Chapter 3 Eve
EVE
The town council doesn’t meet for another four days, but I’m not sure I will physically make it that long.
Mayor Reed promised me that whatever development is happening next door would not affect the farm in any way, shape or form.
Yet the first thing Ryder Blackwell does is traipse onto my property in the early hours of the morning and start measuring things.
And then he has the audacity to stick a foot in my door.
As the farm winds down for the night, I send my favorite gift shop girl home early to prepare for the date she can’t stop talking about and set myself up on the small stool behind the counter to watch as the last few visitors meander toward the parking lot.
The gift shop is just across the dirt road from my bungalow in a small building that was the farm’s original barn.
In the hundred or so years since it’s been built, a newer, larger barn was constructed down the road and out of the way, creating a private, idyllic little patch of land on the far side of the farm where my grandparents’ water wheel chugs along.
And this one was converted into a charming little gift shop filled with sunflower paraphernalia, almost all of which has been lovingly created by my best friend, Izzy. She does everything from paintings, to the sunflowers on the side of my house, to coffee mugs and keychains and T-shirts.
I can only imagine the snorting laugh that would come out of her if she saw the loafered man referring to me as Ms. Harper.
The thought of him has me googling again.
He’s the only son of a wealthy Manhattan builder and inherited the company after his death, but the articles dry up quickly after news of his father’s fatal stroke has been sufficiently squeezed for clickbait.
There are a few boring articles, mostly about charitable donations or his subsidized housing projects being so altruistic—cue my eye roll—but nothing that highlights the snake he is.
He must have a talented PR team behind him, because only an asshole would waltz onto a farm in leather loafers driving a BMW, calling the farm owner by her surname rather than acting like a real human being.
I mean, I’m the first to admit that this town is a weird place with an unhealthy obsession with sunflowers. I’m the caretaker for the namesake sunflower farm—I know it’s ridiculous.
But it’s our ridiculous.
And when I took it over from my grandmother, I vowed to protect that ridiculousness.
That, and… well, my grandmother died when I was in college, and if I didn’t want someone else looking after this place, I had to drop out to do it myself.
Meaning I don’t have the option of doing anything other than this.
So, if Ryder Blackwell wants to barge his way into this town—probably riding the wave of Manhattanites who suddenly find our town so charming—he’s welcome to.
But I’m between a rock and a hard place here, and my only option to protect the life I’ve worked so hard for is to do everything in my power to stop him.
I shake my head, throwing my phone on the counter as I hear a car door shut outside.
I wind through the various tables and shelves of the gift shop, fixing a stack of books on plant identification as I go, and push the gift shop door open just as Izzy blusters toward me with a box in her arms.
“Got two more in the trunk for ya!” she says, heading inside. I circle around her Jeep to grab the next one.
And on my way inside, I notice a cellophane-wrapped package next to the door.
My arms full, I ignore it until I can set my box down.
And while Izzy grabs the last one, I bend down to read the note taped to the outside of the package.
Sunflower,
Looking forward to working with you. I truly respect how much you’ve put into this farm, and I do not intend to harm it in any way. Consider this gift basket an olive branch.
Ryder Blackwell
My eyes narrow as I, first, reach over and close Izzy’s trunk for her, and second, grab the gift basket and haul it inside.
Izzy’s halfway through unpacking the first box, loading the promised sunflower art prints onto the shelves next to the register.
Her dark hair is piled high on her head, a smudge of orange paint underneath her chin.
Her eyes fix on the gift basket in my hands as I walk it to the register and drop it onto the counter next to her boxes.
“What’s that?” she asks, nodding to it as she takes another handful of art prints from the box and distributes them out among the others.
I shake my head. “A gift from the developer next door who’s trying to destroy everything.”
She pauses with a print in each hand, her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
I let out a long breath as I collapse onto the stool behind the counter. “Blackwell Development?”
She presses her lips together. “Oh.”
“He says he wants to work with me, but I have a bad feeling about this. He’s from the city. Builds crappy, ugly apartments, and if this all goes the way I’m expecting it to go, he’s going to ruin all the charm of this place by putting one of his stupid buildings right on the hill.”
Izzy purses her lips, nodding. “Why is he sending you gift baskets?”
I shrug. “He must need something from me. I’ve already pushed him into the stream and slammed a door in his face. To me, that’s the sort of behavior that gets flipped off and forgotten. But he sent a gift basket instead.”
She nods, reaching for the next box and slowly ripping it open. Pencil cases covered in a variety of her sunflower patterns. She makes space on the shelf with the sunflower-themed picture frames and chalkboards and carefully arranges them.
“You pushed him into the stream?”
I grimace. “Not my best moment.”
She nods, a smile coming to her face. “Sounds like somebody has a little crush.”
“Um, I’m not five. I don’t push boys I like into streams.”
She waves me off as she looks for an appropriate place to set up her pencil cases. “Not you. Him. You pushed him into the stream and he responded by sending you a gift basket.”
“It’s probably poisoned,” I say, pulling on the ribbon to take a look inside. “Oh wow, it might be worth the poisoning though.”
Izzy abandons her pencil case arrangement and whips behind the counter to look with me.
“Oh, he definitely has a crush,” Izzy says, reaching in for a bag of white cheddar popcorn and grabbing a sleeve of my favorite candies, little dark chocolate things with a thin layer of caramel and a drizzle of peanut butter.
