She blinked, wondering when her expectations and her reality had gotten so far out of whack. She was supposed to have reached up to kiss him, not stuck out her hand for a solid shake. She took his hand in hers, because really, what else was there to do? “I’ll try to stay near the farmhouse to say goodbye.”
“All right, then.” He nodded.
Would that goodbye be as awkward as this one, or would the sunlight enable her to see how silly her expectations had been? More likely, she would go over every detail of the night and wonder if she could have been more forward in what she wanted. Or maybe he just wasn’t interested—wasn’t that a lowering thought?
Trey cleared his throat. She’d been standing there holding his hand for who knows how long. Long enough for their hands to get warm together. “Thanks for dinner,” she said, reaching up to press a kiss to his cheek. What she’d intended to be a light kiss turned deeper when he pressed his cheek against her lips before pulling away.
“Good night.” Without even a backward glance, Trey marched down the stairs and back to the farmhouse. She must have imagined him leaning into her lips.
Max stood at the door for several seconds, cursing herself. She’d dolled herself up and all but puckered her lips for a kiss. But she had to go and think too much until she’d darn near talked herself out of making a move, and she’d sure as hell communicated “go away” before kissing him on the cheek, passing the mixed messages she was getting from her head onto his face.
“Ashes,” she said as she shut the door, “why do I have to think so damn much?”
* * *
I
N
THE
END
, it didn’t matter if Max stayed close to the farmhouse to say goodbye. She may have been up with the chickens to get started on farm chores, but he’d been awake with the owls. Whatever time he’d packed up his stuff and driven off, she’d been fast asleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
T
REY
WAS
SITTING
at his desk in his office, trying to down enough coffee to transition from low-key farm life to the rush of Washington politics when his phone dinged. His personal email account had received a new message, subject heading “Max’s Vegetable Patch, in full bloom.” He put down his pimento cheese sandwich to read it.
Trey,
I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye and to thank you for the two dinners. I’d thank you for the basketball, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. So thank you for the blinking lights and buzzer noises. I’m sure Hank’s TV will be lonely without him, but I will try to give it some company after I move into the farmhouse. Maybe I can leave it on to keep Ashes company, especially once he retires.
I sense you will be more of an absentee landlord than Hank was, but I don’t want you to miss out on the beauty of the farm. Kelly took this picture last summer. Know that the land will be productive and make people happy.
Sincerely,
Max
Trey stared at the link to the attachment, grateful Max hadn’t called him a coward for scurrying out of the farmhouse in the middle of the night like a rat with the raccoons laughing and pointing at him. He had called himself a coward.
Standing there on her front porch, with the light from her cabin igniting her hair from behind, Max had been tempting. She’d stepped closer to him several times, even lifted her chin to look at him. The cool green of her eyes had looked dark—hot—in the dim light of the porch. Her lips against his cheek had been chapped from her work spent outside. He had wanted to press his entire self into the solid wildness she represented. He could have kissed her. He could have kissed her, wrapped his hands around her waist and stepped forward. She would have stepped back into the barn and he would have woken up the next morning knowing how it felt to be next to her soft, warm body in bed.
On the drive home, he’d thought about each and every step he could have made into her barn and up her stairs. Lived every moment that hadn’t happened. Counted the freckles he had never seen at the soft indentation just under her hip bone, which he’d also never seen.
His mouse hovered over the link to the attachment, switching from hand to arrow to hand to arrow in concert with his indecision. Sex with Max would have been easy. Life after would have been hard. Nearly impossible. For all that Max had been offering herself freely, the land would demand. Unlike the tub of pimento cheese, neither Max nor the land could be packed up and brought back to his apartment in D.C.
Bravery was easier while in his office. Here the land’s claims on him were paper shackles. He clicked the link. At the edge of the picture that popped up on his screen, Max had just finished putting something into the bed of her truck. Her arms were still reaching down but her face was up and laughing at the camera. A floppy straw hat covered her eyes and purple zinc covered her nose, but her white teeth were shining against her sun-darkened freckles. Behind her was the whole of the farm, in all of its summer glory. The camera wasn’t close enough for him to see what all was growing, but everything was a lush, bountiful green. And it looked nothing like the wasteland his father had overseen. But he could see the farmhouse in the background with its peeling paint.
He looked back to Max smiling at the side of the photo. Neither her ponytail nor her hat could fully contain the wild curls that framed her face in a mass of orange. Snow was beginning to fall outside his office window and traffic in D.C. would be a nightmare in an hour or so, but Max and her smile and her hair was like coming across a persimmon tree with its tomato-looking fruit shining through the bare winter branches.
Trey closed the photo and the email, then went back to his work, ignoring his sandwich for more coffee.
