For Shannon, who is always there when I have difficulties,

  whether they’re the technical or literary sort.

  Chapter One

  ROCHESTER FARMS grew a lot more than pine trees, but from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, that was practically the only thing anyone came out to the farm to buy. Poinsettias, wreaths, and other seasonal favorites were fairly popular in the farm’s Christmas shop as well, but no one wanted the colorful persimmon trees or the hardy and exotic nandina plants displayed alongside them.

  Luckily, David Rochester cared very little about what other people liked. Well, not entirely. He did still grow the popular flowers that made up Rochester Farms’ best-seller list, but he was also methodically expanding the nursery’s offerings. The nerine bulbs that had come in yesterday’s shipment would sprout into gorgeously delicate flowers when he planted them in February.

  David put the burlap sack full of bulbs away regretfully. He’d much prefer to stay in the hothouse, but today’s busy agenda didn’t leave any time for him to be out here. He’d already wasted too much time as it was.

  Pine needles crunched under his feet as he made his way back to the main barn. Thanksgiving meant a day off for most people, but not the Rochesters. Today was one of their busiest workdays of the year.

  In the years since David had officially taken on the title of the farm’s horticulturist, when he’d come back to Rives Junction after graduate school, Rochester Farms had greatly expanded its plant offerings. His sister Mel liked to tease him about his dedication to plants no one was interested in, but David didn’t care. Cultivating seedlings for the spring rush and his experiments with hybrid breeding were the only things that made working on the family farm bearable.

  Not that he hated working in the family business—he didn’t. He’d known from a young age he wanted to spend his life in the greenhouse. Unlike so many of his classmates in the small town, he’d gone away to college fully intending to come back and settle in Rives Junction afterward. He liked small town life, and he loved being near his family. The only thing he hated was the customers. And the employees. Basically, anything that dragged him away from his plants.

  Manual labor had always appealed to him because David loved being outside. So today’s sulk wasn’t so much about what he was going to be doing—setting up the outdoor displays and working on the tractor so it was ready for hay rides—as much as it was about who he was going to be doing it with.

  He was a solitary creature, and most of the time that worked. He put in long hours without complaint in the greenhouses and fields cultivating the nursery’s stock. Those twelve-hour days seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, unlike his seemingly interminable eight-hour shifts in the shop during the spring and winter rushes.

  Today there wouldn’t be a gaggle of customers to make nice with, though. That would have been a cakewalk in comparison.

  “Hey, good-lookin’, what’s cookin’?”

  David sighed and shook his head, his eyes sliding closed at the sound of the person he least wanted to be alone with for an entire day.

  In addition to the hundreds of customers who tromped through the farm’s grounds, the busy times also brought dozens of seasonal workers, who got in David’s way and always seemed to want to talk and flirt with him. Worst of all was Erik Shriver, who’d been doggedly pursuing David with playful banter and seductive eyelash batting since last spring.

  “It’s a joke, get it? Because today’s Thanksgiving. Most people are in the kitchen cooking right now,” Erik said.

  His easy grin was almost contagious. Almost, because David didn’t smile at a lot of people, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to smile at Erik. The man took the slightest encouragement and ran with it, and if David wasn’t careful, he’d be in for an entire day of casual touches and innuendo.

  Not that he wasn’t attracted to Erik. He was. That was the problem.

  “If your shift is keeping you from your turkey duties, by all means head on home. I’m used to handling this alone,” David said gruffly.

  And he wasn’t just saying it in hopes of getting rid of Erik. Although the extra help during their busy seasons was a necessity, the part-timers never worked on Thanksgiving.

  Over the years the farm had grown enough that his family couldn’t keep up with everything themselves, especially after his parents had retreated into semiretirement, leaving David and his sister Mel in charge. Their younger brother Danny was still in college, though he lived at home and took shifts whenever he could. Unlike David and Mel, though, Danny wanted off the farm. He wanted a career that didn’t involve hauling potting soil and agonizing over the daily weather reports.

  “Nah, I’m good,” Erik answered. “Mel’s giving me time and a half today.” He gave David a long, appraising look, and David did his best not to squirm under the scrutiny. “At the time, I thought it was for working on a holiday, but now I think it might have been hazard pay since I’d be working with you all day.”

  David bared his teeth in a mock snarl and grabbed the clipboard from its hook on the wall. His surly attitude usually put people off, but he knew from experience that Erik saw it as more of a challenge than an impediment. And damn if that didn’t turn David on as well. He was screwed.

  “You could go organize stock with Mel.”

  “Pass.”

  David gritted his teeth and tossed a pair of heavy-duty work gloves at Erik, not bothering to look up to see if he caught them. It was Mel’s fault he was in this mess. Part-timers were usually perky teenagers David had no trouble glaring into silent submission as he worked with them to cut down trees and wrap them for customers. While it was annoying to work with teenagers who didn’t know a blue spruce from a Douglas fir, they had the benefit of being short-lived. Mel would hire a new gaggle of them every season, and after putting in a few months of work, they’d disappear.

