Part 4 (2/2)
Hunter went to shrug, and s.h.i.+t, sooner or later he was going to remember that the move was a bad idea before he did it. ”I'm sure you remember they've always had totally different personalities, and nothing there has changed. Which is cool in general,” he said, leaning forward in the seat to curl his fingers over the hard plastic pegs in front of him.
”But difficult when you're trying to run a business,” Emerson finished. She motioned for him to start pedaling with his arms, but her attention didn't stray from the conversation.
So Hunter kept talking. ”Yeah, and lately, things are only getting worse. We had a rough spring at the farm, and a rough winter before that-lots of bad weather and a few missed predictions on soil compositions, so we lost some livestock and the crops are weaker than usual.”
”I'm sorry.”
The words were simple, a standard-issue response Hunter might expect from any well-meaning person in pa.s.sing conversation. But something in Emerson's voice told him she wasn't just saying them to show off her impeccable manners, and h.e.l.l if that didn't make him continue to flap his trap.
”There's a ton of work to be done if we want to rebound,” he admitted slowly. ”And even though he'd rather be skinned alive than admit it, my father isn't able to do as much as he used to.”
”Oh.” A flicker moved through her stare, softening her expression. ”How is your dad?”
”He's okay. Tough,” Hunter added, although he couldn't deny that between the unpredictable weather and the bone-wearying manual labor that inherently went with running a farm, the last few years had done their best to wear his old man out. ”Still up with the roosters every day, trying to work circles around the rest of us.”
A puff of laughter crossed Emerson's lips. ”Guess you come by that whole hating-the-sidelines thing pretty honest.”
He knew he shouldn't mess with her, but G.o.d, she'd been so b.u.t.toned up all week, it was too good to pa.s.s up.
”Does that honestly shock you?” he asked, unable to keep one corner of his mouth from lifting into a half smile as he recycled her words from a few minutes earlier.
How about that-she smiled back. ”I suppose not. You did balance working on the farm with school and football practice when you were barely eighteen. Not exactly something a guy can pull off if he lacks ambition.”
”Spoken like a woman who managed to carve out a four-point-oh GPA while waving from the homecoming float,” Hunter said. He waited out Emerson's silence by continuing his rhythm with the arm bicycle, his shoulder not pleased with the exertion, but not quite as p.i.s.sed as it could've been.
Finally, just when he figured he'd exhausted his supply of personal conversation with her, she tilted her chin in a wordless fair enough. ”Okay, so we both still hate the sidelines. But you had the chance for a faster pace, too. You were scouted by some of the best colleges on the East Coast. Even with that rotator cuff injury senior year, you still could've landed one of a half-dozen scholars.h.i.+ps, yet you stayed here, anyway.”
Okay, now she had him in the surprise department. Hunter had never made any bones about his desire to spend his entire life in Millhaven. Sure, he'd liked playing football. But he loved the farm, from breath to b.a.l.l.s. Always had.
”Did you really think I wouldn't?” he asked.
Emerson didn't say no, but the curiosity in her eyes didn't relent, either. ”You said it yourself. Millhaven's barely on the map, let alone the sidelines. Haven't you ever wondered what if?”
Hunter paused, letting all the layers of her question sink in. ”What if what?”
”I guess . . . what might've happened if you'd left for something bigger.”
His heart sped up. ”You're forgetting the most important part of the equation.”
”Which is?”
”For me, running the farm with my brothers isn't sitting on the sidelines. It's not just where I want to be. It's where I've always belonged. As far as I'm concerned . . . there is nothing bigger.”
”I didn't forget,” Emerson whispered. For a second, she stood beside him, her eyes wide and her expression wide open, and all of a sudden, Hunter's pounding heartbeat had nothing to do with the exercise.
He opened his mouth-to say what, exactly, he had no freaking clue. But then she took a step back, the look on her face growing impenetrable once again, and his chance to say anything disappeared like mist at sunrise.
CHAPTER SIX.
Emerson took a step back on the floor tiles, absolutely convinced she'd lost her faculties. Okay, so there had been a method to her madness when she'd bypa.s.sed her strictly business chitchat with Hunter at the start of their session. Emotional stress had direct physiological impact on a lot of injuries, and it never made them heal faster. The way Hunter's shoulder had knotted up at the mere mention of being out of action at the farm told her all she needed to know about the source of the tightness in his shoulder. Emerson had started their conversation in an effort to get him to relax, knowing it would loosen some of his tension and therefore help him heal.
