New Leaf (27 page)

“Ready to go home?” Barney asked Taffeta over the top of Sarah’s head. “I’ve been told that mysterious things can happen there. People who stand along Mystic Creek are destined to fall in love and live happily ever after.”

Taffeta smiled, but she refused to laugh. She now believed in the legend of Mystic Creek. Barney had confessed that he did as well.

“I love you, Taffy,” Barney said.

“I love you, too, Barney.”

“I love you, Mommy,” Sarah chimed in, following it with “I love you, Daddy!”

“I love you, too, Sarah,” Taffeta replied. “More than you’ll ever know.”

Barney reached down with his free hand to tickle Sarah’s ribs. “I love you, Sarah,” he said. “I always wanted my own little girl, and now I’ve got you.”

As he stood tall again, he said, “We sound like the Waltons saying good night to each other. Did you ever watch those reruns?”

Taffeta grinned. “I adored them.”

“We’re going to be like that,” Barney said. “A
large family in a house that’s filled to the brim with love.”

Taffeta nodded. No matter what challenges might lie ahead of them, she would love Barney Sterling with every breath she took, and she knew that he would love her just as deeply.

She was ready to go
home
. Home to Mystic Creek where miracles happened. Today was the first day of the rest of their lives, and she meant to enjoy every second of it.

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Jeb Sterling swore under his breath as he trudged across his steer pasture, snatching up litter. Small pieces of pink paper decorated the grass, looking like overblown clover blossoms. They were everywhere. Why had someone chosen to toss trash from a car window in front of
his
place? Jeb took pride in his property and spent hours each summer at the business end of a Weedwacker. His fencing,
made of metal pipe that he’d welded together, always sported immaculate white paint. The landscaping he’d done around his house could be featured in
Better Homes and Gardens
. He did
not
appreciate some jerk using his land as a garbage dump.

Stalking around the enclosure, Jeb grumbled aloud as he picked up the pink slips and crushed them in one hand. As he captured the sixth before it fluttered away, his anger changed to bewilderment.
What the hell?
Somebody had written a note on this one. Smoothing the damp, wrinkled strip, Jeb read aloud, “‘I wonder how much money I need to buy a decent used car. I don’t care if it looks awful as long as it runs. Walking back and forth to work in this cold weather is the pits.’”

Frowning, Jeb collected more pink strips from the pasture, then found a few more on his front lawn, and another in his driveway. He took the lot inside and sat at his custom-made dining room table, which he’d designed to seat twelve, twenty with inserts, similar to tables once common among large farm families.

Pushing a hank of blondish brown hair off his forehead, he smoothed the notes flat.
I wish I could find secondhand winter boots for my little girl. I can’t afford new ones, and my boss says we’ll soon have deep snow.
Jeb shook his head. Winter boots for a kid didn’t cost all that much. Or did they? Thirty years old and determined to stop counting birthdays, Jeb remained a bachelor and had no kids. He was not an expert on the cost of children’s apparel. Maybe one of his younger brothers or sisters would get married and start reproducing soon. Then Jeb’s parents might stop bugging him about settling down and providing them with a grandchild.

Judging by the handwriting, delicate and flowing, Jeb decided the notes had to be from a woman. Most guys he knew did a print-write thing.

The next note made him grin.
I wish I could meet a man as kind and wonderful as the hero in one of the romances I love to read, someone who’d be a fabulous father to my little girl and make both of us feel safe.
Jeb guessed this lady liked to read sappy love stories. His smile faded. Why did this woman and her child feel unsafe? And, hello, was he being targeted? He found it difficult to believe these messages had landed on his property by accident. Maybe this gal had seen him working outside and decided he looked like promising husband material.

No way, sister
. Jeb wasn’t that desperate. His mother kept telling him the lady of his dreams would cross paths with him right when he least expected it. But so far that hadn’t happened, and Jeb was coming to accept that it probably never would.

Just then his dog farted. Jeb groaned and glanced over his shoulder. “Damn, Bozo, turn the air blue, why don’t you?”

A brindle Fila Brasileiro mastiff, Bozo had a dark brown muzzle and ears, with a gold body that looked as if it had been splattered with different shades of mud. The dog woke from his nap, yawned, and then shook his head, sending strings of drool flying from his flapping jowls to decorate everything within a three-foot radius. When Bozo was younger, Jeb had raced around to clean up the drool immediately, but then he’d read online that once dried, it could be wiped easily from surfaces or vacuumed up.

“If I ever meet the right woman, she’ll take one look at you and run screaming in the other direction. You know that, right?”

Bozo growled—his way of talking. Grinning, Jeb resumed reading the notes.
My only weapons are a cast-iron skillet and a butcher knife hidden under my mattress so my daughter won’t find it. If my husband tracks us down, I pray that God will give me the strength to knock him out with the frying pan. I will die before I let him hurt my baby again
.

Bozo let loose with another fart. Flatulence was a trait of the mastiff that Jeb had overlooked when deciding on a breed. Waving a hand in front of his face, he wished he could lend this poor lady his dog, not to torture her with the less-than-aromatic delights, but for security. With Bozo on guard, she wouldn’t need a heavy skillet for protection.

Jeb turned his attention to the next note.
Damn,
he thought.
This could become addictive
. He felt as if he were peering into someone’s heart. This lady clearly had an abusive bastard for a husband, was as close to flat broke as a person could get, and, to top it all off, had a little girl she could barely support.

