Grit: A Love Story on 7th and Main Read online

  He’s been patient; she’s been busy.

  Patience is running out.

  * * *

  GRIT

  Melissa Oxford is a widow with a ranch, an orange grove, a goat-obsessed ten-year-old, and not enough time. She doesn’t have time to make friends. She doesn’t have time to stop and chat. And she definitely does not have time for a boyfriend.

  Which is fine, because Cary Nakamura is far from being a boy. Cary’s the man who helped Melissa plant her trees. The friend who keeps offering advice even when she’s too stubborn to take it.

  He’s also the man who kissed Melissa in broad daylight on a sidewalk in Metlin, California, smack in the face of God and everyone.

  But while Melissa may spend a little too long dreaming about Cary from a distance, she knows the kind of passion he promises is more than she can handle.

  She just doesn’t have the time.

  But sometimes, no matter how busy you are, life makes you stop. It pulls you up short and makes you see things a little more clearly. Things like…

  The people you can count on.

  The dreams you keep pushing away.

  And the passion that can’t be denied.

  GRIT is a stand-alone, friends-to-lovers romance in the Love Stories on 7th and Main series by Elizabeth Hunter, author of INK.

  Grit

  A Love Story on 7th and Main

  Elizabeth Hunter

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Sign up for a free short story.

  About the Author

  Follow me!

  Also by Elizabeth Hunter

  Grit

  Copyright © 2019

  Elizabeth Hunter

  ISBN: 978-1-941674-42-0

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Cover: Damonza

  Content Editor: Amy Cissell, Cissell Ink

  Line Editor: Anne Victory, Victory Editing

  Proofreader: Linda, Victory Editing

  If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, please delete it and purchase your own copy from an authorized retailer. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Recurve Press LLC

  PO Box 4034

  Visalia, California

  USA

  ElizabethHunterWrites.com

  To all the single parents

  doing all the things.

  I see you. I’ve been you.

  Keep going.

  Prologue

  Cary didn’t know how she was standing, but she was. Melissa Rhodes stood across from him, all five feet and a few inches of tough. In the past three years, she’d lost her grandfather, buried her husband, and taken over the family ranch. All the while, she’d continued to raise her five-year-old daughter and take care of her mother.

  And now she was standing in front of Cary, doing the one thing he knew she hated more than anything—asking for help.

  She stood with her shoulders back, hands in her pockets, staring intently at the ground. “I don’t want to ask.”

  “You wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.” Cary cleared the roughness from his throat. “What do you need?”

  She blew out a hard breath and looked away. “Just advice, I guess. I have a degree. I know all this stuff on paper, but I have no margin for error. Calvin and I had been talking about this for a while. We have all the money together for the planting.”

  “You know you’re not going to see a decent harvest for a few years, right? You need enough money to float the trees for around five seasons. Can the ranch carry that?”

  She looked up, and he saw a flicker of the fire he’d thought she’d lost.

  Her chin rose. “I can handle it.”

  “Okay.” He leaned against his truck. “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for you; it’s a hard business and the drought has been brutal. The only reason our place has held up as well as it has is that we haven’t had to carry debt.”

  Her blue eyes were steely. “What citrus variety will give me the best return the fastest?”

  “You’re planting your lower acreage? The Jordan Valley side?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cary mulled it over. “If my dad were still living, he’d argue with me”—he stuck his hands in his pockets—“but I think you should plant mandarins.”

  “Not navel oranges?”

  He shook his head. “I can point you to some hardy varieties of small mandarins, and I think the market is turning hot for them. Plus you’ll get a full harvest a year sooner. How many acres?”

  “Fifty for now.”

  He nodded. It was a decent start for a new grower, especially one who already had a ranch. “I can give you advice, but are you sure you have time for this? The ranch—”

  “I can handle the herd,” she said. “Don’t worry about that. I have seasonal workers, and Ox said he can help out more too.”

  Depending on family was tricky, but Cary knew Ox, Melissa’s brother, was solid. “Okay.”

  The Oxford and Nakamura families had been neighbors for Cary’s and Melissa’s entire lives. The Nakamuras grew citrus. The Oxfords raised cattle.

  Melissa Oxford was twelve years younger than Cary, and as kids, they’d never been friends. They knew each other in passing at best. Nothing had prepared Cary for the gut-punch of full-grown attraction he’d experienced the first time Melissa had come back from college in Texas.

  She’d left California a leggy teenager obsessed with horses and returned a strong, stunning woman with sandy-brown hair, legs for days, and a defiant smile.

