He shook the paper he held. “It’s gotten a lot more complicated over the years.”
Harper grunted, then looked across the field of baby corn to where the huge old oak tree stood in almost perfect symmetry in the middle of the field like a guard. Several picnic tables, covered with tarps, were under it. One part of the maze would lead to the tables. “Life has gotten more complicated,” she said with a slightly wishful tone in her voice. “It seems fitting that our maze does, too.”
He pulled the bailer twine out and waited while she pounded a stake in. She nodded at the big oak tree. “That’s my favorite tree in the whole world.”
Wyatt looked at the old oak as he tied the end of the bailer twine onto the first stake. “You say that every year.”
“It’s true.” She finished pounding the next stake. “How old do you think it is?”
“Couple hundred years?” He looked back over the area they’d finished. The maze was shaping up nicely.
Harper kept working as she spoke. “I was just thinking, it was here when my great-great-grandmother arrived, when she hid that ring.”
“And it’ll be here when your great-great-grandchildren make the corn maze.” His heart pinched. Her children. Not his. His kids would be in Chile. “Do you think our kids will get together?” Man, he was feeling maudlin. Which was not like him at all. But the question was out there, hanging in the thick summer air.
Harper looked up at him. A glimmer shimmered in her eye. She smiled it away and lifted her chin. “Of course.”
He’d been neglecting his duty, which was to lighten things up as they worked. “You know, I think this maze would work a lot better if we backed that part off about ten feet and cut the corner here…”
“You always do this!” Harper exclaimed. She stood, hands on hips, but the corners of her lips tilted up.
“Well, yeah. Life is about improvising.” He smiled, turning his dimple toward her. Sure enough, her eyes dropped to it before she shook her head.
“Life is about following the script.” She pointed at the paper with her finger. “We took the time to write that thing out. We know we’re going to end up with something great if we follow it.” She pulled out another stake and pounded it in.
“We could end up with something better if we don’t.”
“Or, we could end up with a corn maze that goes nowhere. Again.”
He ignored the jab. “We won’t know unless we try.” He wound the twine around the stake and used the knife to cut it off.
“We will know if we follow the script.” She stood.
He grabbed her shoulders. “How many years have we done this?”
She shrugged. “Ten, maybe?”
“How many years have we done it my way?”
“Half?”
“And how many of those have been successful?”
She pursed her lips. “Define successful?”
“People liked the maze.”
“All of them,” she said, despite the mulish set to her chin.
“Even when it didn’t turn out quite the way we thought it was going to, people still liked it. It still worked. Just not in the way we had planned.”
“Okay, Wyatt. You’re right. I like this design. I kind of have my heart set on it. But it could be better.”
“It could. If we do this…” He explained the idea he’d just gotten about a “secret” passageway that connected the two main legs of the far side of the maze. “And I think the teen boys especially will really get a kick out of that.”
“You’re probably right. And they’re the age group that are the hardest to entertain and keep out of trouble.”
“Yep.” Wyatt looked over the field. They were about half done with the staking. It wouldn’t require too much effort to change.
“Okay. So that means we need to move this stake back…” Harper grabbed the knife and twisted to slice the twine from the stake behind her, but she tripped, her arms windmilled and she bent to catch her balance. She took two big steps and fell with the twine wrapped around her ankle. Bright red blood flowed down her arm. He dropped his hammer and stake and rushed to her, dropping to his knees in the dirt. “Crap, Harper. Are you okay?”
She laughed. “I’m just embarrassed. I’m always so clumsy.”
He took the knife from beside her where it had fallen and tossed it away. “No, I’d say what you just did took talent. How did you manage to slice your shoulder?” He pulled his tee shirt off and folded it quickly before pressing it against her shoulder.
She winced and glanced down. “I don’t know. I’m just glad it wasn’t my face.” She grimaced. “Oh, it didn’t hurt, but it’s starting to.”
He lifted his shirt. Her skin gaped and blood started flowing immediately. “That’s definitely going to need stitches.”
“Great.”
“Hey, guys.” Avery came floating down through the grass. “I’ve finished stacking the apple crates, and I’m here to help.” She stopped short. “Oh, my goodness!” Her horrified gaze flew from Harper to Wyatt and back to Harper. She took a deep breath and all the color disappeared from her face. “I don’t do well with blood. I don’t do well at all. One time—” She swayed.
Wyatt took one step toward her, getting ready to catch her when she fainted.
“Turn around,” Harper commanded from her position on the ground, interrupting Avery’s monologue.
Avery spun away immediately. “I want to help. It’s just that blood makes me dizzy.”
“You can still help with the corn, but hold on just a second. I’ll get Harper and her blood to the ER to get her stitched up.” Wyatt winced. The inside of his chest would not feel like a helicopter was landing on his pancreas if it were his shoulder that was bleeding. He hated it when Harper was hurt. He gritted his teeth and put Harper’s hand over his tee shirt. “Press hard.” He picked her up, then turned to Avery. “You can pull the corn out between the ropes. Make sure to get the roots.”
