Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Finn arrived at The Millstone at six-fifty and was on his second water when Ivy came through the door at seven.
This had become a pattern: him early, her on time, the ten minutes of setup in which he arranged his notes and she arranged herself, and they arrived at the same starting point from different directions.
He'd stopped noting it as a variable and started noting it as a constant.
Within the span of a couple of weeks, she had become a constant in his life.
She sat down across from him and put her phone on the table, face-down.
He noticed this. He noticed it because he had never seen her put the phone face-down.
The phone was a professional instrument, and she treated it as one; always proximate, always accessible, the way he kept a pen in his breast pocket.
The face-down phone was a choice, a deliberate one.
She was prioritizing the conversation. With him.
"I figured we could get our stories together before Mrs. Patel and the news crew get here," she said, opening her notebook.
He liked this side of her; the business side.
He liked the chatty side of her, too —the one she showed her followers.
He liked the focused side of her even more; the one she showed him in the field when she was choosing the right tomato, the one she showed him in the kitchen when she was measuring ingredients, the one she showed him when he'd licked their sauce from his thumb and she'd focused hard on his actions.
Finn should stop thinking about that moment. But he hadn't since the other night. He had gone home and not brushed his teeth. He'd woken the next morning with bad breath and no regrets.
They went through the logistics of their fake relationship efficiently, which was how they went through most things when the agenda was clear.
They agreed that they’d met on the side of the road and that's where they’d felt the first spark.
Not exactly true, but close enough. They’d gotten closer later that morning when they were parked side by side and the blaze started to burn.
That Finn could agree with, even if what he felt hadn't been ardor but annoyance.
By the second day, they couldn't deny their feelings any longer and had given in.
The only thing Finn had given into was that Ivy Lopez had gotten under his skin, and he wasn't as annoyed as he'd been at first.
"Can I ask you something that's not competition or relationship logistics?"
Finn looked up.
"The ranch," she said. "The farm program. How did it start? I'm asking because I'm interested, not because I'm going to post it."
Her phone was still face-down.
Finn thought about where to start. He started, as he usually did with things that required precision, at the beginning.
“When I got here, the farm was already part of the program. They put people to work. Basic tasks. Watering, weeding, harvesting. It gave structure. Something to do with your hands when your head wouldn’t cooperate.”
He paused, not looking at her, tracking the line of the counter instead.
“But it wasn’t built to last. People came through, did their time, and left.
No one stayed with it long enough to see anything through.
Crops need consistency. Timing. If you miss a window, you don’t get it back.
So a lot of crops didn’t make it. Things would go unharvested.
Or they’d harvest, and no one knew what to do with it afterward.
It went to waste. I stayed longer than I was supposed to most days.
Started tracking what needed doing. When.
What would actually survive out here, what wouldn’t.
“When my time in the program was up, I wanted to stay. But you know the lore of the Purple Heart Ranch; the land was rezoned five years ago for families only. So staying meant getting married. That was the condition.”
A small shake of his head.
“I wasn’t doing that. So I moved into town.
Kept coming back to work the land. But I needed it to make sense financially.
So I proposed that we sell the produce. That worked.
For a while. Then I realized I could do more with it if I cooked it.
Dylan, the owner, offered to pay me, but it wasn't enough. Someone had an old truck sitting unused. I rebuilt it. Turned it into the food truck. That’s been enough. For now.”
"Now you want the restaurant."
Finn looked at Ivy. He had her full attention. He decided he really liked having her full attention on him. No phone. No food. Just the two of them.
“Now I want a restaurant.”
Which was true. But there was something else he realized he wanted in that moment.
Ivy bit at her lower lip. It was fuller than her upper lip. Finn realized he wanted to take a bite out of that lip.
“This place, the ranch, the town, it saved my life. This is how I pay it back.”
She nodded thoughtfully. Her gaze slid from him and out the window. Finn wanted her focus back on him. He was trying to figure out how to make that happen when she dropped a bomb on him.
"I ran from this place the first chance I got."
