Page 22 of As It Was (Strawberry Springs #1)

CAIN

Strawberry Springs Neighborhood Watch

Kerry Winsor

Just saw a delivery truck of some sort. Who got something fun?

Comments:

Tammy Jane : Good Lord, Kerry. What do you do all day?

Kerry Winsor : Find all the info I can. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. God forbid a woman has hobbies!

Marjorie Brown : I ordered a giant box of dildos.

Henrietta Brown : I took her phone. Can the admins delete that?

Two days later, Mollie was calling, “They’re here!” as she ran toward the door.

“What’s here?”

“The roots!” she said, stepping out onto the porch.

I followed her, and true to her word, she had ordered a ton . Way more than a field’s worth .

Shit. I should have told her I would order them so I could get an amount I could actually fucking handle.

“Mollie, what did you do?” I asked.

“I ordered berries.”

“I don’t have the capacity to plant all of these.”

“What do you mean you don’t have the capacity?” she asked. I glared, about to remind her that I didn’t sit on my ass all day, but then she added, “I’m the one planting them.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The deal was that I could plant the berries if I helped you.”

“The deal was that I would do it.” I shook my head. Why would she agree to help me and then plant the fields herself? She had a full-time job that kept her tied to her computer, and hadn’t been here since she was a kid. “Do you even know how?”

“Um, mostly? I remember what Bennie did and how he took care of them. As far as how he got the fields ready from scratch? That I don’t know.”

“They weren’t entirely from scratch. He used similar ones every year.”

“Right,” she said. “So I’ll need a tiller at the very least. The rental will be astronomical, though.”

“Hang on. I’m not past the fact that you agreed to help me when you thought you would be planting the fields. That’s doubling the work on you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “As opposed to doubling it on you ?”

“Well, I’m getting the benefit.”

“Yeah, by doing the thing I want to do. I’m not just here to sit in the house all day and watch you have all of the fun.”

“Is playing in dirt fun for you?”

“It was when I was a kid.” She shrugged. “And I have a feeling it would be now.”

She was at least in workout clothes today, but they were ones meant for a gym, not fields. I still saw her as the city girl. The one who was out of place here.

But the more I talked to her, the more I realized that she wasn’t what she looked like.

“You have a tiller,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you’re about to say you can be it.”

“No, there’s an actual tiller in the big barn.” I pointed behind me.

“There’s no way you still have Papa Bennie’s farm equipment after all these years.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “Part of my contract was to keep them in shape in case ...”

In case the farm started doing strawberries again. I wondered if this was the ending Bennie had always wanted. He’d always spoken so highly of Mollie, but I’d thought it had been a memory of a childhood version of her.

“Thank fuck ,” she said. “Those rentals were going to be so expensive that I was considering doing it by hand.”

“It’s impossible for you to plant a big enough field by hand in time, especially considering the number of roots you got. Come on, let’s get the tractor out. We can attach the tiller to it.”

We walked to the large red barn. It had become a victim of the elements as most barns did, but the painted structure was in decent shape.

“So, what all is in here?” she asked.

“I stored all of the farming stuff. The tractor, irrigation lines, and the machinery Bennie used. And the snakes.”

“And what ? Snakes? Why would you put snakes in here?”

“I didn’t put them anywhere. They show up. Especially as it gets colder.”

I heard her stop.

“I don’t do snakes. ”

I turned. “Finally found the one thing you can’t deal with?”

“They’re unnatural,” I said. “They slither and have weird tongues.”

“They’re not that much different than worms.”

“Worms aren’t venomous!”

“Most of the snakes in here aren’t.”

“Sure, until a damn cottonmouth is hiding. I did a research project on them in school. They’re killers!”

I rolled my eyes and opened the doors. “Princess, I’ve been here a decade and a half, and I’ve never seen one.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Are you too scared to go in here?”

“I-I’m not too scared.”

“Seems like you are.”

“Now that sounds like a challenge.”

I shrugged. “Could be.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You know I can’t back down when you challenge me.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“I hate you,” she said, but she stomped ahead of me and into the darkness of the barn.

Well. She won that round.

Luckily for both of us, the coast seemed clear.

“You have keys, right?” she asked as she got close to the massive green tractor.

“I keep them all on me,” I replied, tossing them to her. “I’ll get the tiller.”

I dragged it out of the back and hooked it up. “Now to see if this works.”

“Hang on,” she said. “I wanna go through some of this. I had no idea there was so much.”

