Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story)

DIRTY
– THE COMPLETE SERIES

By
Nella Tyler

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2016 Nella Tyler

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Chapter
One

Autumn

I
watched my dad surveying the new expansion to the farm, looking both satisfied
and worried. “I don’t know why I talked myself into buying the new plot,” he
said, shaking his head slightly.

“We
need it,” Tuck said, looking out over the new territory, as well. “Besides, you
have to have enough land to pass on to both me and Autumn when the time comes,
right?” Tuck looked at me with a smirk.

“You
don’t have to pass anything on to me,” I said quickly. Tuck had considered the
family farm his since he was old enough to start working it; for myself, I
thought that as long as I had enough money to live on and enough work to occupy
my time, I’d just as soon live in town—but things hadn’t worked out that way.

“Anyway,
you got it at a steal, so it might as well be us that owns it and not some
development company,” Tuck pointed out. In my opinion, that was far more
helpful.

“And,
you’ll be able to turn enough profit on it that you can hire a crew, and not be
out here working like a field hand all day, every day,” I pointed out. Tuck
gave me a less-than-pleasant glance for that reminder.

“I’m
just not sure I’ll actually be able to get out this far every day,” Dad said.
He looked at me. “Even with that new tractor we’ve got, it’s a big farm now.”

“You
can hire someone,” I suggested. “You should, actually. We made enough last year
to pay at least one guy to come out.”

“We
can handle it ourselves,” Tuck insisted. “Hell, now that Addie’s almost one, she
could be out working it with us—putting down seed, chasing away the crows. Get
her some dungarees and she’ll be set.” I rolled my eyes.

“Addie
is still being weaned,” I pointed out. “You get squeamish on me whenever I wear
a bathing suit—how would you feel about me breastfeeding her in the field?”

Dad
crouched down on the cleared-out land and scooped up a handful of dirt. It
would take some working to make the new expansion ready for the planting in a
few weeks’ time. He had had a notion to divide it between corn and soy beans
for the first season, to see what kind of yields we could get.

Dad
had been growing corn for longer than I’d been alive, and he’d started growing
soy beans for a challenge when I’d been about twelve years old, though never as
much as the corn. If the soy took to the expansion well, he had told me, he
would alternate between it and corn every other year, and hopefully expand the
farm’s profits.

I
wished that I could be more help to Dad, but since I’d given birth to my
daughter Adelyn, I’d wanted to stay with her as much as humanly possible. Now
that she was almost a year old, I was able to do more and more around the house
to help Dad and Mom—I took care of the vegetable garden and helped Mom in the
kitchen and with the cleaning—but it was a different thing altogether to spend
the day out in the field, sweating and working my ass off, taking breaks every
few hours to feed my baby.

I’d
worked right up until the third trimester of my pregnancy before giving birth,
and eventually, I was sure that I’d probably be needed out in the fields
again—enough to merit spending a half day, or a few half days out there—before
the next harvest came. But in the meantime, I was null and void.

“You
should put an ad in the classifieds, Dad,” I suggested. “I’m sure there are
lots of guys in town who’d be willing to work hard for a decent paycheck. Hell,
we’re not that far away from the college—you might be able to get a strapping
young athlete to help you out in the fields.” Tuck and Dad both laughed, but I
could see that Dad was actually mulling the idea over.

“I’m
not going to have time to go through all the applications on my own,” he said
after thinking it over.

“I’d
be happy to help you screen them,” I told him. “I’ll even help you get the ad
put in.”

“You
seem pretty anxious to get someone out here,” Tuck said, giving me a
playful-suspicious look. “Getting lonely, sis?” I rolled my eyes.

“I’m
a single mother with a baby,” I pointed out. “No one is going to pay me any
mind, even if I wanted them to. But Dad deserves some help around the farm to
make the new expansion pay off.” I reached out for my dad’s hand and gave it a
squeeze.

“Let’s
head back to the house,” he suggested. “Give me a chance to think about it over
dinner.” We walked back from the new expansion together, cutting across our own
fields, still fallow from the winter.

It
would be planting time soon, and even if Dad hadn’t bought the new plot of land
to add onto the fields we already had, I probably would have suggested he find
someone to help. He wasn’t so old yet that he absolutely couldn’t work the
land, but neither he nor Mom were as young as they used to be—and with only me
and Tuck to help them, they were going to start losing money soon if they
didn’t hire out.

We
started talking about what I planned to put into the vegetable garden once it
was time to start planting there. We could get staples in town, and sometimes I
liked to get something we couldn’t grow ourselves in the Iowa climate—oranges
or peaches, things like that—but like most farmers, we grew and kept as much as
possible: chickens for eggs and the occasional stew, tomatoes, squash, and
beans in summer, cabbages, carrots, and other cold-weather vegetables in the
fall and winter. I liked to experiment sometimes, getting different seeds from
exchanges for stuff like heirloom tomatoes, different kinds of berries, or
melons.

