beauty, she squatted and rubbed a tender leaf between her fingers, both the plant and the soil still cool in the early day.
Babies scared her. Small helpless creatures terrified her. These soft plants intimidated her. What if she killed them?
If she bent over and walked down the rows with her palms outstretched, she could read them like braille, but she still wouldn’t understand their needs, or how to keep them alive. She still wouldn’t know how to farm.
Her lawyer had told her not to worry, that Noah would guide her.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Noah kicked her off the farm upon first sight. In the pit of her stomach, that blasted recurring shame stabbed at her with a hot poker. Her tummy had been doing somersaults all morning.
She didn’t want to be here, to have to face the man she’d hurt.
She touched the plant closest to her.
“How do I help you to grow?” she whispered.
Against the bright green, her hands screamed “pampered,” her nails manicured with OPI’s Not So Bora Bora-ing Pink. These hands that had never gardened—had never even tended a houseplant—had to learn how to dig around in the dirt.
What had the judge been thinking?
What on earth did one night of loneliness and one drink too many have to do with farming?
She spotted Noah across the field, watching her, red hair blazing in the sunlight. Noah, she’d noticed, presented two faces to the world—the happy, easygoing hippie and the über-intelligent, fierce activist.
At the moment, he’d added a third. Angry farmer—directed at her.
The heat that had roiled in her belly all morning crawled up her chest and into her throat, choking her.
Her mind refused to remember what she saw Friday night, but echoing sounds gathered, drowning out the nearby bird’s sweet melody. The screech of her tires on wet pavement. The awful thud of Noah hitting her car. The shattering of her windshield and tinkling of glass raining down on her in the driver’s seat.
The silence of Noah’s prone body.
She didn’t want to be here.
* * *
A WILDFIRE RAGED inside of Noah.
His right arm ached from overuse.
His left arm itched inside the cast.
He needed to be able to work whole, unhindered. Almost as badly, he needed to wring that pampered, rich, entitled woman’s neck.
Since last Friday night, he’d cursed Monica Accord from here to the Pacific Ocean, but his anger still hadn’t cooled.
He didn’t want to see her today, didn’t want her on his farm infecting the goodness here with her shallowness, but what choice did he have?
The prosecutor had consulted with him before requesting the sentence for Monica; otherwise, they would have been inflicting the offender on the poor, hapless victim. Which wouldn’t have been right. And he’d agreed with their decision.
He might not want Monica here, but he needed her, and he found the sentence fitting, forcing her to learn exactly how hard this job was, and how much her selfish act of drinking and then getting behind the wheel of her car had set him back.
He had told the courts that, yes, he would have her here to serve her community service.
Let her get her precious hands dirty for a change. Daddy couldn’t buy her way out of this fix.
He knew he was being hard on her, but he had a right to be.
He tore out a couple of weeds and tossed them into the pail by his side, seething with an anger that hadn’t abated even a fraction since the accident.
He hated this. He wasn’t an angry man. Passionate? Oh, yeah. Angry? Nah. He left that for other people. He was a lover, not a fighter, but man, he wished he had a heavy bag to punch for an hour or two. He needed to vent, badly.
Trouble was, it would amplify that he had only one useful arm.
He flexed his neck to ease the tension that had lodged there like a recalcitrant tree stump, going nowhere no matter how hard he tried to yank it out.
Stop. This doesn’t do you any good.
Filling his lungs with the fresh scent of morning dew, he tried to clear his mind. Usually, not much got him down at this glorious time of day—not worries, not memories.
He’d already been out here weeding for two hours, the drill usually as calming as yoga or meditation. Even so, rage flexed its fists in his chest, pummeling his ribs, beating up on him from the inside out.
He didn’t need this.
An engine sounded in the distance, then in his driveway. He heard it because he’d been waiting for it.
She was here.
He dropped his spade and stood—it was a real struggle to rein in his emotions. Useless exercise. Fury flooded his veins. Every last item of produce he grew was destined for a food kitchen in Denver, or for families living miles around who had fallen on hard times.
Now this—a broken left arm and too much work to do alone in his current state. Whatever didn’t get grown and harvested couldn’t be eaten by those in need.
Why couldn’t it be anyone but Monica here to help him? At the moment, he’d take aid from a goat if it was a viable option to get more accomplished. He really didn’t want to deal with that woman.
Court-appointed or not, help was help. He glanced toward the driveway and his breath backed up in his throat.
Monica Accord stepped out of her baby blue BMW convertible, cool and composed, pale blond hair in place, long legs encased in designer jeans, a Victoria’s Secret model and Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue model rolled into one. A classy one.
Monica Accord could no more do trashy than the Pope could break-dance.
She walked toward one of his fields, stepping close to his rows of new radish plants, a puzzled frown furrowing her otherwise perfect brow. He tracked her progress, ’cause the thing with Monica was that walk was too normal a verb to describe her movement. Monica did nothing so mundane as walk. She glided, floating with a lithe elegance that mere mortals couldn’t imitate.
God, she was gorgeous with the sun running warm rays over her skin as though infatuated with her.
Who wasn’t?
His heart boomeranged inside his chest, beating hard enough to hurt. Twenty years after leaving high school, she was still the golden girl, and he was still the guy who had an unrequited crush on her— disgusting in a rational thirty-seven-year-old man.
He tossed his spade into the pail with the weeds.
Still a fool.
He
