Depending on whether or not the wind changed, I might have.
“Hey, Joey—have you seen Jake?”
They glanced at each other and had a silent drawing of straws.
Joey lost. “Heifer check. Barn F.”
F for fucking jerk. I was already stalking in that direction. “Thanks.”
“Don’t tell him I told you,” he called after me.
I gave him a thumbs-up without looking back.
You’d think that the vet would be the one to do heifer checks, but it was really the job of the overseer to make sure the upcoming calves were faced the right way—a task learned early. The vet had enough to worry about than checking the entirety of the pregnant herd. I’d only done it once—my arms weren’t quite long enough for me to be of much use.
When I rounded the corner into the partitioned portion of barn F, I was met with the most satisfying thing I’d seen all day—Jake’s face against a heifer’s ass with his arm buried up to the shoulder in a cow’s vagina.
F for funny.
I snorted, covering my nose with my hand when a couple of farmhands gave me a look.
At the sound, Jake’s eyes snapped to mine, and the hard eye contact stopped all illusion of being professional.
Laughter bubbled out of me as Jake gave instructions and they shifted the calf inside.
“What do you want, Olivia?”
I rolled my lips and bit down to try to stop my laughter.
“I’m kind of busy here.”
“I can see that.” I paused, contemplating my next move. “I don’t know if I can say what I need to say with your hand up Gertie’s lady parts.”
Another hard roll of his eyes.
“I mean, you are inside of her. She’s literally never seen so much action.”
“Jesus, Olivia,” he grumbled.
The farmhands snickered. Jake cut them a look.
“Seriously. Artificial insemination is about as anticlimactic as it gets, but this? Pretty sure you just got three cows over there pregnant.”
One of the guys cleared his throat to cover another chuckle.
“It’s indecent, Jake. Honestly.”
“Are you gonna tell me what you need or just stand there making stupid jokes?”
“You really want me to tell you now?” I folded my arms in challenge. “Right now, in front of Gertie and everyone?”
“I really want you to go away.”
“Fine. I need to talk about how you manhandled me in the hayloft and then ran off without an explanation.”
The room was still other than for Gertie, whose jaw was working a mighty lump in her mouth.
“You asked.”
Jake expertly removed his hand from the cow—only light slurping, squishing sounds—and peeled off a shoulder-length glove.
He jerked a chin at the farmhands. “Put Gertie out to pasture and bring me the next one in five minutes.”
Their gazes bounced between us, still suppressing smiles as they did as they’d been told, leaving us alone. From other humans, at least.
“Five minutes, huh?” I snapped. “Glad to see you’re devoted to the conversation.”
“You make it so easy when you act like a teenage boy,” he said from the sink.
I chewed up the space between us, talking all the way. “Why? What the hell are you doing? Why would you do that to me?”
“You kissed me,” he reminded me.
“You kissed me back and threw me into the hay like you were going to take me right then and there. And then poof—you were gone. And I want to know why.”
“This is stupid, Olivia.”
I paused, watching him wash his hands. “This conversation or kissing me?”
“Both,” he said, turning off the water with a squeak.
My lungs emptied. “Wow.”
He shook his head, his lips pursed, frustrated.
Well, me too, buddy.
“We can’t do this.”
“You said that last night. But you didn’t say why.”
He turned to face me, dark from brow to boot. His hands hung low on his hips, and I almost looked down, my heart fluttering at the thought.
“I don’t understand why I have to explain. We’re currently stuck in a game of tug-of-war for the farm. All we ever do is fight—”
“That’s not true. We’ve been better—”
“Nothing about us makes sense.”
“Who said anything about making sense?”
He shook his head and glanced off, his jaw flexing. “We’re not doing this. It’s a bad idea, and you know it. We have dire things to address, and it’s hard enough to work with you without complicating it any more than it already is.”
I let out a sharp breath through my nose, my eyes leveling him. “Why do you always get to decide? You decide everything, and I’m just supposed to follow your biblical law without question. Maybe you’re right. We don’t make sense. I’d never lower myself to be with someone who has so little respect for my thoughts and feelings.”
“Now come on—”
Angry tears filled my eyes, the pitch of my voice climbing. “Just because you don’t have any feelings doesn’t mean no one else does. Maybe it’d be easier for you if everyone else kept it to themselves, but guess what? Life isn’t easy. And I’m not willing to put up with some jackass who can’t use his words just because he’s a goddamn good kisser.” I pointed at the front of the barn where the backward shadow of the letter F stood. “F is for Fuck You, Jake.”
I turned on my heel and pushed out of the barn, nearly running into the guys who’d just left. But they were nothing but blobs of color behind a curtain of tears.
19
T-R-O-U-B-L-E
OLIVIA
It was my turn to avoid Jake, and I’d done a kickass job at it, if I did say so myself.
I stayed out of his domain, and he stayed out of mine. He spent his days with cattle, and I spent mine working on my marketing schedule for next month. The biggest focus would be the newsletter, which I’d grown exponentially every week since we’d opened the farm to the public. Everyone who joined the newsletter on our website was issued a coupon for fifteen percent off in the store. I’d done half a dozen giveaways on Instagram with bestselling goods from the shop in exchange for their subscription. Our profits were up, and that fact didn’t require Jake to believe in it to be true. But the trouble was, I didn’t know exactly what I was working against when it came to the farm’s debts.
My last conversation with Chase had left me curious. If he knew the extent of our debts, everyone knew. Except for me. I couldn’t make sense of the numbers, and Ed didn’t do much to help beyond some cursory explanations that did little to clarify what I was looking at.
So once I stopped fantasizing about braining Jake with a crowbar, I threw myself into organizing Pop’s office.
Which was where I found myself that night.
I’d eaten two meals in his office, both delivered and tidied up by Kit, who’d eyed me with a dubious look on her face and no small amount of concern. But she didn’t question me, just let me organize the collection of randomness that was this room.