A Family for the Farmer (10 page)

Well, that was an understatement. “People can disappoint you.” He watched her expression carefully. They were treading on delicate ground.

“That's kind of the story of my life. But you've never disappointed me, and it isn't fair for me to treat you as if you have. Or will. So, I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry about it. I never took it personally.” He smiled encouragingly at her, trying to ease the concern he saw lingering in her eyes. “Although feel free to apologize to me any time if it involves a visit and some more of this bread.”

“Do you really like it?” She looked shy and hopeful, and he felt his heart constrict a notch or two.

“You ask crazy questions.” He helped himself to another piece.

“I have a reason for asking. I'm hoping we can work out a deal.”

“Does this deal involve you cooking for me? Because if it does, I like it already.”

“It does.” She took a deep breath. “You're right. I'm not going to be able to handle the farm by myself. I really did think I'd learned enough during the summers I spent with Grandma to skate by until September, but I'm already in over my head.”

“The simple life's not so simple.”

“Exactly. So, I really need your help.” Abel started to speak, but she held up her hand. “Let me finish, okay?”

“Okay.” It looked like she had a whole speech planned out. He'd let her have her say. He took another bite of the sweet bread and settled in for the duration.

“The problem is I'm short on cash, and Grandma's funds won't be available to me until the end of the summer. No,” she said when Abel tried to interrupt again. “Let me get this out. I know you'll say you're willing to work for free. That's nice of you, but I can't accept it.”

“Well, I've got my own reasons for wanting to help you out, Emily. You know what kind of reputation my family has around Pine Valley. Folks are going to think I conned your grandma into this deal.”

Emily's mind flashed back to Bailey Quinn's comment, and she tilted up her chin. “Nobody who really knew my grandmother will believe that for a minute.” She smiled. “Besides, you wouldn't let somebody work for you for free, would you?”

She had him there. “All right. We've laid out our problem well enough. Do you think you've found us a way around it?”

“Well, I was praying about it this morning, and I had an idea. Grandma has a pantry and a cellar both stuffed full of food. You know how she was. If it sat still long enough, she either canned it, froze it or dehydrated it. Putting up her harvest was the only thing she actually liked doing in the kitchen.”

He laughed. “True.”

Emily nodded. “And you told me the other day that you liked anything that you didn't have to cook yourself.”

“Also true.” He liked where this was going.

“So I thought maybe we could swap meals for chores. I could fix you a good, home-cooked supper every evening in exchange for your help. And I could send you home with plenty of baked goods for breakfast, too. If you're willing, that is.”

He was perfectly happy to do her chores for nothing, and it was more than just his worry over what people were saying. He liked working at Goosefeather. He always had. He understood her wanting to trade it out, though, because he'd have felt the same way in her place. She was finally talking some sense.

Her idea was fine with him. He kind of liked the prospect of sitting across a table from Emily and the twins every evening, and the fact that she was so handy in the kitchen sweetened the deal even more. “I should warn you. I eat a lot.”

She laughed. “I cook a lot, so we should be okay there. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal.” He brushed crumbs off his fingers and held out his hand. She took it and gave it a brief shake, her dainty hand lost in his big one. He grinned at her. “Well, since you've already fed me breakfast today, it looks like I'm on the clock. What do you need me to do?”

“Mama needs you to go to the feed store with us so you can tell us what to buy.” Paul walked over, his little face serious. “We're only used to buying people food.” The little boy had carefully replaced the chessmen on the board, and Abel could see that every piece had been put back just where it went.

“All right. We'll go right now. We can take my truck. It'll make loading and unloading a lot easier.” He didn't think there was any way they could load the feed they needed in the trunk of that tiny car Emily was driving, and the way the thing sputtered and groaned, Abel was afraid to tax it with any added weight. He made a mental note to take a look at the engine and see if he could tune it up a little. Emily was a mother with young kids, and she needed a reliable vehicle. The idea of a pretty woman like Emily stuck on the side of the road, especially up around Atlanta, made his skin crawl.

“Oh, no.” Emily looked uneasy. “I don't expect you to go now. You're working. We don't want to interrupt you. I mean, more than we already have.”

“Mr. Abel likes being interrupted. He said so.” Phoebe was holding a small carving of a fat little hen up to the light. “Can I have this one? I like it.”

“Phoebe!” Emily sounded horrified, but Abel laughed.

