In a Jam

Chapter 11 #3

High school Noah was sweet. So sweet. Quiet, helpful to a fault. He never made growly demands or bit off orders. High school Noah would sooner break-dance naked in front of our entire graduating class than warn me about consequences for not following his directions.

And yet, I didn’t mind the bossy vibe. It was like that sweet, quiet boy had found a rumbly, grumbly voice. And some seat belt snapping and an absurd insistence I couldn’t be trusted in his barn.

Shy. This man was shy. While also being enormously bossy.

So very interesting.

The four-wheeler bumped onto pavement and we cut a wide loop around the parking lot before stopping at the main doors to the barn. From here, we could see the distinctive black-and-white of the cows munching on hay.

“We have a hundred and eighty-four cows,” Gennie said. “And they’re milked twice a day. At four and four.”

Noah trailed his hand up my hip, releasing the seat belt. I glanced down, staring at the spot where his knuckles pressed against my sundress.

In the back, Gennie continued, “They’re called Homesteam—”

“Holstein,” Noah said.

“—and every day, they make eight billion hundred pounds of milk—”

“Eight thousand,” he said.

“—and that goes into a pipe that cooks it really hot and makes eleven million bottles of milk.”

“Eleven hundred,” he said, still staring at me, still touching my hip.

“And in the winter, the floors are hot because they have rainbows inside them.”

“Radiant heating,” he murmured.

“Can we go now?” she asked. “It’s going to be over, we’re going to miss it!”

“We can only milk twenty cows at a time,” he said. “We will not miss anything.” He pulled his hand away from me and pointed at a bright white building with its garage-style doors flung wide-open. “That’s the milking parlor. Come on.”

Gennie ran ahead of us, saying hello to each of the cows leisurely eating their hay. She skidded to a stop in front of the white building, motioning to us with all the impatience in the world.

“She really loves this,” I said.

“Sometimes.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “Mostly since meeting the calves. She didn’t want anything to do with this place before.”

As we approached the doors, Noah gave her a nod and she bounded inside. A member of the crew spotted her and motioned for her to join him as he tended to one of the cows.

Noah held out his arm, stopping me before I crossed into the parlor. “This is far enough for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are not wearing shoes appropriate for this setting,” he said with a wave toward the interior. “And you’re not dressed for”—he ran a finger along one of the dress’s ruffled tiers at my thigh—“anything even loosely related to dairy farming.”

I indulged in a quick scan of his blue plaid button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow and collar open, well-worn jeans, and boots that knew every inch of this land.

His fingers had raked through his dark hair a time or twenty and his short beard was freshly trimmed.

He looked good and he looked good here .

And that was a strange realization since I was still surprised to find him here.

“You were serious when you said there were rules.”

“Someone has to be serious.” He set his hands on his waist and cocked a hip as though he was settling in for a debate. “Might as well be me.”

“Is that your way of telling me I’m not serious? Because I’ll have you know, I’m plenty serious.”

He gave me a look that resembled something like impatience. “No earrings today?”

“No earrings today. It was a chaotic morning. When the school called, I was still in a towel and threw on the first thing I could find. No earrings. It’s a wonder I remembered underwear. And as you’ve already pointed out, my water bottle didn’t make the cut either.”

If he had a response to that, he didn’t offer it. Although he did glance over my shoulder and mutter, “What the hell are you doing here?”

A Black man approached, probably in his early fifties, and pulled off his gloves. “Better question is, what the hell are you doing here?”

Noah gestured across the parlor. Gennie was talking a mile a minute and patting a cow’s flank while a crew member nodded along. “The kid’s been asking for a visit.”

The man turned a warm smile toward me. “Jim Wheaton. I look after this little operation. Welcome to my dairy pavilion.”

“Shay Zucconi,” I replied. “This is much more than a little operation.”

He shot a pointed look to Noah and then stared at me, his eyes round. His lips parted a few seconds before he spoke. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

I glanced between him and Noah. “Oh, really? You knew Grandma Lollie?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t know Lollie personally. I came here from Upstate New York not long before she moved down South. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you.” I paused, not sure how to ask this. “But—if you didn’t know Lollie, how do you—”

“He’s also responsible for the goats,” Noah added.