* * *
“M
AX
,” T
INA
,
HER
stepmom, said into the phone, “your dad just walked in the door. Do you want to talk to him?”
Tina didn’t wait for an answer, just hollered “Nick,” into the house somewhere.
“Hi, Patches,” her dad said into the phone, using the name only he called her. “How’s the farm?”
“Big money for easy work,” she said. Her dad had responded to questions about the farm with those words for as long as Max could remember and, somewhere along the way, she’d picked up the habit when on the phone with him. All their conversations, phone or otherwise, started off this way.
“You met the new owner yet?”
“Yes, Trey was down for the funeral and to pack up his dad’s things. He’ll be an absentee landlord.” She didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.
“Farming is hard work. It’d be nicer if you were nearby, Patches.” In his voice she heard the wistfulness he’d never express in words.
Max’s decision to set out on her own for a vegetable farm in North Carolina had hit her father hard. He had been certain Max and her brother Harmon would take over the farm together—right up until she’d packed her bags, Max had been certain the Illinois farm was in her future. Like her father, she’d thought the summers spent interning at vegetable farms were a small rebellion, that she’d tire of it and move back home.
Then her brother had graduated from college and her mom had announced she wasn’t living in the Midwest any longer, but was moving back to Asheville, North Carolina. Her dad seemed to think Max had chosen her mother over him. Sometimes Max wondered if he was right.
“I know. The Triangle is a good location to be a small farmer, though—much better than near you. Lots of support down here. Lots of interest in local ingredients. Another few years and I’ll even feel good about buying the farm.”
“Farming isn’t always about feeling good. Sometimes you just have to go to the bank with your hat in hand and hope for the best.”
Max couldn’t imagine her father ever following the advice he’d just given her. The problem was he just didn’t understand the choices she’d made. He couldn’t imagine why someone would roll back one hundred years of farming technology for a tomato too ugly to sell to a supermarket. It wasn’t her work ethic he questioned but her sense.
One Christmas she’d teased her father that she was the natural hybrid of a Midwestern farmer cross-pollinated with an Appalachian hippie. Her father had responded with a grunt. When she’d told her mother the joke, her mother had laughed until she’d cried.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve got my goals all planned out.”
When her father didn’t know what else to say, he grunted. Max interpreted this grunt as “Of course I’ll worry. I’m your father,” but she didn’t press him. A quick conversation with her brother and she was off the phone to make her dinner. Max had only been cooking in her real farmhouse kitchen for a couple nights and she still got a kick out of using as many pots as possible, if only because she had counter space to put them on. She thought about having a beer while she cooked but, in deference to Hank’s memory, got out a can of pop instead.
* * *
T
REY
WATCHED
THE
senator’s golf ball sail into the trees. “That was a powerful swing, sir.” Some men in power wanted to hear about the world as it was. Some about the world as it could be. This particular senator wanted to hear about his successes and never his failures. He also claimed to be undecided on the bill Trey was lobbying for, so Trey would compliment the man’s golf swing if his ball landed in China.
Even if the words left an oily taste in his mouth.
A Sunday spent golfing with senators and congressmen was work. As were the drinks he’d had with staffers from another senator’s office who were writing a bill that Trey wanted a hand in. And the lunch he had planned for tomorrow. He shouldn’t have to remind himself that he was helping to make legislation for his country. He’d come to D.C. after college to shape policy decisions and was more influential as a lobbyist than he’d been as a Capitol Hill staffer. The work he did was important.
Trey walked up to the tee, arranged his shoulders and aimed the ball to the trees, coming just short of the tree line. He had
some
pride after all. “Must be the wind, Senator. Ball’s just not going where it should.”
There was not enough Scotch in Scotland to make the ass kissing feel good, education bill or no education bill. The snow from the previous week had melted and the groundskeepers must have a top-secret chemical in their arsenal because the grass was green, even in February. Mother Nature’s seasons had no place on the golf course.
Together they climbed into their cart and rode off to the trees. The senator liked to drive. Trey was playing caddy—all part of the sycophant role he was starring in today.
“I heard your father died,” the senator said. “A shame. You have my sympathies.”
Trey had received flowers from the senator’s wife after the death of his father. She must have told him. “Thank you.”
“I hear he was a good man.”
Even though the senator had heard no such thing, another day Trey might have agreed with the senator because he wanted his vote. “He was the reason I got into politics.” A dodge was the best he could muster today.
The sun was bright and shining overhead, though the cold was crisp. They couldn’t ask for a better February day to be outside playing golf. The senator was in a good mood. Trey could get a commitment on the vote today if he played his cards right.
“My dad owned a small farm. I inherited it.”
