Safe in Noah's Arms

Despite what Monica’s father had told her, he and the judge were cronies. Had to be. What else would it have been? Once again, money talked, and that made him livid. “Your lawyer? Don’t you mean your daddy’s lawyer?” He was being sarcastic and cutting, and he didn’t like that in himself, but God, he was mad. At a time when he needed to be strong in order to get massive amounts of work done, she’d turned him into half a man. Helplessness fueled his outrage.

As an awkward kid trying to come to grips with bones that were growing too quickly for his muscles to keep up, he’d been beat on by a group of nasty boys, repeatedly. Day in and day out, they would hold him down while Kenny Rickard whaled on him.

Helpless to defend himself, he’d grown to hate that feeling.

He wouldn’t complain, though. He’d never once snitched.

Over time, he had grown into his bones and his gangly limbs had filled out. These days, at six-one and two hundred pounds of lean muscle, he could fight anyone who tried to hurt him, but Monica Accord could still bring him to his knees with nothing more than a glance. Plus, she’d handicapped him physically.

Worst thing she could have done to him was to make him feel helpless.

“You broke my arm.” Lame. She already knows that, Cameron.

Her pretty lips thinned. “For God’s sake, not on purpose.” She sounded angry.

Good. Welcome to my world.

He stepped closer. “Let’s get something straight. I’m not happy about you being here, but you caused this—” he pointed to the cast “—so I’m going to work the daylights out of you. Farming is a tough, physical business, so be prepared to work like you’ve never worked before for your mandated two hundred hours.”

A woman like Monica would never have volunteered for such a job.

Disgusted, he growled, “Let’s get started. Follow me.”

He turned away, but she touched his good hand to stop him. Fireworks zinged up his arm.

“Okay, Noah, you want to clear the air? Fine.” He’d never heard her sound so hard. “I’m not any happier about this than you are. I hate that I broke your arm. I don’t like hurting people.”

She took a deep breath, to calm herself he assumed, but what the hell did she have to be angry about? She hadn’t been injured in the accident. “I’ve never driven drunk before—never—but as my lawyer said, it takes only one time for something bad to happen. I’m sorry I hit you. I will pay to replace your bicycle. I’ve already offered more than once.”

“It was vintage. It can’t be replaced.”

“Well, I’m going to try. Give me all the details you can and I’ll track one down.” She tilted her head to one side. “Or can yours be fixed?”

“It’s in bad shape. You really hit me hard. We’re both lucky all I got was a broken arm. You could have killed me.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought she shivered.

“Maybe you have a conscience, after all,” he conceded. “In my experience, rich people rarely do.”

“Stereotype much, Noah?”

“As I said, I’ve come by it honestly. Through experience.”

One long-fingered hand rubbed her stomach. What was that about? “I am really, truly sorry. I don’t know how many more times I can say it. Let’s move forward from here, okay? Show me what I need to do to help you.”

So, the spoiled girl knew how to be reasonable. Okay, he could be, too.

“Do you know how to farm?”

“Nope.”

“Do you keep houseplants?”

“Never.”

“Do you know anything about plants?”

“Nada.”

“Oh, crap.” Visions of how useful she would be to him evaporated like the last vestiges of morning dew dried up by the sun. He stared at Monica in her designer jeans and absolutely useless loafers.

His silly dreams of a capable helper came to a screeching halt. She was going to be useless to him—even less so than he’d imagined.

None of his friends or family had the time to help him out, and he couldn’t afford to hire employees.

Instead, he was stuck with Monica Accord.

What made it all truly rotten was that despite despising everything that Monica stood for—her princess-in-an-ivory-tower lifestyle, her frivolity, her designer clothing that embodied crass consumerism, her uselessness—Noah still felt those awful pangs, the ones he’d had in high school that had been worse than the growing pains in his long legs, worse than the way the other kids made fun of his retro clothing and taunted him his fervent fights to save the environment. He still felt those awful, unwelcome and debilitating pangs of unrequited puppy love.

For two hundred long, long hours, he would be stuck with Monica, golden goddess, former cheerleader and prettiest prom queen Accord High had ever seen.

