1
“LUKA, LISTEN.” I lean backward in my chair and fumble for the stack of papers on the file cabinet behind me, cursing under my breath when my fingertips barely glance the corner edge and it goes cascading to the floor in a flurry of white. “Listen, I need you to stop talking about pizza for a second.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “I was just getting to the good part.”
What he means is he was just getting to the part where he talks at length about homemade cheese, and I don’t think I can handle him talking about mozzarella with that level of detail right now. As a data analyst, Luka is ridiculously thorough in all things. Especially cheese. I rub at the ache between my eyebrows. “I know you were, I’m sorry, but I’ve got something else to talk to you about.”
“Everything okay?” There’s a honk in the background, Luka’s muffled curse, and the steady click of his turn signal as he merges into another lane.
“Everything is . . . fine.” I peek down at the budget spreadsheets littering my floor and wince. “It’s good. Okay, I mean. I just—” The fleeting confidence I entered this conversation with leaves me, and I slouch down in my chair. Every time I’ve called Luka this week or Luka has called me, I’ve chickened out. I don’t think this time is going to be any different.
“I actually have to go. One of my vendors is calling.” I frown at myself in the reflection of my computer screen. I have bags under my eyes, my full bottom lip is bright red from nervous chewing, and my mass of dark hair is twisted up into a bun that looks better suited to a haunted Victorian doll.
I look every bit as rough as the farm’s budget sheets.
“One of your vendors is not calling you, but I’ll play for now.” Luka sounds amused. “Call me when you’re done working, okay? We can talk about whatever you’ve been running circles around all week.”
Reflection me frowns deeper. “Maybe.”
He laughs. “Talk soon.”
I hang up my phone and resist the urge to toss it clear across the room.
Luka has a knack for cracking me right open, and I don’t want that right now.
I don’t want it ever, to be honest, afraid of what he’ll find when he starts connecting all of his data points.
My phone buzzes in my palm with an incoming text, and I flip it facedown on top of a stack of invoices. It buzzes again, and I pinch the bridge of my nose.
With the farm’s finances the way they are, I’m quickly running out of options. I had thought—I guess I thought owning a Christmas tree farm would be romantic.
I had big dreams of a holiday season filled with magic. Kids weaving their way through the trees. Parents stealing kisses over hot chocolate. The stuff Christmas songs are written about. Young couples getting caught beneath the mistletoe. Low-hanging lights and oversized stockings. Wood railings painted red and white. Gingerbread cookies. Peppermint sticks.
And at first, it was great. Our opening season was as magical as it gets.
But since then, it’s been one thing after another.
I’m eyeballs deep in debt with a fertilizer supplier who conveniently forgets my shipment every other month. I have an entire pasture of trees that look like something out of a Tim Burton movie, and there is a family of raccoons orchestrating a hostile takeover of my Santa barn. It is, in short, not a magical winter fairyland.
It is a frigid hellscape from which no one can escape, topped with a pretty red bow.
I feel lied to. Not only by every Hallmark movie I’ve ever seen but also by the previous owner of this land. Hank failed to mention he stopped paying his bills months ago, and as the new owner, I’d inherited his debt. At the time, I thought I had gotten a steal. The land was at a good price, and I had
exciting ideas for expansion and marketing. With a little love, this little farm could make a big impact. Now though, I just feel stupid. I feel like I ignored several red flags in my desire to create something special.
I was blinded by the Douglas fir.
But I do have a solution. I’m just not sure the email sitting at the top of my inbox is something I’m willing to explore.
Honestly, at this point, harvesting my own organs sounds less scary.
“Stella.”
I jump when Beckett elbows his way into my office, my arm knocking over my coffee, a halfway-dead fern, and a stack of pine tree–scented air fresheners. It all tumbles to the ground on top of my destroyed filing system.
I frown at my lead farmer over the mess.
“Beckett.” I sigh, and the headache pressing behind my eyes spreads, curls at the base of my skull. The man is physically incapable of entering a room in a normal, understated way. His knees are caked in mud and my frown deepens. He must have been in the south pasture. “What is it now?”
He steps over the pile of plant and cardboard and coffee and folds his large frame into the chair opposite my desk—a horrible, too-small leather thing I found on the side of the road. I had wanted to reupholster it a rich velvet evergreen, but then the raccoons happened. And then the fencing by the road randomly collapsed twice.
And so there it sits. Horrible cracking brown leather with bits of stuffing spilling out onto the floor. It feels like a metaphor.
Beckett peers at the faded trees decorating the carpet, the cardboard curling up at the edges. One eyebrow shoots straight up his forehead. “Care to explain why you have seventy-five gas station air fresheners in your office?”
