Page 21 of Keepsake
Zach abandoned his pool cue. “Seriously? You rode with that thing?”
I hadn’t told my Funniest Hitchhiking Moment in a while now, and today I wasn’t finding it as amusing as it used to be. While I’d always thought this was a story about a zebra, I was just realizing that it was really the story of a nineteen-year-old idiot.
Lovely.
“I was kind of a wild thing during my teen years. And it was pouring outside by the time I climbed into the trailer. So even though I suspected this man was a little…” I made the universal sign for crazy beside my ear. “I needed a lift.” Or at least I imagined I did. My trust fund would have afforded me a plane ticket any day of the week. But I’d always had this crazy idea that the adventure would be over if I didn’t do everything the hard way. “So I got in and he slammed the door, and then I was eye to eye with a grumpy zebra.”
Zach folded those hunky arms across his impeccable chest. “Were you in there for long?”
“For most of the night,” I admitted. “I just stood there, jammed into the corner, feeding that beast a carrot every half hour when it started making noise. A couple days later, after I’d gotten to wherever I was going, I Googled zebras. Turns out they’re a lot more aggressive than horses, their kicks maim people and their bite is dangerous.”
He gave me a warm smile in spite of the fact that I’d just proven to both of us that I’m a moron. “Guess I’ll cross ‘meet a zebra’ off my list of things to do.”
Kyle wandered over as Zach said this. “Your list of things you need to try is pretty fucking long already,” he said. “Can I play the winner?” He tipped his head back and gulped at his beer.
Shit. It killed me to hear Kyle referencing Zach’s…inexperience. If I’d understood correctly earlier, I would bet that he took lots of flack from the other guys in the bunkhouse for being a virgin. And I expected Zach to look embarrassed.
He didn’t, though. Instead, he reached over and relieved Kyle of the fresh pint in his hand and took a deep drink. “Kind of you to share,” he said. “Now rack ’em up if you want in. We’ll play a game of cutthroat. All of us.”
5
Zach
My watch beepedSaturday morning at six. When I shuffled into the bathroom to get ready for the day, Lark’s door was still shut.
Even though we were scheduled to work together at the Norwich market in a couple hours, I let her sleep. She’d worked hard yesterday.
I’d misjudged Lark, assuming that May’s city friend wouldn’t be all that helpful on a farm. But she’d picked apples like a champ all afternoon. It wasmyperformance that suffered, since I kept dropping fruit whenever I’d get distracted by the stretch of her bronze arms into the tree.
Now I was scheduled to spend several hours alone with her. It was too good to be true.
After helping out with the milking, I loaded crates of apples and stacks of paper retail totes onto the back of Griffin’s truck. At eight o’clock I went back to the bunkhouse to check on Lark, but she stepped outside with a smile just as I approached. “Good morning!”
My heart tripped over itself, but outwardly I kept my cool. “Hey there. You sleep okay?”
“As a matter of fact Idid. One in a row—the start of a streak.” She jumped off the stoop, and I gave a silent prayer of gratitude for the white denim shorts she was wearing, and for the expanse of smooth, shapely legs in view.
“What do we do first?” she asked.
First, we stop staring. “First we load up the truck.”
But when we reached Griff’s pickup beside the cider house, Lark frowned. “Looks like you did it already.”
“Well…” I hefted one last bushel crate before answering her. “There’s a couple trays of late peaches over there on the table. Can you set them on the back seat?”
Since Lark was a smart girl, she first opened the truck’s cab before looking for the peaches, which were stacked into sturdy cardboard flats.
When she approached the truck, I took the flat out of her hands and slid it onto the rear seat. Lark raised one puzzled eyebrow and fetched another flat, this time stepping around me so that she could slide it into the truck herself.
Whoops. I hadn’t meant to make her feel incompetent, but there was something about Lark that turned me into a caveman. I was going to have to watch myself. We climbed inside without a word, and the cab smelled like peaches in the best possible way.
“Now what?” she asked.
“We’re all done here,” I said, putting Griffin’s truck in reverse. “Now we collect the cash box and the scale and get the heck out of here. Did you eat something?”
She shook her head. “That’s okay, though. You said something about donuts…”
I smiled at her, probably grinning like a fool. “You are a good listener.”
