Crossing Hope (Cross Creek Series Book 4)

  Crossing Hope

  Kimberly Kincaid

  CROSSING HOPE

  © 2018 Kimberly Kincaid

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Sneak peek at Crossing Hearts

  Other books by Kimberly Kincaid

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my father,

  who is one of the very finest men I know

  Acknowledgments

  Oh, y’all. This. Book.

  I’m not going to even lie. CROSSING HOPE was a tough book to write. It’s always difficult to end a series, especially one you really adore. And I was pretty much in love with everything about Cross Creek, right from the time I said to my agent, “So, I want to write about farmers…” and she didn’t think I was crazy for not filling in that blank with something more mainstream (thank you, Nalini Akolekar!) But not only do we get to finally (FINALLY) see tough-as-gutter-spikes Marley get her HEA—and with the town bad boy, no less!—but I had to deliver a wrap-up to the Cross family saga, on top of it. To say it was emotional to get that job done is a massive understatement, and would have been utterly impossible without the following people.

  Nicole Bailey, my editor, who has been with me from damn near word one, twenty-six books ago. Thank you for keeping me in line, and also for keeping track of my inability to get a timeline right. Jaycee DeLorenzo, my cover designer, who is magical in all the ways. Wander Aguiar, Andrey Bahia, and Andrew Biernat, I am so very fortunate to have worked with you on the cover image, which (as you know) I love like a love song, baby! Rachel Hamilton, thank you for being my right hand, and sometimes my left hand, too. Without you, I am lost, girl!

  Erin Nicholas, Erin McCarthy (who whipped my BUTT in word sprints, but are pretty much the entire reason the last 65 pages of this book exist), Jennifer Bernard, and Mari Carr, thank you for making me laugh when I wanted to cry. Cat Parisi, thank you for…well, being you! Linda, Elena, Natalie, Leah, Rich, Marly (coincidental, but funny, right?!), Deb, Emerald, and all of the unbelievably wonderful people at Stafford House of Yoga, thank you (really, seriously, thank you) for tending to my Zen as I wrote this book. You carried me more than you know, and I am so grateful.

  Avery Flynn and Robin Covington, I would never consider a minute of this journey without you. Thank you is not enough (yes, I know I can show my love by way of wine, Oreos, and gummy bears!)

  My girls, who make me laugh every single day and also put up with taking goofy pictures of me at the farmers’ market for my Insta. My daughters actually inspired me to write this series the way that I did, because each of them has a distinct “birth order” personality. Marley kind of messed with the birth order of things in Cross Creek, but I love that my girls put their mark on this series.

  And what can I say about Mr. K? I write true love because I know true love. I am blessed beyond measure to know it with you.

  1

  Marley Rallston was bored, irritated, and sad, in that order. Bored, because she was standing in a mile-long line at The Corner Market with an armload of flour, butter, and brown sugar instead of in the kitchen, figuring out how to make oatmeal cookies that didn’t spread out over a baking sheet like liquid-hot lava. Irritated, because the person in front of her in said line was Amber Cassidy, who Marley didn’t so much know as know of, and who also happened to be Millhaven’s town gossip—which meant that by nightfall, everyone with ears would know Marley had made a rare appearance in town. And sad, because…well, that had pretty much been her default for the past year since the mother she’d thought had been her only living relative—and who’d certainly been the closest person to her—had lost a horrible and heartbreaking battle against cancer.

  But not before she’d dropped the emotional grenade that not only was Marley’s father alive and kicking and running his family farm with his three sons out in the middle of God’s country, but she wanted Marley to swear she’d go find him after she died. Oh, how Marley had been tempted to say no. She’d spent twenty-four years thinking her father was dead, the poor, unfortunate victim of a freak accident. She’d even felt sad about him from time to time, the man who’d never had the chance to know his daughter. But the joke had been on her, hadn’t it? Tobias Cross had known all about her, even before she’d been born. Not that he’d ever done a damned thing about it, other than write a monthly check and steer clear of her as if she’d been the nastiest strain of some deadly virus. And now Marley was flat-broke and stuck living under the man’s roof.

  On second thought, she’d take irritated for the win.

  “Oh, my land,” Amber drawled, depositing Marley back to the reality of the line in the crowded market, which hadn’t moved so much as a millimeter, kill her very much. “Marley Rallston, is that you, honey?”

  Amber blinked her too-long-to-be-real lashes at Marley in surprise that was also markedly false, and Marley showed her teeth in a gesture she hoped passed as a smile.

  “Yep, it’s me.” Of course, she just had to be wearing a semi-ancient tank top and ragged pair of cut-offs that both bore the signs of the three exhausting hours she’d spent sweating in the kitchen. Damn it, she should’ve known better than to think she’d get away with replenishing the ingredients she’d wrecked without being caught looking like a car crash.

