping hands-on. I squeezed his biceps a bit. “Very nice.” Leo's eyes
twinkled down at me, and I just shook my head. “You're lucky I didn't meet you first.”

“Seriously, still in the room,” Roxie repeated, and I finally released Leo. “And this munchkin is Polly.”

I stuck out my hand for Polly to shake. “As in Pollyanna?”

“Well, I wasn't named after a polynomial,” the kid said, her eyes as green as Leo's but much more appraising.

I laughed. “It's nice to meet you, Not a Polynomial.”

Polly grinned up at me. “Smells good in here, what's for dinner?”

“Polly, we just got here. Maybe ask Roxie if she needs any help?” Leo said, ruffling up her hair. “It
does
smell really good.”

“Do you need any help, and what's for dinner?” Polly asked, and I retreated to my kitchen stool, hands raised, knowing full well that the person who was actually in charge had just arrived. I was just hoping she'd let me have some of her spaghetti and meatballs . . .

“So you're here to figure out how to get more people to Bailey Falls, right?” Leo asked, buttering a piece of bread for Polly and putting it on the side of her plate. She was trying to twirl her pasta on a spoon, just like Roxie. Her little tongue poked out of the side of her mouth while she concentrated.

“Kind of. I'm here to get the lay of the land, so to speak. My firm got an email from Chad Bowman—you know him?” I forked up my own bite of pasta, and my goodness was it good. My girl could
cook
.

“I do. He and his husband are members of the farmshare program we offer to locals; they're great guys.” Leo smothered a laugh when Polly's spoonful nearly went flying. “Want me to cut it up for you, make it easier to get on the fork?”

“Roxie says to never cut pasta,” Polly said with a serious look on her face. “It disrupts the integrity of the noodle.”

“That seems like exactly something she would say,” I agreed. Roxie was coughing into her napkin in a very timely fashion. “So tell me about the farmshare program.”

As Leo talked, I began to get a better sense of what he'd created over at Maxwell Farms. The more I heard about it, the more eager I was to see it. “This seems exactly the kind of thing that could make this town even more inviting. Norman Rockwell charm meets local sustainable agriculture, which everyone is interested in now. You give tours at the farm, right?”

“Every day,” Leo said, “Two on Saturdays.”

“Perfect. Can I come by tomorrow?”

“You got it. We're moving some of the animals tomorrow for rotational pasture grazing, so it's a good day to come by. Lots of activity,” he answered.

Roxie turned from helping Polly with twirling her pasta. “Moving any dairy cows tomorrow?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant but failing. I looked hard at her, but she seemed very interested suddenly in a loose string on the end of Leo's T-shirt.

“Yep, we're moving them up onto the east pasture. Why, what's up?” Leo asked, tucking into another meatball. “Watch what you're doing there, Sugar Snap, don't unravel one of my favorite tees. I only saw the Pixies play live once.”

“I was just thinking it might be fun for Natalie to see that, to watch you moving the cows,” Roxie answered, still picking at his T-shirt. Leo absently put a hand over hers, stopping her from unraveling the whole thing. I couldn't blame her; what a grand sight that'd be.

“Sure thing, you want to come tomorrow around noon?”

“And get the opportunity to say I literally saw the cows come home? I wouldn't miss it.” I turned toward Polly. “I'm going to meet a moo cow tomorrow, want to come along?”

“They're not moo cows, they're Guernseys and Brown Swiss.” She blinked. “And I have school tomorrow.”

“Ah. Of course,” I replied. Speaking of schooled . . . “Okay, so tomorrow I'll swing by the farm after my meeting with Chad. Sounds like a plan.”

“Sounds great,” Roxie said, grinning broadly.

Chapter 6

A
nyone who tells you a good night's sleep in the country is a cure for all ills has never actually slept in the country.

Between the crickets, the owls, the wind howling, the trees scraping against the windows, and the creakiest, squeakiest bed in America, I barely slept a wink.

And just when I'd gotten the tiniest bit used to the cacophony of sound going on outside in the Wild Kingdom, everything stopped. The wind died down, the trees stopped scraping, the crickets and owls agreed with each other that it was time to take five, and it was like the world outside went on permanent mute.

The world inside dwindled down to the occasional creak from my bed, the ticktock of a grandfather clock downstairs, and my breathing, which sounded loud in the silent room.

Where was the hustle? Where was the bustle? Where were the sirens and the horns honking and the
people,
for Christ's sake, that you could always count on for background noise at all hours of the day and night?

