Damn, but that woman could make him forget all of his responsibilities, and then some.

With Maggie asleep, Jack went to the barn to finish his nightly chores. He’d been so caught up in Maggie that he’d done the unthinkable: forgot he was a farmer who had milking to finish and animals to put to bed.

On top of that, something was very wrong. Maggie had freaked out at the last moment before they could have sex. He knew this was too good to be true. He was too old for her and she had finally realized it.

The truth cut through him like a machete through a thick stand of weeds. It was clear now. It was better if they weren’t together. 

Maybe she would be better off staying with her sister for a while. Maybe what she needed was family to take care of her, not an older man like him obsessing over her. He would bring it up in the morning over breakfast. He would let her off the hook. She would probably be relieved. He would be disappointed, but that was just another sign for Jack to stay on his mission. Hold the line against corporate powers-that-be.

Besides, who was he that he thought he could handle being a boss to a deeply attractive employee? Not that he couldn’t handle an attractive person reporting to him in general, but one that stoked in him such an absolute animal magnetism—that was different. Mixing personal and professional pursuits didn’t suit him.

Maggie had obviously been through some things, and she needed him to be professional. Well, today he would pay her what she was owed, and then some, and maybe even pad her paycheck a little, for her inconvenience.

The fence secure, the chickens fed, watered and settled in for the night, Jack set about milking the goats. He fell into his usual pattern of talking to the animals like a freaking Dr. Doolittle. It wasn’t so bad, doing all this alone. The critters were good company and they didn’t argue with him. Jack didn’t mind growing old—well, older—and being the bachelor farmer with all of the associated jokes that people made. He didn’t care about that. He only cared about making sure his animals were healthy, and taking care of this land. He would continue to be lonely, but it was what it was. 

Jack was so deep in his head he didn’t hear anyone approaching. But he saw a flash of red move in the corner of his eye; he nearly tripped over the milking hoses.

“Maggie.”

She was smiling but serious at the same time. How did she do that? “I meant what I said earlier. I can’t let you do this on your own. So, where are my work gloves? Let’s get this done so I can go get some sleep.”

They finished milking all the nannies in silence, but it was not uncomfortable. It felt right, and the energy between them felt familiar and normal.

Well, shit, Jack thought. She rejects me, and I make up my mind to do this on my own, and then she has to go on and keep her promises like a real reliable human being. He smiled and wondered where the world ever came up with the notion that Millennials were self-centered, entitled flakes. Because that was not Maggie. He’d thought she’d blown into town on a whim, but she was anything but whimsical. She was proving to be practical and spartan, maybe even more than he was. Jack, with his rainwater shower heads and Italian tile shower stall. His four-poster bed. Who is the real diva in this relationship? he mused.

As they headed back into the back door and slammed the screen shut in the kitchen, Jack thanked her for her help and announced he was ready for bed. 

“Jack, I hate to do this to you, but I’m feeling a painful need to talk. Make some coffee?”

Yes, they definitely needed to talk. He sighed as he kicked off his boots, but he did so with a smile. 

Moments later, they were both hunched over steaming cups of black coffee, and Maggie was talking. Jack was listening. 

“When I was in high school, there was a time when Mama Jane brought in a foster kid who had some undiagnosed problems. She took him all the way to Minneapolis for a series of evaluations. Autism and some other issues. Anyway, she was gone for several days. I’m not proud of it, but Lily and I were all between 16 and 18 at the time. I was 16. So you can guess what we did while she was gone. We threw a party here at the house. Everybody was there. Word spread quickly, even though we weren’t the most popular kids in school. Even Chet came. I think he always kind of had a crush on me. I have to admit, he wasn’t terrible to look at, but he drove a fancy truck and walked around like he owned the place. You know, Mama never had much. Even with her foster stipend from the state, she spent everything she had, and then some, raising us. We walked, rode our bikes, and got rides with neighbors, sometimes drove the farm truck into town when Mama didn’t need it. We weren’t fancy people. 