  Amber, on the other hand, looked like she’d just shimmied off the pages of a fashion magazine, her summer-blond hair and full face of makeup flawlessly in place despite the raging heat outside. June in Millhaven? So not the same as June in Chicago.

  “Well, it sure is nice to see you out and about,” Amber said with a grin that was more wolfish than welcoming. “I’m not sure if you remember me. We met a couple of months ago when you and Cate were havin’ breakfast at Clementine’s Diner. I’m Amber. Amber Cassidy. I’m a stylist at The Hair Lair, right up the street.”

  She stuck out a hand tipped in perfectly polished, perfectly fuchsia fingernails, and ah, hell. Marley might rather be anywhere other than standing here in her Sunday un-best, talking to the woman, but she couldn’t justify being blatantly rude. “I remember,” Marley said, awkwardly juggling the items in her grasp in order to meet Amber’s handshake.

  As soon as she had everything balanced and her fingers extended, though, Amber surprised her by tugging her forward. “Oh, this feels too city. I’m a hugger! C’mere, darlin’.”

  “Oh—” Before Marley
could figure out a passably polite way to feint, Amber had wrapped her broomstick-thin arms around her shoulders, leaving Marley no choice but to endure the shockingly powerful hug and finish with a stunned, “Kaaaaay.”

  Marley’s heart thudded in her chest. The response, along with her suddenly shallow breathing, her clammy palms, and the cold spear of panic in her belly, wasn’t normal, she knew.

  But she liked people at arm’s length. Literally. Figuratively. And everything in between.

  Which was just one of the ten thousand reasons she was the odd woman out on Cross Creek Farm.

  “So,” Amber said, shifting back—although only a half-step—and wagging a tenth of her manicure at Marley. “I’ve got to tell you, you’re a tricky one.”

  “I am?” Marley’s brows lifted, enough confusion filling her mind to edge out the unease she’d felt at Amber’s unexpected breach of her personal space.

  But Amber just nodded and gave up a you-don’t-have-to-play-coy-with-me smile. “You are. You’ve made it hard to get to know you, spendin’ nearly all your time up there at Cross Creek rather than comin’ on into town on the regular.”

  Specifically, Marley had spent nearly all of the last nine months either in her room at the main house, at her crappy retail job a few towns over, or in her oldest brother Owen’s kitchen, taking informal baking lessons from his live-in girlfriend, Cate. It wasn’t a hair she wanted to split, and especially not with Millhaven’s biggest blabbermouth, so she simply said, “I guess I’m not really an out-and-about kind of girl.”

  Amber smacked her forehead lightly and laughed. “Silly me. Of course, you’re probably makin’ up for lost time with your daddy. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have found him after all these years!”

  “Mmm.” The sound was all Marley could manage. Her defenses plucked at the back of her neck, digging deep as they broadcast the let’s-go-let’s-go-LET’SGOLET’SGOLET’SGO message in her brain, the words reverberating as if they’d been shouted into a canyon.

  Amber yammered on, oblivious. “And your momma, Lord rest her soul, losin’ her best friend and then turnin’ to Miss Rosemary’s widower for comfort”—she paused to clear her throat over the euphemism—“then leavin’ Millhaven so suddenly like that before you were born. Honestly, the whole thing is just enough to take my breath away.”

  Pain snatched Marley’s remaining scrap of balance, slicing into her from every direction, and oh, God, why wasn’t this line moving? Time for Plan B, before the ache taking over her rib cage betrayed her by making itself obvious.

  “Darn it,” Marley said, faking as much whoopsie as her admittedly limited acting skills would allow. “I totally forgot vanilla extract. Can’t make these cookies without it, so…”

  She jerked her head toward the back of the market before pivoting on the thick heels of her black motorcycle boots and moving the rest of herself hastily in that direction. For a split second, she felt a stab of guilt for the untruth. The reality was, Marley had barely been able to scratch together the cash for the ingredients already in her arms. Every last dime she could squeeze out of her meager paychecks went toward paying the avalanche of medical bills that had started rolling in just weeks after her mother had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer a year and a half ago. The pragmatic part of Marley’s brain told her it was a blessing that her mother had only suffered for six months.

  The rest of her wanted time that didn’t exist to go along with the money she didn’t have to get out of this town where she didn’t belong.

  Okay, she thought, sliding in as deep a breath as her lungs would allow. So, she didn’t normally lie, because she never really gave so much as a single fuck what anyone thought of the truths she had to tell. But the fib to Amber was a means to an end. At least now she could hide among the shelves of canned goods and bushel baskets full of local produce and weekly specials and wait for the line to thin out. Then she could buy the ingredients she’d really come for and head back to Owen’s while he worked on the farm and Cate balanced the books at the main house. Marley would have the kitchen to herself. Maybe she’d be able to find a tiny chunk of peace.

