Falling in Vermont (Cozy Nights in Vermont #2)

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

SOPHIA

“H e ran away, Iris.”

“He didn’t run away,” said her sister’s tinny voice. “It’s so loud. Where are you?”

It was dusk and the crowd at the Finch Family Orchard was hopping. “A fall orchard thingy. If he could have done back handsprings to get away faster, he would have. Blake kissed me like a caveman claiming his mate and then ran away. That’s how bad of a kisser I am, apparently.”

“I’ve always told you that you have terrible breath,” Iris said, a smile in her voice.

“You’re a butthead.” Sisters were the worst.

“An apple orchard sounds romantic. Are you two on a date?”

Sophia looked for Blake and saw him still in line for their hot spiked ciders. He looked so handsome tonight. He’d blushed when asking what time she wanted to leave to scope out the competition.

For research purposes, he’d made sure to add.

“This is business research,” Sophia responded.

“At night?”

“ Yes .”

“Are you wearing makeup and a bra? If so, then it’s a date.”

Sophia huffed. “It is not a date. Especially after said running-away. Now, what does it mean?” She chewed her fingernail, hoping for her sister’s insight into the enigma that was human behavior.

“I’m sure he’s just nervous. You said he hasn’t dated anybody?”

“He went on like two dates, but it seems they ended in hearty high fives.”

She stared at Blake as he chatted happily with a guy next to him. His smile was wide and it took her breath away. His eyes found hers through the crowd. Shit, caught me staring. She waved and his smile went even wider.

“He said he couldn’t lose another person. He talked about me leaving, and…I just thought we’d have fun, you know?”

“Hmm,” Iris said with a knowing voice.

Sophia’s eyes narrowed so she could listen harder to her genius sister. “What do you mean ‘ hmm ’?”

“You know, you’re…casual. You don’t like commitment,” Iris said, a blinker sounding in the speakerphone.

“Yeah, because?—”

“Soulmates are a myth, and”—Iris finished for her—“all the good ones are taken. Yeah, I know. I’ve met you. But he’s not some douchey, weird bro you picked up at a bar. He seemed like a really nice guy when I met him a few weeks ago.”

“Wait a minute. This is all your fault,” Sophia said, realizing she could blame her little sister for her not-heartbreak heartbreak.

Pussybreak? Is that a thing?

“Sorry, I’m khrrrt ”—Iris said, mimicking static with her voice—“going through a tunnel. I’m khrrt losing you.”

“Iris, do not hang up. Do not hang up on me.”

“Oops, oh no. I’m losing signal. Love you, bye!” Iris said, and the line went dead.

Sophia had to laugh at her sister. Iris was her best friend, and sometimes she wanted to wring her neck.

This was all her fault.

Sophia’s pride had stung when Blake had bounded up the stairs. She respected his choices though. It must be an odd experience starting over after so long, and not everyone could hit-it-and-quit-it like she could.

She’d have to be content simply being roommates.

Didn’t mean she couldn’t have one-handed fantasies as she went to sleep like she did last night.

After finally falling asleep on the couch at the lovely hour of 5:00 a.m., her body had woken up after four whole hours of sleep, tucked under a pile of blankets, with a note beside the coffee table that said he’d restocked her favorite local creamer. The coffee pot was on, and there was a mug beside it waiting for her.

Mixed signals much, man?

Blake appeared through the crowd looking like the sexy Brawny towel guy coming toward her with two steaming cups.

“This is quite a crowd,” she yelled over the noise as he handed her the cider. “I’m glad we came here to scope out the competition. They definitely know what they’re doing.”

The Finch Family Orchard had a large hay bale maze, face painters, a band, two food trucks, string lights strung throughout the entire seating area, and a pumpkin patch and apple orchard to pick from for families.

They strolled through the edge of the apple trees as the sky turned into a deep violet. He smiled down at her with that dreamy look. “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head suddenly. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. I guess I was just too embarrassed or something.”

Oh no. She didn’t want him to feel bad. “There’s no need to be embarrassed. You’d need an army of people to do something like this.”

“Jeff and his family have been doing this for decades. It’s an institution.”

She wanted to put her arm through his as they walked, but she refrained. Not a date. “I always forget you grew up here.”

“One summer I worked on the round hay baler for Jeff’s dad. He hired the whole football team. It was backbreaking work on old equipment.”

She allowed herself a lingering glance at his chest and arms. He was easily 6'2", and she could imagine him destroying on a defensive line.

Maybe that was where he got his protective streak.

“It feels almost impossible to try to catch up to something like this.” He sighed, looking around him as he sipped his hot cider.

