Farmer Takes A Wife: Serenity Series, #3
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About this ebook
Carson Royal needed to start over. Everything in his life had turned into a sour ball of crap, and the hurricane washed away the last of the crops on the family farm in South Carolina. With the help of his online friend and lady love Cyndi, he packs ups and heads west for a new town called Serenity that is in need of a farmer.
Life takes an unexpected turn when Jack flies out to pick up his bride to be Cyndi.
Everything comes crashing down for Farmer, but the rainbow at the end of the storm, is far more colorful than the journey itself as the story takes an odd turn, which changed the course of life for not only Cyndi, but also Jack, Farmer, and a saucy rescue worker named Molly.
Welcome back to Serenity.
Olivia Gaines
Olivia is a USA Today Best Selling and multiple award-winning author who loves a good laugh coupled with some steam, mixed in with a man and woman finding their way past the words of “I love you.” An author of contemporary romances, she writes heartwarming stories of blossoming relationships about couples not only falling in love but building a life after the sensual love scene. 2015 Swirl Award Winner, Best Erotic Romance, Thursdays in Savannah. 2017 IRAE Award Winner, Best Contemporary Romance, Wyoming Nights 2019 IRAE Award Winner, Favorite Series, The Men of Endurance 2019 IRAE Award Winner, Reader's Choice Award 2019 Nominee, Top Female Authors, The AuthorShow.com When Olivia is not writing, she enjoys quilting, playing Scrabble online against other word lovers and spending time with her family. She is an avid world traveler who writes many of the locations into her stories. Most of the time she can be found sitting quietly with pen and paper plotting more adventures in love. Olivia lives in Hephzibah, Georgia with her husband, son, grandson and snotty evil cat, Katness Evermean. Learn more about her books, upcoming releases and join her bibliophile nation at www.ogaines.com Subscribe to her email list at http://eepurl.com/OulYf Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/olivia.gaines.31 Twitter: https://twitter.com/oliviagaines Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gaines.olivia/
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Blind Date Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5North to Alaska Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Turning the Page Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Montana Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wyoming Nights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Christmas Quilts Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Menu For Loving Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Holden: Serenity Series, #2 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Farmer Takes A Wife: Serenity Series, #3 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Farmer Takes A Wife
6 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When I retire I want to move to Serenity. I love the way Ms. Gaines outlines the game of chess the universe plays with its inhabitants. Moving each of them in ways that are not clair in the moment, but are impressive at the reveal. I enjoyed this book and am hoping that I will be able to get Welcome to Serenity. I would love to find out what was the catalyst for the creation of this community. Also, I hope Ms. Gaines' muse encourages her to bring us the other stories about the residents of Serenity. How many babies? How do they celebrate holidays and special events? Yup, I want more Serenity. Cheers.
Book preview
Farmer Takes A Wife - Olivia Gaines
––––––––
by
This...is Jamar.
Written by Olivia Gaines
Edited by Teri T. Blackwell, Ed.S.
davonshire houseDavonshire House
Augusta, GA
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely a coincidence.
© 2016 Olivia Gaines, Cheryl Aaron Corbin
Copy Teri T. Blackwell
Cover: Koou Graphics
ASIN:
ISBN:
ISBN-10:
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information Davonshire House Publishing LLC, PO Box 9716. Augusta, GA 30916.
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 9 8
First Publishing October 2016
Also by Olivia Gaines
The Slice of Life Series
The Perfect Man
Friends with Benefits
A Letter to My Mother
The Basement of Mr. McGee
A New Mommy for Christmas
The Slivers of Love Series
The Cost toPlay
Thursday in Savannah
Girl's Weekend
Beneath the Well of Dawn
Santa’s Big Helper
The Davonshire Series
Courting Guinevere
Loving Words
Vanity's Pleasure
The Blakemore Files
Being Mrs. Blakemore
Shopping with Mrs. Blakemore
Dancing with Mr. Blakemore
Cruising with the Blakemores
Dinner with the Blakemores
Loving the Czar
The Value of a Man Series
My Mail Order Wife
A Weekend with the Cromwell’s
Other Novellas
North to Alaska
The Brute & The Blogger
A Better Night in Vegas (Betas Do It Better Anthology)
Other Novels
A Menu for Loving
Turning the Page
An Untitled Love
––––––––
Dedication
This book is dedicated to those readers who understand you can’t change a man in 50,000 words. I am doing it in a series.
