Apple Orchard Bride Read online

  Jenna stopped in her tracks and glared at him. “Listen, you might as well go pack your things because I’m going to talk to my father, and when I’m done, he’s going to un-offer you that position.”

  Her hands were fisted at her sides. She looked like she might start yelling. Which wasn’t like the Jenna from his memories. She’d always been smiling, quick to tease him but also the first and most constant encourager in his life. For a long time, she’d been the only one who believed he was good enough to become a professional athlete.

  Unfortunately, he’d ended up disappointing everyone. Especially Jenna.

  Maybe returning to Goose Harbor had been a mistake. Even still, they both knew Mr. Crest would never toss him out after offering him a job and a place to stay. Jenna’s dad was a man of his word.

  “You know that—”

  “We don’t need more help on the orchard.” She lifted her chin. “I’m doing just fine on my own, and we always hire seasonal help once harvest gets into full swing anyway.”

  Toby’s gaze raked over her. Frustration had always made her appealing, but there was something more that captured his attention today. Her pale cheeks became the color of sunset pink. Her dark blue eyes deepened, like the crashing waves of Lake Michigan right before a storm. Gone was his awkward once-best friend. She was replaced by a gorgeous woman with thick eyelashes and wavy golden curls. The pleated jeans were now dark-wash ones that accentuated the curve of her hips and the narrowing of her waist, and the Crest Orchard T-shirt she wore hugged her torso. Jenna had grown up to become a beautiful woman.

  She leaned her head forward and arched her eyebrow. “You have nothing to say? Absolutely nothing?”

  Right. He should have said something, but his mouth had gone dry. What was she asking if he had anything to say about? Was she referring to her threat to get her father to fire him, or was she trying to get him to talk about something...deeper? Knowing Jenna, it was the second.

  He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. For whatever it is I did to upset you, I’m sorry.”

  “For whatever it is I did.” She mimicked his voice. “Nice, Toby. Real nice. I should have known you’d never own up to anything.”

  “I’d be happy to own up to it if I knew what you were talking about.”

  “So what happened? Huh?” She cocked her head to the side. “You finally messed up your life so badly down there in Florida that you had to come crawling back here to our podunk farm and beg for a job. Life is funny, isn’t it?” She lifted her hands, palms up, to indicate him. “Here you are...stuck in a place you openly scorned.”

  Confusion tied his gut in a knot. “Jenna...”

  “I suppose even a place and people you consider beneath you is better than jail though, right?”

  Excellent. So she knew about his drunk-driving arrests, too. He had a huge hill to climb in order to convince people in Goose Harbor that he wasn’t that Toby anymore. “They don’t actually keep you in jail. You get out on bond,” he mumbled.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” She laughed once, but the sound held no humor. “I guess something like spreading rumors about the poor, backward folk who lived across the street from you is an understandable slip of the mind. The great Toby Holcomb leaves a big wake and never looks back.”

  At least she wasn’t focusing on his arrests. But...what was she talking about? “I’ve never said—”

  “Don’t try to deny it. I heard you. More than once, I overheard you telling people about the orchard.” Jenna worked her tiny jaw back and forth. She cupped her hand over her forehead and released a long sigh. “None of that matters now. That was a long time ago. You’ve moved on. I’ve moved on. So...let’s keep with that notion and move you out of here.” She turned away and started for the farmhouse again.

  Toby kept pace with her but didn’t say anything. What could he say? Nothing. Sometimes silence was the best option. He’d use the next few weeks to unravel the reasons Jenna was so upset with him, and then he’d spend the weeks after that making up for his wrongs, no matter if they were real or only perceived.

  He couldn’t accept the fact that she might not forgive him or that things couldn’t go back to how they were before. They had to. He wanted to make her laugh again and suddenly longed to find their old haunts and set out on new adventures together. Dream about their futures, as they’d done before. Here at the orchard, they were somehow sheltered from the real world and the issues in their lives from the past years. He was able to breathe deeply here, and he felt more like himself than he’d felt...since he left. And Jenna was a part of that, wasn’t she? Even with ten years of distance between them, she knew him better than anyone else alive.

  He’d make things right between them. He had to. Because as he walked beside her through the orchard again—even with the two of them at odds—his heart had never felt more at home. Perhaps that’s why his relationships in Florida had never worked, had never felt right.

  His heart had been stuck in Goose Harbor all along.

  Chapter Two

  Jenna felt like she was going to throw up.

  Why wouldn’t Toby go away? Just. Go. Away.

  A charge buzzed over her skin as if she were still touching the electric fence. He was invading her safe place. Her escape. Her mind instantly flew to a darker place. To a date in college with a very different man, who had invaded not only her space but her body, taking her innocence and destroying her faith in other people in one night.

  She’d survived the past eight years since then by carefully constructing a life that kept her safe and protected at all times. Only interacting with other people on her terms—like at church or the farmers’ market or at the Bible study she attended—and then spending the rest of her time locked away. Alone. Safe.