“We can do that later. ”

“But what if the lines work? That’ll save so much money.” She walked to where they were sitting on a shelf and reached for them.

But one looked very off.

I reached out to grab her. “You shouldn’t?—”

It moved before she could touch it, and it fell to the floor.

“Snake!” she screamed. She jumped back and darted away, her feet barely touching the ground. I had no idea where she was going until she was behind me, her tight hands on my shoulders.

“Mollie, calm down!”

“No! It’s a fucking—I almost touched it!” She urged me forward. “Do something.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Be a man! Go to war!”

“With a snake?”

“Yes! Isn’t that what you’re good for?”

I turned to her, but she shoved me toward it with more force than I knew she possessed. Rolling my eyes, I inspected it, making sure it wasn’t actually venomous. “It’s a barn snake, princess. Totally harmless.”

“Tell that to the heart attack it just gave me,” she said. I gently coaxed it out of the barn while she went back outside.

“Am I just glorified snake removal to you?” I asked her.

“Today? Yes.” She heaved out a breath and leaned on her knees. “Whew! That was scary.”

“You’ve fallen off a roof.”

“I’d take a broken ankle over dying of snake venom.”

“It was a barn snake.”

“Potato, po-tah-to.” She waved me off, and I only had a second to wonder where the hell her logic had gone before she was climbing the tractor .

“All right. Time to make a fool of myself.”

“Do you know how it works?”

“Nope. But I’ll figure it out.”

“Let me—” I reached to show her how to use it, but she stopped me.

“Don’t you have something else to do?”

“Not till eleven.”

“You’re the one who said you wanted me to figure things out.” She leaned forward. “Are you going back on that now?”

“I’m making sure you don’t destroy the barn trying to get out of here.”

“Hey, I’m an excellent driver. And you’re hovering. It’s starting to look like you want to spend time with me.”

“Wrong,” I said.

That was a lie. This was more fun than I had expected, even though I had no idea what went through her head at any given time.

“Sure,” she said, putting it into gear. “You tell yourself that.”

The tractor didn’t move, mostly because she was hitting all the wrong buttons. She tried more, but to no avail.

Yep. This was going exactly how I’d expected.

“Need help?” I called.

“Fuck off!” she yelled back. “But yes.”

I climbed up, hand on the back of her seat to keep my balance. She was a quick learner. I only had to tell her what everything was once before she understood. I hopped down, letting her take over.

Mollie wasted no time going to work on the fields. She must have been planning this, because she immediately got one field dug up and went to work on the next.

I watched her for way too long, marveling at how much she looked like Bennie as she worked. Then I pushed it away, knowing I needed to get to feeding all the animals for the day.

When I got back, the fields she’d made didn’t look too bad. Sure, some of the edges were wavy, but they were in the spots Bennie used to grow things.

I was almost impressed.

Especially when I found her in the barn again.

“Okay, listen. I’m just gonna grab them from around you. Be very chill, Mister Not-Venomous Snake.”

She slowly got the lines out, this time not running when the snakes moved.

“I thought you were scared of them.”

“Terrified, but I’m being brave.” She showed me the lines with a smile on her face. “Think they still work?”

“If you’re lucky.”

“Well, the welcome sign does say the magic is alive.”

“That’s just a tourist slogan.”

She laughed. “What tourists?”

“Seriously, though. Nice work on the fields.”

She gasped and turned to me. “A compliment? From Cain ?”

“I’m just saying that you remembered a lot.”

“I also looked up a lot of stuff.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Especially when I should have been working.”

“For a city girl who works in an office, you don’t seem to like it very much.”

“Don’t tell my dad that,” she replied before walking up to the hose lines. “Now, did Papa Bennie hook these up here or to the main water line?”

“Main water line,” I replied. “But you can test them here.”

She nodded and hooked it up.

“Fair warning, you should start sl?—”

She cranked the water on high and it sprayed everywhere .

“Fuck!” She gasped, fighting for the spigot. By the time the water was off, both of us were soaked.

“Slow drip, Mollie. You need a slow drip.”

“What a rookie move,” she muttered as she stood.

Her shirt stuck to her torso.

Her white shirt.

She wasn’t wearing a bra, and I could see the outline of her?—

I stopped myself. Don’t think about it . Don’t think about it .

“Oh my God,” she yelled. “I need to ... I’ve got to ... bye!”

Mollie ran inside, slamming the door behind her.

I adjusted my jeans.

What the hell was this woman doing to me?

“What are the chances we can pretend that never happened?” Mollie asked as she came back out.