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Danni gave one of her best eye rolls. “Yeah, sure. I’ll believe that when she stops looking at me like I’ve tracked mud into her soul.”

And Indi just smirked back, like she knew something Danni didn’t. Which was very, very irritating.

THAT EVENING, DANNI trudged into the farmhouse exhausted. She fully expected Eleanor to be out, either panicking over wallpaper in her damn house, or attending some kind offunction that insisted on serving tiny food on sticks.

She was looking forward to an evening of scavenging for food and then collapsing into unconsciousness, and was already wondering if it was even vaguely nutritious to just eat her Ramen dry, when she opened the kitchen door.

What she was not expecting was to see Eleanor sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by stacks of papers, looking like some kind of terrifying, and, to be very honest, slightly sexy school teacher.

“Um… what’s all this?” Danni asked, eyeing the uncharacteristic mess.

Eleanor looked up from the sheaf of papers she was reading, looking over the top of her glasses at Danni. Danni, who hadn’t even known that Eleanor wore glasses, found herself feeling very warm. She gulped.

“Sit,” Eleanor said.

A lifetime of obeying teachers and her mother meant that Danni didn’t even think before pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down.

“Eat,” said Eleanor. “We have work to do.”

There was a sandwich on a plate next to her place. It looked good, too. Thick bread, real butter, and something that might have been homemade chutney. Danni’s mouth watered. She took a bite, still wary.

“Define ‘work,’” she said between chews.

“A grant application,” Eleanor replied, still distracted by the paper in her hands, as if that explained everything.

Danni blinked. “For what?”

“Your farm.”

Danni nearly choked on her sandwich. “Say what now?”

“Did you know that almost a fifth of British farms have been lost over the last decade?” Eleanor said, putting her papers down and removing her glasses to look at Danni.

Danni, grateful somehow that the sexy glasses were gone, finally took a full breath. “Sounds about right,” she said.

“That’s an immense failure rate, due mainly to governmentpolicies and the more economically viable structure of large farming.”

“No arguments here,” said Danni. She knew this of old, she’d grown up around these conversations.

“What you might not know is that there’s now a serious effort to promote smaller and more sustainable farming,” Eleanor went on, thrusting the papers she’d been holding toward Danni. “In order to stem the growing tide of large farms and to allow smaller farmers to use better, more environmentally friendly practices.”

Danni looked down at the papers, then back up at Eleanor.

Eleanor sighed, rubbing her temples, like Danni was the exhausting one here. “There’s a grant available for farms like yours, ones that prioritize sustainable agriculture. If you qualify, it could mean a significant amount of money every year.”

“Significant,” Danni said.

“For you, life-changing,” said Eleanor.

“And you just… found this?” Danni asked.

Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “I looked for it.”

“Why?”

Eleanor’s green eyes glowed darker under the kitchen light. She sniffed, then shrugged. “Because I wanted to help you.”

The words hit Danni like a sucker punch. Eleanor didn’t even hesitate as she said them. Help. Just help, just offered like that. It was all Danni could do to control herself, to blink her suddenly heavy eyes.