Harlequin Heartwarming June 2021 Box Set

by Patricia Johns

  “Now let’s try a birddog pose,” Crystal said, demonstrating by reaching out with her right arm while straightening her left leg. A white kid jumped onto her back and walked along her outstretched leg like a balance beam. The guests laughed.

  Rowan followed Crystal’s instructions, running a hand over Madeleine’s head before stretching her arm forward. Madeleine must have liked it, because she followed the arm and thrust her head under Rowan’s hand for more petting. When Rowan lifted her hand, Madeleine shifted her attention to Becca, rubbing under her outstretched hand like a cat. Becca’s smile reached almost ear to ear.

  Two of the kids began to chase each other among the yoga mats until one jumped onto someone’s back and the second kid followed. Then they jumped onto the next back until they’d traveled all the way across the pavilion. Some of the participants had abandoned any pretense of yoga and were just petting and laughing at the goats.

  “Let’s sit back and move to child pose,” Crystal called.

  Rowan obediently tucked her knees under her and moved her upper body into a forward stretch. A brown kid stepped onto her shoulder and walked up her back as though they’d rehearsed it. The tiny hooves on her back felt surprisingly good and the cuteness factor was off the charts. Rowan smiled. No wonder the tickets sold out so quickly.

  After several more poses, Crystal brought the session to a close, with everyone sitting in comfortable position, eyes closed and breathing deeply. Some of the kids climbed into laps and curled up, but others took it as a challenge, climbing and butting against their new playmates to try to encourage more fun. Rowan had never heard so much laughter during a yoga session, and it felt great. The view of the mountains, the fresh air, the cute kids—nature made yoga so much better.

  She got up, rolled her mat and helped Lauren and her helpers distribute treat cups so that everyone could feed the kids. Becca joined the others in feeding and petting them. Rowan snapped a few photos on her phone, and then offered to take photos for the other participants. After ten minutes or so of play and photo ops, Lauren rounded up the kids and returned them to their mothers in the pen to wait for the next class.

  Gran tapped Rowan’s arm. “The Mat Mates have a table outside the tasting room. Get Becca and join us.”

  “Don’t I need to stay and help set up for the next class?”

  “We scheduled in a one-hour break,” Lauren told her, “to give everyone a chance to hit the tasting room or buy souvenir cheese. Get me an iced tea, would you please? I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Becca was standing next to the goat pen, reaching through the bars to stroke Madeleine’s face. Rowan went to stand beside her. “She likes you.”

  “I like her, too. She’s so cute!”

  “Gran and the ladies have a table. Want to go get a snack and something to drink?”

  “Okay.” Becca gave Madeleine a last pat. As they walked toward the tasting room, she reached for Rowan’s hand. “I like it here.”

  “When I was your age, I used to come here to visit my grandparents. They had cows instead of goats. My grandmother taught me all about cooking and gardening and canning. It was fun.”

  “I wish I had a grandmother.”

  “Well, you can borrow mine. Come on. Let’s get washed up.”

  Between Gran and her five friends, Becca received the full grandparent experience over the next half hour. Linda had brought a new book for her about buried treasure, one of Becca’s favorite themes. Rosemary showed her how to create a crown from some dandelions that had sprung up in a corner of the garden. And after Becca mentioned the matching aprons she and Rowan wore when they cooked together, Gran offered to sew another set. “Get Rowan to bring you to my apartment so you can look through my fabric stash and pick out your favorite.”

  Rowan loved watching her. The day had grown even warmer, and it was nice sitting in the shade, sipping iced tea and chatting. Alice opened a folder and handed Rowan a sheet of paper. “We’ve rounded up a few more sponsors for your auction. The dance academy says they’ll offer a package of lessons, but also that some of their children’s classes are interested in performing if you can manage a stage of some sort. I think Hank at the lumberyard,” she said and tapped on the contact information about halfway down the page, “could set you up with that.”