“You can. If you promise to help your mama around the farm without fussing, I'll make you a whole flock of chickens if you want them.”

“I'll try.” Phoebe looked doubtful, but she crammed the little hen in her shorts pocket and nodded. “But I don't want just chickies. I want lotsa animals.”

“Fair enough. And, Paul, if you'll do the same, that chess set can be yours at the end of the summer.”

“Abel, that's too much! You don't have to...” Emily trailed off, looking at the joy shining on her son's face. The worry lines on her forehead softened a little. “Well. All right. Thank you, Abel. That's very generous of you. Paul has wanted a chess set of his own for some time now.”

In Abel's opinion, any five-year-old boy who hankered after chess sets should have one. “Well, that works out fine, then. Do we have a deal, Paul?”

“Yes, sir! That's the best set I've seen anywhere,” Paul said happily. “I'll take good care of it. I promise!”

“Okay, then. Let's get on to the feed store so your mama will have plenty of time to think up something good for supper.”

For once in his life he'd said the right thing. The concerned lines smoothed out completely from Emily's brow, and she nodded. “Great. Let's go.”

Chapter Six

“B
ut, Mama, they're lonely! All their friends are gone. Can't we have them, please?”

Abel watched with amusement as Emily glanced from the two leftover chicks pecking around the cardboard box to the faces of her wheedling children. The twins had spotted the birds the minute they'd entered Lifsey's Feed and Seed, and Phoebe and Paul were bound and determined that the tiny things were coming to live on Goosefeather Farm.

“Won't be any more chicks now till next spring,” Jack Lifsey said encouragingly. “These here are the last of the lot.”

“Pleease,”
Phoebe begged. “We can't just
leave
them here, Mama!”

“I don't see why we can't,” Emily muttered. “Everybody else has.”

“Tell you what,” Lifsey said. “I'll let them go half price, seeing as how the kids like them so much. What about that?”

Emily sighed and looked over at Abel. “I don't know. What do you think?”

Abel blinked. The kids sensed the wind changing in their favor and immediately turned their begging eyes on him.

“Please, Mr. Abel? They can grow up and lay eggs for us and everything. Please?” Phoebe reached over and grabbed his hand, her little fingers twining over his. She blinked up at him imploringly with two big eyes that were exactly the shade as her mother's. Abel suddenly had a burning desire to buy the little girl every chicken in the state of Georgia. How did fathers do this?

“I don't think a cardboard box is a very healthy place for baby chickens to live,” Paul said quietly. “Do you, Mr. Abel?”

Smart kid. There was no way to answer that question honestly that didn't involve riding home with two chickens in the back of his truck. Abel coughed, stalling for time. He glanced back over to Emily, trying to figure out what direction she wanted him to spin this. Emily shrugged.

“I don't know a thing about chickens. You're the farm guy. Your call.”

His call. First she'd come all the way out to his cabin to apologize, then she offered him a seat at her supper table and now she was asking him to make a decision for her. This was way bigger than the two tiny chicks scuffling around in that cardboard box, and he knew it. She was trusting him, handing over tiny pieces of her life to him, and for Emily Elliott, that was one very big deal.

He knelt down next to the box and gave the chickens a closer look. They looked healthy and bright-eyed enough, so he turned his attention to the children. “They're mighty cute.”

Two very eager nods.

“They aren't going to stay cute,” he warned them. “All that downy fuzz is going to come off, and they're going to grow feathers. They're going to get kind of ugly there for a while.”

“We don't care.” Phoebe reached into the box and gently lifted up a peeping chick. “I'll still love you when you're ugly, I promise,” she told the bird solemnly.

“And they're going to need a lot of looking after while they're little. You can't just chuck them in with the big chickens, because chickens aren't very smart and they'll peck these babies to death. We won't be able to put them in with the others until they're near about grown, and then we'll have to do it slow and careful.”

Emily shuddered and rolled her eyes. “I knew there was a good reason I never liked chickens.”

“We'll take care of them,” Paul promised. “We'll feed and water them every day. You can show us how.”

“You'll have to clean up after them, too.” As if to prove his point, one of the chicks obligingly produced a mess on the newspaper lining the box. “Their brooder box will have to be cleared out every single day.”

“We'll do that, too. We promise.” Phoebe smiled winningly up at him, and Abel felt his willpower turn to jelly.

He figured the kids would get tired of the chicks pretty fast, but he also figured that taking care of helpless animals was a great way to learn about responsibility. He stood back up and nodded at Jack Lifsey. “We'll take them.”

