Single Mom's Protector - Complete Series

by Nella Tyler

  I remembered that I had Robert Nelson’s phone number from someone—they’d gotten it when they’d repaired one of his tractors and had passed it along to me as a contact in case I was looking for handyman work.

  I could call Robert directly and see if he would give me an interview, instead of bothering with the email situation. That might give me an edge. Of course, it might also piss him off that I wasn’t obeying the instructions in the ad, but that was a risk that I was willing to take.

  I found the number in my old address book and dialed it on my phone; I considered adding it as a contact, but that wouldn’t make sense unless I actually started working for the Nelsons. I waited as the other end of the line rang once, twice, three times—and I was sure that Robert Nelson was going to let it go to voicemail. But then I heard the ringing stop. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Nelson?” It occurred to me—too late—that my friend could have given me a wrong number either accidentally or on purpose.

  “This is him,” the man on the other end of the line said. “Who’s this?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Nelson,” I said, putting on my best company manners the way my mom had taught me years before. “This is Cade Wilson—I went to school with your son and daughter years ago.” Before Robert could say anything, I kept going. “I saw your ad in the newspaper and thought I’d contact you directly.”

  “You’re the first one to show that kind of initiative,” he said with amusement in his voice. “My daughter’s already starting to get emails from folks looking to fill the position.”

  “My friend Cal Peters worked for you a while back and he gave me your number—he thought I might ask you for some handyman work sometime if I got into doing it again. But when I saw the ad, I thought I could maybe get in touch with you, see what it is you’re looking for more specifically.”

  “As I’ve never hired anyone to work the farm for me before, I’m not sure I know,” he admitted. “Have you worked on a farm before?” I nodded, even though I knew Robert Nelson couldn’t see me.

  “I worked planting and harvest at my uncle’s place every year growing up,” I said. “And, I’ve done the occasional stint working fields for fertilizer or pesticide in the past when I was between construction jobs.”

  “Are you working for anyone right now?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “But my contract will be finishing up in a few days—before you’re going to need anyone to start.”

  “I’m going to need the help sooner rather than later, but if you’re free starting a few days from now, that works for me,” he said. “I’d like to have you out to the place, have a chat about the details of the job. Can you come out this Sunday?”

  “I can definitely do that,” I told him. “As long as you don’t mind me coming by after church.”

  “Not at all,” Robert said. “We’ll be there ourselves, anyway. Do me a favor and send your information to my daughter—she’s scheduling everyone and I don’t want to foul up her program.”

  “I will email her my resume and contact information just to keep things kosher,” I promised.

  “Then, I’ll look forward to seeing you Sunday afternoon,” Robert told me. “Thanks for giving me a call, Cade.”

  “Not a problem, Mr. Nelson. I’ll see you this weekend.” I hung up with him and went back into the house to find my laptop.

  It took me a little while to find my resume in my files, but once I did, I updated it with my most recent jobs and put in a few references at the end before sending it off to the email address from the ad. I wrote a little note, mentioning that I’d already called Robert, and that I looked forward to dropping by the farm that weekend to check things out, and sent it off before going back to the classified ads.

  I thought I was a pretty good candidate for the job—but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t have something up as backup just in case.

  Chapter Three

  Autumn

  It was Sunday, and I had Adelyn with me in the living room after church, while Dad met with a few of the people who’d applied to work on the farm.

  I’d gone with Mom, Dad, and Tuck to church that morning with my little girl, and once we were home, there was not only the interviews to get through, but also the normal tasks that needed doing on the farm and around the house on a daily basis. Even on Sundays there wasn’t such a thing as a true, complete day of rest—chickens had to be fed, lunch and dinner had to be made, the house had to be straightened for the people coming and going for their interviews.

  Mom got Tucker to hose down the porch outside—it was almost too chilly still for it, but she didn’t want anyone to see the front of the house looking anything less than its best.

  I straightened up the living room and helped with lunch, and then I was on greeting duty with my mom, meeting prospective farm hands at the door, talking to them a bit, and then handing them over to my Dad to talk more seriously about the responsibilities and work that the job would include.

  Adelyn had reached the age where she just about had crawling down and was trying to get to her knees or onto her feet, pulling up on the coffee table or the couch under my supervision. She didn’t like to be held as much as she had even a month before, and the only way to deal with her fussiness at being unable to move around as much as she liked was to let her have plenty of space on the floor with toys to amuse herself.

  I’d tried to narrow down the people who emailed their resumes to me to maybe a dozen total. Dad had already talked to a couple on Friday and Saturday, but Sunday, being a day of mostly-rest on the farm, was the best time for him to sit or walk around the fields and talk at length to anyone.

  The first of the candidates came by and I introduced myself to him; it was Lane Jacobs, who I’d known in high school—not very well, but he’d been in the graduating class before me, and we’d had a class together. “Hey, Lane, come on in—mind you don’t get Addie under your feet.”

