CHAPTER NINE
SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED bright and clear at the orchard. Collin woke to the sound of cardinals in the trees outside the window, and for the first time in more days than he cared to count, he wasn’t waking up thinking about Savannah.
Much.
He showered, lukewarm instead of ice cold, and pulled a pair of jeans over his hips. He grabbed a Tyler Orchards T-shirt and his favorite ball cap, but skipped the boots. It would be too hot for boots today. He slipped his feet into his old Nikes and headed for the kitchen.
His grandmother, Gladys, had made pancakes and she pointed him to the table. “Short stack or tall?” she asked, her slight Missouri drawl more pronounced than usual. She wore orthopedic shoes on her feet, jeans, a Tyler Orchards T-shirt, and her hair was held back with a colorful scarf. She looked like a shorter, older, female version of him. He studied her closely. The paleness of the last few weeks was gone. Her eyes were alert. The post-surgery limp remained, but he thought it didn’t seem as pronounced.
A wave of love and relief rushed through him.
“Short. How are you feeling this morning? And where’s Amanda?”
“She rushed through breakfast a few minutes ago and said she was going to make sure the truck was ready to go. What’s gotten into that girl?”
“She says she wants to learn the business.”
Gran shook her head. “I hope she stays with it.” She brought his plate, only limping a little, and sat across from him. “I’m going to the market with you today.”
“Gran—”
“I had hip surgery, not heart surgery. I miss my friends. I need to be around people,” she said. “A woman can only take so many naps, and I’ve already taken far too many.”
“That old parking lot is filled with potholes, and you know the building isn’t air-conditioned.” Not limping was one thing, taking Gran in her condition to the market was another. He took a bite of pancake and then another.
“And you know we didn’t have air-conditioning in this house for a lot of years. I can deal with the heat, and I’m going.” She set her mouth in a stubborn line that Collin recognized. It was the same expression he and his sisters wore when Gladys or Granddad laid down a law they didn’t agree with.
“I’m just thinking of your comfort.”
“And I’m just thinking of my sanity. It’s been more than two months since the surgery, and the only people I’ve seen outside of the family are in my doctor’s office. Besides, I’ve got Red Rider.”
“Who’s Red Rider? And what does he or she or it have to do with the market?”
Gran went into the mudroom and a second later motored into the kitchen on a red mobility scooter with orange flames painted on the sides and a long orange flag swinging from behind the seat. “This is Red Rider, guaranteed to make it through potholes, crowded restaurants and even a sandy beach without an issue,” she said, gesturing with her hands like one of those models from The Price is Right.
Collin choked on a bite of pancake. “When did you get a mobility scooter?”
Gran turned off the machine, stood and returned to the stove where she flipped another pancake. “A couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t sleep so I was watching one of those middle-of-the-night health shows—”
“You mean infomercials?”
She waved a hand. “Whatever. There are people older than me running all over the world on these things, and you know I’m not as fast as I used to be. I figured one might be the answer to my problems. Plus, you won’t have to wait on me so much. It arrived yesterday and I tipped the delivery driver an extra fifty to help me put it together.”
“Gran, I don’t mind waiting.” He didn’t. He might get frustrated when she asked him to run back and forth all over the grocery, but at least he had her in the store with him.
“I mind.” She looked at the scooter as if inspecting it. “I’m not sure I’d have painted it to look as if there were flames shooting down the sides, but then again, the flames are kind of cool, don’t you think?”
He sighed and got up to inspect the scooter. The tires seemed fine. It was electric, so no worries about gas or oil. Collin decided to make a deal.
“If I put your scooter in the truck so you can get around easier, you have to promise that you’ll use it. No leaving it in the market while you traipse off with your friends,” he said, feeling as if he were talking to a teenager rather than his grandmother. He had to, though. Gran might seem excited about the scooter here, but once she was around her friends there was no telling how she would feel. Gran started to say something, but Collin held up his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Gran drew her brows together. “Fine.”
A half hour later the three of them were at the market, Amanda watching the table inside with jams and jellies, and him outside with the apples, berries from the garden and a few early peaches and pears. Gran cruised the aisles on her scooter, the orange flag flying behind her as she motored around, talking to her friends. Collin shook his head.
Maybe he’d been wrong about Gran’s mental health. This morning she’d seemed like her old self, not the sad, tired woman he’d been worrying about the past few weeks.
He spotted Savannah inside with Hazel at their table. She wore a white tank top, olive shorts, and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Long chains hung from her ears, and he wondered if she still wore the green belly button ring or if she’d changed it. Could belly button rings even be changed?
She laughed at something Mama Hazel said, and the pure joy on her face sent a shiver of awareness through him. Collin couldn’t remember her ever laughing or smiling that freely in the past. Whatever had brought Savannah home, it seemed to have changed her from the sullen person she had been all those years ago into someone a little less angry and a little more happy.
Happy looked good on her.
He knew he wasn’t being completely reasonable. He hadn’t interacted with her enough to know if she were truly sullen or if there was something more to the quiet girl she had been.