  She was also engaged.

  It was just as well. Falling for the neighbor girl promised a few too many complications. But Cary was happy to become friends with Melissa and Calvin when they moved back to the ranch in Oakville. Cary and Calvin got close, and the latent attraction he felt for Melissa was solidly locked away.

  When Calvin’s truck had been hit by an eighteen-wheeler ten months ago, Cary and his mom had been devastated. Calvin, Melissa, and their little girl, Abby, were family. Cary’s mother, Rumiko, and Melissa’s mother, Joan, mourned together. Cary had dealt with his grief by offering to help, but there was only so much he could do. Melissa was the cattlewoman; Cary grew trees.

  And now she was taking fifty acres of their prime grazing land and planting citrus.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Mandarins sound good. It’s always been the plan to diversify.”

  “Okay. I’m here if you need advice. I don’t know shit about cows, but I can help with the trees.” He debated asking the question, mostly because it was a sore subject for both of them. “How you doing?”

  Her daughter Abby’s birthday was coming up.

  She shru
gged. “I’m fine. Busy. Ready for Abby to start school, that’s for sure.”

  Abby was going into kindergarten, the first of many milestones Calvin wouldn’t see. It hurt. And it made him angry. “Seriously, Missy—”

  “Don’t.” She blinked hard. “I’m fine, Cary. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Do you talk to anyone?” She didn’t have many friends. He didn’t know if she preferred it that way or if she was too consumed with the ranch.

  She opened her truck door and hopped in. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

  He frowned. “I’m not sure that counts.”

  She slammed the truck door shut. “Sure it does.”

  “Melissa, don’t—”

  “I gotta go.”

  She started the truck, and the engine drowned out his words.

  Stop hiding, he wanted to say.

  Let yourself grieve.

  Let yourself miss him.

  I do.

  He looked at her, her body worn out by hours of labor, rocking back and forth on her mother’s porch with a bottle of beer propped between her knees. Her skin was pink from the sun. She’d stripped off her long-sleeved shirt and was finally relaxing in a tank top and jeans, her feet kicked up and resting on the porch rail.

  She was sweaty and dirty. It did nothing to detract from her beauty. Her skin glowed and her eyes were dancing. She was exhausted, but she was smiling. He hadn’t seen her look so alive in months.

  He wanted to kiss her.

  He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. It was just a spontaneous reaction to seeing her so happy for the first time in what seemed like forever. That was all.

  Keep telling yourself that, idiot.

  “We got a lot done,” Melissa said.

  “We did.”

  “Tomorrow, you think?”

  “Yeah.” He rolled his sleeves up and pushed the rocking chair back and forth with his toe. “I think by tomorrow they’ll be done. You’ll have some that won’t take. You know that, right?”

  She nodded. “Second season.”

  “Maybe a few in the third. By the fourth, you should have a solid grove of pretty little mandarins.” He reached his beer bottle across and clinked the neck with hers. “Congratulations, Melissa Rhodes. You’re officially a citrus grower.”

  Her smile lit up the night. “Thanks, Cary. For everything.”

  Two years later…

  The rain was pouring down, and she could barely see him through the sheets of water. Cary had never been very graceful on a horse, but he was a competent enough rider that he could make it over the hills.

  “How’d you find me?” she yelled.

  “Ox said you’d be out here.” He slid off her mother’s gelding, PJ. “I followed the fence.”

  “Do you have a—” She saw the posthole digger strapped to the side of the horse. “Oh, thank God. I thought I was going to have to ride back.”

  He waded through the mud to get to her. “You can’t use the old hole?”

  “The water washed too much of it away. I’ll never be able to secure a new post in this storm, and the herd has already tried to break through and go down the hill.”

  He squinted through the rain. “And we’re not letting them because…?”

  “More flooding in the lower pastures, and I don’t want them crossing the creek. Too many calves. Believe it or not, this is the driest place on the ranch; they’ve got tree cover here.”

  The cattle were huddled under the low oaks that spread across the hills of the upper pasture in Christy Meadow. Unfortunately, the storm had already damaged one of the posts securing the fence that kept them away from a muddy road that crossed a rushing creek.

  Melissa had thought she was going to have to repair it herself when Ox told her he was stuck in town with a client. She had no idea he’d called Cary.

  “Tell me what to do,” he said. “I’ve never done this, but I’m good at following directions.”

  If there was one thing she loved about Cary, it was his lack of ego. The man was incredibly competent in many, many things, but he had no problem admitting when he didn’t know something and he didn’t get his ego bent out of shape.

