Page 19 of Delicious (Delicious #1)

Chapter One

David

I ’m fairly sure that when I’m on my deathbed, I’ll still be cursing Benji Gange’s name.

“Fucking Benji Gange,” I say to my brother on the phone I’m holding one-handed while I try to repair the ancient water trough’s third leak this month.

“What’s he done this time?” My brother Lance sounds a combination of amused and exasperated, like he’s watching a rerun of a show where he already knows the ending.

“He’s only gone and painted his gate to the Boundary Ridge paddock.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“He’s painted it purple,” I say.

And not just any purple. This purple is so bright it could probably guide lost sheep home in the dark.

“It’s on his land,” Lance says mildly.

“But I’m the one who has to look at it! It’s a bloody fence, not an art exhibition.”

I can too easily imagine the smug smile on Benji’s face as he wielded his paintbrush like Michelangelo redecorating the Sistine Chapel. He’ll have known what my reaction would be.

I’m fairly sure that’s why he did it. My hands clench just thinking about that.

“I’m going to have to go over to his place and talk to him about it,” I say.

“Of course you are,” Lance says.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing.”

“I know your nothings. Come on, spit it out.”

“It’s just that everything the guy does seems to wind you up. You’ve been like that from the moment he took over his uncle’s farm. Stuff you normally wouldn’t care about suddenly becomes a capital offense when Benji’s involved.”

He’s right.

Would I care so much if Bruce and Louise McMillian, my neighbors on the other side, had done the same thing?

But hell would freeze over before Bruce would ever paint a gate that garish purple, so the question is redundant.

Lance is right that something about Benji Gange has rubbed me the wrong way from the first moment I met him.

After his bachelor uncle passed away, rumors flew around the district that his nephew from Auckland had inherited the farm.

I vaguely remember Benji as a kid visiting during the summer holidays, trailing after his uncle like an imprinted duckling, but he was five years younger than me, so I hadn’t paid much attention to him.

But when he turned up in his city-slicker clothes, his light-brown hair styled with some sort of product that made it shine like a newly polished pickup truck on show day, I’d definitely paid attention.

Mainly to scoff.

The guy would last two months farming if he was lucky.

He’s proved me wrong on that one.

Turns out his city-slicker job had been in environmental management, so he understood more about soil composition than half the old-timers who’d been farming since before he was born.

He pissed off quite a few farmers round here by raving on about water conservation strategies, but when he was still managing a good stock load while the rest of us were selling off sheep during the drought, people at the pub began to listen more carefully to what he had to say.

Maybe that was what bugged me about him? The way he’d sauntered into this tight-knit community, all effortless charm and styled hair, and suddenly had everyone fawning over him.

They don’t have to be a neighbor to the guy. They don’t have to constantly interact with him about shared water rights, boundary fences, and his organic fertilizer experiments that drift onto my land whenever the wind picks up.

I’m not a complete stick-in-the-mud. I’m prepared to learn and adapt.

But some of Benji’s experiments belong in one of those fancy agricultural magazines, not in the real world where mud and machinery don’t always play nice with computer programs.

Like last spring’s debacle with his newly installed automated feed stations. They worked fine until the first proper southerly hit, then the whole system went haywire. Meanwhile, my simple hay feeders kept my stock fat and happy through the worst weather.

I don’t have a good comeback to Lance’s accusation that Benji winds me up more than anyone else, so I ignore it.

“Need to go so I can finish fixing this bloody trough,” I grunt.

“Pub tomorrow night?” Lance asks.

“Yeah. See you then.”

I end the call and wrestle with the ancient pipe wrench. The metal groans in protest as I force it to grip the corroded fitting. Water sprays in my face, tasting like rust and minerals, but I don’t flinch. Been doing this since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, watching Dad curse at these same troughs while I handed him tools.

The sun beats down on my neck as I methodically work through the repair.

My shirt’s soaked through by the time I’m done, but the repair holds when I test it. I straighten, my back protesting.

