When Luna left, Jameson called the Tahoe PUD and began the painful process of dealing with an automated system that kept kicking him to the curb. “Agent,” he said for the twentieth time.
Disconnect.
“Customer service,” he said next time.
Disconnect.
“A LIVE PERSON,” he said loudly on his fifth attempt, like the automated system cared.
Disconnect.
In a last-ditch effort, and more than an hour into the effort of reaching someone, he hit all the numbers and the pound sign and the star sign a million times. He was just about to hang up when someone said, “Tahoe Water Public Utilities Department.”
He blinked. “Are you a real person?”
“Last I checked. How can I help you?”
“We’ve got a busted water line at Apple Ridge Farm, in the botanical gardens,” he said. “We need someone here ASAP.”
“Sorry, sir. We’re working about two weeks out.”
He rubbed the tension spot between his eyes. “That would leave us without water in the fields and shut us down, not to mention threaten the life of the gardens and orchards.”
“So do you want the appointment in two weeks or not?”
He ground his back teeth. “Yes.” He climbed over his makeshift desk with DZ under one arm. After passing the goat to Stella in the front room, he headed outside to find Luna to let her know about the PUD. He was halfway to the barn when he saw her in her truck coming toward the barn from the other way. The truck was old and beat to hell, bouncing her around on the dirt road, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her smile as she pulled up—executing half a donut while she was at it—to park next to another truck said it all.
Then she hopped out, and damn. Everything about the sight—the sun making her hair shine, her eyes flashing with good humor, and those long, long legs as she closed the distance to the group of men waiting on her—really did it for him.
Not having seen Jameson walking the trail toward the barn, Luna stopped to talk to Jeb and a few other guys with him. Jameson had met Shep and Jeb, but not the others. She hugged one in a way that told him they were very familiar with each other, and as he got closer, he could hear her words.
“Marco, how’s your wife, how are those gorgeous babies?”
Marco grinned wide and pulled out his phone, presumably to show her pictures.
“I can’t believe how big they’re getting!” she gushed, looking at the phone. “So adorable . . .”
One of the other guys also showed her pics, and just when he wondered if anyone was going to get any work done today, she stepped back with a sweet smile and said, “Hey, thanks for listening to the changes we’re making, guys. It means a lot that you understand we’ve got to work harder and smarter if we want to stay in business. I so appreciate all you do.” Catching sight of Jameson, she excused herself, climbed the fence between them with an ease that was sexy as hell, and looked at him expectantly.
“The PUD is two weeks out,” he said.
“What? No.” She whipped out her phone and stalked off. “Thanks for trying,” she called over her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, no one else here can get anything from them either.”
“But you can?”
“Well, duh.”
He had to let out a wry laugh as she left him in her dust. Feeling like he’d failed at a basic task, something he wasn’t used to, he went back to Luna’s office to work, but found Stella in there making some calls. He ended up in the Square on a bench, which was every bit as hard as Stella had complained about in their staff meeting. But it was quiet, so he stayed out there with his laptop and a soda, a burger, and fries he’d ordered to go from the café. He was deep in the work when he realized he had company. Three humongous crows stood near his feet, in a line, and stared up at him with their large, beady black eyes like three godfathers waiting for their payment for allowing him to sit there.
He tossed them some fries.
They shared, eating neatly and thoroughly, then stared at him some more.
“That’s it, guys, sorry. The rest is for me.”
They flew off.
He went back to work, but two minutes later the crows were back. The first one dropped a piece of foil at his feet, the second a shiny silvery pen missing a few pieces, and the third a wrinkled dollar bill.
“They’re making a trade.”
Jameson craned his neck as Luna came up to him, a wheezing Sprout trotting along at her side, her faithful steed.
“If you keep trading with the crows, they’ll keep bringing you stuff,” she said. “If they bring you something you like, give them a bigger portion and they’ll keep bringing that thing to you.”
He picked up the wrinkled dollar bill and tossed them more fries.
She smiled. “Now they understand what to do. Bring you money.”
He had to laugh. “Sounds morally gray . . .”
“You probably couldn’t be charged with stealing. Maybe an accessory though . . .” She sat next to him and Sprout plopped at her feet in a warm sunspot. Luna brazenly stole a fry from Jameson’s plate, dragging it through his neat dollop of ketchup before popping it into her mouth.
No one had ever done that, eaten off his plate, and . . . he liked it.
