“If you were less secure,” she replied from behind the rim of her cup, “I would never have said it.”
Flo chose that moment to drop the toast off to Gemma, who thanked her and then slathered her toast with the homemade apricot jam on the table. He enjoyed watching her enjoy her breakfast. She rolled her eyes at the first taste and polished off both pieces in record time. He couldn’t recall seeing any of the NYC women he’d dated eat more than a few delicate bites of any meal. But Gemma wasn’t like those women. That much was already abundantly clear.
She brushed the crumbs from her hands. “And since you’re so secure, I know you’ll allow me to pay for your breakfast and mine to make up for earlier.”
“The robe thing, you mean?”
She colored. “Not to mention the new phone, which I’d better go get set up. My voice mail is, apparently, overflowing.”
“Well, I already paid for both of us,” he told her as Flo returned with the credit card he’d slipped to her while Gemma was eating her toast. “But I promise not to feel threatened by your offer.”
She dipped her head. “Then, thank you again.”
“My pleasure. Look, I know you have your own thing to do here, and Trey’s got us fly-fishing this morning, but there’s a fish fry later this afternoon if you’d like to come with me.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Let me check my schedule—nope, entirely free. I’d love to.”
“Good. Pick you up at four? I happen to know where your room is.”
*
Gemma spent the next hour getting her new phone in order before heading down Main Street to browse past the shop windows, feeling as if she’d stepped back in time in this little Western town, whose streets were crowded with locals and tourists alike. The pace here was just slower and no one seemed in a rush to go anywhere in particular.
She spent another hour or so wandering from shop to shop, talking to people, shopkeepers, casually interviewing them about the topic of weddings in Marietta and the success of love matches, therein. Everyone had an opinion about how Marietta played a part in the uptick in weddings. Almost everyone knew a couple who’d met here and fallen in love. It was a trend that had crept into the local hive mind here slowly, but most of the people she met seemed proud of their town and of how Marietta seemed—for the most part—to bring out the best in people. She’d certainly met some of them last night at the party. More than one person she spoke with believed the simplicity of life here influenced those who chose to settle here and helped them find that perfect match.
For her part, Gemma remained skeptical. But she supposed there was enough for a fluffy romantic piece. Enough to satisfy the lovelorn of Seattle into believing that happy endings were possible.
Walking past the Big Z hardware store, she glanced down at her phone as a text came in from Frannie in reply to the one she’d sent as a test.
Frannie: He bought you a phone??!! :-o Now text me a photo of him so I can do an FR on him, and we can lock this thing down for sure.
But, Gemma knew running facial recognition software on a photo of him might tip off someone in research to what she was up to and that might be disastrous. She had no idea who she could trust back at the paper anymore. Except for Frannie.
Gemma: I’ll send a photo for your eyes only. No FR. Promise me you won’t. I can’t risk anyone seeing it.
Frannie: Okay. But at least let me double-check for you. You can’t afford any more chess moves at this end.
Gemma: As soon as I can, I’ll take a photo. Talk later.
She locked her screen and looked up, just as she practically collided with someone.
Holly McGuire neatly dodged her as Gemma gasped an apology.
“Gemma! You know Marietta has laws against reading your cell while walking?”
“Oh, God. They do?”
She laughed. “No. I’m joking. We are actually quite technologically progressive here. But the longer I’m in town, the less I want to be ‘connected’ all the time. Which means I’m less likely to step off the curb into a mud puddle. Where are you heading anyway?”
Relieved, she said, “I was just looking for a place to take a run, actually.”
“Oh, the walking path up by the courthouse is nice. But I’m just about to meet up with the girls for yoga while most of the boys go fishing. Why don’t you join us?”
She wasn’t a fan of yoga. Pilates was more her style. Wrinkling her nose, she said, “I’ve done yoga before…and—”
“Trust me. You’ve never done yoga like this yoga. I guarantee you’ll love it. And the fee is already paid.”
Already paid for her expected guests that is. “But, Holly, I know you have this whole weekend planned to the tee and one more person can throw everything off. Especially the cost.”
