She paused and pointed at a sign they were passing for The Old Cannery. The warehouse-style store sold furnishings with an emphasis on Northwest-inspired styles. They also had an unexpected case full of fudge for sale.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s the Cannery. A Sumner icon.”

  “I’ve been there,” Taryn said, her gaze following where Bonnie was indicating. “I bought a light oak bedroom set from them. They have some beautiful pieces in the showroom.”

  “Exactly,” said Bonnie, elbowing Taryn gently. Yes, always looking for an excuse to initiate casual contact. She pulled her arm back. “I’ll bet they would be proud to host the wedding for Sumner’s mayor. And there’d be so many places to sit—just think how much Marty and Lex would save on chair rentals alone. I’ll bet they even make a pumpkin fudge in the fall.”

  “Yeah, too bad we’re already locked into a contract with Sumner’s iconic cat café. Where, incidentally, there are also plenty of chairs.”

  “Contracts can be mysteriously ripped to pieces by cats if they’re left unattended.”

  “Which is why the first lesson we learn in Wedding Planner 101 is to always scan and digitally file each document.”

  “Damn,” Bonnie muttered, hiding her smile. She had already agreed to do this, but the occasional hint at an alternative venue wasn’t going to hurt.

  Taryn settled back in her seat with her elbow resting on the console between them, tantalizingly close to Bonnie’s arm. “Quit trying to back out of the deal and tell me more about this farm,” she said.

  Bonnie sighed in defeat and launched into a description of the farm’s herb garden that carried them through the short drive to the Puyallup Valley. She fell silent for the last part of the journey, giving her full attention to the rutted gravel road.

  She turned left onto a driveway marked only with a mailbox and a barely readable sign that said Lee Farm. They weren’t open to the general public most of the year, and all the locals called the place Ben and Daisy’s, so they had no need to upgrade their sign. Come September, the road would be graded, and the entire area would be covered with bright and kitschy Halloween decorations—none of Taryn’s elegant Halloween here.

  “See that bare dirt area?” Bonnie asked, gesturing to her left. “You can see tiny shoots of corn plants. In the fall, it’ll be a huge corn maze. That’s the pumpkin patch on the other side. The Halloween attractions are here in the front, but the year-long working parts of the farm are behind the house. They also have a few hundred acres in Eastern Washington.”

  “Wow. That seems like a lot to manage. How many…oh, are those baby goats?”

  Bonnie smiled at the delighted expression on Taryn’s face. Even people who weren’t big animal lovers couldn’t seem to resist tiny goats. Bonnie had her suspicions about Taryn and pets, guessing that her stiffness around them was likely more due to lack of exposure than a real dislike.

  She parked the car and got out, following Taryn who seemed drawn to the goat pen like a magnet. Bonnie needed to be more careful with the assumptions she made about her. Before long, she might be trying to convince herself that Taryn was someone who really wanted to have a lifestyle that included dozens of cats, but she just hadn’t realized it yet. Taryn most likely was quite clear in her mind that she did not want to share in any part of Bonnie’s feline-centric lifestyle. Bonnie needed to remember that if she wanted to protect her heart.

  She caught up with Taryn and saw Daisy coming out of the main barn, cutting across the yard to meet them. About a decade older than Bonnie, she always managed to look like she was about to go clubbing in a trendy city hotspot, even when she was wearing dirt-smudged overalls and tall rubber boots and holding a fuzzy yellow chick in her gloved hand. If she wore her outfit in Seattle, Bonnie would bet that everyone in the city would be clamoring to match her look, chicken and all. She and her partner Ben had been working in the city when Daisy’s parents were killed by a drunk driver. They had quit their jobs, moved to the small town of Puyallup, and taken on the management of an overwhelmingly huge farm. Bonnie admired the way they made it look easy. She knew it was anything but.

  Daisy gave her a one-armed hug, and Bonnie introduced her to Taryn.

  “Nice to meet you,” Daisy said, handing Taryn the chick. “Here’s a little welcome-to-the-farm present from me and Ben.”

