Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
I didn’t speak to Dan the entire ride to Green Acres. There was a ten-minute awkward ride from Terry’s Auto Body shop to the church to pick up Dan’s truck, during which Terry, not picking up on the somber vibe between Dan and me, chattered the entire way.
Dan insisted on opening the passenger door of the truck and helping me climb in, despite my silent protests, and I wasn’t sure if he was doing it out of kindness or to make me feel more helpless. He certainly wasn’t enjoying himself. He looked the same way my cousins and I looked as kids when being forced to do Saturday-morning chores. Was I his chore? Something else attached to the farm that he had to take care of.
I dug into the manila envelope the lawyer handed me to retrieve the keys to the house, but Dan surprised me by using his own key. I thought it was odd, but then again, I didn’t know anything about running a farm. Maybe farm managers had to have the key to everything.
The living room was large and homey-looking, with mismatched furniture that worked perfectly together. The walls and shelves were lined with pictures. I found a faded color photo of my mother, sitting on what must have been her grandfather’s lap while he was driving a tractor. She looked like she was about ten. There was a candid photo of my parents on their wedding day. Next to a photo of my grandfather on a Jet Ski was a photograph of two little brown-skinned girls in identical dresses with identical ponytails. One was taller than the other. It was me and my older sister, Annie. I barely had any memories of her, just occasional flashes. My mother barely spoke about her and there certainly weren’t any pictures like this on display in the house I’d grown up in. I was hugging the picture to my chest when Dan’s voice startled me.
“The kitchen is this way,” he whispered. “I’ll make you something to eat.”
I followed Dan and sat at the table. I gazed around the room, which was large for a typical kitchen—twice the size of the one at my condo—but for some reason, it felt small. A flash of memory hit me:
I was sitting at this table with my older sister, Annie. My grandmother asked us how many pancakes we wanted, and Annie said, “One million!”
My grandfather answered, “One million pancakes. Coming right up!” making us squeal with laughter. Bright sunlight was streaming through the windows and a song by Marvin Gaye was blaring through the kitchen while my grandparents shimmied around the room.
“All right, Emma?” Dan’s voice broke me out of my daydream. It was night again. The kitchen was dull and darker. There was no music playing. Annie and my grandparents were gone. “Emma?” he repeated. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I nodded. I wrapped my hands around a steaming mug that Dan must have placed in front of me when I wasn’t paying attention. “What is this?”
“It’s tea.” He turned back to the counter where he was busy doing something, but I had no idea what. He’d taken off his jacket and placed it on the back of a chair before rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, showcasing muscular forearms dusted with hair. Dan was broad shouldered, with back muscles that flexed and rippled as he made his way around the kitchen. He opened and closed cabinets, followed by the rhythmic chopping of a knife on a wooden cutting board. I felt like I was watching a sacred ritual. A low, melodic sound floated around the kitchen, and I realized that Dan was humming while he was cooking. His hips slowly swayed to the rhythm as I watched him—hypnotized—my mind straying to places that a woman with a long-term boyfriend shouldn’t go. I slowly brought the mug of warm liquid to my lips. It was unlike any tea I’d ever had before and I wanted to ask Dan the name of the brand, but watching him weave his way around the kitchen was too distracting.
I was trying to focus on something besides Dan’s hips when I was startled by the feeling of something small, hard, and slimy on my tongue. A squeal of surprise left my mouth as I almost dropped my teacup and struggled to spit out whatever I’d inadvertently ingested.
“What’s wrong?” Dan yelled, and within an instant, he was leaning over me with his hand on my back, his face a mask of concern.
After using a finger to scrape the foreign object off my tongue, I held it up to the light for inspection, hoping to God that it wasn’t an insect.
It was a tea leaf.
My face heated with embarrassment. In my defense, it was a huge tea leaf. When I glanced at Dan, he was stifling a smile.
“I think you’ll live.” His hand smoothed its way up my back as he stood to return to the stove, and I wondered if he’d meant to do it. I wondered why it felt so good.
“Why is there a tea leaf in my mug anyway?” I retorted, knowing that I wasn’t making a good argument.
“Since tea leaves are a vital component of making tea, finding the odd tea leaf in your mug is inevitable.” He smirked again. “Is this your first pot of tea?”
“No,” I answered quickly. “I just… I don’t usually drink tea. I’m more of a coffee person.”
“Ah.” He nodded.
“And I usually have tea with a tea bag . It’s this handy invention that keeps the tea leaves out of your drink.”
The kitchen got quiet. The shuffling noises of Dan working behind me stopped, making me turn to face him.
“Tea bag?” he asked in a scandalized voice. “No. In this house, we drink real tea, properly prepared.”
“Yeah, I saw the way you properly prepared the tea.” I mimicked his accent, remarking on the way he carefully measured the leaves from the tin with a spoon and filled the pot with a little bit of steaming water from the kettle before filling it the rest of the way. “It seems way more time-consuming than just heating up a mug of water in the microwave and sticking a tea bag in it.”
