by Fiona Lowe
Nicole had been amazing, organizing the stunned wedding party into town with a minimum of fuss so they could join the other guests. The reception had gone ahead, in as much as the food was served because everyone was from out of town and hungry. Wade told him that Ella Norell had taken the much-anticipated cake to the town hall where all the Whitetailians involved in the wedding had gathered to eat cake and debrief. Everyone except Erin. She’d refused both Nicole’s invitation and Wade’s cajoling. Luke had stayed with her until he had to go mix the cow feed and distribute it in the barn. Now he was back and she was still at the computer.
Her hair stuck up in jagged spikes as if she’d pulled it up at the roots. “I think there’s one I could use.”
“One what?”
She stared at him, her eyes dilated and slightly wild. “Photo. For the Memmy.”
“Erin,” he spoke softly. “They’re getting an annulment.”
She shrugged his hand away. “I know that but they got married and I’ve poured hours of work into this shoot. I’ve been editing this one. What do you think?”
He stared at the photo. The sunflowers, so bright and cheery, almost leaped off the screen and it was impossible not to smile at the hope they inspired. In contrast, the bride looked like a bored model and the groom looked utterly miserable.
“Not even the ‘Erin Davis touch’ is going to make this work.”
“I make people look happy,” she ground out. “It’s what I do.”
He frowned. “You do when the conditions are right, but you can’t create a moment that doesn’t even exist.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. It’s so much more than that.” She dropped her head in her hands. “I can’t believe he left her.”
Luke could—Connie Littlejohn was obnoxious and Erin had pinned so much on the shoot that she’d totally missed seeing that. “Come here.” He pulled her to her feet and kissed her, hugging her hard and wishing he could absorb her disappointment. He moved her toward the bed and they lay down together.
“I wanted this so much, Luke. This was supposed to be my moment, my chance to shine and show the world that I take great wedding photos.”
“You do take great photos. You just had the wrong bride and groom. Connie was all about the wedding, not the marriage, and the only emotional well available to tap was pain and anger. Don’t beat yourself up.”
Her entire body slumped against his. “Do you know anyone madly in love who wants to get married this coming week while the sunflowers are perfect?”
He let her hair slide through his fingers and smiled. The failed wedding had undermined his plan to propose to Erin over champagne after she’d found her perfect photo, but she’d just given him the perfect segue. “I might.”
She sat up fast, her face alive with hope and enthusiasm. “Who? Do they have a photographer? Do you have their number?”
His heart expanded again. God, he loved her so much. Loved her zest for life, her “can do” attitude and the way she bounced back from disappointment. He couldn’t help grinning. “Yes, I know them. No, they don’t have a photographer but I do have their number.”
“Can you call them, please? Set up an appointment?”
He traced her cheek with his finger. “No need.”
Two frown marks scored the bridge of her nose. “I don’t understand.”
He rolled off the bed and kneeled down beside it before picking up her hand. “I love you, Erin. Marry me?”
Her eyes widened into a fathomless green sea. “Be serious, Luke. This is my future.”
“I know it is,” he said gravely. “Yours and mine.”
Her face paled and she raised her free hand to touch his face. “Oh my God, you’re really serious.”
“I am.” He pulled her closer. “You marched into my life and made me realize I’ve not only been lonely but I’ve been trying to fit myself into a business that doesn’t totally fit me.”
“Luke, I—”
“Please.” He put his forefinger gently against her mouth, wanting to tell her everything. “I’ve got so much more I need to say. That night you helped deliver Essie’s calf, you said I needed my own project. I didn’t want to hear it but now I know you’re right. I need the challenge and the excitement of something new to get me up in the morning, to keep me focused and enthusiastic, so I’m starting a new venture for me, for you, for us. I’ve got a meeting with the bank on Wednesday and we’re going into the gourmet ice cream business.”
She sat perfectly still. “I’m a photographer, Luke.”
His eagerness spilled over. “I know and I want one of your photos of the farm to be the signature look for Lakeview Farm ice cream. Maybe that one you took of the cows through the trees?”
She stared at him and he scanned her face seeking delight on her cheeks for the idea, looking for the zest roving across her mouth for the project, and for her love for him glowing in her eyes. He found nothing. It was like looking at an expressionless plaster cast.
Blinking, as if she was coming back to him from a very long way away, she asked faintly, “What sort of loan are you talking about?”
He sat back on the bed facing her. “Substantial. It’s an investment in our future and I’m taking a two-pronged approach. There’s the refrigeration plant for the ice creamery as well as establishing a Jersey cow herd.” The buzz he got whenever he thought about the new venture fizzed in his veins and he squeezed her hand. “Initially, we’ll be supplementing our milk with milk from the Amish farm down the road. Jersey milk’s high in butter fat which makes the creamiest ice cream.”
Incredulity spun across her cheeks. “You’re going into debt to make ice cream?”
