“Do me a favor and stay out of trouble,” he called over his shoulder.
“I can’t promise that,” I shouted after him, enjoying the view until he picked up his hay fork again.
Once I put my tools away and given the girls the treats I promised, I unhooked my phone from the tripod and leaned on the fence to scan the video frames. There were some cute shots of me and the calves, some great ones of me shoveling manure, then the sequence of me getting head-butted by a calf and knocked flat on my back.
But that was nothing compared to the shots with Jake in them.
I’d seen a few pictures of Jake around the house, and in every single posed picture, he was wearing one of those fake, toothy smiles. Like somebody’d told him to say cheese while they stuck him in the ass with penicillin.
When he wasn’t paying attention, he was perhaps the most handsome man I’d ever known.
As I rolled through the frames, the sight of him getting into the mud to pull me into his lap did something melty and hot to my insides. The worry on his face made me wonder if maybe he did care about my well-being. But my favorite shot was the two of us faced off with our arms crossed and mud all over us.
I thought of a handful of captions in a millisecond, weighing the value of putting shirtless Jake on the internet he loathed versus what he’d do to me if I did.
“Hey,” I said in his direction. “I’m going to use these pictures on our social.”
He gave me a look. “Wasn’t that the whole point?”
“And you’re okay with it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really.”
“Then thanks for asking,” he deadpanned.
“Look at us, being a team and all.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, farmgirl.”
“Too late!” I cheered, letting myself out of the gate to skip toward the house for a shower.
But nothing could wash the smile off my face.
10
No Goats
OLIVIA
A week later, I stood in the store admiring what I’d accomplished in such a short amount of time. Two weeks had to be some sort of a record, not only for the strides I’d made in getting the farm ready to welcome to the public, but for Jake’s lack of interference.
Begrudgingly, he’d let me do what I would. So far, I’d cleaned out the shop and washed all the floors and windows. Ordered goods both local and otherwise, decked out the shop with a trio of glass-front product fridges, and started the process of organizing the displays. A tree-trimming company had come last week and cleared out the underbrush, paring down the tree branches to give a gorgeous view of the house from the gravel parking lot I’d had poured. A local woodworker had provided us with furniture and decor, not only to use, but to sell in a consignment deal that saved us a considerable amount of money.
Jake had banned me from getting goats for the petting zoo—too much trouble, annoying, ate more than their share—but that was milk and cheese I could actually consume. What was the expression? Ask for forgiveness, not permission. As inconsiderate as the proverb was, I didn’t know that there was any other way to handle Jake.
I’d learned quickly that just because Jake didn’t try to throw down with me every time we crossed paths didn’t mean he was happy about what I had planned. Sometimes, I’d catch him watching me with that annoyed, skeptical look on his face, and nothing could stop him from frequent and sassy notations on whatever I was doing.
I’d also learned that he didn’t like being called sassy.
Obviously, it became his new nickname.
My little speaker sat on the ancient register counter, blasting Fleetwood Mac. I sang too loud with Stevie as she reminded me about when thunder happens (when it’s raining), when players love you (when they’re playing), et cetera., but my hands were busy arranging pots of ivy in the pockets of a cream-colored macrame hanging planter. A girl in the next town over had made them, and I was almost certain that with this display, it’d become a bestseller. It was so inviting, in fact, that I positioned the creaky white ladder I’d just climbed down at an angle, set some of my gardening tools on the steps, and stepped back to take a picture for Instagram.
The lighting was perfect—sunshine brushed everything it touched with an inviting, ethereal glow. Humming behind a smile, I threw on my filter and posted the picture with a reminder of our opening next week.
My farmgirl account had taken off, thanks to some strategic brand tagging and hashtags, the rain boot company in particular. They’d shared several of my pictures and tagged me back, and between them and the local vendors I’d taken on, I had almost twenty thousand followers.
But my most popular posts were my adventures. Or more often misadventures. The selfie I had taken, smiling in my sun hat in front of the barn, had over a thousand likes, and while cute, it had more to do with the blistering sunburn I’d acquired and the caption: SPF 1000 couldn’t save me. Somebody send for @bananaboat!
Baby cows were also a crowd favorite. With eyelashes like that, likes were a sure thing.
I was in the middle of checking my notifications—the time lapse of me setting up the store went over well, particularly the segment in which I lay on my back in the middle of the store like a starfish and the part where I took a brief dance break.
The tap on my shoulder scared me straight, and I yelped, whirling around to find Presley Hale smirking at me with a wooden crate full of wares on her hip. Her three-year-old daughter, Priscilla, was very, very busy doing ballerina twirls to “Gypsy.”
I turned down the volume on my phone, smiling. “I forgot you were coming by today,” I admitted.
But she laughed, unfazed as she set the crate on one of the tables. “I’ve been here every day for a week, so I’m putting that on you. Store looks almost ready to open.”
“It’s the rug. Really pulls the room together.” I leaned down to the toddler’s level. “Hi, Cilla.”
“Hiyee,” she answered, still spinning.
I mouthed Candy? at Presley, and she nodded.
“Guess what I got in today?”
She ignored me.
“Lollipops.”
She stopped on a dime, her eyes wide. “Wollipocks?”
“Yup.” I bent at the waist. “And I got the good ones.”
Her face lit up, and I extended my hand, which was instantly filled with Priscilla’s small, slightly sticky one.
“The store’s looking good,” Presley said, looking around as we walked to the counter where I’d hidden a massive apothecary jar full of Tootsie Pops. “I’m so glad you’re selling Julie’s macrame. Who knew it could be actual art? All I think of when you say macrame are those scratchy brown ’70s things our grandmas used to make.”
I chuckled, unwrapping the strawberry lollipop while she bounced impatiently. “Thanks for the hook-up. Have you seen her hammock? She almost had to dump me out of it. I might never have left.”
“I have been drooling over that hammock since she posted it on social a few weeks ago.”
“Me too. I commissioned a couple of the hammock chairs from her to hang in one of the trees out front too.”