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“So how’s my favorite farm girl?” James Knightley asked, climbing out of his pick-up. He was drop-dead gorgeous, had the smile to prove it, and the law degree to whip out in case some fool thought he was just another handsome face.

“I’m not a girl, James,” Violet said as she endured a one-armed hug. “These are not your haymaking duds.”

James took up a lean against the truck’s hood, and he looked good doing it, but then, James Knightley, Esquire, looked good pretty much all the time. He was a shade over six feet, blond, blue-eyed, and one of those men who truly, madly, deeply, liked women.

When he wore a three-piece suit to go with his smile, any sighted female would have been hard put not to like him right back.

“I stopped by to let you know I have to go into the courthouse for an emergency hearing,” James said. “I’m sorry. You still planning on baling this afternoon?”

Violet ran through a mental litany of very bad words. “No, James. I just mowed forty acres of timothy and alfalfa last week because I like to numb my butt on a tractor seat every chance I get. Then I raked it because the deer prefer it that way, and I’m going to drive around on my tractor some more now because it’s the only way to guarantee the baler will break before sundown.”

She was being ungracious, which she blamed on Elias. James’s offer to help with the haying was in return for some tools he’d borrowed, rather than time and effort on Violet’s part. Charity, in other words, but charity she’d relied on.

James had the grace to look uncomfortable. “I had planned to send Luis to help you out in my place, but he’s sprained his wrist. Mac has court, and Trent’s in depositions.”

“I don’t know what depositions are,” Violet said, as Bruno came strutting across the road. “But thanks for dropping by. Do you need any eggs?”

“Damn, I’d forgotten. Vera said to pick up a dozen. Twyla likes the brown ones.”

“C’mon, sharp-dressed man. I’ve just put the day’s haul in the fridge. How are your brothers?”

Violet asked out of basic manners—she’d been a few years behind James in school, but she knew his older brothers Trent and Mac reasonably well too. The Knightley brothers, like their uncles and grandfathers before them, would be “local boys” until the day they were buried in a Damson Valley churchyard.

“Mac and Trent are busy,” James said, following her into the kitchen. “It’s nice to see them happy-busy rather than just billable-busy. I’ve cleared the decks for tomorrow, if you want to bale what you have down and leave it in the field.”

The suggestion was reasonable—if it didn’t rain. Whatever hay Violet made into square bales could simply sit in the field overnight, then be tossed onto a wagon and loaded into the mows in the morning. The more efficient alternative was for the hay to go straight from baler to wagon to mow, though that worked much better if somebody was on the wagon to stack the bales as they emerged from the baler.

“I have only two wagons with sides,” Violet said. “I’ll fill those.” Which would leave most of the crop in the field, and that made any farmer nervous. If hay was rained on at any point in the process—when it was down, after it was raked into windrows, even after it was baled—the nutritional quality suffered and its value dropped.

She picked out twelve brown eggs—hurray for species diversity—and arranged them into a plain biodegradable cardboard carton while James lounged against the kitchen counter looking delectable.

“How are things going, Violet?”

She closed the door to the fridge. “Are you asking as my lawyer or as my neighbor?”

“As your friend,” James said. “Though I can put on my lawyer hat if you need me to.”

A farm was a large, complicated business, subject to regulatory oversight from a dozen different angles. Wetlands, forestry, soil conservation, federal subsidies, livestock maintenance, zoning, fencing, building codes, wildlife conservation… they all impacted even a small farm in any given year. James had been raised on the farm where his brother MacKenzie now lived, and he knew agribusiness like Violet knew the contours of her arable fields.

 James had gone over Violet’s tax returns, both the personal and the business, not six weeks earlier. His question was not quite casual.

“I’m still here,” Violet said. “What time do you have to be in court?”

“Eleven, which means we have time for you to put on the coffee.”

Any other Monday, Violet would have been happy to catch up with James, to update him on the not very encouraging life and times of Violet Hughes. To whine a little, and maybe get a short pep talk from somebody to whom tax liens were not a theoretical misery.

Bruno, who seldom came into the house in mild weather, batted a paw at the screen door.

“Maybe some other time, James. I have three fields of hay down. You know what they say…”

 “They say if you bale hay before the dew has dried off of it, you’re more likely to burn down your barn.” He let the cat in, though Bruno was capable of opening the screen door himself. “This guy looks like he’s put away a few mice.”

