Rescued by a Wedding: Texas Wedding / A Marriage Between Friends

Suddenly Josie came into the room, holding Trent’s cell phone in one outstretched hand. She crossed the room quickly and stopped at the foot of his ladder.

“It must have fallen off when you and Chase were assembling the bookcase,” she said. “It was ringing, so I answered it for you. It’s Missy Snowdon? She said it was urgent.”

Chase appeared in the doorway, holding the fuzzy pieces of the mobile he’d obviously been putting together. The look on his face was priceless. Josie’s hand wavered, as if she realized she’d goofed, though she wasn’t sure how.

Trent had to enjoy the irony. Though Chase must have told Josie at least some details of Trent and Susannah’s problems, apparently he had withheld the piece about Trent sleeping with Missy Snowdon. To protect Trent’s reputation, no doubt.

What a joke. Once again, fate proved that hiding the truth didn’t work. Secrets simply wouldn’t stay buried.

He took the telephone, because, in the end, what else could he do?

He glanced once at Susannah.

He shouldn’t have.

“Hello, Missy,” he said in an even tone. “Is everything all right?”

“Not really,” her arch, sexy voice responded. “My old friend Maxy isn’t answering my calls or returning my messages. Here I am, between love affairs and between cocktails, just looking to get together with an old friend, and he won’t give me the time of day. I can’t figure out why that would be. Can you?”

“It’s pretty simple.” Trent watched Susannah’s face, which had hardened into a sardonic indifference that he was pretty sure he recognized. Had she learned that look from him? “I don’t know if you heard. I just got married.”

“Oh, I heard. Everyone’s talking about it. But it’s not that kind of marriage, is it? Word on the street is that she still hates your guts. Sounds like you need a little TLC just as much as I do. And by TLC I mean, touching, licking—”

“Missy.” God almighty. She was drunk, and it was only, what…about three in the afternoon? Poor, beautiful Missy Snowdon. He could have predicted she’d find the real world to be so much harder than high school.

Pity softened his voice. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to help you with that. But it was nice of you to call.”

Susannah made a low, disgusted noise. She dropped her sponge in the paint, wiped her hands on her shorts and began backing down the ladder.

“Come on, Maxy,” Missy wheedled. “I hear she won’t sleep with you, even though she promised she would. And I know you. You can’t go a year—”

“I’m sorry, but I’m just not available right now. It was good to talk to you. Take care of yourself.”

He flipped the phone shut, though she kept talking. He wondered if, when she realized he was gone, she’d call right back. Just in case, he turned the phone to silent mode.

He looked at Susannah, who was watching him, as rigid as an ice mannequin. She smiled slightly, as if she found his predicament amusing, but the frost in her eyes said something different.

Without warning, anger bubbled up, like a geyser that had been dormant so long he’d almost forgotten it was there.

Was it his fault Missy Snowdon needed a man and had decided to become Trent’s own personal stalker? He hadn’t touched the redhead in almost eleven years, for God’s sake. Was there no such thing as forgiveness? No Get Out of Jail card in the game of Susannah Everly’s life?

He was a bloody fool. Why was he trying to make this goddamn marriage work? She wasn’t ever going to forgive him. She wasn’t ever going to forget. Maybe, over the years, she’d lost whatever sweetness and humanity she’d once possessed.

And if she had nothing to offer him but ice and hatred, why the hell shouldn’t he take what Missy Snowdon had to offer? He was tired of guilt, tired of loneliness, tired of wearing sackcloth and ashes while he beat his fists against Susannah’s locked door.

Missy might be a drunk, but at least she wasn’t a walking textbook of resentment, repression and every emotional issue known to man.

And she got pleasure from making a man feel good, not out of making him feel like shit.

He glanced at the phone, thinking how good it would feel to thumb it open and hit Redial, right here, while Susannah watched with that supercilious look on her face. That “I know you’re a bastard” look, which, paradoxically, just made him want to prove her right.

