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She bit her bottom lip and stared at a grape bumping along over pebbles then bouncing off the brick wall.
“Me and the bruised and bloodied fruit still reside here for the moment.”
A nervous chuckle broke through which opened the floodgate of stress-relieving laughter. He threw his head back and howled, releasing all the tension. He’d always laughed when he was nervous, which got him in a lot of trouble back in school.
“How’s this funny?”
He pointed at the mess. “It’s like a vegetable massacre. A ravenous Bunnicula must’ve gotten loose.”
She chuckled and joined him with a bent-over, arm-around-her-stomach outburst. Did that mean she remembered reading that book together when they were nine?
Laura burst through the back door. “What’s wrong? You need a new hip now, too? I know a guy.”
Tears dripped from Scarlet’s eyes. “No. I mean…look at this.”
“Oh, dear Lord, I broke her. She’s cracked.”
“I’m fine.” Scarlet swiped the tears away.
“If you’re smiling, let alone laughing, you’ve either been invaded by mutant elf dust or you’ve lost your ever-lovin’ mind.” Laura looked to Duke and her eyes shot wide. “Oh no. And you. I’m so sorry, Duke. You’ve got that big meeting at the bank this morning.”
“Bank?” Scarlet offered him an apple and an eyebrow raise.
Laura dropped her hands and shuffled into the circle of wreckage. “Our resident organic farmer is working on expanding, so he was on his way to apply for a loan.”
“Great, now I feel worse.” Scarlet’s tone tugged at his own disappointment and tossed it out of the way so he could focus on making her smile again. To hear the laugh that once echoed through the woods, making the cloudy winter days bright. “Don’t worry about it. The interview was a fool’s errand. Mr. Marwood’s never going to give the son of a scoundrel a loan.”
Scarlet tossed a smushed grape at him. “Shut up with that talk. You’ve never been and never will be your old man.”
“And you’ll never be your mother,” he said, finishing the mantra they recited at the end of each book club meeting. He only hoped she remembered those times together. “I should stick to the gifts I’ve been given in life and be happy.” Duke didn’t want to leave. In seconds, he swore she’d stolen the only piece of heart he’d held onto all these years. She’d taken his love piece by piece with each kind gesture and word. She’d believed him to be more than a worthless Trenton when everyone had given up on him. The boy who only found town pride through baseball until he blew it like a true Trenton.
That’s why she’d never see him as more than a friend. If he knew one thing about Scarlet, she’d never take a chance on being a small-town wife who ran off like her mother.
He tilted his head toward the carnage and eyed Laura. “No wonder you needed an emergency delivery. What happened?”
“You should go.” Scarlet snapped, warning him he’d stepped on something more sensitive than the rotting pear. He wasn’t sure how he’d offended her, but he knew what that crooked, forced grin meant. He’d stepped in something. The way he always stepped on his own words when around the most beautiful girl in Cherry Creek.
“I’ll finish cleaning this up. You get to that meeting. Hard work and determination are always the key to success.” Scarlet stated like she was reading from a manual.
Laura snagged his arm and edged him toward his truck. “I’ll walk with you. Doc says I need to move more.”
She snagged him by the crook of his arm and escorted him away. His mood slipped into grayness.
“No getting mad at me now, but I might have sacrificed some supplies to get you here. That niece of mine is in serious trouble, and I need your help. I love her too much to let her make the biggest mistake of her life.” Laura tightened her grip like a nutcracker around a nut.
His gaze drifted over his shoulder to Scarlet. Her golden-fire hair fell over her face, and he wanted to tuck it behind her ear so he could see her beautiful features.
“And you love her, too.”
His skin heated. His breath caught betweenonce upon a timeandhappily never after. “What? No. We’re friends. She belongs with some rich man from a good family.”
“She belongs with you.”
Four words had never caused any man to spontaneously combust, but the way his insides hummed and strummed he felt an explosion building inside his stomach. “Please, I’m a legendary Trenton. The most hated family in three counties.”
“You’re not your father, and this isn’t high school. You don’t have to worry about tarnishing Scarlet’s reputation. I know that’s why you never asked her out and why you kept your book club a secret. Not to mention you disappearing on Christmas Eve ten years ago.”
His gut clenched and curdled. “You can’t know why. No one does.”
