by Nella Tyler
I drove back to my place the long way, thinking about the job ahead of me. What really was there for me to worry about, in terms of hard work? I had been single for so long I wasn’t even sure I remembered what being in a relationship was like, and I’d been working long hours for more years than I had been single—there was no one back home to miss me if I stayed late, no one to complain that I was gone from morning until night.
At the rate that Bob Nelson was paying, I would actually be able to put some aside, maybe take a vacation and go over to Montana or Dakota for a week of fishing or camping after the season was over. I thought to myself that it would be a nice break—if I could keep my expenses low through the growing season, and get through harvest.
Bob hadn’t said anything about after the harvest, but I assumed at least he’d want me to be around until everything had been shipped off the farm and the ground cleared for the next year. If I was lucky, I could maybe turn it into a regular gig—work construction in the late fall and winter and be back on the Nelson farm in time for planting.
But that would only come about if I were good enough to be re-hired. I would have to prove I could get the work done reliably and make myself absolutely indispensible to him. How hard could it be to be a good employee? It’s no harder than construction work, and it’s not like anything will get in the way of work.
I pulled into my driveway and parked, and thought again about the promise that Bob had extracted from me: that I wouldn’t fall in love with his daughter Autumn. I shook my head thinking of it. Autumn Nelson was a beautiful woman—there was no question of that—but I couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made Bob so sure that his daughter would be a target for the affections of anyone he hired.
I supposed it was a good sign that he had considered me at all, since he could have picked from more than a few married men from the town. I went into the house and began to pull together something that I could call dinner, from some leftover chicken in the fridge, and frozen rice and vegetables.
I would have to remember to check my email later and make sure that I got the documents that Bob had mentioned—I wanted everything all set for myself by the time I started, with no loose ends.
Chapter Five
Autumn
It was the Friday after Cade had started at the farm, and I was getting ready to head into town to pick up a few things for dinner and for the weekend. Since the farm was out of the way, Mom or I tried to make the most of any trip to the supermarket, so we wouldn’t have to go as often and use up gas. Mom had given me her list and sat down to watch one of her shows in the living room while Addie played on the floor.
I checked what she’d asked for against what I knew I needed and what I’d noticed the house was running low on: flour, sugar, bleach for the laundry room, bread, beef—steaks as well as ground—apples, noodles, and some cheese. I wanted some of the yogurt-bites that Addie seemed to like, diapers, a four-pack of the supplement drink she preferred, a bottle of wine for myself, and a few other odds and ends. Mom had given me cash to cover the stuff for the household; I would pay for Addie’s stuff out of my own money.
I headed outside after giving my mom and my baby each a kiss goodbye. I spotted Dad, Tuck, and Cade out in the fields and decided that since I didn’t want Mom to have to make another run, I’d check in and see if there was anything else my brother or Dad needed. There was also dinner to consider; since it was a Friday, my dad had invited Cade to stay after they finished up for the day to eat with us.
I had—or at least I told myself that I had—gotten used to the presence of the good-looking man on the farm every day. He was easy on the eyes, friendly and polite, but I could ignore him while I went about my own chores, and it wasn’t that often that my chores brought me out into the fields, so I didn’t have to talk to him much.
I strode over to where the guys were taking a break, drinking some water. “Hey, Dad; hey, Tuck. Hi, Cade,” I said, trying my best not to blush. “I’m headed out to the store to pick up a few things—do either of you need anything in particular?”
“I could use some more of those coffee packets you bought the last time,” Dad said.
“And, I’m out of jerky,” Tuck told me. I made a mental note of both of the things to add to the list.
“Anything else?”
“I think my razor’s out of replacement blades,” Tuck told me, I shrugged and made a note of that, as well. Dad wanted bananas, Tuck needed batteries and Gatorade.
“Any thoughts on what you might like to have for dinner, Cade?” I looked at the farm hand and my heart stuttered in my chest.