Two pairs of small arms were promptly flung around his legs, and he was hugged fiercely as the twins celebrated their win. Even grouchy Jack Lifsey was smiling as he watched the kids' excitement. “Ya'll can take that box with you to get them back to the farm, and you'd better add a bag of chick starter to your order, Abel.”

“I'll load it, Jack. You figure up what we owe you, and I'll sign the slip.”

“I'll sign for it,” Emily said quickly. “This is all my responsibility now.”

He'd always signed the slips for Miss Sadie, but Abel just shrugged and went over to hoist the fifty-pound sack of chick starter onto his shoulder. Emily was letting him help, and that was all that mattered right now. Let her fuss over signing the slip if it made her feel better.

He loaded the feed and got the kids settled in the back of the truck, the peeping chicks in their box between them. He opened the door for Emily and then glanced up to find Lifsey trying to catch his eye.

“Hey, Abel, can I talk to you a minute? Got something I need to ask you about.” Lifsey looked uncomfortable, and Abel frowned.

“Sure. Here.” He tossed Emily his keys. “Crank it up, and turn on the air. I won't be but a minute.”

Lifsey led the way into the small office of the feed store and closed the door carefully behind them.

Abel's frown deepened. “What's wrong, Jack?”

“I didn't like to say anything in front of the lady. I didn't want to embarrass her in front of her kids and all. But, Abel, I can't let her sign Miss Sadie's slips.”

“Why not? Miss Sadie always ran an account here.”

“I know that, and she was one of my best customers. But Miss Sadie's gone now.”

Abel wasn't getting it. “So what? You want Emily to open an account in her own name? That's not a problem. I'll bring her back in now, and we'll go ahead and get it done while we're here.”

“Well, now, see?” Lifsey shifted his weight uncomfortably and avoided meeting Abel's eyes. “It
is
kind of a problem.” The older man hesitated. “I can see you like the girl, and of course I know how much you thought of Miss Sadie. We all thought the world of her.”

Abel narrowed his eyes. He didn't like the way this was going, not one bit. “Get to the point, Jack.”

“Well, the truth is, the word around town is that Miss Emily isn't...particularly honest.”

After a flash of disbelief, Abel felt something uglier, something he hadn't felt in a long while, start its slow burn in his belly. “I guess you'd better make yourself pretty clear about what you're trying to say here, Jack. And I'd choose my words mighty carefully if I were you.”

Lifsey held his hands up. “Hold your horses, now! I'm not trying to rile you up, Abel. Like I said, I can see you've got a real soft spot for that girl, and I can't say as I blame you. She's pretty as a picture, and she seems just as sweet as sugar candy. But where there's a good bit of smoke, there's usually some fire. You know that as well as I do. I've heard the same thing from four or five folks. They're saying she was arrested back up in Atlanta for thieving.”

Whatever nonsense he'd been expecting, it wasn't this. For a second Abel didn't know whether he wanted to punch Jack Lifsey in the nose or laugh out loud. He took a firmer grip on his faith and opted for the laugh. “I'd have thought you knew better than to listen to foolishness like that, Jack.”

“Maybe it's foolishness, and maybe it isn't. Times are tough, Abel, and business is business. I can't afford to extend credit to somebody I don't even know, especially when word from people I do know is that she's not trustworthy. I'm sorry, but I just can't do it.”

Abel could hear the steady rumble of his truck outside, and he knew Emily would be wondering what was keeping him. If he tarried much longer, she was likely to pop back in to see what was going on.

He didn't want that to happen. She couldn't know about this. He wouldn't let a piece of silly small-town gossip hurt Emily, not when she was just starting to let down her guard a little bit. He'd been on the receiving end of talk like this often enough to know how it could set a person back. He stood silent for a minute thinking hard.

“Start me an account, then, Jack. You can do that, can't you?”

Relief spread across the store owner's face. “Well, sure, Abel! That's not a problem at all! And there's no limit on your credit here, neither.” As Lifsey began tapping information into his computer, Abel shook his head slowly. Things sure had come to a strange pass in Pine Valley when a Whitlock could get all the credit he wanted, but Sadie Elliott's granddaughter was looked at sideways.

Lifsey clicked a couple more keys and looked up from the screen. “There we go. The account's all set up. And like I said, no limit. I know you're good for it.”