“Anyway, so we had this party. Somebody brought beer. Of course. I had never touched a drop. But I had had a few by the time Chet started talking to me that night. Somehow we ended up in my room with the door closed. He wore me down. He asked me to go to his senior prom with him, because wouldn’t I, a poor little foster kid, just love to go to prom in a fancy truck? He even offered to pay for my dress, everything. I had to admit, three beers in, feeling emotional and hormonal as a 16-year-old, I was pretty into the idea. Chet being my date, I could take it or leave it. What I really wanted were the fancy dress and flowers and to dance around and feel like a princess. Then Chet started in with what it would cost me. Well, I’ll give you three guesses as to what he wanted in exchange for a perfect prom night. And he wanted a deposit that night in my room, if you get my meaning.”

Jack’s blood started to freeze and boil at the same time, if that was even possible. “That little shit. I hate that guy.”

“Oh, I’m not finished,” Maggie continued. “So he starts kissing me, and it’s not terrible. I didn’t have any feelings for Chet, but it was my first kiss, so it was pretty exciting. But it turns out I was pretty naïve. He wanted a blowjob, right there in my room, in the middle of the party. With my sister right outside the door. As we were kissing, he undid his pants and took my hands and made me touch him. I didn’t resist at first. I was a little tipsy. Then before I knew what was happening, his penis was out. I stared at it and then looked at him, like, well, what are you expecting me to do with that?”

Jack’s stomach was in knots listening to this story. How could anyone take advantage of a sweet young, inexperienced Maggie? 

Then he remembered that this story took place less than five or six years ago, and his stomach churned. 

She finished the story. “I needed to look at something else because all of a sudden I felt very uncomfortable. I didn’t know it at the time, but sometimes when bad things happen when you’re drunk, you sober up right quick. Yeah, that was me in that moment. I looked away, I didn’t want to look at his penis. I instead focused on my little ceramic art project on the wall shelf. I sort of latched on to that, just to look at something else. I had never seen anyone’s dick up close before—what the hell was he expecting me to do? Well, I figured out pretty quickly that what he was expecting me to do was to go down on him. He started pushing my head down, and I resisted. When he finally backed off, he said I could forget about prom, because obviously we were not a good match. The real end of that story was that he told—or implied—to everyone at that party that I had in fact given him a blowjob. And it was a terrible blowjob at that.

“The next week at school, everyone stopped talking to me and even to Lily. All except for Charlie Bryson. I heard through the grapevine that he and Chet got into a fight in the school parking lot. Rumor on that was, Chet was talking smack about our whole family and Charlie had had enough. I always thought that was very neighborly.”

Jack gritted his teeth. “I’m feeling a mite neighborly right now. You mind if I head over to the Easleys’ right now for some face time with old Chet?”

“If you mean fist-to-face time, as tempting as it sounds to give Chet a good knuckle sandwich just for the hell of it, let’s hold off and let karma have her way with him from here on out.”

“I don’t know if I believe in karma.”

Maggie winked. “She’s a bitch.”

“She’s also slow as molasses in winter. Knuckles get the job done faster,” said Jack.

Maggie shrugged, acknowledging his point as fair, and took a deep sip of her coffee. She picked up the carafe and warmed up her cup. “I have to believe in karma, because that’s the only way the universe is going to make up for what happened with Alex.”

Jack bristled. He hated the fact that he was going to hear about another asshole in this world who did Maggie wrong, but on the other hand, he loved listening to her talk and he loved finding out more about her. He accepted her offer to warm up his mug of coffee and he settled in for the next tale of woe.

“The real trouble started when I went to study art history at the University of Iowa. I was in love with the art scene down there, I was having such a good time, and I didn’t see it coming. I met Alex at a concert in the park one day. He was doing sound for his friend’s band. He saw me dancing—and I admit I was a little high at the moment—and he walked up and started talking to me and we hit it off. We sat up all night after the show and talked about art and music. Those were the best times. Alex knew how to talk, and well, you know I can talk. 

“Anyway, I fell pretty hard. Soon after that I was spending nights at his apartment, and then before the end of freshman year I was fully moved in with him. I never came back to the farm, except for Christmases. I was barely there, always itching to get back to school and my studies and my boyfriend. After Alex and I graduated, he said he had a job waiting for him in Chicago, as well as an apartment. 

“The thing I remember now is, he didn’t explicitly ask me to come with him to Chicago. What he said was, ‘You’re more than welcome to come with me.’ Looking back, that should have been a red flag, right?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t read much into things, but go on.”