  “Wow. Excellent.” Rowan skimmed the list. “This is gold. Thank you!”

  As people began arriving for the second yoga session, the party broke up. Lauren took Becca with her to check on the goats while Rowan pitched in to help clear the empty tables and prepare the tasting room for the next onslaught. When she finished, she looked over to watch Becca on a mat between Gran and Rosemary, laughing when a goat tried to chew on Rosemary’s braid. Madeleine hopped over and nuzzled Becca’s face. She giggled and stopped to pet the goat. Madeleine and Becca were two of a kind: shy at first but brimming with love.

  * * *

  ZACK PARKED IN front of the big farmhouse and hopped out of his truck. He was late for dinner because he’d been called in on an emergency, but Rowan had told him not to worry, they understood. He hoped so, because he’d taken the time for a quick shower and change after finishing up at the clinic. He’d been to the farm many times in his professional capacity, of course, but today was different. He wanted to make a good impression.

  The farmhouse felt welcoming. A picket fence surrounded a large lawn, with beds of flowers. Rocking chairs and a table with a checkerboard painted on top tempted passersby to sit on the front porch. He reached for the doorbell, but the door opened and Rowan’s beautiful smile greeted him. “You made it! Come in!”

  “Thanks.” He followed her inside.

  “Perfect timing. We just sat down to dinner. Becca helped Gran snap the beans.” She led him through an archway to a dining room with a long dining table piled with food. An empty place waited for him next to Rowan.

  Becca waved at him from her chair. “Hi, Zack. I helped cook, and I played with goats and did yoga and picked flowers and ate cheese, and I watched them milk the goats and everything.”

  “Cool!” Zack settled into his chair. “Hello, everyone. Sorry, I’m late.”

  “No problem,” Patrick said. “Rowan told us you’d had an emergency.”

  Zack nodded. “A beagle had a disagreement with a porcupine.”

  “Wow, that was a tough lesson,” Rowan said, passing him a bowl of mashed potatoes.

  It had been. It had taken Zack almost two hours to get all the quills out of the dog’s face and feet. “The sad thing is, if my other patients are anything to go by, given the chance, he’ll do it again.” Rowan passed him another platter. “Is that fried chicken? I haven’t had homemade fried chicken in years.” Probably not since his mother moved to Florida.

  Rowan’s grandmother beamed. “Have some green beans.”

  “Thank you.” Noticing Becca watching him, he took a bite. “Yum. These beans are great.”

  Becca looked delighted. “I helped make them!”

  “Wow. Between lessons from Rowan and Mrs. O’Shea, you’re learning to be quite a cook.”

  “What’s this Mrs. O’Shea business? You’ve always called me Bonnie, and Becca calls me Gran. We’re family now.”

  Family. Zack wondered if Rowan had anticipated this when she’d proposed this mock marriage. Would her family be upset when she dissolved the whole thing next year?

  “So, hot one today, huh?” Patrick commented, obviously fishing around for a conversation starter.

  “Sure was. I heard on the radio it was seventy-seven, only two degrees off the record for the day,” Zack told him. Casually, he added, “But it’s a dry heat.”

  Rowan snorted. When Zack turned to look at her, they both burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Patrick asked, but Rowan’s grandmother grinned.

  “Never mind,” Gran told Patrick, chuckling.
“It’s obviously an inside joke between the two of them. One of the joys of marriage.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Rowan pulled into the pickup line for camp. Even though she was ten minutes early, there were several cars ahead, so she would be waiting a while. She got out her phone to note the two food vendors she’d recruited that day, a game and fish processor and a local tapas restaurant that was just getting off the ground. She set a reminder to talk with Patrick about the best way to get power to the booths.

  Her phone signaled an incoming video call. Well, it was only a matter of time. Rowan had gone more than a week without hearing from Mom, and since the silent treatment wasn’t working, Mom was no doubt ready to move on to the next phase. Rowan smoothed her hair and accepted the call. But it wasn’t her mom’s face that appeared on the screen. “Dad!”

