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(previously titled Blackberries in the Morning)
Anna was up to her elbows in flour when the knock came. At this hour? Dawn streaked down the mountains and flamed over the trees. Later the kitchen would be packed and the café filled with customers, but for now the tables were empty, the espresso machine blissfully still. With a five-year-old up all night with a cold and a two- year-old practicing her new favorite word NO, these few hours before opening felt like the only quiet she’d be able to savor for the next eighteen years. She brushed her hands on her apron, draped a towel over the dough she’d been kneading, and reluctantly went to find out who’d dared to disturb her routine.
She didn’t recognize the truck out front, but then again people traveled from as far away as New York City, Boston, and Montreal to eat at Sweet Amandine. Granted, they usually waited until later than 5 a.m. to show up, but there was a short hike with a trailhead up the road. Whoever it was could kill a few hours watching the sun finish
rising from the granite peak that rose over town and be back right when the crusty rolls she was shaping were done. They were always best straight from the oven, slathered with butter fresh from Heritage Farm and a thick drizzle of honey from Bess’s Bees down the road.
Just the thought of that honey made Anna’s mouth water, so that she was licking her lips with what must have been an absurdly dreamy expression when she flicked the lock, opened the front door, and found that moist lips and dreamy expression were exactly not how she wanted to look when face to face with the stranger again.
He tried to smother his expression with a hand over the salt-and-pepper scruff along his jaw, but the lines around his eyes made it clear he was grinning.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said. “Is this Sweet Amandine?”
He shifted his weight, his jeans dark and low on his hips. They were fitted enough to show he knew how good he looked, and faded enough to say he didn’t care. Anna’s mouth went dry. Since speech didn’t seem to be working, she pointed to the sign over the porch that clearly stated Sweet Amandine with a picture of a fat, flaky croissant.
“But I’m afraid we don’t sell blackberries here,” she finally managed. “And we don’t usually open until seven.”
She hoped he’d take the hint and leave, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she wanted to take them back. He had long hair that swept back from his forehead and tucked behind his ears. It was thick, chestnut with a little bit of wave, sprinkled with grey in a way that tipped the scale toward sexy rather than old. It surprised her, how the same thought had flashed at her when she was racing toward the fruit section at Heritage Farms yesterday, trying to stop Sofie from grabbing the last carton of blackberries right out of his hands. That of course her daughter had to go after the sexy stranger with strong, calloused hands and eyes as blue and changing as the sky.
Followed immediately by her mortification as the whole carton tumbled to the ground.
The man ran a hand through his hair and pushed back a strand that had strayed in his eyes. Anna could have kicked herself for mentioning blackberries. Did she have to go and remind him of those dark jewels trampled in the dirt? She’d tried to apologize, even meant to buy him something else, but Sofie was an octopus in her arms. She’d wound up whisking her daughter away and going home empty-handed to avoid any more embarrassment. I know, baby girl, she’d wanted to croon as Sofie screamed the whole ride home. I know what it’s like to reach so badly for what you want, only to find that it’s just out of reach.
It wasn’t like Anna wanted her hair to be this messy, swept back to get the dirty blond strands off her neck as she worked. It wasn’t like she wanted the flour to get everywhere—her arms, the faded V-neck t-shirt she’d worn only because she’d thought she’d be alone. There was probably even flour on her cheek, a dusting of white to offset the dark circles under her eyes. And yet here she was, facing the one person she’d told herself that at least she never had to see again.
She sighed. “I’m really, really sorry about yesterday. Blackberry season just started—give it a week and there’ll be so many even Sofie won’t be able to get her hands on them all. Or I can give you directions to swing by a few other farms, they might have picked more that haven’t been sold.”
There. Get him off the porch and out of her sight so she could go back to work, parenting, and her usual unsexy thoughts.
The man cocked his head at her. “You think I tracked you down this early to give you a hard time about blackberries?”
Anna blinked, confused.
Then he said, “Deegan,” and she almost laughed. This she knew how to do. She’d stepped out of the doorway and was pointing him to the winding road he’d take to get to 87 and then the Major Deegan Expressway down to New York before it registered that he’d been telling her his name. “Deegan James,” he repeated. “I swear, I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Anna had no choice but to shake his outstretched hand. In that one touch she could feel his contradictions, his skin calloused yet soft, everything gentle but strong. No wedding ring on his other hand, but she’d already noticed that. Add it to her growing list of questions about who he was, what he was doing here, and what was wrong with her that she even cared.
“Anna,” she blurted when she saw him still looking at her. “Stephenson.” And then in one exhale like a single word: “Annastephenson.” She flushed and pulled her hand away. It wasn’t like there weren’t other men she’d met since moving to Bonnet who’d made her head turn. But apparently this was the first to make her forget her own name. “So if I can’t offer you blackberries that haven’t been smooshed by a toddler—”
“I’m the landscaper,” Deegan interrupted before she could go on.
“What?”
“The landscaper. Down from Lake Placid? Well, Lake Placid was where I was last.” He shook his head as if to say it didn’t matter. “Ben told me to swing by before the sun gets too high.”
Anna winced. Surely her boss had mentioned this. She knew he had mentioned this.
He just hadn’t mentioned he’d hired the hottest man to set foot in Bonnet in the whole year she’d lived here, beyond lucky to get this job when it had seemed every other door had closed.
“I’m the manager, I open up three days a week and then Ben takes over while I run my kids around.” Anna overemphasized the plural, more for her reminder than his. Kids meant no panting over the lines around a stranger’s eyes when he smiled. No wanting to make said stranger smile to see those eyes light up again. And absolutely no thoughts of what kind of smile that stranger might give as he trailed his lips down her bare stomach and paused to look up.
“That’s great,” Deegan said, oblivious to her inner turmoil, and Anna’s stomach flopped when, of course, he smiled. Although she noticed it wasn’t quiet as bright and his eyes didn’t crinkle when he asked, “Their dad’s with them now?”
“Their father’s in Syracuse,” Anna said crisply. And then, when she wasn’t sure she’d made her point, she added, “Or Rochester. Or New York. Or Wyoming. I really don’t know.”
He gave an easy shrug like she’d told him to grab an umbrella, the forecast said rain. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“My neighbor Lee is watching them. She’s wonderful, spoils the little monsters like they’re her own, even promised to make Tommy soup today while he has a summer cold.” Anna was aware that she needed to can it. Her ex, her kids, her full schedule, her questionable parenting skills... And all she knew was that he had a last name for a first name and a first name for a last and the kind of two-day salt-and-pepper stubble sure to make her whimper when it scraped against her thigh.
Not that she had time for fantasies. The rolls needed to go in, peaches still had to be pitted, and Ben had asked her to temper chocolate for a ginger cake with bourbon sauce he wanted to try that afternoon. Plus the blackberries were starting to ripen, which meant soon Anna would be even busier, baking pies every morning until her fingers were permanently stained. So Deegan had popped out of nowhere to plant a few flowers. What difference did it make? He’d be gone just as quickly as he’d arrived.
But as she stepped aside for him to come in, he flashed a wink that nearly knocked her to the floor. It was harder to concentrate on peaches after that.