by Abby Knox
Jack set down his mug and rubbed his face in exasperation. “I’m going to walk to New York right now and beat his scrawny little ass.”
Maggie laughed. “How do you know his ass is scrawny?”
“Because I just know. Is it?”
“Yes.”
“See? I’m already a lot smarter than that guy.”
She grinned. “That you are, Jackson Clay.”
“And not just because I can guess he has a scrawny ass. But because I can see what’s right in front of me and that you’re a talented, driven, beautiful, funny, smart, challenging and magical woman. He missed his chance.”
He watched Maggie’s cheeks blush as her gaze became shy and focused on her coffee.
Jack reached across the table and touched her cheek. “I had no idea this was all so raw. This was all just last month. You’re in a tender spot, and I feel guilty, like I’ve been taking advantage of a woman who is in a desperate situation. You’re so young, Maggie. Are you sure you want to stay here with me?”
Maggie placed her small, smooth hand over Jack’s callused, tanned one. “I came here to get my head right. My head hasn’t been in the right place in years. I never listened to Mama when she warned me about Alex. I just need to surround myself with home and good memories and work I know how to do before I figure out how to do something with my degree.”
So, when she said she wanted to stay, she hadn’t necessarily meant forever. She had meant, until she gets her head straight and to protect Jane’s land from encroaching development. She wasn’t talking about staying for Jack.
“Can you handle it, Maggie? You call the shots here. Because having you here has been amazing. I enjoy your company. Hell, if it were up to me, I would take you right here on this kitchen table and not regret it for a moment. But if you knowing that about me makes it too uncomfortable for you, I will understand, and I’ll drop the matter. I can control myself, but I need to know where you are. I want to give you a chance to get back on your feet. After what happened earlier, I was thinking about encouraging you to go take a job with Carrie or with your sister. But really, I think you belong on this farm. You were meant to be here. I think this farm needs you and you need this farm.”
She sighed as his thumb stroked her cheekbone. “You might not be wrong about that, Jack.” She tossed back the rest of her coffee. He loved that she drank it black, just like him. Then she looked him dead and serious in the eye and said, “Jack, I have to ask you now. I’ve told you everything, and I don’t know much about you. I feel like I’m kind of hanging out here on the edge of a branch and I want you to come out here with me before it cracks. What’s your story?”
Energized by the coffee, and now feeling the need to talk, Jack stood and held out his hand.
“Where are we going?”
“Grab your jacket. We’re going for a drive.”
Maggie
Maggie loved listening to Jack talk, and even more she loved hearing him talk about his past. He had lived almost twice as long as she had, and she wanted to hear all of his stories.
Even if that meant sitting in the bed of his pickup and parking in the middle of a cornfield so he could look at the stars while he spoke and not have to look at her face.
Whatever works, she told herself.
At least he had thought to bring a few pillows and a blanket for comfort, and a bottle of something with a little more kick in it than coffee. The windows in the cab were rolled down so they could listen to an old cassette tape of Neil Young, live in concert. Maggie had never understood this kind of music, but here in the cornfield, in the back of a truck, looking at the stars and sipping on whiskey, the smell of alfalfa and sweet corn wafting on the night breezes, it all made sense. Neil was singing Helpless.
She smiled. Weren’t we all?
“Wendy and I go way back. We grew up together in Mount Pleasant, a tiny little town just outside of Council Bluffs. We were best friends for as long as I could remember. We swam naked in the creeks together, way before we were old enough for it to be called skinny-dipping. We caught frogs, snakes, craw-dads, we built dams in the creeks, causing all kinds of problems for the neighboring farms’ irrigation. We used to get up to all kinds of trouble together. As teenagers, we took joyrides on other people’s horses and got in heaps of trouble for that. We never caused any real harm, but we were usually up to some kind of mischief together. We were real-life partners in crime. She was such a character. We were high school sweethearts; everybody assumed we would get married and take over her daddy’s little hog operation one day. She loved her little pigs. Just like Fern in Charlotte’s Web, you know?”
Maggie’s heart warmed at the reference. “Yeah, totally, one of my favorite books of all time.”
“She saved every damn runt that was ever born, bottle fed every one of them. She had a heart of gold as a kid. Her mom and dad let her run wild, barefoot and free all over her land. She took care of those animals and, in a way, they sort of took care of us. Anyway, we got engaged shortly after we graduated high school. It’s early, I know. It was 1990.”
Her stomach lurched up into her chest. She was born in 1994. Holy shit, he was old. But hot too. Damn silver fox. His face was so youthful and he had such an easy way about him, she never thought about his age until it smacked her in the face in moments like this.
She decided not to point out their difference in ages, as it was something for her to think seriously about at some point.
“Wendy and I didn’t set a date for the wedding. We decided we would wait until we graduated college. In the meantime, we decided to save for a big wedding and also a big down payment on her daddy’s farm. The plan was that I would earn a degree in animal husbandry and take care of the day-to-day operations. She would get her degree in agribusiness, and she would run the business end.
