Whirlwind Romance: 10 Short Love Stories

by Alicia Hunter Pace

  No way at all.

  • • •

  “What the hell? “Maybe I am crazy,” Richard Whitman said as he stood on the back patio, braving the New Year’s Day chill, clutching his morning cup of Earl Grey, and staring at the murky horizon line where the Pacific Northwest sky met five acres of lush, green ground. He hoped to fill this land with camellia sinesis plants, but after last night, he wasn’t sure. “Maybe Joe is right. Maybe growing tea here is a pipe dream.”

  The screen door creaked behind him, and Shelia wrapped her long arms around his waist, warming his back with her body. “All genius is a little crazy.” Her lips, soft and heated, brushed his cheek. “I believe in you.”

  “You matter most,” Richard said, facing his wife and pulling her into a hug until her head rested against his chest. He watched steam rise from his mug, still in hand. “I’m doing this for you and the boys. If we want this farm to flourish and support multiple generations, we have to make a name for ourselves. We have to do something nobody else is doing. But I need Joe to believe in me, too. We’re partners.”

  “He’ll come around.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Joe’s stubborn streak had caused more than a few arguments lately, but this one felt different, more serious.

  “It will all work out in the end.”

  Richard chose to believe her. He showered, dressed, and helped Shelia in the kitchen, trying his best to keep his mind on slicing potatoes for the holiday dinner instead of tea leaves and the disagreement with Joe. But it was difficult. His friend wasn’t a big fan of change, but he’d never reacted this negatively to an idea before.

  “Maybe I could’ve handled the announcement better,” Richard said, dumping the sliced potatoes into a pot of water Shelia had set on the stove. “Maybe I shouldn’t have sprung it on him like that.”

  “Richard.” She gave him a pointed look and then added a smile. “Stop worrying about it. When he gets here, you can apologize for the surprise announcement, and then you can explain everything in better detail…after dinner. Everything will be okay.”

  Laughter from their children playing in the living room punctuated her positive pronouncement, and Richard did relax. He cleaned homegrown vegetables while he whistled Auld Lang Syne, and guarded the cooling pies from the boys’ grubby hands.

  Richard was chasing Chad from the kitchen with a wooden spoon when the phone rang, and Shelia answered, “Hi, Rebecca.”

  The silence that followed was deep and thick.

  Worry plagued him again, and when Shelia hung up the phone with a frown, Richard knew everything wasn’t going to be okay.

  “They’re not coming,” he said.

  She nodded her head. “Jacob is sick.”

  “Jacob looked fine to me last night.”

  Shelia walked to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and nuzzled her cheek to his. “It’s going to be okay.”

  This time, Richard doubted her. Joe had been mad before, but never mad enough to skip a holiday dinner. No, this was different. This was…

  “Happy New Year!” Richard’s brother, Sam, said as he walked into the kitchen, chasing Richard and Shelia apart.

  “Happy New Year, Uncle Richard and Aunt Shelia,” Richard’s niece, Ashley, chirped before she skipped off to join the boys.

  Twenty-four hours ago Richard expected this to be the happiest New Year yet. Now he just hoped it didn’t end up being the year he was forced to choose between business dreams and his best friend.

  • • •

  “You’ve got to look at this from Joe’s perspective,” Sheila whispered when Sam had ducked into the mudroom to remove his muddy boots at his hostess’s request.

  She passed a large WhitSand Farm cabbage from one hand to the next and raised one eyebrow at her husband.

  “Come on. Give it to me.” Richard sighed.

  Sheila handed him the cabbage. “I was going to cook it, but—”

  “No!” He plopped the vegetable onto the cutting board. “Not the cabbage. The unvarnished truth, I meant.”

  She tucked her hands into her sweater’s kangaroo pocket and worried at her bottom lip for a moment. “Okay. Naturally, this is amateur psychology on my part, but Joe is like this.” She rested her right palm atop of the cabbage.

  He let his forehead furrow. “He’s a winter vegetable?”

