Ally carefully sliced the remaining ears from the stalk, transferred them to the wagon, and dropped the useless stalk to the ground. Matt watched her until she successfully cut an ear from a new stalk, then turned back to his own side of the row.
They worked in silence, broken only by Ally’s muttered blessing upon the savaged corn stalk. Normally at harvest, she thanked the Earth for the bounty she had received, and bid it rest and restore its strength before the next crop. But for the maze, the corn needed to continue growing, or at least living, even after the ears had been harvested.
Matt passed close beside her as he brought three more ears to lay in the wagon. “Did you say something?”
Damn! He’d heard her blessing.
“Uh, I was just wondering about you. Are you originally from Hargrove?”
“Yeah. I’m a regular small town success story.” Oddly, his voice was tinged with bitterness rather than the pride she’d expect from such a declaration.
“Aren’t you happy to be successful?”
He let out his breath in a gust. “Don’t get me wrong. I like who and what I am now. It’s what I was that I’d prefer to forget.”
“From what you said earlier, I thought your family were farmers.”
“Being a farm family wouldn’t have been so bad. But we didn’t have a farm. My father lost it, before I was even born.”
Matt paused his methodical chopping of the corn, and stretched his back. Ally suspected the tension she could see knotting his neck and shoulders had nothing to do with his harvesting, and everything to do with his memories.
“He drifted from job to job, sometimes helping on other people’s farms, sometimes getting a job in town.” He turned to face her, his eyes bright with the intensity of his emotion. “He wasn’t lazy. He worked hard. Too hard. That’s what killed him. But he had no plan. He had these grand dreams—we’d get our farm back, we’d move to a big new house in town, hell, at one point he even wanted to sell every John Deere tractor in the county. But that’s all they were, dreams.”
Matt snorted, and turned back to the corn. His machete rose and fell in short, savage strokes, as tightly controlled as his voice. “He expected things to happen instantly, like magic, just because he wanted them to be so. I learned early that there’s no such thing.”
Ally bit her lip and clenched her fingers around the handle of her machete. Magic was real. She knew that better than anyone. But it wasn’t the genie in the lamp, three wishes kind of magic that would solve all your problems in a single stroke. It was the magic of life, of nature, of working in harmony with the forces of the universe. It was taking advantage of the waves and rhythms of the world around you to add power and force to your own actions, in the way that someone on a trampoline used the power of the springs to throw them higher into the air than they could jump on their own.
But she kept silent, knowing he wouldn’t want to hear her justification of her beliefs. Not when they so closely mirrored what he saw as his father’s failing.
“We had nothing. As soon as my sister and I were old enough to go to school, my mother took a part time job to try and make ends meet. But every time she got a little money set aside, my father would convince her of his latest grand idea, and they’d throw the money away.”
Matt’s fist clenched around his machete and he stood frozen, staring sightlessly at the wall of corn before him. Ally forced herself to resume cutting ears of popcorn and laying them in the wagon, hoping the soothing rhythm of her work, the repetitive whoosh and snap of her swinging blade biting into the corn, would help ease his tension.
Whoosh, snap. Whoosh, snap. Whoosh, snap. Turn and lay the corn in the wagon. Roll the wagon forward. Whoosh, snap. Whoosh, snap. Whoosh, snap.
The rigid tension of his shoulders eased, and he resumed harvesting the ears on his side of the row, too. His blade rose and fell in concert with hers, as if he’d absorbed Ally’s rhythm and his heart now beat in time with hers.
“When I turned fourteen, I started taking jobs after school and on weekends. But unlike my father, I had a plan. I gave part of the money to my mother, of course, and part to my sister so she’d have the right clothes and things that are so important to a girl. But my share I saved, until I had enough to invest.”
She could hear the smile in his voice, and the pride in his younger self.