“About six months before we graduated college, we set a date for the wedding. We put down deposits on flowers, musicians, a venue. She reserved the ballroom at the biggest hotel in Omaha. She had her dress. Everything was planned. And then she took an internship with a cattleman in Dallas. She said it would last only until the wedding, and it would give her extra experience to take her daddy’s hog business to the next level. She envisioned a real high-tech situation. I didn’t know what I wanted, I just knew I wanted to get married and work with animals. But six months later, she flew into Omaha. She called from the airport and asked me to pick her up. I went to pick her up, met her in the terminal, but instead of coming home, she broke up with me in the airport and headed back to Texas. I told her, ‘Shit, woman, you could have saved yourself a plane ticket and me the parking fees if you’d dumped me over the phone.’
“Looking back, I could sense her becoming more and more distant every time we spoke on the phone. I went to see her about halfway through her internship, and I was surprised to see her office was not out in the country on a farm somewhere, but she worked in a high-rise building downtown. I thought it was strange, but she said this was the future of agriculture. She was inputting data for a company that owned fifteen different cattle feedlots, representing tens of thousands of head of cattle. I met her boss. What they call a cattleman these days means little more than a guy in an office outfitted with tacky cowhide chairs. He was real slick. Friendly guy. But later on I told her, ‘that guy ain’t no rancher.’”
“I should have seen right away that the two of them were sleeping together.”
Maggie shuddered. “Damn. I’m sorry to hear all this, Jack.”
But it was clear he wasn’t seeking any sympathy from her. He continued like he was describing a movie, or someone else’s life.
“The day I went to pick her up from the airport, I sensed something was wrong. As soon as I saw her in the terminal, and she had no baggage, I knew. I said, ‘You’re not staying, are you, Wendy?’ She said, ‘No, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Jack, and I wanted to return your ring.’”
“Ouch.” Maggie sipped on the bottle of Jack. It burned all t
he way down but felt good in this October chill.
“Yeah. Ouch is one word for it. So she went back to Dallas. I took my ring and sold it. I got back all our deposits. I cashed out my half of what we had saved and I put an offer on her daddy’s hog operation. But he had already sold it to a corporation. I decided then and there that Big Ag was out to ruin my life, and I took the money and moved to an apartment outside of Des Moines and took a low-paying job on a small organic farm. I raised grass-fed hogs and helped sell them for meat. That was the beginning of the trend toward grass-fed meat, so it was slow-going at first, but then word got around and business picked up. I ended up buying and selling that place for a profit to a larger organic-minded company, and I bought back my great-grandparents’ land up near Ames. I still own that place, and now it sort of runs itself. I decided to buy this land from Jane to expand my sales into Iowa City and maybe eventually Chicago. I’ve been managing for her for a couple of years now, just to make the handover as smooth as possible.”
Maggie smiled. “I can’t believe I never noticed you around here before. I guess you were right when you implied I wasn’t spending enough time with Mama Jane.”
“It goes both ways. You might also say I’ve totally given up on women and thrown myself into my work. Until now.”
“Have you ever been in a relationship since Wendy?”
Jack pulled on the bottle. “I’ve had a fling here and there. I’ve had several blind dates. It seems like everywhere I’ve lived, somebody’s trying to set me up with somebody. Hell, about an hour after closing on this place, Ms. Jane took me out to lunch and tried to fix me up with one of the servers at Carrie’s Tavern.”
Maggie laughed. “That sounds about right.” And then, she had a thought. About how she and Jack had been thrown together under a shadow of misinformation. Could this be…?
But no, Maggie dismissed the thought from her head and sipped on the bottle. The strong liquid warmed her insides and she snuggled more deeply into the pile of pillows.
Jack continued. “In some small towns, people look at you sideways when you’re new and you raise a small amount of animals and do things the old-fashioned way. I’m just doing things the way my great-grandparents did things. To live off the land and be good to the soil and to the animals. But some people look at me and see a hobby farmer. And that’s fine, but it also doesn’t make a good prospect for marriage when all the farmers are making better money by contracting or selling to Big Ag. But it’s my cross to bear. I’m good.”
Maggie wondered if that “I’m good” meant he was just fine with being single. She wondered if she had a place in his world. Sure, she felt at home here, but was she getting in the way of his mission? Because it did seem to her that he was on a mission.
But she couldn’t ask that. She didn’t want to put him in that awkward position. Besides, they were having such a good night. She was so enjoying hearing him ramble. He wasn’t much of a rambler, but when he got going, it was mesmerizing to her. His voice was low and slow, like one of those outrageously expensive chocolate truffles that makes you want to take your time and appreciate the love and artistry that someone put into it. She bent her ear toward every nuance and inflection of Jack’s voice. In the moonlight, Jack’s profile, his voice and entire being was like that: perfectly molded and beautiful, attractive and sensual, tempting and endearing.