“It’s free food,” Cade pointed out. “I’ve got no grounds to be picky.”
“I didn’t say for sure that I’d make what you want,” I countered. “I just wanted a good pool of ideas to choose from.”
“I’ve been craving my mom’s fried chicken lately,” Cade told me. He shrugged. “But you aren’t my mom—so it’s not likely you’d be able to take care of that craving.” I raised an eyebrow at that.
“I may not make it the exact same way that she does, but I could probably make a fried chicken dinner that would satisfy,” I told him.
“Fried chicken is supposed to be for Sundays,” Tuck said, though his voice sounded at least a little excited at the prospect.
“That was back in the day,” I told him tartly. “Now that we live in the 21 Century, we could have fried chicken every day if we wanted to. Ain’t modern life grand?”
I made a mental list of what I would need if I wanted to make fried chicken. I’d need to buy a chicken—none of ours were worth having their neck wrung just yet, and anyway I didn’t feel like doing the extra work. I was getting flour and a few other things anyway. Ideally, I’d want to have an extra day to make fried chicken happen, so I could brine the pieces in buttermilk—but Cade’s comment about his mom’s fried chicken made me want to rise to the challenge, even if he hadn’t intended to issue one.
“I’ll be on my way,” I told the three men out in the field, walking back towards my mom’s SUV, which she let me borrow to go shopping since my own car didn’t have enough room in it for groceries. “Y’all stay hydrated out here.”
I glanced over my shoulder for just a second when I came to the fence at the end of the field, and saw that Cade hadn’t quite gone back to work, but he was obviously getting refocused on the task at hand. My heart beat a little bit faster in my chest at the sight of him in his long-sleeved tee shirt and jeans, sweaty and gorgeous. I calmed myself down and found my keys in my purse, reminding myself to focus on making a decent dinner everyone would enjoy—not get distracted by Cade, no matter how hot he was.
I turned the car around and went up the long driveway from the house out to the road, doing my best to focus on something other than the new, handsome farmhand my father had hired. I needed to make the most of my trip into town, not be distracted and fantasizing.
“It’s not like it’d work out, anyway,” I reminded myself, talking over the radio. Mom liked to keep it on NPR, and I hadn’t bothered to hook my phone up to the sound system to listen to my own music. “You’re a single mom—not many guys would be into that, and anyway, you shouldn’t even be looking at guys.”
Ever since Titan had left me, I’d felt more than a little lonely—especially at night, taking care of Adelyn more or less by myself. You should have known better than to get involved with Titan in the first place, I thought glumly. But then I wouldn’t have Addie. Just because he’s useless...
I stopped myself short of completing that thought. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t say anything negative about the father of my child—and while thinking it wasn’t exactly the same as saying it, if I let myself get away with thinking about Titan negatively, I knew I’d end up eventually saying something.
I pushed all thought of him out of my head and reminded myself that all things considered, I actually had a very good life: my parents were more than happy to have me around, even with
Addie, and Mom gladly helped me take care of my little girl. I had money coming in from my share of the farm, and my daughter was healthy.
There wasn’t very much at all that I could say I truly regretted—though the loneliness was sometimes a bit much. But I knew I’d probably have to wait until Adelyn was a little older before I could find someone who’d be willing to take on the baggage she represented in my life. I tried to tell myself every time I felt a little left out of the world that it was for the best—but sometimes it was hard.
I got to the store finally and took out my lists, determined to spend no more than maybe thirty minutes getting what I needed; if I was going to make fried chicken, I needed as much prep time as possible. I knew the grocery like the back of my hand—I’d been coming to the same one ever since I’d been a child, at my mother’s side, and they hadn’t changed very much over the years.
I started with the dry goods and non-perishables, since that stuff could sit in the cart and wouldn’t spoil on the way back home. I grabbed Tuck’s razor cartridges and the few other things he’d wanted and Dad’s stuff, all the while thinking of what I would make to go with the fried chicken I was going to cook up for Cade and my family.