Threading her arm around Gemma’s shoulder, she said, “If you must know, though I’m not supposed to tell you, Noah took care of that himself. He insisted, even though that was unnecessary. He told me he wanted you included in the weekend if you wanted to be. So no pressure, but you’re welcome. More than welcome. Personally, I think he has great instincts.”
Stunned, Gemma fingered the cell phone in her hand, knowing getting this story required access. Access Noah himself had just granted her. Instincts? She sighed. What about her own?
An SUV pulled up beside them on the street, driven by Noah’s friend Jase Wheeler, and carrying some of the women she’d seen at the party last night. Olivia and Eve Canaday and a couple of other women she’d met. “C’mon,” Holly urged. “There’s room for you in the car.”
In for a penny…in for a pound. “Okay. I’ll come. Thanks, Holly.”
The women welcomed her, too, and their strong-but-silent-type chauffeur, Jase—aka Cowboy—smiled knowingly at her in the rearview mirror. Instead of heading to a local yoga studio in town, Jase drove them out of town and down a country road.
She wondered about him not joining the men for fishing, but she supposed not everyone loved the sport. Jase, she’d been told, had moved to Marietta a few months ago and was setting up his own construction business in town. The other girls teased him about only coming today knowing someone named Megan would be there and he took the ribbing like a champ.
“Hey, I only came ’cause Maddie challenged me to a yoga duel,” he said, but that argument was thinly veiled by the blush on his cheeks. “And you know I’m always up for a challenge.”
“Whatever you say, Cowboy,” Holly teased.
The others laughed, though Gemma had no idea who this Maddie was they were talking about. But the easy camaraderie between them was something that felt completely outside of Gemma’s experience. She had friends, but mostly work friends now. In fact, her life was mostly work. At home, except for nights out with Frannie, she ran alone, drank wine alone in the evenings and generally avoided contact with most of the people she and Ash had once called friends. After the wedding debacle, she felt too…embarrassed to see them. And gradually the outside couples they’d known had fallen away from her, their newly single friend, and gravitated back to him and Rebecca. Now, she imagined he’d actually campaigned for them.
Work had become her refuge. And now, even that was threatened. By Ash of all people. #CurseHim.
Maybe yoga wasn’t her favorite thing, but at least she was with other human beings who weren’t plotting to murder her career. That was something.
They pulled down a long drive toward a farmhouse and a rather imposing-looking barn, complete with weathered, red siding and a loft, stacked with hay bales. A man was standing in the open door of the loft, tossing one of those bales down to a truck below. Nearby pastures were dotted with cows and another with goats. A few horses grazed companionably amongst them.
“I thought you said we were going to a yoga studio,” she said to Holly as they got out of the car.
“Oh, we are.” She pointed to a wire fence-enclosed paddock where several people had already thrown yoga mats on the neatly trimmed grass. And a small herd of tiny
baby goats romped playfully in their midst. “You’ve never heard of goat yoga?”
*
“So, what about this Gemma chick?” Mick asked Noah, tossing his line expertly into the slow-moving current across the river. The two men stood hip-deep in water a few dozen feet below the others who were fishing upstream. “She seems nice.”
“She is,” he agreed, taking aim with his own line, but fudging the cast. “Damn. I can’t seem to get the rhythm of the toss.”
Mick demonstrated the finger-release timing again. “It’s like pulling the trigger on an AR-15 and letting out your breath at the same time. A little jiggle the wrong way and you lose it. Coordinate and your line lands right where you’re lookin’.”
Plop! Mick’s line found its mark exactly where he’d aimed.
“Show-off.”
Mick laughed. “I’ll admit I have an advantage with all the sweet fishing streams in Georgia, which, I imagine are a bit scarce where you’re workin’ now. By the way, how long you been in the city? And when exactly were you going to tell us you’d moved there?”
“I’m rarely in town. I travel a lot for my job,” he said. Though that was stretching the truth. The last thing he needed was one of them showing up for lunch and him getting recognized somewhere. “In fact, I’ll probably be moving in the next month or two.”
