by Nella Tyler
I was pretty sure that no one other than me and Autumn knew for sure that we’d had sex, or that anything had happened between us more than the most innocent movie date possible. I doubted that she’d even told her mom, much less her brother or her dad; but if they started to suspect that there was more than flirtation between us, things could go downhill fast.
I got to work, spraying my allotted row with fertilizer, focusing intently on my work. I heard Tuck walking through one of the adjoining rows, though the corn was a bit too high to actually see him, and I assumed that at some point, Robert Nelson had finished his meal and gotten back to work, as well.
I thought about Autumn; she was vulnerable, and I knew it. She was living with her parents, and I could understand that they wanted to protect her, but she was a grown woman, and it wasn’t as though she should have to be single forever. She would need someone to help support her emotionally, beyond just her parents, while she raised Addie. And, Adelyn deserved a father. Not that I was considering myself for the job, but it seemed like everyone wanted to protect Autumn so much that they weren’t willing to let her live her life.
As I came to the end of one of my rows, I looked up and saw that Bob Nelson was watching me intently. “How many rows have you gotten done?”
I shrugged. “About five, since lunch,” I replied. I wasn’t all that sure how long it had been since our break, but I knew it hadn’t been all that long. “Think I’ll get another ten or so done before we knock off for the day.”
Bob Nelson nodded curtly and started off towards his own corner of the field once more, without saying anything about why he’d been watching me. Even without a comment on it, though, I was pretty sure I knew the cause: Tuck’s stupid remarks.
I took a deep breath through the face-cover I wore to keep from inhaling fertilizer and turned my attention back onto the work in front of me. I couldn’t do anything better to testify on my own behalf than to do the best work possible, especially while Bob Nelson was watching me so intently. I couldn’t afford to screw up.
Chapter Nineteen
Autumn
It was just after six in the afternoon, and I was still more than a little unnerved by the lunch break I’d taken with Tuck, Cade, and Dad.
I had heard the guys coming back to the house at the end of the day and taken my dinner back to the guesthouse, telling Mom that since Addie seemed to be feeling a little off, I’d spare her the excitement of dinner at the table with so many people and feed her at my place. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to risk seeing Cade again, but that I didn’t want for Tuck to see me and Cade together for a while.
It was obvious to me that Tuck had some kind of issue with the possibility of Cade and me getting together, and I didn’t want to give him any kind of reason to get hostile.
I had to wonder what it was that was setting my brother off. It couldn’t just be a matter of Cade and me flirting, Tuck had never had an issue with me flirting with anyone before. I could almost wish he’d taken issue with me flirting with Titan when I’d first gotten together with my ex—but then, nobody had known any better than I had that Titan would end up cheating on me and abandoning me when I was in my second trimester of carrying his child.
There was something more at play in my brother’s mind, but I had no idea what it was. Maybe Cade had said something to piss him off, and I just hadn’t been there to know about it? Or maybe it had something to do with Tuck’s insecurities—or maybe my brother was still carrying a grudge from that argument that he and Cade had had at the dinner table weeks before.
Whatever it was, my brother was not being reasonable, but I couldn’t really tell him that.
I ate my dinner and fed Addie hers, watching a show on TV that I’d seen a dozen times before. Part of me wanted to go back to the main house on the farm, but I reminded myself that I didn’t really want to deal with Tuck in whatever current state of mind he was in. I’d much rather have a quiet—if boring—night to myself with my daughter and deal with whatever was going on with Tuck another day.
Of course, I didn’t end up getting my wish. A little after sundown, I heard a knock at my door. Mom would have called or texted me, and Dad never came by at night. I couldn’t think of any of my friends who it could be, and I certainly didn’t think that Cade would have had the gall to sneak back onto the property and knock on my door after leaving for the day—not the way that things were between him and Tuck already. So before I even opened the door, I was fairly certain it was my brother.
“Tuck,” I said, confirming it in the sight of the young man standing on my front porch, “I’m tired and Addie is grouchy. What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you about Cade,” he said. “Let me in, will you?” I considered it; I could call my parents, but that wouldn’t resolve the issue.
“I’m trying to get Addie calm enough to go to sleep at a reasonable time tonight,” I warned Tucker. “So if you’re planning on yelling at me, I want you to walk right back to the house and save it for another day.”
“Why are you flirting with him so hard?” Tuck crossed his arms over his chest. “Haven’t you learned anything from how Titan treated you?” My eyes went wide and I stared at my brother in shock at what he’d said. I felt my cheeks burning with embarrassment at the suggestion that Tuck was making.
“Are you trying to say that every man on the planet is exactly like Titan? That you’d leave the mother of your child—your fiancée—behind because you’d found someone you liked better, because you’d cheated on her?” I took a deep breath and glanced over my shoulder into my house. Addie wasn’t kicking up a fuss, but I’d heard my own voice rising in anger at what Tuck had said.
“No,” he replied sharply. “But just because I’m not a shit like Titan doesn’t mean that other guys aren’t. You don’t even know Cade—and a guy who’s single at his age… Well, it doesn’t speak well of him.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re talking like Cade is forty or something,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s not even thirty yet. And it’s not like you’re all that much younger than he is!”
