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Wes’s eyes rested on her for a moment longer than necessary. “There’s plenty to do. The block map can wait until we’re moving people between both orchards.”
“Excellent. I’d hate to think I’d walked all this way just to admire you.”
His mouth curved. “I could probably find time for that later.”
The words were quiet enough that only Kate heard them. Heat touched her face. The other night returned to her with uncomfortable clarity, and judging by the expression in Wes’s eyes, he knew exactly where her thoughts had gone.
Then someone called his name from farther up the row. Wes glanced toward the sound and back at her. “I need to go.”
“I know. Go.”
His hand brushed hers as he turned, and his fingers caught hers for the briefest moment before he moved away. Kate stood there smiling like an idiot for perhaps two seconds. Then she got to work.
What needed doing took no special skill, which Kate found refreshing. Full containers needed moving. Empty ones needed taking back. Fruit had to be handled carefully, and people carrying more than she wanted to imagine needed room to get through.
One of Wes’s workers showed her the safest way to empty a picking bag into a bin without dropping the fruit, and after that Kate joined in wherever there was space.
The work was physical in a way her normal life rarely was. Within half an hour she had dirt on her jeans and a strand of hair stuck to her cheek. Within an hour she could feel muscles in her back reminding her that carrying things for a living was very different from occasionally lifting a box of tile samples. She liked it anyway.
It was satisfying to see the result immediately. A row that had been heavy with fruit slowly changed as the pickers moved through it. Empty bins filled. The trailer Alan had brought over disappeared uphill and returned empty again. Her father looked happier every time it passed.
Janice worked nearby without fuss, occasionally stopping to make sure Penny had not drifted beyond the area Wes had said was safe. Penny had been given a bucket and permission to collect windfalls beneath two trees at the end of the row, as long as she stayed where Janice or Kate could see her and never went near ladders or moving equipment. She took the job with the gravity of somebody entrusted with national security.
“Mom,” she called after several minutes, holding up an apple with one brown side. “Is this still an apple?”
Kate looked at it. “I’m fairly certain falling on the ground doesn’t turn it into something else.”
“I mean, is it still good?”
“I don’t know. Put it in the bucket and Wes can tell you later.”
Penny accepted that.
Kate went back to work. By midmorning, she had stopped checking where Wes was every few minutes. Mostly.
He moved through the orchard constantly, talking to the crew, checking fruit, climbing onto a tractor, disappearing between the rows and reappearing somewhere else. Every time Kate happened to look up and find him, she felt the same little pull of awareness. Sometimes he found her first.
They were in the same place, doing the same work, and every now and then their eyes met across a row of apple trees.
Around eleven, another car came along the track. Kate recognized Eileen before she was fully out of it.
Janice did too. “I thought she was leaving this morning.”
“So did I.”
Eileen opened the back door and took out an old jacket. When she joined them, she looked entirely unsurprised to find half the Harland family working in Wes’s orchard. “I called the Lodge and told Curtis I’d need the room another night.”
Janice stared at her. “You were supposed to be going home.”
“I was.”
“What changed?”
Eileen looked toward the sky. “That.”
The cloud had thickened since morning. Not enough to make the day dark, but enough that the blue patches between it were getting smaller.
“I checked the forecast before breakfast,” Eileen continued. “Then I looked out of the window and decided I’d be a fool to drive away from two orchards full of fruit when I’ve spent half my life complaining that nobody knows how to harvest properly anymore.”
