Second Chance at the Orchard Inn, page 5
What’s new in Texas? It is all going down out here rn. Jonah and Lark broke up and OMG the work drama. You’re missing it! When are you coming back?! I’m booooooooooored without you.
I miss you too, Aurora messaged back.
Sloane responded. One of the restaurant group execs came in last week and asked about you.
A partner of the restaurant group was asking about her.
She replied to Sloane, Asking in a good or bad way?
I think a good way. He wanted to know when you were going to be back.
It was time to go back to California. Maybe past time.
Chapter 6
Is the Holcombe order ready yet?” Jude’s mom, Linda, pushed back her ever-present straw hat as she walked into the main store of the farm.
“Yep. Got it right here.” Jude handed a box of half a dozen lavender bouquets to her.
He checked on Jenna in the back of the shop. She was quietly snipping and separating lavender into small bundles for retail sales, while his dad “supervised.” His sister Bonnie and her friend Meredith rushed into the back room of the shop, disrupting the peace. “Logan is here for his order. If it’s ready, we can take it to his truck.”
“Ready.” Jude tapped four boxes sitting on the outgoing table. “Invoice is inside.”
“He wanted a double order this time,” his dad chimed in. “Did you remember to fill a double order?”
“Yeah, Dad. I remembered.” It was his job to remember.
As they took out the order, John Jones made his way around the worktable, eyeing the progress of the other orders like he was the foreman at a construction site. “I’m just making sure. No need to get defensive.”
“I’m not getting defensive.”
His dad peered at him over the top of his glasses. “That sounds an awful lot like your defensive tone.”
Okay, maybe he was being mildly defensive, but he’d run the sales side of things on the farm for a year now and had been diving heavily into operations. Yet his dad still didn’t trust him to handle any of it responsibly. Or without his supervision.
“Uh-oh, is there a family meeting I didn’t know about?” Bonnie returned and joined them at the worktable.
His youngest sister knew how strained things had become between Jude and their dad, and she waffled between full support of Jude taking charge, and full insistence that he wasn’t doing enough for the farm’s future.
“No meeting.” Jude went to work on the giant bin of picked lavender and the wrapping paper used to protect the bundles.
“Your brother is in a mood because I asked about an order.”
Jude clenched his jaw to keep from taking the bait.
“Hmm.” Bonnie grinned, leaning eagerly over the table to pick up some lavender. “Are we sure this mood is all about work?”
He flashed a look at his sister, knowing exactly where she was going with this.
“Because Jenna said you’ve been in a bit of a mood since the market yesterday.”
Jude huffed through his nose. “Jenna’s got a big mouth.”
Bonnie smirked. “She said Aurora came by our tent.”
“Aurora as in your ex-girlfriend Aurora?” his dad asked.
Jude grabbed several sheets of thin protective paper and wrapped a bundle of lavender with entirely too much gusto. “Let’s all just get back to work.”
“Quit picking on Jude.” Meredith joined them at the table, probably to pick on him more. “He’s outnumbered and he’s going to hurt the lavender.”
“I have so many questions though.” Bonnie wrapped her bundle of lavender carefully. “Like what did she say? What did you say?”
“Go run the front of the store. How about that for an answer?” Jude put on a big smile.
“I’d like to know more too,” John added, his tone far less playful than Bonnie’s.
“Come on.” Meredith took Bonnie’s bundle and placed it in a shipping box before pulling her toward the door. “You can interrogate Jude later.”
“Aurora Shipley was at the market?” his dad asked, as soon as the girls left the room. “At our booth?”
“In the flesh.”
His dad’s brow furrowed. “It’s been a while since she was in town.”
If that wasn’t the understatement of the decade.
“She moved to California, Dad. By way of Colorado. I haven’t seen her since graduation.” Though she’d surely visited at holidays, they’d managed to avoid each other until now.
“Why was she at the market?” his dad asked.
“I don’t know. I guess to buy produce and crafts, like everyone else.”
“Mmm.” John took off his glasses and polished them.
“She’s coming by the farm today too,” Jude added, knowing it’d bother his dad, but it’d bother him more if Jude didn’t give him advance notice.
Aurora had been close to his entire family, except for Jude’s dad, but her absence affected them all in some way. His dad had always insisted she was a distraction for Jude—their relationship something that took his attention off baseball, his grades, and his responsibilities at the farm. But when they broke up, and Aurora left, the change in Jude wasn’t what his father had anticipated.
John paused with his glasses halfway up his nose. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Nope. You can ask your daughter.”
“Jenna?”
Jude nodded. “She invited her when Aurora and Cece visited our booth.”
“Well, that’ll be…interesting.”
Jude’s mom chose that moment to join them, still fiddling with her too big straw hat. “What’s interesting?”
“Aurora Shipley is coming to the farm today,” his dad blurted.
His mom’s eyes went wide. “I’d heard she’d moved back here, but—”
“Not moved back. She’s here temporarily to help at the inn,” Jude corrected her.
“That’s right. They had to fire that caterer or whatnot, who gave those people food poisoning.”