  “No,” she said, with a laugh. “He’s traditional. We eat cabbage every New Year’s Day because it’s supposed to bring us luck, right?”

  He nodded. He didn’t know where his wife was going with her metaphor, but he had no problem admitting she was the smarter of the two of them. He’d let her run with it.

  “Well, Joe does what he does because of tradition, too. He’s the son and grandson of farmers. What he knows, he learned from them, and he didn’t see anything wrong with the way his folks ran their farm.”

  “But his folks were like mine; they didn’t go to college. College was supposed to teach us how to do things smarter, to expand on the knowledge we have and profit from it. That’s what I want to do with the tea.”

  She nodded. Naturally, she already knew this. “What was Joe’s major, sweetheart?”

  “His major?” Richard fidgeted the dishtowel tucked into his apron string. “The same thing I majored in. Agriculture.”

  Her smile was serene as she shook her head. “You’ve sat on the opposite side of his desk hundreds of times, and you never noticed your best friend’s diploma was issued in political science?”

  He opened his mouth to rebut, but his wife’s cocked eyebrow gave him pause.

  He and Joe had been in all the same agriculture classes freshman year of college, but after that, their schedules had diverged. He’d assumed Joe had just been in different sections of the same courses.

  Apparently not.

  “Why would he change his major?” he asked.

  She opened the closest drawer and extracted a serrated knife from the organizer. Nudging him aside, she sawed the cabbage head in half. “I think the better question is why would he major in something he thought he was already an expert in?”

  “Because the business is always changing.”

  She clucked her tongue and pointed to the cabbage she was preparing. “Tradition. Joe’s not going to buck it.” She shredded the cabbage and tossed it into a heavy skillet atop a slick of melted butter.

  “You’re not going to boil it?”

  “Not this year. Figured I’d try something new with the old tradition.” She picked up a pair of tongs and moved the shreds around the pan. “I think it’ll be just close enough to the familiar dish that the kids won’t make faces. You have to change things a little bit at a time, you know? Maybe next year, I’ll add sausage. In five years, maybe it’ll turn into soup, but no one will be able to remember when the change started.”

  Yeah. She was definitely the smarter one, but it was too late to be tentative. He didn’t have five years to talk his friend out of complacency, not if he wanted to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing.

  He didn’t know what it would mean for the farm if Joe wouldn’t adapt, but he knew one thing. Farming wasn’t about feelings. Obviously, Joe had understood that more than two decades ago when he’d changed his major without even a word to his best friend.

  • • •

  Joe raised his popcorn box in front of his face to shield his lips from the watchful Whitmans. They sat on the other side of the gymnasium, rooting for the blue team—Chad’s. This was the first year Chad and Jacob had been put on different basketball teams. The rosters had been filled by random drawings, but somehow, the timing of their separation bore a certain irony given what Joe may have had to do if Richard didn’t ease up with his demands.

  Joe cringed at his son’s half-hearted defense against his best friend, and said in a low voice, “Every time I try to sit down with him to talk about this year’s crops, he brings up the tea again. We have the same damn argument every time. He says I’m complacent, and I say
he’s reckless.”

  Rebecca folded her hands atop her lap and said through clenched teeth, “Well, it’s been two months. Give him your answer.”

  “I already did, and I thought I was as clear as that weak tea he keeps trying to foist on me.”

  At some point, the basketball had changed hands and a boy from the red team streaked past way too quickly for legal play. The referee blew his whistle and signaled traveling.

  Joe groaned.

  She whispered, “You keep telling him no, and he won’t accept it because the risk is so low. I did the math myself. What’s wrong with converting just a couple of small sections of farmland to tea? If it doesn’t work out, what do you have to lose?”

  “It’s not me, it’s us, remember? We have a family to think about. Two kids who need to go to college sooner than I care to think about. Whose side are you on?”

  She shook her head and crossed her arms, her gaze pinned to someone across the gym.

  He didn’t have to look to see onto whom her attention was fixed. If he were to turn his head, he’d probably find Sheila Whitman sitting in a similar slump and wearing the same inscrutable expression. Those two had always been thick as thieves, and usually were the mediating voices in the rare spats between the men, but he and Richard had never been on the outs this long before.