“I didn’t just work any job, though. I knew what I needed to learn, so I took jobs that would teach me that. I worked as a field hand for an older farmer with no sons, but also as a delivery boy, a clerk, and a sign-painter. I learned about the land, the people, business, and advertising. So I was ready when I started my own business, still in high school.”
“Matt’s Marvelous Mazes?” she asked, caught up in his story.
“That’s right. I sent a proposal to the county fair, outlining my plan for a corn maze. I offered them two choices. Either no investment from them, and I’d do all the planting and growing at my own expense, as well as run the maze during the fair, but then I’d keep all the money made from admissions. Or they could pay me to plant and grow the corn, then to run the maze, and they’d keep the admissions profit. As I expected, they wanted me to absorb all the expense. I made double my initial investment that August. More importantly, everyone in the county knew I had a successful corn maze business, and the offers for the next year rolled in.”
They continued working in silence after he finished speaking, then Ally asked, “What about your father?”
“I offered him a job when I started expanding the business. But we didn’t get along. He kept wanting me to expand in untested areas, or take crazy risks, and my insistence on sticking to the business plan frustrated him to no end. He finally quit, and got a job in the lumber yard.” Matt paused, then added softly, “He died of a heart attack a few months later. No life insurance, of course.”
“You were still in high school?”
He nodded. “I had to drop out my senior year, when planting time came around. But the school was very understanding, and let me take my GED exam and graduate with the rest of my class. It was rough at first, being the sole support of the family instead of just helping out, but I stuck to the plan, and it worked out.”
They reached the end of the row, and found Susan and Cindy waiting for them with an empty wagon. Cindy grabbed the handle of the full wagon and pulled with all her might, nearly falling when it began to roll. Matt and Ally chuckled at her surprised expression, while Susan hovered anxiously beside her to grab the wagon if it proved too much for her. Cindy quickly got the loaded wagon under control, and turned it toward the barn, pulling it slowly and carefully across the uneven ground. Susan watched for a moment, joy and pride lighting her face, then turned to Ally and Matt.
“How’s the harvest going?”
“Good. How long did that row take?”
Ally frowned at the answer. Assuming they’d grow faster as they got more skilled, but slow down as they tired, that would be a good average to estimate their effort by. Multiplied by the number of rows to get the time required to harvest the entire field.
“We might not finish in two days.”
“We’ll finish,” Matt reassured her. “Tomorrow night’s the full moon, so we can work as late as we need to, to get it done.”
She flashed a smile at him. “Let me guess. It’s in your plan for two days of harvesting, so two days of harvesting it will be?”
Matt laughed. “How’d you know?”
Susan interrupted them. “I need to catch up with Cindy. But is there anything you want me to bring with the next wagon?”
“Water would be good.” Ally stripped off her sweatshirt, and handed it to her sister. “And you can take this back. I’m plenty warm, now.”
Matt followed suit, pulling off his flannel over-shirt and handing it to Susan. “If you wouldn’t mind taking mine, as well?”
Susan nodded and disappeared after her daughter, leaving Ally and Matt looking at each other. Matt’s T-shirt hugged
his chest, still fresh and crisp, and she was once again gripped with the desire to rub herself against it. Meanwhile, his eyebrows raised, and she belatedly remembered which T-shirt she’d pulled on after her shower.
“Botanists do it in the dirt?” he asked, his lips twitching with suppressed laughter.
Her cheeks heated. “Let’s start the next row.”
They worked in companionable silence for the first few yards, broken only by the sound of their machetes rising and falling in unison.
While they harvested, Ally’s mind turned to Matt’s story, thinking of the parallel’s with her own life. She’d been reluctant to describe her own childhood, earlier. But now she thought he’d understand.
“I had to be a caregiver to my sister, too,” she finally said. “My mother was never very maternal. She married young, and had children right away, because that’s what she thought you were supposed to do. But my father never wanted a family. My mother was beautiful, and he wanted to show her off as a trophy wife. Babies are squally, smelly, drool-covered things that can be briefly cleaned up for display, but are generally just a mess. When we moved to Colorado, he decided that he needed a different trophy. They divorced just after Susan was born.”
