Page 62 of Love and Lattes at Pumpkin Hollow
‘When I was trying to distract myself from thinking about you at night, I thought about what I would do to these cottages. I think they could be a great addition to the farm. If you refurbished the rooms and publicised them, especially with all the attractions you have throughout the year now, you would make good money from people coming to stay here. I think you could?—’
‘That’s it.’ I sat up excitedly, ignoring Dylan’s protest at me moving away from him. ‘You could run this business.’
‘Huh?’ He leaned on his elbow to look up at me as I knelt on the bed.
‘You could take over the Airbnb business for us; you’d be great at it. And we could share the profits. You could stay here and run the business. Um… if you wanted…’ I trailed off, suddenly wondering if I was being too pushy. But then I remembered to trust my gut. ‘I want you to,’ I added firmly.
Dylan sat up slowly, looking at me. ‘You would trust me to do that?’ he asked quietly.
I remembered what he’d told me about his brother and father. ‘I believe in you, like you believed in me.’
His face lit up and he gave me a big kiss. ‘Really? I could do it, Willow. I really could.’
‘I know,’ I told him firmly. ‘Do you really want to?’
‘I told you – I want to stay. This might be your best idea yet.’
‘Well, it was your idea really… Let’s talk to Dad about it all.’ I glanced at the clock. ‘We have so much to do, we should go to sleep, but I am kind of peckish.’
‘Want me to get us a snack?’
‘No, I will.’ I hurried off and when I returned with a tray, Dylan was leaning against the pillows on the bed. ‘I brought some snacks but then I couldn’t resist this…’ I put the tray on the bedside table and picked up the can of whipped cream that he still had in the fridge. I crawled onto the bed and went over to Dylan. I leaned over his bare chest and squirted some cream on it. Dylan’s breath hitched as I licked it off.
‘I thought you said we should go to sleep,’ he gasped as he ran his fingertips through my hair while I cleaned the cream off him.
I looked at him and reached for his boxers. ‘You don’t want me to take these off and have a sweet treat of my own then?’
‘Fuck, yeah, I want that. So much,’ he said, watching with dark eyes as I grinned and started to slide them off. ‘Forget what I said earlier about falling for you. This is it for me. I’ve already fallen.’
I paused to smile back at him. ‘I’ve already fallen too,’ I said. ‘Like the leaves on the trees,’ I added; even though it was a cheesy-as-hell line, I was unable to resist.
‘Like the leaves on the trees,’ he agreed as I slid his boxers off and we ignored all the work ahead of us and concentrated on each other instead.
47
Half-term was suddenly with us, and with a sold-out pumpkin patch to manage, we were busy all day every day for the week. It felt amazing though to see so many families and visitors flock to the farm and leave with an array of pumpkins. It had been an exhausting week but it gave me hope that the patch had done what we wanted it to for the farm.
Then we reached the end of October. Halloween. The 31st. It fell on the Wednesday after half-term and it was the perfect day to close Pumpkin Hollow for our first (but hopefully not last!) year of being open.
It was also the sixth and final week of the pact I’d made with Dad and Dylan. I would soon know if we’d done enough to save the farm.
Anticipation was high then for the night of the Birchbrook lantern festival. Dad had persuaded Mayor Taylor to let the LED lantern trail finish at the farm and in advance, we had made the patch look as spooky as possible, setting up LED lights all over, putting them in lanterns and carved pumpkins, and draping fairy lights over every space possible. Along with Paul’s Birchbrook Café van, we’d also invited a couple of other local food businesses to set up vans, and the craft shop in the next town over was going to have a stall for the night.
As the day faded into evening, everyone came over to set up and we closed the pumpkin patch to visitors for the last time.
As I left Dad and Maple outside putting through the final pumpkin sales to last-minute buyers, I found Dylan with his laptop at the kitchen table in the farmhouse. The last visitors had walked through our trail and they left with big smiles on their faces.
I walked over to him nervously as I knew he’d been inputting numbers for the past hour once the last booked slot had been and gone. My limbs ached and I was bone-tired, but tonight was an opportunity to show the town how great the pumpkin patch was and to make it a part of our annual Halloween celebrations. If I was able to keep the farm going for another year, it hopefully would be even more popular next autumn.
‘How did we do?’ I asked, walking over to sit beside him.
He looked up from his laptop with a serious expression on his face. ‘I think we should wait for your father to come in so he can hear this and you both can decide what to do.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Okay,’ I said shakily.
Dad came in a minute later with Maple barking excitedly. ‘Well, that’s it until tonight. The last customer has left the farm.’ His smile faded when he looked at my face. ‘What’s wrong, love?’
‘Dylan wanted to wait for us both to be here to tell us how well we’ve done this month,’ I said, my nerves now tenfold. Dylan was giving nothing away and I had no idea what I was going to do if I’d been wrong and it hadn’t been quite the smash hit it had felt like it was. Dylan had asked if we should sell tickets for the lantern festival but it had always been a free event, unless you bought food or drink or something from one of the shops of course, and I wanted to make sure everyone thought of the patch in a good way so we had made all the money we were going to this year now.
