He leaned a hip against the table. “What do you have in mind?”
I tipped my head toward the jars of blackberry thyme. “Choose your favorite underdog. I’ll stick with mine. We’ll see who sells the most.”
“What does the winner get?” He glanced at the wave of customers heading toward the tent.
“Other than pride? Other than bragging rights?” I tapped a finger to my lips. “Winner’s choice.”
“Oh, that’s dangerous.” He scanned the crates behind the table. “I’m choosing—hmm. How about strawberry nectarine?”
“That’s your dark horse?”
“Yeah. Nectarines seem—I don’t know—foreign. They’re not as familiar as plums or as popular as peaches. We get a lot of strawberry purists who won’t even entertain a blended option. I only make it because the nectarine adds amazing dimension to the strawberry. I keep waiting for people to figure that out.”
“All right.” I gave a single, confident nod. “Let’s do this.”
At first, we were mature about our competition. We redirected requests for strawberry and raspberry with gentle efficiency and talked up our jams like they were our first-born children. But we kept it clean. Honest. The way a jam sales sprint between people posing as husband and wife was meant to be played.
But then I took a good look at the people queued in Noah’s line. The clientele there clearly skewed feminine. The couples, the families, and the people who didn’t require a side of beefcake with their jam came through my section of the line. And few of them wasted their time flirting with me.
Fewbut not zero.
On the other side of the line, the flirting was cranked all the way up. Every time he mentioned hand-selecting the nectarines that went into every batch, or how the strawberries were his springtime babies nurtured from little shoots in his greenhouse, his customers edged in closer, touched his arm or his wrist, and sighed out laughs that saidmy panties are in my pocket and I’d be happy to bend over this table right now.
Something spicy flared in my chest when one woman leaned in so far as she examined the jars that I didn’t have to guess whether she was wearing a bra.
“That’s another one of my favorites,” I said, sidling over to Noah. I dropped my head against his bicep and skimmed a hand down his back. His ears were burning red. “It’s great with a little goat cheese too. Have you tried that? Cheese, a touch of jam, some crusty bread? It’s a whole Provençal moment.”
Free Boob glanced between me and Noah, stopping at the spot where I used his arm as a pillow. She straightened, saying, “Umm, no, I haven’t tried that. It sounds…great.”
“I’ll grab some for you.”
As I turned toward the cooler, Noah let his fingers trail down my arm. “Thanks,” he said softly.
Once Free Boob moved along, I put more effort into keeping an eye on Noah’s customers. Most batted their lashes at him and cooed over his recommendations, and I took no issue with that. He was one fine farmer and he deserved the attention, though he didn’t appear to know what to do with the attention, even if it was clearing out his stock of strawberry nectarine. His ears were still burning and his cheeks were flushed from more than the heat.
It was cute. My husband, the cutie.
“Do you make the jam yourself?” my next customer asked.
I smiled at him as I showed Gennie the labels of the jars he’d selected. “I do not make the jam though I have a hand in quality assurance. No batch goes unsampled.”
What was a white lie here and there when it came to jam sales? Nothing at all.
“Important job.” The customer gave me a winning grin. He was a bit older than me, probably in his early forties if the lines around his eyes could be trusted. His hair was blond and wavy, and he wore an untucked blue Oxford with shorts and boat shoes. “My mom loves your products. Every time I visit her up in New Hampshire, I have to bring as much as I can carry or she doesn’t give me the time of day.”
“Your mom’s a lucky lady,” I said, bagging the nine jars—including one blackberry thyme—he’d chosen. “Hand-delivered jam is quite the treat.”
“She’s going to lose it when I tell her I met the beautiful jam lady who personally guarantees each batch. What should I tell her your name is?”
Laughing, I said, “You can tell her Shay is the one sampling all the—oh!”
Noah wrapped an arm around my waist and yanked me into his side. “You can tell your mother you met the guy who creates the recipes too. I’m Noah.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s cool,” the customer replied, his eyes wide with the newfound knowledge that the beautiful jam lady belonged to the growly jam man.
“That will be one three five, period zero zero,” Gennie announced.
Fumbling for his wallet, he said, “Right. Thanks. Here you go.” Gennie shoved his card into the reader as he glanced at me and Noah again. “Mom’s going to be thrilled to hear I met the—uh—couple behind Little Star Farms.” When Gennie returned his card and shifted the screen toward him, he added, “The whole family, even.”