Avery turned slightly, but did not look in the direction of the blood. She patted the ever-present cat in the carrier on her chest and bit her lip. “You mean, like touch the dirt?”
Harper shifted in his arms. “There are gloves in the laundry room at the house. You might want to go grab a pair.”
Wyatt eyed Avery’s long, pink fingernails and white hands. “That’s a good idea.”
“Okay. I can do that. And I’ll get all the corn pulled out and is there anything else I can do?” she asked breathlessly.
“Not all the corn, Avery. Just the stalks between the ropes.”
She nodded and started back toward the house. “Got it. The stalks between the ropes. I’ll have it all done before you get back.”
Harper and he grinned at each other. He was definitely disappointed they wouldn’t get to see Avery pulling corn. Unlike anyone in any country he’d ever met, Avery seemed like a bit of a featherbrain, but over the past few days that she’d been on the farm, she’d proven herself a willing worker. She’d get that corn pulled out, and she’d do it without getting a spot of dirt on herself. Or her cat. He’d bet his best pair of skis on it. The look on Harper’s face said she knew it as well. At least the pain grimace had disappeared. He’d thank Avery later for being a great distraction.
Chapter Twelve
Harper twisted her fingers in her lap. She could hardly believe a whole month had flown by. A full month of working with Wyatt.
The seating area where they waited for their flight to be called had filled with people, talking and laughing, but Wyatt had been uncharacteristically quiet. Was he as nervous as she?
She slanted a glance at him.
Nah.
Casually dressed in jeans and a tee, he slouched slightly, with his ankle propped on his knee, thumbing through a magazine.
He glanced up and caught her staring. His brow lifted.
Flattening her lips, she shook her head slightly and looked away.
Beside her he shifted, putting his leg down and leaning towar
d her. “What?”
How could she say she was nervous, scared, and homesick and they hadn’t even left the country?
She cleared her throat. “Maybe we should practice acting like we’re engaged.” Immediately, she ducked her head to hide the widening of her eyes. Where had that come from?
Wyatt chuckled. “Nice try.”
She jerked her head around. “What?”
“You’re nervous. Probably scared. I bet you’re homesick already, too. In order to keep yourself from running out of this airport, you’re trying to distract yourself.”
Wow. The man knew her better than she knew herself. She nodded, half embarrassed that he’d known, half relieved.
“Look around, Harper,” he said in a low voice.
Her eyes wandered around the room.
“How about that couple over there?” He nodded at the far corner where a couple in their early twenties snuggled together, the woman’s bare leg thrown over the man’s, their heads together. She whispered, then smiled coyly. They laughed and kissed. His hand came up and ran through her hair…
“No,” Harper croaked. “I’m not sitting in your lap.”
“That’s good, since I don’t particularly want you there. My legs would fall asleep.” Wyatt’s eyes crinkled.
Harper crossed her arms over her chest. “If we’re engaged, you should want me on your lap.”
“If we’re engaged, you should want to be there,” Wyatt said reasonably.
She grunted. “Not at the airport.”
“Why not?”
She looked around, then lowered her voice even farther. “Because people might think…”
Wyatt winked. “What? That we like each other? I think that’s the point.”
Okay. She could totally see herself sitting on Wyatt’s lap, fingering through his hair, whispering in his ear. But he was her best friend. She absolutely could not entertain those thoughts. “It’s a little much, and I think with our inexperience, we’d never pull it off.”
“What are you saying? That I’d drop you? I think I can manage to keep something as large as you on my lap.”
A voice came on the loudspeaker. They stood with everyone else and shuffled forward as general boarding was announced for their flight.
“I’m large?”
“I just meant, you know…”
“Yeah?” She fought to keep her grin in check as Wyatt tried to wrest his foot out of his mouth.
His hands motioned in the air. “Like a mouse would be hard to keep on your lap. You, not so much.”
Time to let him off the hook.
“What about them?” Harper indicated an older couple to their left. The woman read a book. The man’s head drooped toward his chest, and it looked like he was sleeping. They didn’t even realize the plane was boarding.
“That’s not too different than what we’re doing right now.” He shrugged. “This should be easy.”
She couldn’t imagine ever looking that bored with Wyatt. “Well, maybe they’re not such good role models. Looks like they’ve been married for sixty years.”
“I don’t care if I’ve been married sixty years or not, I’m gonna be having fun with my wife.”
Just like she figured. Life with Wyatt would be a lot of things, but not boring. But thinking about life with Wyatt was pointless. Pointlessness had never been something she allowed in her head or life, and she wasn’t about to start.
She followed Wyatt to their assigned seats on the plane, subtly checking out the other passengers, but no one else looked like they were engaged, or even in love. Not the couple with two small children—they looked stressed. Not even the couples who sat together. Most of them were on their phones, ignoring each other. A few shoved carry-ons into the overhead compartments, but none of them acted like a couple in love should. Maybe she had romanticized ideas of how love should work.
Pointing her chin at the two closest couples who were already settled in their seats, phones out, thumbs moving over the screens, she said, “Maybe we’re talking too much. It looks like if you’re a couple, you’re supposed to ignore your other half.”
