Chapter 27
SHELBY
Taking Carter to see my parents’ old farm had seemed like a good idea when I had it, but now that we were in my van, heading down the road, nerves pricked at my insides.
Wooden fenceposts whizzed by on either side of us, and I thought back to when I was a kid.
Seeing the posts blur together had always made me feel like I was in a spaceship, cruising at warp speed through the cosmos, instead of driving through rural Kentucky with my parents.
The farm road connected my grandparents’ farm to Whitaker Farms—or what used to be Whitaker Farms—and my parents had driven us down this way easily a thousand times. I had never imagined taking this drive with the CEO of Allory Enterprises.
I had never imagined sleeping with him either, but that had turned out to be fantastic.
I suspected seeing the old farm would be less fun, but I needed him to see this.
Carter had been shockingly great about everything, so I didn’t want him to think I was trying to make him feel guiltier than he already did.
This was about showing him who I was and where I came from.
I didn’t know how much longer I would have Carter in my life, but while he was here, I wanted him to see the real me, the way he’d been showing me the real Carter. I couldn’t ask him to stay in Ferris but I could sure as hell make him remember me when he was gone.
Opening up to him was nerve-wracking, and when I got nervous, I got chatty, which was true right then. “The two properties are basically next to each other,” I was telling Carter. “But there’s a slight ridge between them, so the only way there is to go the long way around.”
“You can’t tunnel through the ridge or something?” he asked, looking like he was working through the problem.
“It’s pretty big,” I said. “A tunnel would be a lot of work, I imagine.”
“So it’s like a mountain?” he asked.
I laughed. “No, Carter, look.”
I gestured off to the left of us, where the rise in the land was. Carter looked at me like I was joking.
“That’s the ridge?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“That’s nothing. You can’t build a bridge? Or some kind of overpass?”
I shot him a smile. “One, it’s bigger up close. And two, there’s no point in connecting the properties anymore, remember?”
He shook his head. “Right, of course.”
“Your company owns it,” I said, some of the humor fading from my voice. “That means I can’t visit now without trespassing. On the land where I grew up.”
Carter inhaled a long breath before letting it out slowly. “I understand that must be difficult.”
“But today, you’re with me,” I said. “I assume I have your permission?”
He grinned at me. “Well, I guess I could allow that. As long as you behave yourself.”
“Never,” I shot back.
“Fair enough.”
We continued the rest of the ride in companionable silence. It wasn’t that much farther anyway. I spent the whole time trying to manage my emotions. They seemed to be thrashing around inside my skull, pulling me every which way.
Life had gotten incredibly complicated since Carter showed up in Ferris.
We rolled up to the massive gate, fastened shut with a thick chain and heavy lock.
“I don’t have the keys to all of Allory’s properties on my keyring.”
“Well, I guess we’re doing this the old fashioned way. Good thing I wore pants.”
I planted one hand on top of the gate and used the leverage to hop over it. Carter chuckled behind me.
“I know we’re not doing anything wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “But it sure feels like we are.”
“I assume it’s been a while since you jumped a fence somewhere.”
“Uh, maybe never, now that I think of it.”
“Damn, does your butler open them for you?”
“No, but doors do tend to open for me wherever I go.”
“Must be nice.”
“It is. There are a lot of strings attached though. I won’t stand here on your parents’ old farm and ask you to pity the poor little rich boy, but I can promise you my life has been far from perfect.”
I nodded. “I understand. It’s not a competition. Everyone goes through it at some point in their lives.”
He hopped over the gate after me, making it look effortless. Then he took my hand and we walked up the road leading to the main complex.
Whitaker Farms had been broken up into two sections.
Both had chickens, but one area was for the eggs and the other area was for selling the animals themselves.
Each group had different types of chickens, so they were kept in separate chicken houses.
I looked up at the egg house. From the outside, it pretty much looked like a long warehouse.
Now that everything had been shut down, it seemed so silent. Back when my parents had been running this place full tilt, the noise had been overwhelming. Now it was just the empty husk of what it once was.
“Did you ever see this place when it was operating?” I asked him.
“No, unfortunately.”
“It was something to see.” I walked into the chicken house, noting that all the hardware was still in place. The fences and pens and gates. It was just the life that was missing. “I’m shocked it’s all still in good condition.”
“I’m shocked this has just been sitting here empty the last few years,” he said, looking around with a sharp eye. “There has to be something we can do with this place.”
I glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “We?”
“Well, the company, I mean.” He gestured around the space. “It seems like such a waste not to use this for something. I don’t know what my father was thinking, closing it down.”