“I’ll take a dozen apples, please.” A young woman with two toddlers at her knees jolted him back to the parking lot. Collin filled the basket the woman carried and then focused on the rest of his customers.
The morning flew. With summer in full swing, even if the calendar hadn’t made the official changeover, people were out looking for fresh produce and other locally made goods. By noon he’d sold out of berries and had only a couple of baskets of apples left.
“Hey, stranger.” Savannah came around the side of his truck with two large foam cups in her hands. She gave one to him.
“Lemonade. You looked like you could use it,” she said, and sat on the edge of his tailgate. Collin joined her.
“Busy today.”
“Isn’t it every Saturday? I’ve been here twice now, and both days have been crazy.”
“Sometimes I think we could run this market every day of the week and we’d have a crowd. Thanks for the lemonade,” he said as he sipped from the cup.
Bud’s famous lemonade, always on the tart side, made his eyes squinch together. It was the best taste in the world. He shot a glance at Savannah. Maybe the second best, but he wasn’t going there.
“Any news on the tour?”
“Not a peep,” she said, and maybe he was imagining it, but her voice sounded happy about that.
“Got tired of singing about nothing, did you?” he teased.
Savannah shot him an annoyed look. “I don’t sing about nothing. People loved that first single.”
“Of course they did. It was a song about getting drunk and getting revenge on an ex. Who wouldn’t love that?”
“Apparently you.” She shot him another look. “Are you trying to pick a fight with me? Because I’ll take the lemonade back.”
C
ollin switched his cup to his other hand protectively. He backpedaled. “I’m just saying you don’t see King George singing about drunken revenge.”
“No, he sings about breaking the law and running off to Mexico. But that’s okay because—what?—he has a penis and I have a vagina.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He was losing control of the conversation too fast. It was just a joke.
“Because there’s nothing wrong with party songs, as evidenced by where that particular one landed on the charts.”
He’d offended her. Collin didn’t mean to offend Savannah. Damn it, he should have just drunk the damn lemonade and kept his big mouth shut.
“I just meant...never mind. I like songs that have meaning, that’s all.”
Savannah shook her head. “What are you, fifty? Not all music has to be about some deep, dark issue. Music can be about having fun and being free.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “What’s your next single about?”
Savannah took her full bottom lip between her teeth and shot him a sidelong look. “A girl who gets dumped at her baby shower, and takes revenge in a series of diabolical ways.” That was, assuming the song or any others ever got released. Savannah laughed. “So that’s not the greatest example, but there are a couple of ballads on the album, and even one or two George-worthy songs.”
“Good for you. When does it come out?”
An emotion he couldn’t read clouded her big brown eyes for a moment. “I’m not sure,” she said and then shook her head. When her gaze connected with his again, that strange emotion was gone. “What about you? Figure out those twenty-year-old numbers?”
Collin finished the lemonade. “I did, actually. Now I just need to figure out how to present it to a potential business partner.”
“Someone’s buying into the orchard?” She sounded surprised.
Was he that transparent? Contracting with the grocer was as far as he wanted to go on the partnership route.
“No, it’s staying in the family. I had a meeting with a regional grocer who wants Tyler Orchards to become their main organic provider.”
“That’s amazing. Congratulations.”
He wanted to reach out and take her hand in his, but he couldn’t. They weren’t dating. That one sexual experience didn’t even make them friends, which made it even stranger that he was telling her this when he hadn’t mentioned it to Gran or Mara or Amanda yet. Collin wobbled his head from side to side, not agreeing with her but not disagreeing, either. “It could be. The thing is, the contract would call for us to only provide to the chain. No more market or farm stand and, after this summer, possibly no contract with the local restaurants and B and Bs. I want to convince them our trees can provide ample fruit for them while still keeping the market and stand going.”
It felt good to be telling someone else about his plans, even if the someone he was telling wasn’t technically a friend. Maybe because the someone wasn’t technically a friend. Savannah was an outsider, not someone like Gran or his sisters who might agree with his decision even if she didn’t like the choice. Talking it over with Savannah could be his best chance to get an honest opinion about the choices before him.
“Why not just give them what they want? It sounds like an amazing deal.”
He wanted to reach out and take her hand in his, but he couldn’t. They weren’t dating. That one sexual experience didn’t even make them friends. “It would be. More money, more potential for growth. More stability for the family.” He paused. “The stand and the market were important to my grandfather, though. It feels almost disloyal to turn away from them.”
“But if it’s more money for less work,” she said as if she were playing devil’s advocate with him. “Why not go for it? It isn’t as if people won’t still get Tyler Orchards’ produce. They’ll just get it from a bigger store.”
He didn’t want her to play devil’s advocate. He didn’t want to think of the ways it would be simpler to give Westfall Foods exactly what they wanted. And this was not the conversation to have with Savannah, the woman he’d screwed on the side of a lake earlier this week. The woman he still couldn’t get out of his head. The woman whose hand he wanted to hold, whose neck he wanted to kiss, whose body he wanted to get lost in.