With the trough sorted, there’s nothing left to delay the inevitable.

Time to go into battle with Benji.

But instead of heading straight to my truck, I go via my vegetable garden.

The raised beds are coming alive after winter, with the early potatoes pushing up through the soil like green knuckles. My early variety broad beans are humming with bees despite the spring breeze.

The tension in my shoulders eases as I walk between the beds. There’s something settling about good soil under your boots and the smell of things growing.

The rest of the farm might be all about profit margins and stock rates, but here…there are no complicated regulations or fancy modern methods. Just dirt and seeds doing what they’re meant to do.

My great-grandfather established this half-acre vegetable garden and acre of fruit trees back in the thirties. It’s designed to feed a whole family, but because I’m by myself, I end up giving most of it away.

Benji is a big recipient of my vegetable garden.

It’s the neighborly thing to do. No matter how much Benji and I argue over whose stock caused the damage to the new section of boundary fencing or whether his fancy irrigation system sends too much runoff into my lower paddocks, he’s still my neighbor.

And in this small corner of rural New Zealand, that means something.

It feels like summer inside the greenhouse compared to the spring chill outside. I check my tomato seedlings first, which are standing tall in their pots, each labeled in my careful handwriting. I used to stick to just Money Makers, but in the last few years, I’ve grown more varieties. Black Russians, Green Zebras, those fancy Italian ones with the ridges.

I’m a few months away from harvesting tomatoes, though, so I head to the back of my greenhouse, where my cucumbers are showing off, growing faster than gossip at the pub. I pick a couple, along with the last of the winter lettuce that keeps me in salads when everyone else is paying ridiculous supermarket prices.

Armed with the vegetables, I jump in my pickup truck and drive the kilometer to Benji’s house.

When Benji’s uncle lived here, the house was a testament to bachelor living, with peeling weatherboards that hadn’t seen paint since the eighties and a garden of whatever managed to survive without attention.

Now…well…now, the weatherboards are a soft gray that probably has some fancy name like morning mist or coastal storm . The wraparound porch sports hanging baskets full of natives. And because he’s Benji, he’s got those windchimes made from old farm tools hanging everywhere. They shouldn’t work, but somehow, they do, just like his other mad ideas.

I stride up the path and knock sharply on the front door.

There’s no answer.

That’s not surprising. Farmers don’t automatically clock off after five. There’s always more work to be done.

But his pickup truck is out front, and I spot his four-wheeler in the shed, so he must be somewhere around.

I track him down in the cattle yard, teaching his heading dog to work the new cattle he’s bought. The dog’s young and eager, about as subtle as a brick through a window, but Benji’s patient with him. His voice is gentle but firm as he gives commands.

Benji doesn’t spot me approaching, which gives me a chance to observe him. Observe how the sun’s catching him just right, turning his light-brown hair golden. He’s lean, but his shoulders show the results of physical labor three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Not that I’m paying attention to any of that. I’m just…appreciating his stockmanship. That’s all it is.

His head snaps up at the crunch of my boots on the gravel as I reach the yard, a smile spreading across his face.

He’s always like this, always acts like he’s pleased to see me despite the fact that nearly every interaction between us has some point of friction.

He gives the dog a final pat before striding over, all easy grace and too-white teeth.

“David, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“You need to repaint your gate,” I say.

Benji’s eyes dance with amusement. “But I just painted it.”

“Yeah, I saw. It’s an eyesore.”

He leans against the fence post, crossing his arms over his chest, his head tilting to one side as he considers me.

“How is it an eyesore?”

“It’s purple,” I manage to reply.

“What do you have against the color purple?” he asks.

“Nothing. It’s just not appropriate for a gate.”

The corners of his mouth twitch up. “Is there some manual about acceptable gate aesthetics that I missed? Was there some report in Farming Weekly about how purple gates decrease lamb production?”

This is what makes arguing with Benji so infuriating. His tendency to meet every complaint with that crooked smile and dancing eyes, like I’m simply making his day more entertaining.

