Secret Hearts

by Radclyffe

Kip looked so pitiful, Jordan laughed. “Yes, one of them is for you. Tya won’t be in until after she gets her kids to school around seven thirty. I thought you might want coffee.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Come on, then.” Jordan headed around to the driver’s side. “It’s time to go to market.”

  “Where are we going?” Kip jumped in the passenger side, and Jordan handed her the carryout tray.

  “Hunts Point.” Jordan slid behind the wheel, started the truck, and backed down the alley.

  “The Bronx? Why?”

  “Because it’s the biggest wholesale produce terminal in the world and we need to get a contract with them.” Jordan headed for the FDR Drive. “You can put two creams in mine. And the apple fritter has my name on it. Hands off.”

  “Anything else reserved?” Kip rummaged in the bag. “Man, do these look good.”

  “Nope. Tya isn’t fussy, we just need to leave her something.”

  “Then I’ve got dibs on the blueberry scone.” Kip put Jordan’s coffee cup in the pullout dash holder closest to her and fished out the scone. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

  “I really appreciate you getting this truck running,” Jordan said.

  “No problem. I’m here to work, remember? Since I’m not a farmer, I should do what I do best, right?”

  Jordan glanced at her. “What is that, exactly? You said you’re a mechanic. Does that mean you work in a garage or an auto shop repairing cars?”

  Kip stared out the window. “I have done plenty of car repair. Restorations too. My grandfather was a whiz with cars, and he had a thing about restoring old trucks and cars. He taught me.”

  “That’s pretty special.” Jordan pushed aside the lightning-fast flash of riding beside her father on a tractor when she was four or five, long before her feet could reach the gears.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  Kip looked at her as if she’d read something in her face. Maybe she had. “So that’s what you do now?”

  “Not exactly.” Kip shifted in the seat and watched Jordan as she drove. “I sorta quit my job this morning.”

  Jordan shot her a quick surprised look and stared back at the road. “Really. Okay. That sounds drastic.”

  “It was kind of spur of the moment, true. It didn’t make any sense to me to try to work these hours that I owe you—”

  “It’s not me you owe, you know that, right?” Jordan wasn’t comfortable being in the position of supervising Kip. She supposed she should get over it. After all, she was Kip’s boss, in practical terms. That distinction was a bit murky too. And it shouldn’t be. Black and white. Wasn’t that what she’d told herself the night before? Business only. So why was she pushing Kip again to tell her about her personal life? “Sorry. Not my concern.”

  “No, you’re right. I owe the court, not you.” Kip sighed. “But if I’m going to be working at the project fulfilling my sentence, then the best way for me to really contribute is to show up every day. Otherwise I won’t be good for anything except cleanup duty.”

  “What do you want to be?” Jordan said softly.

  “I don’t know. Useful.”

  The way she said it made Jordan think Kip needed more than to be useful. Whatever she was looking for, or looking to make up for, left the undercurrent of pain in her voice. “All right. We can work with that. But you realize you’re not getting paid.”

  “Right. That’s what volunteer means.”

  “So—was it really a good idea to quit your job?”

  Kip grinned. “Well, that might be a slight exaggeration.”

  Jordan frowned. “Explain.”

  “I haven’t actually quit—I’ll be working on a few things on and off.”

  “I’m not going to ask you what. Your private life is your own business.”

  “You already know one of the worst things about me,” Kip said.

  Jordan glanced at her. “You broke the law?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I can’t imagine it was a terrible crime.”

  “Actually, it was a stupid one, but a crime nevertheless.” Kip’s eyes took on a distant look. “Sometimes the worst secrets are not crimes at all.”

  “Then maybe they’re best left that way,” Jordan said softly.

  “I know.”

  Chapter Nine

  Kip leaned forward to peer through the windshield as Jordan turned through the gate in an endless length of ten-foot cyclone fence. Tractor-trailers and gigantic metal sheds like the buildings she’d often seen at port terminals along any busy waterfront crowded the sprawling lot. A sign spanned the gateway. Hunts Point Terminal Market.