  After all, baking always calmed Cate. It was the woman’s refuge, her sanctuary, her happy place. Marley didn’t get quite as into it as all that, but she liked being in the kitchen well enough—certainly better than her job of selling stupidly trendy clothes in the mall—and she was passably decent at it. Or at least, that’s what Cate said, although not in those precise words. She’d gone with “natural affinity”, which Marley definitely thought was pushing the border of bullshit territory. Today’s oatmeal cookies would agree, the tricky little bastards, and Marley was tempted to point to them and say, “see?” But she was also determined to find something to pass the time and keep her sane while she earned enough money to pay off her debt and get gone.

  Considering her debt-to-paycheck ratio, she was going to have a lot of time to kill.

  She turned the corner at the top of the soup and pasta aisle, relief filling her chest at the sight of the empty space in front of her. The row, which stretched out under her boots in laminate hardwood rather than regular old, ho-hum white linoleum, was flanked cozily on either side by shelves marked with handwritten signs. The Corner Market wasn’t like any grocery store Marley had ever seen before. The front of the place had a strong farm stand feel to it. Rough-hewn, wood-slatted bins held fresh ears of corn and fat, jewel-colored watermelons on either end of the rows of bushel baskets, which were filled with everything from apples to zucchini. Much of the produce was local, including selections from Cross Creek Farm, along with others from their rival, Whittaker Hollow. Even the items that had clearly been imported from other parts of the country, like bananas and citrus fruits that needed full-time hot climates to grow, were carefully placed in shallow wooden trays that showed off each selection, rather than haphazardly tossed on display shelves without thought.

  The back half of the market, where Marley thankfully now stood in as much peace as she was going to find (in Millhaven, anyway), wasn’t much different, dotted with small, strategically placed stands holding fresh produce to complement the dry goods and other items on the shelves. Bananas and berries stood in baskets in the cereal aisle. Tomatoes, some with the emerald-green vines still attached, sat gently piled on tall, free-standing displays in the aisle offering their canned brethren, along with all the pasta. Marley had never seen pasta sauce come from anywhere other than a jar before she’d ended up stuck in Millhaven. In fact, there were scores of local customs she’d either never seen or wasn’t privy to as the only person in town who hadn’t been born and bred there.

  Shaking off the squeeze that the thought had sent deep into her belly, Marley moved farther down the aisle, shoulders tight to her spine. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know the small-town protocol or the ass-backward quirks that the people who lived here swore by—even if the sauce Owen made from scratch was one of the most mouth-wateringly delicious things she’d ever tasted, including every dish she’d ever ordered from her mother’s favorite Italian restaurant in Chicago. Marley had only come to Millhaven because her mother had begged her to right before she’d died. She’d just had the shit luck of getting hit with the over-90-days-late final notice from Chicago Memorial Hospital two days after she’d pulled her wheezing, rusted-out Toyota up the gravel drive at Cross Creek Farm.

  Two days after that, she’d had no choice but to drain her bank account to pay as much of the debt as possible. Her meager savings hadn’t taken more than a chip out of the total, so she’d done the only thing she could to save herself from bankruptcy. She’d set up a payment plan and gotten a job to ensure she could keep to it.

  And as soon as she made that final payment in ten months and fourteen days (if she got overtime at the stupid boutique, please, please, please), she was getting the hell out of Dodge. Away from the father who’d had another family and hadn’t wanted her. Away from the small town where she stuck out like a dark
storm cloud on a gorgeous, bright blue horizon. Yep, in ten months and fourteen days, she’d be headed to her favorite place, AKA Anywhere Other Than Millhaven, Virginia.

  Not that she was counting, of course.

  A sharp gasp of surprise yanked Marley back to the here and right-now of the pasta aisle she’d wandered down. Shooting off a few rapid-fire blinks, she registered the sight in front of her. A girl—who looked to be eleven or so, but between her shockingly skinny frame and the long, stringy hair hiding half of her face, it was tough to tell—crouched behind one of the free-standing displays in the aisle. Her light brown eyes widened in fear, then sheer panic, as she looked at Marley, who had clearly caught her unaware. The girl threw out her hands to snatch up the half-opened, fully threadbare backpack at her feet. Only, the zipper was too far undone and the bag too crammed full to make the swift trip to her shoulder, and the top gaped open, sending a trio of cans clattering to the floor in loud succession.

  “Oh!” The girl gulped and ducked down to retrieve the cans, which only made three more tumble out onto the laminate. Marley knelt on auto-pilot, putting the flour, butter, and brown sugar she’d been holding out of the way and reaching for the can of tuna that had bumped up against her boot.