The plot thickens.
The story deepens.
These men have to grow.
Welcome back to Serenity.
––––––––
This...is Jack.
By
Olivia Gaines
This...is Farmer.
Table of Contents
This...is Jamar.
Chapter 1- Digging Up the Past
Chapter 2- Turning the Soil
Chapter 3- Surveying the Land
Chapter 4- It’s All Fun & Games
Chapter 5- May Day – May Day
Chapter 6 – Brace For Impact
Chapter 7 – A Dark & Stormy Night
Chapter 8 – A Fresh Perspective
Chapter 9 – Tilling the Soil
Chapter 10 – Planting the Seeds
Chapter 11 – Taking Root
Excerpt Wyoming Nights
About the Author
Coming Soon
Chapter 1- Digging Up the Past
The droplets of rain pierced beneath the dry earth like tiny wet daggers seeking a home in the soil. Under the layer of cracked dirt, seedlings rumbled, searching for the tiny dabs of moisture which were long weeks overdue. Late May was odd because no rain had come and the red strawberries that typically dotted the landscape had yet to make an appearance. Watering, irrigation, and daily prayers had not been enough for the seedling to hatch and Farmer Royal would soon be ruined if the rains didn’t come soon.
The first droplet was followed by several more and then a torrent of others that saturated the Royal Farm. The water was a blessing from heaven in more ways than one. The sizeable debt owed by Carson Royal’s father had mortgaged the farm beyond recovery. Even if the late budding harvest were to come in, the fruit would be below average in size and debts would still be owed to the seed company for seedlings which were more of a burden than a sacred sign of prosperity. As much as Carson warned his father about going into business with the giant agri-farm company, Ben Royal wanted to be in the big leagues. He had only succeeded in placing the fourth-generation farm into big debt. The debtors were calling. The seed company was calling. The only one Ben Royal was calling was on the Lord for salvation.
The Lord answered on a quiet morning in late May. Chanticleer, the old rooster, had given up crowing from the fence and instead hitched a ride on the back of Ms. Sally, an old sow full of worms. The old hog lumbered about with Chanticleer on her back, crowing sporadically, while Mr. Toodles, the young tomcat ambled along beside them, searching for something to eat. The three of them represented everything which was wrong on the Royal farm– that some shit just didn’t belong together. Even on this rainy morning, the threesome was down to two as they made their rounds in the rain. Mr. Toodles, not really one for getting damp, opted to remain inside of the barn, getting wet only by licking himself. Ben Royal got a kick out of seeing this each morning as he sat in his big living room chair looking out over his land.
That morning, Ben was found looking as if he were sleeping in his living room chair as more rain came down washing away the last of the fields. The crops were gone. The fields were washed out and the land was under water. The Royal family farm was ruined. A matter of days was all that was needed to let the banks and everyone else who had their hands out asking for money to come calling.
Maybe it’s a blessing, Carson,
Cynthia Kleene told him over the phone. You have wanted to get out from under the weight of the debt; maybe this is a sign.
Maybe,
he said solemnly. I just don’t know how to do much else other than farm.
It doesn’t mean you can’t still farm. You can just do it somewhere else. Somewhere fresh. Get a new start,
Cynthia encouraged.
Possibly, but where can a black farmer from South Carolina buy land and start over? I just can’t see my way through this one, Cyndi,
Carson told her.
I heard about this place in Wyoming called Serene or something like that. It is all the buzz out this way. Some young black man is starting a town like in the Old West. He’s looking for a farmer. There’s a website and everything where you talk to the guy; you can even buy as many acres as you can afford to start out,
she told him.