“Let’s think about how to do it your way.” She needed to keep him hopeful.

They meandered past the hay bale maze entrance. “Definitely not the hay bale maze. You have no idea how long it takes to set that up.” He shook his head as if reliving a memory.

“Part of the football team duties?” she said as she sipped her spicy, rum-laced cider.

“The first time we helped, we accidentally trapped ourselves in it.”

She snorted apple cider through her nose. The rum warmed her chest in the chilly night air. “Well, next year we’ll do something that has no hay involved.”

He went quiet.

She turned around and bumped his hip. “What? Did I drip cider somewhere?” She looked down at her sweater.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just, um…” He shook his head.

“What?” Oh fuck . “Right. I mean, you will do whatever you want next year.” She winced in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to insinuate you’d want me to come back, and?—”

“You can stay as long as you want,” he said quickly.

Whoa . Her eyes went wide.

His eyes went wider as he realized what he’d said. “I mean, you can always come back and visit. The cottage roof will be fixed, and…” He scrubbed a hand down his face and sighed. “You know what I mean.”

Fuck. She guessed they couldn’t ignore the elephant in the apple orchard forever. “You’ll probably be dating up a storm by next year,” she said, trying to add a little levity and elbowing him. “You’ll be the Clovely Casanova. Ooh, should that be your new dating app bio?”

“I’ve never been on a dating app. It seems overwhelming.”

Her jaw dropped open. “That is desperately unfair. You haven’t lived until you’ve been ghosted by a creepy guy you weren’t even really interested in. Ooh, ooh”—she hit his arm for emphasis—“or the guy who was great to chat with, but when I didn’t want to pay for his four cocktails and two burritos because I’d only had water, he said I was, quote, ‘what’s wrong with feminism.’”

“You?” he said with arched eyebrows. He guided her through the foot traffic with a gentle hand on the small of her back.

“Yes, me. I am the Achilles heel in the third-wave feminist movement because I wouldn’t buy Chad extra large margaritas after he asked me out.”

Blake shook his head in disbelief as they wandered to a quieter area of the Finch Family Orchard. She was sad when his hand dropped from her back.

She tossed her empty cider cup in the bin. “The bar is in hell, that’s all I’m saying. Any single woman would sell her skincare routine for a chance with a nice guy who’s tall, good looking, hot, kind, with a gigantic”—she faltered, Not gonna finish that thought —“uh, soft spot for his dog.”

His eyes connected with hers, and though they sparkled back at her in shared humor, there was a veil of sadness she could see.

“What if I only want one woman in particular?” he said in a low voice as they stopped in the shadow of an apple tree. His hand rested on a tall branch as he hung onto it and stared down at her. “Who is gorgeous, and funny, and smart?”

She swallowed. She wasn’t used to a man who told her how amazing she was. She bit her lip. “She’d be a really lucky woman.”

A slow smile grew on his face, and her breath caught as his eyes trained on her lips. He started to lean down?—

“Coach Jameson!” shot through the air.

Blake paused in surprise, turning his head toward the shout. A group of gangly teen boys waved their whole arms at him. “Ah, fuck.”

Sophia pulled back with a bark of laughter. “Coach?”

He put his hand on her back, clearing a path through the throng toward the group of high school boys at a picnic table.

They looked like actual babies. How do high schoolers get younger every year?

“Coach, I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” a boy with a wobbly, cracking voice called.

Blake squeezed her side before he dropped his hand from her back. “This is my friend, Sophia. Sophia,” he said, over the chorus of oohs as they catcalled him, “this is the JV football team.”

“Coach! Coach! Did you see me tackle the running back at the game last week?” a kid with glasses and a mop of curly hair said with big eyes.

These boys clearly worshiped the ground he walked on.

“I’m sorry, things have gotten crazy at the pumpkin patch.”

“Hey, is that your girlfriend?” another kid from the end of the table yelled at him with attitude.

“Braden, is it respectful to talk about somebody as if they aren’t there?” Blake said authoritatively.

“Nooo,” he said with an eye roll. “Sophia, you his girlfriend?”

“Why? You single?” she said with a sarcastic eyebrow waggle back to him, and all the boys went oooooh , shoving the kid at the end.

“We like you,” the first boy said, pointing at Sophia. “You should come to the next game.”

“Hey, you boys behave, okay? Who’s driving?” The rest of the boys started to walk away, but a lanky kid jangled keys with an adorably dopey grin.

“What’s the rule to stay on the team,” Blake said with a warm, firm tone.

