“The fence George built onourproperty?” I reply. “And the gas pedal stuck. Even the police said it wasn’t our fault. You running over one of our goats on the other hand…”
“That wasn’t me, it was my cousin Raquel, and it was the middle of a whiteout blizzard so she didn’t see him. Andyourgoat was in the middle ofourdriveway because you can’t seem to keep them in your own damn field,” Tate snaps.
I take a deep breath of the stale air in this stuffy room. “It was our first year goat farming. We didn’t realize they were such escape artists. Maybe if Raquel could drive without texting she’d have seen—”
“Forget I asked,” Officer Humphries interrupts. “The fact remains, though, if you guys can put these ancient grudges aside and share this booth, you both get to sell your products. Win-win.”
“No,” I say flatly.
Officer Humphries frowns. “Well then, unfortunately I have to tell you that my investigation shows there is no proof that George Adler cut the line. Ms. Oleson pleaded the fifth, and so it’s Clyde’s word against George’s word. So then the booth would technically belong to Adler Apple Farm.”
“What? Wait…”
“Okay then! Now that’s settled, can I take my grandfather home, Officer Humphries? I don’t mean to rush you but I have to get to practice this afternoon,” Tate says, smiling like a Cheshire Cat. I have seen women all over my campus swoon over that smile, but I simply want to rip it off his lips.
“I’ll release both Clyde and George, one at a time so they don’t get into another tussle. If they brawl again—anywhere, for any reason—there will be charges. Do you both understand me?” Officer Humphries says firmly.
“Yes sir,” Tate says with a smile. I nod curtly but can’t bring myself to smile.
As Officer Humphries heads off to retrieve our grandfathers, Ethel gives us a wave and heads out the front door and I turn back to Tate.
“Maybe we should rethink this sharing idea. Snap decisions are never the best ones. We could just keep Clyde and George away from the booth to avoid problems,” I say, backpedaling so hard I’m surprised I don’t break into a sweat. “Daisy and I and that younger brother of yours—Jace—could mend the fences the older generations broke.”
Tate laughs loud and hard and it makes my hands ball into fists. “I speak for both Jace and me when I say, no thank you. We’re good with keeping the booth to ourselves and the fences unmended.”
If we don’t share that booth with these assholes, we aren’t at the farmer’s market, and that’s a huge chunk of our fall income. And since we already lost our summer market income, it will be a big blow. Daisy is going to flip. My dad is going to melt down. My uncles are going to freak out. I am going to kill my grandfather.
“Do you even have enough apples to run a booth for three months?” I turn to face him, knowing my face is tomato red because I can literally feel the anger running through my veins like lava. “I know you’ve had some pretty dismal crops the last couple of years. Didn’t you have a bunch of scab apple trees?”
If looks could kill, Officer Humphries would be calling the coroner to come collect my body right about now. “Guess what? Even if we run out of apples and apple baked goods, I will find something else to sell. Hell, I’ll sell my body at that booth before I give it to you.”
“You’d be better off selling the rotten apples,” I shoot back, but he just smirks because he knows that’s not true. Tate Adler is built like some kind of action movie star—six foot one, tanned a golden-brown from the summer farm work, and the parts of him that aren’t muscled are chiseled. Ugh. Screw Tate Adler.
“You’ve only got your granny panties in a knot because it was my granddad who got there first,” Tate replies coolly. “If it was your booth, you’d tell me tough shit too and you know it.”
I turn to face him, arms folded across my chest. “You’re one hundred percent right.”
He isn’t expecting that kind of candor and the frown he’s been sporting disappears. Although I would never admit it out loud, even if I was tortured, his cupid’s bow mouth has the potential to be all kinds of sexy…if it didn’t spew the garbage his brain thinks up. “Is this some psychology-major mind game or something?”
“I’m a business major focusing on entrepreneurial studies, just like you. We have a lot of the same classes, like accounting,” I say. Since the semester started two weeks ago, I’ve watched him look up every time he entered the classroom to see where I was sitting and immediately walk to the opposite side of the room, so I know he knows this. “Also, I don’t wear granny panties. Anyway I’m agreeing that yes, I would have done the same thing, but you have the opportunity to be the bigger person here. Come on small town hockey hero, show the world you’re a bigger person than me.”
Was that too much taunting? I know hockey players love a challenge. Uncle Bobby, who was the last local player to get drafted to the NHL, has never turned down a challenge or a dare in his entire life. He swears it’s because of the competitive nature he developed playing hockey. And for the quickest little second, I think Tate might take my challenge. But George Adler appears from the bowels of the station and comes marching up to us. He’s a tall, burly man with a barrel chest and thinning gray hair that used to be dirty blond. His polo shirt and jeans are in good condition and show no signs of the scuffle he had with Clyde, but there’s a slight red abrasion on his chubby right cheek.
George stops in front of Tate, turning his entire body so that I’m behind his back, out of view, and he says to his eldest grandchild. “I’m sorry they bothered you. I had them call Raquel but she didn’t answer her phone, and they wouldn’t let me leave without supervision. Like I’m a goddamn toddler.”
Tate frowns. “If you don’t want to be treated like a toddler, Gramps, then maybe don’t get into infantile fights. Let’s go. I’m late.”
George and Tate leave without another word or even glance at me. Son of a…
The door to the back swings open again and Clyde appears in all his hunched over, bloodshot-eyed glory. He has the audacity to walk right past me and grumble. “Hurry up. I want to get the hell out of here.”
I follow behind, scowling at the back of his balding head. We’re crossing the parking lot when Matt, my brief Tinder date, pulls into the lot in his police cruiser and lowers his window. “Hey gorgeous! So it was your gramps? That’s wild!”
“Yeah. Wild,” I say tersely. Clyde has kept on marching to my car. George Adler has climbed into the passenger side of Tate’s beat-up pickup, which is only a parking stall away from where I’m standing. So of course Tate has chosen to stand beside his truck and eavesdrop over leaving. Great. Matt smiles up at me and I’m sure he’s leering at me behind those mirrored shades. In the fifteen minutes our date lasted, his eyes kept sweeping from my chest to my ankles, which made me regret the short strappy sundress I’d chosen to wear.
“So…we should probably reschedule our date, huh?” Matt lowers the sunglasses long enough to wink at me. “We had one hell of a vibe going before you ran off, didn’t we?”
I’m about to tell him the vibe he was getting from me was repulsion but I’m not in the mood for another confrontation or to have a cop in town on my bad side or to give Tate Adler more of a show. So instead I just make a weird sound in the back of my throat and mutter. “Call me.”