"You don't want to stay?" He wasn't sure how he managed the words past the lump in his throat.
Ivy shrugged. "I needed to come back here.
To reset. It launched me into the culinary world: school and my first job.
But I want more. I don't need a restaurant like you.
But I also don't want to work for anyone but myself.
Social media is helping me do that. I love traveling to new places, testing new dishes and ingredients. "
"You can do social media anywhere."
She nodded. "Which is why I came back here. Here is a good start. And now people are going to come from far and wide for a taste of your tomatoes. I'm surprised you haven't gotten more press before now."
"I've gotten press before," he said. "Three years ago. A writer came out — did a piece on the ranch program. It ran well. She moved back to Chicago after, for a promotion."
He didn't mention that there had been a relationship. He now doubted it had been anything but a fling —at least in Sloan's eyes.
Mrs. Patel arrived a few minutes later with a two-person news crew. It was a local station, a human-interest segment, Valor's Tomato Couple at their usual spot — two minutes of footage, she'd said on the phone, natural and unscripted.
The crew came in and found their angles with the unobtrusive efficiency of people who covered community events for a living. Finn looked at Ivy. Ivy looked at him. The micro-expression: your call.
He moved his chair.
Not far — a quarter turn, close beside her rather than across from her, the way two people sit when they're falling for each other. He set his recipe notes on the table between them, angled the pages toward her, and leaned in slightly as if explaining something.
Then he put his arm along the back of her chair.
Not around her. Along the back of it, his forearm resting on the frame, which brought him close enough that if she leaned back, she would meet his arm.
She didn't lean back. She leaned forward slightly, over the recipe notes, and tilted her head toward his, and their temples were close — not touching, close — while they appeared to review the recipe.
He was aware of her hair. It smelled sweet, like the brown butter she used to fatten up her treats. Finn couldn't stop inhaling, which was necessary because he had to breathe. But he inched closer and closer to the brown strands of her hair with each intake.
The crew moved. The camera found them. Mrs. Patel was looking at the monitor with the expression of someone getting exactly what they came for, and Finn sat with his arm along the back of Ivy's chair and talked about the verjuice ratio as though this were the ordinary situation and not one he was going to be thinking about at four-thirty a.m. when he woke up tomorrow.
Ivy's voice was even and warm, the professional version, and she talked about the recipe with genuine enthusiasm about the technique, and her shoulder was not touching his arm, but the distance was theoretical.
The segment took eleven minutes. For eleven minutes he sat with his arm on the back of her chair and their heads inclined toward each other over a recipe that was both of theirs, and he thought about the prize, and he thought about the restaurant, and he kept picturing Ivy in both of those scenarios.
Would she stay after they won, because they would win? Or would she pack up her truck and go?
When the crew packed up and Mrs. Patel thanked them. He didn't move his chair back. Ivy collapsed back into his embrace and relaxed. Her phone was still face down on the table. There was no one in the bar watching them.
"I didn't see the video from last night," he said. "The one with the recipe." And the sauce, and his thumb, and her gasp.
"Oh?" was her only response as she finished her drink, still leaning back into his arm, which was braced around the chair.
After she finished her drink, she started gathering her things.
"I'll walk you," he said.
She looked at him. "It's six blocks."
He said nothing. She didn't argue.
The evening was on the warm side of cool; the summer heat finally releasing by nine o'clock. Valor at this hour was its quietest self; a few lights in the diner, the hardware store dark, the square empty in the comfortable way of a place that didn't need to be busy to be itself.
They talked about the recipe. He was not sure they were actually talking about the recipe, but the words were about the recipe.
She stopped at the door of her rental.
He stopped.
She turned and looked up at him, and he looked at her, and there was the ordinary beat of a goodbye — a second, maybe less — and then that beat passed, and neither of them had said anything, and there was another second. Two seconds past the situation's requirements.
Finn wanted to kiss her, to pull her into a hug and just hold her. But there was no one around. No cameras. No audience. Her phone was in her pocket, not asking for a performance.
"Good night, Ivy."
"Good night, Finn."