CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Harvest

 

 

I figured sparring with Felix wasn’t going to win me any prizes, but seeing my girl fawning over him makes me livid. My hand closes around her upper arm. “Jilly—”

She jerks away from me. “You beat him up! Why?”

Cycling through possible answers, I’m not coming up with anything she’ll like. “It’s a guy thing.”

How lame is that? She’s going to tear me a new one.

Horror ripples over the beautiful lines of her face. “’A guy thing.’ Meaning I couldn’t possibly understand, me being a woman and all—”

“Jilly.”

“You know what? Don’t bother. I am so sick of you and Felix going at each other, warning me away from each other—”

“Jilly,” I say, a little more forcefully.

Chaz tries. “Felix threw the first punch, Jilly-bean.”

She gives my face a half-second scan, pausing at my jaw, before going back to her rant. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t have time for this—”

“Jillian, stop,” I say.

“You haven’t been here two hours, and look at all you’ve stirred up. You accuse me of being a spy or some sort of criminal, you beat up my brothers’ friend. You should just go home. Leave. Please. Just—"

“Jillian Theodora Vickers!” I roar.

It echoes.

She screeches to a halt, eyes round as saucers shifting back and forth between me and her father. “Both of you? In stereo?” she whispers.

Nate and I grin at each other.

“Yeah, I’ve got some bad news for you about that,” I mumble. “Your dad and I actually like each other.”

“We’re on the same wavelength,” Nate adds.

Felix stirs and sits up. “You like this man?” he asks Nate.

“He’s growing on me.” Nate winks at me. “Son, you seem to have a couple of messes to clean up.”

I reach out and close Jilly’s mouth. “Yeah. You take care of that one,” I say, gesturing at Felix with my chin, “and I’ll handle this one,” I finish, taking possession of Jilly’s hand.

But she’s still got plenty of fight in her. “I’m not going anywhere with you—”

I pull her up against me. “Enough.” My mouth closes over hers before she can start arguing again.

“You like him,” Felix mutters.

“We all do,” Rafe says. “Why don’t you?”

“He was getting too close to your sister. I knew you wouldn’t like it. But you weren’t there, so I thought I should do something about it.”

“And the emergency meeting?” I ask.

He nods. “I thought if I could raise enough doubt, they’d get rid of you.”

Jilly gasps. “You tried to sabotage Jack?”

“I’m sorry. You’re like a little sister to me. I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Oh, Felix,” she moans. “Thank you, but I have enough keepers. I asked you before. Just be my friend.”

But I’m not quite ready to forgive my nemesis. “What about the tarp? Why did Nola bring it to you instead of her boss?”

“The tarp?” Felix’s forehead wrinkles. “Oh! Oh. Yeah. The piece of tarp.” He flicks a look at my girl and gives her a shy smile. “Jilly knows.”

“Oh, my word! Nola says I know, you say I know. But I don’t know. What is it y’all think I know?”

Jilly’s voice is more strident than I’ve ever heard before. Frankly, I could make it a life’s mission not to hear it like that again.

“You’re the one who pointed it out,” Felix reminds her. “You said Nola likes me.”

Utter silence descends on the room while each of us makes our own sense of Felix’s comment. Jilly recovers first. She plants her fists on her hips and whirls to face me.

“See?” she huffs.

What a little spitfire. My heart rolls over in my chest. I’m a total goner. “Yes, I see. Come here, wildcat, and let me apologize properly.” I drag her to me, outrage and all, and kiss her like there’s no tomorrow.

The brothers start laughing. Nate chuckles. “Have you had your dinner yet, Felix? There’s plenty here,” he says.

“No, I can’t stay,” Felix answers, as though it’s the craziest suggestion he’s heard. “I have a date.”

Jilly breaks off our kiss. “A date? Good for you, Felix. Who with?”

“Who d’ya think? Nola, of course.”

“’Mornin’, sunshine,” I say and plant a kiss on Jilly.

“Mmm, ‘mornin’. Sleep okay?”

