Joanne Rock - Promises Under the Peach Tree

“You cook all you want. I’d rather have you in the kitchen than playing sleuth at my doctor’s office.” Gram frowned and tapped her newly manicured nails against her coffee cup for a moment before she met Nina’s gaze. “I don’t want to give up my independence or this house, hon. So, please, make sure your father doesn’t try and pull a fast one on me to get me out of here, okay?”

Worry made Nina’s stomach clench. Her grandmother had always seemed invincible. She’d carved out a living for herself in a big old empty farmhouse after her husband died when he’d been fifty-five. Gram had been on her own ever since, living frugally and selling off pieces of land and equipment to supplement odd jobs like canning and making jellies for a local farm store. Not until recently had she ever spent a nickel on herself, and that was only because Nina had given her a year’s worth of salon services for Christmas last year. Gram was crafty and cagey. A survivor. And it sent a sharp pain through Nina to hear a note of fear in this strong woman’s voice.

“Of course.” As soon as she made the promise, though, she wondered how she would keep it if she ended up moving home to New York. “I mean, I’ll talk to Dad and clear things with your doctors since obviously, we all want you to be safe, too. But you look great to me.”

Gram quirked an eyebrow, clearly hearing the backpedaling.

A sharp rap on the kitchen door startled her and saved her from digging herself any deeper into a hole.

“It’s Ethan, Mrs. Spencer,” a young man’s voice called through the closed door.

“Ethan?” Nina looked to her grandmother to enlighten her as she stood.

“A neighbor boy,” she explained to Nina just before she opened the door. “Well, hello there, young man.”

“Morning, Mrs. Spencer. I finished mowing the lawn and I wanted to see if you’d like me to pick some peaches or nectarines for you.” A shaggy-headed, dark-haired teenager held an empty bushel basket under one arm, his rumpled T-shirt and jeans covered with bits of hay suggesting he’d already been working for a while.

“The more the merrier, Ethan.” Gram waved at the boy but didn’t stand...a sure sign her knee was hurting. “I’ve got some reinforcements this week to help me with my last batch of jam now that the peach season is almost over. Nina, this is Ethan Brady. He’s the grandson of the gentleman who bought the dairy farm where the Hendersons used to live.”

“Nina Spencer.” Nina shook the teen’s hand. “I’m visiting my grandmother for a couple of weeks. Did you need help with the picking?” She peered out the door behind the boy toward the orchards in the distance, but couldn’t tell if the trees were loaded with fruit or not.

“No, thank you.” He looked like he might be hiding a smile. “I can handle it. I wouldn’t want to take Mrs. Spencer’s company away.”

“I don’t mind.” She hadn’t questioned how her grandmother was doing financially, but maybe she would welcome the extra jam and jelly sales while Nina was home to help her. For that matter, maybe she shouldn’t be helping her grandmother give away those peach pies when she should be charging for them. “I’ll just grab some gloves in the barn—”

“No, really,” Ethan protested, stepping off the small porch and backing away. “My gramp gave me strict instructions to take care of the picking myself because he owes Mrs. Spencer a favor,” he called through the screen. “And he said to tell you that the town of Heartache loves cupcakes.” The teen shrugged his shoulders awkwardly. “No clue what the means.”

Spinning on his heel, he darted through the tall grasses of an open meadow with his bushel basket and headed toward the orchards.

Behind her, Gram laughed and said something about how Nina could charge more for one cupcake than she could for a whole case of preserves. But seeing Ethan jogging across sun-dappled fields made her think of a long-ago summer when another boy had knocked on the door to pick peaches and asked Nina to join him....

“Excuse me,” a deep voice called to her from the yard and she noticed one of the movers flagging her down. “You’ve got some company.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the moving truck, but she couldn’t see who had pulled up since the eighteen-wheeler took up her whole view.

“Gram, I’d better find out who it is.” She pushed open the screen, her gray tabby cat darting between her feet to join her.

Her instincts hummed as she neared the truck. The brightness made her squint, but she could still see an Eldorado convertible parked behind the movers’ vehicle.

“Need a hand?” Mack stepped around the bumper of the beat-up delivery truck, his gaze trained on the hodgepodge of furniture and boxes stacked precariously inside. “I hadn’t realized you’d have so much going on today or I would have waited to pick up the hay wagons for the Harvest Fest.”

His well-washed gray T-shirt had a green clover with Finleys’ written in script on the front. No matter what else had happened between them, she had to admit he wore a T-shirt incredibly well. For the second day in a row, she kept her eyes north of his jeans. Down that path lay madness.

Mack was very...fit. In school, he’d organized pickup games of basketball or impromptu lacrosse tournaments in the fields behind his house. It seemed he hadn’t lost that love of sports. His body was as toned as an athlete’s.

“It’s okay. The wagons are in the barn by the orchard.” She’d rather have this errand taken care of today than risk seeing him again another day. She couldn’t guarantee how long her eyes would behave. “I can get the key from the house.”

Nodding, he stepped back as the delivery guys juggled an industrial-size mixer. When Taz, Nina’s cat, started to dart across their path, Mack scooped the tabby up with one hand.

“Oh!” Nina reached for the animal, but Taz was already batting at the wristband of Mack’s watch, oblivious to her narrow escape. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Should I bring him up to the house?” He stared down at Taz, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I can ask your grandmother for the key and take care of the wagons myself.”

“Taz is a her, not a him.” Nina plucked the animal from Mack’s arm and the little feline mewed pitifully. “And it’s probably just as well I don’t watch my most prized possessions being stored next to rusty cultivators and plows. I might as well go with you.”

She was a grown-up. She could handle spending a couple of weeks in the same town as Mack. Besides, she wasn’t proud of her testy words the day before. She shouldn’t have accused him of coming to Heartache to rub her nose in her failures.

Worse, her harsh words about Jenny had been out of line. And she didn’t want Mack to think he affected her so much that the mention of his ex-wife would rile her up.

“Fair enough.” He stepped aside, letting her lead the way to a farmhouse even older than the one where he’d been raised.

Sunflowers and phlox stood next to deep purple asters in the overgrown flowerbeds lining the wide, grassy path to the two-story white clapboard structure. The scent of the nearby orchards and freshly mown grass rode the breeze. It was peaceful here, with a quiet so deep she almost had trouble sleeping. She kind of missed the constant din of city traffic and the comfort of busy, anonymous humanity outside her windows.

“It’s weird being back here, isn’t it?” She picked a long stem of grass poking through a bed of bushy yellow flowers she couldn’t identify.

Taz made a swipe for the grass, but Nina tucked the little cat tighter against her chest to be sure she wouldn’t get into any more trouble.