Yeah, but what’s the catch?
I think the only catch is that you have to grow food for the town,
she told him. Plus, Farmer, it will bring you closer to me.
Three years he and Cynthia had been talking online or over the phone. They’d met in an online chat room for lonely hearts wishing to starting over. He never had enough spare funds to buy a ticket to Idaho Falls to go see her, nor did he have enough funds to purchase her a ticket to come to him, but he wanted a life with her. He wanted a life. A new life. Somewhere new with new scenery. In his head, he could see his new start.
A little farm with only about 5 to 10 acres of good land to grow just enough crops to feed himself and a few families. The money he’d saved up wasn’t nearly enough make a dent in the sizeable debt he would inherit from his father’s bad decisions. Trying to make payments to save the equipment, the house, or even the land would be the equivalent of giving a whale a Tic-Tac. His mother, God rest her soul, had given up on Ben Royal years ago. Each month, she squirrelled away money in a separate account in her maiden name to make sure her children had a future outside of Royal Farms.
His sister, Sylvia, had run off with a traveling salesman with big teeth and a penis so big it hung in his pants like an elephant trunk. Each time he walked, it appeared as if his pants screamed for relief from the torture of housing the long monster. Ben threatened to cut off the salesman’s wiener if he didn’t leave his Sylvia alone, but many women had tried it and survived; Sylvia wanted to be the last one to ever have it, so she ran away with Big Tooth Big Penis Man as Ben’s mother called him. Several years back when word arrived of Sylvia’s death, it had been too much for Nellie Royal’s heart. The sadness of her daughter’s dream had come true. Sylvia was the last to have the Big Tooth man’s love gun. They died, stuck together in the garage of a neighbor’s home, asphyxiated on carbon monoxide. Ben Royal’s wish had also come true because the coroner had to cut off Big Teeth’s big trunk to get them apart. Sylvia’s death broke Nellie’s spirit, her heart, and her desire to live. Quietly, as the family slept, she drove herself to Charleston, driving non-stop through the night and off a bridge into a deep body of water in her old Chevy. She left Carson a note telling him where he could find the money under her maiden name at the small bank she grew up using in Greenville.
The money was all he had left of his family. That and a crate load of seeds his grandfather had given him as a boy for him to start his own farm. Carson had locked the seeds in a safety deposit box at the local bank when he’d just turned 18 years of age. It was the perfect time to do it since at the same time, his father had climbed in bed with the biotech agricultural company who claimed to help sustain farmers. Instead, they sustained a chokehold on seeds that produced weeds that could only be killed by products the same company manufactured. The super weeds which popped up all over the farm also gained a chokehold in the soil, robbing it of the needed nutrients to nourish the plants. The moisture in the soil was soaked up like a chamois in a puddle of water. Each year, the crop yields were smaller. Each year, the soil became bitterer. This year, the earth gave up on them.
Carson was giving up on the land which he loved. He buried his father on a rainy Saturday afternoon in the family plot. The ground was too saturated, so Ben Royal floated back up the following morning in the next deluge of rainfall. Mr. Millworth, the mortician who gave him a deal on the last coffin in the store, a cheap pink one, called him Sunday morning, upset and crying.
Carson, I think I just saw your daddy floating down Johns Street,
Mr. Millworth told him. That pink casket is busted up on the side and your daddy’s hand is hanging out like he’s waving at all the houses as he floats on by.
With some effort and a better coffin on the house from Mr. Millworth, on Sunday, Ben buried his father again. This time, he placed heavy rocks on top of the coffin to keep the old bastard down. He also buried him a lot deeper this time around.
On Monday, the creditors began calling. By Friday, the bank was beginning foreclosure proceedings. It only took two months to sell off everything in the home with the exception of his grandmother’s china, a few trinkets, and other personal items he held on to. The predators circled overhead trying to pick away at his bones as he