“But what do you need me for?”
“He and I have…history.”
Honey tilted her head. “What kind of history?”
“I married his sister.”
Chapter 16
Honey
The Sugar Spoon Showdown took place on the Town Green, a sprawling knoll of grass framed by maple trees just beginning to blush with fall color. Though it wasn’t supposed to start until noon, the Green was already humming with energy.
A long banquet table stretched nearly end to end, covered with mismatched gingham cloths and sagging slightly under the weight of an impressive spread of baked goods. Golden-crusted pies oozed jammy filling, and there were at least six varieties of apple crumble alone. Plates stacked with cinnamon-sugar snickerdoodles and sparkly lemon bars sat beside ornate towers of cream puffs.
“Do you see him?” Honey asked.
“Not yet,” Ethan replied. Hands on his hips and his brow furrowed, he continued to scan the field.
Meanwhile, Honey watched everything else.
At the head of the table, a trio of elderly judges in oversized straw hats were locked in a heated debate, their voices rising and fingers jabbing wildly in the direction of a cherry lattice pie.
One woman stood watching the debate, arms crossed over a moss green sweater. Her dark hair was twisted into two buns held in place by what looked like actual sprigs of rosemary and a bundle of cinnamon sticks. One black combat boot tapped out a slow rhythm against the grass as she observed the scene with a predator’s patience.
Honey was about to ask who she was when a flash of movement caught her eye—a familiar silver braid and blue bandana charging across the green with Melly flailing behind her.
“Whatever it is, she cheated!” Marlene bellowed, jabbing a finger at the woman in green.
“I take it that’s Clover Marrow,” Honey murmured, nudging Ethan gently with her elbow.
“Mhm. She owns The Kettle. Reigning champion of the Showdown for the last six years, with the exception of…”
He trailed off, and she watched the tick of his jaw.
This pause reminded her that even though she stayed in his daughter’s room, her phone lit up with his messages beyond working hours, and she shared his breakfast table, Honey was an outsider here.
That shouldn’t bother her.
She didn’t care for gossip. She hadn’t asked her neighbor Ruby about whatever drama made the doorman start carrying a taser, though Ruby had told her anyway. She hadn’t pried when the neighbor across the hall moved in with nothing but a shoebox and a potted plant. And she certainly wouldn’t ask what had happened the only year Clover Marrow lost the bake-off.
Not that she wasn’t curious.
But curiosity is a funny thing. It was fine when it was about creating a better system, streamlining chaos,or making life a little more efficient. That kind of curiosity served a purpose.
This was something else.
This pause. This town. This man. It tugged at her in a way she didn’t know how to categorize. She didn’t want to know what happened for the sake of her job or for the sake of the farm. She wanted to understand.
The way this place worked.
The people.
Him.
And that realization made her feel off balance.
All her life, she'd followed rules—her own and everyone else's—drawing neat lines between work and feeling, structure and mess. Helping Ethan save the farm, she’d told herself, was about the greater good. But noseying into this small-town drama that had nothing to do with her audit, and everything to do with people breaking the very rules she was trained to uphold? Wanting to learn why Ethan suddenly looked like he’d bitten a lemon when he talked about his former brother-in-law?