To Violet, the cat looked accusing, as if it was her fault Elias Brodie had left the neighborhood.

“Bruno’s an easy keeper. My mom has been after me lately, James.” A beat of silence went by, while more bad words piled up in Violet’s mind. “She called last night to scold me for not going down to see her over spring break, as if planting can just wait until July. She says all the other ladies in her cul-de-sac have daughters who visit them.”

Mama was a lady. She never raised her voice, never cursed, and had never complained in Violet’s hearing about marriage to a man who’d seldom been on time for dinner, and often tracked mud into the house.

Mama hadn’t forgiven Daddy for giving his life to a farm that had never made him rich. To Mama’s credit, even a sizeable life insurance settlement hadn’t mollified her indignation with her late spouse.

“You could move down to Florida. You have a master’s degree,” James said—carefully. “You’re a hard worker, and you’d be an asset to any organization.”

“I told her I’d visit once the hay’s in.” A white flag which wouldn’t resolve the basic issue. Mama hated the farm, Violet loved it.

Which made Violet want to cry all over again. She’d watched from her bedroom window as Elias had tossed his suitcase into the black pick-up yesterday, and the tears had ambushed her. Then she’d cried after her mother’s sneak attack, and now… now she had hay to bale.

“Shall I look for a buyer, Violet?” James asked. “You own a beautiful little farm.”

Bruno hopped up on the windowsill, nearly toppling the African violets.

“James, you know better.” Violet extricated the cat from the flower pots, put him on the floor, and wedged a chair beneath the window.

James knew Violet technically owned only half the farm.

“I know that options are a good thing,” he said. “I know that farming any property is a lot for one person, no matter how hard-working or competent they are. I know farming is an extremely hazardous occupation.”

A farmer was more likely to die on the job than a police officer, firefighter, or construction worker—not as likely as a logger or fisherman though. That was something.

“I liked you better when you were everybody’s favorite flirt, James.”

“I didn’t like me better,” James said, scrubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “I didn’t like me very much at all. What if I drew up some leases, nosed around, maybe found somebody to rent a few acres from you?”

Bruno hopped up on the chair, his air that of a feline bent on destruction.

“Dammit cat, not today,” Violet said, picking him up and holding him at eye level. “I’ll lock you in with the hens if you don’t behave.”

He gave Violet a bored stare then yawned cat breath at her.

“No leases,” Violet said, putting the cat down. “Not because I can’t pay you to draft them, but because tenants are as much a hassle as anything else.” Then too, if word got around that Elias was selling, the tenants on his property would jump ship in a heartbeat. No need to give them a handy place to jump to, because developers typically had honor the terms of any existing crop leases.

Bruno stropped himself against Violet’s calves. The idiot beast was purring like a street rod.

“Violet, you can sell this place for enough to comfortably invest.” James’s tone was excruciatingly reasonable. “Then you could take your time deciding your next move. Developers typically take two to five years dealing with the permitting, planning, and re-zoning, and during that time—”

During that time, Violet could farm land that was doomed to become parking lots, sidewalks, paved jogging trails, and pesticide-drenched yards.

No, thank you. “James, put on your friend hat and leave,” Violet said. “I know you mean well, but…”

“But you have farming in your DNA,” James said. “So I can just take my eggs and get while the getting is good.”

Bruno gently bit Violet’s ankle—gently for him.

“Cat, you have a death wish,” Violet said, nudging him away with her foot.

He leapt onto the table, scattering a stack of bills.

“Living dangerously, fella,” James said, patting Bruno’s head, then picking up the eggs. “I’ll be on my way, but expect me before sundown with a couple extra wagons.” He stopped by the door, gaze going to the deserted property across the road. “Didn’t you used to have alpacas or llamas for neighbors?”

Violet left the bills for some other time—Bruno would probably just scatter them again in his present mood.

“The guy who lived over there apparently sold off the herd without the late owner’s permission, then ran off with the proceeds. The present owner isn’t too happy about that, but he has more pressing problems to deal with.”

And they were valid problems, at least from Elias’s perspective. He was head of his family in a way Violet did not understand, while she was…

She was angry with the situation.