Jim gave the pavilion a rueful glance. “That operation isn’t as sophisticated as this one. Not yet. But we’re getting there.”

“Let’s get there sooner rather than later,” Noah said.

“Patience, Barden. Patience would do you good.” To me, Jim asked, “Miss Gennie brought you along to meet the girls?”

“She was very enthusiastic. I couldn’t miss it.” I smiled, adding, “Your cows are lovely.”

“They’re the best of the best. We take very good care of them.” He nodded at Noah. “Just how the boss likes it. He’s very particular but I bet you know that.”

“Shouldn’t you be leaving?” Noah asked. “You’ve been here since first thing this morning. Go home.”

Ignoring Noah entirely, Jim turned to me, asking, “Would you like a tour?”

“She doesn’t want a tour,” Noah replied, bringing his hand to the back of his neck.

“I’d love one,” I said.

“I knew you would,” Jim said. “We’ll start in the bottling facility and work backward. Personally, I prefer walking through the process in reverse. Start with the package, end with the pasture. But we could also do the opposite. Just as fun.”

“You’re the expert,” I said.

“Wheatie,” Noah warned.

“Quick tour,” he replied. “You stay right here but don’t harass my staff unless you want them putting you to work—and they’re under strict orders to do exactly that. They’ll happily send you to the manure shed.”

Noah glared at the other man. “Make it fast.”

As we crossed the pavement toward another building, Jim pointed out overhead pipes and explained how they moved milk directly from the pumping area to a separation tank, and they avoided using trucks at this stage because the movement caused too much oxidation.

He went into detail about homogenization and then pasteurization as we moved through those areas, watching from the large windows in the hall rather than going into those spaces.

He led me into the bottling facility, a separate building on the compound, where I pointed to a series of windows with the manufacturer’s stickers still in place.

“This looks new,” I said. “Was it recently updated?”

Jim stopped at the door to the primary storage cooler. “Noah didn’t tell you?” When I shook my head, he continued. “He overhauled this whole place. Energy efficiency, resource conservation, organic certification. He’s been hustling this project for years.”

“And it was recently completed?”

Jim gave a slow nod. “He’s uncommonly good at paperwork. It frees up my time, you see. I don’t have to mess with any of those details. The business is his sweet spot. He can find loopholes in the dark and has never met a grant or tax credit program he doesn’t like.”

“I had no idea.”

Another nod. “Not much of a talker, is he?”

Go ahead and steal the thoughts out of my mind, Jim.

We were walking back to the milking parlor while Jim described his favorite sections of the one-hundred-acre property. The west pasture was especially nice come autumn.

Noah stood at the garage doors, arms crossed over his chest like always as he swung a gaze between me and Jim, and inside the parlor. He made a show of looking at his watch.

“Thank you for the tour,” I said to Jim.

“The pleasure was entirely mine.”

“This would make for a really fun field trip,” I said. “I’m not sure where the second grade usually goes for field trips. I’ll have to ask the other teachers at the grade level when they’re back on campus but I’m sure they’d love everything about this.”

“We’d be happy to have you. Just let the boss man know when you’re coming.” After a meaningful glance at Noah, Jim said, “I’ll be off now.”

We watched him cross the pavement and duck into the bottling facility. A minute or two passed and then Gennie jogged toward us, her cheeks red and her smile wide. “I got to help with Matildamoon and Petuniapie!” She grabbed my hand. “Do you want to help? Bonnieboo is up next.”

“Bonnieboo? I’ll watch you help with her, okay? I need to talk with Noah for a few minutes. Go show me your skills.”

Gennie skipped back inside, satisfied with that response. Noah, on the other hand, dropped his hands to his hips and squared his shoulders. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing’s wrong.” It was a textbook reaction to we have to talk and I panted out a laugh as I rubbed my temples because I hadn’t meant to set him on guard.

I hadn’t even meant to bring this up but—fuck it.

That was the theme of this day. It would probably continue as the theme of this entire year.

“I’ve been thinking about Twin Tulip,” I started, “and this wonky little town and my whole wonky little life. I’ve thought about your offer too.