  The only man she really trusted was her father. He was the only one she was okay with being near. Toby living on her dad’s property messed up her protected space. She couldn’t feel secure here if she had to worry about running into him all the time. Not that Toby would harm her physically—she didn’t believe that of her old friend for one second—but the feeling of invasion made her gasp for air all the same.

  A line of sweat slipped down her spine. They were in for another hot day.

  Her father didn’t know, would never know, about the assaults that happened to her during college. He wouldn’t be able to comprehend why Jenna was so vehemently opposed to Toby living in the bunkhouse. The only way to get Dad to agree would be to tell him about the horrible things she’d overheard Toby say about his beloved orchard all those years ago and hope it fired Dad up enough to tell Toby to take a hike. Although... Dad could be frustratingly full of grace and forgiveness. It was a trait she had admired and loved about him until this very moment.

  When she rounded the edge of the last row of trees, her two-story white farmhouse came into view. Although, instead of the normal, peaceful feelings that the sight of her family home usually brought, she zeroed in on all that was wrong with it. The house hadn’t been painted in years, probably because Dad had been declining for longer than anyone—even he—realized. Huge chunks of white were missing from sections of the lower portion of the house, and both sets of stairs and the front and side overhangs drooped. The gray-green roof had seen better days. The state of the house resembled Toby’s high school statements about the Crests being podunk and backward.

  “I want to stay.” Toby’s voice broke through her thoughts. “I want to help here.”

  “We don’t need you.” She sped up her stride, making it to the back steps a moment later. She yanked open the screen door, and it shuttered on its ancient frame. “Dad!” she called. “We need to talk.”

  A bowl of oatmeal sat untouched and cold at the kitchen table. She glanced at the digital numbers on the oven. Almost nine in the morning. She’d been out longer than she’d planned, but Da
d should have finished eating by now.

  Worry gnawing at the back of her mind, Jenna left the kitchen and made for the front of the house. Because it was built more than a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as an open floor plan in their farmhouse, just little divided areas.

  “Dad!” Her voice grew louder. Why wasn’t he answering?

  Jenna all but ran into the front sitting room and screamed when she saw her father lying, facedown, on the floor. Chunks of a broken mug were scattered near where one of his hands rested in a pool of coffee, but more concerning was the small puddle of red near where his forehead rested.

  “Dad! No! No! No!” she yelled and fell to her knees beside him. She touched his shoulder. Still warm. Alive. Thank You, God.

  “Toby!” she screamed. “Toby, help!” The infuriating man had followed her all over the orchard but hadn’t followed her into the farmhouse. He must have heard her call, though, because his echoing steps pounded into the house.

  “Jenna?” His voice lifted in question.

  “Front room!” She turned her attention back to her dad. “Daddy.” She tapped his shoulders again. “Please be okay. I need you to be okay.” She smoothed her hand over his back. Should she move him? Flip him over? She probably wasn’t strong enough to do it while still supporting his neck. That’s what a person was supposed to do when someone passed out, right? Turn them on their back and start chest compressions? Or would that harm him? If something was wrong with his neck or back, movement might further injure him. She didn’t want to make the decision on her own. “Toby!” she yelled again. Hurry up!

  “Jen—” Toby’s face fell when he entered the room. “What happened?” He dropped down beside her.

  “I don’t know. I found him like this.” Her words trembled as tears started to crash down toward her chin. “I can’t lose him, Tobe.” Her childhood name for him slipped out before she could rein it in. She pressed on. “Will you help me roll him over?”

  Toby eased closer. “Call 9-1-1. If he needs it, I know CPR.”

  “But—” Feeling completely out of control in the situation, she froze. She wanted to curl up in a ball and let Toby take care of everything. But Dad needed her.

  “Now, Jenna. Call.” Toby looked back at her father. He gently cupped where the nape of Dad’s neck met his hair and flipped him onto his back. The line of blood on her dad’s temple shifted to run down the side of his face. He looked as if he had on fake paint for a monster costume. On the positive side, if the gash was still bleeding, then he couldn’t have been passed out long.

  Toby grabbed her father’s wrist and leaned close to his chest. “He has a pulse and he’s breathing. Call, Jenna. Go call for help.”

  Dial 9-1-1. Right. Her cell phone. She felt in her pockets. She hadn’t grabbed it earlier. Jenna started for the kitchen but stopped when she heard a quiet groan.

  Toby smiled. “He’s awake.”

  Her dad blinked a few times and then tried to sit up, but Toby stayed him with a hand to his shoulder. “Easy, now, Mr. Crest. You fell. We found you passed out. We’re going to call an ambulance for you.”

  “No.” Her father pressed his eyes shut and groaned again. “No ambulance. I won’t leave my house that way.”

  Toby sent Jenna a look that said “What now?” It was only an uneven lift of his eyebrows, but she knew him well enough to know what all his facial expressions meant.

  “Daddy.” She slowly stepped back into the room, as if he might scare if she walked normally. “You’re bleeding. You were unconscious. We need to get you to the hospital.”

  “Stop your worrying, the both of you.” Dad started to try to rise to a sitting position again, so Toby braced his back and helped him up. Toby pulled one of the chairs closer so her father could lean against it.

