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He strides toward me. He turns the phone for me to look. "First, this is sexy as hell. Second, this is a great shot of you at work. People will eat it up. They love that their princess works in the garden, cooks, doesn’t do her make-up everyday, wears her hair in ponytails. You’re real and they love it. Third, this will only improve the rubber boots sales."
I look up at him. "Rubber boots sales?"
"Didn’t Linnea tell you?"
"About what?"
He snakes an arm around my waist and pulls me close. "Ever since we started posting pictures of you working on the farm, sales of rubber boots, in all colors, have gone up."
"Come on," I say, disbelieving. "No way."
He leans in, nearly touching his nose to mine. "You are the Princess. Whatever you do gets attention. You’re a trendsetter."
Butterflies kick up in my stomach. I hate attention. He notices my frown and leans back.
"This is good attention, Abigail. We want people to think about the farm. Hell, we want them out gardening themselves, right? If they’ve got gardening boots, maybe they’ll actually get out into the dirt. Maybe little girls will get interested in gardening. And if a little girl sees you as a farmer, a princess who will get dirty, who doesn't have perfect nails and hair all the time, that's a good thing, isn’t it?"
I let that all sink in and nod. I take a deep breath. "You're right. It's a good thing. Thank you.”
He leans in to kiss me but a thought occurs to me and I say, “Maybe we could start a program where the little girls come out with their boots and we have gardening days together. Or we could have a photo contest where they show me their boots in their gardens. We can have them post online somewhere. Start a page for that. Or even if they can’t get the boots—I don’t want anyone to have to buy anything—we can do boots or bare feet.” My thoughts are spinning. “Or if they can’t garden—because not everyone has the means for that—we could have them make paper flowers or cut out fruit and vegetable shapes. We could have them “plant” the flowers in cups at home. We could do an arts and crafts video for them. Maybe it could be a group project. They could all tune in at a certain time and do it together. It could be an online gardening club.” I sigh. “I would have loved to have other kids my age into gardening when I was little.”
I feel Torin’s hand on my face and realize I was staring off, the words just tumbling out. He’s looking at me with wonder and obvious affection.
“Sorry. I was rambling.”
“Never, ever, apologize to me for words, Abigail. You know how much I love them.” He leans in to kiss me. “You’re amazing,” he says softly. “We should do all of those things.”
I smile. “Okay. Linnea would be a great person to help.”
“She really would. She’ll be so proud of you wanting to reach out.” He winks. Then he kisses my cheek and pushes the button on his phone, clearly sending the photo to Linnea.
"What's all this?" he asks, looking into the basket.
He pulls me back to the reason for my visit. "Oh, I wanted to share the first harvest of your favorite fruit." I give him a grin as I pull back the cloth covering the basket.
He reaches to pluck out a strawberry. "How did you know strawberries are my favorite fruit?"
I laugh. "Haven't you ever Googled yourself, Your Highness?"
He grins down at me. "You’ve Googled me?"
I nod. "Absolutely.”
“And what else did you learn?”
It’s actually ridiculous how much information is available about Torin and his entire family. “I know that you put your grandfather’s motorcycle in the river when you were twelve. I guess I know that your grandfather had a motorcycle. That surprised me more than you putting it in the river. Though it didn’t say if you did it intentionally or not.”
He laughs. “Not intentionally.”
“I know that you got fourteen stitches from that escapade.”
He nods.
“I know that you got fifteen stitches from another motorcycle incident. This one in Morocco and that was when you were twenty-four and Jonah was along that time.” I’m watching him and trying not to grin. “I also know there was a stolen chicken, that you were accused of stealing two hundred American dollars from an Egyptian tourist, and a diamond bracelet from a Swedish tourist. But they could never find the two hundred dollars, and the diamond bracelet turned out to be a fake.”
He's clearly fighting a smile, but he nods. “Which is why we stole the chicken. He owed us.”
“The chicken belonged to the Swede? That wasn’t in the article.”
