Page 3 of Call It Love (Sterling Mill #5)

Chase

“Uncle Chase! Why was Cinderella so bad at soccer?”

I pulled away from the window where I was lost in thought and grinned at Emalee’s son, Iain.

This kid was a book of jokes. His mom, who was more like a sister to me than a cousin, had taught him to think of something positive whenever he was having an off day.

Then she would share a joke with him to make him smile.

Now he used jokes to brighten other people’s days.

Not that I was having a bad day. It was just our thing.

“I have no idea. Why?”

“Because she kept running away from the ball!”

I chuckled as I high-fived him. “Good one, kid.”

Iain’s bright smile faded. “Do you really have to go home now? Can I come with you? I can help you feed the goats and everything.” He beamed again. “I’m a good worker, and they like me.”

I laughed to myself because I had acres upon acres of commercial shrubs and trees on my farm, but Iain never saw past the goats, Dolly and Martha. Iain had named them after studying U.S. Presidents and their wives in school.

It was the same with Lexi, my younger sister Bristol’s stepdaughter.

I’d gotten the goats a couple of years ago.

They were cute, even if they were sometimes a pain in my ass.

They earned their keep by eating the grass in the small meadow between my house and one of the tree lots, but to Iain, they were pets.

The next time he came out, I had a big surprise for him. But it would need to wait for now.

“You are a big help for sure. But another time, maybe. I think a storm is coming, so I want to secure everything at home, including Dolly and Martha. Soon, though, okay?”

His shoulders dropped, but then he tilted his head and scrunched up his face, glancing between the window and me. “Okay. But the sun is still out. Why do you think a storm is coming?”

Good question. There was just something in the air, like some kind of nervous energy that stirred the leaves and had me slightly on edge. “Remember when I showed you what a maple tree looks like?”

“Yeah. It’s that one over there.” He pointed to a tree in the front yard that was visible through the window.

“Good job. See how the leaves are kind of turned upward? So that you can see the bottom of them?”

Iain’s forehead furrowed as if he were in deep concentration. “Sorta.”

“Well, that’s a sign rain is coming.” That, and my gut that I’d learned to trust over the years, agreed.

A feminine chuckle came from behind me. “You still using those old folklores to predict the weather?”

I turned to face Em. “Don’t mock. It worked for Uncle James. It’s never failed me yet. I’ll bet you a sink of dirty dishes it’ll rain tonight. Heavy, too. ”

“Sounds like an easy bet, given we’ve already cleaned up from dinner,” she huffed.

I winked. “It’s a safe bet anyway, dear cuz.” I glanced down at Iain, who was alternating glances between the sky and the leaves.

“I dunno, Uncle Chase. I don’t see any clouds.”

I tapped him on the nose. “Just wait until later. Either way, I need to get back to the farm and secure things for the evening. Thanks for dinner, Em. It was delicious as always and a break from my own miserable cooking.”

“I hope you know you’re always welcome here, but I know you miss Marta. How’s the search going to replace her? It’s been a while.”

I sighed and ran my hand through my hair.

The housekeeper who’d been part of the farm since I’d come to live in Sterling Mill as a kid retired several months ago and moved to Florida to be closer to her family.

“Not that great. They’re either too inexperienced or flirt with me or my crew.

But I have a couple of new applications I need to go through.

There just aren’t that many people willing to cook for a bunch of dirty men and clean up after them. ”

Amusement lit up her eyes, and her mouth opened, but I held up my hand to cut her off.

“I don’t mean that kind of dirty. Get your mind out of the gutter.

” I sighed. “But I can’t hold off much longer, either.

And it’s not fair to Mama Rae or you, although we really appreciate the casseroles and other goodies you send out.

But it’s too much for y’all to keep doing that, especially once I hire more guys for the season. ”

Emalee ran the family bed-and-breakfast called The Dogtrot, which was named after the old house style typical throughout the Appalachia Mountains.

Several years ago, she took every penny she could come up with and renovated all of the rooms with the help of my twin sister, Cameron, who owned a construction company and was an interior designer.

Em shrugged. “I don’t mind helping. Seems the least I can do after all the years you’ve brought me fresh flowers for The Dogtrot. Plus, it’s easy to make and freeze until you come into town, so it’s not like I have to leave the house.”

