Page 3 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

Two

R elief washed over Josh when he found the woman with blue-black hair and glorious curves hucking underripe pumpkins at hogs completely unharmed. He had been afraid there would be gore.

Her expression went slightly less feral when he called out to her.

Only slightly. Her all-black getup and unsupportive footwear were ill-suited to working outside with the pumpkins.

And he rarely encountered such razor-sharp haircuts in Pea Blossom, suggesting she had perhaps dropped in from a hip neighborhood in New York or San Francisco.

Or Los Angeles. Of course. She must be Stu’s daughter, Sadie.

“Who the fuck are you?” she said. Her voice was all cigarettes and whiskey, presumably from the screaming.

“Josh Thatcher. I live next door.” He jumped off Shadowfax and held him by the bridle.

“Did your hogs do this?” She swung her hand in a wide gesture, showing off the trampled pumpkin patch like it was history’s worst game show prize.

Josh’s heart sank looking at the wreckage of Stu’s crops.

The dang hogs. The absolute yahoo living on the other property adjacent to Josh’s had been working on a theme park of sorts, for hunting.

Blossom County didn’t have a feral hog problem yet, but this doorknob was bound and determined to make one happen, all so tourists could do the porcine equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

Josh knew the flimsy fencing installed along the property line would never hold.

“My other neighbor’s got a bunch of hogs. They must have busted through the fence and come here.”

With a grunt she chucked another half-eaten pumpkin toward the back of Stu’s property. She put her weight behind it, too. It tumbled through the air in an arc before landing in the leaf litter with a dull thud. “Fuuuuuuck!” she screamed.

“Did they get every plant?” he asked.

“Every. Single. One!” she replied in a terrifying crescendo that turned “one” into a ragged howl.

Consoling upset people wasn’t a skill Josh counted among his own, but solving problems?

That he could do. Stu had let Josh keep a spare halter and lead rope hanging from hooks by the cabin’s back door, for whenever Josh stopped by on horseback, which was often.

He quietly walked over and hitched Shadowfax. Sadie continued throwing pumpkins.

Josh had offered to take care of the pumpkins himself, but Stu wouldn’t let him.

There was no way the Growers Guild would allow Stu to enter a pumpkin in the weigh-off that was tended to, even temporarily, by his protégé and now rival.

Not if Josh wanted to enter himself. Not to mention, Stu made no bones about doubting Josh’s prowess.

Despite the mistrust, Stu made Josh promise to help Sadie with anything if she needed it.

Eye contact and a handshake and everything.

Stu wasn’t a man who shared his hopes and dreams, but Josh got the sense he was deeply invested in Sadie having a good experience on Fox Family Farm.

A devoted drinker of the cheapest store-brand instant coffee, Stu even consulted with Josh on what kind of coffee maker he should purchase for the kitchen before he left.

Having access to good coffee wouldn’t matter if there were no pumpkins to tend.

Josh briefly locked eyes with Sadie as he returned to her, horseless, hopeful she’d calmed enough to drop the decibels and reduce the number of curses per sentence by a third or more.

When she wasn’t snarling, she had a soft, round face.

Pretty scary and scary pretty. She turned her back to him, launching smaller chunks of pumpkin into the woods.

Josh spun back around to take a little walk around the property and give her more time.

A tough wad of guilt twisted in his stomach. He’d tried his darnedest to convince Stu that his pumpkins needed proper fencing. Josh should have done it himself as soon as Stu left. He could have apologized after if Stu got mad about it.

Then he stopped himself from taking that thought any further. Don’t solve other people’s problems when they don’t want your help.

He shouldn’t have hitched his horse. He should have been content with seeing that Sadie’s screams weren’t a medical emergency and let her be. She was a grown woman and didn’t need his help. But then again, he’d made a promise.

For the briefest moment, he considered that this catastrophe benefited him. His fiercest competition was out of the game.

Nevertheless, this wasn’t how Josh wanted to win the pumpkin weigh-off.

He’d been trying to defeat Stu for the past three years, and last year he was only one hundred pounds off the mark.

This year he’d added more technological innovations to his own patch.

From his phone, he could monitor live data from his garden noting the available sunshine and ambient humidity.

Tiny cameras sent their feeds through an algorithm derived from software astronomers used to detect minute changes in a star field.