  “Whoa, this isn’t quite what I expected. This place is huge.”

  “One hundred thirteen acres, actually,” Jordan muttered as she maneuvered down narrow, twisting aisles between parked trucks, commercial shipping containers with their back doors open to reveal stacks of crates, and swarms of workers off-loading pallets of cartons onto dollies and forklifts. ATVs marked with yellow caution triangles front and rear and packed with equipment swooped in and out with the reckless abandon of bicycle messengers in Midtown.

  “Every day it’s like this?” Kip craned her neck to see down the row and still couldn’t see the end.

  “All day, every day, Sundays included. New York has to eat.” Jordan made a sharp turn and pulled the truck into a narrow space between several others. “Fresh produce arrives every morning by boat or rail or truck. Buyers from wholesale markets all the way to upscale restaurants show up to get the best deals on fresh produce.”

  “How much of it is locally sourced?”

  “Not the majority, not yet.” Jordan turned off the engine, reached behind the seat, and grabbed a butter-yellow ball cap. Pulling her hair into a ponytail and securing it with a stretchy tie, she threaded it through the back and quick-looked in the rearview mirror. Apparently satisfied, she pushed open her door and held it wide with her foot. A breeze ripe with sea salt and warm fruit aromas wafted in along with a faint scent of diesel. “A lot of it is big-name consortiums like Dole and Driscoll’s. All of them have organic divisions, which is mostly what people are looking for here. It’s tough for smaller enterprises to compete, but it would be a terrific outlet for us.”

  “I’m surprised the city hasn’t negotiated for their community gardens as a unit to get a place here.” Kip climbed out and joined Jordan at a brisk trot toward one of the nearest sheds. Jordan slung a canvas bag embroidered with fruits and vegetables over her shoulder. Somehow it looked chic with her skinny tan pants and long-sleeved scoop-necked mint green tee.

  “Supposedly they are in negotiation,” Jordan said, “but you know bureaucracy. I’m hoping we can come to some agreement for a small space here. If we could get it, it would handle a lot of what we’re going to produce.”

  “But you’d need to deliver every day.”

  Jordan winced. “Yes, and of course, we don’t have a driver.”

  “You do now,” Kip said.

  Jordan raised an eyebrow and gave her an appraising look. “Four a.m., remember?”

  “I don’t sleep a lot—I’m one of those people that sleeps in shifts. Three or four hours and then I’m up again. I get a lot of work done in the middle of the night. Then I might grab another couple hours and get up. I can handle it.”

  “I appreciate the offer, believe me. But let’s see what happens here.” What she didn’t say was, Let’s see how things work out once you start at the project. Kip was, after all, a forced volunteer, and she hadn’t any idea what the work would be like. She might very well change her mind about how involved she wanted to be and just put in her hours when convenient, to work off her sentence. Jordan hated the word sentence—it sounded so wrong when applied to Kip. She was profiling, and couldn’t deny it. Just because Kip was the kind of woman she might want to know better—okay, know personally—under other circumstances didn’t mean she knew anything about her at all. Kip was obviously intelligent and
her easy confidence and charm made it hard to think of her as nefarious, but a great smile and appealing manner were hardly enough to make an assessment of someone. Physical magnetism and undeniable chemistry were totally untrustworthy guideposts, because she’d found her appealing from the start. Okay, more than appealing, attractive. Oh for God’s sake. Hot. She could admit that at least to herself. There was nothing wrong with acknowledging she still had a normal level of functioning hormones and found a young, magnetic woman hot.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Kip said quietly.

  “Sorry?” Jordan chastised herself for letting her thoughts wander down paths she had no intention of traveling. Kip’s look, grave and searching, gave Jordan the feeling her thoughts were visible on her face again. “Find out what?”

  “How well things work out at the project.”

