Page 75 of The Aster Valley Collection, Vol. 1

The gesture shocked me. My brain blinked erratically a few times before shutting down.

Then it was just his big, strong body against mine.

The heat of him. The masculine scent of his sweat.

The overwashed softness of his shirt against my cheek.

And the wide span of his hands against my back and sides.

God, he felt incredible. I managed to pull my arms out from between us and wrap them around his neck. If he wanted to hug me, I was going to accept it for as long as he was willing to give me the comfort, even though I wasn’t sure why he’d decided to do it.

When he finally pulled back, I expected him to go back to his task with the shovel, but he didn’t. He kept one hand on my hip and used the other to brush back the curls that had fallen in my eyes.

“It’s a mop,” I muttered apologetically.

“Mops where you come from must be sexy as hell,” he said with a slow grin. “I’d never get any cleaning done if my mop looked like this. I love your hair.”

Oh.

Ohhh .

My breathing went low-key haywire. Sam’s long fingers toyed with the same crazy bits that had driven me nuts only a few minutes ago in the house. His fingers twisted around a curl before letting it go and twisting another.

“Thank you,” I breathed, trying hard not to break the spell.

He finally seemed to realize what he was doing and stepped back to reach for the shovel again. After clearing his throat, he asked, “So the man gave your aunt the farm?”

I took a deep breath to keep from tripping after him and plastering myself against his body with a whimpered plea.

“Um, yeah. So… right. The aunt farm. I mean the aunt… the farm for my aunt. My aunt’s farm. Cripes.”

Sam’s laugh crinkled the edges of his eyes, and I thought for a mini-second it was worth accidentally making a fool of myself.

“I could eat you in one bite,” he muttered, almost under his breath.

Yes, please.

I shook my head to clear it and continued on.

“She refused, obviously, but then he offered for her to stay there for the summer to look after the place while he and his partner traveled to Hawaii to visit friends. She was a total free spirit who usually followed her nose, but that summer her nose told her to stay put here in Aster Valley. I think that was the same year my uncle Dave was born, so maybe Berry stuck around to help my grandmother through that. I’m not sure.

But she took advantage of the planting season and grew all kinds of things.

She hadn’t had a plot to garden in the years she’d been traveling and learning, and she’d forgotten how much she loved it. ”

“That’s where you got your green thumb.”

“Exactly,” I said, looking around at the freshly planted plots, the ones tilled and ready, and the ones that would remain fallow this year to prepare for the following year.

“She taught me everything I know about that part of my business. She grew mostly medicinal plants and organic veggies. She gave most of the food away to families who needed it, or she sold it at the farmer’s market when she needed extra money for something or other.

When Sid and Warren came back from Hawaii, they told her they wanted her to stay on as the farm’s full-time caretaker so they could retire to Hawaii to be with their friends.

None of us knew at the time that Sid had already put the farm into her name. ”

“That’s amazing. I’m surprised she stayed if she was used to traveling around. Did she ever marry?”

Sam continued his work, slamming the sharp blade of the shovel down into the ground and working clumps of dirt and rock to the surface.

“No. But she was always surrounded by friends. She traveled to Hawaii every few years to see Sid and Warren, and they would come see her, but eventually they both passed on. The farm had been Sid’s parents’ place.

Berry tried giving it back to the family, but they refused to accept it.

So she told everyone in town she inherited it when they died, but the truth makes for a better story,” I said with a laugh.

As Sam worked in the late-afternoon sun, I told him more about my aunt, about the work she did through her shop that was half natural healing and half accidental psychotherapy.

I told him about how she kept an old corduroy beanbag in the back of the shop that I could curl up on to page through picture books.

Every afternoon during kindergarten, I would come straight here from school and spend the afternoon dozing in a sun patch like a contented cat—or an exhausted five-year-old.

I remembered loving my life during those early years, but then it had all come crashing down.

I didn’t tell Sam that part. I was sure he already knew the basics, about my supposed jaunt out onto the deserted ski slope that fateful night with my grandfather’s old sled. About the ensuing disaster that befell not only Olympic hopeful Langdon Goode but also the very town itself.

Including my own parents.

“I missed her when we moved away,” I admitted. “I think part of her wanted to come with us, but she would have hated it in Durango.”

“What was it like there?” he asked as he finally levered out the giant block of concrete that held the gate post. My eyes were glued to his bulging arm and back muscles like I was in a trance. It took me a minute to realize he’d asked me a question.

“Not great,” I admitted, moving over to where the water bottle lay forgotten on the tailgate of the SUV. I picked it up and handed it to him, watching every movement of his throat as he took large gulps of it.

“Thanks, sweet,” he mumbled, handing it back.

It took me a moment to realize he’d been using my last name.

At least I thought that’s what it was. If he’d called me sweetheart again, like he’d done the first night in Mikey’s kitchen…

well, I would probably have to beg him to try out some of those dirty things he’d mentioned.

I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to reset my brain from horndog to reasonable human mode.

