“I might’ve kept my tongue in my mouth for one thing!”

He laughed so hard he was bent at the waist. He laughed so hard that when he tried to kiss her goodbye, it was just wet and sloppy.

“Hey! Is that proper behavior for a minister!”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her a salute and walking off back toward the lodge. Laughing his cute butt off.

“Man, can I pick ’em,” she said to no one.

Chapter Seventeen

Krista refilled Jake’s coffee cup and he gave her free hand an affectionate pat. “After your shift, I’d like to take you for a ride.”

“Oh?”

“To the farm,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift home to change and tell your cousins where we’re going, make sure they don’t need you for anything, then we’ll go. It’s not far.”

“Did you ask your sister and brother-in-law if they mind?” she asked nervously.

“My sister is at work until dinnertime and my brother-in-law will be working around the farm. They won’t mind.” Unconsciously, she backed away. “Don’t be nervous,” he said. “They’re very nice people. Very welcoming.”

Of course there was no way Charley and Meg would ask her to miss a trip to the farm, not because it would be such a great new experience for her but because Jake was taking her. They were almost giddy with excitement.

It was a beautiful August day, the sun bright with just a few scattered clouds and enough of a breeze to keep her clothes from sticking to her. It was less than a thirty-minute drive to an old farmhouse surrounded by barns, outbuildings and what seemed like miles and miles of green fields. The corn was high, the wheat was thick and there were other growing things she couldn’t identify. “Soybeans and sugar beets,” Jake said.

Also, there were several trucks.

“How much of this does your brother-in-law farm?” she asked.

“Everything you can see. That house to the north—that’s the Jaspers and they don’t farm anymore. Richard leases their fields. That house to the west, that’s Nicholls and they only have a small plot, mostly for their own personal use. There are a few other neighbors here and there but this is the biggest farm in the area.”

“All the trucks?” she asked.

“Richard has hands. Day workers. Seasonal. He only keeps two year-round and usually has another four from planting to harvest.”

“Look how vast,” she said in an almost reverent breath. “What must it have been like to grow up here?”

He laughed and said, “I thought I was cursed. Lotta chores on a farm.”

He parked and met a bunch of barking dogs in the yard. At first Krista stiffened nervously and counted—four. One blond, one black and white, one solid black and one chocolate brown. Jake good-naturedly talked to them all. One of them, the golden one, sat in front of her, waiting.

“That’s Lucy,” he said. “She’ll sit there patiently until you pet her. The others all run around in excitement because they have company.”

“They don’t run away?”

“This is where their food is,” Jake said. “Twice a day, morning and night. They have work to do—keep the wildlife away from the chickens and any unfriendlies away from the house. And if they ran off, I don’t know who’d go looking for them.”

Close to the house was a vegetable garden with tomatoes that were huge, melons nearly ripe, zucchini and yellow hook-neck squash. There was a row of lettuce and a large plot of cucumbers. “Zoe likes to can pickles,” he explained. There were a couple of apple trees and Jake pulled two off, rubbed off the dust on his jeans until they shone deep red. He handed her one.

There was a swing set with two swings, a slide and hanging rings. Beside it, a sandbox. “The grandchildren,” he said.

He showed her the chickens, kept in a modern coop that was heated in winter, their three horses in the pen and two miniature mules. There were two cows and an old bull in the pasture. “They’re more of a hobby than anything. If Richard gets a calf, he usually just sells it. Once he had a Clydesdale—someone was mistreating the horse so Richard took him in until he could find a permanent home. It took him five years.”

“Five years!”

“I suspect he was dragging his feet. It’s an expensive horse to feed and take care of and Richard’s Clydesdale didn’t make beer commercials. But his kids were young then and loved that horse.”

He walked her through the cornfield to a pond right on the property.

“Oh, my God, it’s beautiful,” she said. “Did you swim in it as a kid?”

“We did not,” he said. “It’s a swampy thing. The water’s okay, but not as pleasant as the lake. We skated on it in winter.”

