Chapter Two
June 1985
The lemon-yellow Triumph kicked up a cloud of dust behind it as Phoebe maneuvered the slow curves and easy hills of upstate New York’s country roads. She glanced down at the map on the seat next to her, the path marked with highlighter, and hoped to God she was headed in the right direction. She’d just driven through a town that looked as though time had frozen it in the mid-sixties. Bell bottoms, tie-dye, and, by her count, eight VW vans parked around the main square. It was so authentic she wondered if they were shooting a movie in town.
She’d have stopped to poke around if she’d had the time. The video and record shop looked like it might house some treasures, and the bakery with its vibrant pink awning tempted her. But she was already running late, a sin in her book. If she was going to spend most of the summer on a man’s farm picking his brain, the least she could do was show up on time.
Phoebe nearly missed the drive. The broken-down fence that lined the road split for a sliver of dirt lane. A hand-painted sign hung crookedly from an unpainted post.
Pierce Acres read the wry script.
She bumped down the lane, swerving to miss the biggest of the ruts until the farm came into view and was relieved to find that there was indeed a house on the property. It was a traditional two-story that had seen better days. The serviceable white clapboard siding was clean, and the roof looked brand new, but the porch bowed and sagged, and the flowerbeds were overgrown with weeds. Phoebe noted there were no curtains in any of the dingy windows, though privacy didn’t appear to be an issue out here with no neighbors for a quarter mile in each direction.
Across the drive from the house sat a dilapidated barn in faded red, though the fence around the scrap of land in front of the barn was new and freshly painted. The barn itself looked like a good stiff breeze would have it tumbling in on itself.
There was no welcoming committee visible, so she turned off the car and hefted her suitcase and typewriter out of the trunk. When she slammed the lid, the first signs of life stirred. A frantic yip came from the screen door on the porch. It bumped open an inch, closed, and then bumped again. A brown and white mottled dog the size of a toaster oven shoved its nose through the opening and muscled its way out.
“Hey, buddy,” Phoebe said, dropping her baggage and sinking down. The dog hunkered down in suspicion and inched forward. It gave her hand a careful sniff and must have downgraded her threat status because he flopped on his back inviting a belly rub.
It was character that made the dog cute, not anything physical, Phoebe decided. He had one eye, an ear that flopped up, and an obscene length of tongue that lolled from the side of his mouth.
“Lousy guard duty, Murdock.” The voice as rough as the gravel beneath her knees came from over her shoulder in the direction of the barn. Phoebe rose and then froze.
Farmers did not look like the man ambling toward her. They were older, weathered, craggy.
This guy looked like he’d walked off the set of Dukes of Hazzard. His dark hair was long, curling a bit at the ends. Grey eyes peered at her from a tanned face that carried a rough layer of stubble. His long, muscular legs were encased in tight denim. The dirty plaid shirt was tight across a set of spectacular biceps that bulged as he hefted two buckets filled with what looked and smelled like shit.
The man made carrying shit sexy. She’d had no idea that was possible. Now, if he was as smart as he was hot, her summer had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.
“John Pierce?” she asked, one-eyed dog and bags forgotten.
The man set the buckets down and peeled off his work gloves before offering her a large, callused hand. “That’d be me. And you are?”
Phoebe blinked, returning his strong grip. Just how many visitors was this farmer expecting? “I’m Phoebe. Phoebe Allen, the grad student you said could spend the summer.”
He looked at her blankly.
She tried again. “Thesis? First generation farms and the obstacles they face post-farming crisis?” John was staring at her as if she’d just announced she was here to perform a craniotomy on him. Maybe he was daft? Maybe he’d hit his head on a piece of farming equipment and had lost his short- or long-term memory, whichever held the information that she was coming to stay with him for the summer and interview him for her thesis.
“Phoebe Allen?”
“Uh-huh.”
He finally released his grip on her hand and swiped an arm over his forehead. “Son of a bitch.”
“I beg your pardon?” It wasn’t that Phoebe was opposed to bad language. She was a bit of a connoisseur of four letter words. But to lead an introduction with it was odd and didn’t bode well.
“I was told you were a grad student named Allen.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Technically I am.”
“I was told you were a man.”
“Who the hell told you that?”
“A meddling, exasperating liar, that’s who.” He was scowling now, his expression dark.
“Let me guess. You have a problem with me being a woman.” Phoebe was used to the attitude. She was the only woman out of fourteen master’s students in her class at Penn State University and one of only three in the entire College of Agriculture.
“Of course I do.”
Phoebe settled her hands on her hips and drummed her fingers against the denim of her skirt. “Just because I’m young and female and a little on the short side doesn’t preclude me from an interest in farming economics and rural sociology.” She was gearing up to launch into her just-because-I-have-a-vagina lecture when he gave a short laugh.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” Phoebe was toe-to-toe with him. Given the contents of the buckets he’d been hauling, she probably should have kept her distance, but she was mad enough, annoyed enough, to forget about her sandals and bare toes.
“I mean we can’t live under the same roof all summer alone together.”
Phoebe, never at a loss for words, found herself struggling to come up with any at the moment. “What? Why not?”
“I’m a single man. You’re a single woman. We’re not shacking up.”
Phoebe looked over both shoulders. She had to be on one of those Candid Camera TV specials. “Do you have a calendar?” she asked finally.
“Not on me.”
“It’s funny because I could have sworn that it was 1985, not 1955. And that respectable, responsible adults who are working together don’t need chaperones.”
“You have no problem staying with a man you just met on a farm where the only witnesses to your potential screams would be a handful of chickens and a cow with a limp?”