Almost as soon as I got to the produce section, the answer jumped out at me: mashed potatoes, of course. I’d make mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans. Nothing too fancy, but absolutely satisfying and delicious.
I grabbed a five-pound bag of potatoes and a pound of green beans—we could eat the leftovers on Sunday with a pot roast or something like that. I knew we had bacon in the house; our neighbors, the Knowleses, kept pigs and had given us a couple of slabs at Christmas that we still hadn’t worked our way through just yet. I grabbed buttermilk and sour cream form the dairy section, and picked up some things to make a quick relish to go with the meal.
I did another lap through the store, checking my list again to make sure that I wasn’t forgetting anything. I did have to pick up one or two things that I had missed during my first walk through. I divided up my purchases at the cash register, separating my parents’ purchases, my own, and my brother’s so that I could pay for them with the different cards I had in my keeping.
I loaded everything up and got it out to the car, and thought about how good it would be to see the look on Cade’s face when he tried the chicken; it wouldn’t be quite as good as I normally made it, but I was damn sure going to make it better than he’d be able to get from any fast food place in town.
I drove back home, tingling a little, my heart beating a little faster as I thought about the evening ahead. I knew it was a bad idea—I knew that nothing would ever come up between me and Cade—but I couldn’t help but feel excited at the prospect of cooking dinner for a good-looking man.
There was something that I guess had been missing from my life since Titan had left me; not just companionship, but doing for someone else, having meals with them, sharing a bed with them. Stop thinking about sharing your bed with anyone, I told myself firmly. You’re only going to be sharing a bed with Addie until she’s old enough to go to school—you don’t need to even think about anyone else being there.
I pulled up to the house and started gathering up the groceries to bring into the house. Tuck, Cade, and Dad had moved onto another portion of the field, closer to the house, and I called out to them. “Someone want to give me a hand real quick? It’d go a lot faster and I’d be able to get dinner on the table sooner.”
Dad sent Tuck and Cade to help me move the groceries into the house. “It’s going to be a hot summer, I can already tell,” Tuck said as he lugged bags through the door.
“It’s not even that hot out, you big baby,” I told him, glancing as briefly as I could at Cade; it wasn’t that hot, but it was unquestionable that both my brother and the new farmhand were sweating.
In only two trips, we’d gotten everything into the house, and Dad called out for the guys to start heading back. “I’m going to grab something to drink first,” Tuck said. “You want anything, Cade? I’m sure my sister would be delighted to make you some lemonade.” I glared at him.
“You run your mouth too much, Tuck,” I said. I spotted the hose where I’d left it earlier in the day after watering the ground for the vegetable garden.
“Cade doesn’t mind that you’ve got the hots for him, I’m sure,” Tuck told me. I reached down and grabbed the hose.
“Oh, sweet brother,” I said mockingly. “Did you say you were thirsty?”
“You wouldn’t,” Tuck said sharply. I twisted the nozzle and sprayed him as quickly as I could from head to toe, drenching him.
“Pretty clearly, I would,” I said, smiling. I looked at Cade. “You thirsty, too?”
“No,” Cade said, spreading his heads wide in front of him and grinning. “But I appreciate the offer.”
Chapter Six
Cade
“Let’s call it a day, boys,” Bob Nelson said as the sun began to sink towards the horizon. “It’s going to be too dark in a little while to see anything, anyway.”
I gathered up the tools I’d been using and mopped the sweat off of my forehead. Before too much longer, I was going to definitely need a hat—I might even need to cut my hair if the spring was any indication of the heat we’d have in the coming summer. I would think about that later.
We walked towards the house from the furthest field—the new one—and I was glad that the Nelsons were planning on providing dinner for me; there was no way I would go home and cook, tired as I was after the long day of work. Instead, I would have ended up picking up some fast food, taking a shower, and probably going to bed right after a beer. At least a home-cooked meal would be better for me.