Silence pressed in on me from every direction, convincing me that Roxie had faded away and it was just me left alone to
battle the shadows from a thousand nearly empty trees outside, silhouetted by an angry pumpkin moon gazing down on this land that time forgot.

When it's quiet in the country, it's all too easy to imagine a man in a plaid shirt striding out of the woods. Peering at your farmhouse from across the field, wondering if there was a buxom city girl curled up in a squeaky bed upstairs, too pretty to be killed off at the beginning of a horror movie, but kept alive for something truly terrible somewhere near the end of the third act.

Yeah, sleeping in the country isn't all it's cracked up to be.

“How'd you sleep?” Roxie asked brightly as I staggered downstairs the next morning, following the smell of coffee that beckoned like an olfactory pied piper.

“I hate you,” I muttered, pushing my hair back from my bleary face. She rolled her eyes and handed me a cup of coffee, which I grasped like a talisman. “I love you.”

“You're so dramatic.”

“I agree.” I sighed, sinking into a chair at her table. “How long did it take you to get used to sleeping with all that racket?”

“What racket? I didn't hear a peep.”

“Yeah, that's the other thing. It's either as loud as Mardi Gras out there, or the sound of silence. What's up with that?”

“I grew up with it so I barely notice it anymore. Of course, I don't sleep much anyway.”

Roxie had had insomnia since she was a kid. “That getting any better?”

A content look crossed her face. “It's funny, but ever since Leo and I, you know . . .”

“Started fucking?”

“Started seeing each other is what I was going to say,” she said, her cheeks pinking. “I've been sleeping better. I mean, I'm never going to get eight hours, but I'm definitely getting more sleep than I ever used to.”

I sipped at my coffee, nodding. “It's all that fucking.”

“It's more than the fucking,” she insisted, hooking a chair over with her foot and sinking down next to me. “It's the before and the after, you know?”

“Ah yes, the sweet nothings and the afterglow.” I picked a stray yarn on my sweater. “I'm usually wondering when the fucking will be starting back up again.”

“Oh, the fucking starts back up again,” she said, her blush deepening. “But there's just something about sleeping next to him. It's . . .” She paused, searching for a word.

“Amazing? Incredible? Out of this world?”

“Nice.”

“Nice?” I asked, shaking my head. “That's all you got, is nice?”

“It
is
nice. It's
so
nice,” she replied with the most perfect sense of peace and contentment I'd ever seen. “I don't get to sleep with Leo every night; some weeks there's only one or two nights we can have an actual overnight due to Polly's schedule. So when we're together, of course it's full of slap and tickle, but then, when that's through, and it's just him and me and the quiet—that's the nice.” Her eyes looked right through me; she was in her own world now. “He always drifts off first, of course, so I get this time with him to just . . . be with him. Watch him sleep, listen to him breathe, listen to him snore, for God's sake, and just feel this big, warm man next to me, his body wrapped around me, those big callused hands on my hip or on my belly, and it's honestly the best feeling ever. It's just . . .” She trailed off, dreamy and faraway.

“Nice,” I breathed, understanding.

“Yeah,” she replied.

I'd had nice. Once. But then it was so very
not
nice.

We both mooned for a moment, lost in our own thoughts, and then I broke the spell by telling her I was off to meet her high school crush.

“Tell him I'm still waiting for direction on Logan's birthday cake. I don't know what I'm making, but if he doesn't tell me soon it'll involve Walmart fruit cocktail,” she called out to me as I headed down the stairs and off to the Jeep.

“I'll do my best, but I'm sure with all the flirting going on, it'll be hard to remember,” I teased, knowing how she felt about her high school crush.

“I loved that man since puberty; you better watch your ass, city girl,” floated out to me through the open kitchen window. As I turned back I could see the curtains fluttering, and I pantomimed my finger doing something inappropriate to the hole my other hand was making.

I couldn't wait to meet this guy . . .

“How adorable are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Excuse
me,
but you're the second beautiful man I've seen in this town since arriving last night. What is in the water upstate?”

“You must be Natalie,” replied the beautiful man who was exactly as Roxie had described The Chad Bowman to be. Tall, handsome, confident but not cocky, the guy was worthy of many a high school crush.

“And you are definitely Chad Bowman. You're as gorgeous as Roxie described.”

“Back at you—she gave me the lowdown on you as well. As soon as you strutted through the door, I knew it was you,” he said, pulling out a stool for me.

“I don't strut.” I gracefully lowered myself onto the seat. Adjusting, I winked. “Okay, maybe a little. I prefer to think of it as sashaying.”

“Either or, you're killing me with the shoes,” he said, gesturing to my heels. “How many accidents did you cause walking in here this morning?”