Abel didn't answer Lifsey's smile. “If you had any sense, you'd know Emily's good for it, too, but we'll play it this way for now. At least you were smart enough not to say anything in front of her. We'll keep this between us. Understood?”

“Sure, if that's what you want.” Lifsey nodded.

“And when you see whoever's talking about Emily, you make sure they know they're spreading lies. Emily Elliott never stole a thing in her life. You tell them I said so.”

* * *

Emily opened her grandmother's cavernous oven and checked on her pot roast. It looked perfect, and the potatoes she'd added an hour ago were nicely browned. She poked one of them with a fork, nodded and grabbed two pot holders. Abel should be here any minute.

She levered the large chunk of meat onto a platter and clustered the seasoned potatoes, carrots and onions around it. She set it on the table, slid an apple crisp into the heated oven and then set about making gravy from the rich juices left in her roasting pan. She hummed as she worked. There was a lot to making a meal for a hungry man, but she'd take this any day over trying to milk a balky cow or being a midwife for a goat.

“Mr. Abel's here!” Phoebe's excited squeal made Emily jump, and she splashed hot gravy onto her wrist.

“Ouch! Good, that means it's suppertime. Wash up!”

She glanced up from the steaming gravy she was whisking as Abel came through the back door. He was wearing new dark jeans and a green cotton shirt that still looked like it had some of its factory creases. The damp ends of his dark hair were curling along its collar. He'd spruced up for this dinner, she realized. Her heart reacted oddly to the idea, bouncing around like a Ping-Pong ball.

“It sure smells good in here,” he said with a crooked smile. He'd halted in the doorway, looking uncertain.

She smiled encouragingly back at him. “I figured you for a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, so I hope you weren't expecting a gourmet meal.”

“Don't worry. This'll be plenty fancy to me.”

“Take a seat, and I'll have it on the table in a jiffy.” She quickly filled up her grandmother's gravy boat then she reached over and opened the smaller side oven to retrieve the pan of fluffy buttermilk biscuits.

Instead of sitting down, Abel crossed to the sink and washed his hands quickly. He came up beside her as she was picking the hot biscuits up with light, cautious fingers.

“I'll do that,” he said, taking the napkin-lined basket out of her hands. “You're burning yourself.” He picked up three of the biscuits at once and chucked them into the basket.

He was doing it again. “
Sit down
,
I said
.
” She pulled the basket out of his hands and thunked it down on the countertop. “You may be the boss of the barn, but I'm the boss of this kitchen. Sit.”

Abel looked surprised and a little abashed, but he did what she said and took his place at the table.

Thankfully the children arrived in the kitchen just then. They talked over each other, eager to tell Abel rambling stories about their beloved chicks. He listened attentively as Emily finished piling golden biscuits in the basket. She set it in front of his plate along with a jar of her grandmother's homemade peach jam.

She stood back and surveyed her table nervously. It looked all right, didn't it? The red-checkered cloth was spotlessly clean and crowded with steaming dishes. Four places were neatly set with her grandmother's plain white plates, and she'd poured sweet tea over ice for the adults and glasses of fresh milk for the children. “I think we're ready to eat,” she said. “Let's say grace. I think it's your turn tonight, Phoebe, isn't it?”

Her children settled in their seats and reached out their hands. She saw Abel startle slightly and then gently enclose the twins' small hands in his own and bow his head.

“Thank You, God, for this food Mama made except for the green beans because I don't like green beans.” Emily's lips twitched as she listened to her daughter's sweet, high voice. “Thank You that Mr. Abel's here because we like Mr. Abel, and he got Mama to let us have our chickies. And bless our chickies to grow up and lay lots of eggs and not be roosters because roosters are mean. Amen.”

“Amen,” Abel agreed with a laugh he disguised as a cough. She glanced across the table and caught his blue eyes twinkling at hers. Her heart ping-ponged again, and she quickly dropped her gaze back down to her plate.
None of that
, she told herself firmly.

When Abel started on his second helping of roast, Emily relaxed in her seat with a sigh of relief. Her first meal was a hit. She listened to the happy chatter of her children and sipped her tea, wondering idly what would be the best choice for tomorrow's meal. Roast chicken, maybe? She made a good roast chicken. Although there was that casserole recipe she'd cut out of a magazine she was dying to try.

“Why don't you have any kids, Mr. Abel?” Paul's innocent question brought Emily back to high alert.