You know, to marry me because Lollie needed me to jump through hoops to keep her farm going.

Still haven’t wrapped my head around that choice but whatever.

Can’t argue with the dead. Anyway. I have a few conditions. ”

A beat passed. Then, “You have—what?”

“You were right when you said Gennie can’t get caught in the middle if we do this.”

“If we do this,” he murmured. He bobbed his head, slow and a little rusty, as if he was thinking very hard about the act of nodding and getting it all wrong in the process.

“Okay.” He pulled off his sunglasses and gripped the back of his neck.

He stared at me, his gaze stormed over. “I thought you weren’t ready to think about this. What happened? What changed your mind?”

“I don’t have a good explanation for that,” I admitted, and that was as close to the truth as I was willing to get.

I didn’t have a good explanation for anything right now.

I was fumbling along. “I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

All the worsts have already happened to me.

It can’t get worse. It just can’t. So, I might as well give this a try while I still can. ”

The muscles in Noah’s jaw pulsed. He was quiet a long time. Too long. Long enough that it occurred to me he might’ve changed his mind.

“If the offer still stands,” I added. “It’s cool if not. Totally understandable.”

He stared at me, his gaze dark. “The offer stands.”

I shoved my fingers through my hair, gathering it off my neck. “Okay. Great. So, my conditions.”

“Your conditions.”

I didn’t know when he’d moved closer to me but his knuckles brushed my thigh and I couldn’t remember any of the conditions I’d cobbled together.

“Like I said, you were absolutely right about protecting Gennie. I don’t want to do anything to hurt her or complicate her life.

Or your life. So, this has to be nothing more than a legal transaction.

If we do this, nothing changes. I live at my place, you live at yours, never the truth shall be revealed.

” His knuckles passed over my leg again but he remained silent.

I hurried to add, “I’ll be your human shield anytime you want, of course. You can use me as much as you want.”

He turned his face to the sky, slowly shaking his head. “Shay,” he grumbled. After a long beat, he dropped his gaze to me. “You’re sure about this?”

I laughed. A real, true laugh that shook deep into my bones. “I am sure about nothing. Not a damn thing. I am making it up as I go along, Noah. Maybe I’ll pull it off with Twin Tulip but maybe I won’t. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But fuck it, let’s find out. Right?”

“And after the estate is finalized? What happens then?”

“Then we dissolve it,” I said. “Nothing has to change.”

He glanced at the cows, at Gennie. His knuckles continued their barely-there circuit across my thigh. It didn’t seem as though his touch was entirely intentional. “Are you—I mean, is everything okay? You’re safe here. Right? There’s no stalker, no abusive ex that I should know about?”

When was the proper time to explain you’d been left at the altar less than two months ago?

And really, was it necessary to explain that?

I didn’t think so. And I wished people would stop asking if everything was okay because there wasn’t a clean mechanism for me to say no to that.

The expected answer was always yes and anything else was socially toxic.

“No stalker, no abusive ex. Just an avocado of a relationship. You know how it is. Perfect one day, complete trash the next. If it’s all right with you, I’d rather leave it at that. ”

“We can do that.” He bobbed his head and pressed those knuckles against my thigh too hard to be anything short of intentional. “There’s no waiting period for a marriage license in Rhode Island. Any city hall can issue a license and preside over a ceremony.”

“Not here, not in Friendship,” I said. Really wished I had my water bottle with me today. Would’ve been nice to have something to fidget with while negotiating the terms of a marriage. “The town. It’s too—you know. People talk. And we don’t want that.”

“Yeah. Agreed.” He glanced inside the parlor. “Providence would be better.”

Did he have this info stored in his big brain or had he gone looking for it? Had he expected me to take him up on his offer? “Right. Providence.”

“Are you free tomorrow? Midday? Gen’s with Gail until three, if that works for you.”

Apparently, there wasn’t a minute to waste. “I’m setting up the classroom and prepping for the first day but it’s all on my own time. I’m not required on campus until Friday.”

He frowned and rocked back on his heels. “Then I’ll pick you up at the elementary school tomorrow. Eleven. I’ll draft the prenup tonight.”

He stalked into the milking parlor, leaving me staring after him.