Jeb wondered once again if she was targeting his land with her notes. He thought of his cantankerous old neighbor across the road. Tony Bradley, who farmed full-time for a living, had a heart of gold that he tried hard to hide.
Time to take a stroll
. If Tony had found pink slips of paper on his land, then Jeb could relax. Jeb didn’t like the idea that some desperate female had set her sights on him. Even if she had no car, she could walk by his land if she lived nearby.

Bozo went with Jeb to Tony’s place. Mastiffs needed plenty of exercise, at least a thirty-minute walk each day, which Bozo got by following Jeb around as he tended to his livestock. Extra walking never hurt—although he tried to make sure his mastiff seldom ran. That was bad for the joints and hips of a dog that weighed two hundred and thirty pounds; also, mastiffs could easily become overheated, even in cold weather.

With the crops all harvested, old Tony was in “winter” mode, when he repaired his equipment, fed his animals, watched TV, and worked crossword puzzles. Jeb found him tinkering with his tractor, an ancient John Deere that had lost nearly all its identifying green and yellow paint and was probably worth more as an antique than Tony’s whole farm was.

“Hey, Tony!” Jeb called out. “Got tractor problems?”

The old man resembled a stout stump with a two-day growth of whiskers and was dressed in tan Carhartt outerwear smudged with grease. He cast a cranky glare at Jeb. “Betsy never has problems. Kind of like a woman, son. All she needs is a little lovin’ to keep her motor tuned.”

Jeb drew to a stop near a front tire that was taller than his hip. Bozo chose that moment to shake his head and send drool flying. Just then, Mike, Tony’s red tri Australian shepherd, bounded out from under the tractor. The two canines sauntered off to take turns pissing on every bush in sight.

“What brings you over?” Tony wiped his hands on a rag so greasy that it only smeared more oil onto his fingers. “If you haven’t found a new cleaning lady and you’re wantin’ to hire my wife, you’re out of luck. Mike sheds
like a son bitch and I’m sloppy, so we keep Myrna pretty busy.”

Jeb hadn’t started looking for a new cleaning person since his last one had quit. “I’m between jobs right now.” Jeb saw no need to elaborate. He and Tony had been neighbors long enough that the old man understood his on-and-off-again work schedule. Jeb had just finished a furniture order from a man who’d wanted a special Christmas gift for his wife, but otherwise it had been a slow season. “I figure I can muck out the house myself for a while. When the building market picks back up in February or March, I’ll send out some feelers.” He winked. “And I promise not to steal Myrna.”

Tony, a tobacco chewer, leaned sideways to spit. “Good thing. She’s got a hip goin’ out on her, I’m afraid. Hurtin’ her off and on.”

Jeb hated to hear that. Myrna was a sweet gal and only sixty-three, a bit young to need a hip replacement. “I hope she gets to feeling better soon. A couple of months back, my mom hobbled around from pain in her hip.” Kate Sterling’s version of hobbling was to limp at a fast pace. “She was about to see Doc Hamilton when the discomfort went away.”

“I see his partner, Dr. Payne.” Tony chuckled. “Signed on with him out of curiosity. If I was a young doctor with a last name that sounds like
pain
, I’d get it changed.”

“He may be young, but I’ve heard he’s good,” Jeb observed. “Maybe you should take Myrna to see him.”

“Damned woman won’t go. She’s too stubborn by half, my Myrna.”

Not sure what to say, Jeb whacked the frozen ground
with the heel of his boot. Tony worshiped his wife and didn’t share personal stuff unless he was truly troubled.

“So what brings you over?” Tony asked.

Jeb fished a handful of pink strips from his coat pocket and extended the crinkled lump. “Just wondering if you’ve found any of these on your land.”

Tony squinted. “Son bitch. You gettin’ those, too? Got my Myrna in a tailspin, I’ll tell ya. She drives me half nuts tryin’ to figure out who’s writin’ ’em. Has me lickin’ my finger to test the wind direction.”

Jeb stuffed the notes back in his pocket. “I didn’t consider the possibility that they floated into my place on the wind. How many have you and Myrna found?”

“A good twenty.” Tony spat again, narrowly missing Bozo, who’d come to lie at Jeb’s feet. “I got my theories on it, if you don’t mind me sharin’. The writer is a female, and she’s lonely. Has no friends. Works as a cook somewhere and makes barely enough to scrape by. Also yearnin’ to find herself a man. In one message, she wished for Prince Charming to carry her and her child away on a white steed to live happily ever after.”

“Really.” Jeb recalled the note about the woman’s wish to find a hero. “She must be having a hard time of it.”

“And she’s probably uglier than a fence post if she’s that desperate.”

Jeb thought about it and decided Tony might be right. A beautiful woman didn’t normally have to search for a man to rescue her. Men stood in line to apply for the job. Not that Jeb cared if this gal was homely. She clearly needed a friend. He tried and failed to imagine having nobody to talk to. He’d grown up in Mystic Creek and
couldn’t go into town without seeing someone he knew. He also had heaps of family here.

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad to hear the notes aren’t landing only on my property.”

Tony laughed. “You’re safe. I haven’t asked our neighbors if they’ve found any, but you can rest assured, as many as we’ve gotten, you aren’t bein’ singled out.”

Jeb studied the clouds. “Looks like snow tonight.”

Tony nodded. “Myrna says there’s a bastard storm front moving toward us.”

Jeb ended the conversation the way he and Tony always did, by walking away. He and Tony said only what needed to be said. Polite farewells weren’t part of their repertoire.

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