His modified software identified possible insect activity on his plants’ leaves.

Soon he’d install more cameras to monitor changes in the pumpkin stems that could become deadly cracks if ignored.

Irrigation triggered automatically according to soil sensors, and shades tracked the sun like sunflowers, only letting the optimal amount of sun fall on his precious plants.

Making pumpkin growing an advanced science should have allowed him to beat Stu, a guy who poked his finger into the soil and then licked that same finger to probe the air.

And yet.

Josh swung by the fridge in Stu’s garage and pulled out two cans of beer before walking back to Sadie.

She’d stopped throwing pumpkins. Instead, she was tending to one plant, pulling off the sections that had been severed completely.

She would no doubt salvage what she could, making cuttings from viable sections of the trampled remains.

They wouldn’t produce in time for SPICE, but Stu still needed the seeds to sell.

“Weird question,” he said, “but do you happen to be sober?”

“At the moment? Yes. As a lifestyle, no.”

He handed her a beer and she took it silently, tapping the top four times the way he’d seen Stu do countless times.

Stu hadn’t told him much about Sadie before her arrival.

But here she was, a sexy vampire bat of a woman with half-sleeve tattoos creeping out of her black T-shirt.

She clearly put effort into looking tough, but nothing could truly harden that compelling face.

She pursed her black cherry lips around the can and Josh took a swig of his own beer to distract himself.

She stared at him again, eyes narrowed. “Who are you again?”

“The neighbor. Josh.”

She nodded. Not going to be forthcoming with any information herself.

“You must be Stu’s daughter.”

“Sadie.” Stu mentioned that he’d lived in the farmhouse his entire life.

So this was Sadie’s childhood home. Yet Josh had never seen a trace of her.

Maybe there was a school photograph somewhere, or a macaroni ornament on the pretrimmed tree Stu annually hauled out of the attic, but nothing recent.

And no visits. He would have remembered those luscious lips.

She finished the beer and dropped the can to the ground, stomping it flat under her sneaker. She’s going to destroy me, and I’m going to beg for more. Josh had been single too long, and it was catching up to him.

Sadie picked up the crushed beer can and started toward the front of the house.

“Do you want any help?” he asked.

Sadie stopped in her tracks and turned. They were nearly the same height at about five-ten.

He was rangy where she was plush, with ample hips and thick thighs.

The kind of thighs Josh fantasized about worshipping.

She gave him an assessing look that sent a bead of sweat running down his spine.

This look had an extra whiff of I could snap you like a twig .

“What could you do?”

“Maybe we can find cuttings from what’s left of the plants? And then I’ll take down my neighbor and his ridiculous hogs.”

“Are you fucking with me?” she asked.

He most definitely wasn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t let her know about his promise just yet.

Stu had said that Sadie was capable and wouldn’t need any help.

Then again, the man had also rejected the fencing.

“No. Stu’s done so much for me. If my dingus neighbor isn’t going to do the bare minimum to keep his hogs out of everyone else’s property, I’ll do it for him, and I’ll make him pay for this.

” He paused before adding, “But only if you want me to.”

Sadie looked at him askance. “Not with, like, his life, though, right?”

Since moving to Indiana, he’d swapped all the tech-bro hoodies and expensive sneakers for a simple wardrobe of plaid button-ups and boots.

He looked cooler now, but he certainly didn’t think he could pass for someone with a deadly revenge fantasy.

“Ha! No. This half-baked venture of his, which is called Go Hog Wild, by the way, has been mired in zoning problems. And I’m about to be his biggest zoning problem. ”

“Do I have to be involved?” she asked suspiciously.

“I don’t think so. I’ll take some photos of the damage for evidence and that ought to do it. I might have a question here and there, but you can always tell me to go away. Lord knows your father does. But first, the cuttings. Do you have some pruning shears handy?”

A ghost of a smile passed over her face. “In the garage,” she said. “Knock yourself out.”

“Could I get a hand finding them?” he asked with all the hope in his heart. She rolled her eyes and walked back toward him.

“I could use another beer anyway,” she said. “Can’t believe the whole pumpkin crop is gone in the blink of an eye.”

Josh followed her into the garage—a waste of timber he was dying to tear down.