Her Kind of Cowboy

by Charlotte Douglas

  With the key Rand had provided, she let herself in. She’d expected to be overwhelmed with sadness, but was surprised to find that the house enveloped her with pleasant memories, as if Eileen’s loving spirit still resided there and was welcoming her.

  To her own home.

  As many times as Caroline had entered Blackberry Farm, she’d never viewed it through the eyes of ownership. In her entire life, she’d never possessed a place of her own, and, even though her stay would be temporary, for now the house was all hers. With fresh appreciation, she noted the shotgun hall with its gleaming hardwood floor that reached from the front to the back door, obstructed only partly on one side by the staircase that rose to the second story with its multiple bedrooms.

  On her right was the large dining room and behind it, the huge country kitchen. On the left was the spacious front parlor. Behind that, the second parlor had served for the last three decades as Eileen’s bedroom, so she hadn’t had to climb the stairs. It was the kind of house that had been built for a big, boisterous family, but for more than seventy years, Eileen had lived here alone. She’d come to Blackberry Farm as a bride, but her husband had died in World War II, and Eileen had never remarried. She had earned her living from the land, the acres of pasture she’d rented to the Mauneys, the profit from her orchards and the sale of her famous homemade blackberry jellies, jams, syrups and wine at a roadside stand. She’d been known throughout the valley as the Blackberry Lady.

  While Eileen had been a good neighbor and well-loved, she’d had no intimate friends. In recent years, aside from Caroline, her closest relationships had been online in the various chatrooms she’d frequented.

  Caroline stood in the front parlor by the computer that had been Eileen’s connection to the world outside Pleasant Valley. For the first time, the enormity of the old woman’s bequest hit her. This house, with its wraparound porches and two stories filled with spacious rooms, was all hers.

  The irony made her laugh out loud. Finally having her own place to call home, her prevailing thought was to contact Marion Sawyer at her real estate office about putting Blackberry Farm on the market and getting out of—or, more accurately, into—Dodge.

  Caroline glanced around the parlor and bedroom. Eileen, despite her advanced years, had always been as neat as a pin. Unlike many who’d lived through the Great Depression, she’d never been a hoarder or collector. Her rooms were clear of clutter and decorated in a sparse but traditional style, accented by homey touches. A crocheted afghan lay across the back of the sofa, and a handmade quilt covered the large four-poster bed, its feather pillows topped with a needlepoint throw pillow.

  In many ways, for the past several years, Blackberry Farm had been more welcoming and familiar than Caroline’s mother’s house, where strangers came and went on a regular basis. When Caroline left Pleasant Valley, she would miss Eileen’s place far more than the bed-and-breakfast.

  But Caroline wasn’t going anywhere soon if she didn’t get busy. She hurried into the country kitchen and began an inspection of the cupboards and refrigerator. Sitting at the kitchen table, making a grocery list, she heard a vehicle head up the road from the highway.

  She strode to the living room window and peeked out. A pickup truck with the Archer Farm logo on the door parked behind her car, and Jack Hager, Archer Farm’s resident psychologist, hopped out and headed up the front walk. With his hair the color of cornsilk, pale blue eyes and the gold-rimmed glasses he sometimes wore, Gofer, as his friends called him, would have looked like a college professor—except for the rest of him. In his fitted olive-drab T-shirt, shorts and work boots, the uniform of Archer Farm, he looked one-hundred-and-ten percent United States Marine.

  Caroline stepped onto the front porch to greet him.

  “I was hoping you’d still be here,” he said. “Brynn said you were stopping by to get ready for your new tenant.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  He waved an accordion folder in his right hand. “Some papers to sign. Just a formality.”

  “Papers?”

  “For Hannah’s guardianship. I have to turn them in to social services before Hannah arrives on Monday.”

  Caroline racked her brain for a way to break the news that she wasn’t taking Hannah. Gofer looked so pleased, she hated to let him down standing on the front walk. “It’s hot out. How about a glass of tea?”

  “You don’t have to twist my arm. The boys and I have been working hard, taking down tables and chairs from the luncheon at River Walk and carting them back to the church. It’s hot enough in town to fry an egg on the pavement.”

  He followed her into the house and down the hall to the kitchen. Still trying to decide how to tell him she couldn’t take Hannah, Caroline filled the teakettle and set it on the gas burner with easy familiarity. She knew Eileen’s kitchen as well as her mother’s. While she placed tea bags in a pot and took sugar from the cabinet, Gofer sat at the table and removed a sheaf of papers from his folder.

  She couldn’t help thinking how relaxed she felt with him, even though he was drop-dead handsome. When she was around Gofer, her heart rate didn’t increase and her palms didn’t sweat. Like most of the other men she knew in the valley, Gofer seemed like an older brother, a man she admired and regarded with affection. Unlike Ethan Garrison in whose presence she felt like an awkward adolescent.

  “How’d you get the name Gofer?” she asked, stalling for time.