“Oh my God,” she moaned, and he really hoped she kept stealing his food so he could hear that sound, that sexy purr from deep in her throat again. That, or screw the french fry, he wanted the chance to make her purr himself.
Milo, sitting on a bench across from them, called out, “Babe, you’re doing it again, having sex with a french fry.”
“Sorry.” Luna, not looking sorry at all, grabbed two french fries this time, and once again drowned them in ketchup. “And sorry I’m stealing your food. I skipped breakfast and lunch. Starving.”
Jameson pushed the plate with half of what was left of his burger over to her.
“Wise decision,” Milo told him. “We had maybe twenty seconds left until she turned into a very different person.”
“Don’t listen to him.” She met Jameson’s gaze. “You sure you don’t mind?”
Her hands were shaking a little and she was pale. “I’m not hungry,” he said, and waited until she was in the middle of inhaling his burger while running through her work emails and texts with her free hand, multitasking in a way he knew he’d never managed . . . “Luna.”
She gave him a go-ahead gesture with her burger hand, still scrolling with her other.
“Did you get anywhere with the PUD?”
She chewed and swallowed. “Dammit! They didn’t call me back. Son of a—” Wiping her mouth with a napkin, she hit a number on her phone and stared at him as she waited for the connection. Specifically at his mouth, which brought visceral memories of when that mouth had been on hers, of the sweet little whimper she’d made when his tongue had touched hers—
“Hi, Sharon,” she said, her voice a little husky now, like maybe she knew his mind had gone to the same place as hers. “Can I speak to Bob, please? It’s Luna at Apple Ridge. Yep, I’ll hold.” She stuffed in another two bites before wiping her mouth again. “Hey, Bob. Guess what? I’ve got another busted pipe at the main, which is your territory— Yep, right at the same place. Your people already turned off the water but I need your guys out here to fix. Yesterday. The new boss is an even harder hard-ass than the previous one.” She smirked at Jameson. “Yeah, a real a-hole. So save my life and get out here, please? Yeah? Aw, you’re my favorite.” She listened, then laughed. “You bet. I’ll have Chef box you up his famous strawberry pie—of course from our own strawberries.”
She hung up and had the good grace not to gloat as she went back to demolishing his lunch.
“How did you do that?” He shook his head. “I was on hold for a total of two hours and got nowhere.”
“Everyone’s got their own will-do-anything-for-you button. You just gotta know what it is.”
“Yeah? What’s yours?”
She smiled. “You’re going to have to work a lot harder for that information.”
Willow walked by. “Hello, Jameson,” she said, pointedly ignoring Luna, and sat with Milo.
Jameson looked at Luna. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why? What have you heard?”
“What would I hear?”
“I don’t know. How would I know what you’ve heard until you tell me what you heard? Who was it, Stella?”
“Hey,” Stella said via the radio. “Hurtful.”
“Dammit,” Luna said. “My stupid radio keeps getting caught on my belt in the on position.” She adjusted it and looked at Jameson. “It was Chef, right? He gossips like an old man at a poker game.”
“No one told me anything,” Jameson said.
“Uh-huh.” Her phone had been buzzing in her pocket this whole time. Her radio was also squawking, and she paused to handle all of it, something about a garden snake in the barn, and something else about Hen Solo on the loose chasing two teenagers who’d tried to shoplift lip gloss from Stella’s shop . . . Her life made him dizzy.
“Excuse me,” she said, and was gone.
Jameson went back to the office and reclaimed his closet. When his stomach growled, he looked up. It was 6:00 p.m. He went in search of sustenance and found Willow and Shayne in a serious lip-lock in the staff room. He quietly turned around and headed out. He’d just passed the Square when he saw Luna standing with a man next to a Tahoe Water Public Utilities truck. The man looked stern and kept shaking his head, and as Jameson moved closer, he caught their convo.
“You were right, Cutie-Pie. There’s a big problem, one I can’t possibly fix today. I’ll come back with all the needed equipment soon as I can, I promise.”
“By then I’ll have a dead botanical garden,” she said. “Think of the bunnies who eat all my flowers, Bob. We both know your sweet little Kylie loves to come see the bunnies. You going to tell her that they’re all dead because you didn’t have time? How’s that going to go over?”
Bob, looking pained, sighed. “My boss’ll have my hide if I fix this for you right now instead of the other five emergencies we’ve got today.”
