Page 11 of Hard Cider Mountain Man

"No, I understand the capital's allocated. I'm telling you I'm not signing it."

She's on my porch in yesterday's sweater with my coffee in one hand and her phone against her ear, and the sun's coming over the ridge behind her and lighting up the whole nine acres orange, and I have stopped drying the same glass three times.

I don't move. I'm not going to hover and I'm not going to leave, either. She wanted the door open.

"Because it's not the right use," she says. "That's the whole answer, Rob. No. No, and I want to be straight with you, because you've been straight with me: I've had a better offer at a lower number." A pause. She switches ears. "The Lister site's better for you anyway. It's serviced, it's zoned, and your access doesn't cross a fish-bearing creek. I've sent you the file number. Take it and you'll be in the ground by March."

Another pause. Longer.

"I know what I'm turning down," she says. "Thank you for the incentive. It was well-structured and it nearly worked. Good bye."

She hangs up.

She stands there with her back to me and her shoulders up around her ears, breathing, and then she puts the phone face down on the porch rail like it's hot.

"Three hundred," she says, without turning around. "One-twenty down, the balance over ten years at four and a quarter, payments quarterly so they land after your season instead of during it. Vendor take-back. I hold the paper, you hold the ground."

"Juneau—"

"I'm not finished." Now she turns. Her eyes are wet and her chin is absolutely level and both of those things are true at once. "There's a covenant registered on title. Agricultural and value-added agricultural production only. No storage, no subdivision below nine acres, in perpetuity, and it survives you, me, and anyone we sell to. I drafted it at four in the morning. It's the tightest thing I've ever written and I've written a downtown plan."

"You gave up sixty-five thousand dollars."

"Seventy-five." She wipes her face with the back of her hand, annoyed about it. "And I'm applying to have the 1977 water licence reinstated on historical use. Which will take eighteen months and a hearing, and I intend to win it, because I have read every page of that council's minutes and they were wrong."

I put the glass down.

"Come here," I say.

"I'm making a point."

"You made it."

She comes off the porch rail and into me and I get both arms around her and lift her clean off the boards, and she laughs into my neck, and I carry her inside my own house like an idiot, which is a thing I have never once done.

The bedroom's at the back with a window facing the parcel. She gets it open before she gets her sweater off, cold coming in over the sill in a slab, and then she's on the bed in the middle of my unmade blankets, pulling me down after her.

"You planned my land deal better than I could've," I say.

"I plan things for a living." She gets my shirt over my head. "Falling for you wasn't part of the plan. Worked out anyway."

I take her wrists and put them over her head, one hand, and she lets me, and she watches me look at her.

"You in a hurry?" she says.

"Not anymore."

I hold her there and kiss her properly, no rush in it, until her hands stop testing my grip and go soft above her head.

I take everything off her slowly, because I can. The sweater. The undershirt underneath it. Her jeans, one leg at a time, and she gets her heel stuck and swears and I laugh against her hip and she pushes my head with it. When she's bare the cold from the window goes right over her and she gets goosebumps from her collarbone to her knees, and I put my mouth on every warm place that's left.

Her breasts. The soft under-curve of one and then the other, until she's arching. Her nipples go tight the second the window air touches them. I take one in my mouth and warm it and then let the cold have it again, and she makes a noise.

The dip beneath her ribs. Her hip bone, which makes her jump. The inside of her thigh, where the skin's thinnest and she's warmest, where I stay long enough that she gets a fistful of the blanket.

"You're taking your time on purpose," she says.

"Yeah."