Feels Like Home: A Southerland Family Contemporary Romance Book 1 (27 page)

Sliding the French toast onto a plate,
she topped it with the sliced berries and sprinkled on powdered
sugar. When she pushed open the door to the dining room, the man
looked over the rim of the coffee cup he clutched like a lifeline
and hit her with a smile so full of pleasure she stopped
mid-step.

“
I think I love you,” he
said when she set the plate in front of him. He took an enormous
bite of French toast and berries and groaned. “God, it’s official.
True love. What did you do to the strawberries to make them taste
so good?”

“
Not a thing. It’s just
the berries. They’re grown locally at a farm at the bottom of the
mountain. First of the season.” As she said it, she tried not to
think about the farmer who grew them and how much she’d hoped they
would be more than friends. No use crying over bruised
berries.

“
They’re amazing,” he
said, following another bite of toast with a swallow of coffee. “So
is this view.”

Bailey looked out the wall of windows
to the view of the valley below. She’d fallen in love with Mountain
Lake on a weekend visit to her sister, Rachel, at Virginia Tech.
They made the climb up the 4,000 foot peak in Rachel’s ancient
Volvo and had lunch at the old Mountain Lake Hotel. Bailey had been
completely charmed by the history of the place.

When she was ready to start a
restaurant of her own, she’d come back to Mountain Lake and found
the house hanging off the side of the mountain that she’d turned
into Seasons.

“
It is, isn’t it?” She
took one more look out over the spring green patches in the valley
below. “More coffee?” she asked, reaching for the pot.

“
Please,” he said. “My
name is Spencer Davis, by the way. Thanks for saving me from
another cup of hotel coffee.”

“
My pleasure. I’m Bailey
Southerland.” She held out her hand and Spencer took it in his much
larger one, not so much shaking it as giving it a gentle
squeeze.

“
Nice to meet you, Bailey
Southerland. I think it’s going to be a real pleasure getting to
know you.”

Trace Campbell finished pulling the
last of the radishes from the end of the row. It was barely May,
but if the weather held, it would soon be too hot to keep them from
bolting and going to seed. The variety was a blend called Easter
egg and the ping pong sized globes were white, pink, pale lavender
and the expected red. Bailey had asked him to plant them for her to
use at Seasons.

He dropped them into the tub. He’d add
them to the greens he and the interns had picked that morning and
take them up to the restaurant with another batch of strawberries
and some fat asparagus spears. His long-term intern, Jake handled
some of the other deliveries, but Trace always went to Bailey’s
himself.

“
Hey boss, what do you
want to put in here?” Amanda, a junior from Radford and his newest
intern, stood at the end of one of the beds they’d cleared the
spinach out of the day before. She tucked her hands in the pockets
of her cut off short shorts and stuck out her chin in a gesture
that was almost provocative.

Please don’t let her get
any ideas
. It seemed like at least once a
season he ended up fielding off unwanted advances from one of the
young college women who came to work for him on the farm. Usually
it was a simple as making it clear that he didn’t get involved with
the people who worked for him, but it always made for some awkward
days.

He didn’t have any illusions that it
was him they were interested in. For most of them it was their
romanticized view of the farmer, the same reason they spent their
summers working on the farm. Ten years from now they wouldn’t be
farming, they’d just gotten caught up in the magic of working the
land and saw him as a kind of a contemporary Thoreau.

They wanted a fling and his roots ran
too deep for that. The few times he did date it was someone from
Blacksburg or even farther away and he always kept things casual
and just for fun. There had only been one person he’d really been
interested in in over a decade, since Anna left really. And he
wasn’t about to mess things up by changing their relationship. He
might want more – hell, he did want more, but there was no way he’d
risk losing their friendship.

“
Go ahead and rake the bed
and then you can put in a second crop of Swiss chard.” Bright
Lights, it was another of Bailey’s varieties. “Get Jake to help you
if you have questions. I’ll be back later.” He picked up the tub
and headed to the shed to get the rest of the produce for
Seasons.

Trace’s twenty year old Ford pickup
ground its way up the mountain. It worked harder and harder at the
end of each switch back. He ought to replace it before it broke
down for good, but he just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it
while there was still some life left in it. He passed the huge
boulders that dotted the top of the mountain and was struck again
by the size of the rhododendrons. Spring was a little later
arriving at this elevation and purple blooms still covered the tree
sized plants.