Leave it to Beckett to forget an apology and start digging into something personal instead. My phone buzzes again. Three staccato bursts in rapid fire.
It’s either Luka’s dissertation on pizza crust consistency or another vendor looking for their late payment.
Beckett’s eyebrow creeps higher. “Or perhaps door number two. Care to explain why you’re ignoring Luka?”
I hate when Beckett is feeling clever. It almost always ends poorly for me.
He’s too astute for his own good, despite the dumb farmer act he plays a majority of the time. I bend down and pick up an air freshener, tossing it in the bottom drawer of my desk with all of the rest. A big ol’ mess of tangled strings, stale pine, and unrequited feelings. A single pine tree for every time Luka has been home, starting back when we were twenty-one and stupid. I typically find them a week or two after he’s left—tucked away in some hidden spot. Beneath my snow globe, under my keyboard.
Wedged in my coffee filter.
“I’m not and I don’t,” I mumble. Hard pass on both those options, thank you. “Care to explain what you found out there this morning?”
Beckett slips off his hat and runs his fingers through his dark blond hair, working a smudge or two of dirt in there. His skin is tanned by the sun and from spending his days in the fields, the flannel rolled up to his elbows displaying the color and ink on his forearms. All the women in town are crazy about him, which is probably why he doesn’t go into town.
Also probably why he frowned at me when I suggested a Hot Farmer calendar to boost profits.
I swear, I’d have no financial concerns if he let me take that one to market.
“I don’t understand,” he mutters, thumb rubbing at his jaw. If Cindy Croswell were here right now, she’d drop dead on the spot. She works at the pharmacy and sometimes pretends she’s hard of hearing when Beck comes in, just so he has to lean into her space and yell straight into her ear. I even saw that old bat pretend to stumble into a shelf so Beckett would help her back up. Hopeless.
“These trees are probably the lowest maintenance crop I’ve ever had to support.” There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I frankly don’t have the energy. My lips tilt down until my frown mirrors his. Two sad clowns. “I can’t think of a single reason why the trees in the south pasture look like— like—”
I think of the way the trees growing at the base of the hills curve and bend, the brittle texture of the bark. The limp, sad needles. “Like a darker
version of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree?”
“That’s it, yeah.”
Strangely enough, there’s a market for lonely looking Christmas trees. But these don’t fall into that category. These are unsalvageable. I went out the other day, and I swear one of them crumbled when I looked at it. I can’t imagine one of these things sitting in anyone’s home—ironically or not. I pluck at my bottom lip with my thumb and do some quick calculations in my head. There are dozens of trees in that lot.
“Will we be all right without them?” Beckett looks worried and he has every reason to be. It’s another hit we can’t afford to take. He’s the head of farming operations. I know I owe him the truth. That we’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth. But I can’t make the words come out. He took a leap of faith when he left his job at the produce farm to work here with me. I know he’s counting on this being a success. For all of the promises I made him to hold true.
And so far they have, thanks to my savings. I’ve had to scrimp and save and eat ramen more nights than not, but no one who works here has seen a dip in their pay. I’m not willing to sacrifice that.
But that won’t last forever. Something has to give soon.
I glance back at my computer screen, the email at the top of my inbox.
“Well,” I say, chewing on my bottom lip. In for a penny, in for a pound, and all that. If Beckett wants us to make it through this next season with the farm in one piece, there is something he can do. I breathe deep and summon the scraps of courage that didn’t abandon me during my call with Luka. “Want to be my boyfriend?”
I’d laugh at the look on his face if I weren’t so serious. He looks like I asked him to go out into the orchards and bury a dead body.
“Is that—” He shifts in his chair, the leather squeaking under his legs.
“Stella, I’m not—I don’t really see you—you’re like my—”
When was the last time I heard this man stutter? I honestly can’t think of it. Maybe when Betsy Johnson tried to cop a feel in front of a group of schoolkids during his Arbor Day presentation at the middle school.
“Relax.” I press the toe of my boot into another air freshener and drag it toward me. “I don’t mean a real boyfriend.”
I’m struggling with dragging the piece of cardboard toward me, so I don’t see the way Beckett’s body goes ramrod straight in the chair. All I see is his leg jumping up and down a mile a minute. I snort. When I look up, his eyes are wide, and he looks like I’ve put a gun to his head. It’s the same thinly veiled apprehension and mortification he wears on his face every time he steps foot in town.
“Stella,” he swallows. “Is this—are you propositioning me?”
