Forever a Maverick

  FOREVER A MAVERICK

  A farmer in need of water…

  Ash Warner’s well is dry. Unless he finds a new source of water, his dreams of a flourishing farm will crumble to dust. He makes a last-ditch proposal to the one woman who can solve his problems—just as long as he ignores how she makes his blood sing.

  A single mom in need of hope…

  Juniper Gries is drowning. Keeping her and her son fed and housed has gotten harder every year. When Ash proposes—her water rights for a fat check—Juniper sees her chance at a new life. And not even her attraction to her new husband will hold her back.

  A convenient marriage that threatens to become something more…

  The harder they try to keep everything impersonal, the deeper Ash and Juniper fall. Soon they suspect this plot hatched in desperation might just be the marriage of their dreams…

  Copyright © 2017 by Genevieve Turner.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  For K, who’ll understand why if he ever reads this

  CHAPTER ONE

  Water.

  It was Ash Warner’s only thought: water.

  The word became a chant that ate its own tail, the r smearing into the w as he watched Bill stride toward him, fine clouds of dust rising from each footfall. Ash didn’t bother to look to the sky—water hadn’t fallen from there in any amount for almost three months. It never really had here in Southern California. No, he looked to the ground, to the aquifer hidden beneath their feet, and prayed.

  Water.

  Bill wiped his hands on a dingy, tattered rag, his expression grim. The machinery behind him had fallen silent, the great drill turning no more. But still Ash prayed: water.

  Bill stopped before Ash, now as motionless as his machinery. “We’re at twenty-six hundred feet,” he finally said.

  Water, Ash prayed. Water.

  “Twenty-six hundred feet,” Bill went on, “and nothing. Not even a drop.”

  Ash released his prayers, let them float away on the same wind carrying the dust away from them. Dust that hadn’t seen water in months.

  Twenty-six hundred feet and nothing. Which meant there was no point in drilling deeper. This was test well number five that Bill had dug out here. All five were equally dry.

  This was the answer to his prayers then: no. No and hell no. There was no water.

  Ash looked out over the acres he’d planted. Fruit trees, nut trees, potatoes, rows and rows of peas and tomatoes and peppers. Ash might have drilled and prayed for water, but those plants were crying out for it. When he’d bought this acreage five years ago, the first well he’d sunk had an excellent flow rate. He’d thought himself set for water, the lifeblood of any farm.

  Six months ago, the well had gone dry. Ash had called Bill out to sink another, thinking it would be a simple matter. Five empty shafts later, Ash was realizing he was screwed.

  There was no use praying for rain. It was year who-even-knew of the drought. Rain might as well be a myth.

  His dream—this farm, this place he was building for a future family, something real and true he could pass on to his kids—would crumble into dust without water.

  Bill kept wiping his hands, his expression drawn. He knew as well as Ash what this meant.

  He ought to say something to Bill, but words were hard for him to come by even at the best of times, let alone when his heart was breaking. So Ash kept quiet.

  Instead, he thought on the water bill he’d just gotten and the number of zeros in the amount. Not to mention what he’d already spent for Bill to dig all those dry holes. He had no water, and if he kept getting water bills like that, he’d soon enough have no money.

  “Don’t worry too much,” Bill said. “You’ve got some water rights, don’t you? It’ll just be more expensive to irrigate is all.”

  Ash blinked once, slowly. “I don’t have any water rights.” He hadn’t had Bill out here all those times just for fun. “At least not any senior ones.”

  He’d have to be descended from the first settlers in Cabrillo to have those. Being here for only five years so far meant he wasn’t even in line for any water rights—those were all long gone.

  He’d worked so hard, saved so much, to buy this place. But once he’d bought the land and started the hard work of planting his acres, he’d allowed himself to dream of his future. First the farm, then the wife, then the family. And eventually this land would pass to Ash’s descendants along with the knowledge of how to work it, to make it prosper.

  His fingers unfurled, the dry, charged wind running along them, the fissures in his knuckles red and angry. Even his skin was crying out for moisture.

  “That’s a shame,” Bill said. When Bill clucked, Ash’s hand curled again. “I always said you were stubborn, trying to farm up here. Those farming days are over.”

  Bill hadn’t been the only one to say that; quite a bit of the town thought Ash odd, hardheaded for doing this. He’d gone ahead and done it anyway. His mother had always said he was too stubborn, and she was right.

  Bill cocked his head, as if the mention of the good old days reminded him of something. “Of course, you could always marry someone with rights. That’s one way to get them.” His smile was a fishhook dangling for a laugh. “I hear Juniper Gries is looking for a man. She needs one, what with that boy of hers running wild.”

  Ash’s jaw tightened. If Bill noticed that he wasn’t laughing along, that didn’t stop him from doubling over with amusement at his joke. Ash waited silently for the man to get ahold of himself before he told Bill to leave.

