Page 20 of Baby for My Billionaire Rival

I laugh. “I’m alright, thank you. I really appreciate the offer though.” I go to the golf cart and climb into the seat beside Jake. His legs are straddled wide like the farm boy he is and consequently, my leg has to brush up against his.

“Have fun!” Lori cries out.

I wave to her as the golf cart zooms back down the pebble driveway, leaving Jake and me in silence.

“Thanks for…” he speaks first, thankfully. “Coming all the way out here.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” I say, tucking my hands under my thighs. I can smell him. A combination of bodywash and grass. There’s dirt under his fingernails. And for some unknown reason, I find that so sexy.

“I like your outfit,” Jake says.

I glance at him. He’s grinning ear to ear. “It’s silly, I know it’s silly.”

“With the heels and the red lipstick, maybe, but you tried, that’s what counts.”

“Can’t help being me wherever I go,” I say. It strikes me how I likely feel the way Jake feels whenever he’s on campus. If he can do it for weeks at a time, I can definitely feel like a fish out of water just once.

“That’s not a bad thing,” he says, taking one of the turnoffs. “Going to show you our tomatoes first. What we’re all about. Then… a bit of a surprise.”

I smile. “A surprise?”

“I had a feeling that’d catch your attention. Although it might be smellier than you’d like.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I can do smelly.”

“Sure, you can.”

The greenhouses are bustling with activity. Rows and rows of towering tomato plants, robust with the biggest, reddest tomatoes I’ve ever seen. No wonder Simmons Sauces are so good. They look like you could almost take a bite right out of them. “Last harvest of the season probably,” he says with a sigh as he admires one of the tomatoes.

I watch him examine the tomato. There must be a method to his madness, but what it is, I can’t be sure. He’s the expert.

And there’s nothing sexier than an expert.

He’s somehow taller here on the farm. Prouder, maybe. Each person we pass he greets and they all look happy to see them. He’s clearly liked.

“So, we harvest here and then we have a property a couple miles south where we make the sauce and do all the canning and distribution,” he explains. “Less scenic than the farm.”

I resist telling him I really wouldn’t mind seeing the factory. I love to watch an assembly line, would love to watch how the sauces are made. One thing at a time, though.

We go from one of the main growing greenhouses to the “experimental” house as Jake calls it. It’s quieter in there and messier. More like a laboratory than a farm.

An elderly bespectacled man pokes his head out from one of the aisles. “Jacob Junior!” He waves us over. “Come, come, come!”

“That’s Wexler. He’s been here since my grandfather was CEO if you can believe it,” Jake whispers to me as we walk.

From all the wrinkles on Wexler’s face, Icanbelieve it. However, his smile is that of a child’s, full of wonder. He grabs two tiny tomatoes off the vines and holds them out to us. “Try, try,” he says eagerly.

The little tomato is a purplish hue. “I’ve never seen a tomato like this.”

“Blue tomatoes,” Wexler says.

“We’re working on getting blue tomatoes out into the world. The issue is they’re a bit temperamental and we haven’t gotten the taste quite right yet,” Jake says then pops the tomato in his mouth.

I follow suit. It’s delicious. Juicy, acidic, but also vaguely smokey. “Mm. So good.”

From the way Jake reacts, though, you’d think he’d never tasted a tomato in his life. “How did you do that?” he asks Wexler.

Wexler grins and shrugs. “Practice.”

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