“It gets pretty good eastern light, so in the off-season, I typically use it for?—”
Daisy was already pushing open the door. Emerson hurried after her, as if arriving two seconds before Luca would change anything.
“Uh, prepping starts,” he finished hastily as Luca followed him into the room. “Storing seeds. Drying herbs.” After dropping Luca’s suitcase, he swooped past Daisy to gather dirty trays from the dresser, the bed, the ground into his arms. “That kind of stuff. Sorry I didn’t clean it more before you arrived.” Juggling the soil-crusted trays in one arm, he swept a hand across the bedspread with a frown. Well. At least the pillows looked clean.
“No worries.” Luca dropped the rest of his bags onto the bed. “Looks just fineto me.”
“Typically all this stuff would be done in greenhouses, but mine are a bit of a mess at the moment.”At the momentmeaning,they’ve been a mess since we bought the farm and I haven’t been able to fix them yet, even though it’s been years and doing so is essential to my long-term business plan.
“Maybe that’s something I could help you with?”
Emerson opened his mouth but couldn’t formulate a reply. Even with Luca’s extra help, there was so much to do this next month, especially with preparing for the wedding, that it felt impossible to believe the greenhouses would be fixed anytime soon.
God. Emerson had agreed to host a wedding inSeptember. By many accounts, his busiest month of the year.
“Yeah,” he eventually said.
Luca stepped toward the arrangement of mismatched cabinets along the far wall.
“This where you keep your seeds?” He pulled out a small drawer, labeledPeppersin Jayden’s neat hand.
“Yeah.” Emerson swallowed. Jayden had found every piece of the vintage assortment of cabinets and shelving in this room—along with a lot of other things that filled this house and this farm—all along the Oregon Coast, from scouring thrift shops to hours spent on Facebook Marketplace and Buy Nothing.
They hadn’t had much to fill these seed storage cabinets with that first year, but they had become Emerson’s prized possessions.
“Da-dee says I’m not allowed to play with those,” Daisy said with a Tony-worthy pout.
Emerson held back a response. He had to havesomeboundaries with her on the farm. A man had to be somewhat precious about his seeds.
“Well then.” Luca pushed the drawer back in, raised both hands in innocence. “I better not play with them either.”
Daisy giggled.
“Okay my room!” she shouted mid-giggle and twirled on her heel. Luca smiled after her as she raced out of the room.
“You don’t have to—” Emerson almost reached out a hand to stop Luca following her, until he realized placing his hand on this man’s forearm might be a thing he couldn’t recover from. “You can get settled in here, if you want. Jansel will be ready for you whenever.”
Luca shrugged, stuffed his hands in his pockets. The smile that had chased Daisy still lingered on his lips. The space between them was so small, and Emerson didn’t know why he’d stopped him, why he hadn’t let Luca proceed out the door. His pulse jumped in his throat.
“She seems pretty determined to give me the tour,” Luca said. “I don’t have much to unpack anyway. I’ll get over to Jansel and out of your hair as soon as she’s done.”
“Thank you,” Emerson said, feeling suddenly grave. “For being kind to her.”
Luca’s eyebrows rose the tiniest fraction.
“It’s not hard,” he replied. “She’s sweet.”
Emerson only nodded. Extended a hand, motioning for Luca to exit ahead of him.
It shouldn’t be hard. Being kind to kids.
But it had been, for Emerson’s parents.
“Helloooooooooo,” Daisy called from upstairs.
“On our way, ma’am,” Luca called back as they headed up the stairs. And even from here, through the stairwell and the kitchen and the upstairs hallway that led to her room, Emerson could hear Daisy’s giggle.
seven