“Trent.” Chase’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Pal. Think it through.”

Trent glanced up. Chase looked worried, but steady. No pressure, which he knew from long experience wouldn’t work with Trent at a moment like this. Just a reminder that sanity was still an option.

It was a look that had stopped Trent from doing a lot of dumb things through the years.

Trent took a breath. Then he slowly slid the cell phone into his back pocket.

He glanced toward Susannah, wondering if she knew how close he’d come.

But she had already left the room.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SOMETIMES, life just didn’t seem fair.

The next day, in the silver-pink early-morning sunlight, Susannah stood at the edge of her two-acre rows of Rio Grande trees, the first of her peaches to ripen.

She tried not to feel bitter about the rotten trick fate had played on her.

For the first year she could remember, Everly’s orchards had been blessed with perfect conditions. No frost, no drought, no catfacing, no scab. As a result, thousands of juicy peaches hung from the trees like Christmas ornaments, glowing gold with deep red blush, throwing off waves of mouthwatering sweetness.

But unless she could pull off a miracle, much of this beautiful fruit would rot, unsold, in cold storage. Because this year, this perfect year, was also the year her biggest buyer had gone bankrupt. The other retail outlets were already contracted with other growers.

Except for a few little mom-and-pop stores, and a bunch of roadside stands, she had nowhere to sell her crop.

Zander came up beside her, panting, his bulky form already sweating, though a chill still hung in the air. It was that kind of morning, when no one moved slowly. Every morning for the next three months would be like that.

“Snap out of it,” he said, handing her one of the drop-bottom bags. “Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to get the peaches picked.”

“I know. But look at those trees. They’re all going to look like that this year, from the Rios to the Dixielands. All five hundred acres, all twenty-five varieties. What are we going to do if a new bulk buyer doesn’t show up in the next few weeks?”

He shook his head. “Beats me. Right now all I care about is getting this fruit off the trees. You going to help me or not?”

She smiled. “Yes, sir.”

Adjusting her hat and squaring her shoulders, she scanned the workers, who were pouring out of the makeshift office, where they’d been issued their gear. Male and female, old and young, they began to filter into the rows of dawn-lit trees, ladders and bushel baskets in hand, laughing and talking.

By the time the sun hit the treetops, Susannah knew, only the superfit would still be laughing. The rest would be sweating and silent, aching from shoulder to toe.

Most of her workers each season were regulars, college students and teachers on summer vacation, as well as whole families of migrants who knew the rhythms of nature so well they magically appeared the day she needed them.

But this year she’d hired at least thirty extra pickers to cope with the bumper crop. Many of them were newbies and would need a lot of supervision, just to be sure they didn’t manhandle the fruit or pack it so deep she ended up with box after box of peach mush.

Where the peaches would go after they’d been picked and packed, Susannah had no idea. She was still making calls, exploring options, searching her brain for new ideas, but mostly she was just praying for a miracle. She even dreamed once that a new grocery chain began building a store downtown. In her dream, she’d grabbed a hammer and nails and joyously leaped on a scaffold to help.

She watched the workers, eager to begin, none of them wondering where it would end. “Do you think maybe we could add another couple of roadside stands?”

“We’ve already doubled what we had last year.” Zander tucked his thumbs into his belt loops and sighed. “I did as you said and got Eli supervising the deliveries to the roadside stands. Trent offered to oversee the pick-your-own acres.”

Susannah shot him a hard look. “Shouldn’t Trent be at the Double C?”

Zander shrugged. “He said he could spare the time.”

“Still, he doesn’t know anything about peaches—”

“Ms. Susannah, follow my logic. He offered. We need him. I said yes.”

Her chest tightened. Though Zander was right, she was reluctant to take any favors from Trent. She didn’t want to owe him any more than she already did.