As he led her around to the back porch of the house to hunt down a pair of rubber boots that might fit her, he said it again, with feeling. “Oh, crap.”

* * *

FOR THE FOURTH time in the two hours Monica had been weeding, Noah yelled at her.

“What are you doing?” Along with his harsh shout came a shadow that cut off light.

Behind his head, the sun created a halo around Noah’s too-long red hair. Wisps of it had escaped his ponytail and curled in the heat.

“That’s not a weed,” he cried. “It’s a radish.”

Rats. She’d screwed up again. Cramming it back into the earth, she shoved soil around the roots with shaking hands. She’d been pulling up too many plants. She just couldn’t tell them apart. She wished she could. Contrary to what Noah seemed to think, she didn’t like screwing up, especially when he’d drilled into her that she was wasting food.

“It will be okay.” She picked up the pail beside her and watered the radish. “Honest, I’ll check it again tomorrow to make sure it survived.”

He crouched down, too close. Noah had grown up well. Really well. His eyes sparkled like bright green gems. The man exuded a lot of heat. His mouth, a flat slash that divided his red mustache and beard, signaled his disapproval. Usually when she saw him around town, his lips were full and on the verge of an ever-ready smile—not that she’d noticed.

“No, Monica, it won’t recover from being yanked out of the soil when it’s still so young. Would you recover?”

Abruptly, he stood and stomped away, clearly agitated, but spun back and moved close to her again. “Every plant that dies is food that doesn’t make it to someone’s plate. Understand?”

“I know. You’ve already told me a million times since I got here.”

“You know nothing about hunger or poverty. All you’ve ever known is privilege.”

Why did he take such pleasure in making her feel ashamed of who she was? “I get it, Noah. I truly do.” Monica stood, because she didn’t like that he was taller than her at the best of times, let alone when she was kneeling in the dirt. “Whether or not you choose to believe me, I’m trying my hardest to do a good job.”

She took off her sun hat and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. It came away damp with sweat. “You have to understand how new this is to me, Noah.” She touched his arm, but he pulled away, so she dropped her hand to her side. Even before she’d hit him on Friday night, he’d always seemed to go out of his way to avoid her. Why did he dislike her so much? “I want to get this right. I really do. Okay?”

“Okay,” he muttered, but she had the sense it wasn’t, that there was something going on beneath the surface that Noah wasn’t explaining to her—something she couldn’t figure out on her own.

It messed with her nerves so she gave up trying. “I have to leave. I start work in forty-five minutes and I have to wash up first.” She took a small pink notebook and matching pen out of her back pocket and wrote down a sentence indicating she’d put in her first two hours of her sentence. She handed the book to him. “Initial here, please.”

“Aren’t you the organized little beaver?” Ignoring the pen, he fished a pencil stub out of his jeans and scrawled his initials across the page, a messy slash beside her tidy script.

She held back a knee-jerk response, totally getting that he had a right to be angry, but his sarcasm hurt. She rose above it by ignoring it. One of them had to be the adult here.

“Write down all of the details about your bike, too.”

When he’d finished and handed the notebook back to her, she said, “I’ll be back tomorrow morning at the same time.”

She trudged to her car, tired already, and she still had to put in a full day at work.

With Noah’s hot gaze burning through the shirt on her back, she started the car and drove away.

Once in town, she detoured to her apartment to shower and change for work. It wasn’t quite ten and here she was having her second shower of the day.

She threw on a bit of makeup then ran out the door.

For over a year now, Monica had been working at The Palette, the only art shop in town. She stepped through the doorway and found the gallery cool, a godsend after the past two hours spent under the hot sun.

The owner, Olivia Cameron, Noah’s mom, stood talking to one of the sculptors whose work they stocked. Gorgeous Aiden McQuorrie had his focus squarely centered on Olivia. Even though she was fifteen years his senior, she held him in sway. Monica sighed. So romantic. Everyone in town knew they were getting it on every chance they got. In the year since Olivia had started to date Aiden, after much persuasion on Aiden’s part to get her over her reluctance because of their age difference, she had blossomed.

Monica smiled. Understandably, Aiden was Olivia’s favorite sculptor.