I leaned down to kiss her soft cheek. “You’ve been a godsend.”

She hugged me in return. I might have lost some people dearest to me—my grandparents, who helped my dad raise me and my two sisters, and my great-uncle James.

All three of them were killed in a tragic bus accident on their way home from Nashville while on a church trip.

And then my dad died in a plane accident just a few years ago.

But thank God I still had my sisters, Cam and Bristol, as well as Em.

And now their husbands had become like brothers. It helped to ease the sting.

“You know, if you were married, you’d have someone to help you without needing to hire someone,” Em said.

She might have used a teasing tone, but the women in my life worried about me being lonely, especially now that we spent less time together as they focused on their own families.

And now that they were all happier than a pig eating slop, all of their attention was focused on me.

“Honey, leave the man alone.”

I looked up, happy to see Zach, Em’s husband, join us, carrying Olivia. We might have had our differences in the past, but we were close now, and I couldn’t ask for anyone better for my cousin.

“I’m just saying,” Em defended herself.

“And you’ve said it a thousand times before. The man’s not deaf. He’s also not desperate enough to marry the wrong person just to have a built-in hostess.” He softened his chastisement with a kiss on the top of her head. Em leaned her head against his chest, the picture of contentment.

I threw Zach a grateful smile. “I better go. It really is going to rain. In fact, I bet it will storm.”

Em winked at me. “I’m going to enjoy getting out of dish duty at the next family breakfast.”

I shrugged and smiled. “We’ll see.”

The first flash of lightning, followed by a low rumble of thunder, sounded around nine o’clock, only two hours after I left Em’s house. Even though no one was there to see it, I grinned with satisfaction.

My phone buzzed from somewhere under the piles of papers strewn across my desk.

I’d been working on balancing my books for the month.

It was a job I hated, but a necessary evil in business.

Then there was all the inventory of seedlings and flowers I had to track: orders in and orders fulfilled, shipping dates, and more.

A housekeeper might not be the only help I needed.

Unburying my phone, I saw my brother-in-law’s name on the screen. I frowned as I accepted the call. “Hey, Reid. Everything okay?”

“Why does something have to be wrong for a guy to call one of his buddies, much less family? Maybe I wanted to know if you want to grab a beer at Ferg’s.”

I snorted and waited. If that were the case, he would have texted. I heard him sigh.

“Okay, fine. It’s more of a business call.”

That piqued my interest. Reid was our sheriff, and I couldn’t imagine how I could be of help. “Let me guess. You want to deputize me, and we’re going to head out to Han’s place and demand he hand over all of his moonshine, which we’ll secretly stash and save for our personal use?”

Reid was quiet for a few seconds, then chuckled. “Like I’d need you to do that. I can do that on my own.”

Hans Zimmerman was a living legend in our hills.

He was a homesteader, enjoying the simplicity of living off the land.

He came to town periodically, and while some thought he was strange, most loved the old-timer who could spin a story like no one else.

He often wore a coonskin hat—most likely because he knew it would piss the hell out of eccentric Matilda Espey, better known to locals as “Crazy Tillie.” Tillie wore crazy combinations of clothing and tried to befriend raccoons and treat them like pets, despite that being illegal in our state.

Their dislike of each other was legendary around here.

Hans was probably best known as a suspected moonshiner. But as long as he didn’t sell it, everyone turned a blind eye, mainly because they all secretly enjoyed what was considered the best spirits in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And to date, no one had found his stills, although several had tried.

“Please tell me you already have a secret stash.”

“If I did, I would never admit it.”

I laughed because it wouldn’t surprise me if Reid did indeed have a few Mason jars filled with white lightning stashed somewhere. Hans had been known to try to bribe people with it before, especially during our annual barbecue contest.

Thunder rumbled lightly in the distance, and I grinned to myself as I thought back to my earlier conversation with Em and Iain. I leaned back in my chair and waited for Reid to get to the reason he called. I didn’t wait long .

“Do you know the Dunston family?”

I scratched my chin while I tried to recall the name. “You mean Kate Dunston?”

“That’s the one.”

“Not all that well. I used to see her around town sometimes, but now that you mention it, I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“That’s because she died.”