my defenses and embedded herself straight into my heart.
I am so screwed.
I stare at her until she’s out of sight and then head toward my customers. I can’t seem to wipe the goofy grin off my face when I reach my mother.
“Looks like you have a busy day ahead of you,” she says. I nod. “Alyson is proving to be quite the woman.”
“She’s something,” I agree.
Mom looks up at me for a moment. “Maybe she’ll be here for Colin’s wedding after all.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. “Mom,” I begin, then shut my mouth. I want to tell her about the bet, but what can she do? An apple pie isn’t going to fix the mess I’ve gotten myself into.
“You know what you have to do,” Mom says and my gaze jerks to hers.
“What?”
She goes quiet for a moment, then nods to the customers. “Go meet everyone. Talk about farming.”
“Right,” I say but have the sneaking suspicion she was talking about something else altogether.
I walk to the crowd, and for the rest of the day, I teach people, young and old alike, how to remove cornstalks, and we talk about farming before I send them to Alyson’s farm to pick up more goodies.
By the time the last car rolls from the parking lot, dusk is upon us, and all I can think about is getting Alyson into my arms and thanking her for this. My stomach grumbles as I head to my cottage for a shower. I feed Capone and order a pizza to be delivered to Alyson’s place. I hurry to her house and find her at the barn, getting the animals locked in for the night.
“How did it go?” she asks, her face lit under the rising moon.
“Thank you,” I say and pull her into my arms. I kiss her with all the need and passion inside me, and when we break apart, I spend the next ten minutes telling her about my day, talking nonstop, until she’s laughing. We reach her front door, and she cups my face and goes up on her toes to press her lips to mine.
“You are most welcome, my friend,” she says, but those words feel like a hard kick to the nuts. Man, I really want to tell her what she means to me, and now she’s calling me friend. She angles her head, looks me over, and I try not to look as fucked over as I feel. “You okay?”
“Just tired,” I hedge. Christ, I’m not about to come out and say how I feel now, not after she called me friend.
She stifles a yawn. “I know all about that.”
Her stomach takes that moment to grumble. “Want to head to town and get a bite?”
“I ordered pizza. You okay with that?”
She visibly relaxes. “More than okay. I’m too tired to go out, actually.”
“Let’s get you in the shower.”
“You won’t be joining me?”
“As tempting as that is, pizza is on its way,” I say, needing a moment alone to pull myself together.
Inside the house, she disappears upstairs, and I take out two plates and two wineglasses. I uncork a bottle and pour a splash into our glasses, my thoughts a chaotic mess. By the time she comes down, dressed in nothing but a thin robe, one that comes to mid thigh, our delivery driver is at the door, preventing me from ravishing her.
She makes a move to get the pizza, and I take her by the shoulders and push until she’s in her chair. I’ve never seen her run off her feet so badly. “Wait here.”
I come back with the pizza, and she’s sipping her wine. She giggles. “This is going straight to my head.”
I set the box on the table, and she inhales when I open it. “That’s because you probably didn’t stop for lunch, did you?”
“No, Saturdays are crazy around here. Does it ever lighten up?”
“The market closes in October, but that’s during harvest. Once that’s done, work to prepare the orchard for winter happens, and things slow down a bit after that. But then there’s snow clearing and things like that.” I set a slice of pizza on her plate, and she rubs her hands together, her stomach grumbling louder. “Hey, maybe when the market settles down you can write that book you talked about.”
Her head lifts, and I note the tired smudges under her eyes. “I’ve been giving that a lot of thought, actually.”
“You think it might be something you could stick to? Maybe that will get your people