“What he should have said, or what I should have waited for him to say, was, ‘Maggie, please come with me!’ Right? I mean, why didn’t he insist on it? He knew he had me in the palm of his hand and I would follow him to the end of the earth, even if it meant I would fall right off the edge like a lemming. Which, I guess I kind of did.”

Jack was so tired. So totally exhausted, but he really wanted to hear the end of this story.

“So I moved with him to Chicago that summer after graduation. It turns out the apartment he had waiting for him was a walk-up in a really shitty neighborhood with four other people who I did not know. Not that it would have stopped me, but it would have been nice to have been forewarned. And the job he supposedly had was working as a roadie for some B-rated band that I had never even heard of. So, he was home for three days with me in Chicago and then he was on tour. He wasn’t even doing entry-level work in sound engineering. ‘Babe, this is how you get started, I have to get my foot in the door somehow.’ He might be right, but still, it would have been nice to know this ahead of time. And I suppose I should have asked more questions.

“I was totally on my own in a strange city, looking for work in the art world. Months earlier I thought I was ready to conquer the world, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I applied at every museum, from the biggest to the smallest, and I completely struck out. Nobody was hiring, nobody even needed any volunteer docents who had no experience. So finally, at the end of the summer, living alone and miserable without my boyfriend, I accepted a serving job at the diner around the corner from our apartment. The boss liked me and gave me all the extra shifts I wanted. I started saving up enough tips that I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I thought I might actually have enough saved that I could get myself a studio in a slightly better neighborhood. I set money aside to afford admission to every museum in Chicago, and in the little free time I had, I visited all of them. I figured if I visited all of them, often enough, maybe I could get work as a volunteer at some point. I mean, even the tiniest basement galleries. I didn’t pass up any opportunity. Did you know in the Polish neighborhood there is a basement museum dedicated to the history of the accordion?”

“No, I did not know that.” Jack smiled. God, what a woman. What persistence and planning, despite some truly shitty circumstances. How could he keep himself from falling completely head over heels for her?

“But I was really missing Alex, and everyone in this apartment was weird and sullen and did a lot of drugs. Like, a lot. Not just marijuana on weekends and cocaine to stay awake. I mean, they were into everything, and pretty soon there were some truly shady people hanging around. I needed to get out, and I called Alex to tell him I was really nervous, could he wire me some money? I just needed a little bit to get out and put a deposit down on a sweet little basement studio in Hyde Park. But he turned the tables on me. Turns out, Alex had pissed away all his roadie money as fast as he was making it. It was the end of the summer, the tour had ended, and he was now on his own in Upstate New York, he said. He needed money to get back home. Desperate to see him again, I wired him some money. And do you know what happened?”

“Let me guess,” Jack growled. “He didn’t come back to Chicago.”

“Oh, he did. But he wasn’t the same. He was ‘over the rat race,’ he said. As if he ever worked a job that could even be considered part of the rat race. He never went back to work. Not that fall, not over the winter. Pretty soon I was paying for his rent and mine. I didn’t like him leeching off me, but I told myself it was better than him being gone and leaving me alone with these people. Then he got offered a job to do roadie work with a different band, and he needed cash to get to New York to kick off the tour. I said, no way. Get a job. I can’t keep paying for you. Then, all of a sudden, Alex was gone and my stuff went missing. I ended a 12-hour shift at the diner only to find my backpack in the break room had been rummaged through. My phone, laptop, CDs were all gone. I ran home and found all my clothes were gone—my boots, my shoes—everything was gone. Even my fucking mattress. I questioned the housemates, but they were so out of it. I finally got ahold of Alex and I called the police. It was taking forever to get the police to do anything, and all Alex had to say to me was, ‘New York is expensive, babe.’”

Jack set down his mug and rubbed his face in exasperation. “I’m going to walk to New York right now and beat his scrawny little ass.”

Maggie laughed. “How do you know his ass is scrawny?”

“Because I just know. Is it?”

“Yes.”

“See? I’m already a lot smarter than that guy.”

She grinned. “That you are, Jackson Clay.”

“And not just because I can guess he has a scrawny ass. But because I can see what’s right in front of me and that you’re a talented, driven, beautiful, funny, smart, challenging and magical woman. He missed his chance.”

