How To Rescue A Family (Furever Yours Book 2)

by Teri Wilson

  When she’d left Ryan, Dillon and the Brewsters behind at the adoption tent, she hadn’t been headed anywhere in particular. The line she’d given them about announcing the winner of the cook-off had been a white lie. As the event judge, Ryan had already made his decision, but Amanda wasn’t scheduled to present the winner with the trophy for another forty-five minutes. She’d just needed to get away, and since Mollie’s dog training stall was clear on the other side of the Granary, it seemed as good a place to stop as any.

  Plus, she could use a friendly face right now, and Mollie’s definitely fit the bill.

  “I’m fine.” Amanda shrugged and wrapped her arms around her middle.

  Hold it together. You’re in charge of this entire event. You can fall apart tonight after you get home.

  Mollie’s gaze narrowed. “Are you sure? You look a little freaked out and you were running past here almost as quickly as the dog I was trying to catch this morning.”

  Amanda gasped. “Oh, was it a scruffy gray dog? Smallish?”

  “Yeah. How did you know?” Mollie glanced at her booth, where Zeke Harper was handing brochures to people interested in her training classes.

  “Because I’ve seen that dog three times now. I chased him down Main Street the other day. He’s quick.”

  “Right,” Mollie said, gaze lingering on Zeke. “Well, I left some dry dog food out on my property. Hopefully he’ll come back and I can gain his trust. If not, I’ll set out a humane trap and we can get him cleaned up and placed in a home.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” If anyone could get her hands on the stray, it was Mollie. She was great with animals—the best, really.

  She had such a good rapport with them, in fact, that she’d confided in Amanda a time or two that she wished she got along as well with people as she did with dogs—especially Zeke Harper.

  Not that they weren’t friendly with one another. They were too friendly, which was precisely the problem. Zeke thought the world of Mollie, the younger sister of his late best friend. The trouble was that now that Patrick was gone, he seemed to think it was his job to step into the role of big brother rather than love interest.

  As if on cue, Zeke looked up and shot Mollie a thumbs up. She grinned at him, but he’d already redirected his attention toward a pretty blonde who’d stopped by the booth.

  Mollie sighed. “He’ll never see me as anything but a little sister, will he?”

  Doubtful. Their history was...complicated, for lack of a better word. And Amanda had a newfound appreciation for just how miserable complicated felt. “I don’t know, but you deserve someone who really appreciates you. Let me set you up with somebody.”

  Mollie rolled her eyes. “Who with? I’m pretty sure I know every male in Spring Forest, dogs included.”

  “Fair point.” Amanda laughed, but her smile died on her lips at Mollie’s next statement.

  “I guess there’s the new grumpy guy at the paper, though. What’s his name again? Ryan something?”

  “Carter,” she said quietly. “Ryan Carter.”

  “Why do you sound so weird all of a sudden?” Then her eyes widened and her mouth curved into a grin. “I see. You like him, don’t you?”

  Amanda’s cheeks blazed with heat.

  Mollie nodded. “Yep, I’m right. I can’t believe I forgot how much you love the quietly cranky type. He’s basically Tucker in human form. You’re perfect for each other.”

  Perfectly hopeless, maybe.

  She forced a smile and realized she’d been doing that a lot lately. “On that note, I need to go announce our winner.”

  “Sure you do.” Mollie winked.

  Amanda gave her a final wave before she headed toward the food vendors, but Mollie was too busy mooning over Zeke to notice.

  She sighed. Mollie had known Zeke for years. Was that where Amanda’s crush on Ryan was headed? Toward months, maybe even years, of heartbreak?

  No, thank you. She couldn’t do it. She should probably just keep her distance from him from now on. Surely she’d get her head out of the clouds eventually. If anything, maybe she could manage to convince everyone that she didn’t have a thing for cranky members of the opposite sex—her devotion to Tucker notwithstanding. If she truly found grouchiness sexy, she’d have probably ended up with Cade Battle, co-owner of Battle Lands Farm, where she liked to buy grass-fed beef and free-range eggs for the Grille. Cade ran the farm along with his brother and father, who seemed like truly lovely people. Somehow the niceness gene must have skipped Cade because he didn’t seem to possess a personable bone in his body.