“Still,” he insisted. “I don’t like it. I don’t like what you and he are like together.”
“What we’re like together?” I stared at my brother in disbelief. “What we’re like together is two grown adults who are moderately attracted to each other. It’s just flirting—it’s nothing serious.” But even as I said it, my heart beat faster in my chest. I hoped against hope that it was something more serious, but I couldn’t very well tell my brother that, could I?
“Why are you even fooling around with him? Don’t you have any loyalty?”
I blinked, trying to work my mind around whatever it was my brother was trying to suggest. “How would flirting with Cade have anything to do with loyalty—to anyone?
Tuck crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, I know you’ve got a kid and all, and it’s shitty that Titan abandoned you, but that doesn’t mean you can try and cut me out of what I’m due.”
I closed my eyes, shaking my head. What was Tuck even talking about? I had no idea. “You’re going to have to get a lot clearer if you want me to explain anything to you,” I told him, opening my eyes. “Because right now, I have no idea what you’re going on about.”
“Pretty convenient that you’re into a guy that you talked Dad into hiring right after he bought a new piece of land to add to the farm,” Tuck pointed out.
“Dad hired Cade on his own merits,” I said. “What does the expansion have to do with anything?”
He scowled at me. “You talked Dad into getting a new farmhand with the new expansion of the farm,” he said firmly.
“Okay, yeah—because he wasn’t sure that you and he would be able to handle it on your own, and I can’t help out,” I countered.
“Then you agree to do all the legwork for him, and magically we get this guy who it turns out you’re into,” he continued.
“No—I didn’t even know him before Dad hired hi
m,” I protested. “And I’m into him because I’ve started to get to know him over the weeks.”
“So, you really expect me to believe this wasn’t a set-up?”
I stared at my brother. “I expect you to believe that because it wasn’t a set-up at all,” I told him firmly. “I picked the resumes that looked the most like what Dad would need, Dad interviewed the applicants, and Cade got the job. What the hell is eating you?”
“If Dad decides to sell off part of the farm later on, he’ll choose someone who it seems like he can trust,” Tuck said sharply. “Cade—Cade shows me up on everything all the time! He’s too good, he’s always too good, and he makes me look like I’m lazy.”
“How is that my problem?” I couldn’t believe how far and wide my brother’s brain had traveled, apparently without me even knowing about it.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Tuck said. “Those comments he made about being motivated. He wants to buy out part of the farm one day when Dad can’t manage it on his own, and he’s showing me up so that Dad will sell to him.”
I opened my mouth, realized that I was so stunned by Tuck’s accusation that I couldn’t even formulate anything to say, and closed it again. I stared at my brother in complete shock. What in the world had gotten that idea into Tucker’s head?
“What in the world are you even talking about, Tucker Nelson?” I shook my head, almost completely bereft of belief. “In what world is the stupid plan you’re talking about even a thing that exists?”
“In this world!” he insisted. “I know you want stability for Addie. I know you like Cade. And, I know Cade wants to own a piece of this farm. It’s as obvious as the damn sun.”
“You need to get the hell out of my house,” I told my brother. “Go back to the main house and get some sleep. You’ve been out in the heat too much.”
“This isn’t just your place,” Tuck said stubbornly. “Mom and Dad own it, and when I inherit the farm, I’ll own it,” he told me.
“Assuming that you inherit the farm, I guarantee you that Mom and Dad would never put my welfare in your hands alone,” I told him hotly. “Get off my porch and go home right now.”
Tuck looked for a moment like he was going to keep arguing, but then he turned on his heel, jumped off of my porch and onto the walkway, and stalked back towards the house in the darkness. I sighed and leaned against the frame of the door, shaking my head at the nonsense that had just happened between me and my own brother.
I realized I was standing in my own open doorway and went back into my house, closing and locking the door behind me. I needed to talk to someone about what had just happened.
I couldn’t talk to Cade about it—he would just feel guilty, and probably would worry about the future of his job, with Tuck against him. I couldn’t talk to Dad about it for obvious reasons. I also couldn’t really talk to any of my friends about it, since they didn’t even know that I was interested in anyone, and I didn’t want to share the news of my brother’s irrational attack with them.
That left Mom.
I checked on Addie first. I’d put her in her playpen with the kid-friendly music station on the TV, and she was playing more or less contentedly, mumbling to herself. I found my phone and took it into the bedroom with me. I hoped Mom would be able to talk to me without Dad eavesdropping.
“What’s up, sweetie?”
I took a deep breath. “Mom, is Tuck close by? Or Dad? I want to talk to you about something private.”
“I’m in the office,” she replied. “Your dad’s watching TV in the living room and Tuck just came in and went upstairs.”
“Okay,” I said. My heart was still beating fast from the stress of my argument with my brother. “I need to tell you about what Tuck was just over here doing.” I told her about the argument, about Tucker’s accusations, and Mom stayed quiet throughout the story—so much so that I worried more than once that the call had dropped.