“What are you going to do with the farm now?”
A vision of hair blowing wildly in the wind flashed through his mind. Max was probably also working today. She’d be outside, but instead of tromping on grass made green through fertilizer and water, she was probably tilling—or something. Trey was fuzzy on the details of what she did in the fields, but whatever it was, she had turned his father’s wasted land into a productive thing of beauty.
“I don’t know,” Trey said, wanting to go back and despising himself for the weakness.
“Sell it,” the senator said. “Durham County, North Carolina. Is that right?”
“Yes. It was once a tobacco farm.” He didn’t want to say what it was now. Didn’t want to sully the image of Max’s lushness by letting the senator know she existed.
The senator’s club banged against the others as he pulled it out of the bag. He was good at show but failed at substance. His wife was the political brains in the family and if they’d been of a different generation, she would be the senator.
“A friend of mine is doing developments all around that area of North Carolina. Luxury houses on large plots of land. He’s always in the market for good acreage.”
Visions of Max competed with memories of piles of crushed beer cans and the smell of his father after a bender. The lines in his mother’s worn face growing deeper and deeper when she came home from work every day. The rot in the wood of the front porch that spread through the family living in the house. The fights and the taunts and the stench of country poverty made worse by a man who couldn’t get out of his own family’s way.
Selling the land would make wanting to go back meaningless. Impossible. Max wouldn’t come out of the front door to welcome him. She wouldn’t offer him a bed or breakfast. The farm and all of its memories could finally be erased from his mind.
“Have him call and make me an offer.”
Trey barely managed to lose the golf game. His heart wasn’t in it, and the senator was a poor enough player Trey had to work at each and every stroke that went awry. But between losing the golf game and selling Max’s love out from under her, he had the senator’s vote.
When Trey got back to his apartment, he stood under his showerhead until evolution granted him gills.
CHAPTER EIGHT
M
AX
HEARD
A
SHES
barking as she walked from the greenhouse to the farmhouse for lunch. He’d always barked at a ringing phone, and the ring seemed to escape his increasing deafness.
“Hello?”
“Max, it’s Trey.”
“Oh. Hi. How are you?”
“Fine.” Even over the phone she could hear the tightness in his voice, the kind of tone people used when they delivered bad news. She couldn’t imagine what bad news he could be the messenger for, but she sat down anyway.
“Look,” he said. “I’ve gotten an offer on the farm.”
“An offer of what?” She wasn’t so dumb not to know what he was talking about, but she wanted him to say it.
“A developer wants to buy the land and I have no interest in being a landlord. Your lease is up at the end of the year.”
“You can’t sell it. Hank’s will states you have to offer me another three-year lease.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
The farm was hers in everything but name. Another three years to save up some money and she could be the one to buy it from him, and then he wouldn’t have to be a landlord anymore. She just needed those three years.
“No,” he enunciated both letters. “The will says no such thing. It leaves the farm entirely to me, with no conditions.”
“Hank promised. He said he changed the will.” Ashes must have enough hearing left to catch the anxiety in her voice because he came over and put his chin on her knee. She rested her hand on his warm head, but didn’t have the energy to scratch his ears. If she moved too much, the actuality of what Trey was telling her might fall into her brain. And if she fell apart, she wouldn’t be able to fight him.
“If my father excelled at keeping promises as much as he excelled at making them, I would be a different person right now. And you wouldn’t have gotten to lease the farm in the first place.”
“I know how Hank was, but he never broke a promise to me. He loved that the farm was finally being productive. He wouldn’t have forgotten to change the will.”
“Max, I’m not suggesting he forgot. I’m suggesting he never intended to keep that promise.” Max could hear some unidentifiable noise in the background. Paper shuffling. “Maybe there’s another farm nearby you can lease.”
Like packing up all the work she’d put into reforming the soil was as easy as boxing up dishes. “If there are so many plots of land around for sale, maybe your buyer can buy one of those.”
“You don’t have a say in this. I’m selling the land and it will be out of Harris hands.”
Max didn’t bother to say goodbye before slamming the phone into the receiver. She might not have a say, but there was another Harris who did.
* * *
T
REY
WAS
WRITING
talking points for a bill soon to be debated in subcommittee when his cell phone rang. The screen said “Kelly,” which was odd because his brother never called him. They had an email/text-only relationship. “Harris.”
“Don’t make any promises to any developers you can’t keep. I’m contesting the will.”
“You can’t contest the will. You don’t want the farm, either.”
Kelly didn’t disagree with him. “But Dad told me he had written a new will. And I talked with his lawyer. There was a new will drafted.”
“The lawyer didn’t mention any of this.”