“Microwave?” he exclaimed, even more upset than he was about the tea bag. He shook his head.
“What’s wrong with the microwave?”
“I’m making you another pot of tea.” He grabbed the kettle off the stovetop and refilled it. “Once you’ve finished it, you won’t ever go back to microwaved tea bags .” He mimicked my voice… poorly. I stifled a smile.
Unfortunately for Dan, he didn’t know that I was so hopeless in the kitchen that premeasured and microwaved foods were a matter of survival for me. Still, after having a day from hell, being catered to—and playfully teased—by a handsome and friendly stranger who knew his way around the kitchen wasn’t the most unwelcome feeling.
I’d let myself enjoy it for a little longer.
“Meat?” Dan’s question made me choke on my tea and I realized that I was leering at him again.
“Excuse me?” I asked after I cleared my throat.
“Meat? Do you eat meat?” He pointed his knife at the cutting board. There were a few cuts of what looked like chicken that had been sliced with precision.
“Yes, I do. I’m trying to cut down on red meat, but I’d never pass up an opportunity for burgers or ribs. I tried going vegan a couple of years ago, and it lasted the entire summer until my family reunion…” A nervous chuckle bubbled past my lips and my voice trailed off when Dan turned around to meet my eye. “My… um… father’s side of the family.” I wasn’t sure why I’d answered his yes-or-no question with a diatribe. If I had to guess, I would say I was nervous. I was still trying to wrap my head around my unexpected inheritance and my even more unexpected attraction to Dan. If I was acting strangely, he didn’t seem to notice or mind because he turned back to his cutting board and the rhythmic chopping resumed.
“Well, technically I’m a vegetarian, but I’ve been known to sneak the odd piece of poultry or fish.” He turned to me and held up a small piece of the white meat he was chopping before dropping it back onto the cutting board, giving me a small, mischievous smile. “Don’t tell my mum.”
“If I ever meet your mother, your secret’s safe with me.” Our eyes met and his smile faltered momentarily, making me wonder what he was thinking. Before I got the chance to ask, he grabbed the teapot from the counter and refilled my cup.
“So, how long have you worked here… on the farm?” I asked to break the tension in the kitchen—and possibly to stop staring at Dan’s ass while something delicious sizzled in a frying pan.
“About two years.”
“How did you meet my grandparents?”
“It’s actually a funny story,” he called over his shoulder. “One day, I was walking around a large plant nursery in Bennett.”
“Bennett?”
“It’s a really small town about forty-five minutes west of here. Known for its plants.” He turned to look at me; once I nodded, he returned to cooking. “So I’m there walking around, and some random bloke asks me a question about orchids. Now, I didn’t work there, and I could’ve given him the mickey about assuming I did, but I happen to love talking about flowers.” He let out an endearing chuckle and I forced myself to take a sip of my tea and focus on his story.
“So after I got through with him, another person asked me a question about fertilizer, then someone else needed help, and before I knew it, I had a queue of people.”
“So you just posted up in a random garden store and started answering questions?” I smiled and raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“It wasn’t deliberate, mind you, but yeah. Plants, especially flowers, are my first love, and since I left my job in the UK, it had been a while since…” He drifted off and his smile faded. “Anyway, George and Harriet were there. We got to chatting, and your grandfather offered me a job with room and board. He said he ‘ had a good feeling about me .’” His impression of my grandfather’s deep timbre gave me chills despite it being so long since I’d heard his voice. “So here I am. I oversee all farm operations, but Ernesto takes care of the animals. I’m mostly a plant guy.”
Did he just say room and board?
“You live here? On the farm?” I don’t know why I was so scandalized by the prospect. It made sense. There was a lot of land. Something about the thought of this man living somewhere in close proximity made me uneasy.
“Yeah,” he answered with a sarcastic laugh. “Makes the commute to work a lot easier.”
“So why did you leave the UK?” I asked to change the subject. A heavy silence hung between us in the kitchen, broken by Dan setting a plate in front of me.
“I just needed a change.” He released a heavy sigh before turning to leave the kitchen, making me wonder if I’d said the wrong thing. “There’s a linen closet, should you need any toiletries.”
“Wait. You didn’t make yourself any food. Aren’t you hungry?”
He shook his head in response. The playful, comfortable mood we’d slipped into disappeared, as if Dan and I had been in a bubble that was suddenly popped.
“You’re leaving?” I spluttered. I didn’t exactly want him to stay—well, not for any reason that made sense—but the idea of being left alone in the house made me nervous, like I was trespassing.
“Yeah.” It was all he said before he pulled the kitchen door closed behind him.
I wasn’t sure if it was because I was starving or if I was just remembering Dan’s sexy dinner shimmy, but this was the best food I’d ever eaten.