“To where?”
“London, maybe. Or Tokyo.” He had considered doing just that.
“Tokyo?” Mick turned to stare at him. “What the hell are you selling anyway?”
His line got a tug just then and he nearly fell over setting the hook. Distracted, Mick pulled his net from a clip on his hip and talked him through the catch as he reeled the fish in. A beautiful rainbow trout emerged from the water and he smoothed a hand over the slick body.
“What a beauty!” Mick gestured at the men upstream. “Hey, look what the greenhorn caught!” A few whoops and whistles came from the men above.
He wasn’t exactly a greenhorn as a fisherman, though fly-fishing was new to him. But he was a catch and release kind of guy and even as Mick came toward him with the net, he removed the fly hook from the trout’s lip and tossed him gently back in the water.
“Ahhhh,” Mick groaned. “Now that…that’s just…”
“Only fair,” Noah finished. “He let me catch him. I let him go.”
“At a trout farm, that’s fair! Not in the wilds of Montana where those things grow like weeds.”
Noah smiled, tossing his line in again with perfect timing. “I always throw the first one back. There’ll be more.”
“Overconfident,” Mick grunted, then set his line again, too. “I’ve missed you, man.”
“Same here.” The sound of the water sliding by them, rushing over rocks at the shoreline, the buzz of bugs in the trees, seeped into his bones, relaxing him in a way he hadn’t felt in years.
“How are you doin’ these days? You know, with…the war and all?”
Noah knew exactly what he meant. The aftermath of the war was something all of them had dealt with. Or, more accurately, struggled with.
“Good,” he told Mick, though that was his standard answer. Often, a lie. “You?”
“Great. Well…good.” His modification of the answer spoke volumes. “Hey, you knew Cowboy moved here, right?” Mick tossed his line again. “Came up in May when the weather cleared. He’s got the hots for some lady he met here over Christmastime when we came for Tommy’s thing.” The scattering of his ashes that he’d missed. “Did he tell you?”
“No. But that doesn’t surprise me. Not much keeping him in Texas, I guess, what with his brother taking control of their old man’s business and leaving him out in the cold.”
“That’s what he thought, too.” He tossed his line again. “I’m actually considering doing that myself.”
“Moving here?”
“Thinking. Days like this,” he said, inhaling deeply of the clear Montana air. “I seriously think about it. I like Atlanta all right, but nothing’s holding me there either. My folks are gone. BUDs training is kickin’ my little brother’s ass far away. Y’all are my family and now there’s Trey, Holly and Cowboy here. And…uh, I did meet this pretty little thing here last winter…”
Noah slid a sly look his way. “Oh?”
Mick grinned a little wickedly. “It’s complicated. I don’t think I left a good impression.”
He briefly explained the story of how Trey and Holly had become a thing and his part in the whole mess. “It’s funny how being a stand-up guy can actually backfire on you instead. And Emma…well, she just happened to catch me in a moment that might have been…misconstrued.”
“So,” he said, casting his line again. “Clear things up.”
“Easier said than done, my brother.”
Very true. “Some days,” Noah mused, “I think I’ll just get old all on my own. We’re in our thirties already. Is this what you thought your life would look like by now?” There had been a time, for all of them in the war, when the next battle looked more likely than the future did.
“Nope.”
“Me neither. Then again, I’m not sure I had a real picture in my mind.”
“Family?” Mick said. “A house. A dog maybe?”
He wasn’t sure that had ever been in his future. His past had been so screwed up. And his present didn’t seem to belong to him at all. “Maybe none of the above,” he told Mick.
“Yeah. And then somebody like Gemma walks through the door.” Mick kept his eyes on his fishing line.
Noah squinted at the sunlit water. And then somebody like Gemma walks through the door.
*
“Aaand slowly, take the downward-dog position,” intoned the female yoga instructor. “Stretch out that upper back. Lift your hips. Heels down.”