  Dad gingerly touched his temple. “It was nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Jenna arched her eyebrow. “Like your hands shaking were nothing this morning?”

  “I tripped on the carpeting and knocked my head on the arm of that chair on the way down.” He pointed at the curled-over edge of their large rug and the wooden armrest on one of the two antique chairs that flagged the sitting area. “That’s all. It could happen to anyone. Even someone strong and fit like you or Toby.”

  “Even still.” Toby exchanged another worried look with Jenna. “We’d like to get you to the hospital.”

  Her father set his jaw. “I’m not climbing into an ambulance.”

  “They help you into it—” Toby started to say.

  Jenna shook her head. “That’s not what he means.” Dad could be more stubborn than dried tar. Which was probably where she got that particular trait from.

  Jenna disappeared into the kitchen and grabbed her keys, her cell phone and a clean dish towel from the counter. She marched back into the sitting room and jangled the keys. “I’m driving you there.” She tossed the kitchen towel to Toby. “Press that to his cut.”

  Toby did as instructed. And as if reading her mind, when they were ready to leave, Toby wrapped his arm around her father and helped him walk to the car.

  “I’ll sit in back.” Dad motioned toward the backseat of her late-model Camry. “I may want to lie down.”

  Toby made sure her dad was buckled in. “Try not to fall back to sleep. I’m sure they’ll want to check you for a concussion,” he instructed before claiming the passenger seat.

  Jenna started up the car and backed out of their driveway without looking over at Toby. If he hadn’t been there...if she’d been all alone and something happened to her father...something worse...what would she have done? Would she have been able to clear her mind enough to call for help? She wanted the answer to that question to be yes, of course. But whenever panic clawed its way into her chest, it seemed to affect her ability to think, as well. What if something happened to her father and she couldn’t help him because she was in the middle of an anxiety attack?

  Toby was right. She needed another person at the orchard. She needed help.

  Now to taste humble pie.

  “Thank you,” she whispered so only Toby could hear. No need to stress her father out in his condition; he didn’t need to know that she and Toby had been arguing.

  “For?” Toby’s eyebrows rose.

  “Coming when I called...even after...” She swallowed hard and tried to make her voice even. “After what I said to you.”

  “Listen.” He angled his body so he was leaning over the middle control area and lowered his voice. “From what I’ve gathered, there’s some water under the bridge that you and I need to sort through. And we will. But no matter what—and hear me on this, Jenna—no matter what happens between us, I’ll always come if you call for me. Got that? Always.”

  She sucked in a shaky breath and nodded. Toby wanted to deal with their issues? Was that even possible? And if they did sort through everything...then what? They weren’t kids running through the apple orchard any longer—they could never go back to those carefree days. After everything that had happened in both of their lives, they could never go back to their old, easy friendship.

  She could accept his help on the orchard and with her father, but she couldn’t welcome him back as a friend. Not ever. Not after the way he—and every guy after him—had betrayed her.

  “Mr. Crest.” Toby opened his visor and used the mirror on it to keep an eye on her father. “I’m going to ask you some questions to help you stay alert, okay?”

  “Do your worst.” Her dad’s smile was soft, but his joking manner made Jenna ease her foot off the accelerator. It wouldn’t help them to get a speeding ticket on the way to the hospital.

  “Favorite food?”

  “Besides apple pie?”

  “Sure.”

  “Roast-beef sandwiches.”

  “Who’s the best football team?”
Toby asked with a grin.

  Dad laughed. “Packers.”

  “You know that makes you a state traitor, right?” Toby shook his head as his grin widened.

  “Oh, please.” Her father crossed his arms. “Had they offered for you out of college, you would have accepted.”

  “You’re...you’re not wrong.”

  Had Toby flinched? Or had Jenna only imagined it?

  Toby cleared his throat. “Did Kasey give you any trouble this morning?”

  “Who’s Kasey?” Jenna glanced in Toby’s direction at the next stoplight. His pale blue eyes almost looked like they had a white electric circle in them. She forced herself to look back at the road.

  Her dad leaned toward the front of the car. “She’s only the cutest little girl I’ve ever met. Present company excluded.” He tapped Jenna’s shoulder and then rested his other hand on Toby’s shoulder. “She was nervous about her first day of school and starting after everyone else, so she and I prayed together before she got on the bus.”

  “Wait.” Jenna gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Who’s Kasey? She was at our house? I’m so confused.”

  “I helped her get on the bus so Toby could start working on the orchard.”

  Toby nodded and then pointed toward the entrance to the hospital parking lot. Like much of the Goose Harbor area, the small hospital was nestled in by the thick forest that lined much of the dune-covered areas of town. If there weren’t huge arrows and many signs for the hospital on the street leading up to the entryway, people would miss it all the time, especially when not thinking straight in an emergency.

  Jenna would have never missed the entrance though. She’d driven Dad here for one too many appointments in the past six months. She could probably sleepwalk to the hospital with no problem. Which was a good thing, because Dad and Toby’s discussion had distracted her.