“But I . . .” Cammie pressed one hand to her cheek, mortified. “I don’t do stuff like this. I’m really smart, I swear. I just graduated magna cum laude.”
“They’re not going to take away your diploma for this.” He settled back against the car, watching her. “I’m Ian McKinlay.”
“Cammie. Cammie Breyer.” She reached up and toyed with the silver pendant at her neck. “So, what are you doing out here in the cornfields, Ian?”
“Working. These are my family’s fields.”
She regarded him with renewed interest. “You’re a farmer?”
He laughed, his smile easy and white. “Yes.”
“Is that the right word?”
“Yeah. I’m a farmer.”
“I’ve never met an actual farmer before.” After growing up in the suburbs, the idea of farming seemed like something out of a fairy tale or a TV series. Not real life. Not something someone her age would do.
“It’s your lucky day. Farmers are the best.” He strode over to the nearest green stalk. “Here, take some with you. Best sweet corn you’ll ever have.”
“No, thanks.”
“Take it,” he insisted. “You’ll thank me later.”
“I don’t like corn,” Cammie confessed.
“What?” Ian looked almost offended. “Everybody likes sweet corn.”
“Everybody except me.”
“You’ll like this. This is a whole different experience from the corn you’ve had before. Just try it.” He handed her the corn, and she accepted without further protest. “So, what do you do?”
“Right now, I’m waitressing, but I’m starting graduate school in the fall.”
Ian closed the car door and turned toward his truck. “Come on. I’ll drive you into town, and you can get a few gallons at the gas station.”
Cammie fell into step beside him, and they were halfway to his truck before her magna-cum-laude common sense kicked in. “How do I know you’re not a serial killer?”
“How do I know you’re not?” he countered.
She smiled sweetly. “You don’t.”
And that was the beginning. By the time they got to the gas station, it was like they’d known each other for years. By the time they drove back to the cornfield and refueled her car, she was wondering what it would be like to kiss him.
So she decided to find out. As he screwed the gas cap back into place, she got up on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his cheek. His skin was warm and he smelled wholesome, like sun and grass.
He turned to face her. “What was that for?”
“I owe you, remember?” She kissed him again, this time on the lips.
He slid his arms around her waist. They kissed and kissed under the bright summer sun, out in the middle of a dusty road surrounded by tall green fields.
“Let’s go somewhere,” he said when they finally broke apart.
“Where?” Even as she asked this, she knew what he would answer: My room. Under the boardwalk. Backseat of the truck.
“Let’s count the rows.”
She glanced at him, confused, and he laughed. “Come on, I’ll give you the full farmer experience.”
“Like a field trip?”
“Best field trip ever.” He took her hand again and led her to the far end of the rows of corn.
“When you walk the field, what you’re really doing is counting the rows,” he explained. “Checking the spacing between plants, checking to see if everything’s growing, checking to see if there’s any damage from birds.”
He started walking slowly. Cammie matched his pace, trying to see what he saw: creation in progress, life all around them.
But all she saw was corn.
“Aren’t there the same number of rows as there were yesterday and the day before?” she asked.
He squeezed her hand. “Yeah. Isn’t it great? Everything else changes every day. But the number of rows stays the same.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she loved hearing him say it. After two hours of counting the rows, she was totally sunburned and halfway in love.
He called her the next morning. They got together the next day, and every day after that. They would meet in the cornfields in the late afternoon and walk the field, counting rows.
“Did you try the corn?” Ian asked when he leaned in to kiss her hello.
“Yes,” Cammie said.
“And?” he prompted.
“And you were right—it was better than any corn I’ve ever had before.” Also truthful.
Something in her voice made him laugh. “But?”
Cammie hung her head. “But I still don’t like corn.”
She spent the summer in a constant state of distraction and desire. While her aunt whiled away the days learning to knit and Kat accumulated an ever-growing collection of scabs and bruises, Cammie thought about Ian.
“What else do you do all day?” she once asked him as they paced the perimeter of the fields. “Besides count the rows?”
“Lots.” He kind of shrugged. “But most of it’s done before noon.”
“Like what?” she pressed.
“You really want to know?”
“I really do.”
“Plants don’t sleep,” he told her. “They grow all night, so you want to check on them first thing, before it gets hot. Bugs get up early. If you get out there early, too, you can head off some of the damage.”
She rested her hand on his back as they walked.
“The first thing I do when I get up is check the weather.” He grinned sheepishly. “That’s a farmer thing—we’re obsessed with the weather. We can’t change it or control it, but we have to know about it. All the time.”
“So you’ll know what’s coming?”
“We’re never sure what’s coming. I took a course in meteorology in college, and what I learned is that no one really understands how all the different systems work together. The forecast is just a guess. But we all have our favorite weather websites.” He paused. “And we all buy the Farmers’ Alamanac, every year.”