“Seat belts on, eyes on the road,” the boy answered confidently.

“And?” Blake said with an arched eyebrow.

“And call a coach before you do something stupid,” he said, rolling his eyes in embarrassment. “Oh my God, we’re fine, Coach J.”

Blake gave the kid a fist bump before he started jogging after his friends. “Be safe!” Blake called.

“They like like you,” Sophia said with shock and awe. “How has this never come up?”

Blake bit back a smile, clearly proud of himself. “I mostly do summer training camps with them. Fall gets too busy to deal with the team travel. I played with Marcus, their coach, in high school. Mostly, I’m there to reinforce responsibility. If they manage to learn something about football in the meantime, even better.”

“How do you manage it all? Isn’t summer busy with farming?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But when I moved back, Marcus knew I needed to be around people. Herding thirty lovable dummies with raging hormones who want to beat the shit out of something took my mind off of things for a bit.”

They meandered through darkened apple trees toward the farm exit. “You don’t talk about her a lot.”

“It’s still hard,” he said, looking down. “But I promised her when she was sick that I would try my best to be happy. It was important to her that I keep going, you know? She and I were together for twelve years. We met in college and then got married. That’s why dating has seemed so daunting. It’s just not a skill I’ve ever had as an adult.”

Her heart broke at how lost he sounded. “You are the kindest man I’ve ever met. You have absolutely nothing to worry about, whenever you’re ready. I’m sorry if…” Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. “…if I pushed you. I didn’t realize.”

He gave her a sad half-smile. “Let me go get the truck. You stay here.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I can walk,” she said, shrugging it off.

“I don’t want your shoes to get muddy. It’s not safe to be on the road with all the cars crowding in like this. Please,” he said, turning back with a plea in his voice. “Just let me take care of you, okay? Roomie,” he added as an afterthought with a sad smile and jogged back to the old teal truck parked a quarter of a mile down the road.

When was the last time a man wanted to actually take care of her? Or spend time with her? Not try to see her bank account statement or get in her pants and be ashamed to take her out? Some guys in Dallas loved a full-bodied woman, but only in secret.

Blake drove back and slowed the truck down in front of the entrance.

She cocked her head in confusion as he hopped out and jogged around to the passenger side door. “What in the Leave It to Beaver are you doing?”

He opened her door with a mischievous smile.

“Just being a gentleman,” he said as he grabbed her hand, helping her into the cab. “Never know when one of the football players is watching.”

She felt her insides flutter. He slid into the driver’s seat.

The last time a man had opened the door for her was her prom date approximately 110 years ago. “This wasn’t a date…was it?”

Subtlety had never been her strong suit.

“Who said it was a date? I just opened the door for you.”

That’s what people do on dates. He’d also paid for her. “I’ll send you money for the drinks and snacks.” She held up her phone, but there was barely any signal.

“But you don’t have to,” he said with an arched eyebrow. He turned onto the sloping roads back to the farm. “Why don't you like people taking care of you?”

She shifted in her seat. Guess he wasn’t that subtle either. “I just don’t want anybody to feel burdened.”

“Is that because you feel burdened taking care of others?”

Ouch. Direct hit.

“You know, if this pumpkin farming thing doesn’t work out, might I suggest being a therapist?”

“I like taking care of other people because I like how it makes me feel,” he said with a low rumble as he drove with one hand at the top of the steering wheel.

Ugh, he even drove sexily.

He did seem to love taking care of people, thinking back to how he’d talked to his football players, all the things he’d done for her.

It was an experience entirely new to her.

As an eldest daughter, she was used to planning and making and doing for other people rather than for herself. She could name on one hand, maybe even one finger, the number of times a man had been on top of it enough to not only take care of himself, but her as well.

He slid a sidelong glance at her. “Does it make you feel good to take care of other people?”

She shrugged. She was her parents’ unofficial therapist. She was the one who organized all of the family events, and her constant nagging was probably the reason Iris had finally fallen for a guy. “They need me.”

“What if they just want to love you instead of needing you?” he said with a shrug.

Fucking shrugged .

As if he hadn’t just dropped an atomic bomb into her brain.

She looked out the window as the odd words clunked around in her head.

Just love me…not…need me.

But what would there be to love if I didn’t help them?

She decided to ignore it for now. No time for her world to turn topsy-turvy with a brand-new concept like that.

“Feeding people makes me feel good,” she said, answering his first question instead. “It’s easier to make something special you know someone will love than to say all the words.”

He agreed, nodding sagely. “Sometimes actions are better than words.”

She bit her lip as she smiled, looking out the window.

Like opening a car door.