He watched Maggie’s cheeks blush as her gaze became shy and focused on her coffee. 

Jack reached across the table and touched her cheek. “I had no idea this was all so raw. This was all just last month. You’re in a tender spot, and I feel guilty, like I’ve been taking advantage of a woman who is in a desperate situation. You’re so young, Maggie. Are you sure you want to stay here with me?”

Maggie placed her small, smooth hand over Jack’s callused, tanned one. “I came here to get my head right. My head hasn’t been in the right place in years. I never listened to Mama when she warned me about Alex. I just need to surround myself with home and good memories and work I know how to do before I figure out how to do something with my degree.”

So, when she said she wanted to stay, she hadn’t necessarily meant forever. She had meant, until she gets her head straight and to protect Jane’s land from encroaching development. She wasn’t talking about staying for Jack. 

“Can you handle it, Maggie? You call the shots here. Because having you here has been amazing. I enjoy your company. Hell, if it were up to me, I would take you right here on this kitchen table and not regret it for a moment. But if you knowing that about me makes it too uncomfortable for you, I will understand, and I’ll drop the matter. I can control myself, but I need to know where you are. I want to give you a chance to get back on your feet. After what happened earlier, I was thinking about encouraging you to go take a job with Carrie or with your sister. But really, I think you belong on this farm. You were meant to be here. I think this farm needs you and you need this farm.”

She sighed as his thumb stroked her cheekbone. “You might not be wrong about that, Jack.” She tossed back the rest of her coffee. He loved that she drank it black, just like him. Then she looked him dead and serious in the eye and said, “Jack, I have to ask you now. I’ve told you everything, and I don’t know much about you. I feel like I’m kind of hanging out here on the edge of a branch and I want you to come out here with me before it cracks. What’s your story?”

Energized by the coffee, and now feeling the need to talk, Jack stood and held out his hand. 

“Where are we going?”

“Grab your jacket. We’re going for a drive.”

* * *

Maggie loved listening to Jack talk, and even more she loved hearing him talk about his past. He had lived almost twice as long as she had, and she wanted to hear all of his stories.

Even if that meant sitting in the bed of his pickup and parking in the middle of a cornfield so he could look at the stars while he spoke and not have to look at her face. 

Whatever works, she told herself.

At least he had thought to bring a few pillows and a blanket for comfort, and a bottle of something with a little more kick in it than coffee. The windows in the cab were rolled down so they could listen to an old cassette tape of Neil Young, live in concert. Maggie had never understood this kind of music, but here in the cornfield, in the back of a truck, looking at the stars and sipping on whiskey, the smell of alfalfa and sweet corn wafting on the night breezes, it all made sense. Neil was singing Helpless. 

She smiled. Weren’t we all?

“Wendy and I go way back. We grew up together in Mount Pleasant, a tiny little town just outside of Council Bluffs. We were best friends for as long as I could remember. We swam naked in the creeks together, way before we were old enough for it to be called skinny-dipping. We caught frogs, snakes, craw-dads, we built dams in the creeks, causing all kinds of problems for the neighboring farms’ irrigation. We used to get up to all kinds of trouble together. As teenagers, we took joyrides on other people’s horses and got in heaps of trouble for that. We never caused any real harm, but we were usually up to some kind of mischief together. We were real-life partners in crime. She was such a character. We were high school sweethearts; everybody assumed we would get married and take over her daddy’s little hog operation one day. She loved her little pigs. Just like Fern in Charlotte’s Web, you know?”

Maggie’s heart warmed at the reference. “Yeah, totally, one of my favorite books of all time.”

“She saved every damn runt that was ever born, bottle fed every one of them. She had a heart of gold as a kid. Her mom and dad let her run wild, barefoot and free all over her land. She took care of those animals and, in a way, they sort of took care of us. Anyway, we got engaged shortly after we graduated high school. It’s early, I know. It was 1990.”

Her stomach lurched up into her chest. She was born in 1994. Holy shit, he was old. But hot too. Damn silver fox. His face was so youthful and he had such an easy way about him, she never thought about his age until it smacked her in the face in moments like this.

She decided not to point out their difference in ages, as it was something for her to think seriously about at some point.