  As she shouted directions at him, they managed to repair the fence well enough to last through the storm.

  “That’s good.” She rolled a rock over to prop the new post up. “Can you…?” She pointed to another large rock on the other side.

  “Got it.” He bent over, his shirt plastered to his torso, and rolled the basketball-sized granite stone over to brace the new post.

  As his shoulders flexed, Melissa felt a stirring in her belly.

  What?

  She hadn’t felt that in… a while. Years.

  “Just this one?” Cary grunted as he rolled the rock.

  “Yeah, one should be enough.”

  His hair was coming loose from the low ponytail where he’d secured it. Wet strands stuck to the defined line of his jaw and brushed the strong cord of muscle in his neck.

  Melissa swallowed the lump in her throat and forced her eyes from his arms as he rose. He must have caught her stare, because he frowned.

  “What?”

  Oh God, how embarrassing. “Nothing. Thanks—I’m surprised we got that done so quickly.”

  Cary smiled. “We’re a good team.”

  His smile was a little crooked. Had it always been that way? He turned and reached for the posthole digger, then tied it to PJ’s saddle. Her eyes fell to his ass, which was framed by a pair of wet Wranglers.

  Melissa forced her eyes away. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old girl anymore. This was Cary. Her neighbor. Her friend.

  Stop checking out his ass, Melissa!

  Once she’d noticed it, she couldn’t stop looking. Had he always had that sexy line from his shoulders to his hips? She’d always thought of him as stocky, but he wasn’t. His shoulders were just really broad.

  “…after we get the horses put up.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “You feeling okay?” He frowned. “We should get you back to the ranch.”

  “I’m fine!” She took the roll of barbed wire and walked across the road to the run-down wagon that served as a storage spot. She carefully placed the wire under the old green tarp covering the wagon and walked back to the horses.

  Cary was waiting for her, his eyes narrowed.

  “What?” she asked. “Do you want to leave the posthole digger here?”

  “Do you need it back at the ranch?”

  She shrugged, trying to be casual and not look at his jaw. Or his hair, the thick black-and-silver falling across his cheek. Why the fuck was she suddenly noticing all the attractive things about Cary? “We might need it. I can carry it.”

  “No big deal. It’s already on my saddle.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Was it her imagination, or did he look her up and down? Was that a look look? Or was he wondering if there was something wrong with her?

  Oh God, this is not okay.

  Melissa mounted her mare, Moxie, and nudged her down the muddy road.

  She wasn’t in high school anymore. She wasn’t even in college anymore. She was a thirty-one-year-old widow and mother of a seven-year-old who still believed in dragons and had a goat obsession. The kid did. Not Melissa. She had a ranch she could barely handle and a new grove of mandarin trees that was eating up all her savings.

  She did not have time to notice that Cary Nakamura was sexy as hell.

  Not now. Not ever.

  Three years later…

  “Missy?”

  She was at the hospital. She hated the hospital. Disinfectant stung her nose, reminding her of death. Calvin’s death. Her grandfather’s death. Her own traumatic miscarriage. Melissa’s eyes scanned the room and she saw him.

  He was standing. He wasn’t on a gurney.

  Thank you, God.

  Her knees nearly gave out with relief. Wait, there was blo
od all over his shirt. Why was there blood?

  “Cary?” Her pulse was pounding; adrenaline coursed through her. “Why are you covered in blood? What happened? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Jeremy is the one who got hurt. He has a compound fracture in his right arm—that’s why there’s blood.”

  The rest of his words washed over her.

  Jeremy. His rock climbing partner had been hurt, not him. “You’re fine? The blood…?”

  “Not mine.”

  Not his.

  He was fine. He was whole and healthy. She saw his golden-brown arms held out to her, swirling ink covering his skin. Drying blood stained his shirt, but his arms were the same.

  Strong arms.

  Steady shoulders.

  Strong hands.

  She couldn’t stop the tears. She covered her face. “Oh my God.”

  Not his blood. It wasn’t his blood.

  “Missy?”

  No, don’t call me that. Don’t make me soft. If I give you an inch, I’ll fall apart.

  She couldn’t face him. She turned and shot out the door.

  Once she was in the fresh air, she lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and tried to stop the tears.

  Get it together, Melissa.

  What was Cary going to think of her? He probably thought she was an emotional wreck. Or insane. Maybe insane. And maybe hung up on him.

  She didn’t have time to be hung up on anyone.

  Melissa’s legs ate up the sidewalk, heading to the parking garage across from the hospital in Metlin.

  “Melissa!”