“I’m sorry,” Matt answered. “It must’ve been hard growing up without a father.”
Ally shook her head, fighting the crowd of memories. “Actually, we had the opposite problem. Too many fathers. My mother had no skills, no talents other than beauty. She got married again almost immediately. But it didn’t last. She was too alert for signs that he was cheating on her, wanting to leave him before he could leave her. Her next marriage was shorter still.”
Matt turned to face her, his eyes wide. “How many times did she remarry?”
“She was only married three times. Then she gave up on marriage and just started taking lovers. We moved every year or two, when she’d be convinced that men in a different part of the country had to be different from the men she knew where we were. She dragged us with her, from state to state and from lover to lover, mostly I think because she couldn’t think of anything else to do with us.”
Ally sighed, remembering the bleak disappointment that followed each uprooting and cross-country move. At least she’d had her plants, re-connecting with nature in every new location. Susan had only had her.
“Susan was always more fragile than me. Our mother was useless, so I took care of her, reassuring her that the constant stream of men in our mother’s life was our mother’s fault, not ours. I made sure she had everything she needed, and kept her from rushing into a series of pointless affairs in an effort to prove her own worth, so that she would wait until she found a man who would truly love and protect her for the rest of their lives.”
“But Brian died.”
“Yes. And all Susan could see was that he left her, just as everyone left our mother. It crushed her.”
They worked in silence for a while, Ally’s thoughts chasing themselves down the familiar unproductive circle of what-ifs. Then Matt’s voice broke into her musings.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Have you given up on men, too?”
She caught her breath. He was just curious, that was all. After all, he’d shown no sign of attraction toward her. Her jumping pulse steadied.
“No. Of course not. But I’m not going to define myself by who I marry. I’ve got my own goals I want to achieve.”
“Like what?”
The floodgates opened, and she found herself pouring out a rushing stream of dreams and aspirations. She told him about the degree in botany that she’d been pursuing, and her work on new plant hybrids. She described the university’s research greenhouses, and their long stretches of test farms, and how she would love to some day be in charge of a facility like that, developing new strains of crops, seeing how they fared, improving their hardiness and their yield.
Then she started describing the properties of the Japanese White hybrid they were harvesting, how the taller stalks were capable of six to eight ears per stalk rather than the usual three to six, each ear covered in the tiny golden kernels that popped pure white, hull-less and tender.
“Of course, the problem is that the hybrid ears are very delicate until they’re dried. If they’re dropped or even hit too hard, the kernels will burst. That means they have to be hand-harvested. It’s okay for an organic farm, that makes a tradeoff between labor and cost of produce, but it’s not a good general solution. I’d like to try a different hybrid, maybe with a standard corn, like Silver Queen.”
They continued chatting companionably while they worked their way up and down the rows, and took a brief break for the lunch Susan made for them. By the time evening fell, they were tired and sweaty and more than ready to call it a night. They’d also become true friends.
Matt groaned and lowered his aching arm for the last time. “That’s it for the row.”
A moment later, Ally placed her final ears in the loaded wagon. Cindy had long since exhausted herself and gone back to the house, so Susan collected the final wagon load of popcorn and towed it to the drying shed.
“Do you need a hand laying the ears out?” Ally called after her.
“No. It’ll only take a few minutes. You two go out behind the barn and hose off. You’re covered in dirt, sweat and bits of corn leaves.”
Matt looked down at himself. Yes, he was filthy. And his arms were covered in tiny cuts from the corn. He needed to wash up so that the cuts didn’t get infected. Stretching his tired muscles, he lifted the damp cotton of his T-shirt away from where it was stuck to his back and let fresh air underneath. He probably stunk.
“I could really use a long, hot bath. But a hose down is a good first step.”
Ally chuckled, twisting and stretching her muscles as well. “Me too. I feel like these clothes should be burned, not washed.”
