“Excuse me.” Geez. Wyatt interrupted just to give the lady a chance to breathe. The logical part of his brain said to get off the phone, but he’d practiced his spiel so much over the last three hours, that it tumbled out of his mouth without thought. “Fink is in the hospital and they’re looking for someone to help on the farm.”
The other end of the phone fell completely silent. Then, “I’d have to bring my Abyssinian cat. It’s neutered of course.” She went on about the cat and its medications and the timing and the special requirements that it needed that precluded being able to board it at a kennel. Wyatt wasn’t exactly timing it, but it seemed like at least fifteen minutes before she stopped for air and he was able to tell her he’d text her the address.
She agreed to come out Monday and hung up. He stood unmoving with the phone still at his ear.
“Wyatt. Wyatt? What’s wrong?”
His hand dropped slowly from his ear. “I think I just solved our no-cat problem.”
Harper started to smile. Apparently, the look on his face made her rethink that decision. “I was kidding about needing a cat.”
“She’s coming.”
Harper’s eyes lit up, but she tilted her head. “Why did you just say that like she’s next-of-kin to the chainsaw murderer?”
“I’m not sure we need to worry about her running a chain saw.”
“But she can use hedge trimmers, right? Does she know much about farming? Can she spray the sweetcorn?”
Wyatt looked at his phone, like it had somehow conjured all of this up. “She plays the tuba.”
Harper’s eyebrows flew up. “The tuba?”
“She has an Abyssinian.”
“And…that’s a hairdo that requires multiple bottles of hairspray, similar to a beehive?”
“It’s a cat.”
“You’re scaring me, Wyatt.”
“I’m a little shell-shocked myself. She, um, talked a lot.” He tried to look on the bright side. “But she’ll be here Monday.”
Chapter Four
That evening Harper and Wyatt sat on the porch swing together. Wyatt swung gently with his foot. Peepers from the pond filled the night air with song. The springs creaked rhythmically.
Harper leaned her head against the swing headboard, her phone in her hand. She hadn’t called her mother, not wanting to bother her if she was talking to doctors or nurses about Fink’s care. But she hadn’t set it down.
She glanced at Wyatt out of the corner of her eye. He’d been quiet after their disappointing afternoon. Of course, she’d been quiet and preoccupied, too, because of Fink and her mother. That was probably what was on Wyatt’s mind, too.
She put her hand on his leg. Immediately, she remembered the hardness of his body and the prickling sensations she’d had in the tunnel. Those complications weren’t exactly welcome right now, or ever. But snatching her hand back would only make everything more awkward. She patted his leg instead, like a mother patting a child’s head.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
The muscles under her hand tensed. He blew out a breath and they relaxed. “It’s been ten years since my mother died.”
Harper snapped her gaze to his face. “I hadn’t realized.”
“I was going to the Alps because that’s something she always wanted to do. I thought to do it in her memory.” His head rolled to the side and she caught his gaze in the hazy evening light. “I had even thought I might talk you into going with me.”
Her eyes flew open and her heart spiked in her chest. “If I didn’t have that research position…” Who was she kidding? She didn’t want to travel to Arizona to see her sick stepfather. She had even less desire to take a trip to Europe just for kicks and giggles, yet alone to climb a mountain. But for Wyatt…
“Nah, it’s okay. I knew you probably wouldn’t go. I just sometimes get these crazy ideas.”
“You don’t have to tell me about your crazy ideas,” Harper said, then regretted it. She held her hand up. She wasn’t planning on wearing the ring constantly, but she had put it on earlier and hadn’t taken it off. Maybe she’d rent a safe deposit box, although it seemed like a waste to put something so beautiful and precious away. The emerald caught the light of the moon and muted sparkles winked on her finger.
A piece of her history, there on her hand.