She holds them between us. “How dare you not tell me you’re sleeping with someone new. ”
I roll my eyes, grabbing the candy from her.
How the fuck did he manage this?
“I’m not sleeping with anyone,” I tell her. “You know I don’t have time during busy season.”
She shrugs. “You should make time. Every year you do the same thing. Work yourself to the bone just to end the season saying you never want to see a goddamn sunflower again and that this is it, you’re quitting once and for all.”
“I do not say that.”
She gives me a look as she opens the popcorn and throws a piece into her mouth. “Okay, so I’m paraphrasing. But why do you think everyone insists on having The Last Sunflower every year even when you say you’re not up for throwing a party?”
Our end-of-season celebration where we bring out the fire pits and play ridiculously loud music and everyone gets a little more drunk than they should, me included. It’s become a little culty at this point, whispers starting as soon as the first frost hits that the party will be coming soon.
The sunflowers are generally long dead by then, but we have a bunch of look-alikes planted all over the farm. Black-eyed Susan, coneflowers, mums, marigolds to name a few. They keep the farm hopping until that first frost hits.
That has always been the official end to our season. Our excuse to pack it all up and winterize the place.
We still do tours over the colder months, and there’s a heated tea garden off one side of the gift shop, but once that frost hits, we transition to winter activities.
We make a couple kinds of sunflower tea, as well as sunflower seeds and pressed petals—building that side of the business will be my focus this winter—but otherwise, the place gets quiet.
Our seasonal employees head to next season’s jobs.
The gift shop is manageable with only two.
And I do my best to breathe for a few months before gearing up to do it all again next season.
“Because people like parties,” I say, ripping open the candy wrapper and popping a chocolate in my mouth.
She takes another kernel of popcorn. “No. It’s because by the time the last sunflower falls, you look like a zombie and the only thing anyone wants is for you to sit down, have a drink, and then go to sleep for three days.
And we all know that until that moment, you don’t answer to anyone but the sunflowers. ”
I shrug. “I’m committed.”
Izzy rounds the counter to continue setting up her pencil cases. “You should be committed. To a mental institution.”
“Such kind words from my best friend.”
“All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t hurt you to take a few minutes out of your day to focus on yourself. Whether it’s boinking the developer next door or just chilling and watching some TV.”
I open my mouth to speak but she holds up a hand to silence me before I can. “And do not try to tell me you do that during bad weather because I’ve seen you out there shoveling mud in the pouring rain like that’s actually going to make a difference.”
“If the mud has a chance to build up, it ruins everyone’s pictures.”
“Let one of your farmhands do that,” she suggests.
I shake my head. “I can’t ask that of them. They’re busy. And it’s easy enough to do myself.”
Izzy sighs. “You’re going to work yourself to death,” she says, arranging the last pencil case on the pile and turning back to me to start on the next box.
A refill on mugs, with a few brand-new designs.
She walks the box across the store to the mug shelf and I follow in her wake, filling in empty spaces.
“How about I promise you my next rainy night?”
Her eyes go wide. “You’re selecting me as your bad weather buddy?”
“If you won’t accept the honor, I’ll just have to invite someone else.”
She grins. “You stop. Next time it rains, girls’ night? We can invite Rory and Tabby and drink too much boxed wine?”
I snort. “Deal. But not too much boxed wine or I won’t be able to function the next day.”
Mug rack freshly filled, we turn back to the register. She takes another piece of popcorn as I fit the two smaller boxes into the largest one for her to take with her.
We stare at the gift basket in front of us, an array of my favorite foods in front of me.
“You may hate him, but he fucking knows you.”
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“All of your favorite snacks in one basket? The man is speaking your love language.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
She cocks her head to the side, staring at the spread. “Wait a second. Didn’t you post that once?”
“Post what?”
“That snacks are your love language.”
She pulls her phone out of her pocket and throws it on the counter in front of us, quickly navigating to my Instagram and scrolling.
She stops when she hits a picture of my dining room table filled with my favorites.
My grandmother, before she died, would do that for me every once in a while—buy every single snack she’s ever seen me enjoy and leave them on the kitchen table for me to discover when I got home from school or came to visit during college.
And underneath, I captioned the photo “snacks are my love language.”
Izzy starts snickering. “He cyberstalked you.”
I shake my head. “Of course he did. He’s trying to butter me up.”
She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.
“Oh, not like that!”
She reaches into the basket for a Twizzler. “What do you think he wants from you?”
I harrumph. “I don’t know yet. But it must be important if he’s still trying to be nice.”
“He wants that sweet sunflower ass,” she says, reading over the card.
I grab it from her and bury it within the candy. “Bye Izzy.”
She grabs the other sleeve of candies before I realize what she’s doing. “Delivery fee,” she quips, as she turns and heads for the front of the store.
“Hey! Not fair! You took my favorite ones!”
She shoots me a big grin when she gets to the door. “Maybe Ryder Blackwell will buy you more if you ask him really nicely.”
I snort. “Bye Izzy!”
“Let me know when you need more sunflower shit to sell,” she says as she steps outside.
“I will! Thank you!” I shout. And the door closes.
With a sigh, I sink down onto the stool again.
So Ryder Blackwell is cyberstalking me too.
I throw another chocolate in my mouth, scrolling through my pictures until I find a really beautiful sunset over the sunflower fields, with Ryder Blackwell’s new property framed perfectly in the background.
I post it with the caption:
Nice try, but a little bit of chocolate isn’t going to make things easier for you.