  Taryn took the chick with an alarmed look on her face, carefully cupping her free hand over it to keep it from falling. She looked to Bonnie with a help-me expression on her face. “Oh, thank you, but I really couldn’t…”

  Daisy laughed. “I’m just kidding. It’s not really a present.” She paused and held out her hand, palm up. “It’ll be twenty dollars.”

  Taryn shook her head and grinned. “I can see why the two of you are friends,” she said, gesturing toward Bonnie with her head. “You both share a rather evil sense of humor.”

  “I might have told her about the rapping cats in their sequined capes,” Bonnie admitted as Taryn gently patted the chick on the head with one finger and handed it back to Daisy. “I think this is her version of payback.”

  “I wish I could have seen the look on her face when you asked her to dress up her cats,” Daisy said to Taryn. “You should have filmed her. Now why don’t you two go in and see the goats while I give this little one back to his mama.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Once the threat of becoming a chicken owner was removed, Taryn loved every moment of her time on the farm. She met countless animals, she got to feed some goat kids with a bottle, and Ben gave her a tour of the production areas where they processed honey and goat’s milk. He promised to let her put on a beekeeping suit and take a closer look at the hives if she came back.

  One of her favorite parts of her job was the opportunity to try new things. Skydiving, hot air ballooning, snowshoeing. She had climbed Mount Rainier and had gotten her scuba certification in order to attend her clients’ ceremonies. Even the less adventurous requests, like having the wedding at a brewery or aquarium or museum, often gave her a chance to get interesting glimpses behind the scenes of those familiar places. As a more traditional wedding planner, she would rarely get to experience anything much more exciting than seeing an unfamiliar hotel ballroom or eating yet another plate of dry, roasted chicken with overcooked vegetables.

  This current wedding had already led her to some unusual places. Bonnie’s café, this farm. She’d love to come back here and see the bees, maybe stop by in the fall for some freshly made cider and to get a pumpkin for her front porch, but she wouldn’t want to live here permanently.

  That was another good part of her job—she was able to try things, then move on to something new. Just like she’d leave the cat café behind once the wedding was over, maybe stopping by for a coffee and to see Sasha. To say hello to Bonnie.

  Of course, on one of those visits, she’d discover that Sasha had been adopted. And Bonnie’s new girlfriend would be there, helping behind the counter. They had probably adopted Sasha together and were now living as one big happy family…

  “It’s an acquired taste,” Ben said, breaking her out of her increasingly annoying daydream. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.”

  “No, it’s delicious,” Taryn said truthfully. Her irritation with Bonnie’s imaginary future girlfriend must have shown on her face. She picked up another cracker topped with goat cheese and a drizzle of honey. “I was just trying to figure out what kind of herbs I’m tasting.”

  Okay, the second part was a lie, but the scenario she had been imagining was much better left unspoken.

  “This one has parsley, chives, and tarragon,” he said, then continued with the story he had been telling her about when he and Daisy first moved to the farm.

  “We had only been living together for two months when it happened,” he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankles. They were sitting at a picnic table in front of the main barn waiting for Daisy and Bonnie, who had gone off to harvest something or other—Taryn hadn’t really paid attention to what since she’d had five goats trying to drink from her one bottle at the time.

  “We hadn’t talked much about the future, or where we were heading as a couple. We both had careers that were going great, and it seemed like a perfect time to just be young and free and not care about anything beyond the next weekend’s party. Then there was the accident, and I could tell Daisy was going to come back here to the farm no matter what. And I just…well, I just knew I was going with her. Within a month, we quit our jobs and sublet the condo, and here we are.”

  “Did you have farming experience?” Taryn couldn’t imagine changing lifestyles so drastically. She was happy with her habits and her routines, and her job gave her enough variety and challenge to keep things interesting. Would she give it up for another person? Definitely not.

  Probably not.

