Chapter 24
CARTER
When Mrs. Presley first roped me into being the town’s Easter Bunny, I had resisted, and when I put the costume on, I had felt like an asshole, but as the afternoon wore on, I had to admit to myself that I was having a nice day.
I was hardly ever around kids. I didn’t have brothers and sisters, so there were no nephews or nieces running around.
And there weren’t any kids at the office, where I spent the vast majority of my waking hours.
Now that I had gotten a chance to interact with some little humans, I had to say I liked them.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had smiled so much, even though no one could see it behind the mask.
The kids’ excitement and enthusiasm were infectious, getting me hyped up right alongside them.
Easter had never really been on my radar most years, but I had a feeling it would be a bigger deal for me going forward.
Maybe I could try hosting some kind of big Easter event back in LA next year.
It was impossible to get the same sense of community there as you could here in Ferris, considering the sheer amount of people concentrated into a single area, but there had to be a way to do something similar.
As silly as they seemed from the outside, it had become clear to me that events like these really helped bring people together.
The world definitely needed more of that.
Or maybe I could come back next year to be the Ferris Easter Bunny again. I already knew the suit fit. I sighed and shook my head slightly, not wanting to mess up the photo for the kid standing beside me at the moment.
I couldn’t come back to Ferris next year just for fun. The only reason I had been able to spend so much time here now was because Allory was in crisis mode with this PR stuff. I never got a chance to slow down like this and take some time to get to know a place.
That was probably for the best, considering most of what I had learned was that Allory had fucked over lots of people in its quest for profits.
If I went to some of the other places my father had meddled with, would I find more of the same story as I had in Ferris?
A town destroyed, families torn asunder, good people struggling just to get by.
And for what? More money in Allory’s bank accounts? Numbers on a spreadsheet went up while people suffered and went hungry. Our stock price soared while good Americans crashed and burned.
I hadn’t signed up for any of this when I took over the company.
Money was obviously important, but personally, I couldn’t remove the human cost of success from the equation.
If Allory’s success was built on people getting hurt, I couldn’t just ignore it.
How many people were out there like Shelby, with similar stories about what we had done to them?
I shuddered to think about it.
Putting those thoughts aside as much as I could, I got my head back into Easter Bunny mode.
I welcomed kids and parents alike, now that the line was thinning out.
People were just having fun now, doing more joke poses with me.
I was happy to oblige them. My favorite had to be when a couple of tipsy gentlemen picked up the huge foam carrots and had a sword fight with them in front of me.
It was a lot of fun. Way more fun than exploiting farmers to make a few bucks.
That wasn’t the way I was running Allory, but new leadership didn’t erase the past mistakes my father had made. I was trying to do things a better way, balancing success for the company with success for the people I worked with.
Small farmers like Shelby needed partners, not mega corps acting as competition.
They were the heart and soul of this country, keeping us fed without filling us with pesticides and synthetic hormones.
We needed more farmers like that instead of less.
I knew Allory was part of the problem, but these days, I was desperately trying to make Allory part of the solution.
That required more than just good PR videos online or pretending to change our ways. It required real commitment to change, strength to withstand all the pushback from board members and shareholders, and the tenacity to see it through to the end.
I couldn’t say for sure if I could be the change I wanted to see in the world, but I knew I could try.
Once the event wound down, I headed back to my room to get out of the suit. Taking off the itchy bunny costume was the best feeling in the world. The cool air on my sweaty skin was like heaven. As good as that felt, it wasn’t as good as having Shelby watch me all afternoon.
She hadn’t bothered with playing games or getting fair food that would make a cardiologist weep. Her attention had been firmly focused right on me. I knew that because my focus had also been on her all afternoon.
Shelby was a special girl. I loved the way she teased me relentlessly. She knew I was the billionaire CEO from Allory, and she didn’t care about my money or status. It was such a refreshing change of pace.
I couldn’t remember the last time I dropped my guard like this.
Back home, whether I was in the office or sharing a drink with a friend—of which I didn’t have many—I was always putting on the front of who I was supposed to be.
The tightly wound billionaire. The guy who made moves, closed deals, and turned money into more money.
The unyielding, stubborn, relentless businessman.
Here? With her?
