CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Asher
Ledger’s broad shoulders fill the window frame and block the early morning light coming into the kitchen. The steam from his coffee curls up above his shoulders.
I study him as he takes in my farm and its fields, the early morning mist weaving itself through the rows.
How did this happen?
I keep thinking I’m going to shake my head, and last night, this past week, will all be a dream. How does fifteen years pass and you still have a connection with someone as strong as ours feels?
It’s the weirdest thing to feel like you know someone when you truly don’t know much about them anymore at all.
Their likes. Their dislikes. How they take their coffee.
What their late-night fridge raid choice is.
Their taste in music. The hobbies they like or the company they keep. What they’re like after a bad day.
All things I used to know about the man standing in front of me, yet now feel like a complete mystery.
And yet none of those things mattered last night. Nor do they in this moment that I need to enjoy instead of overanalyzing.
I don’t know what I expected to happen after that incredible sex, but waking up beside him, seeing him standing in my kitchen, definitely wasn’t one of them.
“You’ve expanded quite a lot,” he says and then hisses when the coffee he takes a sip of scalds his tongue. “I don’t remember there being lavender on the slopes over there.”
“We had a fire burn through here about six years ago,” I say as he turns to look at me. He has a way of doing that right at the perfect time to show me I’m being heard. “The house was saved, but almost everything else was lost. The Lavender. Machinery. Tools. Cars.”
“I had no idea. I’m sorry.”
I shrug and take a sip of my own coffee, recalling the devastation and the weight it put on Pop’s shoulders.
How it felt like he aged so quickly during that time.
“It was a disaster. The lavender was burned through and the heat of the fire somehow triggered the seeds of an invasive species called mallow to crack and sprout.”
“Seeds? Where did those come from?” He takes a few steps toward me.
“We learned that lesson the hard way. Apparently, they can lay dormant under the soil for years, and then extreme heat like a fire, can trigger them to imbibe, crack, and then grow.” I shake my head, remembering Pop’s despair.
“The mallow took over the fields. Stole water nutrients from the new lavender seeds we were trying to propagate. They’d start to grow and then die.
We tried everything but ended up having to use a ground clear. ”
“Which means the soil was poisoned and couldn’t grow anything for a certain amount of time, right?” he asks.
“I’m impressed,” I tease. “How does a man who lives in a concrete jungle know about ground clear?”
“We have a family home in Sag Harbor. We’ve had to use it there.”
Of course, he has a house in Sag Harbor. Just a small reminder of what different worlds we live in.
“So you understand why we couldn’t grow in our existing fields.
It forced us to buy more land.” I point to the slopes he was referring to.
“Gran and Pop were so stressed taking out a second mortgage on this house to pay for it when they didn’t have any viable lavender to harvest and profit from.
Their anxiety was a constant around here, regardless of how hard they tried to hide it. ”
“Understandably.”
“It took us a full two years to get up and running and back to our prior capacity, but the repercussions of that year are still being felt to this day.”
“Two years.” He whistles. “That’s a lot of time to be without your commodity.”
I nod. “It was. And of course, Pop couldn’t stomach the thought of letting Danny or George go since they’re like family, so he made the sacrifices instead . . .”
“Sounds like the man I knew.” He smiles softly. “Did insurance help?”
“It did some, but not enough to cover the cost of buying new land and waiting out a year to be able to reseed again.”
“I can imagine. I’m sorry that happened.” He looks out the window and then back to me. “And now it’s all yours.”
“It is.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
I hold his gaze and ask myself about how to answer his question. A question I’ve asked myself numerous times over the past few months.
“Is it what I envisioned I’d be doing with my life?
No,” I say with a reticent smile, “but you already knew that. At the same time . . . it’s where fate has led me to be.
Is it a daily grind? Definitely. Especially when I’m learning on the fly and don’t have enough confidence in myself to be certain I know what I’m doing or how to do it.
The Fields was Pop’s area of expertise, and while I helped out in between taking care of Gran and doing its social media, I was never knee-deep into the details. ”
“And now it all rests on your shoulders,” he murmurs.
I nod but rise abruptly from my chair and move toward the coffee pot, uncomfortable with the questions that logically should come next. Why are you not sketching anymore? What happened to going to college and conquering the world? Why are you still in Cedar Falls?
They’re all valid in their own right, but ones with answers that will give away too much.
That Asher Wells—the Wells family, in general—is even more penniless now than we were back when his father accused us of being just that.
The last thing I want him to know is that I’m struggling and that losing the farm and this house is a real possibility if we don’t have a strong harvest this year.