Which made her hesitant to say what she was about to say. She didn’t want to change the mood, but she had to say something about his ways of raising the baby goats. “You do know there is a way to keep your nanny producing milk for you without weaning her baby from her, don’t you?”
“It’s called a kid,” Jack said, for now she could hear the smile in his voice as he indulged her. “You do know that calling kids babies is going to make it harder to keep your operation running lean. Getting attached only means one thing. Losing money.”
Maggie frowned. “But I thought you weren’t in this for the money? You said yourself you liked being a small, independent farmer.”
“Being small means I have to be even more efficient. Big producers have bigger corporations telling them how to do things. I am on my own. In the weeds. Making it up as I go along. Which means, I also have a very small margin for error.”
Maggie understood. Mama Jane had run the farm as a way to give the foster siblings something to do. She didn’t do it to make money. There was nothing about growing up on this farm that spelled lean or in the black. It was all about attachment. “Well, I was just going to say, you can milk in the mornings. Then just let the kids and the nannies be together all day in the field. You still get milk and they still get their mama, and you don’t need to bottle feed because they will get all they need all day long.”
“But I get less milk for my buyers.” She could hear him sip from the whiskey bottle again.
“But maybe you won’t. The kids will help keep her milk supply up, and you may end up getting more milk from them each morning.”
“Maggie, that doesn’t make any sense.”
She touched his hand. “Sometimes you have to put your trust in nature, Jack. When it makes the least sense to us humans, that’s when it most amazes us.”
He was quiet for a moment, then laughed. “Who is the boss here, anyway? All right, we’ll try it your way. Only because I’m sure you won’t let up until we do. Lord, woman. You could talk a fish into trying to climb a tree.”
“And you’re as stubborn as an alpaca standing in front of the shearing machine.”
“What the hell kind of analogy is that? Everyone knows donkeys are the stubborn ones.”
“A lot you know about animals. Everyone knows that alpacas are ten times more stubborn than donkeys. Speaking of which, alpacas are great for keeping coyotes away, too. I can hear them at night, you need to do something. Mama Jane got an alpaca for a while because she got tired of staying up all night long with a shotgun, watching the barn.”
“Well, I got news for you, the coyotes are out and about in the middle of the day now, while the animals are in the field. I killed one yesterday.”
“You killed it?”
“What am I supposed to do to it? Sing it a lullaby and feed it sushi?”
“That’s why you get a donkey or an alpaca! They scare them away.”
“Your way is just gonna keep costing me and costing me, isn’t it?”
She placed her hand on his hand, not knowing if it was the right thing to do, but she did it anyway. She needed to. “Trusting nature pays off in the long run. It may not be great for your pocketbook, but it’s good for the soul.”
Could he tell she wasn’t talking about animals anymore?
Jack clacked the bottle and tossed it into the corn. The stiff leaves bristled as the bottle sailed through, and Maggie heard it come to a thud in the dirt. What was that about, she wondered. Then she found out.
Jack turned to her in the darkness, the moon lighting up the side of his face. “Woman, do you know what you are doing to me?”
“No, I do not. Sorry for arguing. I didn’t mean for you to go and toss away perfectly good whiskey.”
“It was shit. There’s only one way for us to settle this argument if you’re going to stay here with me.”
“Oh really? What’s that?”
“You’re going to have to marry me.”
Maybe it was the moonlight, the stars, Neil Young, the scent of the hay fields, or the whiskey. But she could only manage to reply with one word.
“When?”
Chapter 9
Jackson
Jack could hardly believe after 20-plus years he finally felt like a man in every sense. But this time felt completely different in every way.
Not the least of which was the way his body felt sinking into her, in the bed of his pickup. He had thought his connection to Wendy had been real, and their lifelong friendship had a lot to do with it. But after she had changed, he had changed. There had never been another woman to penetrate his soul, mind and spirit li
ke Maggie. And there was nobody who ever made him feel such a strong urge to fight, flirt and fuck.
When she simply asked when they could get married, he suddenly saw his whole future come together like a jigsaw puzzle he’d been working at for centuries. Finally, someone had thrown open the curtains and there was light, and everything made sense.
As if that wasn’t enough luck for one night, when he’d leaned in to kiss her to seal the deal, she was warm and welcoming and hungry all at once. He watched her breathlessly pull away and let him watch her unbutton her shirt all the way down, exposing another barely there bra, which nearly failed to hold in her breasts as she bent over to peel off her jeans.
He offered to take her to a more comfortable location. “Maggie, we can go home first if you want.”
She had smiled at him and said, “Nah, I’ve always wanted to get messy in the back of a pickup.”
When she was done with her little striptease, Jack was ready to make her squirm. He smoothed his hand up her thigh as she stood over him, palmed her tight belly.
“C’mere.” He took her hands and pulled her down toward him. No way did he want anyone else getting a glimpse of his woman’s body out here in the wide-open plains. Maggie landed in his lap, straddling him and pushing him back against the soft mound of blankets.