  The Whitaker sisters seemed to adore him, though, much to Amanda’s mystification. As the closest neighbor to their farmhouse, he’d helped them out many times, so Amanda had been able to twist his arm to get him to show up today to sell produce with his dad. Their booth was on the way to the cook-off area, so when she walked past, she gave Cade a flirty little wave, just to test Mollie’s theory.

  He frowned and refused to wave back. No shocker there. What’s more, Amanda didn’t feel even the slightest flicker of attraction. Ha! She knew she didn’t have some weird attraction toward distant, brooding men.

  Just one distant, brooding man.

  Her throat clenched. Why did everything always seem to come back to Ryan Carter?

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that question, and luckily, she wasn’t forced to dwell on it any further because a tall, curvy woman with a huge smile on her face was headed her way, waving enthusiastically.

  “Amanda?” she said, bouncing toward her. “Amanda Sylvester? That’s you, right?”

  Amanda nodded. “The one and only.”

  “I’m Rebekah Taylor, the new shelter manager out at Furever Paws. Maybe Birdie and Bunny mentioned me?”

  “They did. They’re so excited to have you.” Birdie and Bunny had hired Rebekah to replace their former manager, who’d moved to Raleigh shortly before the tornado swept through town, but she’d had to give two weeks’ notice at her former job before starting at Furever Paws.

  Amanda winced. “We’re all just so sorry you’re starting when the shelter is such a mess. Hopefully we’ll raise enough money today to put a dent in the bills for repairs.”

  “That’s why I came to find you. I tried to catch up with you over at the adoption tent, but one minute you were there, and the next minute you weren’t.” She glanced toward the adoption area, and even though Amanda tried her best not to follow her gaze, she couldn’t help it. But a single glance was all it took to confirm what she already knew—Ryan and Dillon were gone. “Anyway, I’ve been keeping a running tally of the money coming in. Between ticket sales, the barbecue cook-off, the other food booths, the big raffle and silent auction, plus the games and donations, the event has taken in just over twenty thousand dollars so far.”

  Amanda’s breath caught in her throat. “Are you sure? If that’s true, we’ve raised enough to fix the storm damage.”

  “I know. You did it, girl!” Rebekah threw her arms around Amanda, and Amanda hugged her back.

  Tears welled in her eyes. Finally, something good had happened.

  Sometimes it seemed as if the tornado had swept through town and turned everything in Amanda’s life upside down. She couldn’t seem to get anything back on track. But at least Birdie and Bunny could fix their roof and the animals at Furever Paws would have a clean, dry place to stay. The entire town had come together to help, and they’d done it. They’d saved the shelter.

  Amanda squeezed her eyes closed tight, but it was no use. She was crying in earnest now, and even though she had every reason to be thrilled, she couldn’t quite tell if her tears were happy ones or if they were sad tears.

  Somewhere deep down, she suspected they were both.

  * * *

  The following day, Ryan went for a run on the treadmill in the room he’d set
up as his home office, just as he always did first thing in the morning. Then he took a shower and got dressed while Tucker ran off with his dirty socks, which had also become a regular part of his morning routine.

  Dillon slept in, as he usually did on Sunday mornings, but Ryan kept a constant eye on the clock to make sure he’d be ready by seven in case Amanda dropped by for their usual dog training session.

  He hadn’t heard a word from her since their awkward encounter with Finch and Annabelle at the cook-off the day before. Granted, he hadn’t called her, either. But he’d spent most of the afternoon and evening trying to convince his former in-laws that Dillon was doing fine in Spring Forest. More than fine, actually. Since they’d adopted Tucker, Dillon had been thriving.