When Aiden stepped past Monica to leave, his glance sympathetic—he knew how angry Olivia was with her—he squeezed her arm then left the gallery.

Olivia approached, every beautifully dyed strand of hair in place, her peach suit expensive and understated—her sophisticated demeanor a sharp contrast to Aiden’s rough-hewn, restless energy.

Another case of the attraction of opposites, like me and Billy.

Olivia, a former housewife, had started the art gallery years ago and, through determination and sheer grit, had nurtured it into a successful enterprise.

Oh, how Monica admired her. She would love to be a businesswoman, but had no idea what kind of business she would start.

Working on commission in an art gallery and living on a small widow’s benefit, Monica didn’t have a lot of money, wasn’t married and didn’t have children, nor did she really have a career. In short, she was floating through life, about as aimless as a leaf drifting on the surface of a stream.

She certainly wasn’t directing her life toward any place she wanted to go.

Olivia glared at Monica. It was all too much—first her son and now her. Monica’s nerves jangled like someone plucking loose guitar strings. Olivia had been cool with her since she’d run down her son last week.

It made Monica’s heart ache because she truly liked Olivia. They’d become good friends. Monica had—dare she think it?—begun to see Olivia as a mother figure.

Now the relationship suffered because of Monica’s flawed decisions on Friday night. Monica couldn’t be more grateful to Olivia for giving her a job, for showing faith in her, but Olivia had also gifted her with friendship...only to now withdraw it.

It hurt.

Monica stifled her longing for things to be normal. She had loved spending time with Olivia on their monthly spa days. She would secretly pretend she had a mom she could hang out with.

The sadness of that loss overwhelmed her. It left a heaviness in her heart more burdensome than the guilt she felt when she was with Noah. She wanted her affectionate relationship with Olivia back. She turned away to surreptitiously wipe her damp eyes.

Struggling to make amends, she said, “I’m sorry I’m late, Olivia.”

“How did it go in court yesterday?” Olivia asked, her tone too cold for Monica’s liking. “Everything okay?”

“I have to perform two hundred hours of community service.”

Monica straightened a painting. She genuinely loved the shop and the art they sold. A little more challenge in her job wouldn’t hurt, but at least this brought in a paycheck. “My lawyer plea-bargained down from a driving with ability impaired to a wet reckless.”

Olivia’s mouth thinned. She didn’t like the break Monica’s lawyer had managed to negotiate any better than Noah had, but then she was a mother bear concerned for her cub. Monica just wished Mama Bear wasn’t also her boss.

“Community service?” Olivia asked. “There’s nothing like that available in Accord. Where do you have to go? Denver?”

“Noah’s farm. I have to grow plants.”

A mean little smile tugged at the corners of Olivia’s mouth. “You have to farm?”

Oh, dear. It looked like Olivia was going to enjoy Monica’s discomfort just as much as Noah. “I don’t know a thing about farming and now I have to help Noah grow his vegetables. Yes. I have to farm.”

Olivia’s glance took in the sleeveless sage linen dress and the rose pumps Monica had donned in a hurry a few minutes ago.

“Good luck.” The hard edge of Olivia’s voice saddened Monica even while she tried to cut Olivia some slack.

“I was already there this morning pulling up plants instead of weeds. They all look the same to me. Noah was angry.” Monica crossed her arms and grasped her elbows. She knew she sounded unhappy, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. What had the judge been thinking? She needed to talk to Daddy, to find out why he’d groaned when Judge Easton had entered the courtroom yesterday morning. Unless Monica had it wrong, there was history between the two of them—and now she was paying the price.

Olivia’s glance skimmed Monica again. “Do you even own a pair of jeans?”

“Of course,” she said, but relented and told the truth. “I bought a pair yesterday after I left the courtroom.”

“You’ll still need to keep your full-time hours.”

“I’ll put in all of my hours. No problem, Olivia.” She didn’t ask her dad for help these days. She was trying really hard to get by on her own. It had taken her years to learn that self-sufficiency provided rewards far greater than material goods.

She’d stopped shopping as a hobby a couple of years ago. The dress and shoes she wore today were a few years old. Fortunately, her style was classic and she took care of her clothes.