I pull her out of her seat so I can wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her hair. “I had trouble knowing we were under the same roof, but not together.”

“Me, too,” she breathes as I nuzzle her neck. “Soon.”

“Tonight?”

“Not in this house, no. After the harvest, when we go for our getaway.”

“I may not make it that long,” I groan.

“Did you or did you not give my father an order last night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, I do. You told him to clean up the Felix mess. And he didn’t argue.”

“That’s right.”

“Anybody who can stand up to Nate can control his baser urges.”

I pull back and gawk at her. “My baser urges?”

She slaps at my chest. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about, Boss Man. Oh! I can’t call you that anymore. I don’t know what to call you now.”

It’s so cute she thinks I won’t be the boss anymore. I could burst her bubble, but it’d just churn her up for no good reason. “You’re resourceful. You’ll think of something.”

“I’ll give it some thought. But right now, all I’m thinking about is finishing my harvest before the rains come.”

“Okay, Jack, crash course. This is a ring you use to measure a grapefruit. See, I slip it over the fruit, like this. If it gets stuck on the ring, like this one, then the grapefruit’s ready to pick. I just give it a little twist, being careful not to squeeze it too hard or drop it, and it comes right off. Then you drop it gently into this picking sack. When the sack gets full, the fruit goes into a bin box, which is what gets transported by truck to the packing house.”

I take the ring she holds out to me. “That’s it?”

“That’s all. Give it a try.”

It doesn’t seem too hard. The first few times are awkward, but once I get the hang of it, a process develops, and I gain some speed.

The grove is beautiful. A manageable size. Nice, straight rows of leafy green trees interspersed with drainage ditches to handle floodwaters so the tree roots don’t rot. Big orbs of green or blush hang from the branches.

We drove about 10 minutes to get here, but from the grove, I can see Jilly’s house. If we get back home while it’s still light, I bet I’ll be able to see the grove from my guest room window.

Between the repetitive motions and appealing scenery, with Jilly on a ladder above me, I’m content.

“How many pickers are there?” I ask her.

“Thirty.”

“And how many trees?”

“About eighty an acre, and we have twenty acres. So, sixteen hundred trees.”

“That makes everybody doing about fifty trees?”

She drops another fruit in her sack. “Sounds about right.”

“How long does that normally take?”

She measures, picks, and sacks another grapefruit. “With the level of ripeness we have right now, an experienced picker will do one tree an hour.”

“Working ten hours a day, that’s five days for your grove.”

“With this number of experienced helpers, yes.”

“Today’s the fifth day since you began picking, right?”

“Yep. We plan to be done this afternoon.”

We work in silence for a while, especially as Jilly leaves “our” tree and starts on another. Measure, twist, drop, measure, twist, drop. When we get hungry, we take a break. Otherwise, we keep working steadily.

The first drops of rain wet my face mid-afternoon. We’ve been working furiously, one eye on the dark clouds gathering.

“Jack?” Jilly calls to me. “Could you start gathering picking sacks and carrying them to the bins, please?”

“Sure thing.” The full sacks, though not overly large, are surprisingly heavy. Especially with the wind slamming into me.

But, considering how heavy a bag of six or eight at the grocery store feels, I guess I should expect a hundred grapefruits in a bag has some heft. It’s not crippling, but I know my muscles are going to scream at me tomorrow. I can’t imagine doing this five days in a row, then hopping on a bus to another grove in another town to do it another five days or more.

Give me a tool belt and some lumber or steel any day.

She has me and another guy dump the sacks into bins next. A forklift stacks the thousand-pound bins as I fill ‘em, then lifts them into a semi. If we can get everything loaded into the semi, the fruit will be protected. But it’s tedious, back-breaking work. Combined with my worry over keeping Jilly safe, I’m losing steam.

Within an hour, rain is coming down in sheets. Jilly gets everybody off the ladders, and only what a picker can reach ends up in a pick sack.

Water’s rising in the ditches. Jilly motions for me to follow her to a shed set up at the end of a couple of ditches.