Dan had made what would be considered by most to be a simple meal of a grilled cheese-and-chicken sandwich with potato chips. Except that the sandwich was comprised of two thick slices of what tasted like homemade bread, at least three different kinds of cheese that I could taste, and thinly sliced chicken, fried in just the right amount of butter… a lot. I could tell the potato chips were also homemade—meaning that instead of simply opening a bag of potato chips from the store, he had taken an actual potato, sliced it paper-thin, and deep-fried the pieces before sprinkling them with salt. He also made me a fresh pot of that delicious tea.
I was glad Dan wasn’t here to see the way I demolished that sandwich and those chips. My lap was covered in crumbs, and I had melted butter dripping down the front of my dress. The eating noises that I made could only be described as moans. Halfway through my meal, I had to unzip my dress because the tailoring didn’t allow for pleasure eating. This was a three-bites-of-salad-in-between-laughing-at-your-boyfriend’s-terrible-jokes dress. I actually couldn’t remember the last time I enjoyed food like this. I sat for a long time after I was finished, letting my food settle, sipping the best tea I’d ever had, and absentmindedly picking the crumbs off my plate.
I decided that if I ever saw Dan again, I would mention that he was right about the tea.
The house was eerily quiet, and I welcomed it. This was the first moment of peace I’d had since I woke up this morning. As I made my way to the stairs to go to bed, I passed what looked like a small office. I recognized this place, too. This was my grandfather’s study. Just like the kitchen, it seemed tiny compared to my memories. One wall was lined with bookshelves filled with books on farming, medicine, and a myriad of other subjects. On one shelf I found my grandfather’s old chess set. I slid it into my arms and walked over to his large oak desk to set it down. After opening it, I began to pull out the pieces and I was hit with another flashback.
I was sitting on my grandfather’s lap at this desk in front of this exact chess set. My legs were dangling off his large thighs, and I could smell his spicy cologne. Annie was standing on the other side of the desk, peering intently at the chessboard. Our grandfather was giving us a lesson.
“Don’t rely too much on your queen,” he said. “The queen is the most powerful piece, but she can’t win the game without the help of the other pieces.”
Dan’s previous words echoed, and I felt a tear slip down my cheek as I finished setting up the board. I stared at it for a long time before I grabbed one of the lighter colored pawns, moved it up two spaces, and went to bed.
The stairs creaked as I slowly edged my way to the second floor of the house. Sleeping in my grandparents’ room wasn’t an option. It was haunted by an intoxicating cloud of my grandmother’s perfume and my grandfather’s cologne. The bed was made and the room was tidy, but it looked lived in, like they could return any moment. One of the smaller guest bedrooms seemed like a better alternative.
I did wear one of my grandmother’s old nightgowns because I didn’t have a choice. It carried the heavy flowery scent of her perfume, and it sparked another memory. My grandmother—I remembered we used to call her Granny—was wearing a nightgown similar to this one. Hell, it might have been this one. It was cream colored and soft. In my memory it reached Granny’s ankles—on me, the gown hit midcalf. Annie and I were tucked into the same bed, and our grandmother was singing us to sleep with “Short’nin’ Bread.” After the memory dissolved, leaving me with a feeling of warmth, I briefly considered not leaving in the morning but quickly dismissed the thought. My life was in Atlanta, not on this farm.
The alarm was set early enough that I could hopefully slip out before anyone noticed—anyone, meaning Dan. But that’s not the way farms worked. I was awakened by the loud crowing of a rooster a full thirty minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. I got up, quickly dressed, and went downstairs to find a note on the kitchen table.
Emma
There’s coffee in the coffee maker. All you have to do is push the button. Your car is outside.
Dan
The car keys were next to the note, and sure enough, when I pushed the button on the coffee maker, fresh-brewed deliciousness dripped into the waiting mug. It was a thoughtful gesture, but I wondered if he was afraid of me rifling through the kitchen. Maybe he made coffee for everyone. Maybe I was just a miserable, jaded person who didn’t know how to recognize kindness.
When I woke up this morning, I was intent on getting back to Atlanta as soon as I possibly could. Yet, while walking around the house sipping my coffee, I no longer felt the urgency. I walked into my grandfather’s study and noticed that one of the pawns from the opposing side had been moved up two spaces, directly in front of the one I had moved. I felt the familiar competitive stirring in my belly that I used to feel during a chess match in high school. Your competitor’s opening told you exactly what kind of player you were up against. Dan was a player who liked to antagonize his opponents. My fingers itched to answer his move. I could probably beat him in twelve moves—twenty if I was underestimating his skill—but I thought better of it.
This wasn’t my game to play. Despite what the lawyer said, this certainly didn’t feel like my farm. This wasn’t my life.
I finished my coffee, grabbed the keys, and pointed my newly repaired car toward home. In four hours I would be back to the life I knew and the things that made sense.