  “Hi, Rosebud. Good to see that beautiful face.” There was a reason Dad was a professional diplomat. When he smiled at you, it was easy to feel that you were the most important person in the world.

  “It’s good to see you, too. Did the speech at the trade assembly go well?”

  “I believe so. It was a good audience. Do you have a few minutes?”

  “Yes, but not too many. I’m in my car, waiting for camp to finish so I can pick up two girls and drive them home.”

  “Carpool duty? That’s new.” His mouth quirked up at the corner. “But then, I hear you’ve made quite a few changes lately.”

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  “Your mother is worried.”

  “I know. Are you?”

  “Well, that depends. One of Renee’s biggest concerns is that she inadvertently pushed you into a poor decision.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Honey, I know your mom can be...assertive.”

  Rowan snorted. “That’s one word for it.”

  He smiled. “And you’re the opposite. You’ve always been accommodating.”

  “Again, a kind word. Some would say I’ve been a doormat.”

  “Some might. I wouldn’t.” A fond smile flitted across his face. “Doormat implies weakness, and you’ve never been weak, Rowan. You simply value peace over getting your own way. Do you remember that incident with the two girls at your school in Athens?”

  “Yes, of course.” It was an international school with students from all over the world. When Fiona, an Irish student, had transferred in, one of the girls in Rowan’s class decided to flaunt her alpha status by excluding Fiona and insisting all the other girls follow her lead. Rowan had befriended Fiona instead, which had resulted in the two of them being shunned from most social activities for the rest of the year. “But I didn’t realize you knew about it.”

  “Of course I knew. Your mother was ready to march into the headmistress’s office with a flamethrower. I told her you’d made your choice, and to let you see it through. Do you have any regrets?”

  “I couldn’t let them make Fiona miserable just for sport.” It had been a tough year, but they’d survived. Fiona had gone on to study medicine and now worked in a clinic in Mumbai. They still exchanged the occasional email. “No. No regrets.”

  “I was so proud of you. You don’t go along with others because you’re weak, you do it because you’re strong enough to know what matters. But your mother is afraid that by, shall we say, encouraging you to marry Sutton, she pushed you too far, and that you rebelled by marrying someone you thought she wouldn’t approve of.”

  “She thinks I married Zack out of spite?”

  “Well, it did happen rather suddenly, and it was right on the heels of your broken engagement. Just for the record, I’m glad about that.”

  “You didn’t like Sutton?” She’d never guessed.

  “It’s not that I don’t like him. I just felt you weren’t the priority you should have been in his life.”

  “You never said.”

  “It wasn’t my decision. But now, here you are married to someone I’ve never met. You didn’t even let me walk you down the aisle.” He still smiled, but she detected hurt in his eyes.

  “Oh, Dad, I’m sorry. But you can’t throw stones. I heard a rumor that you proposed to Mom on your second date.”

  “True, but we weren’t married for another year and a half.”

  “That’s just because Mom and Grandmother needed that long to plan the wedding details, down to the thread count of the tablecloths. Admit it—if it had been up to you, you would have eloped, as well.”

  Dad chuckled. “You’re right about that.”

  “You’ll like Zack. He works hard, he loves animals and he’s devoted to his sister. Becca is the main reason we decided to marry so quickly.”

  “Your grandmother told me something about this custody situation.”

  “I love spending time with Becca, and she likes having me around. In fact, she’s asked me to help chaperone her day camp’s end-of-summer overnight campout. Becca’s doing really well with Zack. I’ve never met her mother, but it sounds like she’s not much of a parent. Being married increases Zack’s chances of gaining custody. So, you can tell Mom this isn’t about her.” Not entirely, anyway. “Like you said before, it’s my choice. Let me see it through.”

  “Okay. But...” He gave her a wry smile, “I am your dad. So, let me just say that if you ever find you need help, don’t let pride keep you from asking. Because I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Dad. No regrets.”