None of those things would help him make this decision; they might muddy it, though.
Savannah had run away from this town twice already. What could she know about the kind of root system that was so important to Collin when, instead of facing whatever bothered her, she ran from it?
Then again, she wasn’t running now, was she? She’d come back, and although she said it was only for a couple of weeks, she’d already been here three and showed no interest in leaving. Maybe he hadn’t given her enough credit. Running away from pain as a teen was a normal thing, wasn’t it? And going on that reality show wasn’t running away, exactly, it was running toward, wasn’t it? His hand tightened around the lemonade cup. She was still here.
That was dangerous ground. Savannah still being in Slippery Rock right now didn’t mean she would always be here any more than the offer from Westfall Foods would always be on the table.
He couldn’t deny he wanted the grocer’s contract, but he wasn’t willing to give up on the market or the roadside stand to do it. Maybe it was selfish, but he wanted all the options. He needed to hold on to more control until he knew Amanda was back on track. Until he knew Gran was truly on the mend and not just having a good day.
If things ended badly with the grocer and he shut down the local sourcing, it would take a long time to build that trust back up.
“We’re a local farm. Going into business with a chain is a great opportunity, but it’s also a risk. I need to hedge the bets. This isn’t anything you would understand.”
Savannah blinked at him and anger lit her brown eyes. Collin leaned back. “Nothing I’d understand?” she asked, and her voice had a strange edge to it.
“You aren’t a farmer. The people in this county depend on my orchard. I have business relationships with other local owners.”
“That’s an asshole thing to say. You think because I can’t milk cows that I don’t know what it means to be a local farmer? I’ve seen my brother and father get up before dawn for most of my life. Even when he was playing football, Levi would call home to talk about the herd or new techniques.”
She twisted her wrist, sending the ice in her cup rattling against the sides. “Leaving Slippery Rock doesn’t mean I don’t understand the people who choose to stay here. The fact is you’ll still be providing fruits and berries and other produce to the community, it’ll just come from a store with air-conditioning instead of the back of your truck.”
She didn’t get it. Collin blew out a breath. “And what about the people who can’t afford grocery-store prices? I sell a bushel of apples for fifteen dollars here at the market. In a grocery store, that price is going to jump to at least thirty.”
“What family of four needs a bushel of apples every week? You’re acting like all people eat around here are apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“You know, money isn’t everything, Savannah.”
“You’re the one making this about the almighty dollar. Or did you not just say the money from this contract would mean a more stable cash flow?”
Collin wanted to disagree, but he had said that. It had been his main motivator for renegotiating the contract before he signed it. Money didn’t buy happiness, but the stability of it made life easier to enjoy.
Savannah shook her head. “It’s your business, none of mine, but if you want the security of the big contract you’re going to have to let go of whatever it is that is making you put this market above your family’s financial security,” she said and hopped off the tailgate.
She walked back into the market and began to help her mother
tear down the remainder of their display. Like most of the other booths, Mama Hazel’s pies had nearly sold out.
Savannah had a point. A family of four didn’t need a bushel of apples every week. He could go along with what Westfall wanted and then renegotiate next year when they saw that he could provide for them and the local buyers.
Damn it, this Saturday had started out so well. Gran was having a good day. Amanda seemed to be regaining her balance.
Savannah looked freaking hot in those shorts.
He’d known exactly how to present his counter-presentation to the executives at Westfall, and now he was torn between the immediate security of the deal and the tentative security of keeping things the same.
There was nothing wrong with his grandfather’s way of doing business, but Collin wanted more. For the orchard and for the family. He wanted to build something bigger and stronger. Something that couldn’t be torn down by anything.
Collin shoved the tailgate closed and stomped to a trash can to throw away the empty cup.
He should have kept the options to himself to mull over a bit more. Sitting with Savannah on the tailgate of his pickup didn’t make her his confidante any more than having sex with her had made her his girlfriend.
He’d wanted an unbiased and possibly uninformed opinion on his plan, and what he’d gotten was a bit of devil’s advocacy and sniping about her lack of farming knowledge. She deserved better than that.
Now he’d not only insulted Savannah when he should have kept things light and fluffy between then, but he was back to square one: put all his apples in Westfall’s basket or keep doing things the way Granddad had always done them.
* * *
HAVING SEX WITH Collin didn’t make her an expert, but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would want a business partner, especially one who told him where to sell his produce and for how much. Savannah tried to wrap her head around Collin’s dilemma. It seemed straightforward to her: choose the road with more dollar signs attached.
She knew it was shallow, but it was also true. Money made things easier. She didn’t remember much about her life before coming to Slippery Rock, but the things she did weren’t pretty. Hunger and anger were what stood out the most. Hunger on her part. Loud words and angry voices from the shadowy people that stomped around the dirty little apartment. She remembered always feeling cold and the smoothness of the note attached to her thin jacket when she’d been left at the police station.
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