  “My Marine buddies christened me. My favorite expression is ‘go for broke,’ which they shortened to Gofer.”

  “Funny saying for a psychologist.”

  “I don’t know.” He cocked his head, and late afternoon sunlight glinted off the lenses of his glasses. “A lot of people miss out on a great deal in life because they don’t have the courage to go after what they want. A good counselor can help them recognize that.”

  He’d given her the opportunity she’d been looking for. “Eileen’s given me the chance to live my dream.”

  “Blackberry Farm?”

  Caroline nodded. “But not in the way you think. I’m going to sell the place and use the money to move out west.”

  He looked surprised. “Not soon, I hope.”

  “I’m planning to leave in a couple of weeks.”

  “But what about Hannah?”

  “I’ll help you locate another foster family.”

  His expression bleak, Gofer shook his head. “Not possible.”

  “Never thought I’d hear a Marine utter those words,” Caroline said with a smile. “Don’t you guys do the impossible every day?”

  He didn’t return her smile. “Hannah’s mother died before Easter. I’ve been searching for months for an appropriate foster family. I’d hit a dead end when Eileen stepped forward. Her age was problematic, but her proximity to the farm and Daniel was a real plus. If you don’t take Hannah, it could be months again before I find someone.”

  “Months? But I’m leaving sooner than that.”

  “For an adult, months pass quickly.” He opened the folder, removed a photograph and slid it across the table toward her. “But months can seem like years when you’re nine, especially when you’ve recently lost your mother and your only living relative is miles away.”

  With reluctance Caroline picked up the color photograph. A tiny girl, with looks that central casting for a production of Annie would love, stared back at her. Hannah had a gamin face, a riot of short red curls, wide blue eyes and an aura of dejection and loss that clutched at
Caroline’s heart. “She’s precious, but she looks so sad.”

  “Look at those eyes. She’s experienced too much unhappiness for one so young. Deserted as an infant by her father, raised by her alcoholic mother, an orphan at nine. The girl’s seen too much turmoil and heartache and not enough love.”

  Caroline couldn’t drag her gaze from the little girl’s photo. “Those same circumstances got her brother into trouble.”

  Gofer nodded. “I’ll admit that the odds are against Hannah. Without the right guidance and love, she’ll end up a statistic and either in juvenile detention or abused, an unwed mother, a thief, a prostitute, hooked on drugs—the dire possibilities are endless.”

  Caroline couldn’t match any of the horrible outcomes Gofer was predicting with the compelling innocence in the little girl’s face. She set down the photo, poured boiling water over the tea bags, and filled two glasses to the brim with ice. The little girl with the desolate expression had awakened strong maternal feelings Caroline hadn’t known she possessed. Those emotions vied with her impatience to fulfill her dream.

  “What if I do take her? I don’t plan to stay in the valley long. Being bounced from one home to another has to be traumatic for a kid. Isn’t it better to leave her where she is until you can find a permanent place?”

  Gofer leaned back in his chair, folded his muscular arms over his chest and shot her a grim look. “She’s in a foster home in Greenville with seven other children. Not exactly the best of circumstances for a grieving child, or any child, for that matter.”

  Caroline added sugar to the hot tea, stirred it, then poured the steaming mixture over ice in the glasses and handed one to Gofer. All the while, Hannah’s sorrowful eyes, her photo burned indelibly into Caroline’s brain, confronted her.

  I know you’ll do the right thing, dear, Eileen’s voice echoed again in her mind.

  If only I knew what the right thing was.

  Caroline took her glass of tea and sat across the broad pine table from the psychologist. “I’m leaving the valley, if not in a few weeks, at least in a month or so. It seems cruel to take Hannah for such a short while, then move her again.”

  He drank his tea, then nodded. “On the other hand, while you’re here, she’d have your undivided attention, she’d be close to her brother, and she’d be settling into a caring community where she’d remain after you leave.”

  “So you’re saying I should take her?”

  Gofer smiled and shook his head. “This is your decision.”

  “But you’re a psychologist. I thought you guys knew all the answers.”

  “A good counselor doesn’t tell people what to do. He helps them explore their options.”

  Caroline stripped off her bandanna and pushed her fingers through her hair. “Everything—Eileen’s death, her bequest, including a new tenant and a foster child—it’s all happening too fast. I’m in over my head and going under for the last time.”

  Gofer leaned forward, his expression kind, his eyes earnest behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “I will give you one piece of advice.”

  “Please. I need all the help I can get.”

  “Don’t decide anything now. Sleep on it tonight.”

  Caroline managed a weak grin. After she informed her mother that she was moving out tomorrow, she doubted she’d get any sleep tonight at all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CAROLINE TUCKED the sack of groceries under her arm and struggled to unlock the front door of the farmhouse with her other hand. Her premonition of a sleepless night had proved to be dead-on. Her brain felt fogged, her feet heavy as lead, and her nerves frazzled over her dilemma of what to do about Blackberry Farm, Hannah and one too-handsome former firefighter. Not to mention the monumental hissy fit her mother had thrown at Caroline’s announcement of moving out. For two cents, she’d chuck her responsibilities, climb into her ancient Toyota and head west—except, in its present state, the car probably wouldn’t make it through Tennessee.

