“Hopefully?” she echoed him.
Blaze stabbed another potato with his fork. “Yeah.”
Later, Sarah lugged a basket of eggs into the house with plans to bandage her wrist upstairs. Mavis the Chicken, usually so serene that she could have traveled with a stoner on a road trip, had pecked a chunk out of her arm.
While she was setting the eggs in a bowl in the sink to wash, Blaze came in from outside, still holding a hammer from where he’d been shoring up her long-neglected raised garden beds.
Shirtless.
The June summer heat must’ve gotten to him because Blaze Robinson was standing in her kitchenshirtless.
The heavy muscle wrapped around his body was chiseled perfection, solid and compact, rather than the overbuilt bodybuilder types in the movies who looked like their meat was well-marbled. Blaze’s rounded shoulders and pecs narrowed to his tight waist, and the thin lines of blue-black tattoos looked like a net had been thrown over his skin.
Yeah, she’d like to throw a net over him and—
Oh, no. He was going to be leaving her farm soon, and Sarah did not need to be the horniest girl in the world when she should be getting her work done. After he left, there would be plenty of time to read G.I. Joe slashfics on the Internet and imagine what might have been.
He asked her, “Are the eggs a significant source of revenue? I saw you put the extra ones in your cooler by the road.”
“A lot of people around here have chickens, but city people drive out to Kalona from Iowa City or even Cedar Rapids to get farm-fresh eggs and dairy.”
“Is the limiting factor the number of eggs or the lack of customers?”
Sarah thought about it. “Eggs. Almost everybody who buys dairy also buys a half-dozen eggs until I run out about ten o’clock, and there’s usually a lot more dairy customers in the afternoon.”
Blaze nodded and mumbled, “Interesting,” and then he went back outside to the garden to finish fixing her raised beds.
She’d been meaning to fix her garden beds for years. Having him around was a blessing she hadn’t known she needed. He saw things and just . . . fixed them.
Things justgot done.
While the eggs soaked, Sarah scanned the spreadsheets on the computer, analyzing what the corn needed for the coming week.
Because the corn always needed something, whether it was pesticide, fungicide, or weed killer. Corn was like a wide-mouthed baby bird always begging for something, and thesomethingalways cost money.
Sarah didn’t have any more money.
Without her supplemental income from reading tarot cards on SnipSnap, the regular crop treatments and feed deliveries had depleted her bank account in only a week.
She should have taken the wad of cash that Blaze had given her and driven straight to the bank, but that fifteen thousand bucks in cash was long gone. Benny and his goons were probably tossing the bills at strippers.
Something had to change.
That afternoon, she drove her truck towing the horse trailer to Abigail Yoder’s farm to clue her in on the situation.
When Sarah knocked on the screen door, Abigail ran so fast her apron strings flew out behind her back, and she grabbed Sarah around her neck, though gingerly. “Are you okay? The doctor said you would be in the hospital fora month!”
“I got better,” Sarah said. “And thanks for taking care of the beasts for me. I can take them home now.”
Abigail dragged Sarah right into her kitchen and turned around from the sideboard with two glasses of lemonade and a handwoven basket full of muffins. “Of course! I can have Matthew’s brother Amos come around to your farm and help feed if your back isn’t up to hauling hay bales. He’s staying with us because they thought he was getting too worldly, working atthe blacksmith’s.”
“No, I’m okay. I don’t need help. Turns out that it was more dehydration than anything else.”
Abigail nodded. “Youhaveto drink your water. Filtered water, of course.”
“Filtered, of course.” Because Iowa well water was too contaminated with pesticides and fertilizers in many areas to drink safely. Pregnant women were cautioned not to shower for longer than three minutes. “But I’m okay now.”
“Maybe you should get some of those electric-light packets from the feed store to put in your water for the dehydration.”
