“I’m going home now, and the next person to bring up Camden Harris or my sex life will live to regret it,” he said, pointing his index finger at each of his friends. “I’m. Not. Interested.” He turned on his heel and started for the door.
“Methinks,” Collin said behind him, and Levi paused.
“He definitely protesteth too much,” James added.
Levi kept walking toward the door. They could think whatever they wanted about Camden, about him, about the possibility of the two of them. They were wrong. Levi didn’t need that kind of crazy in his life. He liked order.
Camden was chaos, he was positive of it.
CHAPTER SIX
CAMDEN WOKE THE next morning with the feel of Levi’s mouth on hers, the smell of him close around her. She stretched, enjoying the sensations in the haze of sleep.
And then sat up straight and knocked the palm of her hand against the side of her head, trying to knock the memory loose. She didn’t want Levi Walters. She didn’t want a rebound relationship. She didn’t want a relationship at all.
What she wanted was to do a good job training Six, to begin rebuilding the dog school with her grandfather, to build a life she could be proud of. A life that didn’t involve primping before mirrors and showing off her assets—especially those she’d padded and taped to appear larger than they actually were—to a panel of judges. One that didn’t include marrying a man simply because her parents—and his—thought it was a good match.
She pushed back the covers and slid out of bed, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her brown hair was mussed from sleep, and in a pair of sleeping shorts with unicorns on them and a gray T-shirt, she looked about twelve. Not at all the kind of woman Levi Walters was likely used to waking up to. Not that she cared. Camden turned toward the door to her adjoining bath rather than the door leading to the hallway and the tantalizing smells of toast and bacon coming from the kitchen. Shower first, then food, then training.
Fifteen minutes later she stepped into Grandmom’s country kitchen with its green-checked wallpaper, dairy cows decorating everything from the pot holders and table runner to the magnets on the refrigerator. Three plates were stacked beside the stove, along with silverware. Grandmom turned a few slices of bacon in the pan, humming a tune Camden didn’t recognize.
“Good morning,” she said. “What can I do to help?”
“You could grab glasses for juice and coffee. Everything else is ready, and Granddad should be back in a second.”
Camden set about her task, filling juice glasses and setting them around the circular oak table and then grabbing coffee mugs from the rack under the upper cabinets. “What’s he up to, Grandmom?”
“Levi stopped in, talking about the rental agreement for the north forty,” she said and began sliding slices of bacon onto plates she pulled from the warming oven.
Camden’s heartbeat sped up at the mention of Levi, and she shook herself. Levi wasn’t here to see her. He was here to talk with Calvin about business. Nothing to get excited about. Still, Camden craned her neck to look for Levi through the kitchen window.
“I heard his four-wheeler take off a few minutes ago.”
Camden snapped back to the kitchen. “I was checking to see if Granddad was coming in,” she said, and Grandmom raised an eyebrow at her. Camden set the coffee mugs down, along with the carafe, and then took her place at the table as the back door opened then closed.
“Smells good,” Granddad said. He moved to the sink to wash his hands before sitting down and heaping scrambled eggs over his bacon. He proceeded to tear apart a piece of toast from another plate and then mixed the concoction up before eating. Camden had never seen another person eat eggs the way Calvin did. She knew all the food ended up mixed up in the stomach, but how Calvin could look at it all like that was beyond her.
Carefully, she put a spoonful of eggs on one side of the square green plate, bacon on another and toast at one corner. Everything together but nothing touching. Perfect.
Calvin grinned at her and shook his head. “Never did get over your fear of foods touching, did you?”
“It isn’t a fear. I just prefer to only taste eggs when I’m eating eggs. Same goes for the bacon and the toast.”
“You eat sandwiches, though.”
Camden forked up a bite of egg and considered the implication. “That’s different. A sandwich is a single entrée. It’s supposed to be all squished together.”
Granddad chuckled. “You going out with Six this morning?”
