Page 72 of The Secret
He blew out a breath. “You know how we sometimes play boss and naughty employee?”
“And you shut me up when I get mouthy?Oh, yeah. I know.”
Micah gave me a sidelong look. “Not helping. The point is, that makes it weird for me being youractualboss.”
I frowned. “I am perfectly capable of keeping those things separate. I know you’d never actually make me—”
“This isn’t about you,” he interrupted. “It’s about me, okay? It’s about me not liking to make myboyfriendload the van or process stock or hose out the fucking buckets for money. It feels wrong. And, then…”
He kept talking, and I’m sure he was saying some seriously brilliant, important stuff, but I’m not gonna lie. My mind had stuttered to a halt atboyfriend, and anything he said after that was irrelevant.
Micah, who called things what they were and not what he wanted them to be, had called me his boyfriend. Right then, I was soaring ten feet above the truck.
“Yeah,” I whispered, interrupting his explanation.
He gave me a wary look, like he wasn’t sure what I was agreeing to.
I cleared my throat. “No, that’s very understandable. So I quit. Effective immediately.” I grinned. “Because firing yourboyfriendwould be a really shitty thing to do, FYI.”
Micah grinned. “I suppose it would.”
“Maybe I could volunteer until you find someone, then.” I took his hand in mine again. “It’s the boyfriendly thing to do. And I’m sure you could find some form of non-monetary compensation.”
The road widened into two lanes, and Micah moved right to take the on-ramp to the highway when movement on the left side of the road caught my attention.
“Actually,” Micah started to say, “I was thinking you could use that little bit of free time to work on your own business—”
“Stop! Micah? Is that a person dressed up as a dancing tomato?”
“Uh.” Micah squinted through the windshield. “I think he or she is meant to be anapple. Sign says Bartlett Estates U-Pick. Oh, and they have cider donuts.” He turned excited eyes to mine. “Little-known fact: the only thing I love more than baked ziti is cider donuts.”
“Then, by God we need to get us some.” I pointed at the apple-man. “Onward.”
“You’re crazy,” he said, even as he waved to the apple guy and turned left onto an unpaved road that led up a grassy hill.
“Crazy.Trouble. Your flirtation game hasnotimproved, Bloom,” I grumbled. “Your loving little compliments make me sound like a psychopath stalker.”
“Aw, Con. But you’remypsychopath stalker.” He shot me a glance that was warmer than sunshine. “And I seem to have developed a hard-on for crazy, too.”
I slid my hand over to rest high on his thigh. “Do you mean that literally?”
“Keep your hand there for about thirty seconds and see,” he suggested.
But as soon as Micah’s truck crested the hill, I forgot all about his suggestion. I forgot about sex and my new car and my own damnname, because the sight before us was just that beautiful.
“Is this real?” I asked, squeezing Micah’s leg. “Am I dreaming?”
Micah laughed. “Unless you dream of fruit trees, I’m gonna say it’s not a dream.”
But it wasn’t the trees, or notjustthem.
The road ended in a little parking lot where five or six other cars, including a couple of minivans, were already parked. To the left, there was an orchard—rows upon rows of trees, each labeled with a white sign indicating the varieties of apples and pears that grew there. But it was the sight on the right, beyond a low stone wall, that drew my attention.
There was a modest, two-story house—not much bigger than the one I’d grown up in—covered in weathered gray shingles, and surrounding it on two sides was a garden.
Agloriousgarden.
I was out of the car before Micah turned it off.