“Wendy and I didn’t set a date for the wedding. We decided we would wait until we graduated college. In the meantime, we decided to save for a big wedding and also a big down payment on her daddy’s farm. The plan was that I would earn a degree in animal husbandry and take care of the day-to-day operations. She would get her degree in agribusiness, and she would run the business end. 

“About six months before we graduated college, we set a date for the wedding. We put down deposits on flowers, musicians, a venue. She reserved the ballroom at the biggest hotel in Omaha. She had her dress. Everything was planned. And then she took an internship with a cattleman in Dallas. She said it would last only until the wedding, and it would give her extra experience to take her daddy’s hog business to the next level. She envisioned a real high-tech situation. I didn’t know what I wanted, I just knew I wanted to get married and work with animals. But six months later, she flew into Omaha. She called from the airport and asked me to pick her up. I went to pick her up, met her in the terminal, but instead of coming home, she broke up with me in the airport and headed back to Texas. I told her, ‘Shit, woman, you could have saved yourself a plane ticket and me the parking fees if you’d dumped me over the phone.’

“Looking back, I could sense her becoming more and more distant every time we spoke on the phone. I went to see her about halfway through her internship, and I was surprised to see her office was not out in the country on a farm somewhere, but she worked in a high-rise building downtown. I thought it was strange, but she said this was the future of agriculture. She was inputting data for a company that owned fifteen different cattle feedlots, representing tens of thousands of head of cattle. I met her boss. What they call a cattleman these days means little more than a guy in an office outfitted with tacky cowhide chairs. He was real slick. Friendly guy. But later on I told her, ‘that guy ain’t no rancher.’”

“I should have seen right away that the two of them were sleeping together.”

Maggie shuddered. “Damn. I’m sorry to hear all this, Jack.”

But it was clear he wasn’t seeking any sympathy from her. He continued like he was describing a movie, or someone else’s life.

“The day I went to pick her up from the airport, I sensed something was wrong. As soon as I saw her in the terminal, and she had no baggage, I knew. I said, ‘You’re not staying, are you, Wendy?’ She said, ‘No, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Jack, and I wanted to return your ring.’”

“Ouch.” Maggie sipped on the bottle of Jack. It burned all the way down but felt good in this October chill.

“Yeah. Ouch is one word for it. So she went back to Dallas. I took my ring and sold it. I got back all our deposits. I cashed out my half of what we had saved and I put an offer on her daddy’s hog operation. But he had already sold it to a corporation. I decided then and there that Big Ag was out to ruin my life, and I took the money and moved to an apartment outside of Des Moines and took a low-paying job on a small organic farm. I raised grass-fed hogs and helped sell them for meat. That was the beginning of the trend toward grass-fed meat, so it was slow-going at first, but then word got around and business picked up. I ended up buying and selling that place for a profit to a larger organic-minded company, and I bought back my great-grandparents’ land up near Ames. I still own that place, and now it sort of runs itself. I decided to buy this land from Jane to expand my sales into Iowa City and maybe eventually Chicago. I’ve been managing for her for a couple of years now, just to make the handover as smooth as possible.”

Maggie smiled. “I can’t believe I never noticed you around here before. I guess you were right when you implied I wasn’t spending enough time with Mama Jane.”

“It goes both ways. You might also say I’ve totally given up on women and thrown myself into my work. Until now.”

“Have you ever been in a relationship since Wendy?”

Jack pulled on the bottle. “I’ve had a fling here and there. I’ve had several blind dates. It seems like everywhere I’ve lived, somebody’s trying to set me up with somebody. Hell, about an hour after closing on this place, Ms. Jane took me out to lunch and tried to fix me up with one of the servers at Carrie’s Tavern.”

Maggie laughed. “That sounds about right.” And then, she had a thought. About how she and Jack had been thrown together under a shadow of misinformation. Could this be…? 

But no, Maggie dismissed the thought from her head and sipped on the bottle. The strong liquid warmed her insides and she snuggled more deeply into the pile of pillows. 

Jack continued. “In some small towns, people look at you sideways when you’re new and you raise a small amount of animals and do things the old-fashioned way. I’m just doing things the way my great-grandparents did things. To live off the land and be good to the soil and to the animals. But some people look at me and see a hobby farmer. And that’s fine, but it also doesn’t make a good prospect for marriage when all the farmers are making better money by contracting or selling to Big Ag. But it’s my cross to bear. I’m good.”