Plus, just knowing he was around would be distracting. They hadn’t spoken since yesterday afternoon, when Missy had called him at the Double C. He had come straight home after finishing up in the nursery. It had been a difficult day, just spending so many hours around Chase and Josie. Susannah was happy for them, really she was. But their uninhibited joy made her think about things that were better left forgotten.

Things like how, once upon a time, she’d truly believed that she and Trent would be sharing such newlywed bliss. Laughing and kissing, and touching at every opportunity.

Even…someday…decorating a nursery of their own.

The dream had exploded eleven years ago. She’d swept it into the corners of her mind. It shocked her yesterday to find that the broken shards still retained the power to slash and tear her heart.

By the time he came home that night, she was already in bed.

Like a fool, she lay awake for hours, thinking he might come up to talk to her, to try to explain Missy’s call. Or, perhaps, to insist on another…whatever you could call that episode in the cellar.

Sometime during the long hours of last night, waiting for the knock that never came, she had a disturbing revelation. He didn’t need to come to her again because, for him, the cellar encounter hadn’t been about sex. It hadn’t been about passion, or desire, or even leftover yearning from the old days.

It had been about power. She thought about how he had prevented her from touching him. Of course. It made sense now. He hadn’t needed any sexual release. All he had needed was to demonstrate that he was in control. That she was a puppet, and he held the strings.

So no. She didn’t want him around all day, didn’t want him pitching in, as if he was just another one of her friends. She was comfortable with her anger, and she intended to hang on to it. This ricocheting around between emotions—fury, desire, hope and back to fury—was exhausting.

Zander hitched his jeans, clearly irritated by her silence. “What’s the problem? We haven’t hired anyone to run those acres yet. If Trent takes over, we can open them today.”

Practicality warred with emotion. She couldn’t deny it would be a help.

Other growers made lots of money with pick-your-own acres, but Everly had never offered the feature before. Her grandfather had thought it would cheapen the orchard’s name.

Susannah couldn’t see how it could cheapen their name any more than covering half the county in the stink of Everly peaches rotting on the pallets. So she’d decided to try it with a few acres of Gold Prince, one of the few early-ripening semiclings that actually sold well for anything other than canning.

“All right.” She tried not to sound ungracious. Zander was doing everything he could to help unload the peaches. At least the pick-your-own acres were on the other side of the property. “Do you think his stitches are healed enough? He’ll be up and down ladders all day, helping people.”

Zander snorted. “He’s fine.”

“Did you check the new ladders?”

Immediately after Trent’s fall, she’d replaced all the old ones on the property—about half of everything they owned. The expense of the new ones pinched, but she couldn’t risk letting someone else get hurt. Trent might laugh off stitches in his usual macho way, but the next tumble might leave someone truly injured.

“Checked ’em all. Old and new. They’re as safe as aces.” Zander shook his head. “I don’t know what the heck happened to Trent’s ladder. I had used that same one just the day before to get to the garage shingles. I didn’t break the step, and I’m about fifty pounds heavier than Trent.”

“I know. It seems so strange that—”

“Why look!” Zander gestured broadly. “Isn’t that your husband over there?”

She looked, and sure enough, Trent was standing by the barn. He leaned against one of the first peach trees, his long torso and narrow hips looking ridiculously sexy, considering he was wearing just jeans and a T-shirt.

He was talking on a cell phone. To Missy Snowdon, no doubt.

She turned to Zander. “I’m sure he’s here to talk to you. I’ll start briefing the workers.”

“No. I’ll handle them,” Zander said flatly. “You go talk to Trent.”

It wasn’t something she liked to do, but occasionally Susannah had to remind Zander exactly what was—and wasn’t—listed on his job description. Nowhere, she was quite sure, did it include the words “marriage counselor” or “matchmaker.”

“Zander.”

Her foreman blinked innocently, and she realized just in time that one of the new workers was watching. She sweetened her voice, remembering that a rumor could race through this orchard faster than San Jose scale. “You decided how the pick-your-own acres should be handled, Zander. I expect you to deal with it.”

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