“That you didn’t.”
“How old is she?” Luca tried to keep his voice casual. He sensed from Emerson’s pauses, his sudden pointed lack of eye contact, that Emerson feared having a kid would put Luca off, somehow. As if being a dad didn’t instantly, inexplicably make Emerson even hotter. Luca took a mental snapshot of the face he’d so recently been able to witness for ten full seconds—easy, crooked smile, warmth in those blue-green eyes—and added in a giggling little girl at his side.
“Four,” Emerson replied, and Luca had to close his eyes.
Farming. He was here to learn about the farm.
“Cool,” he said.
“The berries are actually my favorite, even if their season’s mostly over now,” Emerson said, on the move again, and Luca took a deep breath before he followed. “There are still some late season surprises every time I wander through, but they’re never as good, or—” Emerson frowned, seeming to rethink his own assessment. “As consistent, anyway. Late season berries are normally my cooking berries.”
Luca gave a grave nod, as if he knew jack shit about the growing seasons of anything on this farm. His family probably did, though. The Yaegers treated fishing as not merely a career but a spiritual practice, a way to stay connected to the land and the water and the fruits both gave. His dad especially probably knew when the berries of the Pacific Northwest ripened as well as he knew the spawning patterns of the salmon. Luca, though, only knew when the Chinook and the coho were on the move. For everything else, he trusted whatever Liv had available at the IGA.
They walked on.
It smelled good here. Like…well, like sun, and earth, which was perhaps an obvious farm smell, but Luca had spent so much of his life surrounded by the brine of the sea, so many days wet and cold and in constant motion that something about the smell of warm soil made him feel so grounded, sostill, that he almost choked up about it.
It must be a good place, he thought a second later, to raise a kid.
“These beds are the money makers, most of the year. Well.Money makersbeing a relative term.”
They walked through rows of veggies and greens, long and lush, until Emerson stopped, crouching with a frown to examine a wilted piece of lettuce. Luca tried not to notice howwell Emerson’s jeans stretched over his thighs. Or how easily he’d folded himself into the position, how smoothly he now stood. Luca could barely collapse into a chair these days without a wince.
“Harder to keep it all at peak health these days,” Emerson said as he continued walking, glancing up into the sky, “when you reach this time of year, with the unpredictable heat waves and fire season. Although we’re luckier here, with the moisture from the ocean. Don’t know how farmers in the valley do it. Or farmers anywhere east of the Coastal Range, really. Past those reeds, there, though, is my freshwater pond. That helps me with irrigation. Just have to be careful how I manage it. And then, well. These greenhouses are a total mess.” He waved to his left again as they walked down a track covered in bark chips, veering back toward the dirt road they’d crossed earlier. “And then up here are the fucking goats.”
Emerson veritably flung his hand forward this time, toward a mostly golden-dry field that stretched into the distance, encased by a wood and metal mesh fence. One brown and white spotted goat stood chomping on weeds that crept up a post. Luca smiled as they approached: at the furry animal, at the combination of exasperation and affection that had escaped in Emerson’sfucking goats.
“They’re cute,” Luca said as he propped his elbows up on the fence, his right foot on the lowest rung. Emerson sighed.
“That’s what everyone says. Get goats, they said. Natural weed controllers. You can make goat cheese. They’recute.” Emerson shook his head. “They’re also stubborn assholes who eat everything in sight.Notjust weeds. Yeah, you,” he said to the adorable goat in front of them. Luca reached down to touch its ears, attempting to hide his smile. “I know you’re plotting ways to get out of this field as we speak. Dreaming up ways to fuck up my shit. I can see itin your eyes.”
Luca bit his lip, turning his head to squint at Emerson.
“I take it they’ve fucked up your shit before.”
Emerson only scowled and started walking again.
“And then, of course”—another flick of Emerson’s hand toward a large barn in front of them, the boards grayed by time and sun—“the chickens.”
He opened a gate in a different fence. Luca stepped forward onto a muddy patch of straw as Emerson latched it shut behind them.
“Watch your step,” Emerson said as he walked toward the barn. “For shit,” he clarified over his shoulder, and Luca had not known farmers were as foul-mouthed as fishermen—would not have expected it out of this farmer, anyway, when he first saw his weary form in the bar—but it pleased him all the same.
“Huh,” Luca said when they stood just inside the open barn door. He glanced around at the scene inside and then back at the hens pecking the ground outside. “This is a lot of chickens.”
“Sure is.” Emerson picked up a woven basket from a shelf and collected stray eggs as he talked. “One of the highest ROIs I have.”
And even though it smelled rather awful in here, Emerson was smiling down at the basket of multi-colored eggs as he returned to Luca in the doorway.
“Pretty, too.”
“The chickens or the eggs?”
“Both.”
“So you’re more a chicken fan than a goat fan.”
“Oh, well.” Emerson shrugged and walked past him. “They’re all assholes.”
