Chapter Six
Ben
The midday sun scorched everything in a near-blinding blanket of light at Schuman Farms. The crunchy, golden remnants of a hay harvest stretched toward the horizon, broken up by the regularly spaced rows of rectangular bales. We were approaching that point in the summer where everything was starting to look tired and dry, in desperate need of the autumn rains or a good summer storm.
The Schumans were family friends of my dad’s, and baling and stacking hay at the farm was a staple of my summers. Even as an adult, Mom volunteered me to help. This year, the blame fell soundly on my big brother.
Not that I wasn’t happy to be able to help a neighbor. Aside from the itchy hay that got stuck everywhere and the scrapes and scratches I always seemed to accumulate, it was good exercise and a big help to the Schumans.
This year, Liam’s first summer back from his NFL stint, he had the high school football team volunteer to help as part of their conditioning program. It was exactly the sort of tidy efficiency I associated with my brother. If the team needed exercise and the Schumans needed manual labor, why not get them done together?
I grabbed another bale and tossed it onto the trailer, using my forearm to wipe away the sweat that poured down my forehead. Honestly, the sun was the worst offender. The work itself was repetitive but not terrible. It was the baking alive part that made me miserable.Well, that and the insane cramping in my hands after a day of gripping baling twine.
Liam spent most of the afternoon orchestrating the sixty-some teenage boys who’d been able to make it, though he got his hands dirty at every opportunity. Hours later, when we’d finally moved every bale into the barn, Mrs. Schuman brought pitchers of lemonade out for the team and Liam brought me over a cup.
“Thanks for coming out with us today.” He moved next to me, leaning against the wooden half-fence that sat between the barn and the farmhouse.
“Every year,” I grinned, taking a swig of the ice cold lemonade. “Did Mom talk to you about her party yet?”
Liam’s blue eyes rolled as he took a drink himself. “I don’t know what’s going on with her, but she’s acting weird.”
“Do you think she’s planning to leave and join Dad on his trips?”
He grimaced. “I actually wondered if she might be planning to leave him and is trying to get a clean slate. You know, picking up where she left off or something like that.”
My stomach plummeted. I hadn’t even considered that. “But she misses him,” I countered, grasping. “She always sounds so sad when she talks about him. It’s because she wishes he were here.”
“Maybe she sounds sad because she realizes he’s never going to really be here.”
“Maybe it has nothing to do with Dad at all.”
Liam snorted, shaking his head. “Your first suggestion was better.”
We stood in silence for a while, drinking our lemonade and watching the players goof off while they waited for their rides.
Eventually, I broke the silence, falling back into the habit of asking my big brother for advice. It was easy to do when your brother was as even-keel as Liam.
“So, I’ve got this problem,” I began, staring out at the horizon.
Liam chuckled. “Now it feels like I’m back home. Shoot.”
“When I put Grandma’s place on the market yesterday, Ava came over and tried to schedule a tour.”
“Ava, as in the chick from high school that you liked so much you dumped your girlfriend?”
I sighed. “That’s the one.”
“Okay?” Liam cocked his head my way. “I don’t see how that’s a problem, though. Sell her the house and be done with it.”
Oh, how I wished it were that simple. “I don’t want to sell it to her because then I’d have to see her all the time for a month or more. And I can’t have another agent help me because then it wouldn’t be pro bono like I promised Mom.”
Liam narrowed his eyes. “You can’t possibly still be fighting over some shit that happened in high school.”
“ I’m not the one fighting,” I defended. “They get all Jekyll-Hyde when they see me, like it’s just a condition they have now.”
“Tell her you have someone else on the line, and then ignore her until you do,” he suggested. “It’s not how I’d go about it, but I get it that we all have our own challenges.”
I grimaced, realizing how stupid this all sounded. But Ava belonged in my past—in one of the worst memories of my past—and she needed to stay there for my own sanity. We’d both fired too many shots over the years to keep this civil.
A silver minivan skidded to a stop in the Schuman’s gravel parking area. I swore under my breath.
Ava might belong in my past, but it seemed she wasn’t going to stay there.
Liam choked on a laugh as we watched Ava storm across the lawn, a murderous glare pinning me to the fence rail. Just what I needed—another very public, very embarrassing moment to add to the tally. This was exactly why I needed to keep space between me and Ava. When she and I mixed, crazy ensued, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
“Hello, Benjamin.” She might have a victorious smirk on her lips, but those baby blues were blazing.
I didn’t budge. “Ava, what are you doing here?”
“I want a tour of the Van Kamp place,” she demanded. “You’ve ignored my messages and my emails, and I see no other choice but to badger you in person.”
“I’m not giving you a tour.”
A few of the football players noticed the shootout unfolding and stepped within earshot. Ava didn’t notice. She walked right up to me until she stood so close that I could see her eyes weren’t just blue. Tiny flecks of silvery-grey dotted the sapphire irises, burning all the brighter in her admittedly-justified rage.
“Why. Not,” she ground out. It wasn’t a question. “I’ve tried to be civil with you, McKinley, but I’m prepared to take the gloves off.”
I pushed off the fence rail, irritation flaring against my best effort. “Civil?” I growled. “You call texting me every hour with a passive aggressive, insulting message civil ?”
“It’s at least as civil as refusing to let someone tour a house!”
Damn, but she was gorgeous. Righteous anger looked good on her. I needed to shut this down fast—Mrs. Schuman was peeking around the barn doors now that Ava’s voice had shot up an octave.
“Find a different house, Lancaster. I can set you up with one of my agents to search for a different house.”
“I don’t want a different house,” she growled. “I want that house. It has to be that house.” A hint of desperation entered her words at that last statement.
“I already have offers on it.” The lie rolled out before I could think it through.
Her face fell, some of the bluster dissipating. “After one day?”
“Find another house, Ava.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me or not,” I shrugged. “It doesn’t change the fact that the house is unavailable.”
That shut her down, but I couldn’t tell if she actually believed me. Closing the little space left between us, I leaned down so that we were eye-to-eye.
“Now, will you please stop wasting our time. Both of us have busy lives, and we don’t need to bring back an old feud to complicate things,” I whispered.
“You’re a fool if you think that I’m bringing anything back,” she hissed. “The feud never died, because I will never forgive you for breaking Jules’s heart.”
We stared at each other for several torturous breaths, neither one willing to be the first to back down. As I stood there surrounded by the scent of strawberries and sugar, I reaffirmed what I had always believed.
Even if I decided to take another stab at dating, it could never be Ava. We only brought out the worst in each other, and dating me was already as good as the kiss of death. Every time I dated a girl, I messed it up. Deep down I knew, if I dated Ava, I’d somehow manage to ruin everything for her.