“That has to be the most arrogant cat I have ever encountered,” James said, as Bruno prowled to the door. “Somebody should file a police report if valuable property was stolen, Violet. Insurance companies won’t pay restitution otherwise. If you’ll be out in the heat all day, remember to hydrate.”

“Yes, James, and I’ll see you and your wagons—”

Bruno had got hold of the laces of Violet’s right paddock boot. He tugged, the laces between his teeth, and glowered up at Violet, as if she was supposed to play a game with him. 

“This is how nice kitties get their pictures on pet-shaming social media pages,” Violet said, shaking her boot free. “Or I could sell you as a—”

Bruno stared up at her, the shoe lace hanging from his mouth like spaghetti.

“Violet?” James asked, hand on the doorknob.

A cautious trickle of hope dripped through Violet’s lousy day. “You asked if you should look for a buyer for my farm. I assume you meant an agricultural buyer?”

“This side of the road is mostly zoned agricultural preservation, so yes. I’d be looking for somebody who wants to own a farm.”

“Start looking,” Violet said, opening the door and putting Bruno on the porch. “I’ll walk you to your truck. I want you to find me a rich, ambitious farmer or farmers, and find them as fast as you can.”

The electrician couldn’t fit Elias in until Tuesday, and Dunstan and Jane both had court on Monday, which meant… Once Elias had spent the morning answering emails and phone calls, he was at loose ends, and he had Jane’s car at his disposal.

The compact hybrid was a marvel of design and engineering, a significant step forward from an environmental standpoint, and—in Elias’s opinion—absolutely pathetic as a driving experience. Acceleration was foreign to its nature, and the relationship between the suspension and the road surface was far from genteel.

 The car did, however, have air conditioning.

Elias tossed several bottles of water into his knapsack and headed out to his property. When he parked in his driveway, Sarge and Murphy came bounding over, ears and tongues flapping.

“It’s hot,” Elias said, patting each dog’s head. “Nobody should run in this weather. Have you no sense?” They panted happily, while on Violet’s porch, the orange cat sat looking smug and overfed. “Where’s Violet?”

The dogs capered around, though they didn’t jump up and they didn’t bark. The only sound was the whine of an engine—diesel, heavy, and the pitch was wrong for a truck.

“In this heat,” Elias muttered, striding across the road. “She’s out in this heat, and probably not wearing so much as a hat for protection.”

Behind Violet’s barn stretched a fairly level field, the tall grass having been cut and raked into fluffy rows. Violet drove a green tractor straight down one of those raked rows, the tractor pulling a machine that converted the cut grass into bales which were ejected into a slat-sided wagon.

The whole business was ponderous, noisy, and showed every potential for making a day already hot and increasingly humid outright miserable.

Elias waved, but the tractor continued chugging along. He left his pack in the shade of a maple and marched across the baled part of the field. When Violet spotted him, she shut the clattering baler down and halted the tractor, leaving the engine wheezing and thumping.

“The timing on your tractor needs adjustment,” Elias said.

“Needs an oil change, too,” Violet replied, wiping her temple with her forearm. “I was supposed to get to it yesterday, but the day got away from me. Hello.”

The tractor was an inelegant, old powerhouse that would probably outlive Elias, but it was sorely in need of maintenance. Violet looked entirely at home on her tractor, a straw hat her only protection from the sun.

“Hello, Violet Hughes. I’m here to help with the haying.”

“I’m mad at you, Elias.”

He loved her honesty, loved how fearless she was whether making love or airing an opinion.

“You’re being polite. You hate me because I’m selling arable land to the highest bidder, or I’ll try to.”

A weak breeze fluttered a damp curl against Violet’s neck. Her hair was back in its bun, which was a relief. Heavy machinery and long braids made Elias nervous.

She took a drink from a metal water bottle, then capped it and stuffed it into a box beside the seat.

“Would you sell the farm to an agricultural buyer?”

“Depends on the price, and the situation with my castle. How does one make hay?”

Violet studied the sky, and if Elias lived to be ninety, he’d not forget the look of her. She wore only a white V-necked, short-sleeved T-shirt, thin with age. Her jeans were equally worn and her boots were dusty. She was hot, the breeze bore the scent of diesel fuel and new hay, and Elias wanted her on her back in the grass beneath him.

Damned prickly business, though, in more ways than one.

“You want to help me bring the hay in?” she asked, squinting at the clouds.

