Cream of the Crop (Hudson Valley, #2)(9)

There was no one else in line—another first. I walked right up to him, slowing my pace at the end to make sure that when I revisited this later in my dreams (day, sleeping, and wet varieties) I could truly savor it.

Now, standing in front of him, glorious in his simple godlike jeans and T-shirt, I took a moment to breathe. This time, I got a hit of him. Peppery, clean, with a hint of sweet butter. It made sense: the man owned a dairy.

I would kill someone with my bare hands to see him hold his churn.

The mere thought of this nearly knocked me off my feet, but as it was, I was already feeling the telltale signs of going googly, as Roxie called it. Thank goodness, he knew the drill.

“Brie?” he asked.

“Oh. Yes,” I answered. He wrapped it up, handed it to me, and this time, instead of what simply could be called an accidental brush of a finger, he held onto it for exactly two seconds longer than he needed to. And in those two seconds, he reached out with his thumb and stroked the inside of my palm. For two seconds, he thumb-stroked me.

I held my breath for an eternal two seconds, thumb-stroked so good that I saw stars. And when we finally let go, I knew I’d never be the same.

If he could make me that stupid with his thumb, what would happen if he—

My body was threatening to blow out every circuit, so I stepped away as he looked over my shoulder to the line that had formed. I walked up to the cashier, handed her the package, and fumbled in my linen bag for my—

Where’s my money? I peered into the bag, seeing the eggs and the flowers, but no small coin purse holding my cash for the day. I looked behind me, looked on the ground, and for pockets that I didn’t have.

“Shit,” I breathed, wondering where it had gone. “I’m so sorry, I think I lost my money,” I told the cashier, confused and still rattled by the thumb porn.

“Sorry, cash only,” she said, taking my cheese and setting it back onto the display. “Next!”

“It’s on me,” a deep voice interrupted, and I looked up to see Oscar handing me back the cheese.

“On you?” I repeated, and for the first time, he grinned.

“Mm-hmm.” He raised that scarred eyebrow in a knowing way. “On. Me.”

Yeah, today was different.



If Saturday morning had a ritualized feel to it, then Sunday was etched into stone tablets and mounted on the wall.

You will have brunch with thy mother and father. So it is written. So it is done.

Brunch with my family meant a lazy morning reading different sections of the Times, consuming platters of food from Zabar’s, and recapping the week’s events over incredible coffee. An unstated rule was that, barring anyone being out of town, Sunday mornings were nonnegotiable. Even hangovers were not an excuse for no-showing. You got your ass out of bed, and nursed it with one of my mother’s patented Bloody Marys, supplemented by extra onion on your bagel and schmear with belly lox.

Once when I was home on summer break from college, I developed a terrible case of mono and could barely walk. My father carried me downstairs on Sunday mornings and my mother would push on my jaw to make sure I ate my chicken soup.

If you were breathing, you were brunching, my mother would say. And for the most part, with the exception of Great Aunt Helen’s untimely demise in our front room one Sunday, the rule was rock solid.

The other rule, equally unstated, was that you don’t bring someone home with you on Sunday morning unless there’s a sparkling ring in your very near future. My brother, Todd, once brought over a Dakota or a Cheyenne or some such, who giggled and pranced and preened, and kept referring to my brother as Tad. He never made that mistake again. Sundays were for family.

This particular Sunday I was lounging at my end of the dining room table, croissant in one hand, fashion pages in the other, trying to concentrate on what I was reading. But my eyes kept wandering to the travel section that my father was reading, to the story on the back page with the picture of a small farm in upstate New York.

Its claim to fame was a flock of imported Scottish sheep that were not only delightful to look at, all snowy white and puffy, but apparently gave some of the most delicious milk around. The farmer made incredible sheep’s milk cheese likened to a Spanish Manchego, salty and perfect. A husband and wife, living in the country, making things with their actual hands!

I wondered if the wife was happy, if she loved her life. I bet she was adorable, all sunshiny and strong hands and cute cardigans. To bed early, up when the cock crows—I bet she lived her life according to the natural circadian rhythm of the earth; not segmented around fashion week and art gallery parties.

I got all that from the back of the travel section in the Sunday Times that I was sneak-reading instead of reading my own section. I bit down hard on the croissant.

I thought about my secret dream, the one that only Roxie and Clara knew about, which was to one day venture off my island and into the wild. To live on a farm and collect eggs and make gorgeous handcrafted cheese in sweet packaging from smiling sheep. And if there was someone sharing my bed who woke me with his crowing cock . . . well, that would be very okay.

I sighed, thinking about cheese and the simple life and simple yet intense sex. I wondered if Oscar liked cardigans. I wondered if he’d like me in only a cardigan, the edges barely covering my breasts, one large button barely keeping it closed somewhere around my navel, crossing my legs just so as I perched on a hay bale to keep him from seeing my country kitty. His eyes would shine, his shirt would disappear, displaying all of that wonderful ink as he stalked across the barn toward me, his hands flexing as he ached to take hold of me, flip me over the hay bale and—