“My dad got a job as a manager for a hotel there. It wasn’t bad, actually.

At least… I didn’t think it was a bad job for him.

He manages one of the biggest hotels in town.

It runs along the river and has great occupancy rates.

It’s owned by a national chain, so the benefits are good, too.

At least, that’s what my mom always says when he complains about his job. ”

“But it wasn’t the same.”

“No. It wasn’t. It’s almost seven hours away from here by car. And my mom missed her friends. I think she missed having someone to help her with me the way Aunt Berry and my grandparents did.”

Sam found the water hose and began mixing concrete in a bucket. “Do you get along with your parents?”

I thought through my answer. “We have what you’d call a polite distance now. We’re cordial enough for visits, but we’re certainly not close. They resent my moving back to Aster Valley because they thought it opened back up a large can of worms that was better off buried.”

Sam gestured for me to come help him hold the new post in place as he poured the concrete around the base. “Do you have siblings?” he asked.

I nodded. “My sister, Trinity. She’s three years older than I am. She’s an assistant dance professor at the university in Grand Junction.”

“Oh, wow. It’s not often you hear of someone pursuing a career in dance. Do you see her often?”

I shrugged. “No, but that’s okay. She’s happy. Moving to Durango was better for her in the end, so that’s a good thing. She made it into an elite dance company that led to her pursuit of dance as a profession.”

“Why don’t you see her?”

I had to stand on tiptoe to keep the post upright as he moved around me with the cement.

“We were just never close. My parents were pretty miserable after the move, so I tried to avoid being at home. I spent a lot of time at the local library, and Trinity spent more time at dance. It’s hard to be close to someone when you rarely see them.”

I didn’t want to talk about my sister or my family anymore. And I didn’t want to talk about anything related to the incident .

“Do you have siblings?” I asked, shifting the subject slightly.

Sam’s face darkened. “Mpfh.”

Okay .

“Sorry. That was personal,” I said. “I didn’t mean to?—”

“I have two sisters. You didn’t do anything wrong by asking.”

I clamped my lips together and stayed quiet, so the ball remained in his court.

“Sophie and Kira. They’re… they have issues. Hell, who doesn’t? But Kira is an addict, and she’s been struggling lately. Sophie is a single mom, so she has it rough in a different way…”

He seemed to be paying a little too much attention to how he described them to me, as if he was worried about my reaction.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. But if you do want to talk about it, I’m hardly one to judge.”

Sam took over holding the post and indicated I could go back to my perch against the other side of the gate and relax. Then he continued.

“Okay, straight truth. Kira is an addict and a felon. She showed up high and ranting at my jobsite last week.”

I winced, but before I could say anything, he kept going. “And she refuses to go to rehab, so I have to enforce some boundaries with her at this point. Which upsets my mom very much. Mom expects me to fix everything.”

“Where’s your dad?”

Sam’s jaw tightened, and I knew right away I shouldn’t have asked.

“Prison,” he said. “Has been for a long time and will be for an equally long time.”

He took a breath as if considering whether or not to say more. Then he did.

“He was a mean drunk. Violent, even with us. Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat.

“One night it went too far. Thankfully, the girls were at a sleepover. But I wasn’t.

I’d come home from football practice and was going to grab a bite to eat before doing my homework.

But when it got really bad between them, I bolted.

I called the cops, then went to Mikey’s and hid in his basement. Like a chickenshit.”

“Like a scared kid,” I countered, defiantly.

“Yeah, well, I know that now.”

But I wasn’t sure he did.

Sam’s eyes flicked upward. “The cops came, and it was bad. My mom went into the hospital for a while, and Dad went to jail. After that, it was just the four of us.”

Even though he was still holding the post steady, I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his middle. “I’m sorry.” For once, the word was exactly right.

“Thank you. So am I. It’s a longer story, but he ended up getting a life sentence,” he said.

“Good,” I said softly, extracting myself from the hug when I realized he was having trouble keeping the post steady. “But it must have put a lot of pressure on you and your mom to hold the family together.”

For a split second, Sam’s face was full of raw emotion.

Grief, hurt, anger, resentment, helplessness.

It was like a heavy blanket of horrible feelings he usually kept hidden away.

The weight of it almost staggered me back, and my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest and wing its way over to settle into his chest in case he needed it.

I opened my mouth and stepped forward again, but his face quickly shuttered, and he turned away from me.

“Yeah. So anyway, that’s life, right? You ready to cook? I could use a sous chef in the kitchen.”

I almost continued my way toward him, to slide my arms around him from behind and press my body against his back just to let him know I was there, to pay him back in kind for the comforting embrace he’d given me earlier.

But I wasn’t that brave.

So I did the expected thing instead.

I told him the etymology of the term sous chef and chattered nonstop on our walk back to the house about the history of Escoffier’s kitchen brigade in the London Savoy hotel.

Nothing said “I want to take care of your giant sweet heart and make love to your incredibly sexy body” quite like the French words for fish and fried food.