of me, Alyson flicks on her signal and swerves around an orange roadside cone to pull into the drive-through at a local coffee shop. I drive past and take one last look at her in my rearview mirror before I hit the highway. That’s that.
“Maybe a hot girl will take the farm over, and you two can…” He taps his clenched fists together again, and I ignore him. He’s playing with me, I get it, but when I catch the hint of concern in his eyes, my stomach clenches, the way it always does at the reminder of my bachelorhood. My kid brother worries about me. Hell, everyone worries about me, but they don’t need to. I’m perfectly fine.
“The guy taking it over might need our help for a while,” I inform Tyler.
He twirls the hay between his lips. “What do you know about him, anyway?”
“Other than his name is Reid, not much.”
Tyler grabs his ball cap, tugs it on, and lowers it over his eyes. “Wake me when we get home. I’m partying with Shay tonight after Beck’s birthday dinner and need my beauty sleep.”
“You two have been hanging around a lot.”
“Your point?”
“Nothing. No drinking,” I say. Shay Banks is a nice girl, from what I know of her. Her older brothers, on the other hand… They’re trouble, and it’s hard enough to keep my wild-child sibling on the straight and narrow as it is.
“Whatever you say, Dad.”
“Smart-ass,” I mumble.
I reach the highway and drive the rest of the way listening to the radio over Tyler’s snoring. As I approach farm country, the afternoon sun shining down on the crops in the fields and the tree in the orchards, the thick scent of hay in the air, I turn down our dirt road. The old farmhouse rises up before me. Mom is on the porch, hulling the strawberries she grows in her private garden, and in the distance, Beck is in the pasture brushing his horse.
I shove Tyler to wake him, and he wipes the drool from his face. “We’re here,” I say and open my door. I step from the truck, and the scent of hay is replaced by that of fresh apple pie.
“What are you doing in your drawers?” Mom asks when she catches sight of me in nothing but my boxers.
“Fell in the water,” I grumble.
Now she sits up a little straighter. “At Peggy’s Cove?”
“Yeah, I was warning a tourist to get of the rocks, and they slipped, dragging me in with them.”
Tyler slides from the car, waves to Mom, and takes off toward Beck, leaving me to deal with the lobster. My boots sink into the wet soil as I open the back, tossing the woolen blanket over my shoulder.
“Damn tourists,” she murmurs.
“They never learn,” I add but feel a hint of guilt. Alyson was actually helping someone, and I probably shouldn’t have made any kind of comment about her lacy underwear. What was I thinking? I wasn’t, I guess, and that slipped out because it was hard to think straight with her half naked. Not that I was going to do anything about it. Right now I’m too busy righting all the wrongs I made. I promised my dad I’d take care of this place and my family, and that’s what I’m doing. I owe him at least that much. Besides, a city girl like Alyson—not in this lifetime. Not a second time, anyway.
“Pretty, was she?”
“Huh?”
“The girl you saved.”
I’m about to tell her I was more responsible than not for her falling in but stop. Yeah, I could be the poster boy for fucked-up good intentions. “How do you know it was a girl?”
She looks at me over the top of her glasses, and I just shake my head.
“Oh, honey, really?” she teases.
I grumble under my breath. I can never get anything by her. “I’ll get the pot going,” I say and walk up the three stairs leading to the wide deck I helped Dad build when I was eight. I drop the crate onto the kitchen counter and head to my cottage at the far end of the property. Actually, it’s an old carriage house, built by my great-great grandfather over one hundred years ago. Mom and the guys stay in the farmhouse, but I wanted privacy, so I moved back here with… Shit, I can’t even bring myself to say her name. I walk a little faster and damn near jump from my boots when our stealthy rooster comes running from the