He followed her to the barn, his gaze dropping to the tantalizing switch of her strawberry blond ponytail, swinging like a pendulum in counterpoint to every sway of her hips. Although he was tired, aching, and wanted nothing more than to fall into bed unmoving for hours, his cock twitched to life at the enticing sight. He could easily picture her swaying against him as their bodies moved together, as smoothly in tune as they’d been while working in the field.
Matt shook his head, dismissing the thought. She was a friend, nothing more.
They reached the barn, and Ally turned the spigot, releasing a stream of water from the hose. She rinsed her hands, then put her thumb over the mouth of the hose, forcing the water into a narrow stream that shot forth a good five feet. Turning the stream on Matt, she hit him with the cold water.
“Hey!” The cold and shock cooled his body’s reaction, so there was no reason to keep his distance from her. He lunged forward, grappling with her for control of the hose.
They were laughing, soaking wet as they wrestled for the hose that was trapped between their slick bodies. Then it slipped free, hitting the ground and writhing like a snake, spraying a fountain of water as it whipped back and forth.
Matt grabbed it, holding it aloft with a triumphant cry. Then he put his thumb over the mouth and turned the spray on Ally.
She squealed, lifting her hands to keep the stream from hitting her face. The soaking wet fabric of her T-shirt pulled tight across her breasts, clinging to the beaded nipples rising under the sluice of cold water.
He swallowed, hot blood pooling in his groin and stiffening his cock as her breasts bounced and swayed beneath her “Botanists do it in the dirt” T-shirt. God, he wanted her. He’d gladly do her in the dirt, right here in the muddy ground beside the barn.
He groaned, imagining her naked body slick with mud, her muddy hands sliding over his bare skin in encouragement as he thrust into her again and again. Slowly, he realized that she’d stopped laughing and squealing. He forced himself to meet her wide-eyed gaze. Her pupils were dilated with desire. The tip of her tongue slipped out to lick awa
y the water droplets clinging to her lips, drawing his gaze downward, then down further still, to note how rapidly her chest rose and fell, each breath pressing her taut breasts against the wet shirt. He could see the outline of her skimpy bra beneath the clinging T-shirt, but it hid nothing, merely lifting her breasts higher for his display. He wanted to roll them beneath his palms, squeezing her hard nipples between his fingers until she arched and moaned against him. Then he’d cover each breast in turn with his mouth, sucking the water from her shirt and bra as he loved her nipple with his tongue.
He reached blindly behind himself and fumbled with the spigot until he turned off the water. Then he dropped the hose.
“Ally,” he croaked.
Her eyes lowered, her gaze fixed on his soaking wet jeans clinging to his stiffened cock.
They stood that way, staring hungrily at each other’s bodies without saying a word, as the moment stretched out like that painful moment of exquisite pleasure when you were balanced on the edge of release. Then she took a step backward.
Reality crashed over him in a wave. Ally was his friend. He already had a girlfriend. So what if Cece’s body had never made him instantly hard like this? He’d never spent a whole day working beside her in a field, either. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything. He wouldn’t allow it to mean anything.
“I’ve got to go.”
Turning, he fled to the safety of his truck. He didn’t even care about the mud and water he was tracking all over the upholstery as he jumped inside. One thought consumed him. Ally had rejected him, and he had to leave before he did something that would lose her friendship forever.
Chapter Four
Despite a hot shower and two extra strength painkiller geltabs before he went to bed, when Matt woke up Sunday morning, his arms and shoulders ached so badly he could barely move. The pain in his arms wasn’t what had woken him, however. The ache further south had done that.
His dreams had been filled with images of Ally Nichols. Sometimes she’d been naked, sometimes wearing the clinging wet “Botanists do it in the dirt” T-shirt, and sometimes a skimpy bikini suitable for mud wrestling or car washing. But whatever she’d been wearing, she’d looked sexy as hell.
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