She sat down across from him and put her phone on the table, face-down.
He noticed this. He noticed it because he had never seen her put the phone face-down. The phone was a professional instrument, and she treated it as one; always proximate, always accessible, the way he kept a pen in his breast pocket. The face-down phone was a choice, a deliberate one. She was prioritizing the conversation. With him.
"I figured we could get our stories together before Mrs. Patel and the news crew get here," she said, opening her notebook.
He liked this side of her; the business side. He liked the chatty side of her, too —the one she showed her followers. Heliked the focused side of her even more; the one she showed him in the field when she was choosing the right tomato, the one she showed him in the kitchen when she was measuring ingredients, the one she showed him when he'd licked their sauce from his thumb and she'd focused hard on his actions.
Finn should stop thinking about that moment. But he hadn't since the other night. He had gone home and not brushed his teeth. He'd woken the next morning with bad breath and no regrets.
They went through the logistics of their fake relationship efficiently, which was how they went through most things when the agenda was clear. They agreed that they’d met on the side of the road and that's where they’d felt the first spark. Not exactly true, but close enough. They’d gotten closer later that morning when they were parked side by side and the blaze started to burn. That Finn could agree with, even if what he felt hadn't been ardor but annoyance. By the second day, they couldn't deny their feelings any longer and had given in. The only thing Finn had given into was that Ivy Lopez had gotten under his skin, and he wasn't as annoyed as he'd been at first.
"Can I ask you something that's not competition or relationship logistics?"
Finn looked up.
"The ranch," she said. "The farm program. How did it start? I'm asking because I'm interested, not because I'm going to post it."
Her phone was still face-down.
Finn thought about where to start. He started, as he usually did with things that required precision, at the beginning.
“When I got here, the farm was already part of the program. They put people to work. Basic tasks. Watering, weeding, harvesting. It gave structure. Something to do with your hands when your head wouldn’t cooperate.”
He paused, not looking at her, tracking the line of the counter instead.
“But it wasn’t built to last. People came through, did their time, and left. No one stayed with it long enough to see anything through. Crops need consistency. Timing. If you miss a window, you don’t get it back. So a lot of crops didn’t make it. Things would go unharvested. Or they’d harvest, and no one knew what to do with it afterward. It went to waste. I stayed longer than I was supposed to most days. Started tracking what needed doing. When. What would actually survive out here, what wouldn’t.
“When my time in the program was up, I wanted to stay. But you know the lore of the Purple Heart Ranch; the land was rezoned five years ago for families only. So staying meant getting married. That was the condition.”
A small shake of his head.
“I wasn’t doing that. So I moved into town. Kept coming back to work the land. But I needed it to make sense financially. So I proposed that we sell the produce. That worked. For a while. Then I realized I could do more with it if I cooked it. Dylan, the owner, offered to pay me, but it wasn't enough. Someone had an old truck sitting unused. I rebuilt it. Turned it into the food truck. That’s been enough. For now.”
"Now you want the restaurant."
Finn looked at Ivy. He had her full attention. He decided he really liked having her full attention on him. No phone. No food. Just the two of them.
“Now I want a restaurant.”
Which was true. But there was something else he realized he wanted in that moment.
Ivy bit at her lower lip. It was fuller than her upper lip. Finn realized he wanted to take a bite out of that lip.
“This place, the ranch, the town, it saved my life. This is how I pay it back.”
She nodded thoughtfully. Her gaze slid from him and out the window. Finn wanted her focus back on him. He was trying to figure out how to make that happen when she dropped a bomb on him.
"I ran from this place the first chance I got."
"You don't want to stay?" He wasn't sure how he managed the words past the lump in his throat.
Ivy shrugged. "I needed to come back here. To reset. It launched me into the culinary world: school and my first job. But I want more. I don't need a restaurant like you. But I also don't want to work for anyone but myself. Social media is helping me do that. I love traveling to new places, testing new dishes and ingredients."
"You can do social media anywhere."
She nodded. "Which is why I came back here. Here is a good start. And now people are going to come from far and wide for a taste of your tomatoes. I'm surprised you haven't gotten more press before now."
"I've gotten press before," he said. "Three years ago. A writer came out — did a piece on the ranch program. It ran well. She moved back to Chicago after, for a promotion."