He shrugged against a tiny ripple of exasperation that she wasn’t as excited as he was. “There’s a definite gap in the Midwest market right now for pure, simple, old-fashioned creamy ice cream straight off the farm.” He grinned at her. “And who knows? Maybe in the future we can expand beyond the Midwest and take on those two guys from Vermont.”
“If you invest in a luxury item you’re likely to end up losing everything.”
Exasperation morphed into chagrin. “It’s not designer clothing or diamond-studded watches. I’ve studied the market and done the math, Erin. This isn’t a whim. Even in tough economic times, people buy ice cream because it’s an affordable luxury.”
She shook her head as her fingers pulled at the quilt on the bed. “It’s too much of a risk.”
The words penetrated his excitement as if amplified by her total lack of enthusiasm and a chill settled over him. “What is? The ice cream venture or marrying me?”
Her eyes filled with misery. “Both.”
The softly spoken word was like the wet, black mud of the marshland, and it sucked him down, trying to bury his soul. He refused to let it. He could still convince her.
“I’m sorry, Luke.” Her eyes implored him to understand. “I can’t be with you with that insurmountable level of debt.”
“It’s not insurmountable debt,” he said firmly, “and it’s called a business loan.”
She stiffened. “Don’t lecture me when I know far more about debt than you do. How can you take the security of what you’ve got here and gamble it on a crazy idea that can risk you losing the farm?”
“Gamble it?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing given the nights he’d been turning figures while she’d been editing photos. “Shit, Erin, this isn’t a gamble. This is a solid plan.”
“And that’s exactly what my father would say.” Her fingers pulled at the quilt. “Can’t you see?”
He could see all too well and at that moment he hated Tom, and he’d never really hated anyone in his life. He sucked in a steadying breath and tried to keep his voice even. “I can’t see how it is anything like your father. I can give you a spre
adsheet with real costings, projected earnings from the farm and the ice creamery, plus loan repayments and how they’ll be serviced along with a buffer if things are slower to take off. It’s a calculated risk on the low side of failure.”
“Figures lie, Luke.” The harshness in her voice thundered into him. “You can make them work any way you need them to.”
I’m not the con man your father is. The words teetered on his lips but with a shock of clarity, he realized that hurling them at her would serve no purpose, nor would they change her mind. Tom was a charlatan but he was still Erin’s father and familial ties ran deep and could surface at any time. Disparaging her father to defend himself and the business was not the path to take to make her change her mind. She feared financial risk and given what had happened to her, he could understand it but this situation, their situation, was totally different.
He’d rely on the simple truth. “Erin, I love you and together we can make this work.”
She shook her head so hard her hair swung wide. “You don’t love me. You’re confusing loneliness with love. I filled a void in your life with a summer fling, is all. You can fill loneliness with anyone.”
The black bog surged forward, its thick, sticky mass sticking to his heart with a message he refused to accept. He would change her mind. He’d show her that they truly belonged together because contemplating the opposite was far too terrifying. “Before I met you, Erin, marriage had never even crossed my radar, but with you it makes so much sense.”
His hands cupped her cheeks and he sought her gaze. “I want to share my life with yours and I promise you, the ice creamery will not bankrupt us. Trust me. Know implicitly that I will never do anything or let anything hurt you.”
Luke’s words burned through Erin like the sizzle of a brand. Identical words used by her father called up the past so strongly it made her gasp. How often had he made her a promise that he then broke moments, hours or days later, hurting her deeply?
Jumping off the bed, she pointed to the screen where a slideshow of photos moved across the screen showing Connie and Toby making their vows. “They pledged to love each other, made promises, invoked trust and it lasted less than two hours!”
His lake-blue eyes darkened like water under the clouds of an approaching storm. “You can’t seriously be comparing us to them?”
“Why not?” Her heart pounded and her head hurt. “They’ve known each other longer than we have.”
“Connie Littlejohn is a raving loon.” He ran his hand through his hair as if dragging at his patience. “I know how much security means to you, Erin, and I’m not asking you to invest any of your savings into the farm. Just invest in me.”
The panic that had been rising in her from the moment he’d first proposed overflowed and flooded her. Agitation vibrated every part of her. “I can’t marry you, Luke,” she said, begging him to understand. “It wouldn’t work. We’d argue over money and make each other miserable.”
He flinched as if she’d slapped him. “I don’t believe that for a moment.”
She spoke from her heart. “It’s what I know to be true and nothing you can say will make me change my mind.”
Luke’s face crumpled for a brief moment, only to immediately harden. She saw the angry man—the one she’d first met all those weeks ago—return and she ached that she was the cause.
“So if you’re not marrying me, what will you do?”
She bit her lip at the harshness in his voice. “What I’ve always done. Make people happy.”
His bark of a laugh rained scorn all over her. “You don’t make people happy, Erin. If they’re happy to begin with you work with them and relax them so they can get past their nerves. Then you find the truth of their happiness and photograph it. If they’re not, well, today is a case in point.”
His words struck hard and she flicked the mouse onto a different folder and displayed a photo she’d taken of him and his siblings. “Look at that. You were hardly a cohesive family the day I took it.”
