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Stepping out of the BMW that had drawn stares, Cal could see one of the bystanders whisper to his kid—a boy of about ten years old wearing a ball cap of Cal’s former team.
Way to go, Ramsey.
He wasn’t in a good headspace to make the appropriate remarks and tell the kid how hard work paid off, or how grateful he was to be in the big leagues since—of course—he wasn’t anymore.
And he felt plenty bitter about it.
“Calvin Ramsey?” The boy approached him with a grin while his father stuffed a pen into the kid’s hand.
The hubbub drew Josie’s attention from where she sniffed a trailing vine of white flowers spilling out of a hanging basket. Her blue eyes darted from the kid to Cal and back again.
Missing nothing.
So much for keeping his career quiet.
*
As soon asJosie spied the boy whip off his baseball hat and pass it to Cal along with a pen, the pieces fell into place.
Cal was a famous baseball player.
She remembered his father had been a pro pitcher. And there’d been a reference to “baseball-playing sons” in her emails with Hailey Decker about the job. At the time, Josie had assumed Hailey referred to scholastic athletes and younger kids, and she’d promptly forgotten all about it in a rush to impress the woman with her knowledge of bees and gardening.
But it came back to her now, and it made sense that Cal was built like a pro athlete, because gauging by the awed hero-worship in the boy’s eyes as Cal signed his hat, Calwasa professional athlete. He also had the ease with money to buy a sports car and treat strange women to a pantry full of groceries.
Although, she wondered as Cal shook hands with the kids’ parents, what was he doing home during the spring when the baseball season was already underway?
She hated to be any more obvious about her eavesdropping, but she was fairly certain the boy’s father had asked Cal about his team. She wandered closer, picking up the occasional peach to cover her movement.
“…one day at a time and we’ll see what happens,” Cal was saying with a forced geniality that didn’t sound quite right coming from him. Or maybe it did. She’d just never heard that tone from him before. Like a radio station suddenly playing a different kind of music. “There’s always next season. Nice meeting you.”
There was hand shaking and back clapping all around, followed by a group selfie before the young family got into their pickup truck and drove away. Leaving Cal and Josie in the farm stand with an older couple currently paying for a small basket of cherry tomatoes.
Cal’s eyes met hers and she only had a second to decide her course of action.
But as curious as she was, she intended to honor the truce. Mostly because she needed him to quit asking questions about her past. Besides, if he was a pro ballplayer, he’d be leaving town soon enough for the sake of his career, wouldn’t he? She didn’t follow professional sports, but she guessed maybe he was hurt and on a leave of absence or something. She would just have to remain patient.
“So how do we go about finding the beehives?” She busied herself with admiring a display of blueberries.
She didn’t glance up when he didn’t answer right away. Instead, she moved on to a bin of melons. Deliberately casual.
“I’ll ask,” he said. “The manager’s office is in back.”
As his footsteps retreated out of the store and to—she assumed—the big barn behind it, Josie wondered if the clerk would have a list of the crops grown on Rough Hollow lands. Now that the farm stand had emptied of everyone except for the two of them, she hurried to the counter to ask.
The clerk was texting a mile a minute. The girl looked like summer help—late teens at the oldest, but more likely a high school student. She had platinum-blonde hair tinted blue at the tips.
“Excuse me.” Josie cleared her throat after a minute when the girl’s thumbs didn’t show any inclination of slowing. “Could I ask a question?”
“Of course!” the girl said in a cheery voice, her focus still on her phone screen. “Just texting my friend that I saw one of the Ramsey brothers. She’ll die when she hears. She loves the Atlanta Rebels.”
“The who?” Josie figured she had a few minutes before Cal returned. She could ask a question or two.
“The Rebels?” the teen repeated more slowly, as if that would help. She set her phone on the worn wooden counter by the electronic tablet resting on a cash drawer. “The team that cut him earlier this season? I mean, I’m not a big baseball fan like her, but the Ramsey brothers have a cult following here because, well. You know.”
She grinned and shrugged like they shared an inside joke.
“I’m not from around here, actually,” Josie clarified, keeping a sort-of watch at the corner of the farm stand in case she saw Cal’s long shadow returning.
