I figured, as vices went, my lumberjack obsession could have been way worse. I mean, I could have been free-jumping off buildings, or huffing glue, or sending weekly Instagram DMs to Zac Efron and sobbing when he wouldn’t follow me back, like my freshman roommate Nick.
So, if fate was offering me the chance to live in the Land of Lumbersexuals, to bring them home to the quaint bed-and-breakfast accommodations I’d envisioned and lick maple syrup off their solid bodies before they went out and slaughtered trees, where was the harm?
I’d signed my contract with Webb Sunday, invested in a wool sweater that my almost-but-not-officially brother-in-law Toby solemnly swore made my dull brown eyes lookamber, and headed north with a kind of desperate optimism, figuring I’d known all I needed to know.
Spoiler: I hadn’t.
For example, I hadn’t known that, beginning in September, all the roads around Little Pippin Hollow, which called itself “small in size but big in charm” on its town website, would be absolutelycloggedwith tourists. I’d later heard Webb’s best friend, Jack, refer to this scourge as the “damn flatlander leaf peepers,” and after watching them pull intoevery. single. one.of the scenic overlooks on the way to Sunday Orchard, making me arrive ninety minutes late for supper and so hungry and tired I could cry, I understood the sentiment.
I hadn’t known that the orchard, a place that grewapples, would also inexplicably have cows—loud, menacing, territorial, possibly violent cows—loitering like a group of thugs near the orchard’s pea gravel parking area so they could taunt me with their bellows and rolling eyes as I exited my Prius.
I had for sure not known that Webb’s offer of “room and board” would mean eating all my meals with the Sundays in their farmhouse kitchen andsharinga convertedapartment over the orchard’s barn turned gift shop—an apartment whose cutesy sliding barn doors offered zero privacy for lumberjack shenanigans, even if a guy could find an amenable lumberjack, which I hadn’t.
I hadn’t known Sunday Orchard’s systems would be quite so firmly entrenched in the Dark Ages, or that when Webb had said he wanted to automate “things,” he meant literallyall the things, from irrigation, pruning, and fertilization schedules, to tracking retail prices for apples, to the processes in his Uncle Drew’s cider press, to time and personnel management for the farm stand and the jam kitchen, all of which would take until Christmas, minimum.
But the widest and most glaring gap in my knowledge? The gravest miscalculation? My biggest rag-ret?
I had not counted on Knox Sunday.
“Are you even listening, Goodman?” the man demanded. “Blink twice if you’re aware of my presence.”
I stifled a sigh. Aware of his presence? Was he kidding?
The Sunday Orchard office might have made a good-sized tack room back when the building had housed horses instead of the gift shop. But when filled with two desks pushed front-to-front, a couple of file cabinets, and one incredibly sexy, incredibly annoying, incredibly cranky man who was constantly jabbing his keyboard like it owed him money, or making frustrated noises as he squinted at the paper ledgers where his Uncle Drew had kept the orchard’s accounting before he’d broken his ankle and let Knox take over, or glaring at me while he pontificated on my latest failings as a roommate—specifically my inability to “wash out a damn coffee mugif your damn lifedepended on it, Goodman”—the space felt incredibly cramped. It wasn’t really possible to ignore someone.
And I knew this, because it made pretending to ignore him that much more satisfying.
“Hmm?” I looked away from my computer screen and blinked innocently at Knox. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”
Knox’s gorgeous face went red, and his jaw clenched. “Hard at work, were you?” His biting tone suggested he thought the opposite.
“Oh, no. I finished my work for the day fifteen minutes ago,” I lied, conveniently forgetting the two additional hours of work I’d need to do that evening to stay on track. “But you were being really boring, so I started daydreaming.”
Good. Lord.The look the man gave me could have turned Whispering Key into an icy tundra.
It was a little thrilling but mostly baffling.
Have you ever had someone take an instantaneous and irrational dislike to you? I hadnot… until I’d arrived at Sunday Orchard.
When I’d finally,finallypulled down the long driveway from the road, it had been the golden hour. The place had been gorgeous in the early evening light—menacing cattle aside—and very nearly empty, since the orchard was closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Webb had greeted me with a handshake and introduced me to his uncle Drew, his sister Emma, his son Aiden, and his younger brother Hawk, all of whom had been welcoming and friendly andlovely. He’d shown me briefly around the office and given me a plate of dinner they’d kept warm for me. Then he’d helped me drag my big suitcase up to my new barn-apartment.
I’d been so tired from the drive that I’d nearly been sleepwalking at that point, so I hadn’t seen Knox emerge from the apartment’s tiny bathroom dressed in nothing but a low-slung towel until I’d walked smack into his naked chest and bounced off it. He’d been startled, obviously, and he’d reached out his hands to steady me, while I’d tried very hard not to chub up right then and there, becauseohmyflippingGod, he was the guy from the picture.
Thatguy from the picture.
The happy-go-lucky one with the devilish grin that made my stomach fizz like pop rocks. And he was standing right in front of me, close enough that I could watch the lucky little water droplets cascade from his beard down his thick, muscular shoulders.
I would swear to you until my dying day that when I first glanced up at his face, his fingers had clenched around my biceps for half a second and his eyes had flared with interest—withwant—like Webb hadn’t even been in the room with us. And at that moment, you could have told me that Vermont contained nothing but rabid tourists and homicidal cows, and I would have told you it was all worthwhile, becauseholy shit, lumbersexuals were even hotter in their natural habitat.
But then Knox had taken a step back, given me a single up-down, from the toes of my worn Birks to my Mordor Fun-Run T-shirt, and proclaimed,“Thischildis the programmer you’re paying an arm and a leg for, Webb? The one you expect me toshare an apartment with? For fuck’s sake, the kid was supposed to be here hours ago. He can’t even tell time.”
Then he’d stalked off to his bedroom, leaving me gaping after him while Webb stammered out a lame-assed explanation about Knox’s “minor health issues” forcing him to leave his “dream job” in Boston, and how he was having a “tough time adjusting” and blah blah blah.
Like that was an excuse to be rude to someone?Please.
The old expression says to never meet your heroes, right? The real trick is to never meet the hot guys you’ve randomly jerked to because, trust me, the disappointment was epic.
Sadly, that had been the high point of our relationship, and it had all gone south from there.
