LITMIR.BIZ

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she set it on the table gently. “I’m sorry to leave you, boys, but I’ve got to talk to the foreman about some new hires. Several of my best workers had a terrible car accident last weekend, and I’m going to be shorthanded.”

      Obediently, Chase stood up and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled, and waited for Trent to do the same. Still part of the charade for Chase’s benefit. Trent kissed her, surprised to find that her cheeks were still soft and warm, not firm plastic like a mannequin’s.

      Then she was gone.

      The silence in the kitchen held a million unasked questions—and a million unspoken answers. Trent didn’t rush to fill it. Between the two men, words were often unnecessary.

      Chase pulled open the cabinet door that hid the trash can. Then he wadded up the wrapping paper and tossed it toward the container. He missed. Trent retrieved it and tried again. He missed, too.

      “Pathetic,” Chase said. They both stood staring at the misshapen ball of glittering silver paper on the tiled floor.

      “Look, Trent. Maybe I should stay out of this but…don’t give up on Sue, okay? It’s early days, you know. Things could get better, with a little time.”

      Trent grunted, then went over and stuffed the paper into the trash can and kicked the cabinet door closed. “Yeah, and you could get drafted by the Mavericks, but I’m not holding my breath.”

      Chase shook his head. “What the hell happened? I was hoping I’d find you two still in bed. But I get here, you’re gone, and she’s doing her bookkeeping like it’s just any other day. Damn it. I honestly thought that, once you guys were married, she might—”

      “Well, she didn’t. And she’s not going to. I was an idiot to think she ever would. She was always strong, Chase, but it’s different now. She’s changed. Maybe her grandfather did it to her. Hell, maybe I did it. But she’s turned…tough.”

      “No, she hasn’t.” Chase chewed the inside of his lip. “Or if she is tough, it’s tough like an avocado. Just on the outside. You’ve got to remember that, you know. She can still be bruised on the inside. Are you sure you didn’t do something, say something that might have made her feel—”

      “No.” Trent took his coffee cup to the large stainless steel sink and tossed the dregs down the drain. “I didn’t say a damn thing. And, frankly, I’d prefer not to get lectures from you on this. Why don’t you go home and take care of your own wife?”

      Chase smiled. One of his best traits was his easy nature. He rarely took offense at anything.

      “Gladly,” he said. “But I think you’re passing up some pretty useful advice. After all, I do have an embarrassingly happy marriage.”

      Trent made a harsh sound. “Then your advice is no use to me. Last night made one thing perfectly clear. Susannah and I aren’t married.” He felt his shoulders tighten. “We’re at war.”

      * * *

      AS SUSANNAH SAT with her foreman in his cluttered office just off the barn, listening to him sputter indignantly about the young slacker they’d just interviewed, she really was trying to focus. Every time her mind or her gaze wandered toward the house, she dragged it back.

      She had been more relieved to see Trent show up this morning than she wanted to admit. When she’d awakened and found him gone, she hadn’t been sure whether he was ever coming back.

      But he had come, and that’s all that mattered. As long as her plan to break her grandfather’s will was safe, she didn’t care what Chase and Trent were saying now. Trent had undoubtedly already spilled all the gory details, and they’d begun bashing her, employing the usual macho insults for women who promise things they refuse to deliver.

      But so what? That wasn’t important. This was. The peach crop was going to be good this year, and, even if she wasn’t sure she had buyers for the fruit, she’d still need as many skilled workers as possible to bring it in.

      Even the worker she’d just interviewed. Eli Breslin.

      “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the cheeky little son of a gun.” Zander was so outraged he sputtered. “He has the nerve to walk in here? As if you’d hire that one to shine your shoes!”

      She smiled. “I can’t afford to have my shoes shined by anybody. But I do need someone to pick peaches. And he’s the only one who showed up, right?”

      “Well.” Zander shuffled papers on his desk. “There were a few calls.”

      “Yes, but those men weren’t good enough, either.”

      They’d already discussed this. One candidate used to work for the Ritchie spread, which was notoriously badly run, and the second applicant had been on the wagon for only six months, which wasn’t long enough in Zander’s eyes, and…well, the bottom line seemed to be that most of the callers failed to meet the foreman’s standards.

      Eli Breslin wouldn’t have made the cut, either, except that he hadn’t bothered to phone first. He’d just knocked on the office door, and Susannah, despairing of getting anyone past Zander’s gauntlet, had insisted on interviewing the kid.

      Zander leaned back in his ancient, squeaking leather chair and tapped his pencil against his knee. “He’s got zero experience with peaches.”

      “He can learn,” Susannah said. She moved her hand and almost overturned a teetering stack of paperwork. Ironic that Zander required perfection of everyone but himself. “Things are desperate right now. We may have to lower our standards a bit.”

      Of course, that was the wrong thing to say. The big man sat up straight and puffed out his chest. “I’m glad your grandfather isn’t around to hear you say such a thing. He never abandoned his standards, no matter what. Not even when the Alzheimer’s laid him low.”

      Sighing, Susannah stood and walked to the window, where she could see the east forty, which looked beautiful in May, with all the trees wearing full green. The sight calmed her a little.

      She and Zander had been through this a dozen times in the two years since Arlington H. Everly had died, and she didn’t feel like hashing it out again.

      Her grandfather’s “standards” were, in her view, simply mule-headed stubbornness and excessive pride. His refusal to face economic facts had brought Everly to this current disaster, and she and Zander both knew it.

      When Susannah was a kid, before her parents died, Everly Industries had owned ten thousand acres of fertile land here near Austin, and almost as many in West Texas, where the land was so rich the oil just boiled out of the ground. Today, they had one tenth that, only one thousand acres, a mere three hundred of them producing. Oh, and a dried-up two-acre plot in West Texas that looked like Swiss cheese from all the useless holes Arlington had kept drilling after Alzheimer’s had claimed his brain.

      “I need hands,” she said, trying to stick to the topic. “Lots of hands to prune and thin, and then, in a few weeks, start bringing in those peaches before they rot on the trees. Eli Breslin is a healthy, willing worker with two excellent hands. Hire him.”

      The silence behind her was full of disapproval. Finally Zander spoke, his voice a deep, censorious rumble in his chest. “You can’t mean that. What about Miss Nikki?”

      She bit her lower lip. That was the big question, of course. When Eli Breslin had worked next door at Chase’s Double C quarter horse ranch, Nikki had fallen for him like a too-ripe peach dropping from the tree. In fact, Eli Breslin was one of the main reasons Susannah had decided to spring for Nikki’s expensive art school. It had simply been too hard to keep the two from sneaking off together into the orchard late at night.

      And Susannah knew all too well what could happen in the orchard, under a milky moon, on a warm spring night.

      On the other hand, Nikki was gone, and during his interview Eli had apologized with a lot of grace and maturity. Maybe, without her wild little sister to distract

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