Nuts (Hudson Valley, #1)(29)

Both kids forgot all about their iPhones for the rest of the tour, and I heard them telling their father that Leo was “awesome.”

We hiked up and down hills, tucking in and out of hedgerows and along the naturally worn paths between the fields. We saw rows and rows of vegetables, almost every kind imaginable. Pole beans grew vertically up green wood stakes, teepee’d over frothy catnip plants, designed to deter pests in a natural way. Carrots were planted alternately with leeks, which encouraged growth and discouraged something called carrot fly. We stopped periodically to taste, nibbling chive flowers and the first tiny yellow pear tomatoes, planted alongside bushes of purple basil.

We visited the greenhouse, where trays and trays of seedlings were in various stages of growth. Tiny potato seedlings grew next to enormous heads of butter lettuce. We spent some time out in the fields that were deliberately resting from crop production, but hardly dormant. We were up higher on the hills now, the barns and the main house far below in a sea of green.

Just as we were leaving one of the fields, three tractors appeared, towing what looked like . . . outhouses?

“Perfect timing, here come the chickens,” Leo said, herding us into a corner of the field as the tractors made their way out into the middle. “If you look at this field, compared to the one next to it, what do you see?” He looked at everyone, encouraging the kids to answer.

To my left, a field with sheep grazing. To my far left, a field with the aforementioned borrowed cows grazing. And the current field? As each tractor stopped and disengaged its little towed house there were chickens everywhere. Beautiful big birds with glossy feathers, fat and sassy and tumbling out onto the waving grass. Grass. Hmmm . . .

I looked from field to field. “You’re moving the animals to mow the grass,” I piped up. Leo looked straight at me, his expression lighting up at my correct answer, and a feeling of warmth started in my tummy and spread outward.

“Exactly right: the animals are mowing the grass for us.” He pointed toward the cows patiently chewing their cuds. “On that field we’ve got a tasty cover crop of alfalfa grass, with a bit of clover mixed in. The cows chew it, crop it down to about knee high, then we move them on to the next field.”

“And the sheep move into the first field, right?” I pointed to the fluffy snowballs.

“Right again, Roxie,” he said, walking through the group to stand right in front of me.

For a moment, I thrilled at the sound of my name on his lips. And for another moment, I imagined him saying my name over and over again. And then for a particularly naughty moment, I forgot all about my name on his lips, and just imagined me on his lips.

And just like that, he licked them. His lips, I mean. And that sweet feeling of warmth headed straight between my legs. No longer sweet, no longer content. Just lust.

“So what do the chickens do?” someone asked.

Leo was silent, lost in studying . . . me?

“Why do you move the chickens behind the sheep?” the asker repeated.

Leo’s jaw clenched. I stopped breathing.

“The chickens?” the guy repeated.

I started to tell whoever was so worried about the chickens exactly where to go, when Leo luckily intervened.

“The chickens finish the job the sheep and the cows started,” he said, appearing to ground himself in the familiar material. “And in turns, they all fertilize the field. The chickens help to finish aerating the soil and feast on all the bugs left behind, making them fat and happy in a completely natural and stress-free environment. The chickens produce eggs with yolks so orange you’ve never seen anything like it. And the chickens”—he started off down the hill toward the main house—“are at the end of the tour. Let’s head back.”

The group followed dutifully behind him, and I could hear him telling them about how they could help out in their own community, or join the farmshare if they were local. Were we moving faster than normal? We sure seemed to be, as he hurried us down the hill and back to where the tour began, wrapping things up.

He caught me by the elbow as he said, “Thanks for coming out today, folks. Hope you enjoyed your tour. Anyone interested in purchasing anything we’ve made here on the farm, including those orange-yolked eggs I was telling you about, just see Lisa over in the store on your way out.”

He waved good-bye, keeping me close to him with the other hand. My heart sped up a bit at the feel of his hand clutching my elbow. Lucky, lucky elbow. He was touching my wenis. It’s a word—look it up.

“What’s up, Farmer Boy,” I murmured, leaning a little closer to him, grazing my breast against his arm. Now my right boob was as lucky as my right wenis.

“Didn’t want you to run away with the herd. I wanted to show you something,” he murmured back, smiling and nodding and still with the waving. Once the group had left, he steered me across the courtyard and around the back of the stone barn.

“Oh, the employee parking lot,” I remarked as we emerged into the shade of the building, where cars with Maxwell Farms mirror tags were parked. “This is the man-behind-the-curtain stuff, where all the magic happens, right? Gee, thanks for showing me this.”

“You’re a bit of a smart-ass, you know that?” he asked, letting go of my wenis and climbing into an old black Wrangler. “I’d open the door for you, but I took them off last spring and haven’t bothered to put them on again.”