A baby goat hopped onto Gemma’s back and adorably bleated. Gemma collapsed with laughter and rolled over to pet the cute little thing, who climbed happily into her lap for a cuddle. Around her, the others were in various stages of distraction and effort, mingling with the baby goats who had the run of both the mats and the practitioners. Everyone was smiling.
“Aaaand be one with the goats.” The instructor’s liquid voice relaxed her. “This is why they’re here. To pull you from your thoughts. To center you in the moment. And breathe in, and exhale.”
Though she’d never heard of ‘goat yoga’ before, apparently this was a thing. In the country. Where there were goats. The instructor, a middle-aged woman named Laurie, explained that the idea for the yoga studio had been an organic one, springing from her goat cheese operation and her love of teaching yoga. Apparently a successful one. Classes here were booked weeks in advance. “The goats have a calming life force,” she said before demonstrating Surya Namaskara—the sun salutation. “My clients with anxiety and even PTSD find this interaction very helpful.”
Gemma scrubbed her fingers in the goat’s soft fur. An anxiety reliever? Sign me up. Where was this class when her rat-fink fiancé ditched her at the church? And why was she still allowing him to force her into defensive moves all these months later?
“And inhale…and exhale,” Laurie intoned. “Don’t worry if they distract you.”
Right. Breathe.
“Allow worry to drift away.”
Uh-huh. The goat in her lap stood, shook itself, then danced away. She resumed Vriksasana—the tree position, with the sole of her foot on her inner thigh and her hands clasped above her head. She lost her balance and tried again.
“As we center our bodies,” Laurie said from her perfectly executed position, “we center our spirits.”
She supposed her spirit could use a bit of centering.
A few feet away, the woman Jase had come to see, Megan, was arched over a goat who was nibbling at the hem of her T-shirt. And her daughter, Maddie—who was Holly’s niece, and seven or so, with Down syndrome—sat cross-legged beside Jase, who was helping her hold out a handful of nibbles for the baby goats.
Watch
ing the pretty, dark-haired Megan observe Jase’s gentle interaction with her daughter, who clearly loved the animals, made Gemma momentarily forget about how terrible she was at yoga. Certainly wasn’t her imagination that Megan’s eyes went soft at the sight of the two of them together. Gemma smiled, too, thinking she liked Jase. She liked all of them, these friends of Noah’s.
The thought made her breath catch as anxiousness rose in her throat. One of the smallest goats did a joyous little dance on its way to investigate her hair as Gemma folded into the child’s pose. The tiny cat bell around the goat’s neck tinkled as he did a quick nuzzle of her hair before skipping off to explore the other practitioners. Maddie squealed in delight as a goat climbed up her shoulder.
“Isn’t this the best?” Holly whispered from her mat beside Gemma. “In the colder months, she holds class in the barn. I’ve been practicing yoga here with the goats since April once the wedding plans started cranking up.” She put a hand on her pregnant belly. “I’m convinced they’re magical creatures.”
“I must admit, they’re pretty cute,” Gemma agreed, though none of them seemed to have unicorn horns.
Holly chuckled. “Say yes to the goats!”
Olivia and her sister, Eve, who was Holly’s wedding coordinator, both had goats curling up on their bellies as the warm-down began. “Do you think,” Olivia asked the general group, “that we should start raising some goats over at my parents’ place at Lane’s End?”
“If you don’t,” Eve said, “I will. As a bonus, Dad can ditch the lawnmower.”
“Genius angle,” Olivia said. “And you know he and Jaycee can’t refuse the grandkids anything. My little Brady is already gaga about the horses. Goats would put him over the moon.”
Ali Wolfe agreed. “They might even get Carrie out from behind her phone.”
Exactly how many grandkids were in this Canaday family anyway? Gemma wondered, but didn’t want to be nosy and ask.
Sitting up with the calm of a Buddha, Laurie said, “If you all are in the market, I will unfortunately be selling off my goat herd soon. And this farm.” When her statement drew gasps of dismay, she went on. “I was going to mention this sooner, but I’m afraid the goat yoga classes will only keep going until the end of this month. I’m selling and moving down to Texas to take care of my elderly mother.”
Unexpected Hero Page 7