“And my boss will have your boss’s hide. You know how much philanthropy we do, how much we give back to the community. Plus”—Luna sweetened her smile and leaned in a little closer—“I’ve got two tickets to the Warriors game next Thursday night with your name on them.”
Bob gasped. And if he’d been wearing pearls, he’d certainly have been clutching them. “You better not be messing with me. You know how I love the Warriors.”
“I do,” Luna said. “So, do we have a deal?”
“You drive a hard bargain, but yeah, we’ve got a deal.”
Luna gave Bob a brilliant smile. She’d effortlessly charmed the guy. And maybe, possibly, Jameson as well. It was fascinating to watch her work. She connected with people, making everyone a friend for life, something completely out of his skill set.
She looked up then, saw him, and waved him over. “Jameson, meet Bob from the PUD. Bob, you’re really going to like Jameson even if he’s a numbers guy and a suit.”
“I thought we already established that I’m in jeans today,” Jameson said.
“Don’t think I don’t know that it’s only because Dammit Ziggy kept chewing on your suit’s pant leg.”
“At least I’m adapting.”
Luna smiled. “That’s news to me. I wasn’t aware that Y chromosomes could adapt.”
Bob grinned. “So you’re the new hard-ass boss.”
Jameson gave Luna a side-eye.
“I was just kidding!” she said.
Right.
“You also said he was so uptight he squeaked when he walked,” Bob said helpfully, and smiled at Jameson. “Which is what they need around here. They work hard, and are so great for the community, but I’ve got a feeling they could use a hand up in the area of actually making money.”
One hundred percent true story.
Luna rolled her eyes. “Maybe I should call someone else to assist me with our water main.”
Bob laughed so hard he had to bend over, hands on his knees.
Luna sighed. It’d been a desperate, empty threat and everyone knew it. She looked at the time. “Oops, gotta go. I’m meeting the new tenant with a contract in five. We’re finally filling that little shop adjacent to the Bright Spot.”
“Something good, I hope?” Bob asked.
“A candy shop.”
“Yes!” Bob pumped his fist, then watched Luna walk away. “That there is one of the best women on this planet.”
Jameson was also watching her go, thinking yep. And she also had the best ass on the planet.
“Be careful with her,” Bob warned. “She’s family.”
There was that f-word again. “We’re just partners.”
“Whatever you say, man. Just know that she deserves the world, you know what I mean?”
Jameson found himself nodding, but he wasn’t sure he knew even a fraction of it. She was very good at the illusion of being open, but she was even more closed off than he was, and that was saying something. What he did know was that he’d seen her people skills now, and how she easily—if not reluctantly—had folded him into the network. In his past jobs, if someone had a connection, they wouldn’t have shared it. But Luna was the real deal, and genuine. Holding her connections close to her chest had probably never occurred to her.
Nope, the only things she held close to her chest were her emotions.
He made his way back to the closet. If Luna was still working, he’d do the same. An hour later, she finally appeared, looking like she’d been through the wringer. She was in different jeans, a flannel shirt over a cami, damp hair up in a messy topknot, emphasis on messy. Which maybe was his new favorite Luna look. He really wanted to know what it’d feel like to kiss her again, to unleash all that fiery sass and passion his way. “You changed.”
“Yep, that’s what happens when your orphaned calf thinks you’re her mama and wants you to lie down with her. In her own poop.”
He grimaced, but then manfully took a deep inhale. “You don’t smell like poop.”
“Which was the point of my thirty-minute shower.” She paused and appeared to be biting back a smile. “At my mom’s.” She shrugged. “She did say she wanted to see my face. Task complete.”
He laughed. “You’ve got a little evil in you. I like it.”
“So do you.”
No doubt. She grinned at him and the familiar jolt of awareness streaked through him. “Warriors tickets?” he asked.
“Yep. One of the players has a house on the lake, and his wife and kids come to the farm all the time. She gave me the tickets a few days ago.”
“Sweet of you to pass them on to someone else.”
“Nothing sweet about it. I have no regrets bribing Bob so we can be operational.”
“But it shouldn’t come from your own pockets.”
She met his gaze. “Don’t you get it yet? I’d do just about anything for this place.”
He knew that, and in a world that didn’t value hard work as much as it used to, he found her mesmerizing, and so fascinating he was having difficulty keeping himself in check.
“Have you seen Willow?” she asked. “She’s still hiding from me.”
