“Like what?”
“Well, I could tell you but I’d rather show you.”
Shelby groaned. “Will this require us to put on clothes?”
I laughed, not wanting to move either. “It would.”
“Then show me tomorrow,” she said before crawling on top of me again.
The next day, after the chores were finished and we had lunch, I drove Shelby down the back road leading from Granny’s Acre Farm to Whitaker Farms.
It was a damn long drive for two adjoining properties. But I didn’t mind when Shelby was bouncing in her seat, excited just to be with me. I totally understood, since I was feeling just as excited. I was just less bouncy about it.
I kept looking over at her, drinking her in, hypnotized. She just had that kind of mesmerizing effect on me, making me starelike I’d never seen a woman before. Shelby didn’t seem to mind though, which I appreciated.
We drove up to the massive locked gate at the entrance to Whitaker Farms. I shut the engine off and we got out. Shelby went to hop over the gate again, but I stopped her. “Hold on. I’ve got the keys this time.”
Her eyes brightened. “Good thinking. I mean, it’ll still be trespassing, but so what? It’s not like anyone will notice. We could burn the place down and no one would care.”
“The new owner might,” I said with a shrug.
She stopped and narrowed her eyes at me. “New owner?”
“Yup.”
“Let me guess.” She grinned at me. “You’re the new owner.”
I slipped the keys into her hands and closed her fingers around them. “No,you’rethe new owner.”
Her mouth fell open in shock. She shook her head like she was trying to clear it. “Explain. Because that’s not possible. You can’t just give something like this to me.”
I explained to her exactly how I could just give something like this to her, leaving out the part where I threatened to expose company secrets. You know, just in case Shelby didn’t find extortion as romantic as I did. I just told her that I made a deal with the company before I resigned. That it was part of my severance package, which was close to true. And now the property had been transferred back to her. I had all the paperwork in my bags. It was legit.
Shelby had tears in her eyes before I was finished explaining and she hugged me so tight I heard my ribs creak in protest. “I can’t believe you did this for me. I can never repay you.”
“I did it forus,” I said. “No repayment necessary. And, look, when I said I wanted to fix the company’s past mistakes, I was serious. Putting this farm back in your hands seemed like theonly way to fix it. You were supposed to take it over after your parents retired, and now you are.”
“Thank you, Carter.” She kissed me, and I would have bought her a million more farms to get another kiss like that.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said.
Shelby unlocked the gate with trembling fingers, but she got it open, and we drove up to the main area where the office building was located between the various livestock buildings. From the size of things, the farm had been a serious operation. I still thought my father had been shortsighted when he’d shut it down. There was a lot of money to be made here for people who cared about actually making it work.
She looked around at everything, and I could tell she was seeing it differently than the last time we had visited. Then, she had been looking at the husk of what used to be. Now, she was seeing unlimited potential.
As we walked through the buildings, which looked a little weathered but were still in great condition, I smiled at her. “Yesterday, you asked me what my plan was. But now that the farm is yours again, it’s my turn to ask you: what areyourplans?”
She sighed and spun in a circle like she was trying to take in everything all at once. “I would love to reopen this place. Maybe not at full capacity and not all at once. But we could start bringing on people from the town. A lot of folks moved away after the farm closed, but there’s still plenty of people who would be happy to come back.”
“We can make that happen,” I said.
“It won’t be cheap.” Her expression fell. “I know you have money and all, but I can’t ask you to foot the bill.”
“It would be an investment,” I said. “That’smyplan.”
Shelby kissed me again. “You can invest as long as you stay and help me. You’re kind of bad at being a farmhand but youknow business more than anyone I know. I’m going to need your help if I’m going to reopen the farm and bring it back to its former glory.”
I nodded and grinned at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