  “Zero. Daisy grew up here, so she’d been involved since she was a toddler, but even she had no idea how to actually manage the place. Finances, sales, hiring employees. She had helped with harvests and wore a costume during the pumpkin patch season, but there’s so much more to this than she realized. I didn’t have any experience at all. Shopping at Pike Place Market was the closest I’d ever come to farm life. We muddled through, though, and we’ve made it ours. We’ve added some new crops, and the bees were my special project.”

  Taryn looked around them. The place was beautiful and peaceful. The garden was full of flowers, and she could see pastures and fields stretching into the distance. These moments of sitting down without hard labor to do must be few and far between, though. “Do you ever regret leaving your old life behind?”

  He looked at her with frank brown eyes. “Never. Not even for a second. I expected to, of course. I thought I’d struggle with doubt, maybe even leave if I couldn’t handle it, but it was just never an issue. She was here, so I was, too.”

  He seemed to fit his surroundings, just like Daisy did, but Taryn could just as easily picture both of them in suits in Seattle, having a power lunch in a fancy waterfront restaurant. His face lit up in a wide smile, and Taryn turned to see Daisy and Bonnie coming around the corner of the barn, both holding large crates stuffed with net bags of produce. Taryn felt her own face stretch in a welcoming smile, but unlike Ben, she tried to keep her expression less noticeable.

  Bonnie grinned at her and set the crate on the table, reaching for one of the crackers. “I’ve got a list of what will be in season in October, plus Daisy had some good ideas for pumpkin dishes. I’ll be able to make some of them for Lex and Marty to try Friday.”

  Bonnie sounded optimistic about the food, but Taryn was still skeptical. “I was thinking we might be able to sell them on a pumpkin-adjacent menu. Meaning we could have some scattered on the buffet table as decoration.”

  Daisy laughed. “Never underestimate our Bonnie’s creativity. She just might surprise you with what she comes up with.”

  “She definitely is full of surprises,” Taryn said with a grin. Daisy raised her eyebrows, possibly reading more into Taryn’s comment than she had meant for anyone to notice. Without looking at Bonnie to see if she had registered Taryn’s interest in her as well, she continued in a lighter tone. “I’m still expecting her to have a full-blown cat chorus ready to serenade the happy couple.”

  Her ploy worked, and the four of them spent the next half hour trying to outdo each other with the spectacular cat antics Bonnie could pull off for the wedding. Eventually, they said their good-byes, and Taryn promised to come back to see the bees. As they drove back to the main road, she glanced over the list of October crops Bonnie had handed her.

  “Have you looked at these options?” she asked, flipping the page over in case there were tastier-sounding items listed on the back. It was blank. “Rutabagas and cabbage? Brussels sprouts? Are these any good with pumpkin?”

  “We’ll see. We might have some misses Friday, but we’ll figure it out by October.”

  Taryn shook her head, imagining the look on Marty and Lex’s faces when they were served a dish of cabbage mixed with canned pumpkin. “You seem very calm for someone who has to make these ingredients into something we can serve to guests without having them run out of the café and to the nearest McDonald’s.” She gasped and poked Bonnie in the leg. “This is part of your plan to keep the café from being a dating spot, isn’t it? Serve an all-rutabaga menu, and no one will even come in, let alone fall in love.”

  Bonnie laughed. “It wasn’t my plan, but it is now. Thank you.” She took Taryn’s hand from where it was resting near her leg and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t worry. I try new recipes for the café all the time. Some are good, some aren’t. You just keep making changes until it works.”

  Taryn brought her hand slowly back to her lap, trying not to look like she was pulling away from Bonnie’s touch. She was pulling away because she liked the feel of Bonnie’s hand holding her own far too much.

  “Don’t worry. Easy for you to say. They always blame the wedding planner, no matter what goes wrong. Once word gets out about the Rutabaga Incident, I’ll never be hired for another wedding.”

  “Fine, I’ll stick to cabbage if it will make you worry less. Say, Daisy and I found some Lady Fern fiddleheads down by their stream, so I was going to cook them for dinner. Do you want to come home with me and try some?”