  I led him over to the couch where he sat down to wait while my mom looked for my father. “Can I get you a glass of lemonade? Or maybe a cup of coffee?” Addie crowed at Lane, flopping around a bit as she scooted on her elbows and knees on the rug in front of the fireplace.

  “Coffee would be great,” Lane told me, smiling. He looked older than he should—but then, if the rumors in town were right, that would stand to reason. His mother was going through chemo for breast cancer, from what I’d heard, and he was picking up odd jobs here and there to help pay for the treatment, in addition to helping run the family drug store.

  I was surprised that he’d be looking for work as a farm hand so far away from his parents’ place or the store. But if his younger sister was in control of things at the shop, it was possible that he had some time to devote—though probably not the amount of time Dad would need, at least not throughout the rest of the season. I didn’t think he’d get the job, but I wasn’t about to tell him that; it’d just be mean.

  I went into the kitchen and poured him a cup of coffee. I filled one of Mom’s cream pitchers with some half-and-half and grabbed the sugar bowl and put everything on a tray to carry out to the living room.

  I chatted with Lane for a few minutes while we waited for my Dad and found out that I was right—he was looking for a steadier job to add to the work at the drug store to help pay for his mother’s treatment. He drank down about half of the coffee with a little cream and no sugar, and then Dad arrived to chat with him about the job.

  I picked Addie up and took her for a quick walk around the house in between interviews while I thought about the applications we’d gotten.

  The town wasn’t all that big—fortunately and unfortunately. Most of the emails I’d gotten were from college guys, and the ones who might actually stand a chance among the young men were the ones who’d obviously grown up on a farm themselves. I didn’t think even they really had any idea of how hard it would be to combine school and work, but I couldn’t help respecting their resolve and determination to earn some money.

  There
were a few people from town that I knew at least by reputation if not by face; people like Lane who were looking for ways to make some extra money, or people who were in-between jobs and looking for something that would last them a few months of steady pay before another project came along.

  The work was going to be pretty tough: it was almost planting season, and the new expansion on Dad’s property had to be fully cleared and the ground prepared for seed before we could sow it. Whoever Dad decided to hire, they were going to be working hard.

  I got into the flow of the interviews. Dad didn’t take too long with any of them, no more than about thirty minutes at the most, just to talk about what the hours would be like, what the work would entail, the usual things like that. By mid-afternoon, I was ready to be done with it; I hadn’t had to deal with so many people coming and going since Addie had been born, almost a year before, and at that I hadn’t had to entertain them, at all.

  “How many more of these do we have today?” I sighed and looked over the list I had compiled from the applicants I’d narrowed down as being the most likely to be a good fit. There were only three names left on the list: Cade Wilson, who I thought I might have gone to school with—though I was pretty sure he’d been a year or two ahead of me if so—as well as Ben Yates and Kyle Northrop.

  Ben had called while Dad was with the last candidate to say that he had to reschedule; one of his kids had gotten hurt falling out of a tree and had to go to the hospital. That left two more.

  A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts and after checking to make sure that Addie was well and fully occupied with a toy, I went to go get it.

  The man on the other side of the door was probably 6’4”, way taller than me and even a bit taller than my dad or brother, and had medium brown hair that fell just to his shoulders, along with the prettiest pair of hazel eyes I’d ever seen in my life. He was broad in the shoulders, with a muscular chest that his collared, v-neck shirt did nothing to hide. In fact, he looked like he could pick me up and throw me across the room if he wanted to—but thankfully he didn’t look at all like he wanted to.

  “You must be Autumn,” the man said, smiling. I pushed aside the rush of heat that rose up in me at the sight of him.

  “I am,” I said, smiling as politely as I could. “I assume you’re Cade Wilson?” I had thought I’d recognize Cade when I saw him—he would have gone to school with me, and surely I’d seen him around—but the man in front of me was drop-dead, mouth-watering gorgeous, and if I had seen him, I would have committed his name to memory.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Cade said, nodding. “Your father said I could come a bit early since one of the other folks canceled?”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “Fellow by the name of Ben Yates—one of his kids had to go to the hospital, so he had to go with. Come on inside.” I stepped back from the door and let Cade into the house, trying to keep how flustered I was about him at the back of my mind, or at least off my face.

  “Is this your daughter?” Cade sat down on the couch and gestured to Adelyn.

  “She is!” I knelt down at my baby’s side and tried to keep her from putting something—I didn’t know what—in her mouth.

  “Can I get you anything? Lemonade? Coffee?” I’d said it so many times that afternoon that I was starting to get sick of even the idea of lemonade or coffee, but somehow with Cade, I really—really—wanted to get him something to drink. I wanted to cook him dinner. Down girl! I took a quick, deep breath to get myself under control once more.

  “I think I’ll buck the trend you’ve probably been seeing today and ask for lemonade—as long as you don’t have to make it from scratch for me right now, that is.” I laughed.

