Page 30 of Harvest Moon

I grinned. “Love ’em.”

“The youngins have their prom this spring, and there’s nowhere nearby that sells flowers, so we either have to order out or try and twist Mr. Sedgwick’s arm into letting somebody clip his babies. If I can get some from you all, that’d be my preference.”

I nodded. “We’ll keep that in mind. Anything else?”

Isaac shook his head. “Honestly, you all have always kept us happy. But I sure am glad there’ll be an extra set of hands on the farm. I know Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been putting Ford through it these past few years.”

“I managed,” Ford mumbled, barely loud enough for us to hear him across the store.

Mr. Tartt wandered over to him and squeezed his arm. “’Course you do, but you shouldn’t have to. Nobody should have to go at things all by themselves, even a big, capable alpha like you.”

And though he wasn’t talking to me, I was beginning to see that I might’ve needed more support than I would’ve gotten at my parents’ farm to really make my life what I wanted it to be.

Our next stop was Reynolds Hardware, less to introduce me around as the new hand on the Hills’ farm than to get a part for the tiller. One of the blades had broken off that morning, and when we got back, we were going to fix it.

The hardware store was stocked so full of stuff that it seemed like it’d be impossible to find a single thing, but Ford headed right where he needed to go, past shelves of cardboard boxes stuffed with different kinds of screws and metal pieces, toward the back where tools were.

He was quick to pick out what we needed and went straight past another room, full of rocking chairs, jean overalls, and small plastic baubles that rocked in the sunlight.

He set the piece we needed on the counter in front of an alpha with black hair and light brown eyes. He looked a little tired, but he smiled between the two of us.

“You find everything you need?” he asked Ford.

Ford grunted and nodded, then jerked his head toward me. “Cliff, this is Ridge. Ridge, Cliff.”

“Pleasure,” Cliff said as he typed numbers in on the old register.

Ford pulled out his billfold and paid the man. I thought that’d be it, given how little he liked talking to people, but when I turned to go, Ford hung back.

“You holding up okay?” he asked, his gaze intent on the younger alpha across the counter, almost like he felt some responsibility for the man. He’d mentioned his brother once, out on the farm, but I was pretty sure that his brother was called Jack, not Cliff.

“I’m all right,” Cliff said, but his smile was tight and uncomfortable, and he didn’t look anything close to fine.

“Good.” Ford nodded. “You call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” Cliff said, but he looked so uncomfortable it was hard to imagine these two men ever having a long conversation.

Back at the car, Ford swung the truck’s door shut behind him when he climbed into the driver’s seat. I stared over at him, frowning. “What was that about, with Cliff?”

He scowled out ahead. “Cliff’s got it bad for Rowan Grove.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

Ford made a pained sound in the back of his throat, and he shrugged. “Not a bad thing, no. But Rowan’s a beta wolf, not an omega. It’s rough on them. Things can be hard for an alpha without an omega. You feel that too sometimes, right? That’s why you came out here.”

I swallowed hard. I wasn’t sure I did know what they felt like. Sure, I had a pull toward Alexis, I needed to see him safe, but I’d spent five years without him while I was in school. Even though I’d met other omegas at the university, none had ever turned my head like that. It didn’t seem instinctual, to me—didn’t seem like I was suffering quite the same way Cliff was.

Or Ford was.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, looking down at my knees. “It’s not like that for me, really.”

I felt Ford’s eyes on me, but I didn’t have it in me to look up. It only lasted a moment, then he turned the keys in the ignition.

“You’re lucky then.”

That was all he said before he pulled onto the road and headed toward home. And I suspected, if the choices were between suffering against wild impulses or just feeling kind of lonely and strange sometimes, I damn well was.

17

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