“What kind of screams are we talking about? Murder or sexual?”
He didn’t look amused. John was back to quietly staring at her, his gray eyes nearly silver in the softening light as day wound down into evening. She tipped her head back. “This would be a lot easier if you had a sense of humor.”
“This would be a lot easier if you were a man.”
“Look, John. Can I call you John, or should I stick with Mr. Pierce?” She didn’t wait for an answer since he probably wouldn’t get the joke anyway. “I’m an adult. I’m twenty-three years old, not a virgin, and not looking to do anything this summer but work on your farm and my thesis.
“If you don’t think you can control yourself around me, say so now, and I’ll scramble to find another guy who just decided ‘Farming crisis, schmarming crisis. I think I’ll start a first gen produce farm and carve out a living after thirty percent of my brethren got foreclosed upon in the last five years.’ Shouldn’t be a problem. Shouldn’t throw off my thesis or push back my graduation at all and ruin my chances for a job in August.”
Sarcasm was another one of her finer qualities that John Pierce obviously wasn’t going to appreciate.
“I don’t like being manipulated into things,” he said.
“Who does?” Phoebe shrugged. “But if anyone did any manipulating here, it wasn’t me, and I resent being held accountable for someone else’s bad behavior.”
He studied her quietly, and Phoebe felt a little tingle race from her toes to the roots of her hair. She held her breath. She was so close to graduation, so close to a job that excited her, so close to finally making things right for her parents. She wasn’t going to let John Pierce—handsome devil or not—or anyone else wreck those plans.
Murdock let out a yip at John’s feet. His stump of a tail wagged in the dirt.
“Guess it’s close to supper time,” John said, squinting up at the sun as it eased toward the horizon in the west. He looked back at Phoebe, and she squirmed under his amusement. “Guess you’ll be wanting a place to put your suitcase.”
“I guess so,” she said, debating whether or not she should apologize for jumping down his throat. She was used to the razzing—and sometimes outright harassment—that came from her classmates and had come to expect it as an annoying downside to her chosen path. Technically, John didn’t seem as concerned about a woman being interested in farming. He was more concerned about sharing a house with one, which to her was just as stupid.
“You gonna yell at me if I carry your suitcase?” he asked blandly.
Phoebe blew out her breath. “I think I can hold back on my verbal insults for the moment.”
He leaned around her and picked up the case. “Can’t ask for more than that. I’ll show you Allen’s room.”
Had the serious farmer just make a joke? Was he relenting and inviting her to stay? Phoebe couldn’t tell on either count.
Murdock bulleted toward the side door of the house and scratched at the screen, and John set off in the same direction at a more leisurely pace. Phoebe hefted her typewriter case and followed along behind him.
The kitchen was small and dark and hadn’t been redone since the 1950s. The refrigerator was original. The stove was a little newer, definitely an early 70s model in the same pea green as her suitcase. Orange and white linoleum tiles peeled up at the corners. The Formica dining table was a hand-me-down with rusty metal legs and a scarred top. Its four chairs boasted mismatched vinyl patterns of flowers, birds, and checkers.
“It’s a, uh, work in progress,” John said, looking around as if seeing his own kitchen for the first time.
“It’s nice,” she told him and meant it. The space was clean, and it was in better shape than her apartment off campus. Phoebe spent most of her time in the library, the lab, or the fields. Her shabby studio apartment was reserved for sleeping... and the occasional bottle of wine. This place felt like a home. An outdated home in desperate need of some sprucing up, but a home nonetheless.
Phoebe peered into one of the front rooms and discovered a dining room with peeling brown-on-brown graphic wallpaper that probably made dinner guests dizzy. Though judging by the fact that the room housed a table and no chairs, Phoebe assumed John didn’t do much entertaining. Opposite was a small living room with requisite couch and recliner. “How long have you lived here?”
“Bought the place a year ago. Should have seen it then. It was a real wreck.”
Before she could clarify if he was joking, John disappeared down the hallway toward the front of the house. She followed and grinned wistfully at the wallpaper here, black with orange and yellow flowers. It was a twin of the paper that had been in her grandmother’s laundry room on the family farm. She’d have to dig her Polaroid out of her bag and snap a picture to send to her grandparents.
She followed John’s remarkable denim-clad ass up the staircase and into a bedroom at the front of the house. It was small but cozy. There was a twin bed with a wrought iron headboard and no sheets near a dusty dresser that was missing four knobs, and she imagined the skinny door with the glass knob was a closet.
John stared at the bed for a long minute. “I don’t have sheets.” He sounded baffled as if bedding hadn’t occurred to him when he’d agreed to house a guest.
So, he was going to let her stay the night at least, she thought, relieved. “That’s okay. I’ve got my sleeping bag in the car.” Phoebe prided herself on being a low-maintenance woman. She wore her long hair straight so she didn’t need to deal with the case of Aqua Net most of her friends went through in a month. Her clothes were mostly variations on a theme: denim and cotton. And she was perfectly comfortable sleeping on a bare mattress or the floor of a tent.
“Bathroom’s back that way.” John jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m across the hall. I’m going to grab a shower, and then maybe we’ll figure out what to do with you. If you need anything just holler.” He was gone before she could respond.
She smirked at his choice of words. Holler. Yep, she was definitely in farm country and with a farmer of few words. It was fine with her. Phoebe had more than enough words to make up for John’s lack.
The springs sang as she sank down on the mattress. She plumped the lone pillow and flopped back against it and wondered if John really believed he had a choice about her staying.