LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER FIVE

      WHEN TREY FOUND Max in the greenhouse about ten o’clock the next morning, she had already planted the first table of broccoli and was ready for a break and a chance to stretch her legs. The monotony of the task plus the patter of the rain against the thick, plastic roof had lulled her into a trance. The only way she knew she hadn’t planted two seeds into one cell was because she was out of cells and seeds at the same time.

      Since all she’d seen Trey wear so far had been jeans that were nice enough for any place in Durham; dress pants, complete with dress shirt and sport coat; and a funeral suit, she hadn’t known what to expect him to don for his tour in the rain. His boots looked a little too big, the rain slicker a little too small, and his jeans would get soaked, but they would do. Especially when she gave him something to cover his pants. He called out to her, but she couldn’t hear what he said over the drumming of the rain.

      She walked across the greenhouse to where he stood petting Ashes. “There are rain bibs on the peg behind you.”

      “Won’t you need...” he said before looking up and noticing the rain bibs she was wearing. “Will they fit?”

      “Better than any of the clothes you have on.”

      “Dad’s clothes are packed. These are my grandfather’s. Apparently, he had big feet and tiny shoulders. I found them in the closet off the back porch.”

      Max thought it would have been simpler to have unpacked Hank’s clothes, especially as he and Trey were of a size—minus the beer gut. Perhaps it was easier to step into his grandfather’s shoes than his father’s.

      Trey sat on the bench and tugged off his boots before stepping into the bibs. He was wearing dress socks. Max was about to comment that for a man who grew up on a farm, he didn’t know how to pack to visit one, when she realized that was probably the point. He hadn’t planned to step out of the farmhouse long enough to need woolen socks. After he and Kelly had packed up all their parents’ things, would Trey ever come back to the farm?

      “Ready,” he said. The bibs covered the flannel shirt he’d also apparently found in a closet somewhere and he fastened the slicker over them. Max put on her own raincoat and, in unison, they flipped their hoods up over their heads and stepped out into the cold rain. Ashes had to be cajoled out of the greenhouse into the damp.

      “I thought a farm dog wouldn’t be so averse to rain,” Trey said.

      “Ashes is now an old farm dog. He likes to pick and choose his farm duties, but he wouldn’t want to be shut in the greenhouse, either.”

      Trey kept up with Max easily as she strode past the packing shed and the second tobacco barn to the fields, Ashes bounding alongside. Now that being out of the rain wasn’t an option, the dog was determined to enjoy himself. Plus, rain wouldn’t scare away the geese and Ashes still had his farm chores to attend to.

      Max walked more quickly than normal, but couldn’t seem to slow herself down. She didn’t want there to be any strangeness between them. Here she was, a grown woman in a man’s job, upset because Trey didn’t seem to have any leftover feelings from their near kiss last night!

      Or had that near kiss been a figment of her imagination and he hadn’t been reaching for her when Ashes barked? Just because she couldn’t escape her thoughts by walking faster didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.

      When they stopped at the first field, Ashes dashed off after some geese cheeky enough to encroach on his territory. “I have four fields, each divided into two sections, and we rotate the crops. This field will have peanuts for a season, which will add nitrogen back into the soil. In the past, I’ve planted cowpeas or clover for the same purpose, but I had a request from one of the downtown restaurants for peanuts, so I’m giving it a try.” The peanuts were part of the joy and the fear of farming. She’d never grown them before and she didn’t come from a part of the country where they were grown, so she lacked a gauge to measure her progress. But there was also exhilaration in trying something new: reading the literature, testing the soil, shoving something in the ground and then looking to Mother Nature for the rest. Knowing that only some of your success or failure was under your control and that the forces of nature held tight to their power. She scanned the field, trying to read her future in the soil, then shrugged at her own silliness. If the peanuts didn’t work out, there was always next year. And regardless of whether she got a cash crop out of them, they would add nitrogen to her soil.

      “Crop rotation, like during the Middle Ages?”

      “Well, yes.” When she nodded, the rain dripped off her hood, obscuring her view of the field. “I have a tractor instead of oxen, a pickup instead of a wagon and I can buy ladybugs over the internet, but the basic principles are the same. Rotating your plants keeps insects from gaining a foothold and your soil from being depleted. Cover crops and tilling in add nutrients. That plus elbow grease, sun and rain and you will grow good food.”

      She didn’t know why she was so intent on having him understand, having him be impressed with her land management. Probably because of his dismissive attitude toward the land that was his by birth, but she didn’t want to accept that. She’d never let one person’s opinion, especially one man’s opinion, of her business affect how she felt about her life choices before.

      Mud squished and squawked under their feet as they walked up the small rise to the next field. Ashes let out a woof when he finally noticed they were gone, and vaulted some rocks up to them. The gray, wet weather obscured the breath of her fields, but land was alive. Max could walk it, plant it and make it grow.

      She wished Trey could see the land’s value, as useful as wishing she could plant infertile seeds plucked from hybrid plants. Max continued her tour, which had turned into a treatise on crop rotation. She talked about how she would schedule carrots in fields that had previously had potatoes because the potatoes cut down on weeds and how she planted clover between all her crop rows. If Trey was bored, he hid it well.

      By the third field, Trey was talking about his life on the farm as a boy. He pointed out places where he’d hidden from his father and where he had surprised Kelly with an angry and aggressive water snake, telling him it was a water moccasin. He also pointed out where he’d been bitten by a cottonmouth, which he’d deserved for poking it with a stick, and where his brother had broken his arm jumping out of a tree into the pond during a drought.

      As they rounded the dirt road from the fields back to the greenhouse, Max asked the question that had been burning inside her since Trey had actually expressed feelings other than disgust for the land. “You talk about your memories fondly, even though they involved physical pain. Why don’t you enjoy coming back here?”

      “Do you want me to decide to become a gentleman farmer and kick you out?”

      The hard tone in his voice pushed her into a defensive position. “Well, no, but...”

      “Why don’t you return to Illinois

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