Page 112 of Falling for Mr. October

Of course, he agrees. He’s charmed by her, the way anyone with sense would be, and when we head home, it’s with the farm wagon hitched to the Range Rover. The farmer even equipped us with bales of hay for the back.

Because of the wagon, we have to drive excruciatingly slowly, much to the disdain of the half a dozen people who pass us, middle fingers outstretched, but I don’t mind. It feels like a victory lap.

When we get back to the farmhouse, Theo’s sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the creaky front porch, and he whoops when he sees we actually came home with a wagon.

“Who wants to go for the first ride?” I ask after we all get out so we can show off the wagon. “Will the ladies do the honors?”

“We still don’t have a donkey,” Bianca points out, fighting a smile. “Unless you’re offering.”

A grin steals across my face. “What do you know, I think I am. What do you say, Theo?” I ask, turning to him. “Want to pull our womenfolk around in the wagon?”

“Womenfolk?” Bianca repeats, laughing.

Her brother laughs too. “She’s gonna get you for that one. Is recruiting me for this mess revenge for giving you too much playtime with my trees when you first got here?”

“Absolutely.”

It’s a ridiculous idea, but I’m hopped up on the high of Bianca and on actually acquiring the ridiculous wagon, and the nonnas whisper conspiratorially to each other before agreeing.

Theo and I grab some flannel blankets from inside the house, as well as a couple of carafes of cider—one of them with whiskey from the fresh bottle I picked up—and we all pile into the Range Rover, Bianca tucked into the back between the nonnas. We haul the wagon to the apple barn and then disconnect it and move the car out of the way.

The plan is simple: we’ll pull the wagon along the trail leading from the apple barn to a barn where the Murphys used to keep animals. The goats used to live there, as well as a stubborn old horse Bianca’s grandfather used to own. The Murphys are going to store the wagon there, just like they did the previous one that broke. So it works out pretty perfectly to take a hayride out there now.

“All right, let’s do this,” I say, making a big show of stretching so I can get a laugh from Bianca.

“You’re young boys. This is no problem for you,” my grandmother says dismissively, making a waving gesture with her hand. “Let’s get moving so Rose and I can go home and watch our stories.”

Nonna Rose offers her the whiskey-spiked carafe of cider. “You didn’t take your alcohol-soaked raisins today, Fran. It always makes you cranky.”

To my bafflement, Nonna Francesca doesn’t have any retort. She just shrugs and takes the carafe.

Well, I’ll be…

It truly is a day of miracles.

Theo sighs and stretches too. “You’re going up front, Mr. October,” he says, pointing. “I’ll push them from behind.”

It was my batshit idea, so I don’t object.

“Giddyup,” Bianca calls out, laughing as she leans forward to pat me on the back.

I smile over my shoulder at her. “At your service, boss.”

Turns out, moving a wagon is much harder than it seemed. It’s the hills around here. Even though the farm is relatively flat compared to everywhere else in Apple Ridge, you’re always either going up or down, never traveling on flat land. It takes probably half an hour to get the wagon from the apple barn to the empty barn—at least twice what the walk would take.

“Stop the wagon!” Bianca urges just before we reach the darkened interior of the barn.

“Aw, come on,” Theo says. “The barn’s right there.”

“Nope. You have to stop. Nurse’s orders. You have to come up here and watch this ridiculous sunset with us. It’s nonnegotiable.”

Enough said.

I drop the tongue of the wagon and climb into the interior. Theo does the same but a bit more reluctantly, probably since the girl of his dreams didn’t just ask him to.

“You’re covered in sweat,” Bianca says, nudging my arm as I get settled next to her on the straw. The nonnas are sitting across from us, and Theo takes a seat on the bale of hay at the back, right in front of where he’s been pushing the wagon for the last half hour.

Sitting on straw sounded romantic in theory, but it’s poking me through the fabric of my pants. Couldn’t care less, though, especially when Bianca shifts her flannel blanket to cover me too.