“This is our pumphouse,” she says. “It pumps the water out of the ditches and this big hose runs to the lake, where the flood water gets dumped. Will you do something for me?”

I can’t wait to get away from the grove. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. “Anything. What do you need?”

She lays her hand on my forearm. “I need to you monitor the water in the ditches. I’m going to turn on the pumps now, and the water level should go down. If it doesn’t, or worse, if it starts to rise, come get me, because we’ll have a problem.”

“Got it. But Jilly?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful. Don’t take risks. Even if it means a smaller harvest.”

Her lips purse, but she nods before whirling away to pick some more. Her hands fly through the sequence, dropping fruit after fruit into her pick sack. Because I’m manning the pumps, she has to tote her full sack to the bins. I’d make her switch jobs with me, but I’m nowhere near as proficient a picker as she is.

A gust of wind blasts her as she struggles to carry her full sack. I start toward her to help, but a sharp crack sounds, and a tree slowly leans to the left, falling over until it’s on the ground with the roots exposed. I look around for Jilly. Waving my arms, I finally get her attention and point at the tree. She gazes over at it and nods, but returns to her sack.

In spite of her request, I run and take the sack from her. “It’s too heavy for you,” I say over the wind. “I’ll take this, and you wrap up the harvest.”

“No. Not yet,” she cries. “Too much ripe fruit is still on the trees. The storm will ruin them.” She picks up an empty sack and works another tree, while I tote her full sack to the bin.

What if a tree falls on a picker? Or on her? I can’t stand the thought. The food I snacked on earlier churns in my stomach. In spite of the wet cold, I blaze with heat, thinking of all the catastrophes that could happen in this grove. I need to make Jilly understand that it’s not worth risking injury or worse.

On my way to plead with her, I check the ditches. The pump is whirring like a swarm of cicadas, and vomiting into the lake, but it can’t keep up with the amount of water falling out of the sky.

I have to stop her. Now.

“Wrap it up!” Jilly calls to pickers.

She’s finally coming to her senses. I just hope it’s not too late.

But her voice hasn’t carried. I run to the nearest picker and tell him to pass the word. Some of my tension eases when I see the message ripple to pickers at neighboring trees, like a giant game of Telephone. All the fruit that’s going to be harvested has been picked. Now it’s a matter of getting it into the bins and into the truck for transport.

I search for Jilly, wanting to get her to the safety of the semi or the school bus that brought us out here. When I locate her, she’s set a couple of itinerants to assist her making a last trip through the grove, to help pickers get their sacks to the bins.

She runs along the side of a drainage ditch. Her boots have no traction. The wet grass is as slick as an ice-skating rink. She skids with every step. The distance between a tree and the slope down to a ditch doesn’t leave much room for error.

Wind surges, and my vision suddenly goes into slow motion. I can feel the danger in my gut before my eyes see it.

Jilly’s next step doesn’t connect with land. She’s going to slide into one of the drainage ditches.

She told me they were five feet deep. With the water swirling like it is, if she falls in, there’s a strong likelihood that she’ll drown. I start running toward her.

She’s scrabbling to gain a foothold. Before she’s solid, a tree comes loose from the ground. It leans. Every cell of my body screams.

“Hold on! I’m coming!” The wind slaps the words back in my mouth. Jilly’s on her stomach, sliding down the slope, grabbing at handfuls of wet grass.

Roots groan and snap just as I reach her.

“Grab my hand!” But she won’t let go of the grass for fear that she’ll be lost to the churning water rising to swallow her.

A broken wrist will mend better than a crushed body. I dive for her and pull hard. The tree collapses, roots exposed like dirty spaghetti, a horror film come to life.

“Jack,” she cries, clutching me.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you, baby,” I croon. My arms are wrapped around her like she’s in a vise. “We’re alive. We made it.” I rock as I chant the words, not sure who I’m trying to comfort more, her or myself.

“Come on. We’re done here,” I say, climbing to my feet and pulling her up beside me. We join the others and I stick close by as we finish loading the truck. Coming back into herself some, she signals the driver, who toots his horn as he pulls away from the grove on his way to the packing house. We practically crawl onto the bus that brought us and head for home.