“Everyone in Ferris asked the same question.” I kept walking down the long aisle and he kept pace with me. “People expected some changes when Allory bought the place, but no one had anticipated it closing down completely.”
We reached the end of the chicken house and Carter pulled the sliding door open. It squealed on its tracks after years of disuse. The other massive chicken house was across the way, between the two buildings was the office building.
I nodded toward it. “Do you think they left stuff in there too?”
Carter shrugged. “Probably. Sometimes it’s cheaper to abandon things than to ship them and pay for storage.”
“Is everything disposable to Allory?”
“To the company, yeah, back when Dad was in charge,” he said. “Not to me. I haven’t spent a lot of time in my life thinking about my legacy, but I’ve come to realize recently that I don’t want to leave a trail of destruction in my wake like my father did.”
“See that?” I pointed to the farmhouse up on the hill. “That’s where I grew up.”
“It looks like a nice place, although I thought it would be closer.”
“Far enough away from the chicken houses that we weren’t driven crazy by the sound or the smells.”
I saw the gears turning in his head, imagining what it had been like. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“I haven’t been able to bring myself to go inside since my parents sold.” I sighed and shook my head sadly. “My parents thought Allory would take over production. I don’t think they understood how the sale would turn out.”
“I think in this case, buying the farm wasn’t Allory looking to make Ferris prosper.
” Carter sounded guilty. “Sometimes they bought farms specifically to shut them down, to cut down competitors. It’s something we learned in the tech world.
You don’t buy companies to innovate. You buy them to kill them. ”
“You’ve done deals like that before?” I asked.
He looked at his feet and nodded. “I’m ashamed to say it now, but yes. I don’t think any of those deals were as devastating as what happened here, but I still feel bad. Seeing things from the other side has made me rethink a lot of past business decisions.”
“That sounds like growth,” I told him, leaning my head against his arm. “We can’t change who we’ve been but we can try to be better in the future.”
“I’m trying,” Carter said and kissed the top of my head. It sent a shiver all the way down to my toes. “And what about your future? How big are you hoping to make Granny’s Acre Farm?”
I let out a long breath. “That’s a big question. I want to get my income solid and steady. Then I want to grow and save enough to buy this farm back from you.”
Carter took hold of my shoulder and turned me to face him. “If I could sign it over to you right now, I would. I need you to know that. But the company owns it. They would have to sign off on it.”
I nodded and pulled away. “Which they’ll never do.”
“They might.”
I met his gaze. “No. You said they closed this place to kill competition. They don’t want anyone opening this operation again.”
“Damn, you’re absolutely right,” Carter said, nodding like he was impressed. “You have a head for this kind of business.”
“You take that back.” I smiled at him but my spirits were dragging through the dirt.
“What’s wrong?”
I shot him a sour look. “What do you think? This whole situation is infuriating and depressing. The farm never had to close. People didn’t have to lose their jobs.
Being here again, it feels like a tombstone of the life I used to have, and the dream I had for myself.
Now it just reminds me of what my parents did.
How they gave it all up. Gave my future up. ”
I looked up at him, feeling a weight lift after sharing some of my deepest pain with him. For whatever reason, I felt like I could trust this man fully. All things considered, my bad bunny is anything but bad.
I was thinking of being even more honest with him. The wild urge to reveal my feelings to him gripped me like a fever. I had no idea how it had happened, but I liked Carter. I didn’t know if I loved him, but that was the path I was walking down. I wanted him to know.
Fittingly, I chickened out.
Then Carter’s phone rang again, tearing through the tension I was feeling. I waved in the direction of his pants pocket. “Go ahead.”
He looked at the screen, then at me, and then his shoulders sagged and he answered. I eavesdropped shamelessly, but it was just someone freaking out about a contract falling through in someplace I had never heard of.
When he hung up, Carter looked at me with regret. “I’m sorry, but I have to get back to the B&B. I need to get to my laptop or there’s gonna be trouble in Idaho.”
“Oh no,” I said sarcastically. “Not Idaho.”
He smiled at me. “It’s going to be an Ida-horror show.”
I laughed despite myself and shook my head. “Don’t quit your day job, Carter.”
I drove him back to the farm and he hopped into Tyler’s truck. He rolled down the window and I leaned in for a quick kiss before he drove away. I watched him go, wondering if I could just text him that I was into him.
With my thoughts a tangled mess, I walked up my porch steps to find my brother, Shane, watching me through the screen door. “That better not have been what I think it was.”
I froze at the anger in his voice. “What do you think it was?”
“I think I just saw fucking Tyler kissing my sister.” He pushed the screen door open and came out onto the porch. His footsteps were loud on the wooden boards as he paced like a caged lion.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Welcome home, Shane. You’ve missed a lot.”