“She and Shayne were swallowing each other’s tonsils in the staff room earlier.”
“And they think they’re separated.”
“Someone needs to tell their lips.”
“It won’t be me.” She met his gaze. “She’s still mad at me, both for not securing her a promotion and for how she found out about Silas leaving me half the farm.”
“And you think that’s my fault.”
“Well, it’s not not your fault.” She gave a small headshake. “Never mind. Why are you still in my closet?”
“I couldn’t find another place to work.”
She bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I’ll find you a space.”
Stella stuck her head in the open door, craning her neck to see Jameson. “Hey there, Hot Stuff. I’ll share my desk with you anytime.”
Jameson managed to keep his blank face on, barely. “Thanks. But I’m really okay in the closet.”
“That’s just physically though, right?” Stella asked. “You’re not like in the closet closet, are you? Because Luna’s not getting any younger, and we’re all sorta shipping you two.” She paused at Jameson’s blank look. “Shipping is when others, such as everyone on this farm except you two, secretly wish to see you in a romantic—and hopefully sexual—relationship.”
“Gram!”
“Right. Mind my own business.” Stella grinned. “It’s just hard to do when I’m as talented of a fortune teller as I am.”
“Stella, raise up your phone, we can’t see,” Chef said.
Stella held up her phone, which revealed she was on a FaceTime call with not just Chef but also Milo.
Luna face-palmed.
“Tell Jameson I can permanently reserve a table for him at the back of the café,” Chef told Stella. “That way I could look at his pretty face all day long.”
“He can hear you,” Luna said dryly. “And why are you all chatting instead of working?”
Jameson’s question would have been why were they on the phone when they were together all the time? In his experience, people went into work and then raced out of there the second their time had been put in. Sooner if they could get away with it.
But they obviously really liked each other here. In fact, everyone had been kind and generous with him.
“Out,” Luna told her grandma.
Stella, clearly not taking offense, leaned in to kiss her cheek, and then left.
Luna looked at Jameson. “You didn’t leave.”
“I assumed you weren’t talking to me.”
She plopped into her chair with a laugh. “Men should bottle up and sell their cockiness.”
Jameson ignored that. He wasn’t cocky. At all. Okay, maybe confident, but ever since he’d stepped foot inside Apple Ridge Farm, he could honestly say the only thing he was confident about was that he had no idea what he was doing here. “They’re good people,” he said.
“I know.” Luna opened her laptop and began typing.
Okay. Message received. He watched her for a minute, noticing that while she was sexy as hell in a girl-next-door-with-an-edge sort of way, she still seemed so tired. She hid it well, but he suspected she worked way too many hours handling everything on her plate. Work that was probably enough to keep three employees busy, not just one, but she never seemed to complain. They might be polar opposites, but he could see just how valuable she was to this place. Hell, she did more in a day here than he could’ve ever figured out how to manage.
“Why are you staring at me?” she asked, eyes still on her screen, fingers still typing.
“I was hoping to get a word with you.”
“Oh? Should I step into your office?”
He smiled. He wouldn’t mind her stepping into his office. He’d plop her ass on the desk, step in between her legs, and—
“What’s on the agenda?”
Right. Business only—his doing. God, he was stupid. “I’ve been entering everything from the ledger into our new program. We need to discuss this past month’s numbers.” He turned his laptop to face her.
She came over to see better and he realized she smelled delicious. “What language is this?” she asked.
He smiled. “Math.”
“Funny. Tell me what I’m looking at.”
“Lots of negative numbers. Too many. To get out of the red, we need to trim the fat.”
She sighed. “How?”
“For starters, we could cut a meal a day from the employees. Or all of them. We pay well, we don’t need to provide three squares as well.”
“It’s one of their benefits.”
“Okay, then we’ve got to make the really difficult decision to cut some of the employees.”
She straightened up. “We’ve been over this. We’re not firing anyone.”
Their gazes met and held, and there was a banked fire in hers. “Fine,” she said. “We cut their meals—” She broke off when his phone began buzzing. “Oh bummer,” she said, scooping up Sprout. “I’m going to give you some privacy.” She snapped her fingers. “Come on, Dammit Ziggy, you too.”
Dammit Ziggy lifted his head from his perch on Jameson’s lap. “Bleeeat,” he said lovingly into Jameson’s eyes.
“Traitor,” Luna said, and left without the goat.