“I don’t think I want to be part of a relationship like that. Maybe we need counseling.” Wyatt finished stowing his bag and dropped into his seat.
“Counseling?”
“Yeah. So we can learn how to interact with each other in a healthy way. Obviously, the couples around us are not positive examples.” He grinned at her.
She rolled her eyes. “I think we can fake it.”
He placed his arm, palm up between them. “I think engaged couples would hold hands.”
She stared at his hand. Large. Long fingers. Calloused.
Her breath quickened. Surely not from holding his hand. She’d held Wyatt’s hand plenty of times. Every time he’d gotten her into some scrape or talked her into his latest adventure.
But that was before. Before she realized she didn’t look at him like a brother. She swallowed, cognizant that she’d waited way too long to bring her own hand up. She did so now, sliding her palm over his, matching her smaller, softer palm to his.
Wyatt stilled. Possibly because she hesitated. Or possibly because the touch and friction had electrified his hand and arm as much as it had hers. She could hardly think so.
She forced herself to breathe again, but it was wobbly. His fingers slowly curled, sliding between hers and enfolding her hand in his. Her heart trembled. Heat radiated out from her chest.
Folding her own fingers, she marveled at how their hands fit together. At how elemental they looked. At how easy it was to succumb to the idea that holding Wyatt’s hand seemed natural. Somehow sensuous, yet comfortable.
Her hand tingled, but it was her heart, which beat softly with a warm and fluttery thump-thump, which concerned her. Of all the people in the world, there was no one she’d rather be with than Wyatt. She couldn’t feel like this with him. She couldn’t fall in love with him. But she couldn’t pull her hand away, either.
Still, she had to put some distance between them. He could read her like a neon sign. And the last thing she wanted was to scare her best friend with the un-friendly feelings ripping through her chest right now.
“This is good practice, I think,” she whispered.
He jolted, like her words had surprised him, or maybe reminded him of why they were holding hands to begin with.
He laughed. A little shaky. “Holding hands isn’t hard. We do it as children. Anyone can do it.”
“That’s right.” She slapped a big, carefree smile on her face before tilting her head up to look at him. “We’ve got this.” Lifting their hands, she gave them a shake as though to prove it. But also to shake out the burgeoning sensations threatening the perfect friendship she had with this man.
“We definitely look engaged now.” Wyatt twisted their hands over, stopping short. “What’s this?” He touched the ring she wore with his free hand.
“I thought I should have an engagement ring.”
“Crap. I never thought of it.”
Her face tilted down and he couldn’t see her expression to be able to tell whether she was upset or not.
She twisted the ring with her free hand. “Yeah, well, it’s a good thing you get to practice on me. The next time you ask a girl to marry you, you’d better have one of those.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” The only girl he’d ever wanted to marry was sitting right beside him and had provided her own engagement ring. Man, sometimes he was a blunder brain. “That’s the one from the tunnel.”
“Yeah. It’s a little thicker than I would have chosen, but I love the emerald.”
He touched the ring now. It suited Harper. Elegant, not fancy. “If I were picking a ring out for you, I would have chosen something just like this.”
He pressed his lips together. Although true, he hadn’t planned to say it.
But she didn’t seem to notice. “It’s almost exactly what I would have wanted. I haven’t really ever thought too much
about getting married, but as soon as we saw it, I did kind of have the idea of using this ring as an engagement ring.”
Things were getting a little too heavy for him. Unable to face the gray swirl of emotions in his chest, knowing she didn’t return them, he said, “So you’re not easy, but you’re cheap?”
As expected, she laughed. “I guess that’s a compliment. But now that you’re an engaged man, you really need to up your game.”
“Meaning the jewelry buying or compliments?”
“If this were a real engagement, both. But for the purposes of convincing your dad that you actually want to marry me, you might want to dig beyond easy and cheap.”
“Eh, I’ll just tell him you’re rich.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged.
“What’s this charade for if all it takes is money?”
“He’s tried to talk me into the whole finding a girl with money before, and I wasn’t going for it. I might have said something along the lines of money not buying happiness and all that sap.”
“Great. Now I have to pretend to be rich.” She glowered at him. He knew as well as anyone that she’d gone through school on scholarships and loans, and that her side job as a farmer wasn’t exactly high-end. “And I also have to convince him that I’m going to make you happier than money.”
“No pressure, Pickles.” Wyatt couldn’t tell her how much he had riding on this. Not in terms of financial gain or anything like that. But he’d struggled for too long to lose face with his dad. Guilt nagged in the back of his mind. His mother wanted him to get along with his dad, but somehow he didn’t think she would have approved of lying to him.
“That’s pressure! If they see through this, your whole reputation with your dad is down the drain. I know how much that means to you.”
Maybe Harper did see. She’d be the only person in the world to understand how much he longed for the support and respect of his dad.
He tried to downplay it. “If it doesn’t work, it’s not like they’re going to kick me out.” He shrugged. “But I really do appreciate you being willing to do this for me.” He squeezed her hand. “I owe you.”
Better Together Page 9