“You can let me off here.” Angelica Camden practically shouted the words over the roar of her grandfather’s mufflerless truck. The hot July air, blowing in through the pickup’s open windows, did nothing to dispel the sweat that dampened her neck and face.
She rubbed her hands down the legs of the full-length jeans she preferred to wear despite the heat, took a deep breath and blew it out yoga-style between pursed lips. She could do this. Had to do it.
Gramps raised bushy white eyebrows as he braked at the top of a long driveway. “I’m taking you right up to that arrogant something-or-other’s door. You’re a lady and should be treated as one.”
No chance of that. Angelica’s stomach churned at the thought of the man she was about to face. She’d fight lions for her kid, had done the equivalent plenty of times, but this particular lion terrified her, brought back feelings of longing and shame and sadness that made her feel about two inches tall.
This particular lion had every right to eat her alive. Her heart fluttered hard against her ribs, and when she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, the truck’s exhaust fumes made her feel light-headed.
I can’t do this, Lord.
Immediately the verse from this morning’s devotional, read hastily while she’d stirred oatmeal on Gramps’s old gas stove, swam before her eyes: I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.
She believed it. She’d recited it to herself many times in the past couple of difficult years. She could do all things through Christ.
But this, Lord? Are you sure?
She knew Gramps would gladly go on the warpath for her, but using an eighty-year-old man to fight her battles wasn’t an option. The problem was hers. She’d brought it on herself, mostly, and she was the one who had to solve it. “I’d rather do it my own way, Gramps. Please.”
Ignoring her—of course—he started to turn into the driveway.
She yanked the handle, shoved the truck door open and put a booted foot on the running board, ready to jump.
“Hey, careful!” Gramps screeched to a stop just in front of a wooden sign: A Dog’s Last Chance: No-Cage Canine Rescue. Troy Hinton, DVM, Proprietor. “DVM, eh? Well, he’s still a—”
“Shhh.” She swung back around to face him, hands braced on the door guards, and nodded sideways toward the focus of her entire life.
Gramps grunted and, thankfully, lapsed into silence.
“Mama, can I go in with you?” Xavier shot her a pleading look—one he’d perfected and used at will, the rascal—from the truck’s backseat. “I want to see the dogs.”
If she played this right, he’d be able to do more than just see the dogs during a short visit. He’d fulfill a dream, and right now Angelica’s life pretty much revolved around helping Xavier fulfill his dreams.
“It’s a job interview, honey. You go for a little drive with Gramps.” At his disappointed expression, she reached back to pat his too-skinny leg. “Maybe you can see the dogs later, if I get the job.”
“You’ll get it, Mama.”
His brilliant smile and total confidence warmed her heart at the same time that tension attacked her stomach. She shot a glance at Gramps and clung harder to the truck, which suddenly felt like security in a storm.
He must have read her expression, because his gnarled hands gripped the steering wheel hard. “You don’t have to do this. We can try to get by for another couple of weeks at the Towers.”
Seeing the concern in his eyes took Angelica out of herself and her fears. Gramps wasn’t as healthy as he used to be, and he didn’t need any extra stress on account of her. Two weeks at the Senior Towers was the maximum visit from relatives with kids, and even though she’d tried to keep Xavier quiet and neat, he’d bumped into a resident who used a walker, spilled red punch in the hallway and generally made too much noise. In other words, he was a kid. And the Senior Towers was no place to raise a kid.
They’d already outstayed their welcome, and she knew Gramps was concerned about it. She leaned back in to rub his shoulder. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Don’t worry about me.”
But once the truck pulled away, bearing with it the only two males in North America she trusted, Angelica’s strength failed her. She put a hand on one of the wooden fence posts and closed her eyes, shooting up a desperate prayer for courage.
As the truck sounds faded, the Ohio farmland came to life around her. A tiny creek rippled its way along the driveway. Two fence posts down, a red-winged blackbird landed, trilling the oka-oka-LEE she hadn’t heard in years. She inhaled the pungent scent of new-mown hay.
This was where she’d come from. Surely the Lord had a reason for bringing her home.
Taking another deep breath, she straightened her spine. She was of farm stock. She could do this. She reached into her pocket, clutched the key chain holding a cross and a photo of her son in better days, and headed toward the faint sound of barking dogs. Toward the home of the man who had every reason to hate her.
* * *
As the sound of the pickup faded, Troy Hinton used his arms to lift himself halfway out of the porch rocker. In front of him, his cast-clad leg rested on a wicker table, stiff and useless.
“A real man plays ball, even if he’s hurt. Get back up and into the game, son.” His dad’s words echoed in his head, even though his logical side knew he couldn’t risk worsening his compound fracture just so he could stride down the porch steps and impress the raven-haired beauty slowly approaching his home.
Not that he had any chance of impressing Angelica Camden. Nor any interest in doing so. She was one mistake he wouldn’t make again.
His dog, Bull, scrabbled against the floorboards beside him, trying to stand despite his arthritic hips. Troy sank back down and put a hand on the dog’s back. “It’s okay, boy. Relax.”
He watched Angelica’s slow, reluctant walk toward his house. Why she’d applied to be his assistant, he didn’t know. And why he’d agreed to talk to her was an even bigger puzzle.
She’d avoided him for the past seven years, ever since she’d jilted him with a handwritten letter and disappeared not only from his life, but from the state. A surge of the old bitterness rose in him, and he clenched his fists. Humiliation. Embarrassment. And worse, a broken heart and shattered faith that had never fully recovered.
She’d arrived in her grandfather’s truck, but the old man had no use for him or any of his family, so why had he brought her out here for her interview? And why wasn’t he standing guard with a shotgun? In fact, given the old man’s reputation for thrift, he’d probably use the very same shotgun with which he’d ordered Troy off his hardscrabble farm seven years ago.
Troy had come looking for explanations about why Angelica had left town. Where she was. What her letter had meant. How she was surviving; whether she was okay.
The old man had raved at him, gone back into the past feud between their families over the miserable acre of land he called a farm. That acre had rapidly gone to seed, as had Angelica’s grandfather, and a short while later he’d moved into the Senior Towers.
In a way, the old man had been abandoned, too, by the granddaughter he’d helped to raise. Fair warning. No matter how sweet she seemed, no matter what promises she made, she was a runner. Disloyal. Not to be counted