Jameson stared at the call coming in from Brett Stephens, one of the “coven,” as Luna had called them. Brett had been a partner with Silas over the years on many investments, which wasn’t to say they’d been friends. They hadn’t. But they’d enjoyed each other’s ability to make money. Brett also happened to head up the investment group that held the loan Silas had taken out for the farm’s renovations.
“Hayes,” Brett said in greeting. “How’s it going, kid?”
Kid. Jameson was thirty-two, and at six foot two, towered over Brett by a good seven inches. But he supposed that since Brett had known him as the fifteen-year-old street rat Silas had taken in, first impressions never went away. Jameson had to purposely relax his every muscle, including letting his shoulders down from where they’d ended up at his ears at just the sound of Brett’s voice. “It’s going,” he said, not letting out another word. If Brett wanted info, he’d have to ask for it.
And Jameson had no doubt Brett wanted info. The group had a lot of money in Apple Ridge Farm, and without Silas beating them back, the lions were circling.
“I’ll cut right to the chase,” Brett said. “We want to buy your fifty percent. And to be honest, we want Luna’s fifty percent too. I figure the best way to do that is for you to bring your fifty percent on board, and then we’ll have the leverage to force her out. The farm’s barely breaking even thanks to her inefficiency.”
“Luna is the perfect manager for this farm. She’s gifted at what she does, has good intuition, and no off switch.”
“I didn’t ask for her qualifications. And frankly, I expected this to be a no-brainer decision for you.”
None of this was a surprise. And yeah, maybe Jameson could even understand why it might’ve been an attractive offer before he’d come here. But he was here now, and couldn’t see himself being a part of the reason Luna got forced out. He knew the group had no interest in the farm. The land though . . . that was worth more than the money they had in the place. They’d raze the farm and build something. And get even richer.
“You there?” Brett asked, sounding annoyed.
Since it was a bad idea to ever show one’s hand to Brett, he said, “I’ll think it over.”
“Don’t mistake this for any sort of bailing-you-out thing,” Brett warned. “We both know that the farm will sink fast without Silas. So either you start earning a lot of money fast, or you sell to us. Either way, at the end of the quarter, we intend to have our money from that balloon payment. We won’t want to hear any sob stories about how the farm means so much to the employees. We just want our money. Oh, and the offer won’t be on the table for long. Don’t go down with the ship.”
Jameson knew the ship was already taking on water. But if anyone could make this work, it was him. That wasn’t him being cocky, as Luna would accuse him. He simply knew the ins and outs of the financial world, and what could be saved and what couldn’t.
“Look,” Brett said, “we all know you. We know what the old man did for you. The best thing you can do for him now is to get out alive while you can. Don’t prove his time and efforts with you a waste of time.”
It was always Brett’s way or the hard way. And the hard way never ended well if you went up against him.
“And if it makes you feel better,” Brett went on, “our offer will be fair market value—minus the balance on the loan. You’d both get a very big fat check.”
“And the employees?”
“Collateral damage,” Brett said. “You know the drill. You’re not new at this.”
True story. He’d never let himself think about the people whose jobs he’d dissolved in the past. What kind of man did that make him? He’d always hated regrets, but in that moment, they nearly swamped him.
A regret isn’t written in ink until you refuse to learn from it.
His mom had said that to him, how many times? Too many to count. Just thinking about her squeezed his heart. All this time and he still missed her more than he could say. Would she be proud of him? He’d like to think so. But he knew one way to honor her memory and be the best man he was capable of being, and that was to do the right thing for this farm.
Silas had pulled in his favors and asked him to be here, but the old man had also given him an opportunity to belong somewhere, to be a part of a self-made family, and he was going to take advantage of every gift the old man had given him, unknowingly or otherwise.
“Son, don’t confuse sentiment with sensibility,” Brett said into Jameson’s silence. “Take the check and move on. Or step into the ring with us and reap the benefits when we raze the farm and build something new and hugely profitable.”
Silas had poured a lot of surprising heart into this place to keep it open, maybe out of some sort of romanticism, but possibly also as an obligation to his granddaughter. Either way . . . “I’m going to take my chances here.”
Brett’s voice turned cold. “Then the day the balloon payment’s due, we’ll expect our payment in full, or we’ll force you both gone.”
And they would.
But Jameson couldn’t sell the crew out. He couldn’t sell Luna out. Bottom line, he refused to be the next guy to disappoint her. Which meant they had to pull this off, or it would truly be game over.