She hadn't realized that lowering Hunter's stress would also lower her guard until it had been too late.
Emerson tucked her hair behind her ear, strong-arming her pulse back out of the stratosphere. The past was over, her decisions made no matter how much her memories stung. Right now she had a job to do, and her only client was in pain. Which meant the tension in Hunter's muscles and tendons absolutely had to go.
There was only one surefire way to make that happen, and it d.a.m.n sure wasn't confessing how she'd come within a thin thread of telling him the truth about her family life and begging him to go with her when she'd left for college.
”So tell me more about how the farm runs now,” Emerson said.
Hunter's chin popped up with the force of his surprise. ”You want to talk about daily operations at Cross Creek?”
”If you'd like, sure.” She realized a beat too late that he might not want to talk to her at all-she had been pretty adamant about keeping things on the straight and narrow this week, and he probably wanted to get personal with her about as much as he wanted a colonoscopy. But then his shoulders loosened just slightly beneath the white cotton of his T-s.h.i.+rt, the small but genuine smile spreading over his face telling her she'd hit pay dirt.
”Some things at Cross Creek are the same as they've always been,” he said, his shoulders dropping even farther from his neck as he rolled through the motions on the hand bicycle. ”We're still the biggest family-run farm in the Shenandoah. Corn, soybeans, seasonal crops, livestock, although we hired a separate manager for the sheep and cattle about seven years ago.”
Interest sparked in Emerson's mind, so strong she couldn't resist. ”Whatever happened to that brown Jersey cow? The one your brother begged your dad to keep in the barn with the horses by the henhouse?”
”Clarabelle?” Hunter's laugh was all warmth and rumble. ”She's getting a little long in the tooth, but she's still around. All eleven hundred pounds of her. And before you ask, yes. Eli still treats her like a puppy. Going on fourteen years old, and that old cow has got the nicest stall in the horse barn. Blankets in the winter, the whole nine yards.”
Now it was Emerson's turn to laugh. ”Sounds like a lot of things really are the same.”
”Not everything,” he countered. ”Although most of our livestock and crops are still sold to distributors, in today's market, a farm the size of Cross Creek needs multiple streams of revenue in order to stay in the black.”
”I'm afraid you're losing me a little.” Human bodies, she could fix no problem. She'd even worked with some moderately high-tech imaging and record-keeping systems when she'd been with the Lightning. But running a business with all those moving parts-and one that had to do with things like managing crops and livestock at that? Yeah, that was waaaay out of Emerson's league.
But if Hunter minded her cluelessness, he didn't let it show. ”Think of it like covering all the bases. Yes, we do most of our business selling our agriculture to companies that process it for different uses. But there's more than one way for us to utilize our resources to make money.”
”So you're not just selling corn and soybeans and cattle to distributors anymore,” she said, and he lifted an index finger from one of the bike pedals to gesture that she'd caught on.
”Exactly. We sell produce to a few local grocery stores and restaurants, and we dipped our feet in the agritourism pond a few years ago.”
”Agri-what?” Emerson's brows lifted as her brain went for a full spin. She'd always known farming was more than seed/feed/sow, but, wow, she'd missed a lot in the last twelve years.
Hunter, however, hadn't missed a single step. ”It's just a fancy way of saying we added a few things to bring people out to the farm, proper. We've got some pick-your-own fields for smaller seasonal crops like strawberries, apples, and pumpkins, and we started a community-supported agriculture program so people can buy produce direct. We're also trying out some specialty market stuff in the greenhouses year-round. That's sort of been Owen's baby for the last couple of years.”
Just like that, Emerson's interest tripled. ”Specialty market stuff, huh? Like what?”
”You name it, we've tried it. A bunch of different kinds of squash, root veggies, asparagus, some herbs and greens. About twenty varieties of heirloom tomatoes. The list goes on and on.”
”Wow. Those tomatoes sound delicious,” she said, her stomach seconding the motion with a slightly embarra.s.sing and very toothy rumble.
Hunter arched a chestnut-colored brow. ”And your stomach sounds empty.”
”Not exactly.” Most of the time she was too busy for breakfast-or at least, she used to be-and the meds her new neurologist had started her on a few days ago were wreaking havoc on her stomach, besides. But just because she wasn't a breakfast person didn't mean she wasn't a coffee person.
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