News traveled fast around town, and everyone had quickly learned of Aurora’s return to help her sisters get their inn back on the rails. Details like Aurora’s moving back permanently versus her being here only temporarily didn’t matter when it came to local gossip.
His mom shook her head. “That was some bad luck indeed. It will be so good to see her though. Where was she working in California? Do you know?”
As it so happened, he did know. When he’d heard she was back a couple of months ago, he’d googled her. She had a public Instagram page, so he’d had a scroll. He’d told no one about his little investigative jaunt on social media though. All he’d heard for months after Aurora left was that it was time to move on. He should get over her, get over the two of them and what they’d had, and live his life. Mostly this came from his dad, but no one else ever jumped in to argue otherwise.
For a while it’d felt like an impossibility, but finally, he’d managed to move forward.
If he ever mentioned to his family that he’d looked her up, he risked their deepest concern—again. They meant well, but Jude didn’t want to go back to the place, ten years ago, with their worried glances and apprehensive questions.
“I don’t know,” he answered instead. “Some restaurant.”
“Is she in town for much longer?”
“I have no idea,” he answered honestly.
“Quit quizzing the boy, Linda.” His father rescued him, surprisingly.
But Jude knew why she was asking. His mom had adored Aurora while they were dating. And why wouldn’t she? Aurora had always been kind and respectful, funny and endearing.
From what she’d shared with him, and what he’d seen, Aurora had had a rocky relationship with her own mother. Not unusual since she was a teenager, but Jude got the feeling it was more than that. Aurora often commented how easygoing and accepting Jude’s mom was with her.
Jenna popped her head in from the front of the shop. “Someone is here to see you.”
His stomach twisted into a knot. Aurora was here.
He tried to pace his steps to the front of the store, not to seem overeager or dreadful. Just calm and relaxed. Any old day, business as usual. His parents followed right behind him.
Jude pushed open the swinging door and found two ladies at the counter. He recognized them from the farmers’ market the day before.
Decidedly not Aurora.
“Well, hey! Good, the gang’s all here. I’m Maureen and this is Doris, we’re on the Planning Committee for this year’s jamboree and rodeo, and we noticed that no one from Edge of the World Farm signed y’all up for the big pie contest.”
“Or for anything for the jamboree,” Doris added.
Maureen nodded as she spoke. “Y’all are planning to participate in the celebration, aren’t you?”
Bonnie and Meredith slowly made their way over to join everyone at the counter.
Jude’s mom looked to him to answer, but his dad spoke up. “You bet we are. We wouldn’t miss the big celebration.”
“Wonderful. What kind of pie can we sign you up for?”
His dad looked at Jude.
So now he had to answer for the family?
“Or is it a secret?”
“Secret,” Jude answered quickly. “Naturally. We want it to be a surprise. Put us down for surprise pie.”
His family hadn’t discussed the first thing about the Stonewall Peach JAMboree. With everything going on at the farm, along with his dad’s health, they hadn’t gotten around to even acknowledging the annual event was coming up. The whole tri-county area participated in the jamboree each year. It was a big deal, had gone on for decades, but this year, it’d snuck right up on them.
“I can’t wait to see what y’all do,” one of the ladies exclaimed.
“Are you the baker in the family?” Doris asked Bonnie.
Jude burst out laughing, then tried to cover it by clearing his throat.
Meredith slapped him on the back. “Bonnie doesn’t bake,” Meredith explained. “Or cook things. At all. So no, she won’t be entering the contest.”
“I am available for judging though.” Bonnie smiled.
The ladies laughed. “Wonderful. We’ll just put the farm’s name next to your pie contest entry. And give some thought to anything else you might like to do for the celebration.”
They made some more small talk and eventually the ladies left with a few bundles of lavender.
“You don’t bake either,” Bonnie pointed out as soon as they left.
“Which is why I didn’t sign us up for a baking contest,” he murmured to her while checking his phone. So much for getting out of it though.
“We’ve participated in the jamboree every year, son,” his dad grumbled.
“We’ve got a lot going on this year, Dad. It’s okay to sit it out one year.”
“Pssht.” His father dismissed him with the wave of one callused hand. “We ain’t missing a year. And if they want to do a cake contest this year, we’re doing a cake.”
“Who is going to bake the cake?” Meredith asked.
“Pie. Not a cake,” Jude corrected. “And heck if I know. Mom?”
His mom shook her head. “I don’t enter contests to have my food judged.”
“We can figure out the pie later.” Jude checked his phone again. “We also need to decide what else we’re going to do to participate in the jamboree. Can you two find out what that includes, what are our options, etcetera?”
“Sure. Are you late for something?” Meredith asked. “You keep checking your phone.”
Bonnie grinned. “That’s because Jenna invited Jude’s high school girlfriend to come by the farm today.”
“Oooo, nice.” Meredith tapped her fingers together like some cartoon villain. “I’m so glad I’m here for this.”
“I don’t need an audience, thanks. Don’t you two have something you could do in the fields?”
Behind them, his mother gasped.
