warmed with humor.
Today?
Better, if possible. He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt that proclaimed him the winner in last year’s October breast cancer run, along with well-worn blue jeans. Piper noted his pants with a glance. “Jeans? In this weather?”
“I’m a farm kid,” he admitted, which surprised her because she’d noted reluctance in his gaze as he scanned the farm the day before. “You always wear jeans on a farm.”
“True.” She slipped the phone back into her pocket and turned toward the barn, noting the fresh oil streaks on her work pants with a grimace. “Denim’s handy when you forget to grab a stack of rags while doing engine maintenance. Luce will have something to say about this, no doubt.”
Her look of repentance made him smile. “Where would you like Beansy?”
She growled and led Zach and the goat through an adjacent barn. Calf pens lined the semishaded side of the building. One pen sat to the side. The perimeter fencing was decked out with trinkets and miniature signs done in little-kid scrawl. Beansy the Goat read one. Beware of Goat said another. A half dozen similar signs swung strategically around the enclosure, leaving no doubt about the ownership. “Here we go, Beans. Scoot in there and bleat real loud if they take you out again.” Piper scratched the little fellow’s head, and Zach was pretty sure the tiny creature preened.
“Beans is a pet, I take it.”
Piper hemmed and hawed, then nodded. “I’m a softie and I have a hard time saying no to those girls.”
Zach laughed out loud. “Well, who wouldn’t? They’re the cutest things I’ve ever seen. So Beansy is theirs?”
“Beansy was left behind by folks who moved away and abandoned their animals. Luke Campbell brought him by last spring.”
Luke Campbell was a deputy sheriff for the county. But did Luke’s visit here mean he and Piper had something going? And why should Zach care if they did? One glance her way said he had a grocery list of reasons to back away from this attraction, but the look on her face made him wish the list away. “But Beansy is just a baby.”
Piper shook her head. “He’s not. He’s a small breed, and he’s smaller yet because he wasn’t properly fed, but he’s probably two years old. Luke thought the girls would love him. And he was right. We have room. And forage. And he’s so little and cute.” Her voice went soft. Sweet. Maternal. But one snap of her hand to her thigh brought back the dogged farmer within the pretty, petite woman. And Zach had enough of farms and farmers growing up to last a lifetime. “I’ve got to get back to that oil leak. Zach, I appreciate what you did.” She tipped her hat and held up her grease-stained hands as evidence. “I’d shake your hand but that’s pretty undesirable right now, so I’ll just thank you again for Beansy’s safe return.”
* * *
Despite the sheen of grease on her palms, Zach didn’t find her hands one bit unbecoming, but he shoved that opinion into his “don’t go there” file. “You’re welcome.” He started walking away, but something―manners, interest, guilt―made him turn back. “Do you need help, Piper? I know a few things about tractors.”
She turned and met his look. For long seconds they stood separated by a matter of ten feet, but the look in her eyes said they might as well be light-years apart. “You’re kind, but no. I’m fine.”
Cool. Concise. As if she were shouldering him off because she loved working with smelly, greasy engines?
No.
Because she didn’t want to work on the engine with him.
Zach reached into Beansy’s enclosure, gave the fuzzy fellow a nice ear rub, then headed toward his house. Helping on a farm ranked dead last on his list, so most of him was glad she’d rejected his offer. But he’d glimpsed the tired, frustrated look in her eyes when she first turned his way in the barn. And it had deepened when she’d been unsure of the girls’ whereabouts.
A part of him longed to ease that frustration, but he’d grown up witnessing that look on his father’s face. It wasn’t a game he ever wanted to play again.
* * *
“You didn’t need to take time off.” Marty Harrison poured a cup of coffee, gaze down, grinding the words that evening. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Dad, I—”
“And I don’t need someone hovering over me 24/7. What I need is...” Marty stared out at the fields beyond, the adjacent dairy farm a reminder of all he’d lost due to a medical error, a mistake that had triggered a bunch of wrong decisions. Decisions made by Zach.
His father’s grim expression increased Zach’s guilt. “I didn’t take the time off because of you, precisely. I realized that if I’m going to get that deck done out back, I’d better do it before summer ends. I thought I might be able to enlist your help with it. If you want to, that is.”
“Keep the old man busy?” Bitterness deepened his father’s already cryptic tone. “That way I won’t get into any trouble?”
Easing Marty back into a semblance of normalcy was going to be harder than he expected, Zach realized. His father’s flat gaze deepened Zach’s concern, but other than good old-fashioned time, how could he help Marty’s mental and physical recovery? “We could drive down to the lake,” Zach suggested. “Or take a walk.”
“A walk to nothing is still nothing.”
Zach knew that wasn’t true. He’d often walked on his own as a kid. He continued the habit now, as an adult. Quiet walking time cleared his head. Eased his mind. The measured pace allowed him to be at peace. Notice the birds, the winged creatures chronically busy but generally unworried.
In a job that dealt with the seamier side of humanity too often, walking soothed him. If Marty Harrison wasn’t walking to something, to be somewhere, the walk wouldn’t make sense. But things were different now, and—
Marty’s shoulders squared. His jaw softened. He held the coffee cup higher. Tighter.
The sound of children laughing drifted across the evening air. A host of them, from what Zach could hear. Another shout of laughter had Zach noting the time. Almost eight o’clock. That must mean ice cream at the dairy store. He moved to the back door and swung it wide. “Dad, come on. Let’s go get some ice cream.”
“I’m not walking down to the lake for ice cream.” His father’s ludicrous look said Zach was crazy and annoying. “It’s nearly a mile.”
“Come on.” Zach pointed southeast and gave his father a lazy smile. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Marty’s face darkened. His eyes looked down for several beats, but Zach had outwaited tougher guys than his father lots of times. He stood, patient and persevering, allowing his father time to take that first step forward. Shouts of childish laughter tempted Marty outside. By the time they skirted the near pasture and worked their way around the closest barn, the sight of children laughing, playing and shrieking paused Marty’s step.
“What are they doing here?” he asked.
“Ice cream after the game.” Zach pointed