  Juniper Gries. Ash obsessed over her almost as much as he did water. She worked at the Ranch Kitchen, a restaurant that bought Ash’s produce, and never once had a kind word for him. But that hadn’t stopped him from watching her as she worked, all sharp, efficient grace. Juniper didn’t have time for distractions, and she clearly counted Ash as one. Maybe she’d even caught him looking sometimes and that had pissed her off.

  Bill was right—she had senior water rights thanks to an inheritance from her father. The Grieses were one of the oldest farming families in Cabrillo, not that Juniper farmed.

  No, she waited tables and raised her son and looked at Ash with a cold fire in her eyes, the same way she looked at everyone else. A fire that made his gut knot every time Ash saw it. Juniper was his complete opposite—armed with a sharp tongue and unafraid to use it. Her life looked messy.

  Ash’s life was anything but. His life was dry.

  He needed water, and Juniper had it. But to get it—legally—he’d have to marry her.

  His skin prickled, and he shook himself. That was… A marriage wasn’t supposed to be for something so mercenary. Not in the twenty-first century. It was supposed to be about love and partnership and shared dreams.

  Building this farm and their family would have been one of his future wife’s aspirations. Ash had no idea what Juniper might want from life. Whatever it was, it drove her as hard as this farm drove him. No one would work as hard, wear such a permanent expression of determination, if she wasn’t driven by something.

  Owen. H
er son was what drove Juniper. There couldn’t be anything else.

  Ash began to pace, his mind whirring with rationalizations, ones he was half-ashamed to be making.

  Owen was the key to Juniper. She’d do anything for that boy. Ash could offer her something for Owen, for the kid’s future, in exchange for Juniper’s water rights. Her child’s future for Ash’s future. A fair trade.

  He stopped, started back the way he’d come. No, no, he couldn’t trade on a mother’s love. Not like that. Ash wanted a wife as determined as Juniper, one who loved her children as fiercely as she did—and one he’d never want to stop looking at—but that woman wouldn’t be Juniper.

  He flicked a glance at Bill, who’d stopped braying like a donkey. “Is there anything else you need from me?”

  “Uh, no. We’ll pack up and head out.”

  “Good.” Ash started for his truck. “You know where to send the invoice.”

  “Wait.” Bill tipped his hat back and scratched at his bald spot. “You aren’t going to wait for us to pack up? Where are you going?”

  The bank, Ash was about to say. A line of credit would save his bacon, at least for the time being.

  But water prices were never going to go down. They’d only go up and up, even once—if—the rains came again. The water company knew a good racket when they found one. Ash would be buying himself a few years at best. And a few years wouldn’t make a future.

  Maybe he could buy that future from Juniper Gries in exchange for a better one for her son. Hell, it wouldn’t hurt to ask, and she’d tell him no in that snappish tone of hers, the one she always used with him.

  Unless she said yes.

  Ash was just stubborn enough to try.

  “I’m doing what you suggested.” Ash kept moving toward his truck, although his final destination was very different now. “I’m going to see Juniper.”

  “I want McDonald’s, I want McDonald’s, I want McDonald’s!”

  Juniper popped her jaw as the screams from the backseat of the car hit eardrum-shattering levels. It was a miracle she could still hear that frequency considering Owen had been screaming at it since he was born.

  The poor kid was tired and hungry, hence the screaming. But repeating that wasn’t making her patience magically reappear. Or her headache magically disappear.

  “Baby, we’re almost home.” And I’ve got exactly two dollars in my purse. “We’ll eat there.” She tried for “chipper, endlessly patient preschool teacher,” but she would have made a crap preschool teacher, and they both knew it.

  “Grandma takes me to McDonald’s! I want to go to Grandma’s!”

  “Grandma’s at a meeting.”

  And once her mother was done in a few hours, Juniper would hand Owen off to her and head to the restaurant, working while Owen slept and her mother kept watch.

  Juniper would rather be sleeping. Owen’s nap had been too short today, which was why he was screaming and why Juniper had a killer headache. She sighed, not that she could hear it over the drumming of Owen’s shoes against his car seat.

  “I want Grandma,” he screamed one last time, then burst into noisy, gulping sobs.

  Juniper resisted the impulse to close her eyes. She couldn’t crash the car. But God did she wish for just half a second of quiet darkness. Just half a second.

  She swallowed hard and blinked to clear away her mood. Once he was back home and had a snack, he’d calm down. Owen didn’t do well when his routine was interrupted, and getting only an hour-long nap definitely qualified as an interruption.

  Oh hell, who was she kidding? Owen didn’t do well with most things. He was a sensitive, high-strung kid. The doctor said he was completely normal, just more on the anxious side.

  Juniper couldn’t tell if he had been born that way or if her failure to provide an appropriately stable life had caused it. She was doing her best on her own, but it killed her to realize that her best still might not be good enough. That she might be actively hurting her kid.