  He looked down at his desk and flipped a page in his ever-present day planner. He had never learned to trust an electronic calendar. “I have something I can’t get out of on Friday, but I could carve out a few days next week. Your mother and I could come and meet your new husband.”

  “Oh, um...” Not a good idea. Rowan could fool her mother, but Dad had always been able to read her. If he was around her and Zack as a couple, he’d spot a fake marriage in no time. “This may sound odd, but with Becca and all, I think we need some time to ourselves as a family for a while before we have guests. Can you give me that?”

  The worry lines in his forehead deepened. “Rosebud—”

  “Trust me, Dad.”

  He hesitated, and then nodded. “Okay. But if you need me—”

  “I know where to find you. Say, the car in front of me is moving, so I have to go. Love you.”

  “I love you, too. Goodbye, Rowan.” His image shrank to nothing and disappeared.

  “Bye, Dad,” she whispered. “Thanks.”

  * * *

  ZACK FINISHED UP at the clinic and made his way through the gate behind it. Rowan was picking up the girls, leaving him free to check on the animals in the wildlife center and still get home early, which would give him more time with Becca and Rowan.

  Rowan. Just thinking of her made him smile. It was a different life since she’d moved in. When he walked through the door at the end of the day, he would be greeted with wagging tails, happy faces and delicious smells. When he left for work tomorrow morning, it would be with a kiss. Granted, the kiss was a sham, for Becca’s sake, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy it.

  Tomorrow afternoon was the lawyer’s meeting. That’s when he would announce he was married, and that Becca was thriving under their care. He’d have liked to bring up the idea of custody, too, to sound out Clarissa, but his lawyer advised him to wait until they had their arguments lined up and were ready to formally file for custody, so that he could ask for temporary guardianship at the same time. He was nervous, wondering if Clarissa’s lawyers had any surprises in store, but with Rowan beside him, he felt like he could handle whatever they threw at him.

  He passed the storage shed where they kept the feed, and then stopped and turned back. Was that a new coat of paint? Maggie must have done it. Usually they left maintenance jobs like this for the periodic workdays when they recruited extra volunteers.
He’d have to talk to Maggie, make sure she wasn’t overdoing. The last thing he wanted was to lose his primary volunteer to burnout.

  Hearing voices, he veered off toward the porcupine cage. Becca was there, feeding Puddin carrots. A few feet closer, Maggie was talking to Rowan. “Be sure you wear long sleeves and gloves, and a face mask. If it gets on your skin, it can cause blisters.”

  He waved to Becca and joined Rowan and Maggie. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, hi, Zack. Your wife—” Maggie cast a smile toward Rowan “—painted the storage shed this morning and tomorrow she says she’s going to tackle that patch of cow parsnip growing too close to the trail.”

  “You don’t have to do all that,” Zack protested. “We’ll gather up a work crew in August to take care of things like that.”

  “I wanted to get it done in advance,” Rowan told him, “so everything will look good for the slideshow.”

  “What slideshow?”

  “For the fundraiser. Gran’s friend Alice put me in touch with a photographer who wants to put together a presentation showing the people all the good you do at the wildlife center. His name is—” Rowan checked her phone “—Gordan Malee.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why do you say that?” Rowan asked.

  “Gordan Malee is a famous wildlife photographer. His work is in museums all over the world. I can’t believe he volunteered to help a little nonprofit like us.”

  “Well, I met with him today, and he’s quite enthusiastic. Of course, wildlife is his passion, and he loves that your focus is to get the animals you help back into the wild as quickly as possible.”

  “He gave a major donation after the moose segment on television,” Maggie told Zack. “Didn’t you look over the donor list Jessie gave us last week?”

  “I guess I haven’t gotten around to that.”

  “Well, you have been busy, what with eloping and all.” Maggie grinned and put an arm around Rowan’s shoulders. “Good choice there, by the way. She’s a miracle worker.”