“Your brother’s under a lot of stress right now,” she said finally. “I’ll admit, most of it’s self-inflicted. You were right to make him leave you alone—what you do with your life is none of his business.”
She paused and I wondered if that was all she would have to say on the subject. “I do want you to be real careful, if you’re going to get involved with Cade,” she said finally. “Make sure it’s what you want, what he wants, and most of all that it’s what’s best for Addie.”
“Mom, all we’re doing right now is flirting,” I said. I couldn’t even admit to her what Cade and I had done the day we’d gone to the movies together. “I’m not going to get into anything serious unless I’m sure. I’ve learned my lesson on that score.”
“I’ll see if I can’t talk to your brother about the way he’s acting without letting him know you told me about tonight,” Mom suggested. “I’ve noticed his temper is shorter than usual, especially in regards to Cade.” She sighed. “He’s even beginning to get on your Dad’s nerves—but don’t tell him I said that.”
I laughed. “Glad it’s not just me he’s coming down on, I guess,” I said, shaking my head again at the ridiculous argument. “You don’t think there’s anything in what he was accusing me of, do you? You don’t think I’d be that sneaky?”
“Of course not,” she said. “And, you have just as much a right to a piece of this property when we’re gone as Tuck does. He’ll have to learn to mange himself properly or he’ll be unpleasantly surprised with how your father settles matters in his will.”
Mom changed the subject after that, and I told her that Addie was settling in for the night. It was nearly time for my daughter’s bath and to go to bed, and while I was relieved from talking to Mom, I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d heard the last of Tucker’s insecurities.
Chapter Twenty
Cade
A few days after the weird interaction with Tuck over lunch, I had almost forgotten about it. I told myself that it was just Bob’s son being irritable in the heat. I’d noticed that somehow Autumn didn’t seem to linger as much whenever she delivered food or water to us in the fields, but that didn’t seem all that strange.
It was heading into a busy part of the year once more, as the combination of sun and rain encouraged insects and the developing corn and soybeans attracted other pests, interested in sampling the growing plants.
In addition to the pesticides and fertilizers we were spraying out in the fields, Bob had had Tuck and I put out traps. Part of every day’s work was to go out to the different parts of the fields where we’d put traps out the day before and check them for critters—mice, rats, squirrels, rabbits, and so on.
If we’d caught something, we emptied the trap. If the trap was empty with the bait still in, we left it where it was—it was probably just not an area the pests were going. If the bait was gone and the trap was empty, we moved it to another place with new bait. Rats, mice, voles, and the like got bagged up and disposed of in the trash, while rabbits—assuming they were fresh kills—got gutted, cleaned, and packed away in the freezer. I had to admit that I’d had plenty of delicious rabbit stew in my life; and it was clear that Bob didn’t let anything, even pests, go to waste on his farm.
I’d finished checking my allotment of traps, moving them around or emptying them as needed, and had moved on to spraying down my rows. I mostly worked on the new section, which was half soybeans and half corn.
Bob had explained to me from the beginning that it was sort of a test site for him: he wanted to see how much he could make off of the split crops, and then he might put the whole new section into soybeans the following season.
It was trickier going with the fertilizers and pesticides than it was in the rows and fields that were just corn—or the few that were just soybeans—because the needs of the two plants were different, and spraying the wrong thing on either one of them could damage half the row.
I’d been doing pretty well with my assigned sections. Bob had commented on it early on, thanking me for my hard work and attenti
on to detail. He’d even begun to float the idea of keeping me on the following year if I was available, which pleased me. I could certainly take on a few construction jobs in the winter when the farm was dormant and be ready for more work once it came time to clear and plant again the following spring.
But after Tuck’s pointed comments I wasn’t so sure that I was going to push the idea of being hired on again. I didn’t want to be a bone of contention between Tuck and his father or Tuck and Autumn.
I felt more than a little guilty, too, about the fact that Autumn and I had slept together. In the moment it had felt good—so right, so perfect that I hadn’t wanted to let her go back home at the end of our tryst. I’d wanted to try and talk her into staying the night with me, or at least a few more hours, so we could go at it again.
But one of the things I had admired about Autumn from the moment I’d met her was the fact that she was so dedicated to her daughter. I couldn’t expect her to be anything less, just because it was me she was with.
I also couldn’t shake the fact that I’d promised Bob Nelson I wouldn’t fall in love with his daughter, and while I couldn’t exactly say that I was in love with her—not really—I didn’t think he’d make much of a distinction between true love and sleeping around, even if it had only happened the once.
I came to the end of one of my rows and stopped, looking around for the water cooler that Bob had hauled out to the section we had split between us. Tuck was on the other end of the fields, taking care of the rabbits he’d caught in his traps, and I was relieved at the fact that I wasn’t going to have to interact with him all that much for a few hours.
I walked over to the cooler, mopping at my face with a towel that I’d kept tucked in one of my pockets, away from where the chemicals could get to it. It was heading into deep summer and getting hotter by the day, or so it seemed. I poured myself a cup of water and drank it down; it was just cool enough to slake my thirst, without being so cold that it’d give me water cramps.