Chapter 1 #7
They ate at the battle-scarred kitchen table, swapping tales of Michigan power outages past and near-misses skating on ponds that weren’t quite frozen over.
“I wonder if the one in the back pasture is frozen yet,” Amber mused with a speculative look at Devon.
“No,” he said.
She stuck out her lower lip. “But Devon.”
“If it is frozen, it’ll be impossible to find it with the snow on top of it, and someone will have to shovel it before we can skate anyway. And no one is getting on it without confirmation that it’s frozen solid enough to bear weight. Give it a couple days. Maybe for New Year’s.”
Her eyes brightened. “Ooh. We could do that as an attraction next year! New Year’s Day skate at Muttonchop Farms. Come out and meet the sheep, buy some knitwear or wool, drink some hot chocolate, eat a donut…
.” She glanced at Noah. “Can you make donuts? Are they as good as your pancakes?” She’d eaten hers as little knife-and-fork sandwiches with the bacon and maple syrup in between.
That was Amber for you. Casually assuming Noah would still be around in a year with no better New Year’s Day plans than to make donuts for a farm event. Because she already knew Devon wanted him there. Because Devon was as predictable as his routine, these days.
“I have never made donuts,” Noah said. His cheeks were pink, and he cast a shy look at Devon from under his Muppet eyelashes and added, “But I have time to learn.”
How the fuck was Devon supposed to cope with this?
He’d always been a romantic at heart. He thought you had to be if you wanted to be a professional athlete. You had to believe in fairy tales, a little bit.
But he’d let that go when the addiction got him. It was tough to be romantic when you were alternately sweating and shivering and shitting yourself as you dried out from nearly drowning in the consequences of your own bad decisions.
It looked like the romance had come back to him whether he was ready or not. The thought left him as warm and fuzzy as a week-old lamb.
He wondered, as Noah threw his head back in laughter at one of Amber’s early Devon Learns to Farm stories, if Noah liked The Muppet Christmas Carol.
NOAH’S FATHER came to pick him up just before eleven.
Devon had offered to drive him back to his car, but he plainly had plenty to do around the farm, as evidenced by the phone call he excused himself to take after breakfast—something about feed delivery, maybe?
—and God knew getting the car out of the snowbank and running might not be a simple task.
Noah’s dad had called a tow to meet them there.
But before that, while Devon dealt with whatever he was dealing with, Amber took Noah on a tour to meet the sheep.
“You can’t seriously be afraid of them,” Amber said, hunched against the cold as they stood at the side of the pen.
“They’re huge!” Noah pointed out.
“So are hockey players,” Amber countered.
Which, well. “Yeah,” he agreed, “and now I have brain damage.”
Amber blanched like she’d accidentally put her foot in it, but Noah only grinned. It was what it was. “Oh my God.” She huffed and shoved at his arm. “It’s like they made you in a factory just for him.”
The warmth of the backhanded compliment washed over him, and he burrowed deeper into his jacket. “If that’s the case, I guess I better meet the family.” A potential horrifying pun occurred to him. “Oh God, you don’t eat the sheep, do you?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” Amber said, as though Noah hadn’t just watched her eat a quarter pound of bacon. “But no. Why would we give them names if we were going to eat them? We just raise them for wool, though we’re talking about doing cheese production. Everyone likes cheese.”
“Everyone does like cheese.”
Amber elbowed him. “Come on. I’ll bring out Flower for you. She’s Devon’s baby.”
As if she knew somehow, from the hour they’d spent together, that that would get Noah to capitulate.
Noah didn’t know what he expected from the term baby, but it wasn’t a gangly thing stuffed inside a roll of wool stuffed inside a knitted sweater with a tulip on it.
Flower was just over six months old and already about a hundred pounds.
She nudged his hands like a dog would, as though hoping for treats, and crunched down happily when Amber gave him a chunk of carrot for her.
“Her mom was a late bloomer,” Amber said.
Noah wiped his hand on his pants and tilted his head in question.
“Giving birth in June. Most of them lamb in February or March.”
Noah looked into the pen. It wasn’t difficult to work out which sheep were ewes; they didn’t have horns. “So those sheep are all pregnant?”
“The ewes are, yeah.”
Huh. “How do you tell? Like, I’m guessing they don’t pee on a stick, and they’re all kind of….” He gestured. “The same shape.”
“Round?” Amber suggested.
Even the male sheep were, well. Yeah. “I was going to say fluffy.”
“Well, you’re right. They don’t pee on a stick. Though I bet my mom wishes we could do that instead. She’s a vet,” she added when Noah gave her a blank look. “Preg checks on sheep are done rectally.”