When
the growing season would be at its peak out in the fields, Mom and I would be
canning and freezing as much as we could. The farm made a good bit of money,
but it went a lot farther if we didn’t have to buy much in the way of food. “I
think I’m going to do a big herb garden this summer,” I said as we got closer
to the house.

“Herbs
aren’t much for eating,” Tuck pointed out. “Can’t have a salad made of ‘em,
even.”

“But
they make other stuff taste better, and one of the seed exchanges we belong to
has some interesting stuff—chocolate mint, Thai basil, things like that.”

“Just
make sure it’ll actually grow here before you put all that work in,” Dad
suggested.

I’d
bought seeds from a catalogue once that I had thought—hoped—would bring me
armfuls of beautiful flowers. I’d been maybe fourteen at the time and just
starting to really pull my weight around the house. Instead of beautiful
flowers, I’d ended up with a bunch of dead sticks in the ground when the summer
heat scorched the plants, and no amount of water or fertilizer could keep them
alive.

When
I’d gone crying to Dad about the failure, he’d looked up the plants and showed
me that they were for a completely different “zone”—that had been the problem.
Ever since then, I always checked twice or even three times before I took on a
horticultural experiment, but I was pretty sure I’d never live that failure
down, no matter how long I was on the earth.

“What
have we got for supper tonight, Kimmie?” I could smell the meal Mom had made as
soon as we got to the front door; I’d helped her early on, but she’d taken over
the project when Dad had come home with the paperwork that proved his ownership
of the new plot of land alongside our farm and Tuck and I had gone out with him
to inspect it.

“Chicken
and dumplings, with some of that corn relish you like so much and strawberry
bars for dessert,” Mom told him. “I think we might still have some ice cream in
the outside freezer if you really want it, but it’s still too cold for my
blood.”

It
was starting towards spring, but late at night, there was a chill in the air.
I’d be grateful for my jacket when I left the main house with Addie to go to
the guesthouse on the other end of the backyard.

I’d
moved in after things had gone south with the father of my child, and while I’d
felt a little strange at first, I’d actually gotten comfortable in the cozy
little place with its two bedrooms, tiny kitchen, and old-fashioned furniture.
My parents didn’t have guests that often, anyway—that was why they’d offered
the mini-house to me, instead of making me move back into my old room.

I
got my daughter out of the family room where she’d been playing with some of
her toys in her playpen and loaded her up into her high chair. Addie didn’t eat
all that much in the way of real food just yet, but I made a point of seating
her at the table for every meal and giving her a little bit of everything so
she’d get used to meals gradually—and so she wouldn’t get to be a picky eater
like Tuck had been as a kid. I helped Mom serve up big bowls of the chicken and
dumplings and a little plate of the delicious, rib-sticking food for my little
girl, and we all sat down to eat.

“Autumn
seems to think I’m going to need some help managing that extension,” Dad said
to Mom after we’d all had a few bites of food.

“I
still say we can handle it on our own,” Tuck insisted, wiping his mouth at the
corners after devouring a big chunk of stewed chicken. “We’ve got equipment,
and it’s not like it’ll take as much effort as the larger part of the field.”

“But
you two barely managed to keep up with the rest of the farm last year,” Mom
pointed out. “I think hiring someone on makes sense; it’ll give you some
insurance that you’ll get the most out of the new land.”

“That
was pretty much what I was starting to think,” Dad admitted. “And since Autumn
volunteered to help me get through all the responses, I think it’s what we’ll
do.”

“How
much are you going to pay?” I checked on Addie briefly. She was smearing one of
the noodle-like dumplings against her lips, not really eating it, but she’d
managed to get some of the carrots and peas into her mouth.

“I’ll
have to see what everyone else is paying,” Dad said. “I don’t want to cut into
my profits too hard, but I also don’t want to lowball anyone who’d work hard
for me.” I nodded.

“The
Hendersons up the way pay about $11 an hour, plus benefits,” I told him. “That
seems like a decent deal to me—especially since you’re only hiring one guy. And
he won’t be working the whole year, just most of it.”

“Man,
it’d be nice to be an employee instead of an owner,” Tuck joked.

“Oh
hush,” I said, shaking my head. “When have you ever hurt for money since you started
working for Dad full time?”

“I’m
just saying,” Tuck said with a shrug.

“Anyway,”
Dad interrupted, breaking up the fight between me and my brother before it
could really start, “I’ll put together an ad and we’ll get it in the paper.
I’ll check around on pay and benefits first, and you’ll screen out the
applications. Deal?” I nodded.

“It’s
a deal, Dad.”

Chapter
Two

Cade

I
flipped through the paper while sitting on my front porch, drinking my first
cup of coffee for the day. There were times when I considered canceling my
subscription, but since it was only a couple of dollars a week, I’d never quite
given it up.

I
was always grateful to have the subscription when whatever job I was working
came to an end and I needed to find something to replace it. Otherwise, the
coupons in the Sunday edition were pretty good, and I liked to do the crossword
puzzles during dinner—at least, when I was working.

It
was my day off, and I thought about skipping ahead to the Accent section for
the puzzles, but I knew I’d be better served to immediately go to the
Classifieds.