Page 19 of Heartland

“Why would I say that?”

“Because you never spend more than a single night with anyone.” Griffin laughs.

He isn’t wrong. I kick a pebble with my shoe and try to appear disinterested in this conversation.As if.

“Can’t you grill me on my personal life later?” Dylan asks his brother. “What are you doing here, anyway? Besides giving me a hard time.”

“Helping Leah with some paperwork for her nonprofit.”

“Cool,” Dylan says lightly. “See you in the morning, then?”

“Yeah, go on,” Griff says, waving a hand toward the creamery. “I brought down three gallons of goat’s milk for you. Nobody will be happier than me if you can use that stuff. Jacquie jumped the fencethreetimes today! I spent lunchtime chasing her around the fucking orchard. Now there’s a good time.”

Dylan scowls. “Did you see how she got out?”

His brother shakes his head grumpily.

“I’ll look at the fence tomorrow,” Dylan says. “Maybe the water bucket—”

“It wasn’t the fucking bucket,” Griff snaps. “Learned that lesson already.”

“They can’tfly, Griff,” Dylan returns. “It has to be something.”

“Then figure it out. I got other things to worry about. Are you coming home for supper?” Griff looks at his watch. “You don’t have a lot of time.”

“I cooked!” comes Leah’s voice from inside the house. “Dylan can eat here. Homemade mac and cheese and chicken cutlets.”

“Score.” Griff claps him on the back. “Good luck with the candy. Be in the barn at six tomorrow morning. Don’t forget to set your alarm.”

“I won’t. Jesus.” Dylan rolls his eyes as his brother climbs into his own truck.

Griffin leaves, finally. And Leah gives us a wave hello from the door then disappears as well.

Then it’s just me and Dylan. Alone. The way I like it.

Eight

Dylan

Even a minor run-inwith Griffin puts me in a crappy mood. So I’m standing in the creamery scowling while Chastity unpacks a bunch of ingredients from a grocery bag.

It doesn’t bother me so much that he calls mekid. And I don’t mind doing farm work. But he’s gotten so pushy lately about what I plan to do with my life. Like maybe he’s hoping I won’t follow through on farming with him after graduation.

The dude really likes to be in charge. And everyone thinks of me as the fuckup. Maybe he doesn’t think I deserve to help run the place after college.

And maybe he’s right.

“You okay?” Chastity asks.

“Sure. Tell me what to do,” I demand, trying to shake off my bad mood. “We’ll make the first batch small, right?”

“Yes, and no. We’re going to cook two batches at once. But we’ll pour them off at different times, at different temperatures. After it cools overnight, we’ll decide which batch we like best. I only brought five pounds of sugar so we can’t get too carried away.”

“Still sounds like a lot.”

“We won’t need it all.” She looks up at me with those clear blue eyes of hers and tilts her head to the side. “Ignore Griffin, okay? This is going to be fun.” She plucks an apron off a row of hooks on the wall and places it in my hands.

“Don’t let me screw it up,” I grumble. I seem to do that a lot.