“The Farmers’ Almanac?” Cammie was incredulous. “Is that thing accurate?”
“No.” Ian lowered his voice. “Except it might be. You never know.”
“You never know,” Cammie echoed.
“What about you?” he asked. “What were you studying while I was reading up on barometric pressure in college?”
“Hospitality management. That’s what I’m going to grad school for. There’s a great program in California. It’s really hard to get into; I was shocked when I got accepted.” She couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice. “My plan is to open a restaurant.”
“Oh.” His voice was flat.
“What?” she prompted.
“Nothing.”
“What?” Cammie demanded.
He led her into the shade offered by a row of cornstalks. “Don’t a lot of restaurants go out of business pretty early on?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Like ninety percent?”
Cammie flipped her hair back. “I don’t know the exact percentage, but that’s why I’m going to grad school. To learn how not to go out of business.”
“Okay.”
“What are you saying?”
He held up his hands. “I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re saying my restaurant’s going to go out of business,” she accused.
He started walking again. “Ninety percent is pretty bad odds.”
“Well, odds don’t apply to me,” she informed his back. “I’m going to be very successful. Very successful.”
When Ian talked about his family’s land, she could sense how much he loved it. The land, the growing cycle, the lifestyle. But no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t feel t
he way he felt about it.
She tried to appreciate the smell of fresh fields when she turned the soil over in her hands. She tried to read the weather blogs he’d recommended. She tried to identify the moment that a plant “broke,” just as the new green sprout appeared. She just couldn’t seem to find any passion for corn.
But she had plenty of passion for Ian. She couldn’t get enough of his time, his body, the sound of his voice. Their preferred activity was to park out in his family’s farmland, under the stars, and make out.
“What’s going to happen in September?” he asked her one sultry night in July as they stretched out, both topless, on a blanket in the bed of the truck.
“I have to go to California.” The reality started to sink in as she said the words.
“You don’t have to go to California.” He pulled her closer against his chest.
She went still for a moment, thinking about that. What if he’s right? What if I stay here?
“What kind of restaurant do you want to open?” he asked, breaking the silence.
This was one of things she liked best about him: He was always interested in what she had to say, even when she had her shirt off.
“I’m not sure.” She shifted, rested her cheek against his warm bare skin. “In my mind, it’s a fancy, upscale lounge. Like a really fancy bar. By the beach, maybe.”
“That’s really what you want to do?”
“Yeah. It’s what I’m going to do.” She pressed her lips over the steady thud of his heartbeat.
“But why do you want to?”
She lifted her face. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you want to open a restaurant?” He rested his hand on her lower back. “You could do anything you want.”
Cammie hesitated for a moment before confessing the truth. “My mom always wanted to open a restaurant. She was a great cook; she would try anything. And she loved entertaining. She always said when my dad stopped traveling for work so much and I started high school, she’d open a little café.”
“But she didn’t?” Ian asked.
Cammie sighed. “She died when I was in sixth grade.”
He didn’t say anything, just held her close.
“Breast cancer,” Cammie said, as if this told the whole story. She supposed that in a way, it did. “When she died, she left me a trust fund. I gained access to it when I turned twenty-one. I can’t cook the way she did, but I love that feeling of getting people together. Dressing up. Escaping from reality a little bit. She and I were alike that way. That, and we have the same middle name.”
Ian rubbed her bare skin, sending a delicious shiver through her. “What’s your middle name?”
Cammie blew out a breath. “It’s weird.”
He waited.
“Really weird. It’s a family thing.”
“You get that the longer you put this off, the more I want to know?”
She turned her head so she didn’t have to see his expression when she confessed, “It’s October.”
“Like the month?”
“Like the month,” she confirmed. “That was my grandmother’s middle name, too.”
He let this sink in for a moment. “Were you born in October?”
Cammie laughed. “No. January twenty-ninth.”
He laughed, too. “Hang on. You’re initials are COB?”
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t like corn?”
“Oh, the irony.” They laughed and kissed and laughed some more.
Finally, Ian pulled away. “You know, there are a lot of restaurants in Delaware. Graduate schools, too. You could do everything you want to do right here. Less risk of failure than in California.”
“I’m not scared of failure. I told you—I’ve got this.”
“Then stay here because I want you to.” He hauled her up across his chest. Her hair fell down across her face, blocking them both from the glow of the moon.
“You make a good case.” But her tone was apologetic, reluctant.
“Stay,” he urged her, pulling her closer against him.
She shivered as a cool breeze blew across her damp skin. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” He loosened his arms around her. “We can do whatever we want.”
