Bet The Farm - Staci Hart Page 0,7

to losing Pop. Because his whole world was this farm, and its well-being had been placed on our shoulders—or his alone, if you asked him. And I was about to disrupt that world when he’d been so sure I’d pass it all over simply because it was hard.

That self-righteous asshole thought he had me all pegged. He thought I was in over my head, but he was wrong.

And I was going to prove it to him.

3

Shuck It

JAKE

The second I showed Jeremiah out, I stormed toward the old red barn with my chest full of thunder.

Somehow, I hadn’t even suspected she’d want anything to do with the farm, and the fact that she did didn’t sit right. It was an invasion, an intrusion by a foreign general toting pink suitcases. A stranger uneducated in the way of things, with grand designs to meddle with things she didn’t understand.

To change the place I’d poured my whole life into.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t known she was going to inherit the farm. I just assumed she’d come back for the funeral, get her affairs in order, and leave the rest to me as the overseer of the farm. There’d been a chance I could have kept things as they were, run them just as Frank had. But if the last ten minutes were proof, Olivia wasn’t going to let that happen.

The only upside was that I owned half the farm too, so if she wasn’t going to leave, I could stop her.

A shock of realization blazed through me. Half of everything I loved—everything I’d thought I’d have to hand over to Olivia—was mine.

It didn’t feel real, couldn’t be possible. I hadn’t known my father, but all the imagining I did when I was a boy were nothing compared to the truth of Frank Brent. He was more than a father to me. He was a savior. A mentor. He was the indestructible, unchanging peak of a mountain that had crumbled without warning, leaving my view forever changed.

And he’d loved me the same it seemed, to have left me half of his legacy.

Half of this place was mine. And there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d let Olivia Brent ruin it with her inexperience.

I was absolutely certain there was no way she could tackle the task before her. Olivia, who’d been home a handful of times in ten years. Olivia, who couldn’t lift a hay fork if her life hung in the balance. Her exit was as sure a thing as ever existed.

I could see the outcome spread out before me like a game of chess. She’d fumble around the farm. Figure out how complex it was to run. Realize that nobody gave a goddamn about a dairy farm’s Twitter account. She’d get bored, give up, turn tail, and run back to the city where she belonged, just like she always did.

Maybe I’d have felt different if she’d stayed when I asked her to. Back then, I was stupid enough to think she could do some good around here, first and foremost by coming back for Frank’s sake. If he’d been standing here before me, he’d laugh at the suggestion. He’d play it off, wave a hand, insist she was where she needed to be. But I knew better. I’d spent enough sunsets on the porch with him, seen the look in his eyes when he talked about her. He was lonely, and I was poor company. Having her here would have been a blessing to him, a light of joy in his final years.

But she hadn’t stayed. It wasn’t important enough for her to give up her New York life. And by proxy, neither was Frank.

This time wouldn’t be any different. But I told myself not to worry. She wouldn’t last until September before she got bored and left me to do my job uninterrupted. I could survive Olivia for one summer.

I had before, though God knew I’d never forgotten it.

I suspected I wouldn’t soon forget this summer, either.

My palm smacked the small side door of the barn so hard, it hit the wall with a crack and rebounded back at me.

Old Mack spun around, wild-eyed and peaked.

“Good God, son,” he said, weathered hands shaking as he pulled off his baseball cap to wipe his brow. “What’s got in your Jockeys?”

“Sorry,” I shot, unable to actually sound sorry. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Doesn’t take much,” he said on a chuckle, and it was true.

The Vietnam vet had been homeless for a decade