Camden nodded. “I thought I’d take him to the course first and then maybe hike around. See how he does outside the course setting.”
“Good plan. Dogs can get too used to a course—they need the variety. I was thinking about going over to Joplin Monday morning. There’s a dog sale we could hit, then make our way on to Tulsa for the show on Wednesday,” Calvin said.
Bonita sighed, but there was excitement in her voice and in her eyes. “Tulsa for two and a half days in the Christmas season. It’s going to be crazy.”
“But you could visit that craft store you like instead of ordering stuff online for the church bazaar,” Calvin said, a cajoling note in his voice.
Bonita finished a slice of bacon and then tapped another against her fingers as if counting off something. “True. And since I’ll be spending hours watching dogs herd goats and sheep in a ring, you can spend hours helping me pick out the right ribbons and beads and other supplies for the craft booth. I was just checking and I’m going to need paper clips and craft foam paper and ribbon to finish those bookmarks for the sale on the fifteenth.” Bonita turned to Camden. “Will Levi be joining us?”
Camden choked on her eggs, picked up her coffee mug and gulped down a mouthful, burning the roof of her mouth in the process. What? Levi? Tulsa? No. Not just no but no no no no no. No. “Why,” she began, but her voice sounded as if she’d spent last night screaming at a football game instead of kissing Levi like she’d never kissed another man in her life. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Why would Levi join us?” she asked, fanning her face.
“After last night at the Slope, why wouldn’t he?” Bonita asked innocently. She cocked her head to the side, set her bacon on the plate and picked up her cup of coffee. “I didn’t realize the two of you had been spending time together,” she said over the rim of the mug.
“Now, Bonnie, Cam is capable of picking her own dates. Although that khaki-wearing fella didn’t seem like her type at all,” Granddad added.
This wasn’t happening. She’d never had a dating talk when she was a teen; she wasn’t going to start now. She was twenty-six years old. Perfectly capable of dating whoever she chose. Should she choose to date anyone, that was. And when she did choose, her date wouldn’t be a Levi type. Levi made things too upside down. He wouldn’t be a Grant, either; Grant made things too steady, too predictable.
The man Camden would invite into her life would be a Lent or a Gravi—a man who was nice to look at and who made her stomach do that roller-coaster thing, but who didn’t make her question every other thing in her life.
“I’m not dating or doing anything else with Levi. He was just...helping me out of a sticky situation,” she said. Camden folded her napkin and put it on her empty plate. “No need to invite him to Tulsa.”
“I didn’t realize you were the kind of friends who helped one another out of sticky situations by exchanging bodily fluids. In my day, a woman knew a little more about a man than his name before she kissed him in quite that way.”
Camden’s face burned. She’d kissed Levi—not once, but twice—and Bonita was right. She barely knew the man. In the heat of the moment, with Grant showing up at the town meeting and at the bar, she’d thought she needed a drastic move. Kissing Levi, though, was probably too drastic. Too extreme.
Granddad grunted.
“‘In your day,’ my left foot. Did you or did you not jump off the cattleman’s float to plant a kiss on me in the middle of the Founder’s Day parade?”
“That was different. We went to school together. I happened to live on one side of the lake and you the other, but we weren’t strangers.”
“You’d never said two words to me before that kiss, and we were in a class of less than one hundred people.”
“Still—”
Granddad shook his head, but Camden jumped into the conversation. “You jumped off a float? To kiss Granddad?” This was the first she’d heard of this. Her grandparents were affectionate with each other, but jumping off a float in the middle of a parade? Grandmom had always seemed more reserved than that.
“Of course I did. Hattie Mallard was making eyes at him at the time, and I had to get in there quick before she put the best-looking senior in the whole school under her spell.” Bonita’s gaze was much softer than her voice when it landed on Calvin. “Calvin Harris was quite the catch back then,” she said and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “Still is, as far as I’m concerned.”