She saw a virtual army of big green farm machines, learned that three generations had lived in that farmhouse, his sister was a nurse who worked for a doctor in Willet, their two kids were grown and they had two grandchildren. She met a little pack of new kittens in the barn, got chased by a rooster and Lucy followed her devotedly, leaning against her regularly for a pat.

“I don’t know if I can leave this dog,” she told him.

“She’s a lover, isn’t she? Lucy was my dad’s dog. He passed six years ago.”

“Do you ever wish you were still involved with the farm?”

“Nah, I’m not a farmer. I like to come out here on a nice day, though. There’s nothing harder than running a farm but to a visitor like me it seems so peaceful and healthy. I don’t have to think about an early freeze, a bad storm, a long winter, a flood...” He picked a few daisies from a border along the side of the house, handing them to her.

“I bet you had adventures here,” she said.

He took her hand and led her through the yard toward the barn. “Adventures in weather,” he said with a laugh. “Blizzards in winter, tornadoes in summer, floods in spring. There are two types of kids raised in rural Minnesota. The ones who can’t be happy in the city—it’s too loud, messy, crowded, dangerous. And the ones who can’t wait to get off the farm. I was the latter.”

“I bet there were fun times,” she said.

“Like you and your cousins had,” he said. “Fun times, hard times. Growing up isn’t easy. Let’s go in the hayloft. I want to talk about something.”

“We’ve been talking the last couple of hours,” she said. “All the way here, out to the pond, through the veggies...”

He pulled on her hand. “You like those veggies, don’t you?”

“You have no idea what a luxury they are. Charley goes to the farmers’ stands all the time.” She looked around, saw the ladder to the loft. “I bet you got into a lot of trouble up there.”

“Not me so much as the other kids. Up you go,” he said.

“But what about Lucy?” she asked.

“I’m sure she’ll be waiting for you.”

“Why are we going up there?”

“Because after we’re done talking, we’ll want to be alone.”

“Oh,” she said. “I guess I get it now.” She smiled over her shoulder. “More kissing, I assume.”

“If you don’t mind.”

She stepped up onto the loft. There were a couple of hay bales, an old horse blanket and a pile of loose hay in the corner. There was also a big hatch, a window, that Jake opened to let in the breeze. He sat down on a bale and pulled her down beside him.

“Tell me how the summer usually ends for you and your cousins.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“When do you close up the house and leave?”

“When we were kids we left in time to get home and ready for school. We had to get our school things—new shoes, clothes, notebooks and things. We usually left right before Labor Day weekend.”

“And this year?”

“I don’t know. So much depends on Meg. We might be able to stay through the holiday weekend but we can’t stay after the temperatures drop. We’ve all avoided talking about it.”

“It’s August, Krista. We have to talk about it, you and me. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Go back to Saint Paul. Maybe to my mother’s? Or maybe I’ll rent a room, get a waitress job.”

“What if I said I don’t want you to go?” he asked.

“Careful, Jake,” she said. “You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew.”

“I don’t want you to go,” he said. “I don’t want to scare you but I think I love you. I know you mean a lot to me, like nobody has. And I know I haven’t felt this way in a long, long time. Together, we just hit all the right notes. I don’t want you to go.”

“Well, I might not have a choice,” she said.

“If that lake house has to be closed up, I can find you a place.”

“Winter will come,” she said. “I don’t have a car. I have appointments I have to keep.”

“I’ll make a commitment to get you around,” he said. “Did you ever drive? Have a license?”

She shook her head. She had driven, many years ago, but never got her license. “I don’t want to be dependent on anyone,” she said.

“You’re dependent on Charley,” he pointed out.

“You know how different that is,” she said. “I’ve known you for two months!”

“Let’s think about where to go from here,” he said. “Just suppose we find you a place nearby for after your cousins leave. Something decent and affordable, close to the lodge so you can work. Just let me know when you need transportation—I’ll be glad to help with that. There will be cold, snowy days when you can’t walk. There will be your appointments and I suppose you’ll want to visit your mother. Let’s try it, Krista, because if you leave...” He shook his head. “I’d hate that. I love having you here. I love being here with you.”