  Joe couldn’t blame the women for being exhausted by the enduring debate, but the fact of the matter was friendship sometimes got in the way of good business sense. If they were all on the streets, friendship wouldn’t keep them warm or put food in their bellies.

  Nudging her gently with his elbow, he said, “Look, maybe it’s a good thing this came up when it did. Farming is such a fickle endeavor to start with, and I’ve been thinking of ways to minimize our risk.”

  “Meaning what?”

  The crowd around them stood and cheered a red team basket, and he leaned in closer and whispered, “I’ve been talking to my folks and your parents, too. I know some folks that’ll invest in the farm if we split. They’ll give us the money to build up something on our own. A Sanders legacy. We won’t have to worry about getting tangled up in Richard’s experiments. We’ll have a buffer until we get on our feet.”

  She drew back from him, eyes round in shock and lips parted.

  He leaned in more as the crowd sat. “It won’t stop with tea, Rebecca. He’s the kind of man who isn’t content with leaving well enough alone. He was that way in college, too, and back then, I got tired of bailing him out of all his entrepreneurial whims.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “I never had a reason to. It was a secret between friends. Hey, don’t worry. Nothing will happen if he just backs off about the tea. Things will be business as usual.”

  The scoreboard buzzer bleated, indicating the end of the fourth quarter. They stood, watching the two teams form queues to shake hands.

  The bleachers cleared, and the last two players in both lines—Jacob and Chad—wore stupid grins as they bumped elbows, and then fists.

  Jacob draped his arm over Chad’s shoulder, and the two seven-year-olds sauntered toward the concession stand.

  “This is going to be a mess. Mark my words,” Rebecca stepped down the three rows to the gym floor and followed the boys toward the food, already opening her purse.

  “It won’t. I promise,” he called after her. He raked a hand through his hair and blew out a breath.

  At least, he hoped it wouldn’t be.

  • • •

  One Month Later

  Sheila slipped her hand in Richard’s and squeezed. “You okay?”

  Their footsteps echoed as they walked through the quiet hallways leading to the attorney’s office. “Sure, I guess. I just want to get this over with.”

  “I know. It’ll all be over soon enough.” Her blue eyes reflected the sadness Richard felt—sorrow for the end of a partnership, but especially for the end of a friendship.

  He never thought Joe would dig in his heels so deep. The last few days had been surreal, between the arguments, the mediation, and the final sickening realization that WhitSand Farm was choking out its dying breath. He paused outside the closed door, unable to force his hand to turn the knob.

  Sheila ran her hand up and down his back. “There’s still time to change your mind. You don’t have to do this.”

  He blew out a hard breath. “No, I’m right about this. Joe’s refusal to consider it, and his willingness to shut down the whole thing is about more than just tea.”

  They pushed the door open and saw a stone-faced Joe Sanders sitting at a shiny mahogany table, a glass of water dripping condensation onto the surface. WhitSand’s attorney sat at the head of the table, shuffling papers. Sheila walked in and took a seat, leaving room for Richard to sit across from Joe.

  “Where’s Rebecca?” She said as she set her handbag on the chair next to her.

  “Not coming.” Joe kept his eyes trained on the table.

  The attorney cleared his throat and took a stack of papers from a folder. “Gentlemen, as discussed during your mediation sessions, WhitSand Farm will be formally dissolved and your partnership will officially end today. You’ll each leave today with signed documents for your records. Do you have any questions?”

  “No.” Joe finally looked up, his eyes shooting anger directly at Richard.

  With that, the ambivalence that had dogged him since mediation began disappeared. Joe’s refusal to consider branching out into tea was one thing, his bitterness and anger was another. They were friends and partners, practically brothers. Hell, their children had grown up together and their wives were joined at the hip. How could he throw it all away without a thought?

  Their attorney pushed two stacks of documents forward and handed both men pens. “Sign by the arrows, and WhitSand Farm will be officially dissolved.”

