Aiden nods. “So we chop.” He glances at me before continuing. “I’ll be around until I can’t be. Use me, okay? I can come back in the morning.”
I take a step forward. “I’ll be here too.”
“I thought you were going back to New York,” Aiden says.
I give him a look that I hope says,bro, I’m not going to abandon my girl. “Nope.”
Eve shrugs. “I’ll take whatever help I can get. Bring your favorite shears,” she tells Aiden, and then turns to me. “If you want to pick up a strong pair for yourself, I’ll reimburse you.”
I press my lips together. “Won’t be necessary.”
22
EVE
I’ve been watching the storm with a close eye over the past few days, painfully aware that it seems to be building and building as it hovers over the Atlantic, but unwilling to believe the worst until I have to. We have all sorts of sunflowers on the farm—late blooming varieties and hardier ones—but none, unfortunately, that can reliably survive a hurricane.
It doesn’t look like it'll be a direct hit, but I’m betting it’s enough to cause flooding if Aiden’s already stockpiling supplies. His animals are more important to him than anything else, so the second a potential threat shows up, he abandons everything else.
And he only ever shows up here with ominous weather predictions if he thinks I might need to make a big decision.
He’d never tell me what to do, and he makes that painfully clear anytime he gets that prickly feeling along the back of his neck that tells him the weather isoffin some way, but I know by now that it’s better to heed his advice while I still have the chance.
I thank him for coming and send the twomen away with promises to see them again early in the morning, armed with their shears. I send out a text to every single one of my employees to get here early, if they can—this is an all-hands-on-deck sort of situation—and that they’ll be rewarded handsomely for any extra time they can give me.
And then I pour myself a mug of tea and go down the list of friends I’ve made over the years, once I took over the farm and realized this shit is fuckinghard, and downrightimpossible,if not for a community of support.
I sit on my couch under my favorite sunflower blanket and text Grace from Lavender Springs, who specializes in all things botanical. Rory’s sister Kat, a wedding planner who has her nose in every flower shop in the tri-state area for just thechanceof a discounted flower. Willow, who runs a scrapbooking business online and has an almost uncomfortable love for dried flowers. River from Daisy Lake who ironically specializes in candles and her sister Ivy who has a chokehold on the pressed flower business nationwide.
And they, like the wonderful humans they are, agree to take on stock a little early and spread the word that Sunflower Hill sunflowers are—for this storm only—cheap as fuck.
Before I know it, there’s a knock on my door that wakes me from a truly delightful dream in which Channing Tatum had been dragging sunflowers lightly across my skin, whispering words I couldn’t understand but I knew to be sweet nothings.
Although to be honest, I’m not disappointed to see Ryder on the other side of my door.
“Fuck, I fell asleep. I should have been out there hours ago,” I mutter as I let him in and promptly run up the stairs to change. I pull on my uniform—a layer of spandex underneath a thick sweater and overalls to top off the classic farmgirl look—but just as I’m about to head back down the stairs, I realize Ryder was wearing a rain jacket, and call down, “Has the storm started?”
“Raining lightly."
“Fuck.”
I scramble down the stairs, throwing my hair into a ponytail. “What time is it?”
“Six.”
I rear back. “Wow, that’s actually a lot earlier than I expected it to be when you managed to show up before my alarm clock.” Then I realize I would have had tosetmy alarm clock. “Except my alarm clock is upstairs.” I shake my head. “I fell asleep on the couch trying to sell sunflowers.”
His brow furrows. “Do you need to sleep in a bit? Tell me what and where to chop and I can get started without you.”
I shake my head. “No, I’ve got everyone I’ve ever met coming for flowers today. I should already be out there preparing for when they get here.”
I grab my rain jacket from the coat closet by the front door and head outside, holding the door for Ryder as he follows. I head straight for the barn, grabbing a number of five-gallon buckets and stem powder to keep the bouquets fresh. As we haul everything out to the dirt road, I spot Vic heading up the driveway, and he gives me a big wave as he diverts straight for the sunflower field. He knows the drill by now.
But Ryder doesn’t, so I speak while I distribute a little bit of flower food into each of the buckets and add a light layer of water from the faucet outside the gift shop.
“We want to start from the back of the sunflower field. Goal is to get as many about-to-bloom flowers as possible into these buckets before everyone gets here. Abby will put a sign up at the road for half-price bouquets, so we’ll make afew that we’ll keep nice and pretty and stack around the rusted bicycle in case anyone stops in. Otherwise, we let everyone else have their pick and sell them half-price by the stem. I’ve got a bunch of girls who use them for different things so they might want ones that are just browning or ones that look extra seedy, so don’t be too picky with those ones.”
He nods, pulling a brand-new pair of shears out of his pocket. “I came prepared. Wiped them down with an alcohol swab and everything.”