Granddad smiled back at her. “And Bonita Walsh is still the prettiest girl in any homeroom,” he said. Grandmom blushed.
“I’m just going to go grab Six,” Camden said, excusing herself from the table. Neither of her grandparents seemed to notice her leaving. That was just fine with her.
Camden pulled a light jacket over her shoulders as she headed for the barn. The sun was just beginning to burn off a bit of fog from the early-morning hours, and the sky was a crisp December blue. Fitting, she supposed, since it was December 1. If she’d gone through with the Thanksgiving wedding, they would just be returning from their honeymoon in Antigua. She’d be at the small office suite in Kansas City this morning, prepping one contestant or another for the holiday season pageants. Deciding on red velvet and fur-trimmed dresses in which her contestants would sing “Silent Night” or “Hallelujah.” But she’d walked away from that—some would say recklessly—and she was now wearing jeans and rain boots ready to train a dog in herding techniques.
It was a life she’d imagined as a young girl, but one she’d put into a box in her mind, chalking it up to wishful thinking.
She glanced back to the farmhouse that hadn’t changed since she was a preteen. Same black shingles on the roof and shutters at the windows. Same green front door that was so seldom used it squeaked when you opened it. Same mudroom where boots and coats were removed, even if said boots weren’t muddy or dirty. Same kitchen, same bedrooms. Same grandparents, people she had never envisioned as reckless at all. They’d always seemed so settled, so in their routine. Like she’d been for most of her life. Now, she wondered how it had taken her more than ten years to finally stand up for what she wanted in her life.
Maybe she wasn’t—
Camden stopped short just outside the barn. The door to the runs was open, but instead of Six’s usually excited barks at her approach, she heard nothing. Camden peered into the kennel area. The run with the older dogs was full; most of them appeared to be snoozing, although one of the collies raised a lazy eyelid as if questioning why she was there.
“Six,” she called, even though she could see the dog’s run was empty. The door was latched securely, but the collie was nowhere to be seen. Camden contemplated the options. Either Six had spontaneously combusted and then cleaned up the mess from the beyond, or he’d escaped the runs. Escape seemed like the more realistic option. The dog had been watching closely as Camden opened and closed the run for several days now, and just yesterday Camden had caught Six trying to climb the chain link of the door.
The question now was where would the dog go? And what were the odds that Camden would find him before he caused havoc somewhere?
It only took a few minutes to hike to the training area, Camden’s first choice for Six’s escape destination, but there were no puppy sounds coming from any of the training apparatus, and no chasing sounds, either. In the distance, a few cattle mooed, but other than that, the chilly morning air was still and quiet.
Wait a second. Cattle were making noise. She never heard the cattle Levi had parked on the forty acres to the north of the training area. If she hadn’t walked that area with Granddad and the dogs a few days before, she wouldn’t have known the cattle were there at all. Knowing Levi rented the land for the cattle when he could just as easily have put the cattle down when they lost their usefulness to the dairy made her heart clutch in her chest.
Levi might not be thrilled that she was back in town, but he wasn’t a monster. No man who created a retirement farm for his old cattle could be a monster.
Camden started for the field where the cattle spent most of their time and, hearing a yip from the same area, quickened her pace.
Darn that silly dog, anyway. He had probably chased another rabbit into the field, only to disturb the cows in the process. Camden felt around in her pocket for the whistle, and when she found it, put it to her mouth, ready to signal Six to stop.
Around the last corner, Camden stopped short. Six hadn’t chased a rabbit into the field, or at least, it wasn’t a rabbit he was trying to catch now. The little dog worked tirelessly around a small grouping of five cows, pushing them closer to one of the fences separating this part of the Harris farm from Walters Ranch next door. The cattle not being herded ignored the dog to either chew their cud or lick a big white salt lick as if it held the last scrapes of fudgy brownie batter. While most of the cattle in the pasture relaxed in the late-autumn sunshine, the few cows Six tried to herd bawled or lowed as he moved them closer and closer to the corner of the fence.