As he relaxed, she tensed. “Then come to California with me.”
“I can’t move to California.” He said this without even a hint of hesitation.
“Why not?” she challenged. “You expect me to move across the country for you, but you wouldn’t move across the country for me?”
“You wouldn’t be moving across the country; you already live here.”
“I don’t live here. I spend the summer here in a rental house. Big difference.”
“You could live here.” He squeezed her hand in his. “You could move in with me. We could walk the fields every day.”
He made it sound so easy. So tempting.
“It’s not that simple.” She drew back so she could study his face in the starlight.
“It is that simple,” he insisted. “All you have to do is make up your mind.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to say: Why do I have to be the one to make up my mind?”
He kissed her again. “My mind is already made up.”
“Then you take a chance. Come with me to California.”
“I can’t.” His voice was so kind but so unyielding.
Cammie sat up and pulled on her shirt. “Because of the farm?”
“Yes.” Not a trace of regret or apology.
“The farm doesn’t own you. You can leave if you want to.”
“No. I can’t. I’m not hoping to start a business. My job is to keep this business going.” He sat up, too, and she recognized her own stubborn determination in the set of his jaw, the fire in his eyes.
“What’s the failure rate for farms?” she challenged.
“Doesn’t matter; I’m already invested. And I don’t want to leave.”
“So you’re saying that I have to rearrange my life because you’ll never rearrange yours? You and your farm will always come first?”
He hesitated for a long moment. “I want you, Cammie, but I can’t leave.”
“Because a bunch of dirt and corn mean more to you than I do.”
“It’s not just dirt. It’s not just corn.” He looked around at the vast green acres around them. “All of this belonged to my grandparents and great-grandparents. It will belong to my children and grandchildren someday. It’s part of me; I’m part of it.” He rested his hand in hers. “Stay here with me.”
He sounded so sure of himself. She tried to envision what he envisioned. “And do what? Be a farmer’s wife?”
“Yeah.” He cupped her cheek in his palm and smiled that slow, heart-melting smile. “Be a farmer’s wife.”
Cammie couldn’t help herself. She started laughing. Ian surprised her by laughing, too.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “A straw hat, a pitchfork, some overalls . . .”
“You forgot the little piece of straw between my teeth.”
“Piece of straw?” He shook his head. “Go corncob pipe or go home.”
This was why it was impossible to dismiss his entreaty to stay as an adolescent fantasy. He was funny and playful and sexy and smart. He was everything she wanted in a man. Even at twenty-two, she knew that this kind of connection was rare.
But she’d have to give up everything she wanted for herself to be with him.
He saw her expression changing, and his changed, too. They got dressed and he drove her home in silence. When they pulled up in front of the rental cottage, he gave her a slow, gentle, thorough kiss that she knew would have to last her forever.
Because August was all they had left.
• • •
The ne
xt afternoon, when she drove to the farm to count the rows with Ian, he led her to a corner of earth on the far end of the cornfield.
The land had been cleared and cordoned off. Where yesterday there had been burgeoning stalks of corn, there were now tiny green sprouts, so new that Cammie couldn’t guess what they were going to be. She knelt down to examine the tender leaves with jagged edges and the tiny white flowers with yellow centers.
“Strawberries,” Ian said when she glanced up at him. “I know you like them better than corn.”
She did love strawberries—in pies, ice cream, cocktails, and fresh off the vine—but she hadn’t realized he’d noticed. She should have known better. Ian noticed everything, even if he didn’t remark on it.
“I planted them this morning.” He knelt down next to her in the freshly turned dirt. “I think I got the depth right. You can still see the crown here. Look.” He pointed out the section of the plant where the leaves and stems met the roots. “That’s the sweet spot.”
Cammie reached out and brushed one of the green leaves with her finger. “So, now what?”
“Now we keep them alive.”
Over the next few weeks, Cammie watered and weeded the berry plants before she went to work. She chased away birds and covered the plants with long strips of burlap when ladybugs threatened. Every day she checked for signs of progress.
“When will the berries show up?” she asked Ian as August drew to a close.
“Next year.”
She blinked, confused. “What?”
“Right now, the plants have to put all their energy into growing.” He produced a small, sharp knife. “We’ll prune the flowers this year.”
She threw herself between the blade and the berries. “But they’re about to blossom!”
He rolled his eyes at her theatrics. “If we cut them now, the fruit will be better next year. The plants will spread and we’ll have more. It’s all about delayed gratification. We have to wait until next spring.”
She sighed. “But I won’t be here in the spring.”
In the end, they compromised. Ian severed all the flowers on all the plants—except one. One plant was allowed to pursue its natural course, and at the end of the month, Cammie plucked a single red berry from the vine.
Once Upon a Wine Page 6