Maggie wondered if that “I’m good” meant he was just fine with being single. She wondered if she had a place in his world. Sure, she felt at home here, but was she getting in the way of his mission? Because it did seem to her that he was on a mission.

But she couldn’t ask that. She didn’t want to put him in that awkward position. Besides, they were having such a good night. She was so enjoying hearing him ramble. He wasn’t much of a rambler, but when he got going, it was mesmerizing to her. His voice was low and slow, like one of those outrageously expensive chocolate truffles that makes you want to take your time and appreciate the love and artistry that someone put into it. She bent her ear toward every nuance and inflection of Jack’s voice. In the moonlight, Jack’s profile, his voice and entire being was like that: perfectly molded and beautiful, attractive and sensual, tempting and endearing. 

Which made her hesitant to say what she was about to say. She didn’t want to change the mood, but she had to say something about his ways of raising the baby goats. “You do know there is a way to keep your nanny producing milk for you without weaning her baby from her, don’t you?”

“It’s called a kid,” Jack said, for now she could hear the smile in his voice as he indulged her. “You do know that calling kids babies is going to make it harder to keep your operation running lean. Getting attached only means one thing. Losing money.”

Maggie frowned. “But I thought you weren’t in this for the money? You said yourself you liked being a small, independent farmer.”

“Being small means I have to be even more efficient. Big producers have bigger corporations telling them how to do things. I am on my own. In the weeds. Making it up as I go along. Which means, I also have a very small margin for error.”

Maggie understood. Mama Jane had run the farm as a way to give the foster siblings something to do. She didn’t do it to make money. There was nothing about growing up on this farm that spelled lean or in the black. It was all about attachment. “Well, I was just going to say, you can milk in the mornings. Then just let the kids and the nannies be together all day in the field. You still get milk and they still get their mama, and you don’t need to bottle feed because they will get all they need all day long.”

“But I get less milk for my buyers.” She could hear him sip from the whiskey bottle again.

“But maybe you won’t. The kids will help keep her milk supply up, and you may end up getting more milk from them each morning.”

“Maggie, that doesn’t make any sense.”

She touched his hand. “Sometimes you have to put your trust in nature, Jack. When it makes the least sense to us humans, that’s when it most amazes us.”

He was quiet for a moment, then laughed. “Who is the boss here, anyway? All right, we’ll try it your way. Only because I’m sure you won’t let up until we do. Lord, woman. You could talk a fish into trying to climb a tree.”

“And you’re as stubborn as an alpaca standing in front of the shearing machine.”

“What the hell kind of analogy is that? Everyone knows donkeys are the stubborn ones.”

“A lot you know about animals. Everyone knows that alpacas are ten times more stubborn than donkeys. Speaking of which, alpacas are great for keeping coyotes away, too. I can hear them at night, you need to do something. Mama Jane got an alpaca for a while because she got tired of staying up all night long with a shotgun, watching the barn.”

“Well, I got news for you, the coyotes are out and about in the middle of the day now, while the animals are in the field. I killed one yesterday.”

“You killed it?”

“What am I supposed to do to it? Sing it a lullaby and feed it sushi?”

“That’s why you get a donkey or an alpaca! They scare them away.”

“Your way is just gonna keep costing me and costing me, isn’t it?”

She placed her hand on his hand, not knowing if it was the right thing to do, but she did it anyway. She needed to. “Trusting nature pays off in the long run. It may not be great for your pocketbook, but it’s good for the soul.”

Could he tell she wasn’t talking about animals anymore?

Jack clacked the bottle and tossed it into the corn. The stiff leaves bristled as the bottle sailed through, and Maggie heard it come to a thud in the dirt. What was that about, she wondered. Then she found out.

Jack turned to her in the darkness, the moon lighting up the side of his face. “Woman, do you know what you are doing to me?”

“No, I do not. Sorry for arguing. I didn’t mean for you to go and toss away perfectly good whiskey.”

“It was shit. There’s only one way for us to settle this argument if you’re going to stay here with me.”

“Oh really? What’s that?”

“You’re going to have to marry me.”

Maybe it was the moonlight, the stars, Neil Young, the scent of the hay fields, or the whiskey. But she could only manage to reply with one word. 

“When?”