Page 24 of Fruit and Flash

Remembering the man with Hayes from my first night in town, I can’t help asking, “Leon is a good friend, then?”

Somehow, Hayes misses my double meaning. “Leon’s my best friend and also works for me part time when I need help. He trades me fish for produce sometimes.”

“Cool.”

Well, damn. So Hayes does have help on the farm. Am I going to be in the way?

“You won’t mind the drive to and from town?” Hayes asks and I take a minute to get that he’s insinuating a ten minute commute might be a hassle.

“Ha, no. My parents live in Waikapu on the east side of Mauna Kahalawai and I worked in Kaanapali on the northwest part of the island,” I explain, fully aware he likely has no clue about the location names I’m saying. “It was forty-five minutes to an hour each way around the mountain.”

“Every day?” Hayes asks in shock. “I thought twenty minutes to and from my sister’s property was annoying. Granted, I drivehours to Sacramento or even further to Reno for supplies a few times a year.”

The urge to laugh at the country boy when he lives in a vastly larger state is brought up short by an idea. It would be easier to start and end my day at the location of my new project. I can work on Ezra’s social media stuff anywhere, only needing to try on clothes for pictures when he’s finished with new designs.

What if I stayed on Hayes’ Farm?

We pull into the gate after Hayes lets me hop out to unlatch it, and I learn that the big metal thing is heavier than expected. I start to let the gate go, but it starts swinging in towards Hayes’ as he drives in, and I stop it just in time to not ding his beloved truck.

Instead of hopping back in, I walk behind the truck the short distance to the house, reaching into the bed for a bag when Hayes stops. “Can I keep things here?”

“Sure,” Hayes nods and grabs the other two bags. “It would be silly to lug stuff back and forth.”

Following him and Shadow into the house, I set my bag on the table in the kitchen. “Does this place happen to have a spare room?”

Hayes looks towards the hallway and rubs at his beard. “Technically, it has two spare rooms. Do you want to see?”

“Ooh, yes!”

The whole place is like a nineteen-nineties farmhouse time capsule. The walls have flowered wallpaper and the wide-plank wood floors are worn and covered in threadbare rugs in a warm but lived-in way. The walls are lined with family photos, and I sneak peeks at a younger Hayes before the facial hair.

Walking the path we took to hookup in his room, he stops short and opens the door on the left across from the bathroom. Inside there is a frilly pink, four-poster canopy bed. There arehorse toy figurines lined up on top of an old oak dresser and I'm surprised they’re not all covered in dust.

“This was my sister’s room, but now it’s where my niece, Meaghan, sleeps when I babysit.”

“How often do you watch her overnight?”

“Once a month, for date night,” Hayes tells me and I’m not surprised. He seems like he would be good with children. “Sometimes a few days at a time on school breaks for her parents to take a mini vacation. Or if she asks.”

Yeah, I’m not going to ask to stay in his niece’s room if she’s here that often. “And the other room?”

“My parents’ old room,” Hayes tells me, and I can hear the weight in his words. Maybe this was a bad plan.

Chapter sixteen

Hayes

WalkingKaidownthehall, the idea occurs to me that Kai could stay here. He already told me he’s not paying rent while working for Ezra, so he has no tie there. And he isn’t actually working at the boutique—Kai is doing some kind of online job that only requires wireless internet. I have Wi-Fi.

The girly room that was once Kristen’s and I now think of as Meg’s is out. I really do babysit my niece about once a month, sometimes for days in the summer. Besides being used regularly, it’s fairly small compared to the other two rooms. My parent’s old room is the biggest, and it has an attached bathroom. The fact that it’s across the hall from my room is a coincidence.

A nagging voice that I hear when I’m horny says it’s convenient, but I brush that off to open the door.

“This was my parents’ room, but it’s mostly used for overflow now.”

“Overflow?” Kai asks and I gesture to the canning supplies in a row on the floor.

There are stacked crates of glass mason jars waiting to be used along with the canners and other tools. There isn’t enough space in the kitchen and I don’t like to keep the jars in my root cellar under the house. All of this can be moved to the kitchen now, though.