  “Yes. We will.” Jordan dodged a forklift ferrying crates of bananas. “Let’s win this battle first.”

  Kip shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans and surveyed the big building in front of them. “So what is this place?”

  “It’s called the food barn. It’s where vendors set up stalls and sell their produce.”

  “How tough is it to get one of the stalls?”

  “There’s a waiting list for the big ones, but we wouldn’t need much space, and that helps.”

  “Pricey?”

  Jordan sighed. “Demand is high, so yes, but this is something I’m willing to stretch for.”

  “Who controls your budget?” Kip said.

  “The city semi-officially, but it’s a grant, really.”

  “You don’t actually work for the city?”

  “Not officially. I’m the grant administrator, which I suppose puts me under some bureaucratic umbrella somewhere, but there’s not a lot of oversight.”

  “That’s handy.”

  Jordan laughed. “I can see you’ve got some experience with organizational hierarchy.”

  “Everybody answers to someone, usually, but the looser the reins, the better, in my opinion.”

  “The biggest problem is the more autonomy you have, the less you can pull on official connections to help. And that’s why we’re here begging.”

  They walked through the open industrial overhead doors into controlled chaos. Three aisles ran the length of an enormous space that had to be three stories high, a couple of football fields in length, and about as wide. Stalls with big numbers next to their vendor names packed either side of the aisles, separated from their neighbors by wooden counters and filled with bins of fruits and vegetables.

  Kip halted abruptly. “This is a madhouse. How do customers decide what to buy or who to buy from?”

  “A daily bulletin comes out every morning around three thirty with prices, descriptions, and bargain status, like the stock market.”

  “It looks about as incomprehensible to me.” Kip laughed, the energy of the place contagious. She couldn’t wait to explore.

  “Once buyers make connections with vendors, they’ll keep coming back, even if your prices fluctuate a little bit higher than your competitors’. The key is the relationship, and the quality of the goods, of course.” Jordan surveyed the room as if assessing a battlefield. “This is just the beginning. We have to start networking with local bodegas and restaurants and street-side retailers to buy from us here by direct delivery.”

  “You need a marketing team.”

  Jordan pointed to her chest. “That would be me.”

  Kip shook her head. “So far by my count you’re CEO, COO, head of sales and marketing, and apparently research and development too.”

  “At least I’m no longer repairs and maintenance.”

  Kip gave a little bow. “At your service.”

  “I can’t tell you what a relief that is.”

  Kip relished a swell of satisfaction. She liked providing something Jordan needed, even if that was only something as simple as keeping the truck running and taking care of the relatively straightforward construction repairs needed at the project. “I don’t know how you wear so many hats without your head exploding, but I admire your energy and your determination. I’m sure you’ll make it all work. All the same, a couple more hands will help.”

  “True, and we’ll be reaching out to the community soon too.” Jordan smiled. “And thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Anytime.” Kip envied Jordan the chance to build something from the ground up, even if the effort was enormous. She’d more or less walked into her position at the factory, even though she’d studied, trained, and earned it. Still, the infrastructure was there waiting for her. The enormous corporation, actually many of them now, had been chugging along for generations, and she didn’t have to worry about how it would survive from month to month. She liked that about her job. She’d never wanted to be a manager. She was a hands-on engineer and extremely lucky that what she really loved to do was something she could contribute to the family enterprise. She was happy to at least fulfill some of her father’s ambitions for her, even if she’d disappointed him by refusing a career path to a corner office. He’d finally begrudgingly accepted she wasn’t headed for the boardroom, and they’d come to peace over their slightly disparate visions. The Ninth Avenue Garden Project was something entirely different from the safe, stable, and unchangeable world of Kensington Corp, and Kip looked forward to contributing whatever she could. Besides the project being a worthy one, the chance to help Jordan held powerful appeal.

  “I’m going to find someone in the business office,” Jordan said, “and see if I can sweet-talk them into putting us on a list that will get us in here as soon as possible.”