“What? Oh my god, Beck—” I can’t help the full-body shudder. I love Beckett, but—god. “No! Jesus, is that what you think of me?”
“What do I think? What do you think?” His voice has hit a register I have never heard from him before. He gestures wildly with his hand, clearly not knowing what to do with himself. “This is all a little out of left field, Stella!”
“I meant like a fake boyfriend thing!” I shriek, like that was obvious. Like this is a normal thing people request from their very platonic friends. Like my overactive imagination and half a bottle of sauvignon blanc didn’t get me into this mess to begin with. I click to open the email and stare at it mournfully, ignoring the animated confetti that explodes across my screen. I watch it three times in a row and pretend Beckett’s eyes are not currently drilling a hole into the side of my head.
“I did a thing,” I supply, and leave it at that.
“A thing,” he parrots.
I hum in response.
“Do you want to share what that thing is?”
No.
“I—”
As if summoned by sheer force of will, Layla tiptoes her way into my office, a tray of something preceding her around the edge of my door. I smell cinnamon, dried cranberries, and a hint of vanilla.
Zucchini bread.
Like an angel descending from the heavens, she brought zucchini bread.
The one thing that always, always distracts Beckett.
Beckett makes a noise that is borderline obscene, and I vaguely consider recording it and putting it on OnlyFans. That might bring in some dollars: Hot Farmer Eats Zucchini. I chuckle to myself. He reaches for the tray with grabby hands, but Layla smacks his knuckles with a wooden spoon she pulls out of her . . . back pocket, I think? She balances the tray neatly on the edge of my desk. I peer into it and almost weep. She added chocolate chips.
“Made you something, boss lady.”
She nudges it forward with the edge of her spoon and rests her chin prettily in one hand.
While Beckett embodies rugged recluse with all the charm of a paper bag, Layla Dupree brightens any room she walks into with her sweet Southern hospitality and no-nonsense wit. She is striking with her crystal clear hazel eyes and cropped dark hair. She’s kind to a fault and makes the best hot chocolate in the tristate area. I snatched her up to manage the dining options at my little tree farm as soon as I tasted one of her chocolate chip cookies at the firehouse bake sale. She’s the third member of our humble little trio, and if she’s bringing me sweets, she wants something.
Something I probably can’t afford.
I shove a slice of bread into my mouth before she can ask, bound and determined to enjoy at least one thing before I have to tell her no.
My phone takes advantage too, buzzing merrily across my desk. Layla blinks at it, exchanges a glance with Beckett, and then looks at me.
“Why are you ignoring Luka?”
“I’m not—” A spray of golden, flaky, delicious crumbs accompany my
denial. “I’m not ignoring Luka.”
It sounds more like M’snot snore ukeah.
Layla hums and pivots. “So, I was thinking,” she starts. Bingo. “If I add another stove in the back corner of the kitchen, we could almost double our output. Maybe even start some prepackaged things if people want to take a little basket out into the fields with them.”
Beckett crosses his arms as I continue chewing my massive bite. I ignore Layla for now and stare him dead in the eye.
“It’s still warm,” I tell him.
He groans.
Layla relents and rolls her eyes, plucking a slice off the top and offering it to him.
“If people start leaving trash in the pastures, I’m going to have a problem with that,” Beckett grouches. He shoves the whole slice of bread into his mouth and then collapses against the back of the chair in rapture, the leather once again releasing an ominous squeak of defeat. Just like I’m about to.
“I love the idea, but we might need to put a hold on any big purchases right now.” I think about the sad little number in my savings account. How I was barely able to cover operational expenses this past quarter.
Layla’s face falls, her hand reaching out to mine. She touches my knuckles once. It’s a kindness I don’t deserve, given that I haven’t been completely honest about how bad things are right now. “Are we doing okay?”
“We’re doing”—I search for a word to categorize hanging on by my fingernails—“all right.”
Beckett finally swallows his ridiculous bite of food and kicks out a leg.
“We were just talking about that, actually. Stella propositioned me.”
“Oh? That’s interesting. Don’t understand how it plays into our operational status though.”
“Yeah, me too. But that’s what I got when I asked her the same question.”
“Do I get to be propositioned too?”
I roll my eyes and choose not to dignify that with a response. Instead, I turn my computer screen around so they both can see the animated confetti in all its glory. Beckett doesn’t so much as blink, but Layla throws both arms up in the air with a high-pitched screech that has me wincing.
“Is that for real?” She grabs the sides of my desktop and leans closer, nose practically pressed up against the screen. “You’re a finalist for that Evelyn St.
James thing?”
