LITMIR.BIZ

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in Asheville. I was attracted to North Carolina, not repulsed by Illinois or my family.”

      Though everything she’d told Trey was true, it wasn’t the whole truth. She’d grown up thinking she would farm her father’s land with her brother, but one summer spent interning at an organic vegetable farm outside of Chicago had changed her mind. Her brother and father grew the food that fed the world, no mistaking that, but she wanted to feel the sun directly on her back, not through the glass of a harvester window. Despite her father’s claim to her childhood, she was her mother’s daughter after all.

      He harrumphed, the same noise Ashes made when scolded. “Maybe that’s the difference, then. I decided at an early age that whatever my parents were, I didn’t want to be that. Farm included.”

      His use of the plural parents was interesting. “I know you didn’t like your father, but no one ever has a bad word to say about your mother. Surely she holds some tie for you.”

      “My mother was an uneducated woman who worked a job she hated with people who made fun of her. She was afraid if she quit that she’d never get another job. And we needed the money because my dad was a failure at life.” Max turned her head to look at him. He raised an eyebrow at her, though the disgusted look on his face softened before he spoke again. “She was a lovely, kind person who spent her entire life being trampled on by people who never noticed she was there.”

      Trey said the words with the hesitation of someone who didn’t know whether to be disgusted or sad. Max saw what he described but she credited Noreen with being a woman of untapped strength. She had to be, to put up with what Trey had described so that her children would have one stable parent and food on their table. Noreen may not have been a role model for her children, but she’d provided them with enough stubbornness to grow up and get out of a trap. Max supposed Noreen would think Trey’s success was worth the antipathy he felt toward the farm.

      The wind started again, and Trey’s slicker wasn’t as weather-hardy as Max’s; the wind and rain were starting to break through. “Let’s go inside the greenhouse. It’s not much warmer in there, but we’ll be out of the weather and we can share my thermos of hot tea.”

      * * *

      TREY DIDN’T SAY anything as Max took a sip from the thermos cup before handing it to him. She’d stripped off her slicker as soon as they had stepped under cover, so now she was wearing her rain bibs, a neon green thermal undershirt and a navy blue flannel shirt. With her masses of hair, she looked ridiculous and underdressed. And also like the loveliest thing he’d ever seen. A fire burned inside her that warmed her from the inside out. It made her glow. Trey gripped the tiny plastic cup with a fear that he would never be warm again. He tried to step closer to Max, but she moved away, busy in her greenhouse on her farm.

      Despite the official ownership, this was more her farm than his—or than it had ever been his father’s. She’d taken a ratty, falling-down piece of property and was turning it into something productive and wonderful. He wanted to pack up his clothes and drive back to D.C. Sell the dirt under his feet to the highest bidder and forget he’d ever lived here. Instead, he poured another cup of tea.

      Max was laying out flats on one of the long tables. When her hands stopped moving, he handed her the cup and she took a big gulp. “Thank you.”

      “What are you planting?” Besides the flat, she had seeds and soil.

      “The last of the broccoli for today.” She was already looking down at her task. Tour was over and tea was shared; he’d been dismissed for work. “Broccoli gets started early then transplanted into the fields. In another two weeks, I’ll seed more broccoli. I should have three weeks of broccoli for the CSA and six weeks of broccoli for the market.”

      “Can I help?” He couldn’t say where the impulse behind the question had come from. A lack of desire to go outside into the rain made more sense than wanting to spend more time with Max.

      Her head jerked up and her pale eyes were questioning. “Sure, I guess. Planting’s not that hard.” She demonstrated, filling the flat with soil, adding a seed to each cell and topping it with a little more soil. “It’s basically your same seed-starting process as in a garden, only on a larger scale.” She gestured to the table of flats. “I’ll need 2600 feet of broccoli in the field. Makes for a lot of little transplants.”

      “You don’t have help?” Trey didn’t know what he’d pictured winter on a vegetable farm to be like, but he’d expected more people.

      “No.” She stopped, putting her hands down on top of the flat. “I have three interns March through September, otherwise I’m the only one. It’s a lot of work, but not more than I can handle.”

      “I didn’t mean to imply...”

      “The winter’s slow, spent mostly planning the coming summer. I’ve thought of starting a winter CSA. Or maybe selling at the market in the winter. I already grow a winter garden for myself. But selling means I’d need another person and I’ve never been willing to risk the cost, especially since I wouldn’t be able to provide housing. If I’m living in the farmhouse, the second person can live in the barn and a winter CSA might be feasible.”

      As she was talking, he realized he’d opened his hand out in offering to her. All of her dreams depended on him and his willingness to keep leasing her the land. But she didn’t appear to notice that the land wasn’t resting like a gift on his proffered palm. Once she had stopped talking, she had started planting again. Trey followed her movements until he’d gotten the hang of them enough to find his own rhythm. Ignorance of the farm and Max had been preferable to this...whatever their relationship was now. He’d rather think of the farm as his personal trap than as soil for dreams. But he still couldn’t help asking, “What other plans do you have for the farm?”

      She glanced up from her planting and her uncertainty looked tinged with fear. But that was ridiculous. A woman with her forthright gaze couldn’t be afraid of anything. Yet it was written on her face.

      When she didn’t answer, he clarified his question. “If money was no object, what would Max’s Vegetable Patch look like?”

      “I’ve toyed with the idea of raising animals, but—” she stalled and he could see the objections to her grand plans piling up in her brain “—they’re expensive and unless you’ve got the staff you can’t ever go on vacation.”

      He raised a brow at her. “Money is no object.”

      “What about time?” she retorted.

      “If you have money, you can hire extra people to cover the time.”

      “Right.” She went back to planting and Trey gave her some space to organize her thoughts. What he’d meant to be a simple question asked out of curiosity clearly was not.

      “Right now I’d like to own the land I farm. Renovate the second tobacco barn so I can offer housing to two interns. Past that, I have no plans.”

      When she stepped away from her finished tray of broccoli to begin another, he thought their conversation was over. Max didn’t hum to herself. She didn’t whistle or mutter. The only noise she made was the brushing of her clothing against itself as her hands busily planted seeds and the occasional shuffling of a seeding tray against the wooden tables. Outside the greenhouse the rain pounded—on the ground, on the sides of the greenhouse, on the trees. But even with all the noise Mother Nature could muster in the storm, Max was so centered in her thoughts and her work that the greenhouse felt silent. Trey knew it wasn’t. When he stopped working to listen, the rain buffeted about outside and Ashes panted at Max’s feet. So long as he didn’t resist, Max and the work pulled him into a meditative state.

      It wasn’t until Max checked her watch that Trey noticed how the light had faded. He’d spent several hours in contemplative, comfortable peace with a woman on his dad’s farm. No anger, no frustration, no resentment, just the repetitive movements of planting seeds.

      “Finish up your tray and then we’re done. I got far more finished today than I’d hoped.

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