  “What do you want me to do while you’re begging?” Kip asked.

  “Why don’t you take a walk around and see what the layout looks like. I’m open to suggestions as to the best way to take advantage of whatever space we can find. Convincing buyers to try our produce is the first step. Once we get in the door, I know we can build the sales channels.”

  The spark in Jordan’s eyes suggested she was ready to go to battle. Kip liked that about her too. She liked her confidence and drive and, well, pretty much everything else about her. Just being with her was a little dizzying, in an altogether new and enjoyable way. “No problem. You can text me when you’re done. And good luck.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you soon.” Impulsively, Jordan squeezed Kip’s hand before turning away. “Have fun.”

  Kip watched her go, thrown off stride by the contact. A touch from Jordan, however brief, struck her as a lot more intimate than the kind of casual caresses she was used to from the women she went out with, women who often breached personal space with a kind of ferocious aggression that struck her as slightly predatory. She wasn’t averse to being hunted, metaphorically speaking, particularly when the hunt led to the bedroom. She liked being chased as much as she liked chasing, but she usually preferred that the game have some basis in mutual attraction. And now she was reading far too much into that brief contact. Jordan was a warm and friendly woman. That’s all there was to it.

  Still, as she walked away she had the urge to whistle. She closed her hand around the tingling in her palm, just to hold in the strange and welcome pleasure a few more minutes.

  *

  Kip’s phone buzzed forty minutes later.

  All done. Meet me by the entrance. J

  She headed that way although she could have used another hour to explore. She’d barely completed a circuit through half of the enormous warehouse, stopping often to talk to the uniformly friendly vendors, casually asking them what she hoped were intelligent questions about their produce and how things were moving. She took mental notes on which stalls and displays had the most traffic. For the first few minutes everything looked pretty much like a free-for-all, and she couldn’t make a lot of sense of it, but as she began to follow the traffic, she got a better feel for what kinds of things were drawing the biggest crowds, not just in terms of the products themselves, but accessibility a
nd patterns of flow. In her mind, she superimposed the mechanics of a well-oiled, high-efficiency machine on the human interactions and physical space. In her view, everything in the environment, man-made or natural, contained intrinsic patterns of movement that could be analyzed in terms of efficiency and economy of design. When she looked at the world, she often saw an invisible grid made up of iridescent paths crisscrossing and intersecting into one huge tapestry of movement.

  “How was it?” Jordan asked when Kip found her in the crowd by the entrance.

  “Fascinating.”

  Jordan raised a brow. “Really? How so?”

  “I’ll tell you in a bit. First, what did you find out?”

  “There’re half a dozen stalls coming open, and since the market has a mission to support community efforts, I shamelessly pushed our community connection as one of the reasons we needed to be here. The terminal actually gives away everything that’s unsold at the end of every day to charitable outlets and food kitchens, so we fit right into their social agenda.”

  “Good move,” Kip said.

  “I hope so. They’re going to prioritize our application. By the time we have our first harvest in six weeks or so, we may have a stall here.”

  The excitement in Jordan’s voice caught Kip in its wake and pulled her along. “Do you think you’ll have a choice of location?”

  “I can certainly push for one. Why?”

  “I’d like to get a map of the layout here. There’s an interesting pattern to the way buyers frequent some stalls and not others, and I think we might want to optimize our position if possible.” Only after she spoke did she hear herself. Our. She had to remind herself her role at the project was only temporary. In a few months she’d be gone, back to her normal life. The idea rang hollow.

  “Really?” Jordan tilted her head, expression intent. “You found that out just from walking around for half an hour?”

  “It’s kind of what I do—well, it’s more like how I see the world. In patterns.”

  “Tell me.”

  Kip knew she was blushing. She never talked about this with anyone other than Randy, who never laughed at her excitement when describing how she saw things. “It’s probably gonna sound crazy.”