“This is a bad storm,” she mutters, staring out the bus window. “We’re going to lose some trees.”

She almost died, and she’s still worried about those fucking trees? After I down a few Scotches, we’re going to have a serious conversation.

My body feels like it’s been pummeled by wild horses. I stood in the shower and let hot water flow over me for twenty minutes, and it didn’t help as much as sitting in sweats, under a quilt, my arm around Jilly, like I am now. A fire is blazing in the fireplace, and we’re slurping down hot toddies as fast as they can be made.

Nate sits in a chair beside the couch we’re snuggled on. “The packing house just called. It’s a good haul, Jillian. A good harvest.”

“We’re going to lose trees,” she says, voice dull and lifeless.

He shrugs. “It happens, honey. I’ve called Manion’s. They’ll go out as soon as the rain stops and assess the damage.”

“And take his portable pump?” she asks.

“Yes, that, too. You’ve done all you can do, baby girl,” he says. “Take some time to pat yourself on the back.”

Her shoulders shake, and I realize she’s sobbing. I look over at Nate for guidance.

His voice gentles. “Jillian. What you’re feeling right now is left over from the stress. Tomorrow, after you’ve had some sleep, you’ll realize you did good with your first harvest. Remember, nothing went wrong but Mother Nature.”

She sniffles, but raises her head up to skewer her dad with a look. “I almost died.”

His face fills with dismay. “What?”

Her bawling starts again, so he applies to me for an explanation.

I nod, my teeth clenched so hard my head aches. How much should I tell him?

“You saved my life,” she wails.

“I wasn’t sure you noticed,” I say through the clenched teeth.

She cries harder.

“You scared me to death, Jillian. Worse, you put others at risk.”

“But the harvest—”

“Nothing is worth somebody’s life.” I inhale deeply, trying to get my anger and fear under control. Ranting at her won’t help anything.

Her dad strokes her hair. “He’s right, honey. I would have burned the grove to the ground if anything had happened to you.”

“I failed the harvest. I was so set on proving myself, I lost sight of what was really important. What if it had been one of the itinerants whose family is back home waiting for them? What if it had been any of our workers? I wasn’t careful enough.”

I squeeze her shoulders. “No, you didn’t fail. Nobody was hurt, and your father says you picked a lot of grapefruit. Those are good things. As long as you realize the mistake you made today, it won’t happen again.”

Over her bowed head, Nate rolls his eyes. “Well, maybe she’s right. There’s a reason I don’t hire women for management positions.”

Her body stiffens under my hands. Her head raises so high, her neck’s like an elevator. “What did you say? Women can’t handle management positions? Daddy, you know how mad I get when you say bone-headed things like that. I planned every aspect of this harvest. I coordinated the workers, the accommodations, the food, the equipment maintenance, the transport, everything—the list is as long as an armadillo’s dick—and because the damn hurricane tried to drop a tree on me, you’re condemning all women to subservience?”

I relax, glad she’s bouncing back after her scare and my anger.

Nate sits back in his chair, sporting a self-satisfied grin. “Aaaand, she’s back.”

I snort, causing her to flash me an evil eye like she’s all sorts of tough.

“There’s my wildcat.”

Her adorable nose is begging to be kissed.

She sniffs and tosses her hair back. “Since we’ve established that even though I’m a woman, maybe I’m not a complete washout, do you need me to plan our getaway?”

I rub my knuckles over the stubble covering my jaw. “I designed cutting edge construction for a multi-billion dollar project. I think I can handle planning our trip.”

“Okay, so have you planned it yet?”

“Uh-oh, clash of the titans,” Nate mutters into his toddy mug.

“Yep.”

“Oh.” Jilly blinks up at me, fetchingly.

“It’s a surprise.”

Her shoulders slump. “What do I pack?”

“Normal stuff. Nothing fancy.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow or the next day.”

“Tell me.”

“Stop your whining and just deal with it.”