Page 5 of Horn of Plenty
Cal
1475
Cal stared at the four pink numbers, then placed the cap back onto the dry erase marker.
“The count continues,” he said to himself, but without the usual feeling of bitter loneliness when a brush of fur swished past his ankle, and he glanced down to see Mabel…the kitten.
“You’re up early, little one,” he said, scooping her into his arms.
He scratched under her chin and carried her to the window. The late June sun was a sliver on the horizon, but he was too amped up to sleep. Today was the day—their first Saturday Elverna Farmers’ Market.
“I wondered where you went.”
A smile the size of the north field stretched across his face at the sound of that voice. He set Mabel the Cat onto his desk chair, then turned to get a look at Mabel, Eat Elverna’s social media PR and marketing maven.
He could hardly believe that the last ten days had passed, let alone that he’d spent the majority of every day and a good part of each night with the woman who’d held the keys to his heart for as long as he could remember.
“It seems you’ve left me for another blue-eyed girl,” Mabel teased, joining him in the office and setting her phone on the desk.
Wrapped in his bedsheet with her sex-mussed tangle of chestnut hair draped around her bare shoulders and her lips still a touch swollen from the insane amount of kissing they’d gotten in these past ten days, Mabel Ruth Muldowney was a goddess.
He tilted her chin and leaned in to kiss her but stopped a breath away from her lips. “Maybe I have a thing for Mabels?”
Mischief glinted in her sky-blue eyes. “And perhaps I have a thing for Cals…who happen to be broody little goats?”
“Then we’re both in the right place,” he replied before pressing his lips to hers.
Christ! He’d never tire of kissing this woman.
She hummed her satisfaction—a sweet sound that went straight to his cock. But before he could deepen the kiss, she pulled back and raised an eyebrow, sizing him up. “You don’t need to worry,” she said with the ghost of a grin.
He schooled his features. “I’m not worried,” he answered, going, what Mabel liked to call, total broody farmer. Something that used to drive him crazy until he realized that his country couture fashionista had no trouble kissing that scowl off his face.
But this was different. The future of the town was on the line.
He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. He worried—it was just who he was. He needed to be in control. He required tasks to be completed correctly and as efficiently as possible. He’d never invested much time in superfluous actions. And once upon a time, he’d deemed social media a killer of productivity as well as a pit of mindless clickbait sites. That is until Mabel had amassed a small army of Eat Elverna followers.
Still, it was one thing to have thousands of people effortlessly tap a heart or click to like a post. It was a whole other ballgame when it came to gaining actual paying customers.
“Those broody worry lines on your forehead beg to differ,” she tossed back.
He frowned, probably making it worse and only proving her point. “I don’t have broody lines.”
She sighed and shook her head. “You have broody everything. Isn’t that right, Mabel the Cat?” she asked, looking to her kitten namesake for reinforcement. But Mabel the Cat didn’t have time for stupid humans and began to entertain herself by batting at a pen.
“I think Mabel the Cat is on my side,” he replied, biting back a grin.
Mabel ran her hands down his torso, then stopped when she got to his belt. “Mabel the Cat is on no one’s side. She does what she wants.”
As if on cue, the kitten pranced from the chair and landed on the floor. With a snooty little cat turn of her head, the animal regarded them as not worth her time, then curled up into a ball and promptly fell asleep.
“Case in point,” Mabel said with a faux-haughty shrug.
He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Just like a Mabel I know.”
She leaned into him and her soft contours molded with his muscled body as she pointed to the dry erase board. “The pink number changed,” she remarked as she wrapped her arms around his waist.
He inspected the list of numbers. “Yep.”
