it hadn’t been the same love at first sight for them as it had been for Topher and Mandy, before that school had been hit, he’d had a few laughs with Emmy, he’d liked her.
But that was water far, far under the bridge now.
“Anyway,” he continued, “she doesn’t know squat about farming. She lives and works in Denver, and her mother says that’s where she plans to take Trinity and Kit. But she wants to keep the farm in the family so the kids have the option of running it when they grow up, which means she’s figuring on leasing it. Only nobody’s going to take it on until she gets it cleaned up. And she needs an extra pair of hands and someone who knows their way around a farm to do that.”
“Are you well enough for farm work?” Kinsey was a nurse and very protective of his health right now.
“I’m fine. The knee is a little stiff, but I’m keeping up on the physical therapy exercises for it. The farm work will just help get me the rest of the way back in shape. I have to wait for my review with the Medical Evaluation Board anyway before I can get the go-ahead to get back to my unit. Might as well be productive in the meantime.”
His sister didn’t look convinced, but he knew his body. He knew how hard he’d worked in rehab not just on regaining the use and strength of his leg, but with weight training on the rest of his body so he’d be ready and able to return to duty.
“Plus there’s the kids,” he said then. “Mandy’s mom has been staying at the farm, but she told me she’s leaving today. Mandy’s dad has been holding down the fort at their travel agency, but her mom really needs to get back. The timing is rough. Before the hail hit, there was someone serious about leasing the farm—he was set to take over so Emmy could take the kids to Denver with her mother this weekend. But he backed out once he saw the hail damage.”
“So now they have to start all over trying to find someone else?”
“That’s what Karen said. She also said that Emmy is good with the kids but she was in over her head with the farm even before the storm, when other farmers were lending her a hand here and there—”
“But now other farmers have to regroup from the hail themselves,” Kinsey said.
“Right. So she has to clear the damage, replant the fields, take care of the animals and, with her mother leaving, do all the household stuff and take care of Trinity and Kit, too. Plus Karen said Kit is colicky—whatever that is—and he cries a lot at night... There’ll be some help from babysitters coming in during the day, but Emmy will be on her own for one sleepless night after another and—”
Declan sighed. “Bottom line—there’s a big need for help over there, for more than two hands. So I’m going to work with Emmy to do what I can.”
As long as he didn’t go over there today and find her standing on the front porch with a shotgun to run him off the property.
It had been her mother—not Emmy—who had told him what was going on. In fact, Emmy had looked like she wanted to strangle her mother when she’d come downstairs after her shower to discover just how candid Karen had been.
And when he’d offered his services, Emmy couldn’t have been more against it. She’d flatly and fervently refused his help.
The two women had gone back and forth for a while. But Karen had held her ground and eventually Emmy had conceded, even to the idea of him moving into the basement so they could trade off nights being up with Kit.
But the whole concession had been so obviously against Emmy’s will that he thought she might have only pretended to go along with the plan in order to end the argument, always intending to keep him away once her mother was out of the picture.
It was what Declan was half expecting.
More than half, really. He already knew how changeable she could be.
She’d been friendly when they’d first met in Afghanistan. But after digging her out of that bombed school, she wouldn’t even let him visit her in the hospital. Instead she’d sent a thank-you note with her sister. Her sister, who hadn’t been inside the school when it was blown up and had escaped injury.
After leaving the hospital, when Mandy and Topher were still keeping as constant company as they could, Emmy had had her sister tell him that she still wasn’t up for any visits.
And during Mandy and Topher’s lengthy parting at the airport? Emmy had hidden aboard the plane and Declan had been left hanging on the tarmac, not even allotted a goodbye.
Message received—that was what he’d thought. Apparently sharing a couple of laughs had meant more to him than it had to her and she didn’t want anything to do with him. Okay, fine.
But then there was the wedding.
She’d been weird toward him initially. She hadn’t done anything but raise her chin to say hello before taking off as if her tail was on fire. And she’d kept her distance from him through the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, through the pre-wedding pictures.
Then at the reception she’d approached him. She’d said she wanted to thank him again for unburying her from the school debris. She’d even stuck around to chat and that friendly, fun side of her had come out again. To the extent that he’d started to think they might hit it off after all.
They’d spent almost the entire reception together, doing a lot of drinking, dancing, laughing. He’d had a great time with her. But she’d been pretty drunk by the end of it, so he’d walked her to her room. He hadn’t so much as kissed her because he hadn’t wanted it to seem as if he was taking any kind of advantage.
What he had done was make a date for breakfast the next morning.
But by breakfast she’d turned on him again—she’d stood him up, and when he’d happened to run into her in the hotel lobby and asked if she’d forgotten about it, she’d said, “Are you kidding? You really thought I’d have breakfast with you after last night?”
Then she’d turned her back on him, stormed off and not spoken to him the two other times their paths had crossed post-wedding.
So yeah, he wasn’t putting much stock in her agreement to his help now. She was a Jekyll and Hyde if ever he’d seen one.
But despite that, he did hope that she accepted his help.
Not because he had any desire at all to deal with her but because helping with the farm and the kids until a leaser could step in or until he passed his medical review and was deployed again was something he could do for Topher.
For Topher he would do anything. For Topher nothing would ever be enough...
“You don’t say her name like you like her,” Kinsey observed, bringing him out of his reverie.
“I don’t dislike her,” he said, though it didn’t sound altogether believable even to him. “I don’t know... For some reason things just don’t gel between us.”
“I’ve heard that she’s really pretty, though. I met Greg Kravitz in town and he asked if I knew her—he sounded interested.”
“Kravitz? He’s still here?” Declan said through nearly clenched teeth.
“Yeah,
