She shoots me a side-eyed glare. “One you think you’ll make better.”
The words have bite to them.
I stop, forcing her to stop too, and she turns to look at me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Yes?”
I set her on edge with our interview earlier today, and if I want to quell some of this heat between us, I need to rectify that.
I tilt my head. “We got off on the wrong foot. I might have been a bit abrasive earlier.”
One brow shoots up, and she huffs. “Abit?”
“All right, maybe a lot.” I toss her a smile meant to disarm her. “Get your concerns out on the table, and we can deal with them.”
“Fine.” Her chin lifts. “I don’t think you’re going to respect my authority.”
She’s probably right, but it’s not because she’s a woman. It’s because she wears her authority like a chip on her shoulder. I’m guessing, since the inner workings of her mind aren’t my business, that it wouldn’t be smart to bring that up, so I nod, all agreeable like. “You’re the boss. I’m your employee. It won’t be a problem, except if I think it’ll hurt the crops.”
She frowns a little, like she’s not sure she likes my answer. “You think you know better than me.”
“Well, that’s because I do.”
She plants her hands on her hips. “And how do you know that? You don’t know the first thing about me.”
I shrug. “I don’t need to know about you. I looked at the crops and can do better.”
There’s that flash again, for just a second before she covers it up with a hard clench of her jaw. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You won’t even say how many years of experience you have.” She waves a hand over me. “Do you even have a college degree?”
I smirk. “Yeah, I do.”
Surprise lights her face. “You do?”
“I do, in agriculture.”
“From where?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters if you’re lying about it.”
I laugh. “Is it really that hard to believe?”
She glares at me. “Stop trying to win me over.”
I lean down. “Now why wouldn’t I want my boss to like me?”
“Jackson and Wyatt like you. They’re the ones that matter.”
An interesting statement. It rings with truth, and her displeasure at it. That chip’s becoming a bit clearer, but it’s not my place or my problem to uncover the source of it.
I get the conversation back on track. “It’s not a slight. It’s a fact.” Her brows slam together, but before she can get herself too worked up, I say, “Ishouldbe better than you. That’s what you’re paying me for—to be an expert—and that’s what I’m going to be.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.
“You’re not just running a farm; you’re running a distillery too. Your focus is pulled in a lot of different directions, and you can’t do it all yourself. There’s no shame in hiring someone better than you to take some of that load off.”