“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.
* * *
TREY 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.
* * *
THE 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?
CHAPTER NINE
WATCHING TREY STEP out of his car, his dark jeans crisp and green sweater fresh as spring grasses, was physically painful. Max tried to scoff at the idea of him sitting in the dusty attic in his clothes. She tried to laugh at the cobwebs that would be clinging to him when he came down the attic stairs, but both efforts were halfhearted at best. She should be attracted to someone who wore Carhartt and liked to dig in the mud, but the eye was attracted to what it was attracted to and, in her case, that was the crisp, clean lines of Trey’s clothes, his thick hair, which she wanted to run her fingers through and his heavy eyebrows that were made more expressive by an unexpected sense of whimsy.
She was dressed for a farm interview, which meant jeans, work boots and a University of Illinois hoodie. Foolish of her to be lusting after a man who wore a suit every day. Just because she was interested didn’t mean he was interested. He was trying to sell her livelihood out from under her, which made her interest self-defeating anyway.
“Who’s the guy?” Trey nodded at the car leaving her, no, his property.
“Someone I was interviewing for one of the summer intern positions.” The interview had been yesterday and he’d slept over in the barn.
“How’d he do in the interview?”
She shrugged. “Strong back. Seems genuinely interested in farmwork. He needs more hustle.”
The eyebrows she admired so much were crossed when he turned to look at her. “Hustle? I would think strength would be more important and he looks like the kind of man who has a strong back.”
“It’s all well and good to be able to lift up a full crate of potatoes into the bed of the truck over and over and over, but I can do that. I need someone who can get all the lettuce harvested before the summer heat kicks in and kills the lettuce, the worker or both.” She shrugged. “Whoever works the farm with me this summer will get strong if they’re not already. Hustle is related to the drive to work in the sun during a North Carolina summer. No hustle, no drive.”
“It sounds like experience has set you straight.”
“Experience and your father. I was stomping around complaining about how long it took to harvest the tomatoes my first summer when Hank pointed out that one of my interns had no hustle.”
“My father would know. The only thing he ever hustled for was a beer.”
Max didn’t know what to say, so she relied on her father’s old standby and grunted.
“Did you just grunt at me?” She must have surprised laughter out of him because it came out more as a cough.
“Hank wasn’t much of a dad to you or Kelly, but I never saw him take a drink of anything stronger than Cheerwine.” She had no taste for the sweet, cherry-flavored pop that was native to North Carolina.
“He just got better at hiding it.”
“I guess it’s possible,” she said, but didn’t put any conviction into her words. She knew alcoholics could hide their drinking, and she hadn’t spent much time with Hank, despite living on the same property. However, arguing with a wounded son wasn’t on her to-do list for today, so she let it pass.
Trey looked down the driveway to the road, where there wasn’t even a cloud of dust to show someone else had been here. The pity she thought she saw in his eyes was confirmed when he shook his head. “Poor fella.”
“Don’t worry about him. I might still offer him the job. He applied through a program I’m participating in that teaches veterans to farm.”
“And overlook the hustle?” He looked disappointed. “Pity hires are no good.”
“It wouldn’t be a pity hire. As you say, he’s strong. And he has a vision for his future that might provide the drive he needs. I may not be able to teach hustle, but I can light a fire under his toes if he provides the kindling.”
“How many interns do you hire?”
“Three. I’m now able to provide housing, though only for one of them, so it’s nice if I can find some locals.”
“Our hustler over there?”
“Would need housing. But I’ve got some other good candidates who wouldn’t.”
“I assume they don’t know anything about the farm’s future.”
“I assume the farm’s future is with me.” The words were easier to say than to believe, but if she wasn’t able to say them, she wouldn’t be able to believe them. “Hank said he made provisions for the farm, and I choose to trust him on that.”
Trey opened his mouth to respond, but she turned her back to him and walked down the hill to her fields. She had carrots to plant.
Silly though it may be, Max believed the plants took in the energy of the person tending them, and her anger was likely to turn the carrots from sweet to bitter. She would have to put herself in mind for sweet.
The metal of the seeder was heavy when she lifted it out of the bed of the truck, and the seeds sounded like rain as they tumbled against each other from the bag into the hopper. She found it hard not to think, This is the last time.
She pushed the seeder in front of her, down the row of drip line, her legs splayed as she lumbered behind. The seeder was an easier and faster method of planting than doing it by hand like she had when she’d gardened with her mother, but there were times Max missed the feeling of dirt under her nails. Carrots were planted early, which meant the soil would still be cold.
Next year... Well, next year might not bear thinking about. Next year she might be back gardening with her mother. Better to enjoy the experience of seeding her farm while she had it.
She didn’t understand why Trey was so intent on selling the farm. He could continue to lease it to her and never have to think about it. She’d take care of everything and, if he could be patient, eventually she’d be ready to buy it. He’d seemed so interested in the life of a small farmer—in her troubles and her dreams.
Maybe that was what hurt so much about his sudden betrayal. They’d developed a bit of a friendship. She’d shared her work on the farm with him, walked around the fields with him and updated him about farm developments.
When she had the seeder positioned at the next row, Max had her answer. Trey was being entirely truthful about his reasons for selling the farm. He hated his father and anything his father had touched. Maybe her determination to share the glory of the land with him had only made him more determined to sever any connection. She’d chased after him like he was a reclusive housecat and, like a cat, his reaction was to hide.
And if she could go back in time to change her own behavior, she’d start by demanding to see the will Hank had promised her instead of just taking his word for it.
Even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to see over the rise to the farmhouse, Max stopped and looked.
She had wanted to help with the search for the will, but both Kelly and the lawyer thought it was a bad idea. Kelly would keep Trey honest and, as she had the most to gain from the new will, it was better she remain on the sidelines. Kelly knew as well as she did that any new will wouldn’t include him. He was contesting the will for her, and for the transformation she had wrought on the land of his childhood.
Even though Max was pretty sure Trey’s determination to sell wasn’t about her, she still felt like a fool be
ing attracted to him.
Ashes bounded up to her, the bright winter sun and squawking geese giving her old dog new life. He sat, near her but never next to the drip line, and smiled with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, dripping with pond water. All of him was dripping. Ashes had pursued the geese into the pond, their usual refuge from him.
She patted his damp head, enjoying the way he cocked his head toward her when she started scratching his ears. Without geese to chase, how would Ashes find his inner puppy for his last years? Without a purpose, her dog would more quickly grow old before her eyes. Into an early grave.
Tears slipped down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. Crying would do her no good, but she couldn’t help herself. If they didn’t find the new will, five years of turning dirt into soil would be sold off to someone who would pour concrete where her potatoes had been and she’d be a farmer without a farm.
No need to worry if her sadness made the carrots salty; she wouldn’t likely need to worry about repeat customers.
* * *
TREY KEPT EXPECTING—hoping, really—to hear Max’s footsteps in the house. He knew he was hurting her, knew he was tearing her livelihood from her and by rights she should want to castrate him with a garden hoe, but that knowledge didn’t dampen his desire to be near her. Hell, not only was he going to rip the land away from her, but he was also tossing their fledgling relationship out the window. No more watching basketball games. No more emails with pictures of the changing landscape. No more lunches in her kitchen.
Kelly handed him the box cutter and Trey ripped open the tape. They should’ve labeled the boxes. Aunt Lois would have made them label everything they’d packed, but two men weren’t smart enough to think ahead. So instead of opening only the boxes with papers in them, they had to open each and every box. This search would take all weekend. His clients would be pissed that he’d spent another two days in North Carolina instead of working. At least he was at a hotel and had reliable internet.
Weekends in Carolina Page 8