Olivia led her to the office in the back. “Noah works on his farm for four hours every morning before he comes into town to open the army surplus store.”

That ugly old thing. The town should demolish it. Force it to shut down. All of the other shops on Main Street had spruced up their storefronts to bring in tourists. Why shouldn’t he have to, as well?

Her mind went back to what Olivia had said. So Noah had already been out weeding for a couple of hours before Monica had arrived this morning? Insane. “Four hours? Before he opens the store? What time does he get up?”

“As far as I know about five.”

“As in a.m.?”

Compelled, she did the math. Two hundred hours. If she went to the farm for two hours in the morning before coming to work—no way was she getting up at five—it would take her one hundred days to complete her service, if she worked there every day. More than three months, and she would have to work longer hours on her days off to make up the time faster. A little faint, she leaned against the wall.

Olivia grasped Monica’s arm. “You try real hard to make it work, to make up for how much you hurt him.” She picked up her purse. “I’m running across the street for a coffee.”

The slamming front door put an exclamation point to her exit.

She’d left without offering to bring back something for Monica, unheard of in their relationship to date.

As Monica had already done a dozen times this morning, she rubbed a hand over her roiling tummy.

Making amends was a heck of a lot harder than it looked.

CHAPTER TWO

“CAN YOU BELIEVE this whole cockeyed situation?” Noah asked Audrey and Laura when he arrived at Laura’s café for lunch. They were crowded into Laura’s office in the back behind the kitchen. “I’m stuck with Monica Accord on the farm.”

He and his best friend, Audrey Stone, ate together most days, either at her flower shop or at Noah’s Army Surplus, and took turns bringing food. He’d chosen the bakery today so he could vent to both his best friend and his sister.

“She broke your arm,” Laura said, patting her brother’s cast. “It was the best solution. She can be of use to you on the farm.”

“Ha! She threw a bunch of weeds onto the compost heap even after I’d told her they belong in the garbage. How is that useful?”

“She might become better at it than you think.” Laura pushed her long hair back over her shoulder. She’d inherited a more subdued version of their father’s red hair than Noah had.

“Are you kidding? She overwatered the turnips so I can’t water them tomorrow. She didn’t water the radishes enough, so I have to water them again this evening. I need less work, not more.” He banged his fist on Laura’s desk, rattling a bunch of papers, a soup ladle and a bag of cloth diapers delivered by her service. “The woman’s too stupid to know a rake from a curling iron.”

Laura stood abruptly and picked up the diapers. “I have to go. It’s feeding time and I’m ready to burst.”

Noah perked up. “How’s Pearl doing?” Flat-out chuffed to be a brand-new uncle, his curiosity about and fascination with his niece grew with each passing day.

“Growing by leaps and bounds.” Laura tucked the diapers under her arm and picked up the soup ladle to return it to the kitchen. “Who left this here?”

“Probably you.” Noah laughed. Laura left a trail of cooking utensils wherever she went. The woman was as passionate about preparing food as he was about growing it.

“You two stay here and finish your lunch.” Resting her hand on Noah’s shoulder, Laura said, “Give Monica a chance. I almost lost Nick by judging on appearances and past behavior. People grow, Noah. They change.”

After Laura left the room, Noah finished his quinoa salad and felt Audrey watching him the whole time. He knew why. Monica used to be married to Audrey’s brother, Billy Stone, until he died in Afghanistan. She probably felt some kind of loyalty to Monica.

“I’d rather do anything this summer than teach spoiled Monica to farm,” he said, disgust coloring his tone far more than the situation warranted. “It’s distasteful to me.”

“I understand, Noah, but be careful you don’t make assumptions that are unfounded,” she said. “Or based on clichés about rich women and Monica’s blond good looks. You’ve had a bad string of luck with women.”

When he opened his mouth to object, she raised her hand. “Don’t worry. I won’t bring up the elephant in the room.”

The elephant in the room was that Noah had always chosen women who had an uncanny resemblance to Monica, and who were just as wealthy.

It confounded him that he would choose women like her. “That’s all been nothing more than coincidence.”

“Really? Deirdre? New Orleans? A dead ringer for Monica.”