“I said I would, and you appear to be alone with the task.”

She fired a pair of wrinkled work gloves at his midriff, then snatched a straw hat from behind the tractor seat and frisbee’d it at his head.

“My stacker had to cancel,” she said, “and I can’t be choosy. Those clouds are not supposed to be collecting anywhere near my valley. When I got up this morning, the forecast was clear until Wednesday. When I checked twenty minutes ago, this evening has a twenty percent chance of showers. I hate showers when I have hay down.”

Elias would have loved a shower right about then, though not in the sense she alluded to. The hat fit him, thank the kind powers.

“I gather the haying exercise has acquired some urgency.”

Violet’s smile was not exactly benign, but it was pretty, and aimed at him. Elias chose to be encouraged.

“If it rains on my hay, Elias, I lose thousands of dollars in the space of an hour, and that’s just in the price the hay will bring. If I’m feeding it to my sheep, then I’ll have to feed more because the quality of the crop suffers for being rained on, and if the nutrient content is diminished—”

Elias let her natter on, though stacking hay bales did not require a PhD in economics. Climbing onto the wagon was an undignified undertaking, but he managed while Violet watched.

“Lay three bales across the long way for one layer,” she said, “then five across the short way in the next layer up. Use the gloves unless you want to die of blisters on your blisters to go with your sunburn and your blisters.”

Elias tugged the gloves on, and the afternoon went straight to noisy, broiling, itchy, blistered hell.

If Violet hadn’t forced Elias to stop and drink, he’d have worked without a pause. He was damned fit, and it didn’t take him long to get the hang of stacking a wagon. In the barn, he insisted on handling the end of the job that meant tromping around in the hay mow, dealing with the worst of the heat, dust, and sheer effort.

All Violet had to do was toss the hay bales onto the elevator, and that was exhausting enough. The crop was perfect though—lovely fodder, cut at the peak time, dried to perfection. The sheep would love it, and come winter, the horse owners would pay dearly for every bale.

Wagonload after wagonload went into the mow, and with each one, an anxiety known only to hay farmers eased for Violet. So much depended on getting the hay in, and the first cutting was the largest and most valuable.

“It’s a shame you’re selling your farm,” Violet said, when she’d backed the last wagon into the barn’s center aisle. “You have an aptitude for haying.”

“Don’t badger me when every part of me itches like the devil, Violet Hughes. Aren’t you going to start the elevator?”

“No. The last wagonload can just sit here in the barn, to be unloaded some fine day when you aren’t at risk for heat exhaustion. I’m in your debt, Elias. Thank you.”

He climbed off the wagon, his movements lithe. For a Scottish earl, he did a mighty fine impression of a Maryland farm hand, right down to the way he slapped his gloves against his jeans.

“Must you be so honorable?” he said, accepting a water bottle from Violet, and draining half the contents. “I said I’d help. How often do you do this?”

“A third cutting isn’t unusual, though fall hay isn’t as valuable. I’ve made hay in December, when the conditions were right. Pretty stuff. Wasn’t worth much. I have one more first cutting field to do, but it sits low and the alfalfa has been a little slow. I’ll probably cut it next week, if the weather cooperates.”

Or if it didn’t. Hay that grew old and stemmy was as hard to sell as hay that got rained on.

Elias dumped the rest of the water over his face and head, shook, and slicked his hair back, then used the hem of his T-shirt to scrub his face.

“Do you never rest, Violet?” 

She’d rested in his arms. “I’ll rest after the first hard frost. My dad used to say he’d rest when he was dead.”

“You’ll have a lang sleep when ye’re deid,” Elias murmured. “I’m nearly dead. You must not tell Dunstan that a few hours on a wagon has me nearly undone.”

He was rumpled, had chaff all over his T-shirt, and water ran in rivulets down his neck, but he wasn’t nearly undone enough.

“Let’s refill the water bottles,” Violet said. “Do you have a clean T-shirt with you?”

“In my worst nightmares, I could not imagine being this hot and dirty, but I have a clean T-shirt in my backpack because I came intending to do manual labor.”

He’d come offering an olive branch. Violet let the distinction pass, because her barn was full of beautiful hay, among other reasons.

“Are you expected anywhere for dinner?” she asked.

“I am not. I left a note for Dunstan and Jane saying not to expect me. Jane made rather a grand meal last evening, and I didn’t want to put her to the trouble again.”