The connection to her ancestor, and to the farm she loved, made her smile. “I wanted to thank you again for making me go today. I wouldn’t be wearing this right now if it weren’t for you.” She patted his leg again, ignoring the hardness and the way touching him made her heart flutter. “I wish you had something like this from your mother.”
“I don’t have anything tangible. But I have her dreams here.” He put his balled fist over his heart. “She wanted to see the Alps. But, more than anything, she wanted my dad and me to get along. She always said he wouldn’t change; it was up to me.”
His hand came down and covered hers where it rested on his leg. Guilt puddled in Harper’s heart. Selfishly, she’d not wanted Wyatt to go to Chile. But Wyatt needed to go if only to preserve his mother’s memory, just as much as she needed to do what it had taken her all day to decide.
“I found another envelope after you left,” she said softly.
“You dug around in their desk some more?” Surprised laced Wyatt’s voice.
She smiled to herself. Wyatt knew she was such a prude she’d never root through someone else’s stuff. “No. Mom texted me and asked me to take a picture of the passcodes she had written and stuck in an envelope. I did that, but I found something else.” She turned her hand and her fingers laced with Wyatt’s.
He waited.
“They have every afternoon from mid-September to mid-November reserved for school field trips.” The discovery had cause a thick cape of blackness to wrap around her heart. All that revenue would vanish along with any hope of paying the taxes and keeping the farm.
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Thousands of dollars they stand to lose if there are no pumpkins, corn, squash, gourds, corn, hay….” Her voice trailed off. So much work to do.
“Well, I’ve been thinking—” Wyatt began, but she cut him off.
“I have, too. I’ve worked hard for tenure. Years. Looking back, though, it feels like nothing, because I loved what I was doing so much. But lately…” She sighed. She wouldn’t admit this to anyone but Wyatt. “Honestly, over the past few weeks, I’ve been so close to finally getting what I want, but I’m not even sure I really want it anymore. I think I do. Still, this afternoon, as I thought about which is more important to me—the farm or getting tenure—it took about two seconds to decide. My family. This farm. I can’t separate the two.”
Wyatt squeezed her hand. He shook his head. “That’s kind of what I’ve been thinking. Yeah, I wanted to go backpacking over the Alps for my mom—I can’t even remember what she looked like anymore and that bothers me. I’m losing her.”
Harper bit the inside of her cheek at the sadness in his voice. All she could do was squeeze his hand, but it didn’t feel like enough.
Wyatt squeezed back, and his voice lightened. “But I’m going to Chile and that has to be enough. The first thing I did when I got my phone out of the tunnel this evening was to call my friends and tell them to go on without me.”
She straightened and looked at him. “You didn’t!”
“Yeah. I’m going to stay at the farm. I’ll take care of things. Uncle Fink took me in after Mom died. It’s the least I can do.”
“Too late, Wyatt. I already called Dr. Hitten, the supervisor on my project, and told him I was out.”
“Call him back. I’ve got this.”
“It’s my family. My farm.”
Wyatt swallowed. He lifted their joined hands and studied them for a moment.
Her own throat grew tight.
He whispered, “Don’t you know that it’s mine, too?”
Harper’s mouth hung open. She couldn’t think to close it.
“You’re my family.” He dropped their hands and gave the swing an extra hard push with his foot.
“I’m sorry. You belong here. Just as much as I do. But I never thought that this was your problem. What about your mom? What about the anniversary of her death?”
“I loved my mom. And I miss her. But she’s not the woman I thought she was if she’d rather I run around the Alps having a grand time while the family farm crashes and burns. I’m not the person I want to be if I could do that.” The swing’s chains creaked, blending with the sound of the peepers from the pond and the rustling of leaves.
Harper sighed. “That’s how I feel. My position at the university is nothing if I don’t have this farm as my base.”
“What I can’t decide is what to do about Avery.”
What did she have to do with anything? Harper turned to look at Wyatt. He had a mock serious look on his face. He was trying to break the tension, because he never could be serious for long. Harper laughed. “It sounded like she wanted to come here.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Plus, she’s family.”
