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“I just want to check out the back,” he said. “Two minutes. You can go. I know the way out.”
Clarissa nodded, but for a reason she couldn’t name, she didn’t leave as Spencer moved quickly through the house to the back door. She wanted to see his reaction. She loved sitting on her back porch, and while her house was twice as big as Spencer’s cabin and she had room for a rocking chair, a little cupboard where she stored her cookbooks and a bag of cookies, his barely had room for a chair.
Clyde had put one back there, and he’d sat in it every morning and every evening. They’d first started talking across the space between their houses from the back porch. Then he’d started coming to sit on her steps for a few minutes in the evening. Then she’d invited him to dinner.
One thing had led to another, until Clarissa had been starting every morning with a kiss from Clyde and ending every evening the same way. His departure from Sweet Water Falls Farm and her life had left a gash on her heart that she’d been hoping a new chef job in San Antonio would heal.
She’d put in her application for the job at Overlook, but she hadn’t heard anything yet. When she’d checked the listing that morning, the job had still been open. Unfilled. She still had a chance.
Something niggled in the back of her mind though. If they’d been impressed by her application, wouldn’t they call right away? Set up an interview, at least over the phone? Since the job remained open, she suspected they hadn’t had any applicants they were all that excited about…including her.
She followed Spencer out onto the back porch, the wonder of the farm opening up before her and erasing all of her self-doubt and worries about the job in another city. Standing in the shade, with the warmth of summer on her skin and going down into her lungs, Clarissa sighed.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked before she could censor herself. Yes, she’d miss mornings on the farm. Lazy afternoons. Easy evenings and starry, starry nights.
The grass back here was a little wild, because Daddy didn’t get out here all that much. He tamed everything else on the farm, from the horses to the cows to the patch of emerald green grass around the farmhouse.
But here…everything out this way was a little more wild. A fence separated the lawn from the first field, which was alfalfa. It had just been cut, and huge rolls of hay sat in the field to cure. One of their agriculture cowboys would be around to pick them up and take them to storage soon enough.
To their left, a cornfield, one of many on the farm, stretched toward the sky. Clarissa grinned at it, because she did love a cornfield with straight, neat rows and all those waving silks and leaves.
“Is that sweet corn or field corn?” Spencer asked.
“Field,” Clarissa said. “All of our sweet corn is around the farmhouse.” She glanced at him as he leaned against the railing. Clyde had taken his rocking chair with him, she noted. “Everybody on the farm eats corn for months out of the year. We plant it in rotations, starting in February. Our first harvest was last week, and we’ll harvest somewhere every week from now until October.”
Sometimes later, but Clarissa didn’t say that. So much of the dairy farm life revolved around corn. Field corn increased the weight in cattle quickly, and it produced higher yields of milk for their dairy cows.
“Seems like I remember you sayin’ you were going to do a Texas corn cookbook,” he said without looking at her. “Whatever happened with that?”
“I’ve still got the beginnings of it,” she said. “Somewhere on my computer.” Truth be told, she’d forgotten about it completely. She had started a corn cookbook before she’d met Spencer, but just like most things in her life, it had taken a back seat while she’d gone to culinary school and then returned to the farm.
“I make a mean corn chowder,” she said. “And very good sweet corn ice cream.”
He looked up at her, a light in his eyes. “Is that right?” he straightened, that sparkle of desire in his gaze meant only for her.
“Which part?” she asked, pressing herself into the far corner of the porch. “The chowder or the ice cream?”
“Both,” he said, and while he didn’t move physically toward her, Clarissa felt him get closer.
“Yes to both,” she said.
He nodded and turned away, looking to the right. A big, red barn sat in the distance, and when the hay was down and the corn turned into silage, Clarissa could sometimes see people working around the barn from her back porch.
“And you live right there,” he said, not asking a question but simply making a statement.
“Yes,” she said.Right there, she added mentally.
“Great,” he said, but she couldn’t tell if he meant that from his flat tone. “Well, I best be goin’. I have work to do back at Hope Eternal.” He knocked a couple of times on the railing, and they went back through the house together. She followed him down the lane toward the milking operation, where he kept going, and she pulled off.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered. “Help me continue down this path I’ve chosen.” The one that led her to San Antonio and a big break in her career. One that didn’t include Spencer Rust, even if standing on the porch with him and soaking in the farm atmosphere had been…nice.
* * *
The next morningfound Clarissa back in the milk parlor, pulling bottles from the huge, walk-in refrigeration unit and putting them in the white crates. Daddy insisted the crates have the Cooper & Co logo on them properly, and once it started wearing off, he sent the crates out to be re-stamped.
Clarissa had to make sure every crate was exactly right for her customers, and she stacked two crates and headed for the door. It opened before she got there, though she could’ve kicked it open.
“Oh, hey,” Travis said, giving her a quick smile. He was definitely the least grouchy brother, but Clarissa thought she might be the only one who thought so. He was closest to her in age, and they’d always gotten along really well. “Is that for Spike?”