Camden forgot about blowing her whistle and simply watched the little dog work, wondering how he’d figured out what to do. The two of them hadn’t worked on actual herding yet; so far their training had been about learning the signals so that while Six herded, he was also listening for Camden’s instructions. Was it instinct that had him pushing the cows to a corner area? Or was Six simply trying to play with cows who didn’t want to play with him? It was impossible to tell.
For a few more minutes, Camden watched the dog, trying to decide which was going on. When one of the cows started to move away from the corner, Six countered, directing her back with the others. The six of them—five cows and the dog—moved in a kind of dance across the area of pasture. When the cattle veered left, Six countered by pushing them back to the right. The sound of a four-wheeler in the distance brought her back to the pasture, and the fact that she and Six weren’t supposed to be in this area. Hell, if it was Levi on the four-wheeler, he would probably take that even farther and insist Camden wasn’t supposed to be in Slippery Rock at all.
She couldn’t blame him after the way she’d used him the night before. She hadn’t explained why she’d kissed him, hadn’t offered to introduce him to Grant. She hadn’t told him anything about her life before or after arriving in town.
She had barely spoken to him, hardly knew him at all and yet she’d kissed him. Twice now. Kisses that made her think things that simply weren’t possible. Like that maybe the two of them were fated lovers or something. Camden eyed the crisp December sky. Had to be the holiday season talking, although it certainly didn’t feel like a cold Christmas Day right now. The sun was bright in the sky, the fog had burned off the ground and before long she wouldn’t need the light jacket she’d grabbed this morning. Sounds of the four-wheeler grew louder.
Camden blew the whistle, and Six stopped in his tracks to look toward the gate. Letting the whistle fall from her mouth, Camden climbed over the gate separating the area of pasture on Harris land and the portion rented by Levi. When the dog saw the whistle drop, he went back to herding the cows into the corner.
Another of the dairy cattle wandered into the area, and Six joined her with the rest of the tiny herd. Watching the dog’s smooth movements, Camden was proud. S
he couldn’t take any credit for what Six was doing right now, but the dog’s actions reinforced to her that training was how she wanted to spend her time.
She blew the whistle again, but this time Six ignored the sound and continued to work until all six cows were huddled into the corner of the pasture. The animals didn’t seem scared, and once the dog backed off a little, a few of them went back to chewing grass. Six trotted to Camden’s side, looking expectantly at her.
Camden wrinkled her brow. “We’re going to add another rule to your training,” she said, kneeling before the dog and giving him a good scrubbing behind the ears. “The other day we learned not to chase bunnies. Today, the lesson is that we don’t bother the cows. They’re here to enjoy their retirement, not put on a show for you,” she told the dog, who seemed to smile happily at her.
The four-wheeler engine grew louder, and when the cattle in the corner became restless, Six hurried to their area again, herding them back into the corner.
Camden blew her whistle, but the dog either couldn’t hear it over the sound of the four-wheeler engine or he ignored Camden’s instructions. Camden wasn’t sure which was worse—a dog that wouldn’t listen to her or a dog that was hard of hearing.
Levi stopped the recreational vehicle outside the gate and climbed over, an annoyed expression on his face.
A dog that wouldn’t listen, definitely, she decided.
“What the hell are you doing on my land with my cattle?”
Camden crossed her arms over her chest and stepped between Levi and the dog. Not that the dog was paying any attention to the man—he was too busy barking at the cattle in the corner of the pasture for that. “Technically, this is my grandfather’s land. You’re only renting it,” she said.
“Renting to own,” Levi corrected. “And that doesn’t answer my question.”
Briefly, Camden considered pushing Levi, because she didn’t owe him any explanations. Except he had legally rented the land from her grandfather, who seemed to like having Levi as a tenant. Plus, with the dog school not operating, renting out part of the land meant extra money in her grandparents’ bank account.
Christmas in a Small Town Page 12