  But Mel’s latest hire had stuck through the spring rush and stayed on through the summer, and now he was back again. And to make matters worse, he was actually competent. Erik was the Rives Junction High School biology teacher, which made him well suited both to help David in the greenhouses when he needed an extra hand planting and to manage the teenage employees.

  Mel was ecstatic—that job usually fell to her. David was decidedly less so, especially because he could tell his sister was in matchmaking mode. He didn’t blame her. It had been a few years since David had been on a date, and Mel was always trying to convince him to get back out there and try. Logically, he knew not all guys were cheating assholes like his last boyfriend, but there was a disconnect between logic and reality. He was terrified of giving someone that kind of power over him again.

  Erik definitely appealed in ways that were hard to ignore. It was infuriating. And the more he got to know him, the more attractive Erik became. David was at the end of his rope, and he didn’t know how much longer he could stop himself from flirting back. It was a problem.

  “She’d love to pick your brain for gossip about the new kids she just hired. She caught two of them making out behind the shed after their interviews,” David said, hoping that would pique Erik’s interest enough to get him to go bother Mel instead.

  Erik snorted. “I’d be more worried about the ones she didn’t catch.”

  David’s lip curled up into an involuntary smile at that. He knew that half the reason kids wanted to work at Rochester Farms was to take advantage of the secluded location. He’d run more than a few kids—both employees and non—off the grounds for fooling around in the trees.

  “That’s what the security cameras are for. Danny’s installing the last of them today. If you don’t want to work with Mel in the store, you could go help him.”

  Erik grinned. “Kinky.”

  David sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Necessary, not kinky. We’ve had some vandalism out here as well as teenage thrill-seekers.”

  “Ooh, do tell, Inspector Poirot.”

  Erik was a talker, and unlike the teenagers who had come before him, David couldn’t seem to discourage him with sour faces and grunted responses. Even worse, he was able to get David talking. And even when David stuck to his guns and remained silent, Erik just kept chattering away, unbothered.

  David’s crush had been easy to ignore when Erik had gone back to teaching at the start of the school year, but it had roared back into existence as soon as Erik returned to help prepare for the Christmas rush. They’d been working together for the last week, getting the farm ready for the influx of families looking for the perfect tree. David had been looking forward to a day of solitary work to get his head back on right, but Erik had shown up bright and early that morning like it was any other day.

  “Mel mentioned that you guys work all day on Thanksgiving,” Erik had offered when David pointed out that he wasn’t on the schedule. “I figured I’d help.”

  David was sure Mel had mentioned it on purpose. Erik was always looking for extra hours; there was no way he’d pass up the opportunity. She’d set him up. He was tired of her meddling, but he couldn’t get her to leave things alone.

  “So, Thanksgiving,” Erik said, startling David out of his sulk. “Your family strikes me as the type that would eat a big, traditional dinner and then go out and play football.”

  David didn’t answer, settling for raising a judgmental eyebrow at Erik instead. The hay bale he’d just picked up was growing heavy, but David tightened his grip, not willing to break eye contact with Erik. He could tell from the way Erik had persisted in seeking him out over the months he’d worked for Rochester Farms that Erik was interested in him, but David had no intention of encouraging him. He wanted to make it abundantly clear the reputation he’d gained around Rives Junction as an ill-tempered hermit wasn’t wrong.

  “Being around the Rochester siblings is like being in an Abercrombie ad. You’re all gorgeous and ridiculously muscled,” Erik babbled, with a nod at the heavy hay bale in David’s hands. “Even Mel. I’m pretty sure she could bench press me if she wanted to.”

  David snorted. “You say that like it would be a challenge.”

  “Hey, I’m heavier than I look!” Erik ran a hand down his own bicep. “Not all muscles have to be freakishly huge like yours, you know. I’m not as built as you or your brother, but I’m not a weakling. My muscles are just the svelte kind.”

  David knew Erik was telling the truth. He’d seen him lift heavy trees and move bags of peat and fertilizer like they were nothing, but David wasn’t going to give Erik the satisfaction of knowing he’d been watching him around the farm. Attractive Erik might be, but David wasn’t interested in what Erik had to offer. David had been burned by a guy like Erik before, and he wasn’t willing to repeat the experience. Erik was just looking for a good time, and while David didn’t begrudge him that, one-night stands weren’t what he was looking for. Rives Junction wasn’t a huge town, and rumor had it Erik had already slept his way through the eligible male population before he’d finished college and come back to settle. David wasn’t anxious to be another notch on Erik’s crowded bedpost.

  Best to just keep things professional. And luckily, there was no shortage of work to be done to keep them on that level. David sighed quietly and kicked at one of the hay bales that had been delivered earlier in the week.

  “Are you going to stand around opining on my muscles, or are you going to help me set these bales up?”

  A look of what David thought was disappointment flitted across Erik’s face, but David ignored it. He had a dozen things to do before dinner, and Erik was supposed to be helping him. David didn’t have time to indulge in flirting, even if he wanted to—and he definitely didn’t. Flirting with someone like Erik wouldn’t lead anywhere good. The more he and Erik worked together the more he had to remind himself of that.

  “I guess Santa’s sleigh ride isn’t going to build itself,” Erik said, an obviously fake sunny smile back on his face. “Or should we call it Santa’s hay ride? Get it? Because it’s a hay ride. With Santa.”

