The memory made him nod. Free range. Sunshine couldn’t object to that, could she? Well, maybe she would, being vegan and all, but she’d like it better than beef. He had a flash of her knitting tiny sweaters for the birds to wear in winter. Would they end up with thousands of pet chickens?
At least even pet chickens laid eggs.
“You really think there’s a market for them?” he asked Jake.
“Hell, yeah. You’d do fine—if you can find a place. It’s too bad you didn’t get home a couple of weeks earlier. The old Jackson place west of town was for sale, but someone snapped it up right quick.” Jake turned onto Main Street where Cole indicated. “This is a terrific location. You’ve done good, Cole.”
As they got out and stretched their legs, Cole felt lighter than he had in days. Chicken farming. Free-range chicken farming. That was an idea worth looking into along with the wind turbines. If Jake said there was a gap he could fill, he believed him. He was impressed with how entrepreneurial Jake was. He’d do his own due diligence of course, but his gut told him it would check out.
Jake was right, though; he’d have to find a property.
Maybe it was time to start looking.
“If you decide to move forward with the egg idea, it’s all about branding,” Jake went on. “First you name the farm. Then you set up your business. You tell a story about your chickens and your eggs. What makes them so special? Tell the story to your customers and get them hooked so they keep coming back for more.”
“You learn all that at school?”
“Some of it. The rest I know from experience.”
“That is… brilliant,” Cole said. “Chickens. I like it.”
“Do you think Sunshine will like it, too?”
“God, I hope so.”
“Emma Larson!” Hannah suddenly cried, scaring Sunshine so badly she nearly dropped the bucket of cleaning supplies she was carrying into the bedroom. It was one of the rooms to be painted the following day and it needed a good scrubbing first.
“What about her?” Sunshine didn’t recognize the name.
“She’s wanted to open a bakery for years. She was almost ready to do it a while back. I remember she consulted with Regan Hall about how to get a loan, and I think she even bought a place but the deal fell through when she had to leave town to go help a member of her family. She’s back now, though. I bumped into her at the grocery store a week or two ago, and she said she thought she was almost ready to try again.”
Great. More competition, Sunshine thought.
“She might be a possible partner for you,” Hannah went on.
“I’m not really so much into baking.”
“Exactly. But Emma is. And she’s into all that gluten-free kind of stuff. No one else does that in town. What if you worked together? With your vegan cooking and her gluten-free baked goods, you might draw a crowd from the surrounding areas.” Hannah grew thoughtful. “Although now that I think about it, Emma isn’t strictly gluten-free. She does a lot of regular baking too, which might not fit with what you want to do.” She went back to work scrubbing the baseboards of the bedroom while Sunshine got to work on the trim around the windows.
“Actually, one thing I realized while I was traveling is that people are different,” Sunshine said. “I know that sounds stupid, but it became clear that while I can eat a vegan diet and get plenty of variety in my food and be perfectly healthy, that’s not true for everyone. At first I was kind of shocked by how much meat people eat around the world. After a while, I understood it. Different places, different ways of eating.”
Hannah didn’t say anything, but Sunshine sensed her curiosity. She knew the other woman was surprised to hear this take on things from her.
“I don’t want to serve meat in my restaurant. I’m simply not comfortable with that. But if dairy products and eggs are produced in a humane way, well, maybe I can live with that.”
Hannah set down her cleaning supplies, crossed the room and gave Sunshine a big hug.
“What was that for?” Sunshine laughed.
“Because I can tell that’s a really big concession for you. And I know that you’ll make absolutely sure that the eggs and milk used in anything sold in your restaurant will be sourced from farms that give a damn about the animals they keep. Which means people like me, who adore cheese, can eat it to my heart’s content.”
“You can eat it in thoughtful moderation, maybe,” Sunshine corrected her, but as she turned back to cleaning, her heart soared. Hannah was right; lots of people wouldn’t stop eating milk and egg products. She could help support a farmer who was committed to producing them humanely. “I’d love to meet Emma,” she said.
“I’ll set something up.”
When Sunshine’s phone rang, she almost didn’t answer it, fearing yet another call from Carl, but when Kerri Olsen’s name popped up, she clicked to accept it immediately. “Kerri!”
“Sunshine, I can’t believe you’re back!”
“I know. It’s so good to hear from you.”
“Listen, I can’t talk long, but Mia stopped by my store today and she told me—”
“About my ranch and my rock band?” Sunshine said.
“How’d you know?” Kerri laughed. “Anyway, I’d like to help out. Can I come by later? I play bass guitar, by the way.”
“Just like Hannah. We’d love to have you.” She gave Kerri directions to the ranch and only realized when she hung up that she was smiling.
“See, you have to stay here. You have too many good friends to leave,” Hannah said.
Sunshine thought she might be right.
Cole was relieved to find Emma Larson at dinner that evening. Sunshine was too busy quizzing her new acquaintance about gluten-free baking to ask him if he was ready to be a stay-at-home dad. As much as he’d tried to puzzle it out in his mind during the day, he hadn’t made much progress. The thing was, he liked tools and animals and hard work. He wasn’t good at sitting around and he’d never held a baby in his life. Even if he wanted to spend his days like that, he wouldn’t be any good at it. And the prospect struck him as…
Lonely.
After dinner, the women stayed in the kitchen to wash up. Cole wouldn’t have minded cracking open a beer and watching some television, but he and Jake had to return to town.
Time for their stupid line-dancing lesson.
“Cole and I are off to do some Christmas shopping,” Jake told Hannah. “Be back later.”
“Get me something good!” She sent him off with a kiss.
Cole just nodded to Sunshine. She nodded back, immediately returning to her conversation with Emma. Aware he wasn’t scoring any points for taking so damn long to make up his mind, Cole shrugged into his winter jacket. “Let’s get this over with,” he said to Jake.
When they arrived, light shone through the cracks around the windows they had newspapered over earlier. Cole climbed out of Jake’s truck and was about to cross the sidewalk when he bumped into a man so bundled up he could barely see over the collar of his coat.
“Sorry about that.” The man caught sight of Jake. “Hey, Jake. How’s it going?”