“Dad took it home to review and never brought it back to the office. If it’s still with Dad’s stuff somewhere, then it’s the official will.”
“We didn’t find it when we packed his stuff.”
“We weren’t looking for it. And you didn’t want to go through his papers, so those are all still in a box.”
“What the hell do you expect to get out of this?”
Trey could hear Kelly’s shrug through the phone. “Maybe he left me half the farm.”
“Bullshit.” His brother claimed his relationship with their father had improved over the past five years, but there was no way their father would leave the family property to Kelly. Their father’s homophobia was marrow-deep. The old man had always said he couldn’t understand why Kelly would have any interest in owning property, since he’d have no kids or wife to pass it down to. “This is all a ruse to get me to change my mind about selling.”
“It’s not a lie that he said he was changing the will and the lawyer said he did it, Trey.”
“Did the lawyer say you were getting half the farm in the new will?”
“No.” The word came out in a drawl. “But I want to see the new will, just to make sure.”
Trey opened his mouth to argue more, but he wasn’t a two-year-old being denied a cookie. Kelly was within his rights to contest the will. The new will wouldn’t leave his brother half the property—Trey was certain on that point—and if a new will did have a contingent that Max be offered a second lease, well, the cost of breach of contract would be the price of freedom.
“I’ll come down this weekend to search with you. If we can’t find the will, does this limbo go on forever?” Trey asked.
“No.” Disappointment was evident in Kelly’s voice. “We get a reasonable time to search. If it’s not with important papers or we don’t find a safe deposit box with the will in it, then I have to assume it’s been destroyed.”
What a pointless waste of time away from work. And another weekend spent on the farm.
And seeing Max again.
* * *
T
HE
PORCH
LIGHT
above her head gave Max an angelic glow, though her face wished him to the devil. She didn’t greet him. Gravel crunching under his shoes was the only sound the cold night emitted. Ashes wasn’t even barking.
“Hello,” he said, the word failing to fill up the empty space between them.
She raised an eyebrow at him, keeping her arms folded against her chest and making her sweater bulge up at her ears. As always, when not clad in work clothes, she was wearing a rainbow of bright colors most redheads would have the sense to run from. Since he existed mostly in a world of dark suits, her polychromatic clothing choices hurt his eyes, even in the dim light. And she looked fantastic.
“Where’s Kelly?” Trey asked.
He took a step forward onto the porch, and she didn’t budge from blocking the door. Not that he was expecting an invitation to stay at the farmhouse again—he’d booked a hotel room downtown—but he and his brother were supposed to start searching for the will.
“Home.” Irritation clipped her words. He tried to let her anger roll off his back, but it bit and clawed to stay there, his conscience its lifeline. Finally, her shoulders relaxed. “He’s coming tomorrow at seven so you can get an early start.”
Trey was turning back to his car when the question hit him. “How did you get him to contest the will? Kelly has less reason to want the farm than I do.”
“Kelly doesn’t confuse the land for your father. He wants it to be in the best hands.”
“Those hands being yours, of course.”
“At least they’re not some land developer’s. Have you seen how the landscape is changing? If central Carolina isn’t careful, all the natural spaces not either flood planes or state parks will be developed. If it’s not a Bojangles or a Walmart, it will be housing developments. The local produce and farming history that attract people here will be gone.”
He wasn’t going to back away from the developer deal, but Trey wanted to go back to when they were working side by side in the greenhouse and she was telling him her dreams. Stupid, because he was razing those dreams to build luxury homes. But the desire to be here with Max and the desire to be anywhere else except standing on this farmland waltzed together in his soul.
Trey wanted to go back to the night they were standing on the porch of her barn, when she was cocking her head up at him and he’d decided to be honorable and walk away. Sex wouldn’t have changed his mind about selling the land and would have only made this current situation worse, none of which meant he didn’t still want it. He wanted to hear her talk about her tractor, but he wanted to hear it when they were lying in bed, warm and satisfied, and with her hair tickling his nose. He wanted her to explain crop rotation when they were lying naked in the sun with only her vegetables to spy on them.
“I won’t be here, so I won’t care” was all he said.
It wasn’t her farm, it was his, and it was his to do with what he wanted. What he wanted was to not be in North Carolina ever again, even if Max was here.
The skin under her freckles flushed a dark red, and her freckles were nearly a coffee color at his words. He wanted to apologize, which was stupid, because he’d said those words exactly to hurt her, so she would never ask him to stay.
“I gave Kelly a key so you can start your search immediately, without coming to find me.” She was in the house and turning the bolt in the lock before he could reply.
Trey collapsed into the driver’s seat of his car and slammed the door. Since when did he need a key to enter his childhood home?