I thought back to the two blocks I walked after parking the Jeep. A couple of dropped jaws from some teenage guys, one shy wave from the little old man at the barbershop I sauntered past, and a whistle from the gentleman who was walking out of the butcher, right before he dropped his pork loin. Nothing crass like I'd get in the city, no hoots or hollers—but definitely some nice, respectable ogling. “A few near misses, but no fender benders.”

“I can imagine.” He ordered up two coffees and I pulled out my things to get started.

I studied him while he interacted with the server, talking
to
her, not
at
her. Something that I made a mental note of. He was handsome in that “is he real?” sort of way that all high school crushes are made from. I imagined him and Roxie back in the day, her fawning all over this godlike creature, and him causing heart failure everywhere he went.

The diner was packed with a steady breakfast crowd; everything from singles to couples, moms and babies, and a pair of grumpy old men who sidled up to the counter looking so old that the town was probably built on their backs.

Ideas had started swirling late last night when I was flipping through local commercials. You learn a lot from the ads that small towns create. From the small fifteen seconds of Karla's Klip 'n' Kurl to the robust ads that the Bryant Mountain House
put out to court the weekender, this town had a little bit for everyone. The plan was coming together.

“So tell me, what do you think of our little Bailey Falls?” Chad said, blowing on his hot coffee before taking a sip.

“It's darling, but you know that,” I started, eyeing up the pie case. There was a slice of awesome that would go just right with my diner coffee. “I don't mean that in a condescending way, either. It's truly a little spot of perfect, nestled in the mountains. The scenery on the train ride up is worth any price of admission.”

Chad beamed, much like Roxie did when she got all moony and pie-eyed talking about the town. Having been away from it for so long, she'd been convinced that she'd hate it when she'd returned for the summer. Get in and get out was her goal, but it hooked her and didn't let go. It wouldn't be for everyone in long doses—but in short?

More of the puzzle pieces were falling into place.

“I'm glad you see the potential. The town is a huge part of our lives. My husband, Logan, comes from a small town, so when I brought him home for the first time he absolutely fell in love with Bailey Falls, and we immediately started making plans to move our business here.

“We brought you in to show everyone why this is a great weekend destination or summer hot spot. I see it. The town sees it. But you saying that
you
see it is really very validating.”

My heart pitter-pattered, the way it always did when I was excited about a project. “Things are percolating, but I need to see more of what I'm working with first,” I said, waving over the waitress. “We'll take two slices of whatever your best dessert is, please.”

With a quick nod, she examined the full glass case. Choosing two slices, she plated them and hustled over. “Hummingbird Cake. Roxie's specialty.”

“They feature Zombie Cakes here, too? I'm surprised Callahan's didn't try to put a lock-down on sharing the family love with the competitor,” I mused. Roxie's mom must have had a fit when her daughter started plying her wares around town and not just within the confines of Callahan's Diner.

I didn't just moan around the fork. I eye-rolled, legs-clenched, and obscenely licked every last stitch of frosting from the fork. Poor, adorable Chad Bowman looked like I just asked him to motorboat my lady bits in front of his husband.

“Good goddamn, that woman can bake a fucking cake,” I moaned around another mouthful.

Chad shifted in his seat, smothering a laugh. “Yes, yes she can.”

I finished the cake without further embarrassing poor Chad, who couldn't stop staring at my mouth after seeing me defile the fork. I made a mental note to have Roxie start shipping me Hummingbird Cakes once a week in the city.

We chatted a bit longer about the hopes for the town. He explained that the town council was trusting him with this venture to take Bailey Falls in a new direction in terms of advertising, and that he'd do damn near anything to make sure it worked.

“You're in good hands, Chad. I've landed more accounts for Manhattan Creative this year, or the last three years, than any other account executive. My initial approach is simple: get to know Bailey Falls in and out. Top to bottom and everything in between. I want to know what makes this town tick, and why it should be
the
destination for city dwellers, retirees, and families. This place seems to have it all, and we just need to make sure that everyone knows it.”

Chad thought for a moment, then smiled big at me. “Normally I'd just shake your hand and tell you to get to work, but because of the Roxie connection, I feel like I want to hug you.”

“It's been at least twelve hours since a gorgeous man has had his hands on me, and technically that was Leo, so get over here,” I said, waving him off his stool. “The Roxie Connection—that has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?”

“Very eighties-dating-show-meets-Agatha-Christie-novel.” He laughed, pulling out his wallet and settling the bill. “So what sort of crazy plans does Roxie have planned for you this weekend?”