“Most importantly,” Harper said with a lifted brow, “she has a cat.”
Wyatt pulled up the neighbor’s drive and parked the old farm pickup next to their house. After using hot pads to carry the pan of lasagna Harper had made that afternoon while he started planting the pumpkins, he stepped up on the immaculate porch and pushed the doorbell with his elbow.
There was no curtain on the door, and he watched through the window as Gator Franks strode down the hall. The barrel of a rifle stuck up diagonally past his head. Ammo belts crossed his chest. A handgun was strapped to his hip on top of his fatigues.
The door opened.
“Wyatt.” The man nodded without smiling. But his eyes went to the pan of food, and he breathed deeply through his nose.
“Target practice?” Wyatt nodded at the guns and ammo.
Quiet and driven, Gator had been a great friend to Wyatt the first year he’d moved here. He nodded once. “Spent the morning surrounded by white lab coats. Needed to destress.”
Probably the stress was more because it wasn’t easy for anyone to see their mother fighting for her life. But Wyatt didn’t say anything. Gator wasn’t exactly known for being in touch with his sensitive side.
A shaggy, mangy looking cat twined around Gator’s ankles, then walked its front paws up to Gator’s knee. A big, rough hand reached down and gave the cat a rub between the ears.
“Still picking up strays.” Gator had never particularly struck Wyatt as a cat person, but he’d always spent the money he made fixing things around the farm on vet bills.
Gator glanced down at the aluminum foil covered casserole. “That Italian?”
“Lasagna. It’s edible.”
He cracked a smile. “After smoked groundhog, it’s my favorite. How much of it did you eat on the way here?”
Wyatt returned the grin. “Mine’s at home. Harper made me deliver yours before she’d let me eat.”
“Good girl. Smart.” Gator propped his shoulder against the door.
“Harper said you were only in for a few days.”
“That’s right.”
“She wanted me to reassure you that the town is looking after your mom while you’re gone.” It had to be hard to have a job in Montana when his mother was sick in Pennsylvania.
“Thanks.” Gator met his gaze briefly. His eye twitched. The only show of emotion.
A brunette head peaked around his shoulder. “Wyatt Fernandez. I haven’t seen you in months.”
Except for the dark circles around her eyes and maybe a little missing weight, Mrs. Franks looked the same as she had since high school. He would never have guessed she had cancer.
“Yeah. I’m in for the summer.”
Gator put a heavily muscled arm around his mother’s shoulders. Her housecoat was buttoned up tight, but she still crossed her arms over her stomach like she was cold.
He squeezed her to him, like he could warm her up. “Promised you were gonna stay in bed,” he said, his voice sounding like casings in a tumbler, with an underlying tenderness.
“But we have company, son.”
If Gator wanted his mother in bed, Wyatt didn’t want to keep her up. “I can’t stay. Fink and Ellie and the kids are gone. I’ve got to get back to Harper. We’ve got some things to take care of.”
Mrs. Franks allowed Gator to pull her closer, but she didn’t back away from the door. “She’s been buried in the books, I suppose. I haven’t seen her since I retired. She was close to tenure then. Does she have it yet?” Mrs. Franks asked.
“Not yet.” The smell of tomatoes and spices suddenly turned his stomach.
“Let’s not keep him from his supper, Mom.” Gator reached a hand out to take the pan.
“It’s hot,” Wyatt said, although he hadn’t gotten past Mrs. Frank’s comment about Harper’s tenure. Everyone knew it was what she’d been working for all her life. He shook his head. “Don’t worry about giving the pan back.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Franks said.
“’Preciate it,” Gator echoed.
Wyatt met his eyes for a second before he turned. He saw something in them that he’d never seen before. Fear.
Wyatt walked down the steps. His heart bled for Gator, not sure if it was better to lose one’s mother quickly, as he had, or slowly, with a slim chance the whole time that maybe he wouldn’t lose her at all.