  Taryn hesitated, and she could feel Bonnie’s stillness as she waited for an answer. Was she asking Taryn on a date, or to test out wedding food? Or was this invitation just a casual one Bonnie would extend to any friend? And what the hell was a fiddlehead? Taryn had a fern in her office, and she had never been tempted to chew on it.

  “Yes, I’d like that,” she said, after realizing she had been silent far too long. No matter what the answers to the questions she had in her mind, her response would have been the same. A date, a tasting, a casual dinner with a friend.

  Yes to any or all if it was with Bonnie.

  Bonnie nodded as she merged onto the highway. “Good,” she said. Her expression didn’t give Taryn any clues about what she was feeling, and she steered the conversation back to the rest of the fresh produce she had gotten from the farm while they drove back to Sumner.

  Bonnie’s house was a narrow two-story tucked on a small lot between two larger ones. The lawn was tidy, but there was little to it beyond the grass and two rhododendrons that flanked the front door. Taryn guessed that most of Bonnie’s time and energy was focused on the café, with little left over for gardening here, too. She picked up one of the crates and followed Bonnie into the house with it.

  She had expected cats, naturally, but only three came into the living room to curl around Bonnie’s legs and welcome her home. Two were mottled black and orange, and one was a tiny striped kitten.

  “Do you only have three?” Taryn asked. She set down the crate and scooped up the kitten. She wasn’t becoming a Cat Person, but after one look at the fluffy little thing she decided she was more than okay with being a Kitten Person. “I was expecting a houseful.”

  “Just three,” Bonnie confirmed. “These are mine, and the ones at the café are all adoptable. The torties are Frances and Alice, and the kitten is Pepper. He’s about three months old.”

  Taryn reluctantly put Pepper back on the floor and took the crate into the kitchen. She looked around while Bonnie stored the produce away. Just like the outside of the house, the interior was neat, but plain. The cat toys and climbing trees were more adorned than anything that was meant for the human inhabitant.

  “I’m eventually planning to move into the café, so this place is just temporary,” Bonnie said, correctly guessing what Taryn had been thinking. She paused, then continued with a rueful grin. “Well, it’s been temporary since I opened, but I can’t take over the upstairs room there until I make another space for the kittens. I have most of my books and stuff upstairs, which is where I spend most of my time when I’m home.”

  Taryn wandered over to the kitchen table, drawn to the one incongruously cluttered space in the room, and picked up a brochure off the top of a stack. She glanced through it.

  “Did you have these made for the adoption event?” she asked. “They’re perfect. They cover exactly what we talked about with the different rooms and how to decide what type of cat will fit your lifestyle. How did you…Hey! That cat looks like Sasha.”

  “It is her,” Bonnie said, looking up from where she was standing by the sink, peeling something off a coiled green thing. “Jerome has been taking photos for the website, and I used some to make that brochure after we decided to do the adoption event.”

  “You made this in just a couple of days?” Taryn skimmed the brochure again, this time recognizing Salmon and Kip and a few other cats, as well as the furnishings in the café. “It looks professionally done. This is impressive work, Bonnie.”

  Bonnie just shrugged, tossing another green thing into the pan next to her. “Thanks, but it was easy to throw together. I did marketing for nonprofits, mostly animal rescue groups, for years before I started the café.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Taryn said. She pulled out a chair and sat down, and immediately Pepper was next to her, standing on his back legs and stretching as he tried to climb her pant leg. She absently reached down and lifted him onto her lap.

  “Nope,” Bonnie said. “My parents were thrilled when I finally decided on a major and told them I was studying marketing. They were less enthusiastic when I added the for nonprofits part to the career.”

  Taryn shook her head. This was too much to take in. “When I tried to research your café after Marty hired me, I couldn’t find a website or anything on social media. I had to learn about your business from other cat café sites because yours was invisible. And when you get a chance for free publicity practically thrown onto your doorstep, you act like it’s the worst thing that’s happened to you. Were you any good at your marketing jobs, or were you fired from all of them?”