  A wet warmth caught in her eyelashes, burned beneath her lids, but she blinked the tears away along with her exhaustion. She pulled into the driveway, got out and opened the gate, drove through, then got out again and shut the gate, her body going through the motions without thought, her tears drying before they could fall, like they always did. She was a pro at hiding her moments of weakness from Owen by this point.

  The manufactured home they were renting sat upon a small hill, surrounded by a half acre of bare dirt. The owner didn’t bother with landscaping. He just came with a tractor to scrape it bare every few months. A hint of greenery or even a proper, fenced backyard might have been nice, but the place was affordable and close to work and her mother’s house.

  Juniper parked in the carport, avoiding the plastic trike Owen had left in the drive, and shut off the car. When she went to release Owen from his seat, he’d moved on to sniffling and moaning.

  “I want Grandma,” he said as Juniper lifted him out of the car, his arms coming around her neck and his tears hot against her skin. Along with the smeary stickiness of snot. Ugh. This time when he asked for Grandma, it was a sad little whimper.

  “I do too,” she muttered under her breath as she gathered him in her arms. Even her mother would be welcome help right now. “What do you want for snack?”

  With her free hand, she snagged two bags of groceries, balancing kid and bags as she made her way up the steps to the door. With all the hauling she did, she ought to have better-defined biceps, not that anyone but herself and the mirror ever saw her bare arms.

  “I want a ’nana,” Owen said.

  “We don’t have any bananas.” They hadn’t been on sale this week, although apples had been. With only her thumb and forefinger, she unlocked the door, the plastic bag handles turning her fingers bright red as they bit into her flesh. “Do you want something else?”

  The crying started anew. “Banana! I only want a banana.”

  She deposited Owen, still crying, on the couch and handed him an apple. He threw it across the room, then pulled his blanket over his head. Juniper was too worn out to even try to discipline him. Instead, she let him cry under his blanket and went to pick up the apple. A soft spot was forming where it had hit the wall. Great. Now it would start to rot if it didn’t get eaten today.

  Dinner. She’d have to do something about dinner. They’d had spaghetti last night, so that was out, but nothing else was coming to mind. It would have to be easy and quick—

  A loud knock sounded at the door.

  The apple fell from her fingers, rolling across the floor with that echo peculiar to the floors of a mobile home. All that empty crawl space beneath let the sound bounce and bounce and bounce.

  “Who the hell is that?” she muttered under her breath. She hadn’t heard a car come up the drive, although she had been focused on Owen and they had no dog to warn them about strangers. It was probably someone trying to sell their landscaping services, although why they bothered after looking at the place she wasn’t sure.

  Juniper looked to Owen on the couch. He’d pulled his legs under the blanket and was entirely hidden, quiet as a mouse. He still believed that if he couldn’t see them, people couldn’t see him. Juniper didn’t know what would happen once he realized that wasn’t true. Probably have a lot more tantrums when people stopped by.

  She sighed. “I’ll make sure whoever it is leaves soon, okay?”

  There was no answer from under the blanket, but she hadn’t been expecting one. He never talked when the blanket was over his head, the better to be invisible.

  If turning invisible were that easy, Juniper might invest in a blanket herself.

  Her jaw set, she threw open the door, ready to tell the person on the other side she wasn’t interested.

  Instead, her heart stopped.

  There on the step was well over six feet of broad-shouldered farmer. A farmer who was scowling at her like he always was.

  Most of the town gave Juniper the side-eye. She knew
it, and she mentally gave them the middle finger in return. But Ash Warner… His looks weren’t side-eyes. They were like darts, small and sharp—and he peppered her with them. While she understood the glares of everyone else in town, she couldn’t figure out his. Was it interest? Was it judgment?

  She could brush off everyone else’s dark looks since she knew exactly what they were about. The moment she’d announced that the most popular boy in high school had knocked her up, those looks had become the thing most people threw her way. As if she’d meant to ruin poor Evan’s life by being such a slut.

  Fine—let everyone treat her like dirt. She’d gotten a lot of practice at brushing off the nastiness.

  But Ash… Ash’s looks were confusing, and so they clung. Juniper hated that. She didn’t have the time or the energy for clinginess.

  So she didn’t feel the least bit reluctant to snap, “What are you doing here?”

  He’d never come out to her place before. They’d hardly had more than a dozen conversations over the years, mostly her taking his order at the diner or telling him to bring the produce box into the walk-in cooler. The restaurant bought what he grew, so she had to see him twice a week and feel his attention stick to her each time.

  She was snippier with him than most other people, probably because she wanted him to stop noticing her. Hadn’t happened yet though. Maybe she ought to get meaner.

  He slipped off his baseball cap and ran a hand over his close-cropped stubble, which was as dark as the shadow of the beard lining his jaw. From a distance—and for those unfamiliar with the variations in the rural male of the species—he probably looked like any other cowboy. But the baseball cap, the T-shirt advertising some kind of fertilizer company, and the heavy boots with rugged tread marked him as a farmer to the expert eye. And after a lifetime in Cabrillo, Juniper was nothing if not an expert.