Chasing Shadows(5)

Mark shook my hand with a firm grip, and I liked that he didn’t make it all soft just because I was a girl, like some men did. I returned it enthusiastically. “So what made you decide to answer my ad, Mr. Singleton?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the electrical current that had raced up my arm when our hands touched.

“To be honest with you, ma’am, I really need a job,” he answered sincerely. “I’ve been out of the Corps over a year, ‘cause I needed the time, but I need to get back to earning a living. And I need to get out of my parents’ house.”

The last he said with a grin, so I returned it with a smile of my own. “The Corps? You mean the Marines?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes ma’am. Spent the last twelve years with the United States Marine Corps—well, eleven of the last twelve years. Straight outta high school.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I see. So tell me, Mr. Singleton, just what does a man with eleven years of dedicated military service know about farming?”

Mark laughed. “Jack shit nothing, in all honesty—pardon my bad English,” he said. “But like I said, I really need a job. And I’m a Marine, which means I can take orders with the best of ‘em. You tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Show me what to do once and you won’t have to show me again. I actually did spend some summers at my grandparents’ farm up until I was nine, but they fell on hard times and had to sell it.”

He paused, placing his hands on his hips as he looked at me. “Ms. Caldwell, I can see you’re skeptical. I’ve no doubt you’d prefer someone with more farming experience, and I’m a freakin’ jarhead. I know jack about cows and pigs except what they become in the way of food. But I’m a hard worker, I won’t complain about shoveling sh—crap, digging holes, none of it.”

I tried not to smile too much. Here he was making an impassioned plea for me to hire him, and I was already planning to do so for the simple fact that I’d been dreaming about him for over two hundred years. No way in hell was I going to turn away my soulmate because he hadn’t set foot on a farm since he was nine. I had to get to know him and learn everything I could about him—especially what had happened to his mother that had turned him into an immortal human. Obviously I knew she’d been bitten by a vampire during her pregnancy, and he’d used the word “parents” so it was reasonable to assume that his mother had survived the attack.

But then I had to wonder if perhaps he’d been referring to a stepmother. After all, I couldn’t imagine his birth mother having been bitten and received enough draculin to turn her unborn son into an immortal human, but not turn her into a vampire. My instincts told me that either she had been turned or she had died. I would feel an even deeper kinship with him if the latter were the case, as my own mother had died giving birth to me.

I also could not help but wonder if Mark even knew about his condition. Dhunphyr were truly so rare as to be practically non-existent—a myth among mythological beings. Yet here one was, standing right in front of me. I had almost missed the truth because my senses had identified him as human before they had identified him as an immortal. Was that because I hadn’t been paying full attention or was it some trait specific to his kind?

I cleared my throat, and for the sake of keeping up appearances asked him, “Why do you want this job then, if you’ve no real farming experience?”

Mark shrugged. “Should I take a job more suited to my talents? Maybe. But there ain’t none out there for an inactive Marine, except perhaps being a cop or a government spook. I’ve already spent a third of my life as government property, and quite frankly I’d rather like to be my own property for a while. To me, any job is better than no job. You’re offering a place to stay on top of that. Is it possible I’m not going to be very good at it? Sure. Is it possible I’m gonna screw something up? Sure again. I know it’ll take me some time to get the hang of the routine, but I’m a quick study. Like I said, I’m a hard worker. And I can promise you I’m trustworthy. Once I get the routine down, you won’t have to be looking over my shoulder every ten minutes.”

“Sounds good to me. But you might change your mind when you see the apartment—it’s on top of the barn,” I said, pointing over our heads.

He glanced up as I moved past him and over to a door on the right side of the barn. When I’d had half the hayloft converted into an apartment, I’d removed the ladder on the outside of the tack room, and had put stairs inside it that led up to the living space. Whoever I hired would live there, and would be able to enter through a door on the outside of the barn and one inside. I grabbed a set of keys from a nail on the wall and led him up the narrow staircase, where I unlocked the door and gestured for Mark to precede me inside.

He looked around for a moment at the combined living room and kitchen area, then turned to me saying, “That the bedroom over there?”

I looked where he pointed toward the other end of the room. Indeed, I had closed off the bedroom and the bathroom. Nodding, I replied, “Yes. The door on the right is to the bathroom, the one on the left is the bedroom. As you can see, all the basic furniture is here, but if you have or want something of your own, you’re welcome to bring it in.”

I turned then and pointed at the front wall, where I had exchanged the bay doors used for loading and unloading hay for a set of French doors (another set of bay doors had been cut into the rear wall of the loft for hay storage). On warm days, of which there soon wouldn’t be any, whoever lived up here would be able to open those doors for a nice breeze and lots of natural sunlight.

“You’ll be able to haul anything heavy up through those doors, if you can figure out how,” I said.

“I’m sure what you have is fine, Ms. Caldwell,” Mark said. “I ain’t a picky fellow.”

I took a moment to study him, though in my dreams these last two centuries I had already memorized every line, every curve. He seemed to sincerely want the job, though I still couldn’t fathom why he’d want a job he didn’t really know how to do. Not that it mattered overmuch to me, as I was just glad to have him here. I couldn’t wait for the days and nights ahead of getting to know him.

Of course, in so doing, I was eventually going to have to tell him the truth about who and what I was—and what he was, if he didn’t already know.

“Well, I do need the help, and since you’re so willing to become my indentured servant,” I joked, which earned me a smile, “I guess all that’s left is to haggle price and payment method.”

“What, uh, what were you thinking to offer?” Mark asked.

I’d been planning to offer three hundred a week and let potential applicants negotiate for a higher pay, but considering who had actually applied for the job…

“Seven hundred a week, which I can pay you in cash, or I can get income tax forms and pay you by check,” I replied.

Mark whistled. “Wow, that’s pretty generous. More than what I was thinking,” he said.

I shrugged even though I figured it was probably a lot less than he’d been making as a Marine—but then I knew nothing about military pay grades, so it could have been a lot more. “I keep three to four horses at a time—one stallion, one broodmare, and their offspring. I have a bull and five cows for a total of six cattle, one boar and ten sows in the way of pigs, and a dozen hens for egg-laying. I’ve a paddock and two pastures that are fenced in and a hayfield where I grow my own hay.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Doesn’t sound like much, but at the same time, sounds like too much for one person. Can I ask how long you’ve had this place and how long you’ve been running it by yourself?”

I was prepared for the inevitability of such a question, and for right now, I gave him the public answer. “This farm has been in my family since 1846, believe it or not. Always been small, though it was bigger once and there used to be another house on the property for the hands. I’ve had it for the last five years.”

“Been by yourself the whole time?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I replied. “But right now, I’ve a situation where I’m faced with the need for help, so I placed that ad—had actually forgotten about it because no one’s responded. At least until you came along.”

“May I ask how you can afford to pay so much? Twenty-eight hundred a month seems a bit much if it’s so small a farm,” Mark wondered.

I chuckled. “Herugrim, my current stallion, is a descendant of Celtic Thunder, one of the most famous race horses of the early 20 century. Colts and fillies sired by Thunder’s progeny fetch a fair price. I also charge stud fees for breeding with other mares, and I sell his sperm. Then there’s the fact that each of my cows produce a calf each year—I sell the bull’s sperm, too—and my sows produce a litter numbering between ten and twelve on average twice a year, which means I’m selling about two hundred piglets in a given year.”