well.’
She still didn’t respond.
‘Charlotte reminds me of my grandmother. We, my brother and younger sister, used to go berry picking with her. And for the most part, we minded her. Our dad had said she knew how to use a switch and we never wanted to find out if he was telling the truth or not.’
Although she clearly hadn’t wanted him to notice, he’d seen the way she looked at him out of the corners of her eyes.
No longer trying to hide his smile, he continued, ‘And she made the best jam. Ralph and I never waited for bread, we ate it right out of the jar.’ He chuckled while recalling an incident he hadn’t thought of in years. ‘She had a bunch of grapes that grew along the fence around her garden. Sour grapes. But she made the best jelly out of them. One time, she’d boiled down the grapes and seined the juice out, but must have run out of time or something, because there was this big jar of the juice on the counter. Thinking it would taste as good as her jelly, I sneaked a big swallow.’
His entire being shuddered at how bad that juice had tasted. ‘She hadn’t added any sugar yet. My first reaction had been to spit it out, but she’d walked into the kitchen just then so I couldn’t.’ Laughing, he said, ‘I’ll never forget how hard it was to swallow that mouthful of juice.’
That story did more than he’d been able to. She not only smiled, she covered her mouth to smother a giggle.
‘I don’t think I ate grape jelly for a good five years after that,’ he said. ‘Just couldn’t bring myself to eat it.’
‘I know the feeling,’ she said softly.
‘You drank raw grape juice, too?’
She nodded. ‘Our housekeeper was making wine.’
He had to shake in order to get rid of the shudder rippling over him. His grandfather had made wine once. It had been bad. The morning after had been downright miserable. Being fifteen might have had something to do with it. ‘That had to be worse,’ he admitted aloud.
Her cheeks had turned pink. ‘It certainly was awful.’ With a sigh, she added, ‘And like you, I had to swallow it or get caught.’
Curious, he asked, ‘So do you drink wine now?’
‘Not if I don’t have to,’ she answered.
The laugh they shared lightened the air between them. Hoping it stayed that way, but not wanting to put too much into it, he asked, ‘So which berries are we picking?’ The berries in the basket he’d taken from Charlotte were green and hairy. And more unappetising than any he’d ever seen.
She stepped near the bushes and pointed out a small cluster of berries. ‘Gooseberries.’
‘They’re supposed to be green?’
‘Yes.’
‘And hairy?’
She tried but couldn’t smother another giggle, even with her hand. ‘Yes.’
‘Most of the green berries I’ve seen haven’t been ripe, and hair, I associate that with mould.’
‘Well, you’re not in America, Sergeant Johnson.’
‘You don’t say?’
Her brief glance showed the shine was disappearing from her eyes.
Not wanting that, he asked, ‘Can I eat one?’
She shrugged. ‘Yes.’
‘You aren’t trying to poison me, are you?’
The shine returned to her eyes, turning them a thoughtful, shimmering brown. If he wasn’t careful, he could get lost in those eyes. Except he couldn’t look away because he knew what she was thinking.
‘You hadn’t thought about poisoning me?’ Coaxing, he added, ‘Come on. I know you did.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you are now.’
She laughed and handed him a berry she’d plucked. ‘Go ahead and eat one.’
He took it and ate it, puckering the entire time because his first reaction had been to spit it out. Swallowing twice to get it to go down, he shook his head. ‘That’s as bitter as Grandma’s grape juice had been.’
Hiding a smile, she continued picking berries and dropping them into her basket. ‘They’ll be sweeter later in the year.’
‘Then why don’t you wait until later to pick them?’
‘Because the more we pick now, the more we’ll have later.’ She held up one of the green berries. ‘They may taste bitter by themselves, but you’d be amazed by how good they are in a bread and butter pudding.’
He waited for her to pop the berry in her mouth, but when she dropped it in the basket instead, he shook his head. ‘I find that very hard to believe considering you won’t eat one.’
A hint of dog-eared determination crossed her face as she plucked another berry and popped it in her mouth. Her expression remained unchanged, except for a hint of a pinch to her lips as she swallowed.
‘Satisfied?’ she asked after swallowing again.
With her lips pinched tight, pink cheeks and the sunshine making her black hair shimmer, she was cute. Really cute. His mind shifted. ‘Why don’t you like Americans?’
He wanted to kick himself at how her face fell and she blinked slowly, as if trying to hide something. She bit her bottom lip before turning back to the berries.
‘That was a terrible trick you played,’ she said.
‘What trick?’
She cast him a scathing look while saying, ‘What trick? Have you ever been hit on the top of the head by a sweet? Well, I have and it hurts.’
Now he really wanted to kick himself. He hadn’t thought of that. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Didn’t think of that? You only thought of a way to mock me. To get me to take your money?’
‘I wasn’t mocking you,’ he answered. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Noting there was more she was trying to hide, he shook his head. ‘Honestly, and I wasn’t trying to scare you either.’
She reached for another clump of berries, but stopped and balled her hand into a fist instead. ‘Are you trying to say it wasn’t another one of your jokes? Like the plane?’
‘Yes, or no, I’m not sure which is right. Yes, that’s what I’m saying, no, it wasn’t a joke.’
She eyed him critically.
‘I truly didn’t think about the candy hitting someone or that it would scare you.’ He huffed out a breath. Those were things he should have thought about, but hadn’t. These people had been taught—hell, the