  The joke fell flat. David had hardly ever seen Erik unhappy, and it was disconcerting. They’d both grown up in Rives Junction, so he knew Erik’s history. Erik had been the guy whose charisma was too big for a small town. Everyone loved him, but no one was surprised when Erik went to college across the country in New York City. David had heard he’d even had a job and apartment lined up there after graduation, but then Erik’s mother had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and Erik’s plans had changed. He came home after graduation instead to be closer to her. That had been five years ago. She was in a long-term care facility now.

  The Erik who had come back and settled in Rives Junction was a slightly subdued, but still cheerful, version of the charismatic boy David had known in high school. He was talkative and personable, but there was a fragility and bitterness to his humor that hadn’t been there before.

  David knew Erik was working on Thanksgiving because he didn’t have anywhere else to go, so he tried to swallow back his own irritation with Erik and be a bit nicer. As rowdy and out-of-control as they were, David’s family meant the world to him. He didn’t quite fit in with the rest of them—quiet where they were loud, reclusive where they were outgoing—but he loved them anyway. There was nothing he’d rather do on Thanksgiving than work on the farm and share a festive, if nontraditional, dinner with his family afterward. He couldn’t imagine being alone on Thanksgiving like Erik was.

  “So what happens if there isn’t snow? I mean, it’s not like it’s going to snow six inches between now and tomorrow. How is this thing going to move?”

  Erik kicked at the large sled’s runners and quirked a brow at David.

  “It doesn’t. We have a trailer that gets pulled by a tractor for the actual hay ride through the tree farm,” David answered, pointing to the large flatbed sitting behind the shed. “This one is just for show. Santa sits in it and kids get their pictures taken.”

  Erik looked a little stunned at the depth of David’s answer, and David could understand the feeling. He never spoke more than a few words to anyone, not even his family. He much preferred the company of his plants in his hothouse. He and his father had built it at the edge of the property, far from the house and the rest of the farm buildings and a good half-mile walk from the nearest road. David didn’t mind the walk, since he loved being outdoors. The fact that it kept the customers away from his seedlings was just a bonus.

  “So what are we doing with the hay bales, then?”

  David used a pair of wire snips to cut the bale open and then started spreading the hay over the bottom of the heavy wooden sled.

  “The sleigh doesn’t move, but kids still fall off the sides a lot. I usually spread a bale around on the floor as a cushion,” David explained. Erik pulled on his own work gloves and started taking handfuls as well, scattering it over the other end. “The other bales will go on the trailer. We’ll get to that next. We have about thirty to get through before dinner, so less talking and more spreading.”

  Erik laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep you from your family dinner. I can talk and work at the same time. I’m an amazing multitasker like that.”

  “Well, I’m not,” David said shortly, shooting a glare over at Erik. He didn’t want to have to engage in idle chitchat with someone while he was working. He wanted to focus on the job and get it done, hopefully fast enough to get back to the house before Danny ate all the egg rolls.

  Erik managed to work in silence for about five minutes before the questions started again, and David figured he should probably be grateful for the small amount of quiet he’d gotten.

  “So your family does this every Thanksgiving? Don’t you miss having turkey? Sitting back and watching the parade like the good all-American family you Rochesters are?”

  David shrugged. “We’ve only had turkey once, and it was a little strange. This is what I’m used to.”

  “But you secretly yearn to watch a sixty-foot Snoopy glide through the parade route, don’t you?”

  “They retired the big Snoopy. It’s the whole Peanuts cast now.” David shrugged when Erik gaped at him. “We’re not savages. We have a DVR. It’s usually playing while we have dinner.”

  Erik grinned. “Aw, man. I’d love to see that. I bet Snoopy was your favorite, eh?”

  “I’ve always been partial to the Spider-Man, actually.”

  “Mom and I used to watch it every year before we started working on dinner,” Erik said, and David looked up when he realized Erik’s voice had gone soft. “I tried watching it with her last year, but she got too agitated. She doesn’t recognize me most of the time, and my visits upset her. Those days I leave and just come back when she’s asleep.”

  David didn’t know what to say to that, but Erik seemed okay with silence. They worked quietly alongside each other for a few minutes. David had to stop himself from saying something comforting to Erik. He was afraid anything he said would open the door to more flirting from Erik, and David didn’t think he had enough self-discipline not to let things go too far if given the chance. Knowing Erik was bad for him didn’t make Erik any less attractive, unfortunately. But David had tried being with someone who was too big for his small-town britches before, and it had ended disastrously. It was only a matter of time before Erik left Rives Junction and resumed his big-city dreams. And even if that didn’t happen, a guy with Erik’s history would never be content with a homebody like David.

  They finished with the sled and David led Erik over to the barn. “Can you back that trailer up? The bales are in here, so get it as close as you can so we don’t have to carry them far.”

  “Are you saying you don’t think you’re strong enough to carry a few hay bales?”

  “I’m saying that after the first ten or so, you’re going to be really glad you backed the damn trailer up. It’s already hooked to the tractor. Just get it over here.”

 

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