Kate Hoffmann - The Mighty Quinns - Dermot-Dex

Kieran shook his head. “Grandda, we would never—”

“Let me finish.” He folded his hands on his desk and looked at them individually. “I came to this country with one hundred dollars in my pocket and the intention of making something of my life so that I could support my son. I made my own life, something you boys haven’t had the chance to do.”

“We love working for you,” Cameron said. “It’s a family business and family sticks together.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment,” Martin replied. “But it doesn’t make my decision any easier. So, I have a plan. I’m going to give each of you boys one hundred dollars cash, a company credit card and a bus ticket. I want you to go out there and spend some time in the real world. Find a job. Meet new people. See what life is like all alone in the world. Believe me, without all the comforts of home, you’ll have time to figure out what you really want out of life.”

Dermot opened his mouth to protest, but his grandfather held up his hand. “Give yourself six weeks. If you’re still interested in running the Yachtworks after that, I’ll be satisfied.”

Cameron gasped. “You’re kidding, right? You just expect us to take six weeks away from work? I have projects going.”

“Although we’d all like to think we’re indispensable,” Martin said, “if one of us fell off the planet tomorrow, the company would go on.” He stood and handed each of them an envelope.

“You have tonight to pay your bills and put your affairs in order,” Martin said. “You leave tomorrow morning. Go out and imagine a different life for yourselves, boys. And when you come back, come back with a decision.”

“Vulture Creek, New Mexico?” Cameron asked.

Dermot opened his envelope and withdrew his bus ticket. “Mapleton, Wisconsin. What the hell is in Mapleton, Wisconsin?”

“Bitney, Kentucky,” Kieran muttered. “Great.”

“Sibleyville, Maine. Jaysus,” Ronan said. “I’ll be on the bus for a week.”

The brothers looked at each other, shaking their heads.

Martin smiled. “Good luck. And I’ll see you in six weeks.”

RACHEL HOWE grabbed the fifty-pound bag of feed, wrapping her arms around it and lugging it to the back of the pickup truck.

“You need some help with that, little lady?”

She glanced over at the two old men watching her from their spot on the front porch of the local feed store. “Nope,” she said, forcing a smile as the bag began to slip through her arms. “I’ve got it.”

Wincing, she took a deep breath and heaved the sack toward the tailgate of the truck. But at the last second, it fell out of her arms and dropped onto her foot. Rachel cursed, then kicked the sack. How would she ever make this work? She couldn’t even load a pallet of feed bags onto the truck, much less run a farm with absolutely no help beyond her eighty-year-old uncle.

She was virtually alone in this, with nothing but her determination to keep her company. Her father had maintained the dairy until the day he’d died and he hadn’t had help. If a seventy-five-year-old man had managed, certainly his twenty-five-year-old daughter could.

Though she’d put a help-wanted notice in the grocery store and in the feed store, hoping to find a high school boy to relieve her of the heavy lifting, there hadn’t been any takers. Her father’s bachelor brother, Eddie, was still able to help with the milking but the heavy work was beyond his capabilities.

Maybe all the potential workers knew what everyone else in Mapleton knew—that without help, Rachel’s time as a dairy-goat farmer was going to be short-lived at best. Maybe they were right. Maybe she ought to just sell and get on with her own life. A surge of temper caused her face to flush and she reached for the sack again, determined not to fail in front of two more doubters—Harley Verhulst and Sam Robson.

“Are you sure we can’t give you a hand?” Harley asked.

“No,” Rachel snapped. “It’s just going to take me a while to work up my strength.”

“A little girl like you shouldn’t be running that farm all by your lonesome,” Sam commented. “You need to find yourself a husband.”

“Preferably one with very big muscles,” Harley added.

A husband? Right now she’d be satisfied with one reasonably handsome, completely naked man to tend to her sexual needs once a week. She was quite willing to work out some kind of barter, maybe do his laundry or iron his shirts. It could be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Rachel gritted her teeth and grabbed the feed sack again, this time using her sexual frustration for extra strength. When she got it up on the tailgate of the pickup, she smiled to herself. But when she looked over at the pallet, she cursed.

From now on, she’d get the feed mill to deliver her supplies, eliminating the need to pretend she knew what she was doing. Though it might be tough to work into the budget, she’d find a way. Rachel wasn’t ready to concede defeat. Not yet.

She glanced over at the two men and sent them a withering look. “Do you two plan to stand there pestering me or do you have work to do? Your wives will be happy to know you’ve taken such an interest in my dilemma. I’ll be sure to tell them how helpful you were the next time I see them at the grocery store.”

Chastened, the two farmers wandered back inside the co-op, leaving Rachel to tend to her business in solitude. She turned her attention back to the pallet of feed sacks, knowing that it might not be possible for her to load them all onto the truck by herself—at least by sundown. But she was going to die trying. “Just think about sex,” she muttered to herself. “And how little of it you’ve had in the past year.”

“Can I give you a hand?”

Rachel spun around, ready to decline the offer with a curt dismissal. But the man standing behind her smiled and her breath caught in her throat. She felt a bit light-headed, then realized it was time to draw another breath.

He was dressed in a comfortable shirt and jeans, clothes that hugged a slender, but muscular body. In his right hand, he carried an expensive leather duffel. She glanced at his shoes and noted that they were expensive, too. Not the kind of wardrobe usually found outside the feed store.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Gosh, he was handsome, she mused as she looked back into his pale blue eyes. Dark hair that was just long enough to make him look a bit dangerous. A perfectly straight nose and a smile that sent a flood of warmth racing through her bloodstream.

Sex, she thought to herself. As if she’d wished it and it had just appeared. Rachel had long ago come to the conclusion that there weren’t any interesting men in all of Walworth County. But obviously one had managed to sneak over the border from Illinois and was now standing directly in front of her.

“Oh, my.” Rachel swallowed hard, then reached down to pick up the next bag of feed. She’d be just fine once he stopped staring at her. “You’re obviously lost,” she said, shaking her head. “Or you’re just a figment of my imagination.”

“What?”

Rachel glanced over her shoulder. “Men that look like you don’t live in places like this.” She straightened. “If you just take this road right here out to Highway 39 then stay on 39, it will take you to the interstate. You’ll be back in Chicago in a few hours.”

“Why do you think I’m from Chicago?”

“You have big city written all over you,” she said. “Mostly it’s the shoes. And the duffel.” She bent again to grab a feed sack, but he stopped her.

“Allow me,” he said, dropping his duffel in the dusty parking lot. He picked up the sack, then easily tossed it onto the bed of the truck. “Another?”