Page 94 of Harvest Moon

He gave me a dubious frown, but didn’t question me, instead turning to climb down. “I suppose I’d best get back to work, then. I have a half-mile of fences on the south side of the valley to check.”

“Dad, there’s snow on the ground! Do you really need to go all the way out there?” And okay, it wasn’t a lot of snow, just about half an inch, but the man was born in southern Greece. Snow wasn’t exactly his thing, and I didn’t want him losing toes to frostbite just because he didn’t know when to come in.

He waved me off. “It will be fine. I’m taking the UTV, and your mother made me wear wool socks this morning.” He got a goofy smile on his face at that. It seemed that Dad selling the house he’d owned for almost three decades and uprooting his whole life to protect Mom’s health had caused something of a second honeymoon phase in their relationship.

It was kind of hard not to fall back in love with someone who was willing to change their whole life to keep you safe. I should know.

“I already got out there and checked them, since you were busy helping Lex set up the internet,” Ridge said, coming into the newly finished office in the back of our cabin.

Our cabin.

I turned toward him and spread my arms wide to indicate the whole room. We’d even put up a green screen area so I could film, since I was starting a regular video segment for the show where Skye and I talked about omega health. And frankly, Skye was too damn adorable not to have his face on camera. “What do you think?”

Ridge looked around, nodding. “It looks impressive to me.” Then he came over, wrapping his arms around my waist and leaning down to kiss my forehead. “But I don’t know anything about all this stuff. The important thing to me is that you like it.”

“You finished it already?” my dad asked, sounding oddly disappointed. He’d taken to working with Ridge on the farm like a duck to water, and it was super weird. People always talked about how hard it was to teach an old dog new tricks, but Dad was one wolf that loved to learn. And Mom loved that everyone in town was treating him like a big man, because they understood how important the farm was to the community.

Yeah, I know, but I couldn’t just expect her to change everything about herself, could I?

“I haven’t fed the animals for the night yet, if you want to do that,” Ridge suggested. I supposed that was the thing about farming. There was always work to be done, even with snow on the ground and no plants sprouting.

Dad brightened and nodded. “I’ll get right on it. Ford said I could name this year’s new chickens. I was thinking of naming them for the old gods. What do you think? Hestia the chicken.”

“As long as you don’t name them after the angry, vengeful gods, who’d be offended by chickens named after them,” I agreed. “Hestia and Hades, fine, but no Eris the chicken.”

Dad cocked his head in consideration, then shrugged and nodded. “I suppose it would be asking for trouble.”

“Mrs. White’s cat Fluffy should have been named Eris,” I pointed out. “Or maybe that’s Mrs. White herself, the way she wanted to skin Banjo alive for getting Fluff preggo.”

Ridge shrugged carelessly. “She doesn’t want the cats to act like cats, she ought to keep Fluffy inside. Can’t say I mind she’s insisting that we take the kittens. They’re downright adorable.”

As though on cue, at talk of kittens, my phone buzzed. It was a message from Claudia, but the actual words in it made me freeze.

“You better get your ass down here right now and tell Birch we’re not naming our fucking son Sequoia. I might have to kill him. You can hold the baby while I do it.”

As much as I wasn’t a fan of chatting on the phone, I smacked the button to call her back.

She answered on the first ring, sounding breathy and exhausted. “Hey, Alex.”

“The baby?” I demanded.

“Apparently determined to get into the world as fast as possible,” she answered. “Linden says he’s fine. And I’m fine. But he’s coming. Like, right now. Get here before I have to kill someone.”

“Sequoia?” I asked, frowning. “That’s a joke, right?”

She hung up on me. Silly question, I supposed, since his father’s name was Birch.

I slid the phone back into my pocket. “We’ve got to get to the clinic. Claudia’s having the baby.”

“She okay?” Ridge asked, nervous, like maybe she’d have had a sudden resurgence of her sickness.

I leaned up and gave him a peck on the lips. “She’s fine. Just like she’s been since September, when we figured out what was making her sick. But if we don’t get there quick and think of a reasonable tree to name her son for, Birch might be dead.”

Ridge, because he was Ridge, nodded and took me entirely seriously. “We can do that. How about Ash?”

I grabbed the keys to his truck and nodded, shoving him toward the door. “Thanks, Dad!” I called out behind me, but I didn’t slow down to hear his response. I had a birth to get to. After all we’d gone through, I was not gonna miss it for anything.