Jude spun around, expecting to see a snake, a giant spider. Something. Anything other than his dad about to fall under the weight of several wholesale boxes.
“Dad!” Jude grabbed the boxes as Bonnie grabbed his dad.
“They’re overweighted,” his father claimed.
Jude put the boxes back on the counter. They were not overweighted. They packed each box to a specific weight, and Jude was a stickler for compliance. But arguing with his dad over the weight of boxes was a fool’s game. He’d never win, and in the end, everyone in their general area would be brought into it, and all would end up feeling a little bit worse than they had prior.
“Let us move the boxes,” Bonnie tried. “You and Mom can go back to the house and relax.”
“I’m not going back to the house.” He shrugged her off and pulled away.
Bonnie shared a look with Jude. They both knew their father was aging out of the manual labor required on the farm, but you couldn’t tell him that.
His cardiologist had told him, told the whole family, no red meat, more vegetables. No heavy lifting, more walks around the farm. Less fats and cheese, and—worst of all—start taking a statin.
Well, John Jones was not going to stop eating steak or cheese, he was fine with a daily walk, but he was absolutely never going to take heart medication.
I’ve never taken so much as an aspirin my whole life was the man’s mantra.
Jude and his sisters knew their father needed to retire, just like they knew he never would.
“I’m fine.” He stomped toward the door to the back room. “Besides, don’t we all want to be here to see Aurora?”
The way he cooed her name grated across Jude’s skin. For as much as his mother loved Aurora, his father resented her. The way he saw it, their relationship had threatened Jude’s performance. When they’d started to have a little dating drama during playoffs, Aurora had become the worst in the world.
“That girl is messing with your head,” his father had fussed. “Get your mind back in the game and forget about her. Girls are a dime a dozen, but championships come once in a lifetime.”
In the present, Jude rolled his eyes. To think he’d ever bought into such garbage. Aurora wasn’t one of a dozen. She was one of a kind. And sure, he could’ve focused more on his education and baseball career than he had on her, but he should’ve been able to do both.
“C’mon Linda,” his father summoned his mom to follow him into the back, probably to complain about their children and their disrespect for daring to have any concern over his health. “You need to watch how you’re packing them boxes.”
His mother gave them a sympathetic look as she passed.
“We have to do something about him,” Bonnie insisted as soon as they were gone.
Jude dug a hand through his hair and tried to relax his jaw. “What would you suggest we do, Bon?”
“Those boxes aren’t overpacked. He just can’t lift stuff anymore.”
“I know that.”
“He needs to retire. He can’t keep up anymore.”
“I’ve already tried talking to him about stepping down and letting me take over. He won’t hear of it. Mom has tried to get him to take his medicine. Should we just tie him down and force him to stop working, shove pills down his throat?”
“No!” Bonnie paced, as aggravated as him. “I’m not saying that, but…you’re going to have to talk to him again. He’ll listen to you.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know, but he’s got to. It’s time for you to run the farm. He can’t do it anymore.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Jude shouted. He knew it better than anyone. He wanted it more than anyone.
His whole life, Jude had longed for and prepared for taking the reins of Edge of the World Farm. That was the dream. Take over the family business, expand and improve, bring the farm into the next era, make sure they could all provide for themselves, secure the family’s future and make them proud.
“Hey.” Bonnie scowled, her brow creased and eyes wide with hurt. “I’m on your side.”
Jude’s shoulders dropped and he reached for his sister. “I know. C’mere. I’m sorry.”
They shared a side hug.
“I just…dealing with Dad fires me up. I get so aggravated, but I have to be calm. He can’t get too mad or, I don’t know, he might have a heart attack. He won’t listen to reason. It’s exhausting.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to get through to him.”
Bonnie’s mouth tugged down in the corner. “We’ve got to figure out a way, or he’s going to get himself killed.”
Her words echoed the thought he’d had every day for the last few months. It was time for John Jones to retire. Jude was ready. He wanted to run the farm, he wanted to lead. And he’d be the kind of leader who actually listened to others. His sisters were smart and skillful, and better than him at certain things.
Together, they’d grow the farm into the kind of business they’d only dreamed of.
But not if their father wouldn’t let them.
Jude took a deep breath and let out the longest sigh of his life. “I’ll talk to him again. I’ll take care of it.”
“You will?” Bonnie looked up, her blue eyes wide with hope.
“I need to figure out how to get through to him, but yes, I will.”
“Um, I think the old girlfriend might be here.” Meredith’s words jolted him to attention.
A sporty little SUV was parked in front of the shop. Aurora climbed out of the passenger seat, her hair wavy and falling to her shoulders.
“Is that her?” Meredith glanced back at them and Bonnie nodded.
“Wow, she’s really pretty. Hmph. This ought to be interesting.”
Jude’s chest tightened, and his feet refused to move as he watched her through the front windows of the store. The sight of her made him want to run to her and away from her, at the same time.
They’d broken each other’s hearts, and now they were going to—what? Explore the farm together? Just make small talk, casually coexist and pretend like they’d dealt with each other and made peace with the past instead of diligently ignoring it for ten years?
Sure.