That I’m doing everything in my power to get up to speed and figure out how to reinvent the wheel here so we can turn a profit and stay afloat.
But he doesn’t ask, he doesn’t pry, and while I’m grateful that he doesn’t, I wonder what he’s thinking right now. What it is he sees when he looks at me, as he stands here in my kitchen in the early morning hours.
Does he regret coming here last night? Is he simply being polite by having this chat when he really wants to go? Was last night as incredible for him as it was for me? Because last night was incredible, but now there’s a sense of reality setting in, and what the heck do we do now?
My unspoken questions mixed with the weight of his stare on my back has nerves suddenly firing to life.
“Speaking of work falling on shoulders, I’m sure you have plenty yourself that you need to get to.
Don’t feel the need to stay on my account,” I ramble as I fiddle with the coffee filter, grab the sponge to wipe down the counter, and then straighten the dish towels on the counter. Anything to keep my hands busy.
“Asher?” His voice is closer than I expected. I never heard him move.
“Hmm?” I ask as I move toward the refrigerator.
He hooks an arm around my waist to stop my progress. “You’re doing it again,” he says.
“Doing what?”
“Being skittish.”
I look up to meet his eyes. He’s right. I’m acting like a stray dog who’s afraid of everything. This is not me.
“I don’t do this morning-after thing very well, is all,” I finally say.
“No?”
“No.” I smile to cover my flushing cheeks. “In fact, I don’t do it at all so . . .”
He angles his head and studies my face. “What do you mean you don’t do it at all?”
I can see the moment he understands what I mean. That I’m not one to have overnight company. I swear he stands a little taller and his chest puffs out a bit more.
“Am I the first guy to ever sleep over here?”
“Until a few months ago, I didn’t exactly live alone.
” Pop would have died of embarrassment if he’d walked into the kitchen and found a random man with bedhead drinking coffee.
I think I would have too. After the conversation we had with Gran the other day, I venture to say that she wouldn’t have been at all embarrassed.
Ledger’s grin widens. “So, is this making you uncomfortable? Me standing here, drinking your coffee, making small talk?”
“Not uncomfortable, no.” I try to take a step back, but Ledger holds me in place, raising his eyebrows as if to tell me he’s not satisfied with my response. “I just . . . I just don’t know what that means or how this ends, or . . . whatever.”
He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Well, it—or whatever—means we had a good night. The fact that I’m not rushing out is a good sign. One that means I want to see you again.”
“There was a question?” I tease despite the ridiculous amount of relief I feel from his words.
“Not at all.” He presses a chaste kiss to my lips. “And how it ends is I finish my cup of coffee and then head into work because I have to figure out new and clever ways to kiss Mayor Grossman’s ass—”
“I warned you.”
“You did.” He nods. “And when I walk out that red door over there, we’ll both spend our day thinking about the incredible night we had, all while trying to wipe the goofy smiles off our faces—that people will question what they are there for.
Then, we’ll touch base later and see how we feel about seeing each other again. It’s as simple as that.”
“What? You mean there’s no three-day rule about calling?”
“I think fifteen years covered that for us.”
I laugh. “Should I worry that this is something you have down to a science because you do it a lot?”
“Not a lot. No.”
My eyes stay locked on his, and I hate that the thought of him standing in someone else’s kitchen, having morning coffee irritates me.
It’s ridiculous. Of course, he’s done that before.
He’s extraordinarily handsome, wealthy, and educated.
“The perfect catch,” I murmur out loud before I realize I have.
“The perfect catch?”
“Yep. I bet you’re the perfect catch for all those high-society, Park Avenue regulars in Manhattan.”
Like I once aspired to be.
“Hey. Don’t. That look on your face is saying too much.
” That I’m not good enough for him. That I don’t fit in his world.
That his dad was right. He brushes the most tender kiss to my lips and rests his forehead against mine.
“I don’t care about the high-society ladies in Manhattan, Asher.
Those women are perfect on the outside and boring on the inside.
I prefer things a bit more complicated. A bit more real.
And with more history to them.” He sighs and leans back, searching my face to make sure I’ve heard him.
When he’s satisfied, he rubs his thumb back and forth over my lower lip. “I do have to get to work, though.”
“So is this the part where you kiss me goodbye?”
“It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it,” he murmurs seconds before his lips slant over mine. The kiss is the perfect amount of soft yet demanding. He’s definitely in control—of the angle, the intensity, the length—and he’s somehow perfect at all of them.
When the kiss ends, he walks toward the door and then stops to look back at me. There is a lopsided smile on his lips. “This is the part where you start thinking about me all day.”