A Family For The Farmer

“That doesn’t mean I’m happy about being put through this trial by farm, or whatever you want to call it,” Emily cautioned. “It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. I don’t know what Grandma was thinking.”

“The letter didn’t tell you?”

Emily shrugged. “Grandma never thought I appreciated Goosefeather Farm the way she wanted me to. It looks like she just wanted one last opportunity to change my mind. She was always convinced I belonged here.”

“Maybe you do,” Abel said simply, breaking off another chunk of muffin.

“Believe me, I don’t.” He looked as unconvinced as her grandmother had every time they’d had this particular conversation. Time to change the subject. “How are those muffins? I baked them yesterday morning.” She was tinkering with her apple spice muffin recipe, and she thought adding the extra ground cloves had been a good idea.

“Really good. But then you always were a good cook, even when you were a little slip of a thing. Better than Miss Sadie, rest her soul. Her muffins were like hockey pucks.”

Emily smiled, remembering. “She mixed them too much. You’ve got to be careful with muffin batter. I always told her so, but you know Grandma. Whatever she did, she did with a vengeance.”

Abel chuckled. “You’re right about that. Miss Sadie never did do things by halves. I recall when she finally got fed up with my excuses about not going to church with her. She went out in the middle of a Saturday night and flattened her own truck tires, all four of them, so I’d have to come over and drive her into town. Then she made a big show of stumbling on the curb in front of the church so I’d be sure to walk her in. She had me sitting in that pew before I knew what had happened, and she was right beside me, grinning like a mule eating briars.” He sighed. “I’m sure going to miss her.”

Emily nodded and took a deliberate sip of her scalding coffee to dissolve the lump in her throat. “I know. Me, too.”

She’d been right to give him two muffins. He polished them both off in short order. She watched as he carefully wiped up the few crumbs he’d dropped on the table and deposited them on the plate next to his neatly folded muffin papers. Then he drained his coffee mug, set it on the plate and rose to carry his dirty dishes to the sink.

Abel had always done that, she remembered. He’d cleaned up after himself, been careful to remove his muddy boots at the back door and never left one crumb or drop behind. It had seemed so strange for such a big, outdoorsy boy to be so meticulous about things like that that Emily had found it amusing. She’d joked about it one time to her grandmother, and Sadie Elliott’s sharp reply had caught her off guard. “Them that’s had their share of trouble know better than to make trouble for other folks, missy! Mark that, and remember it.”

“Emily?”

She glanced up, startled to find Abel standing at the sink looking uneasy.

“Yes?” She tilted her head to look up at him, thinking that inside the house he seemed bigger somehow. He’d always been tall, but she never remembered him taking up so much space before.

“I reckon we’ve circled around all this long enough. I don’t want to upset you, but I’m going to speak plain. You’re going to lose this farm if you don’t have good help. There’s just no two ways about it, and I’d sure hate to see that happen.”

He’d filled out, Emily realized suddenly. Abel couldn’t be called lanky anymore. He was still lean, but his shoulders had broadened, and there was a muscular set to them now. When she’d left Goosefeather Farm six years ago, Abel Whitlock was only a few years out of his teens. Now he was a man. That was the difference she was picking up on.

She felt a sudden prickle of nerves. Maybe this deal with Abel wasn’t such a good idea after all. Then again, she knew he made a good point. If she didn’t have help, she’d never be able to keep this place afloat.

It looked like she was trapped between this rock of a man and a very hard place.

“Listen to me, Emily. I know you’re not easy in your mind about any of this. You don’t like leaning on somebody else, and I can’t say as I blame you. I’d likely feel the same if I were in your shoes. But I’m no stranger to you. You’ve known me nearly half your life, and you surely know me well enough by now to know that I mean what I say. If you let me help you, I’ll make sure you end up with this farm at the end of the summer. You have my word on it.”

For a second, all Emily could do was blink at this man standing in her grandmother’s kitchen in faded jeans and a threadbare shirt. Apparently he was so determined to forfeit a tidy little inheritance that he was promising his help to the very person who was going to do her best to make sure he didn’t get it. Was it even possible that such a person still existed in this dog-eat-dog world?

“Come on, Emily,” he coaxed, one side of his mouth quirking up. “You must have one last Goosefeather Farm summer left in you.” Suddenly there was something irresistible about that crooked smile. She found herself smiling right back at him, and that was when it happened.

Emily felt a quick, flooding warmth around her heart, and her stomach dropped abruptly out from under her as if she’d just unexpectedly barreled down the slope of a roller coaster. She froze while Abel calmly turned his attention to rinsing out his coffee cup at the sink.

What had just happened?

Her mind stuttered with the shock of it. Had she just had some kind of weak-kneed, girlie moment? Over Abel Whitlock?

Surely not.

She’d thought she was dealing really well with Grandma’s death, all things considered, but she was obviously more overwrought than she’d realized. Because Emily Elliott didn’t have weak-kneed, girlie moments over men anymore. She’d learned her lesson in that department a long time ago, and she had no plans to go down that particular road again any time soon—if ever.

And if and when she did, it certainly wouldn’t be with another man from Pine Valley, Georgia.

* * *

Abel turned back from the sink to find Emily studying him with a wary expression on her face. As he watched, her cheeks flushed pink, and her gaze darted back into her coffee cup.

She was still acting skittish, but who could blame her after the day she’d had? Judging from those purple smudges under her eyes, she was tuckered out. He could hear the twins arguing in the living room, something about a cartoon. Emily still had to load them up and make the trip back to Atlanta tonight. Abel felt a flicker of doubt. As much as he wanted to get this all settled, maybe right now wasn’t the best time. He hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and wishing he knew just what to say to put her mind at ease.

“Abel.” Something in Emily’s voice jerked his wandering thoughts to attention. Now she was sitting bolt upright in her chair, and she looked as taut as a newly strung fence wire.

His muscles tensed. Something was wrong. “What is it?”

She swallowed, and very, very slowly she scooted the old ladder-back chair a few inches backward. “I think...” she whispered. “Okay, I know it sounds a little crazy, but I think there might be something alive under this table.”

Abel’s mind flashed to the screened door, to how it had seemed to be open just a crack when he came up the back steps, and he winced. On Goosefeather Farm that could only mean one thing, and he didn’t think Emily was going to like it one little bit.

Before he could gather his thoughts enough to speak, something gray and long snaked out from under the low-hanging tablecloth and jabbed Emily smartly on the thigh. She yelped, and the mug she’d been holding hit the floor and cracked into pieces, sending the remains of her coffee flooding across the floorboards. Emily tipped her chair over backward, her legs tangling up in its slats as she scrambled away.

She was halfway into the living room before she stopped to look back. “What is it?” she asked in a trembling voice as the creature sidled slowly out from under the table.

“She’s an African gray goose.” Abel tried to keep the laugh out of his voice, but he couldn’t entirely manage it. “I gave her to Miss Sadie last spring because I figured any farm called Goosefeather ought to have at least one goose living on it. Your grandma named her Glory. And she’s a born troublemaker.” He addressed his last comment to the goose, who honked briefly at him in reply.

Emily stayed safely in the living room, her arms wrapped protectively around her twins. They’d left their cartoon to blink owlishly at the unrepentant goose, who was doing her best to thieve the remains of Emily’s muffin off the top of the kitchen table. “Thanks, but you can skip over the introductions. I don’t think I want to be on a first-name basis with that thing. How did it get in here?”

“You must have left the screen door cracked when you headed out to the barn earlier. She’s smart about opening it if it’s not pulled all the way shut. Your grandma thought it was a cute trick, and that didn’t help.”