Beckett eyeballs the zucchini bread as it balances precariously on the edge of my desk, eyes glazed like he’s been drugged. “Aspirin Saint what?”
Layla slaps his hand again without even looking at him. “She’s an influencer.”
Beckett makes a face. “Is that like a political thing?”
“How do you exist in this century? She’s a big deal on social media. She does destination features. Sort of like a mini Travel Channel thing.”
I feel a small burst of pride. She is the influencer for destination hospitality. Snagging a feature on her account is equivalent to thousands in ad spend—thousands we have never had the budget for. It would turn our farm into a place people want to visit, not just a stopping point for locals. And the $100,000 cash prize for the winner of her small business sweepstakes would keep us afloat for another year, if not more.
Too bad I lied on my application.
“Where does the propositioning come in?”
“I didn’t—I didn’t proposition Beckett.” I swing my computer screen back around and minimize the email. I drum my fingers against my lips and remember the night that got me into this mess. I had been on the phone with Luka, a little bit dizzy off white wine and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners. He had been making some stupid joke about ham sandwiches and couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get the full thing out. I still don’t know the punch line.
“I said in the application that I own the farm with my boyfriend,” I mumble. Color heats my cheeks. I bet I look as red as one of my barn doors.
“I thought it would be more romantic than Sad, lonely woman who hasn’t been on a date in seventeen months.”
“I hope to god you’re having meaningless sex with someone.”
“Why do you need a boyfriend to be successful?”
Layla and Beckett speak over each other, though to be fair, Layla makes a much more aggressive effort as she propels herself forward in the chair and yells her statement about my sex life. She collapses back, jaw hinged open, hand pressed dramatically against her chest.
“Holy cannoli, no wonder you are—” She gestures at me with her spoon- wielding hand, and I fight not to blush a deeper shade of red. We’re probably hitting crimson territory by now. “The way you are.”
I fidget in my chair and press on. I don’t have to tell Layla that dating in a small town has its complications, let alone starting a no-strings-attached situation. “She’s coming for five days for an in-person interview, and she’ll
feature us on her social accounts. The boyfriend thing, I don’t know. I guess I thought having a boyfriend would make this place seem more romantic. She loves romance stuff.”
Beckett sneaks another piece of zucchini bread. He’s taking advantage of Layla’s continued shock and awe at my celibacy. “Well, that’s fucking stupid.”
I give him a look. “Thank you, Beckett. Your input is helpful.”
“Seriously though”—he breaks his zucchini bread slice in two—“you’ve made this place amazing. You. On your own. You should be proud of that.
Adding a boyfriend doesn’t make your story any more or less important.”
I blink at him. “Sometimes I forget you have three sisters.”
He shrugs. “Just my two cents.”
“You sure you don’t want to pretend you find me irresistible for a week?”
Layla shakes her head, finally emerging from her trancelike state. “Bad idea. Have you seen him try to lie to anyone? It’s horrible. He turns into a monosyllabic fool every time he has to go into town for groceries.”
It’s true. I’ve had to pick up his order from the butcher more than once.
I’m convinced he became a produce farmer purely so he’d have to make fewer stops at the Save More. Beckett doesn’t enjoy people, and he especially doesn’t enjoy the overt flirtations from half the town whenever he stops in.
Sometimes I feel like Layla and I are the only ones immune to his good looks, probably due to his considerable lack of charm, but I suppose that’s what happens when you’ve seen a man muttering obscenities to trees half the day every day.
And when your heart has been hopelessly occupied with pining over another person for close to a decade. It’s hard to notice the charm of anyone who isn’t Luka.
I grab another slice of zucchini bread and begin to nibble, considering my options. My non-Luka-shaped options. I could ask Jesse, the owner of our town’s only bar. But he’d likely think it’s more than it is, and I don’t have the time or energy for a fake breakup for my fake relationship. I could look into escort services, maybe. That’s a thing, right? Like, that’s why escort services exist? For people to—I don’t know, escort others?
I press my fingers under my eyes, forgetting that one hand is still clutching a piece of zucchini bread. There’s an obvious answer here. It just— it scares me to death.
“There it is,” Beckett mutters, and it takes every fiber of my being not to hurl this bread at his face. “It just hit her.”
“I don’t know why you’re freaking out. It’s a simple solution. He’d do it in a heartbeat,” says Layla.
I peek through my fingers at Layla. She’s smiling a smug little grin. She looks like she should be wearing a monocle and stroking a hairless cat Bond- style. Why I ever thought she was all sweetness is beyond me. She’s a spicy
little thing.
“Ask Luka.”