I was none of those things. And if I started thinking about that for too long, it started to freak me out. I needed a distraction. So instead of showering in my bathroom at the B&B, I decided to head up to Shelby’s farm.
The drive over there felt like it took an eternity. The truck still had a funky smell, but I barely even noticed it. My thoughts were all about Shelby. It was amazing how quickly someone could become important in my life. We’d barely just met and I couldn’t imagine life without her already.
That was a serious problem. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stay here in Ferris.
People back at the home office were already starting to send passive-aggressive messages about when I was coming back, saying there were things I needed to review in person with the whole team. And they weren’t necessarily wrong.
If nothing else, it would probably be a good idea to head back for a few days, check in with everyone, keep folks in line and on task. But the problem with that? Once I was back in LA, I couldn’t really justify returning to Ferris. Not on the company’s dime and not on the company’s time.
I was the CEO, but even I answered to people. The board gave me a lot of leeway, but eventually, they would start questioning my choices. Lord knew I was questioning them myself. This whole thing had started as business, but it had been getting intensely personal for me.
The turnoff leading to Granny’s Acre Farm came into view. It was a hard-packed dirt road with no sign announcing where it went, but I had become intimately familiar with it over the last couple of weeks. The sight of it sparked joy in me, knowing who was waiting for me at the end of it.
Tyler’s truck stank to high heaven but it handled well on country roads like this.
After driving around in it for so long, I was tempted just to buy the damned thing.
It seemed like Shelby’s brother, Shane, was never coming back to fix my car.
I could have flown out a technician to get it done faster than this.
But hey, I supposed waiting on my car to get fixed was a great reason to stick around in town for a while. No one would expect me to just abandon a luxury vehicle like that out here in the sticks. It was a perfectly legitimate reason for me to be here.
I could also keep looking for investment opportunities. That was a part of why I was in Ferris to begin with, but I kept getting sidetracked because of Shelby.
The fact was, I didn’t want to visit other farmers to check out their operations. Granny’s Acre was the only farm I wanted to spend time on. The property came into view as I approached. Shelby’s van was parked in front of the house where it normally was, and it brought a smile to my face.
Shelby’s farm didn’t seem like a bad place to live.
The peaceful country life was a far cry from my life in Los Angeles, but I was starting to see the appeal of a small town like Ferris.
Slowing down helped me appreciate the small joys of life, like a cool breeze after working in the sun all day, a good meal after working up an appetite, or a smile from a pretty girl I had no business falling for.
In my other life, everything needed to be bigger, better, bolder.
And I had thought things couldn’t get better than that.
It turned out I was wrong. There was a benefit to getting closer to the land and the outdoors.
It felt a lot better than being stuck inside all day looking at screens and PowerPoint presentations.
Was that even living? I was starting to think it wasn’t.
That maybe I’d had things all wrong. Money was important, but after a certain point, it didn’t really change anything in my life.
Now I was just socking it away in the bank, barely even looking at the balances on my accounts.
My priorities had gotten out of whack somewhere along the line.
I was making lots of money, but I didn’t think I was happy. Job satisfaction and actual happiness weren’t the same thing. It seemed to me I had one without the other. It was also becoming increasingly clear to me I no longer knew what I was working toward.
I had money. I had success. I had respect. Now what?
My heart was telling me it was time to look for fulfillment outside the company.
I wanted love, affection, and someone to start the rest of my life with.
I wanted a family. Children. Hell, even my father, a notoriously ruthless workaholic, had taken time to get married and have me.
He hadn’t been a great father but he was a father.
I couldn’t say I was too busy if he had somehow found time for it.
As I thought about it, my only defense was that I had never met a woman who seemed right for all of those things. A woman who made me want to settle down. To commit. To have children.
And now even that excuse was no longer true.
Shelby stepped out onto her porch as I parked Tyler’s truck beside her van. The setting sun made her blonde locks glow like fire, and the breeze blew it around her head like a halo.
Now there was a woman who made me want to settle down, commit, and start a family. Not right away. I wasn’t a lunatic. But with Shelby, I could suddenly see the future mapped out before me, and it was looking a lot different than it had before I had shown up in Ferris.
I got out of the truck, rushed over to her, and kissed her with every ounce of affection I felt for her.