LITMIR.BIZ

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storm was small enough not to worry too much. The Farm would most likely remain unscathed. For now, Kyle drank an icy glass of tea and let his father smoke. “How bad is it?” he asked out of curiosity.

      “What’s that?” James asked, turning his head from the view.

      “The aviation industry,” Kyle indicated.

      James took a final puff from his cigar, eyeing Kyle over the brown stump. Releasing a ragged stream of smoke, he leaned forward in his patio chair and stabbed it out in the tray at the center of the table. He’d take the tray out in the yard and dump it before going back inside, so the ashes didn’t get caught up in the breeze and dirty Adrian’s furnishings. Such courtesies between Kyle’s parents were simple and commonplace, performed with unspoken poignancy that was touching in the extreme. “It should be booming.”

      “But it’s not,” Kyle surmised, daring his father to challenge the assumption.

      James did a few more quick stabs with the Cuban before depositing it in the tray. Dragging a hand through his mop of hair, he settled back with a creak from the chair. “There’ve been some ruts in the road.”

      “And?” Kyle posed the question again. “How bad is it?”

      James folded his hands over his middle. “I’ve been a businessman for thirty years. I haven’t lost one entrepreneurship yet, and I’m not going to now.”

      “No matter the cost?”

      James hesitated. He glanced toward the window where Adrian and Mavis were talking. When he spoke again, his voice lowered to a murmur. “Those two are the chief reasons B.S. has to survive.”

      Kyle frowned. “There’ll be collateral damage if it doesn’t,” he realized, trying to read James. It wasn’t easy. The man could bluff like a maverick and not just at the poker tables. “What did you mortgage? The cottage on the bay isn’t big enough. Was it the auto shop? Please tell me it wasn’t Flora or the nursery.”

      “It wasn’t any of those,” James mused, no longer meeting his son’s eye. “It was a sure thing. Byron Strong went over the business plan. The best advisers on the coast took a look at the specs. The application market was ripe for new pilots. The only issue was lack of local training opportunities, but we fixed that with the teaching base of B.S.”

      “So what’s the issue?”

      “I don’t know, exactly. We’ve had two big contracts fall through based on minute technicalities. We’ve had farmers shy away after weeks of negotiation. Even advertising has had its windfalls.” James released an unsteady breath. “It was The Farm. I mortgaged The Farm to get B.S. off the ground.”

      James might as well have pulled a WWE and hit Kyle over the head with his chair. For slow-winding seconds, he felt as if he were being choked out by one of his SEAL teammates.

      Dragging oxygen into his lungs, he worked to clear the bright pinpoints in his head that told him blackout was imminent. Gripping the arms of his chair, Kyle stared at his father in something close to horror. “You...gambled The Farm?”

      “Like I’ve been trying to explain to you, it wasn’t a gamble.”

      Kyle pushed up from the seat. He braced his hands on his hips and walked to the far side of the porch. There were potted plants in most every variety hanging from chains, stacked on shelves and pedestals...and he couldn’t breathe. “Son of a bitch,” he hissed.

      “Kyle,” James said, climbing to his feet, too. “It’ll be all right. We won’t lose. I don’t lose. The Farm is your birthright. Nothing’s going to change that.”

      “Mom let you do this?” Dark gathered on the porch with only the torches to make up the distance between him and his father. “She knew what you were doing?”

      “Of course she knew,” James said, insulted by the insinuation that she might not. “I’m always up-front with your mother. You know this.”

      “Did you sell her the same old line of bull—that it was a sure thing? That we’d all come out smelling like roses?”

      In a weary motion, James dipped his hands into his pockets. “Son. You’re angry. I get that. But there are no lies between your mom and me. There’s no subterfuge. We couldn’t be what we are if there was. It’s the same with you. Haven’t I always given you the truth, straight up?”

      “Yeah, but it wasn’t like that in the beginning, was it?” Kyle asked. He was on the verge of furor and he went there. “All those years ago. You didn’t exactly tell her why you missed the first part of my life. Why you left her when she was seventeen, pregnant. She had to find out for herself what kind of man you were before us.”

      James stared, stricken. They’d rarely spoken in heated terms. They’d never hurt one another. It had been their silent understanding from the moment James had come back into Kyle’s and Adrian’s lives, a way of making up for all those lost years.

      But The Farm.

      Some things were sacred.

      Hurt worked in the creases of James’s face, looking for purchase. Yet he spoke levelly. “Have I ever done anything to make you question my loyalty or motives? You’re my life, Kyle. You, your mother, Mavis... You’re my whole life.”

      “Then why didn’t Mav and I have a say in this?” Kyle asked. “You didn’t do this for us. You did this to satisfy your own need for thrills on a day-to-day basis, Howard Hughes.”

      “I did this,” James said, placing each word with care, “for our home. Family-owned agriculture is dying. Farms like ours are breaking up and being put to auction. I needed to do something.”

      “You did it for yourself,” Kyle maintained. Another thought struck him, and it brought on great big flame balls of ire. “And what about Harmony? How much does she have riding on this? She lives here, too, Dad—her and Bea. This is their home. She’s staked money, probably most of what she has to her name. Her name itself is stamped on the business. You lose B.S., what does that mean for her? You won’t be able to pay back all she bet.”

      “No one’s going to take a loss,” James said, the first signs of frustration bleeding through. “No one.”

      “How much have you told her? She’s your partner. Her training is your big ticket item. What does she know?”

      A pronounced frown took hold of James’s tight features. “I don’t want her to worry.”

      “But there’s no reason to worry, right?” Kyle said, tossing the assertion back at him. He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work.”

      “Kyle,” James said as Kyle shoved through the screen door.

      “I need a minute,” he said as he descended to the grass and kept walking. He had to walk. The fighter in him was taking shots, and it needed to stop before he could face either of his parents again. He felt betrayed by the one person in the world who shouldn’t have betrayed him. His father had thrown his so-called birthright against the wall like spaghetti.

      If Kyle stayed, he’d say something he’d regret. Do something he’d regret.

      He’d walk until the sting of his father’s actions numbed. Even if it meant walking all night. The Farm went on for miles.

       CHAPTER THREE

      SOMETIMES A GIRL needed to see the moon. Especially if that moon was a strawberry moon.

      “Mama,” Bea moaned as she gazed at the rising moonscape through the paper tube of her makeshift glitter-dotted telescope. “It’s not right.”

      “Not right?” Harmony said. She was on her knees in capri pants in the middle of the dusty path that led from the gate of the Brackens’ farmland to the mother-in-law suite. She

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