  Ryan had driven them past Dillon’s school and the park where they liked to take Tucker for walks. He’d shown them the crayon drawings Dillon had brought home from class. They were whimsical, colorful depictions of the things that mattered most to him in this new place they called home—Tucker curled into a ball on his dog bed, Dillon’s dinosaur toy, Ryan holding him tight in the bathtub as a tornado raged outside the house. That last one put a lump in Ryan’s throat every time he saw it. Not only because it reminded him of the very real danger they’d faced the night of the storm, but because for possibly the first time ever, he’d been there when his son really needed him. Ryan had never been a star player in any of Dillon’s crayon drawings in Washington.

  Now he was. And that meant more to him than any of the Pulitzers he’d won during his tenure at the Post.

  His in-laws hadn’t been overtly impressed with any of it, though. They’d sat quietly through Ryan’s tour and politely refused his suggestion that they stop by the Grille for dinner once the barbecue cook-off had ended and the businesses up and down Main Street reopened. But nor had they been as openly hostile as they’d acted at the fundraiser. It wasn’t exactly a cause for celebration, but Ryan took his victories where he could get them.

  Everything was going to be fine. Now that Finch and Annabelle had seen Dillon—now that they’d heard him speak—they’d stop worrying so much. Ryan had offered to let them sleep in his bedroom while he took the couch, but didn’t argue when they’d insisted on driving to Raleigh and spending the night in a hotel.

  And that was great because he desperately hoped to see Amanda on his doorstep, bright and early, just like always. She’d obviously been rattled by the way Finch and Annabelle had acted, and he couldn’t blame her. Ryan hadn’t exactly behaved like a gentleman either. Seeing them had been such a shock that he’d been stunned into silence as they’d railed against Spring Forest, against her.

  He wanted...needed...to make things right, so he did the only thing he figured might do the trick. He decided to make her breakfast.

  She was always cooking for him and Dillon, not because he’d asked her to, but because it was her way of showing she cared. But no one ever cooked for her, and it was time that changed.

  The only breakfast dish he might be able to pull off with any success was pancakes. By some stroke of luck, he had a box of Bisquick in the cabinet and a bottle of maple syrup in the fridge that he kept on hand for Dillon’s frozen waffles. By quarter to seven, he’d managed to mix up the batter. At six fifty, he flipped the first pancake over in the pan.

  The initial attempt wasn’t pretty. The pancake came out misshapen, raw in the center and nearly black on the outside. But each one improved just a little bit more, and by seven o’clock he’d successfully plated a short stack that seemed edible.

  Ryan set the pancakes in the center of the kitchen table alongside the syrup, which he’d remembered to warm in the microwave, and a sinking feeling came over him when he realized the time was now five after seven. On any other day, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Sometimes Amanda ran late. But he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d messed things up so badly that she wasn’t coming back.

  He closed his eyes and gripped the edge of the table.

  Please.

  His heart thudded dully in his chest as the minutes ticked by, and right when he was about to give up hope, the doorbell rang.

  “Coming.” He flew to the door, ready to apologize. Ready to tell her he’d meant the things he couldn’t quite articulate the day before. He wanted her in his life, not just as a friend but as something more. If she wanted that too, great. Perfect. But if she didn’t, he was willing to take whatever he could get.

  He just couldn’t face the thought of never seeing her again.

  “Surprise. I cooked breakfast.” He felt like a lovesick teenager as he swung the door open.

  But the light, heady sensation was replaced by confusion when he realized the person standing on his welcome mat wasn’t Amanda, after all. Nor was it one of his in-laws. It was a young man he’d never seen before—twentyish maybe, with a beard and black-rimmed glasses.

  Ryan frowned. “I think you’ve got the wrong address.”

  Why would a stranger be ringing his bell at this early hour? Was door-to-door solicitation even a thing anymore?

  “Ryan Carter?” The young man arched a brow.

  “Yes.” Ryan nodded, but the second the word left his mouth, bile rose to the back of his throat.

  Something wasn’t right.

