Thirty-three-year-old gay farmer Vladimir Wozniak IV lives for his crops and the hard work that makes them profitable every year. Five miles up the road, former rodeo bull rider and rancher Thomas Sullivan is just as committed to his corn-fed beef. Once best friends until VJ kissed Tommy during freshman year in college, they stopped speaking when Tommy rejected VJ. Ten years later, after the country doctor who helped bring them into the world dies and his will names them as co-owners of property, they decide to check out their inheritance together to see which one wants to buy out the other. As they travel down memory lane through the Doc’s correspondence and visit familiar sites on the land, can they work their way back to friendship ... and possibly beyond?

The Thaw

After lunch, although we were tempted to go straight to bed, we agreed, since we were leaving the next day, to finish cleaning up the office while we talked about what we wanted to do with the land and the cabin.


Deciding took all of five minutes, if that. We were still curious as to why the Doc had left all of this to us, but VJ said he’d gone through everything in the desk and hadn’t found anything that might answer the question.


“What about the flat thin drawer in the middle of the pigeonholes?” I asked.


He pulled it out a couple of inches and said, “Nothing in the drawer. See?”


I reached over and pulled the drawer all the way out. The drawer had slots up the sides, so a piece of wood could be moved to make two compartments out of the space. In the back half of the drawer was an envelope with our names on it.


“Here. You read it.” I handed him the sealed envelope. “You read quicker and better than I do.”


Chapter 28