“Some things are just done certain ways out here,” I say.

“But who says every gate has to be the same color?” he asks, his eyes not leaving mine. “Every time I drive past that gate, it makes me smile. And isn’t that worth something? A bit of unexpected joy when you’re not expecting it? Besides, last I checked, sheep don’t care what color the gates are.”

The idea of doing something just to make yourself smile seems frivolous. Wasteful. The kind of thing that has no place on a working farm. But then again, that’s exactly what my vegetable garden is, isn’t it? Not that I’d ever admit that out loud.

“But I’m the one who’s got to look at that gate all the time.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I was hoping it would make you smile too.”

Inexplicably, heat that has nothing to do with the late afternoon sunshine creeps up my neck.

I scuff my boot against the ground like it’s personally offended me.

Because the way Benji’s looking at me makes my skin prickle. Better to talk about something that makes sense. Something I know how to handle.

“The thistle paddock’s looking rough at the moment. When was the last time you actually ran stock through there?”

“It’s mine for another eight months, remember?” Benji says.

The thistle paddock is one of the constant sources of contention between us.

To be fair, the conflict over the five-acre paddock isn’t just a Benji and me thing. It’s been going on for generations.

Back in the forties, some idiot city surveyor included the paddock on both our farm titles.

The mistake wasn’t discovered until thirty years later, and by then, the paddock had already passed through enough hands that unscrambling the mess would’ve needed King Solomon himself.

My grandfather and Old Jack Gange had knocked back a few beers at the pub before coming up with their solution, deciding to take turns using the paddock in two-year blocks. Simple as that.

“I wish you’d just let me buy it off you,” I mutter.

“But I so enjoy sharing custody of a paddock with you.” Benji’s eyes sparkle with his particular brand of mischief that makes my stomach do something uncomfortable. “In fact, I was thinking maybe we should renegotiate the deal and just split it by days of the week? You get Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I get Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. We can arm wrestle for Sundays.”

I roll my eyes because he’s just trying to wind me up. But I can’t help responding. “Pretty sure it’s a paddock, not a timeshare.”

His eyes continue to dance. “In fact, maybe we should consider other options for the paddock. We could do a joint tourist venture. Experience authentic rural New Zealand. Stand in a paddock that belongs to two men simultaneously.” His mouth quirks up. “We’d make a fortune.”

“There’s nothing in that paddock except thistles.”

“And the view of a purple gate. You can’t forget that,” he says helpfully.

This is why any conversation with Benji is so infuriating. I swear the blood pressure pills Doc Wilson prescribed me at my last checkup should come with a warning label that reads: May be ineffective against the annoying neighbor .

“That gate’s about as much of a tourist attraction as my compost heap,” I say.

He shakes his head at me. “Still think you’re missing out on the potential. We could be great business partners. You could do the practical stuff. I’ll handle the creative vision. Picture it: The Thistle Experience: Where Boundaries Blur .”

“The only thing blurring around here is your grip on reality,” I grumble.

Benji laughs, and the sound does something funny to my insides.

I struggle to come up with another topic of conversation.

“We need to talk about the creek boundary sometime. The bend is getting wider every season.”

“Nature doesn’t go in straight lines,” Benji says. He gives me a wink. “In fact, I don’t think anything worthwhile is completely straight.”

My throat goes dry. Something about the way he says those words makes me wonder if we’re talking about boundary lines at all.

After any conversation with Benji, I always spend the next day reviewing everything he said, turning his words over in my mind and silently crafting better comebacks.

I can’t think of a reply now, so I turn to go, then suddenly realize I’m still clutching the vegetables.

“Here,” I say, thrusting the cucumbers and lettuce at him.

Benji takes them off me, looking down at them with a soft smile.

I don’t know how to interpret that smile.

“Thanks,” he says, raising his green eyes to mine in that slow way of his, like he’s taking his time to memorize something important. “Your vegetable garden never disappoints.”

I grunt in reply before turning and striding off.