He shook the morbid thoughts away. But that made room for the same thought that had run on repeat through his head all night to settle. If the farm meant so much to Harper that she’d give up everything she’d worked for at the university to stay home and save it, she’d never allow herself to fall in love with him and move to Chile. And, more importantly, it would be wrong of him to expect her to.
Chapter Five
Monday morning, Harper had just gotten off the office phone with Gary’s Chemical about spraying the peach trees, when a car pulled in the driveway. During the fall, it wasn’t unusual for the lot to be full, but this time of year, since people didn’t typically want to buy pumpkins and Christmas trees in June, they weren’t open.
Before she opened the door, she texted Wyatt, who was on the tractor planting sweet corn, letting him know lunch was ready. Her ankle still pained her, but even if it hadn’t, she was thankful that he’d not asked her to go with him.
The beige sedan motored slowly past the office and on toward the house. Although nondescript, she recognized the car. An odd tangle of anxiety and dismay settled in her stomach. She set the tray on the banister.
What was Professor Jeff Hitten doing here? As the head of the nutrition department, he was technically her boss. She couldn’t think of anything she’d done wrong. She put a hand to her hair. Same ponytail she always wore, but he wouldn’t be used to seeing her in jeans and a tee shirt. It bothered her to look less than professional, even though she was at home and had no reason to expect company. Her stomach tightened. He was less than ten years older than her, and was considered by other interns to be quite good looking, but he always made her feel young and slightly inept.
She hurried down the porch steps. The professor had already gotten out of his car. Despite the humidity, his dress slacks were neatly pressed with a perfect crease. His collared shirt looked crisp, and the man himself was pale and cool despite the heat.
“Professor.” Harper closed the gap between them with her hand out. “So nice to see you.”
He took her hand in his, which was white and soft. After glancing at the porch, he said, “I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?”
“Not at all. My step-cousin, Wyatt, will be here shortly for lunch. You can join us if you’d like.”
“There’s no need. I was away at a conference and just found out today that you backed out of our research project. Shelly Blair told me, but she didn’t know why. I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
Reading nothing but concern in his brown eye
s, Harper relaxed. “I’m fine. My uncle’s in the hospital and I’m needed here on the farm.”
Professor Hitten nodded, his lips pressed together. “I wish you would have said something to me first. The project this summer has potential to impact the way people think about nutrition in a big way.” He sighed, clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him. “I’m in charge of the team. I can get you back on the roster.”
Harper bit the insides of her cheeks. Across the yard, Wyatt drove the tractor into view. He’d given up his trip, how could she consider ditching him now? Plus, was tenure what she really wanted? She’d worked so long and so hard, and she’d enjoyed every second. Once she had tenure, what then? Her life stretched before her. Sure, she’d have the farm. Wyatt would see to that this summer. But what else? Her mom, her stepdad, her brothers. There was more, she was sure of it. For the first time in her life, the thought of the farm and her family did not completely satisfy Harper, and a tiny spot of restlessness chipped at her chest.
Still, it was unheard of to cancel a tenure vote. And if a professor didn’t get voted tenure, it was understood they would find another position. At a different university. Harper’s chest heaved. There were no other universities within easy driving distance, and she didn’t want to move. She had to get tenure. But a professor’s ability to get grants, do research and be published was a huge part of tenure. Now, all the board would see when they looked at her was someone who had taken the entire summer off, ditched a plum research opportunity, and hadn’t published a paper in months.
But she couldn’t leave Wyatt.
She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry, Professor. I’ve already told my family they can count on me. As much as I wish I could do the project this summer, I just can’t.”
“Are you sure?”
Not completely sure her face wasn’t turning green, Harper nodded. Beyond the sickness, though, a small part of her loosened like a large, heavy chain had been unhooked and released.
Better Together Page 4