There was already a car in the lot at
Seasons and he glanced at his watch to make sure it wasn’t later
than he thought. No, too early for dinner traffic even on the
weekend. He grabbed the tub of produce from the passenger seat and
pushed open the back door. Emory stood at the counter polishing
dishwasher spots off of the silverware and stacking it in trays. It
was too early for whoever was serving that night to be there yet,
assuming Bailey had someone scheduled. Things didn’t really pick up
at the lodge for another month, but Bailey’s restaurant had earned
its own reputation and people had started to make the long drive to
the top of the mountain just for her fresh seasonal
menus.

It made him proud to think of it. When
she moved into the empty house four years ago and said she was
going to turn it into a destination restaurant, none of the locals
thought she’s last a year. She proved them all wrong. She was smart
and creative and her hard work had paid off.

“
Where’s the boss
lady?”

“
Out front with some guy,”
said Emory.

“
What guy?” Trace hadn’t
let himself take a chance getting romantically involved with Bailey
because he didn’t want to risk losing her as a friend. She was too
important to him. His stomach clenched at the thought that he might
lose her to someone else.

“
Some writer. He was here
when I got in. I think he’s been here all day.”

“
What’s he
doing?”

“
Don’t know, but I don’t
think he came for the food or if he did, that’s not why he stayed,”
said Emory with a knowing glance.

Trace set the tub on the center work
table and pushed open the door to the dining room. Bailey sat at
one of the tables by the window, laughing with some guy wearing one
of those fake work shirts too clean to have ever seen an honest
day’s labor. She leaned toward him, her dark curls falling in a
riot around her face. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked so
pretty, he stopped for a moment and simply watched her.

The guy was watching her, too, looking
at her like she was something good to eat. Trace clenched his fists
to keep from decking him before they were even introduced. He
cleared his throat and they turned to look at him. Bailey jumped,
her expression sheepish and defiant at the same time.

It was his own damn fault. She’d been
dropping hints, some more obvious than others since they got back
from her brother’s engagement party. He was the one who’d kept his
distance. She was a beautiful, successful and incredibly sweet. It
made sense that other men would be interested in her, but he didn’t
have to like it.

“
Trace, this is Spencer.
He’s writing about the lake.”

“
The geology?” asked
Trace. The guy in the clean shirt – Spencer – didn’t look like a
science geek but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Mountain Lake was one
of only two natural lakes in the state and its cycle of suddenly
emptying and refilling made it a curiosity for serious scientists
and those with just a passing interest in geology.

“
God no,” said Spencer.
“I’m not writing about the lake itself, but my novel is set here. I
came to do some research and maybe find a little time to play.” He
looked at Bailey and smiled.

If she blushed Trace was going to be
sick.

“
We were just talking
about the last time the lake drained. I hadn’t opened yet, but you
were here, weren’t you?” Bailey smiled at him, sweet and guileless,
and he tried to remember why he shouldn’t drag her away from the
other man and find some way to claim her as his own.

Friends, that’s right. They were
friends. Love didn’t last, at least not the romantic kind, and he
needed her to stay his friend. Hell, he couldn’t imagine his world
without her.

She kept staring at him and smiling,
and he realized she was waiting for him to say
something.

He shook his head to clear it. “In
2008, yeah, I was here. It started to empty a couple of years
earlier, but that was the low point. It was pretty bad. There were
dead fish everywhere.”

“
Really?” said the writer-
Spencer – what kind of name was that anyway? “It’s done that
before, hasn’t it?” He asked Trace the question but his gaze was
glued to Bailey.

Trace had a feeling he knew the answer
already, but he couldn’t figure out how to do anything but tell him
without looking like a jerk.”Yeah, six or seven times in the last
4,200 years.”

“
Wow,” said Spencer, still
staring at Bailey. “That’s amazing.”

And this time she did
blush, the rosy color making her dark eyes and curls even prettier
than normal. Trace clenched his fists and rolled his eyes.
Could the guy be any more obvious?

Bailey caught him mid-roll and
deliberately turned her attention back to the other guy.

Perfect. Just
perfect.

Click
here
to read more of Trace and
Bailey’s story.