What would Elias Brodie consider a grand meal? “I’m not cooking after the day I put in, but neither will I hit the shower in my present state. Meet me at the truck and bring your backpack.”

She liked giving him orders—liked it plenty, because he took them. He didn’t give her lip or sass or mansplaining or reasoning, for God’s sake. He passed Violet the empty water bottle and sauntered off in the direction of the truck.

He was downing more water when she met him there ten minutes later, and that was smart. Haying had to be the hottest, sweatiest, most dehydrating, back-breaking, satisfying work in the world, and Elias was new to it.

“What’s in the hamper, Violet?”

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread … She tossed him the truck keys. “Bug spray. Hop in, unless you want to leave hay mess all over that nice little car.”

Elias hauled himself up into the truck, though of course, he had to adjust the steering wheel and the seat.

“That nice little car is an abomination against all who take pleasure in driving. Where is the—?” He slid the key into the ignition. “Where are we going and why am I driving?”

Violet simply wanted to see him behind the wheel of her truck. “I drove that tractor all afternoon. We’re going that-a-way.” Violet pointed off behind the barn, to the tree line along the hedgerow at the far end of the third field. Even that gesture twinged the ache in her arms from wrestling the tractor all afternoon. “No hot dogging, Elias. This truck is paid off, and we don’t have the health care system you guys do.”

“Somebody keeps your vehicle tuned up,” he said, letting the truck idle for a moment. “Your tractor is another matter.” He drove down the lane, which was reasonably smooth. Raspberry bushes lined Violet’s side—no fruit yet, profuse blossoms, and the poison ivy beneath the raspberries was thriving, too.

Elias drove the truck with none of the awkward misjudgment of people accustomed to smaller vehicles. Had Violet been asked, she might have said the truck liked him—or he liked the truck.

I ’ve missed you, Elias Brodie. Violet couldn’t say that, but she could admit it to herself. Had she never seen Elias with hay in his hair, his arms burnished by the sun, and his jeans creased with dust, she might have missed him less.

“Aim half way to the sycamore,” she said. “Groundhog hole on the right as we pass the wishing oak.”

“Do you have fairy mounds?” Elias asked easing the truck past the groundhog burrow.

I have memories of you. “Not that I know of. Try to get us some shade.”

He tucked the truck under a spreading maple as sweetly as Bruno ensconced himself in a patch of sunlight.

  “I neglected to use the air conditioning,” Elias said, cutting the engine. “Perhaps I’m acclimating to Dunstan’s inferno.”

“Perhaps you’re too tired to think. Haying does that. Second cutting is the worst. Ninety-five degrees, humidity you need a machete to cut, and bugs everywhere you least want bugs to be.”

Elias climbed out of the truck, and while Violet rummaged for the wicker hamper, he came around to open her door.

“I know this is home to you,” he said, “but can you entertain the notion that there are other places on earth more congenial to agricultural endeavors?”

Violet looked past his shoulder, back the way they’d come, to her barn, snuggled up against the rise of the land. Animals could shelter below, feed and fodder were stored above.

“My mother wanted to paint that barn,” she said. “Tremendous expense and effort, but she said a weathered barn was shabby.”

Elias brushed his thumb over Violet’s brow. “A smudge,” he said, repeating the gesture then dropping his hand. “Your mother’s wishes didn’t prevail, I take it.”

“My father did the research, and wouldn’t you know it, somebody has taken the time to compare what happens when raw wood weathers for twenty-five years versus when painted wood endures the same twenty-five years under the same conditions. The raw wood weathers better.”

“So your father did the practical thing, and left his barn unpainted.”

Violet wanted Elias to touch her again, and she wanted to shout at him that selling his farm would be an act of unforgivable betrayal.

Which was unfair and inaccurate. She passed Elias the hamper and climbed out of the truck. “My mother called last night.”

“Is all well with her?”

The sound of water running over rocks should have been soothing. The sight of the barn so majestic and peaceful should have pleased Violet. The hay in the barn was like money in the bank, and yet, her heart was breaking.

“Mom wants me to sell, Elias. She came right out and said so last night. My own mother wants me to sell this place, and she might be able to make me do it, too.”

Elias set the hamper down, wrapped Violet in his arms, and cursed in a language she’d never heard before.