“Sure, we had the issue of the future of the farm but we came together for our parents, to give them a photo of us all together. You captured the love that lives in each of us for Mom and Dad.” He gave a pitying sigh. “You’re a good photographer, Erin, but if the love for our parents didn’t exist there’s no way on earth you could have photographed it.
“I think you’ve confused the happiness you experience from photography with the clients. You need to believe you make people happy because it makes you feel needed and safe.”
His words tore at her. It was as if he was emotionally undressing her and she fought back, wanting it to stop. “That’s so far from the truth to be ludicrous.”
“Is it?” His gaze zeroed in on her with laser-sharp precision. “You love developing your own photos even though you could send them to a lab.”
The muted sounds of her parents arguing rumbled in the back of her mind and she blocked them out. “You know what, Luke? As a therapist you make a good farmer.”
The insult rolled off his tense shoulders. “Taking calculated risks is a part of life, Erin, but you’ve run from that. You’re hiding behind a lens and watching other people live their lives instead of living your own because you’re scared.”
His words hailed down on her, inflicting the sharp and burning pain of ice on skin. “My life is just fine, thank you very much. Just because I don’t want to live with massive debt hanging over my head doesn’t mean I’m hiding. I like my life just fine this way.”
His eyes, now as hard as flint, seared her and his body sparked with anger. “And how’s this life working out for you? You work two jobs just to meet the high city overheads so one day you can get that incredibly expensive studio that will continue to drain your resources? Working so hard you don’t have a social life?”
She wanted to put her hands over her ears to block out his voice.
He wasn’t finished. “You can’t stand here and tell me you haven’t had fun this summer, that being involved in the Whitetail wedding business hasn’t earned you almost as much money as you earned last year from photography. What about the fact you’ve come to love the farm and enjoy being a part of my family? All of that has to be better than what you had before.”
His ruthless deconstruction of her life, reducing it to a series of disconnected parts, torched her temper. “I came here to work and earn money, is all. I didn’t ask for the rest. I didn’t want to be part of your family and I surely didn’t need your mother pushing me at you as if the two of us had no say in the matter.”
“My mother has nothing to do with this.” Exasperation ricocheted around them. “I’m my own man and I agreed to the supper invitation because I wanted you to be there.”
She didn’t want to hear any of it. “My life’s in Minneapolis, Luke, not on this farm.”
She threw up her arms as ridiculous tears—ones she didn’t want to shed—stung the backs of her eyes. “We had a deal, Luke. Sex and fun for the summer and now you’ve gone and broken it.” She hated the way her voice quavered and she blew out a breath. “I don’t love you and I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone.”
His entire body jerked as if her words were shrapnel straight to the chest. “Fine.” He bit off the word with a snap. “You go on believing all of that, but you know what? I totally get not taking stupid risks but not taking any at all? That turns safe into catatonic. A life worth living involves taking some chances so go be safe and enjoy watching your life from the sidelines.”
He crossed the room, wrenched open the slider and stepped out onto the deck into the night. She heard the click-clack of dogs’ paws on the wood.
“Mac, come. Maggie-May, stay,” Luke’s curt voice instructed.
As Mac and Luke walked away, she heard disappointment in the high-pitched whine of her dog. She steeled her heart but part
of it tore anyway. She’d just hurt a really good man and there was no way to feel good or proud about that. Scooping up Maggie-May, who’d trotted into the room seeking solace, she buried her face in her dog’s short, white fur and let the tears flow.
Damn it, Luke. You of all people were not supposed to fall in love.
* * *
Martha sat on the rustic hickory glider, which their Amish neighbors had gifted them three years ago, and sighed. The farm had never looked prettier but apart from the animals and the crops, nothing and no one was particularly happy—not her, not Vernon and especially not Luke. It had been two weeks since the infamous wedding that had changed so many things.
Things she couldn’t change or fix and her heart ached in many different ways. She sighed again and picked up the book she’d let fall into her lap. She’d only read a couple of pages when she heard footsteps. She glanced up to see Vern rocking back and forth, balancing his weight on the top porch step.
The constant movement was a sure sign he had something on his mind and he held a bunch of freshly picked cornflowers in his hand. The brilliant blue color came close to matching his eyes.
“I thought you might enjoy these.” He extended the flowers toward her.
She recognized his olive branch or at least a request to talk in peace. Since she’d stated her ultimatum of returning to Arizona with or without Vern, things had been tense between them and their conversations hadn’t drifted far from the time supper was being served and other general scheduling. Now she wanted the distance to close and the nights of lying stiffly side by side without touching to stop.
Patting the seat next to her she said, “How’s Luke?”
Vern sighed and sat next to her. “Working like there’s no tomorrow. Right now he’s settling the new Jersey cows he bought at the dairy sale into the barn. At least he’s got the new business set up to keep him busy.”
Martha stared out across the garden toward the barns and a pang cramped her heart. “You know, I really liked Erin, but to do this to our boy...”