  The stranger handed him an envelope. “You’ve been served.”

  Ryan’s grip began to tremble violently as he watched the stranger walk down the sidewalk, climb into a beat-up Volkswagen van and drive away. Something was definitely wrong. Very, very wrong.

  He stared at the manila envelope. He knew without a doubt what was inside—notice of a lawsuit. He’d been served with enough cease-and-desist motions at The Washington Post to know what had just happened. Politicians and their ilk were quite litigious, probably because most of them had been practicing lawyers before entering public office.

  This didn’t have anything to do with a story, though. He hadn’t written a thing for The Spring Forest Chronicle that would anger anyone to this degree.

  Still, he clung to hope that there was a simple explanation. He grabbed onto the envelope so hard that he clawed it open instead of gently lifting the flap. But one look at the document inside confirmed his deepest fear, his absolute darkest nightmare.

  Motion to Modify Custody of Dillon Carter.

  Finch and Annabelle were going to try to take away his son.

  Chapter Eleven

  Amanda positioned her phone over the plate on the Grille’s stainless steel kitchen counter and snapped a picture. She took a few more, just to be safe, zooming in to capture the texture of the food and minimizing the shadows as best she could.

  As she scrolled through her image library to choose the one that was the most Instagram-worthy, Paul abandoned his post at the fry station to peer over her shoulder.

  “That one looks good.” He pointed to the picture Amanda was already leaning toward—an aerial shot of the plate. The bird’s-eye view pictures always ended up being her favorites. “But can I ask what on earth you’re doing?”

  Instinct told her to click her phone off, shove it in the pocket of her apron and fake a reason to go up front and check on Belle and the other servers in the dining room. No one in her family knew about her Instagram account. She couldn’t even get her parents on board with adding a few new recipes to the menu. If they knew about the lofty catering goals she had for the Grille, they’d think she’d lost her mind. When was she supposed to do something like cater a wedding when she had to run the diner? Since her mom and dad had retired to help with the grandkids, they’d come to rely on her to keep the family business running smoothly. But they still liked to be involved, even more so since Amanda’s grandmother passed away last year. Amanda’s mom had grown up working alongside her mother at the Grille, and keeping the restaurant exactly the same as she remembered it gave her a great sense of comfort. Amanda had learned that l
esson the hard way when she’d ordered napkins in a new color and her mom had nearly cried when she’d seen them.

  But she couldn’t lie to Paul. He’d been so great the past few days. If he hadn’t stepped up to help her out during his vacation, there’s no way she would have been able to give the fundraiser the attention it needed to make enough money to cover all the storm damage at Furever Paws. So she took a deep breath, tapped her Instagram icon and held up her iPhone for inspection.

  He took the cell from her hand and quietly clicked on a few of the individual pictures while Amanda’s heart lodged in her throat. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  When it seemed as if he’d studied every image on the page, he finally looked up. A huge smile spread across his face. “These are fantastic, sis.”

  She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Thanks.”

  “The recipes are so creative—classic Southern dishes with an upmarket twist.” He handed her the phone and pointed at the dish on the counter. “What’s this one?”

  “Crostini topped with green beans, caramelized onions and bacon.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “So basically a fancy version of traditional green bean casserole.”

  “Exactly, only as an appetizer.” She pushed the plate toward him. “Try one.”

  He popped one of the tiny pieces of toast in his mouth and let out a moan as he chewed. “My God, sis. That’s delicious.”

  “Thank you.” She beamed.

  “What are you planning on doing with all of these lip-smacking creations? Are you writing a cookbook or something?”

  “No.” But that wasn’t such a terrible idea. “I was hoping to eventually talk Mom and Dad into letting me start a catering offshoot of the Grille. We could do local weddings and maybe even branch out and cater some of the high-end parties in Raleigh. What do you think?”

  He snagged another crostini and said, “I think it’s a great idea, but you know your folks will never go for it. Especially your mom. She’s all about keeping the Grille the same and honoring family tradition.”