  “No, I made up a whole pitcher before anyone got here,” I reassured him. “I’ll get you a glass.” Mom was working on pulling together dinner, and I told her to go get Dad again. “Tell him that Cade Wilson is here.”

  “You look like you’re running a fever, girl,” Mom said, looking me over. “Maybe I ought to get a peek at this Cade.” I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t quite hide the little shake in my hands as I poured lemonade from my mom’s old-fashioned glass pitcher into one of the bigger glasses we kept around for guests.

  “He’s pretty, but he’s also qualified,” I told her sharply. “Besides, it’s not like I’d see very much of him if he ended up working here.” Mom raised an eyebrow and turned to go get my dad, while I went back into the living room to give Cade his drink.

  I found him talking to Adelyn, who was responding—more happily than she had with several of the other prospects—with bursts of babble. “Your daughter has very interesting opinions on the matter of whether green or purple is the better color,” Cade informed me.

  “Has she, now?” I knelt down next to Adelyn, who was waving around a green block. “What did you tell Mr. Wilson about colors?” Adelyn looked up at me with her big, bright eyes and beamed.

  “Ah-ga! Ah-ga-ga-boo.” I giggled, shaking my head at her nonsense.

  “That’s a very good point, little bug,” I told her.

  “This is excellent lemonade,” Cade said when I looked in his direction again.

  “Thank you. My secret is that I put the peels in with the rest—gives it more lemon flavor.” Cade nodded and took another sip before setting his glass down.

  “Is your father serious about hiring someone?”

  I nodded. “He knows he and my brother can’t cover the new ground all on their own—or at least, that even if they did, they would make more money to have a third person helping them.” I didn’t mention that Tuck still insisted that a farm hand was a waste of time and money.

  “I hope I can work for him, then,” Cade said. “I’m in between construction jobs at the moment—my most recent contract ended this week—but I’ve got some experience working on farms. And, of course, your dad has a really good reputation in town.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” I didn’t know what else to say; fortunately, Dad arrived from outside then and invited Cade to bring the lemonade with him while they stepped outside to talk about the job.

  As Cade got up and followed Dad out into the fields, I thought to myself that I wasn’t sure whether I really, truly wanted him to have the job or if I wanted him to be rejected for it outright—he was definitely a distracting person to be around.

  Chapter Four

  Cade

  I was actually surprised at how surprised I was to find that Autumn Nelson was a beautiful woman. Somehow, I’d thought she would be plain, but when she answered the door, I had to force myself to focus on the interview ahead of me.

  She was slightly on the short side, with long, auburn hair and big, bright green eyes—the kind that made you think she had secrets she was dying to tell, but was too smart to give away. Pregnancy had been kind to her, and if she’d taken on any “baby weight” it was hard to tell, even in the jeans and tee shirt she wore.

  I followed Bob Nelson out of the house and into the field, and he led me across the already-broken ground he’d been farming for decades to the new plot of land he’d bought only about a week or two before.

  “As you can see, it’s going to be a good bit of work before we can even start laying down seed through here,” he said, gesturing to the expanse of land that he could now call his. It had been cleared out by a crew—that much I could tell—but there was still evidence of the grass and other plants that had inhabited the area before they’d been razed.

  “I can certainly help with that,” I said, nodding to the land in front of me. “Part of the work I’ve done on construction sites has been clear-outs. What kind of equipment do you have on the farm for it?”

  “Same as any farm in the town,” Bob said with a shrug. “Some of that grass has tough roots—I was thinking I’d give it a day to burn it all out, carefully, and then go through with the tractor and plow, give it a couple of days, and then divide it up into sections.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” I said. “You’
d probably want to go through at least once with some hand-tools, as well, make sure every last one of those roots is pulled up, right?” Bob Nelson grinned.

  “Right on point,” he told me. “Then, of course, once I’ve got the rows cut and all that done, the actual seeding would come and it will move forward like every other part of this farm.”

  “Would I be working only this section?” Bob shook his head.

  “I’d want you to basically be an extra set of hands. This section is going to take the most work starting off, but between the three of us—that would be you, me, and Tuck, my son—we’d cover the whole property.” He looked at me, and I took a sip of Autumn’s delicious lemonade.

  “That sounds about like what I would have expected,” I told the older man. “I’m glad I saw the job posting—and I think I’ll be a good fit here.”

  “Have you worked on a farm before?” Bob settled himself against a fencepost, and I set down my glass on another beam.

  “I worked some farms my family members have had in the past,” I said. “Doing much the same stuff—clearing, planting, fertilizer and all that. None have been as big as this, but I know the basics.”

  “I saw on your resume that you mostly do construction work,” Bob said, making the comment almost a question.

  “I take the work that I can,” I said with a half-shrug. “When there’s a construction job open, I take that. But I’ve also done handyman work, odd jobs, that sort of thing.”

  “Are you going to be available the whole season? From now until harvest is through?” Bob looked at me intently, and I nodded.