They what? “I’m sorry,” he said, “are you telling me your mom—”
“Fists livestock for a living? Oh yeah. Shoulder-deep. You can see why I didn’t follow in her footsteps.”
“You mean handprints?”
“Hoofprints?” Amber suggested.
They grinned at each other.
“Anyway,” she went on, “they’re all pregnant, so that’s why the rams are mixed in right now—no risk of inbreeding. Though we’ll have to separate the little ones into their own flock soon enough. Flower might look young and innocent, but she won’t be for much longer.”
“Farm life.” Noah shook his head. “I get the feeling there’s lots to know.”
Flower headbutted his leg.
“Ow.”
“Okay, Miss Attitude,” Amber said sternly. “Go play with your cousins.”
Flower made as if to butt Noah’s leg again, but Nelson chuffed at her and did a little play bow, and she trotted off with the dog in pursuit.
“Devon hand-raised her,” she said, deliberately casual, like she knew it was the conversational equivalent of taking a baseball bat to Noah’s knees. “Her mama couldn’t make enough milk for three, so she got bottle-fed. That’s why she’s so spoiled.”
Oh no, that was so cute. Why weren’t there pictures of that in Devon’s office? “He’s a sensitive guy, huh?”
Amber gave him a sharp look, as though she’d read as much into Noah’s off-the-cuff comment as he intended. “It seems like you know him pretty well, considering you just met him yesterday. But maybe not as well as you’d like?”
“Shit, was I being too subtle?” he asked. “Maybe I could take out a billboard?”
“Don’t worry. I think even Devon’s worked it out.” She gave him a long, assessing glance. “I don’t think you need this warning. But just in case—if you break his heart, I will use you to preg check a sheep and then bury you in the manure pile.”
Yikes. “Understood.”
She dimpled at him. “Good. Wanna see pics of Devon bottle-feeding lambs?”
The wind kicked up, and he shivered. “Can we look at them inside?”
Noah spent the next few hours keeping Amber and Devon company while they went through the year’s sales data to find out what colors and fiber mixes (what was a fiber mix?
Noah didn’t know and was afraid to ask in case it was also about sheep crap) and “wool weights” or whatever were selling, so they could restock the shop fronts and decide on their orders for next year.
From what Noah could tell, that process took about five minutes, but the gossip session that happened concurrently stretched it into almost two hours.
Noah didn’t know Amber’s family, and despite the fact that Amber was airing all their dirty laundry right in front of him, he didn’t learn anything about them apart from the fact that her brother was a tool.
He was too busy running his fingers through Nelson’s fur and, to be honest, making what he suspected were incredibly obvious heart eyes as Devon wound a lump of yarn into something more ball-shaped so that Amber could make—he didn’t know. Mittens? A scarf? A sweater?
Finally Nelson perked up his ears and tilted his head and padded out of the room. A moment later Noah heard the crunch of tires on snow.
That would be his dad.
Amber raised her eyebrows at Devon.
Devon cleared his throat. “C’mon, uh, I’ll walk you out.”
Noah might fucking swoon. Tommy who?
But he managed to keep it together until they were in the mudroom, where he tugged on his nicely warmed boots and shrugged into his jacket.
“So,” Devon said. He rubbed the back of his neck with one scarred hand.
“So,” Noah repeated. He let himself sway closer, until he could pluck Devon’s phone out of his pocket. “Unlock this for me. I’m giving you my number.”
The awkwardness evaporated. Score one for Noah. “You are, huh? Expecting me to text you first?” He handed it over.
Noah created a new contact named NOAH BELL followed by three kissy-face emojis and entered his number. “Nah. You’re gonna call. Like a gentleman.”
Devon took the phone back, but he was looking at Noah. “I am?” He was still just a little pink in the cheeks, which were all pinched up as he held back a smile.
“You are.” Noah pushed himself up on his tiptoes and kissed his cheek. It was warm and stubbly under his lips.
“I am,” Devon agreed, much pinker now.
Yeah, he was. “I’m looking forward to it.” And now Noah needed to make an exit before he decided to move in instead. “Thanks for the rescue, Devon.”
If his own cheeks felt warm, well, his dad would probably pass off any flush as down to the winter chill.
HOW SOON is too soon to call him, do you think?
Devon regretted sending the text as soon as he’d done it, but it was too late now.
You are a disaster of a human, Amber sent back. You could have called him ten seconds after he left and it wouldn’t have been too soon.
Groaning, Devon flopped back against the back of the couch. He wasn’t proud of the fact that he’d apparently lost whatever remained of his mind. There just wasn’t anything he could do about it at this point.