  “Want some help?” a deep voice boomed behind her.

  Startled, she lost her grip on the grocery bag. It hit the porch floor, ripped down one side, and scattered its contents across the painted boards.

  Clutching her pounding heart, she whirled to find Ethan on his knees, scurrying after a lemon before it rolled off the edge of the porch.

  “Sorry,” he called over his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She felt like an idiot. If she hadn’t been so stressed-out after the confrontation with her mother and a night without sleep, maybe she wouldn’t have reacted so skittishly. Recognizing her handsome tenant, however, didn’t calm her nerves.

  “I didn’t hear your truck,” she said, breathing deep and hoping for her pulse to slow. “You came out of nowhere and scared me to death.”

  He snagged the last of the items, tucked them into the remnants of the sack, and pushed to his feet. His smile was 250-watt and apologetic. “My truck’s back at Orchard Cottage.”

  “Engine trouble? I can call Jay-Jay at the garage.”

  He shook his head. “I’m on foot by choice. Thought I’d take a stroll and get a look around the place while I’m waiting for my furniture. I’ve never seen so many blackberries. They’re growing like kudzu along every fence. Looks like they’re almost ripe.”

  She took the bag of groceries he held. “Eileen always loved blackberry-picking. Said it was her favorite time of year.”

  He glanced over his shoulder toward her parked car and nodded toward her open trunk. “Need a hand?”

  An automatic no sprang to her lips, but she bit it back. She was dead tired, her back ached from hauling boxes downstairs from her bedroom and into the car, and she’d be foolish not to take advantage of the muscle being offered.

  “Thanks.”

  He sprinted down the porch steps, glanced into the trunk, then back at her. “Does everything come inside?”

  She hesitated. Moving all her belongings into the farmhouse seemed too much like a long-term commitment, but she had yet to decide what she planned to do.

  “Put the boxes of books in the living room, please.” She would leave them packed, ready for the next move. “Clothes go upstairs in the first bedroom on the left.”

  She wouldn’t use Eileen’s bedroom but one of the upstairs rooms. If Hannah came, Caroline couldn’t make her sleep in a room on a floor all by herself. The child would be frightened enough in the big, strange house without being isolated on the second story. She’d want Caroline close by.

  Caroline carried the groceries into the kitchen and began putting them away. She couldn’t believe she was considering taking the little girl in, even for a short time. But Hannah’s picture, left prominently by Gofer in the middle of the pine table, stared up at her, the child’s unhappiness almost palpable. Who wouldn’t want to put a smile on that precious face?

  Caroline remembered her own childhood, the happy carefree years filled with the love of her parents. Agnes had been a better mother, warmer, less anxious and less self-centered, before her husband’s death. In addition, Caroline had enjoyed the companionship of good friends and the feelings of kinship and belonging in the close-knit community of Pleasant Valley. She’d never been scared, never gone hungry, never been abandoned by her parents. Sure, she’d had to take control after her father died, when her mother had fallen apart and hadn’t been able to put the pieces back together. But by that time, Caroline had been an adult with the self-confidence and skills nee
ded to face the task.

  How prepared was a nine-year-old to face life with no one she could lean on, no one to protect her, no one to offer hugs and kisses and assurances that the world wasn’t such a terrible place?

  “All done.” Ethan stood in the doorway.

  Caroline blinked. How long had she been standing there, lost in thought? “You unloaded the entire car?”

  “Except for the spare tire and the jack,” he said with a grin.

  And the man hadn’t even broken a sweat. In a navy blue T-shirt emblazoned in gold with BCFD, he looked as crisp and cool as if it were late October instead of a ninety-degree late June day.

  “Thanks for your help. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Anything cold would be good.”

  Caroline removed the pitcher of tea she’d made yesterday from the refrigerator, filled two glasses with ice, and added the golden liquid.

  Ethan stepped inside the kitchen to take the glass she offered, and his gaze fell on the photograph in the center of the table.

  “Who’s this?”

  “A long story.”

  He shrugged. “I’m just waiting for the moving van to show up. A long story would fill the time.”

  Caroline started to protest that she had a million things to do, then reconsidered. Ethan could lend an objective ear, and she could use all the advice she could get. Someone somewhere had to have an answer to the conundrum that faced her.

  * * *

  WITH A GLASS of iced tea in hand, Ethan followed Caroline onto the broad front porch, where, as she’d promised, the shade of the overhang and a cool breeze blowing off the mountains provided relief from the summer heat. She settled into the old-fashioned porch swing, and, as much as he wanted to sit beside her, he took the nearest white rocker with its green-and-white gingham cushion.