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Jake nodded. “That’s easy. Olivia isn’t staying, so I’ll take over for Frank here, and she can just collect a paycheck.” He looked at me with his entire stupid, handsome, clueless face. “That’ll work, right?”
“No, that won’t work,” I said, my cheeks on fire and my brain ready for a fight. “I’m not leaving.”
His face quirked in confusion. “Just to live in the farmhouse? What else are you gonna do here?”
“I’m going to work.”
“Remotely for your job in New York?”
“I quit so I could work here.”
“Here?” A haughty burst of laughter hit me like a slap in the face. “You don’t know the first thing about running this farm.”
“Maybe not the cows and the hay—”
“What else is there?”
“Social media. Newsletters. Our website hasn’t been updated in fifteen years.”
He stiffened. “We don’t need any of that internet stuff.”
“That internet stuff is the way businesses run now whether you think we need it or not.”
The only acknowledgment was a derisive noise before he changed the subject. “What use do you have for a farm? I bet you can’t even remember how to milk a cow. Hell, you can’t even drink a glass of milk.”
I looked at him like he had several heads touting feelers. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want some part in running my family business. I can’t believe you expected me to hand it over without a fight. I can’t believe you thought I’d leave.”
“Why not? You did before.”
The heat in my cheeks flared. “Pop told me to go.”
“And you knew better than to believe him. That was his pride, but you’d have taken any excuse to leave. And you stayed gone. You left, Olivia, and you didn’t come back. You weren’t being noble—don’t pretend otherwise.” Before I could argue, he collected himself and tried again. “Listen—nobody expects you to stick around. Leave running the farm to me and go home. You know I’ll take care of it, so just go back to New York where you belong.”
“No,” I said quietly, voice trembling. “We have to decide together, and I’m not going anywhere.”
He drew an impatient breath through his nose, his eyes narrow and fiery. “I’m not going to spend my days fighting with you, and that’s exactly what it’ll be—a fight. I know what I’m doing, so just let me do my job without interference.”
“It’ll only be a fight if you make it one,” I pointed out.
His eyes narrowed when he swallowed an argument. “What’ll it take to get you to turn it over to me?”
“How can I answer that when I haven’t even had a chance to try my hand at it?”
A pause, the time marked by the tic of that muscle at his jaw.
“Well,” Jeremiah began, clearing his throat and shuffling things in his briefcase with no purpose, “no one has to decide anything right now. Olivia, your grandpa wanted to make sure you had time to make necessary plans once you decided what to do. So take some time. Get through what’s coming. It’ll be here waiting.” He closed his briefcase with a squeak and a snick of metal latches. “Call me if I can be of any help.”
When he stood, so did we. But before I could offer to walk him out, Jake steered him away, the two of them talking like I wasn’t even there. And I fumed at their backs with painful disbelief licking at my ribs.
Jake was indignant, shockingly presumptuous. His surprise at my willingness to stay confounded me almost as much as his rejection. I wanted to make excuses for him, and for a moment, I did. Because he wasn’t any better off than me when it came to losing Pop. Because his whole world was this farm, and its well-being had been placed on our shoulders—or his alone, if you asked him. And I was about to disrupt that world when he’d been so sure I’d pass it all over simply because it was hard.
That self-righteous asshole thought he had me all pegged. He thought I was in over my head, but he was wrong.
And I was going to prove it to him.
3
Shuck It
JAKE
The second I showed Jeremiah out, I stormed toward the old red barn with my chest full of thunder.
Somehow, I hadn’t even suspected she’d want anything to do with the farm, and the fact that she did didn’t sit right. It was an invasion, an intrusion by a foreign general toting pink suitcases. A stranger uneducated in the way of things, with grand designs to meddle with things she didn’t understand.
To change the place I’d poured my whole life into.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t known she was going to inherit the farm. I just assumed she’d come back for the funeral, get her affairs in order, and leave the rest to me as the overseer of the farm. There’d been a chance I could have kept things as they were, run them just as Frank had. But if the last ten minutes were proof, Olivia wasn’t going to let that happen.
