The Baby Gift

He groaned. He remembered Illyria’s motel from the photo shoot when he’d met Briana. It was a far cry from the five-star Kempinski in Moscow. Instead of private bars in every suite and a view of the Kremlin, it had a soda machine at the end of the hall and a view of a cornfield.

But that wasn’t what bothered him. What bothered him was that he and Briana had spent their wedding night there. They’d married in a kind of ecstatic haste, too hungry for each other to go anywhere else. They’d made love, then dozed, woke, made love again, and when the sun came up, they made love again.

If Briana remembered, she didn’t show it.

He tried to steer the conversation to neutral ground, not sure they had any.

“The farm’s a success?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said, businesslike. “These days people are careful about what they eat. The more particular they get, the more they like us.”

“No preservatives,” he quoted from memory. “No additives. No artificial fertilizers. Only natural pesticides. No hybrid or patented seeds. The heritage of pure, old-fashioned food.”

“You’ve got it,” she said with a hint of the smile that used to make him crazy with wanting her.

“As George Washington said, ‘agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.’”

“Wow,” Briana said. “You really do remember.”

I remember much more. Too much.

“Yeah. I remember,” he said.

“In growing season, we do well at the farmers’ market,” she said. “We always sell out. We have buyers from restaurants as far away as St. Louis.”

He thought about this past growing season. During it he had traveled over half the earth. She’d stayed home and tended her garden. And their child.

She said, “Was it a problem, getting time to come here?”

He shook his head. “No. Gave up a couple of short assignments. Nothing major.”

“Where do you go next?”

He tried to sound casual. “I’m not sure.”

“Are you still tied up with that crazy Adventure magazine?” she asked, an edge in her voice.

“I’ve got one more assignment,” he said. “That’s all.”

She tossed him a displeased glance. “Where?”

“Don’t know. Maybe Burma. An outside chance of Pitcairn Island.”

“Burma?” she asked with alarm. “Pitcairn Island? Josh, those are dangerous places. When would you have to go?”

He shrugged. “Burma? Probably not for a month, maybe more.”

“Burma has terrorists,” she said. “It has land mines.”

“I’ll be careful. Besides, a few weeks in Burma beats months on Pitcairn.”

Briana had said he needed to be in Missouri for at least three weeks. He’d told Carson he wasn’t touching anything for three weeks, and Carson had been bitter because there was money at stake, a lot of it.

From the unhappy look on Briana’s face, he decided the subject needed changing. “So how’s the seed business?”

She seemed relieved to talk of something else. “It keeps me busy. We’ve got a Web site now. And I computerized as much of the business as I could.”

One corner of his mouth pulled down. “Computerized? Didn’t Poppa object to that?”

The ghost of her smile flickered again. “Until he saw the results. He liked the profits.”

“So it’s the same as just after his heart attack. Larry’s the brawn, you’re the brains. In fact, it’s the same as before his heart attack.”

Her mouth went grim. “That’s not fair. He’s never been the same since my mother died. I told you that when we met.”

“Sorry,” he said, but he felt little true sympathy.

Briana’s mother had died two years before Josh came to Missouri. She had been the one with the business mind. She kept the books, made the payments, studied new directions to take the business.

Leo Hanlon had neither the patience nor the sort of mind to take over the job his wife had done. It fell to Briana to do, and she did it brilliantly.

Leo’s bachelor brother, Collin, a true workhorse of a man, died shortly after Leo’s wife did. He had done all the farm’s heavy work.

Without his wife and brother, Leo was nearly helpless. His back bothered him, his joints ached, and he was lonely. He wore his depression like a badge that exempted him from responsibility. He hired out more and more of the physical work. He was a genial man, sweet-natured, but he seemed to Josh to have drifted into a sort of privileged laziness.

“So what exactly is your father doing these days?” he asked, trying to quash the sarcasm in his tone.

She detected it anyway. He could tell by the way her jaw tightened. “He’s owner and president, same as always. This whole business started with his vision.”

His vision, his brother’s sweat and his wife’s smarts, Josh thought. Leo Hanlon’s shaping dream had been a simple but good one. Most important, it came at exactly the right time.

Twenty-five years ago, the time of the small farmer in America was nearly over. People were not merely migrating to the cities, they were swarming there. Big farms gobbled up the small ones, and corporations bought out the big farms.

But America had begun as a country of farmers and settlers. Many who had gone to the cities missed the cycles of planting, growing and harvesting. They missed the feel of dirt between their fingers and the taste of tomatoes fresh-picked and still warm from the sun.

Leo Hanlon might not have succeeded as a farmer, but he prospered as a nurseryman. He supplied seeds and seedlings and potting mixtures to those city-dwellers who still yearned to garden.

But Leo’s true stroke of genius was not to sell just any seeds and plants. He specialized in the old-fashioned varieties with old-fashioned flavor. He was in short, one of the pioneers in heirloom gardening.

The big seed companies often didn’t offer the older classic breeds. Instead, they came up with new, improved, scientifically developed strains. They grew fast, uniformly and well. They just didn’t seem to taste as good.

Heirloom varieties were in vogue again, and across the country a few dozen places like Hanlon Heritage Farms kept gardeners in supply. Leo Hanlon’s mission was good. It was even noble. Josh sincerely admired it.

But Leo himself was a different matter.

When they first met, Josh had thought Hanlon likable, well-intentioned and slightly comic. But Josh had underestimated him.

Leo Hanlon had proved to be the strongest adversary he’d ever met.