at her dolly.
Karl rattled off a price and Mia dug a credit card out of her back pocket, and even while he was expressly ignoring her, it was kind of hard to ignore her ass.
Yes, he was a dick.
She blew out a breath, fidgeted as the ancient machine slowly printed out a receipt. Finally, she spoke. Because as much as she’d changed, there were still pieces of the old Mia in there.
“For what it’s worth, I...” She raised her chin and looked him straight in the eye. Pretty green eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said resolutely.
He was taken completely off guard, so much so he could make only a kind of “Huh?” sound.
“Holy moly, why am I doing this?” she muttered, snatching the receipt from Karl. She glanced at Dell, expression full of self-disgust. “I have my issues with how you sell stuff, and I’m going to use everything in my arsenal to beat you, but...I don’t want to insult you in the process. It doesn’t feel good to me.”
“Are you insinuating it feels good to me?”
Her brows drew together. “No! I’m trying to be nice and apologize. Leave it to you to make that complicated.”
“Leave it to me? Isn’t that an insult?”
She grabbed the handle of her rolling tray. “Dell, you are the most annoying man I have ever met.”
He had to work really hard not to smile. Something about riling her up was way too enjoyable. “Also an insult.”
“Go to hell.” She smiled faux-sweetly. “Please. Now it’s an insult, but at least I’m being polite about it.” Much like at the market last week, she sauntered away.
It made no sense he was smiling after her. Then again, he was beginning to think nothing about Mia Pruitt made any damn sense.
“HOWBADLYDO you want to beat Dell at the farmers’ market?”
Mia looked up from the row of carrot seeds she was planting. Mia’s youngest sister stood with Kenzie, Dell’s little sister. Anna and Kenzie had been inseparable since kindergarten and Mia had never once felt weird about that.
Until now.
“Um.”
“The jerk told my parents he caught me making out in the barn. I want him to burn,” Kenzie said vehemently, clutching a book to her chest.
“Um.”
“It’s nothing all that bad,” Anna explained, always the cool head wherever she went. “We just have some pictures of him, and we came up with this idea where you could post on the farmers’ market page that you have pictures of the Naked Farmer in his underwear if people came to your booth Saturday morning or whatever. It would get you some extra customers, no doubt.”
“You have pictures of Dell in his underwear?” Mia squeaked. “Not that I...” She closed her eyes against the embarrassed flush spreading up her neck. “I have no idea what you two are trying to accomplish here.”
Kenzie opened up the book, revealing old photos in an album. Mia squinted. “Is that Dell?”
“Yes. In diapers. Underwear. It’s a little harmless embarrassment.”
Mia finally stood, trying to clap some of the dirt off her hands. The same uncomfortable twisting in her gut she’d felt yesterday at the store lodged itself there. “I’m not really into embarrassing anyone. I’ve kind of had my share of that, and it isn’t fun.”
“He walks around that market shirtless. Do you really think a few pictures from when he was a kid are going to embarrass him? I swear, he’s embarrass-proof. And being-a-decent-human-being-proof.”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Kenzie is overreacting.”
“Jacob said we shouldn’t go to prom together anymore!”
“You know he’ll change his mind.”
Mia tried to make sense of two seventeen-year-olds talking about things way beyond any experience she’d had in high school, but it was useless. Boys and prom might as well have been foreign words to her.
“The point is,” Anna said matter-of-factly, “Dell thinks he can beat you with the shirtless stuff. So play a little dirty.”
Mia had no idea why she was blushing again. “I’m sure our normal tactics are fine.”
Kenzie blew out a frustrated breath. “I told you,” she muttered to Anna. “Dell was right. She has no backbone.”
“Hey!”
Anna gave her a sympathetic look. “She’s kind of right. That’s not always a bad thing, but if you want to beat Dell you’re going to have to be a little meaner.”
“I don’t want to be mean. He’s not being mean to me.” Not really. It was nothing like high school, not when she could dish it back out.
Anna shrugged. “If he’s telling Kenzie you have no backbone, he isn’t exactly being nice. Regardless, if you’re not willing to go after him a bit, he’s always going to win.”
“This isn’t win-lose. It’s...sell. Sell enough to be profitable. That has nothing to do with Dell.”
Anna let out a belabored sigh. “Let’s go back to the house, Kenzie. We’ll work up some other revenge.”
The two teens huffed off together, heads huddled, obviously discussing Mia’s failings as a competitor.
Mia frowned and went back to her carrot seeds. The whole thing was stupid. More of the teasing and tricks she’d had to deal with when she’d been in high school. She was far more mature and worldly than Anna and Kenzie now. She did not need to feel peer-pressured into fighting dirty.
There was that annoying blush at the word dirty again. “I do not need to win, or be mean in the process,” she said, combining the seeds with the sand and carefully spreading the mixture into the row she’d already tilled. “This isn’t cutthroat business. It’s just...vegetables.”
She rocked back onto her heels. Cara always got on her when she caught her talking to herself. Or her vegetables. It was a habit. A habit of a lonely girl. She wasn’t that girl anymore.
Dell was right. She has no backbone.
Mia scowled at that. She had a backbone. Being a nice person was not being backboneless. And if he thought her apologizing to him yesterday was lack of backbone...he obviously didn’t know what being a decent human being was all about.
But he was clearly going to beat her in profits again, decency or not.
Mia got to her feet. She needed advice, and she already knew what Anna had to say. Cara would no doubt take the cutthroat side. So her only hope at getting a little reassurance