Noah was angry instantly. He’d put a lot of energy into forgetting Deirdre and her betrayal. He didn’t need Audrey bringing it up now.

“Don’t go there, Audrey.”

“Deirdre might have looked like Monica, but Monica is nothing like that woman.”

“Okay, so I showed poor judgment. I won’t again. Okay?”

Unfazed by his anger, Audrey urged, “Everybody underestimates Monica. Just don’t let your bias have you judging her wrongly.”

Both Audrey and Noah had been on the receiving end of the false assumptions that people made based on flimsy evidence—Audrey because of the way she chose to dress in retro forties and fifties clothing, and Noah because of the same thing—the way he chose to dress—and also because of the green, organic lifestyle he lived. He would probably fit in better in a big city than in rural Colorado.

But in Colorado, he got to grow things, to plant seeds and produce something out of nothing that could feed those in need...and it was the best feeling on earth.

In high school, he and Audrey had bonded as the misfits who didn’t dress like others. They’d been best buds ever since.

“Noah, you weren’t too hard on her, were you?”

With one hand, he wrestled his empty Mason jar into his cooler bag, avoiding her gaze. “I wasn’t patient with her,” he admitted, but, compelled to defend himself continued, “For Pete’s sake, Audrey, every time I look at her I still get tongue-tied. When she showed up at the farm this morning, I actually stuttered!”

Her eyebrows shot up. “That bad? Still?”

“Yeah. It’s still that bad. When’s the last time you heard me stutter? It’s like I’m thirteen years old again! And for what? For a spoiled, ditzy blonde.” So, yeah, he’d been harsh, but that was a whole lot better than stuttering.

“Noah, don’t call her names. You forget that Monica is family,” Audrey admonished.

Chastened, he calmed himself and said, “I do. I often forget. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve never understood how you two could be so different and yet get along so well.”

“First, it’s because she’s not quite who you think she is, and second, because we both lost our mothers when we were so young. Mine when I was five, but poor Monica in childbirth. She never even knew hers.”

“And this helped how?”

When Audrey hesitated to share, Noah bumped her shoulder with his. “I’m just trying to understand this space alien who’s tearing up my radishes.”

Audrey huffed out a laugh and then grew serious. “Okay. Here goes. Losing a parent so early leaves a hollow spot in your life along with a low-grade sadness. It doesn’t matter how deeply you bury the sadness, it’s still there. Often, you feel like you don’t have anyone to talk to about it, even your other parent. My dad was grieving, too, but didn’t know how to express it.”

“What about Billy?”

“I think he dealt with it by ignoring it, by surrounding himself with friends. By becoming the class clown and making sure that everyone, including himself, was always laughing. Plus, when it happened, he was older and less dependent on Mom than I was.”

“That makes sense.” Noah picked at his egg sandwich. “Monica felt that way, too?”

“Yes. She also understood that it makes you different from your classmates and friends who still have both parents. Mother’s Day is particularly hard.”

Finished with her salad, Audrey passed him her empty jar. “Knowing that someone else in the world understood how I felt gave me a measure of comfort, even though I was already a teenager by then.”

“Okay,” Noah conceded. “She might have more depth than I’ve given her credit for, but she pulled up eight of my baby radishes before I caught her. It frustrates me, Audrey. That’s food that won’t make it onto some hungry person’s plate.”

Audrey sobered. He knew she admired his passion for feeding the needy. Of all of the people in his life, she truly understood him.

“She said she thought they were weeds,” he continued. “They were the only plants in a row I’d already weeded.”

“Sounds like a problem with communication.”

“Yeah, there was definitely a problem. I communicated. She didn’t listen.”

He stared at Audrey, begging her to understand how screwed he was.

“What am I going to do about her, Audrey? I’m thirty-seven years old, a sane and reasonable grown man, but I’ll be seeing her nearly every day this summer and I might as well be back in high school.” He added miserably, “Déjà vu all over again.”

* * *

AT LUNCHTIME, MONICA headed to the bar at the end of Main Street, knowing her father had his midday meal there every day. She wanted to question him about his relationship with the judge.

She’d tried to contact him last night, but he’d been out and hadn’t been answering his cell, leaving her with the strange suspicion he was avoiding her.