“You’ll want to wash up,” Mrs. Nelson said as we approached the house. “Cade, you can use the guest bathroom, off the living room just over there.”
I smiled and nodded my acceptance of the offer—I was sweaty and dirty, and while nothing short of a long shower would get me truly clean, I was grateful at least to have the chance to be presentable. I didn’t see Autumn as I went into the living room, but Addie was in her playpen, gurgling at one of her toys.
“Hey, little girl,” I said when she turned her big, blue eyes up at me. “How’s your toy?” She babbled something, and I nodded solemnly. “That is frustrating, for sure.” I gave the baby a smile and went on my way to the bathroom that Mrs. Nelson had indicated.
I definitely wanted to do justice to the privilege of having dinner with the family, so I took my comb out of my pocket and tried to do what I could to get my hair in order—which ultimately ended up amounting to pulling it back with one of those elastic hair ties. I scrubbed my hands and tried to clean under my nails, and attacked my face next.
I was just about finished cleaning myself up when I heard Tuck and Bob talking—they must have been in the living room. “You know, now that we’ve got that field cleared out, and next week it’ll be ready for planting, I’m not even sure you necessarily need someone all season,” Tuck was saying.
“I hired him for the whole season, so I’m not about to kick him off the payroll unless I have to,” Bob told his son. I pressed my lips together, taking longer than I should to wash my face.
“He’s a good worker, don’t get me wrong,” Tuck said quickly. “I’m just saying, we need to be mindful about how much we eat into the profits we’re getting from the new field.”
“This is a trial thing,” Bob pointed out. “We have a cushion to take care of business around here. If it turns out that the extra field isn’t earning us enough money to justify having someone work for us, then I’ll make a change next year. It’s important not to get greedy, son.”
I dried off my face and hands and wondered if I should come out of the bathroom already—staying in there too long would make it obvious I was listening to the conversation, but if I walked out and they were still talking about me, it would make things awkward.
Fortunately, Bob Nelson chose that moment to change the subject. “W
hy don’t you go see if your sister needs a hand setting the table? I’m gonna go wash up.” I heard Bob’s steps, heavy in his boots, moving towards the stairs and decided that it was more than time to emerge from the bathroom.
Mrs. Nelson was coming in from outside, a few late-day chicken eggs from the henhouse in her hands. She smiled at me, gesturing for me to precede her into the kitchen. “Work never seems to end around here,” she told me. I grinned.
“That certainly looks to be the case,” I agreed. “When you’re not doing one thing, it’s the other.”
“Best thing I can say for it is I enjoy my food better and sleep better at night than I believe I would if I worked in town,” Mrs. Nelson said. “I do have to admit I have to remind myself of that fact from time to time.”
She turned off into the kitchen proper, and I spotted Autumn. She’d pulled her hair back into a bun and was just taking off an apron as she walked towards the kitchen table. I had to admit to myself that there was a good reason for Bob Nelson’s warning against falling in love with his daughter: Autumn was a beautiful woman. Even with a smudge of flour on her right cheek, flushed from standing over a stove, she was almost too pretty.
Unless she picked an ugly man to have her baby with, Adelyn is going to give her mom more than a little stress when she comes of age, I thought; the baby in the living room was a pretty one—but I’d seen more than one cute baby that became an awkward-looking teenager thanks to some unfortunate gene combinations.
“I know it’s not your mom’s fried chicken,” Autumn told me, gesturing to the table, “but I think it will definitely satisfy any fried chicken craving.”
I turned my attention onto the spread she’d laid out and my eyes widened: she’d managed to pull together a huge meal, with steaming, crisp chunks of fried chicken, a big bowl of green beans with bacon and chopped nuts, a mountain of mashed potatoes and a gravy boat that earned the name, full of rich, pale gravy. I saw a jar of corn relish and some home-canned beets off to the side, and a breadbasket with just a peek of fresh-baked biscuits, as well. A pitcher of lemonade—complete with the rinds, the way that Autumn had told me she made it—completed the spread.