  Richard looked to Joe again, hoping to see a hint of regret or uncertainty in his eyes, anything that would stop this madness and put them on track to reconcile. He was met with steely determination and genuine anger. “So this is it, huh?”

  “I guess. It’s not too late to change your mind about this insane tea farming idea, you know.” Joe smirked.

  “It’s not too late to get on board with the idea that could put WhitSand Farm on the map, either, Joe.” Richard put his pen down, hoping for a last-minute change of heart. Joe picked up his pen and scratched his name on the first paper, then flipped through to the end and signed again, before shoving that stack towards Richard and starting the next.

  “When you run your farm into the ground trying to grow tea in Washington, don’t come crying to me.” He signed his name, and stalked out of the room.

  To Be Continued…

  Meet the Whitmans

  There’s a wonderful world of family intrigue in store for you in Emerald Springs! Check out their stories as they angle for control of the family legacy:

  Adam’s Ambition by Monica Tillery

  Colleen’s Choice by Holley Trent

  Chad’s Chance by Elley Arden

  Daniel’s Decision by Nicole Flockton

  Ashley’s Allegiance by Robyn Neeley

  About the Authors

  Monica Tillery lives in Texas with her handsome husband and two sons, where she loves playing games, reading, and hanging out with friends. Her books include Kiss Me, Katie, Bells Will Be Ringing, and A Sweet Deal to release in late March 2014. Find Monica at www.monicatillery.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/monicatilleryauthor, and on Twitter @MonicaTillery

  Holley Trent is a Carolina girl gone west. She pens quirky Southern romances from somewhere in Colorado and philosophizes on Twitter under the handle @holleytrent. To learn about her books, which include My Nora, Sold As Is, A Demon in Waiting, and Melt My Heart, visit www.holleytrent.com.

  Elley Arden is a born and bred Pennsylvanian who has lived as far west as Utah and as far north as Wisconsin. She drinks wine like it’s water (a slight exaggeration), prefers a night at the ballpark to a nig
ht on the town, and believes almond English toffee is the key to happiness. Elley writes provocative, emotional, contemporary romances, where Mr. Not-My-Type ends up being Mr. Right. For a complete list of Elley’s books, including the Kemmons Brothers Baseball series and Harmony Falls novels, visit www.elleyarden.com.

  Nicole Flockton is an Australian living in Houston. She writes contemporary romances and enjoys creating characters and situations unique to them. When she’s not writing romance, she is busy looking after her own personal hero, her husband, and two children. Her books include Masquerade, Rescuing Dawn and Seducing Phoebe. You can find out more about her at www.nicoleflockton.com., on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/NicoleFlockton, and on Twitter @NicoleFlockton.

  Robyn Neeley is an East Coaster who loves to explore new places; watches way more reality TV than she cares to admit; can’t live without Dunkin Donuts coffee and has never met a cookie she didn’t like. If you have a must read romance suggestion or a fabulous cookie recipe, she wants to know. Her books include Destination Wedding and Christmas Dinner. For more about Robyn Neeley visit http://robynneeley.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RobynNeeleyAuthor.

  Sneak Peek Excerpt From Art of Affection by Ellen Butler

  My Kia rolled to a stop in front of the valet stand at the Spanish-style estate.

  “Okay, I just pulled into the drive. I’ll see you in a minute.” I removed the Bluetooth headset from my ear and tossed the keys to a red-jacketed attendant as I stepped from the car, slinging both handbag and camera over my shoulder.

  I’d forgotten the address for Poppy's engagement party and called my sister, Sophie, to direct me the last ten minutes of the, thankfully, uneventful drive. The front windows glowed with lights, creating an inviting feel to the stone and red-tiled mansion, and I snapped a picture to capture the mood. My heels clacked along the stone floors as a doorman pulled the heavy oak door aside for me. A large, sweeping staircase met my sight, and sounds of the party drifted down from the back of the house. I came to an abrupt halt as a tall, black man in a white tuxedo greeted me at the foot of the stairs.