doing great right where you are.”
“Mom says Harpswell Prep can help me get into an Ivy League college. But I wanna be a vet, and there are good vet schools that don’t look at whether you went to some snooty high school or not.”
Garrett felt the anger rise. Not at the notion of a prep school, but at the idea that Noelle had failed to consult him on a big decision in his son’s life. And what a decision. She had to know it pushed his buttons. He hadn’t spent his youth in foster care just so his son, with two loving parents, could get farmed out to boarding school.
“I’ll talk to your mom,” he said, rising.
“You can’t talk to her now. She’s on a plane to London. Besides, we need a plan, and I’ve been working on one.”
Surprised, Garrett turned to his son. “What plan?”
“I want to live with you. Full-time. I don’t want to go back to Charlotte. Mom’s always traveling, anyway. We could switch the schedule. I could see her on vacations.”
“Have you mentioned this to your mother?”
Rory shook his head.
Garrett could see the fireworks now. Noelle would think this was his idea. Would think he was using Rory to question her parenting skills, to circumvent the judge’s orders. While she’d use all her considerable money and influence to make Garrett pay, Rory would be the one to suffer in the end.
Garrett couldn’t let that happen.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU LOOK LIKE the wrath of God.” That’s what Geneva had told Garrett as she’d bustled through the kitchen door earlier that morning. Then, while getting eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator, she’d muttered, “I wouldn’t worry so much if I thought there was a chance you’d been out on the town. Goin’ a little wild. Havin’ a little fun…”
She knew him better than that.
Last night, after leaving a message on Noelle’s voice mail to contact him as soon as she arrived in London, he’d lain awake for hours, worrying the untold consequences of both her and Rory’s separate plans. Not having heard from her by morning, he’d called her assistant in Charlotte, who had her itinerary. Overseas, Noelle was already in a closed meeting. Garrett needed to understand the time difference was five hours. Was it an emergency? If not, try Noelle again around nine, North Carolina time. She should have a small break before heading into another meeting, the assistant had said, promising to leave a message as well—
“Dad, look at that!” Rory said with disgust. Garrett had thrown the old banana-seat bike in the cruiser’s trunk and was giving his son a ride to Whistling Meadows. “Someone’s tossed garbage into the pasture. I’m gonna have to take care of that first thing. Before Percy and the boys eat something they shouldn’t.”
It made Garrett proud that his son was already taking ownership of this new job.
As they pulled up the farm road, Garrett could see six llamas haltered and tethered to the paddock fence. One carried a double-sided pack, and Samantha was adjusting another on a second animal. Four more packs lay on the ground. The llamas looked cool, calm and collected, but the woman looked frazzled.
Rory barely waited for the car to come to a stop before he hopped out. “Need help?”
“Yes, please!” Samantha moved from one side of the black-and-tan animal to the other, apparently trying to balance the contents of the bags. “Twelve Rockbrook campers and their counselor are booked for this morning. I just got a call they’d penciled in the time one hour earlier than I had. They’re on their way. I’m not ready.”
Garrett, noting she looked like a woman who preferred being in charge and prepared, stepped forward to pick one of the packs off the ground. “The cinch work looks simple. Anything in particular I should know?”
“The process is pretty straightforward,” she replied, swiping wisps of pale blond hair away from her face. “If you keep the loads evenly distributed, you shouldn’t have a problem.”
“Problem?”
“Llamas express their displeasure by spitting, but that’s really a llama-llama thing.”
“Come on, Rory,” he replied, only slightly reassured. “I’ll put the bags in place. You tie them.” He headed cautiously toward a piebald llama.
“Dad, meet Fred.”
Fred emitted a sound like high tension wires that Garrett could only hope came from the front end of the beast.
“He’s humming!” Rory looked thrilled to be among these strange-looking creatures. In that, he didn’t take after his father. As a kid Garrett had never been allowed a pet.
“So, how do you keep them clean?” his son asked Samantha. “I can’t picture giving one of these guys a bath.”
“They’d get bathed only if I were going to show them,” she replied. “Which I’m not. Everybody here stays happy with a lot of rolling in the dust on their part and some very careful brushing on mine. And spring shearing.”
For the first time, the woman’s speech pattern, her cultured inflection, fully registered with Garrett. He took note of her spotless designer jeans, her expensive boots and her carefully ironed shirt—some soft material in a grayish-green—nothing from the local discount store. Stuff Noelle would have picked out. The Weston woman seemed to know what she was doing with the llamas, but she sure didn’t look or sound as if she belonged on a North Carolina farm.
“Can I do it as part of my job?” Rory asked her. “Brush ’em, I mean.”
“I’ll teach you if you really want. It’s tricky. Llamas are very sensitive to touch. Their coats can be full of static. And more than that, you have to earn their trust….”
Garrett listened with surprise to his son and this stranger talking easily. Rory had spoken more words in the past five minutes than he had in the entire week he’d been in Applegate. As a father, he wanted to be a part of the conversation, too.
He fell back on what every resident asked a newcomer. “So, Samantha, where are you from originally?”
She looked as if he’d asked her for her Social Security and bank account numbers plus the key to her house. At that moment the instincts of both father and sheriff kicked in. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to run a check on his son’s employer.
Samantha tried to keep her features neutral. “I’ve lived too many places to count,” she replied with her pat answer. It wasn’t a lie. Although the Virginia estate outside D.C. had always been the family home, as an adult she’d traveled the world for the hotel business.
“Army brat?”
Rechecking a cinch, she pretended not to have heard the question.
“How do you come to run a llama trekking business in western North Carolina?” he persisted.
She wasn’t about to tell him about the rehab center just outside Asheville, recommended by an old family friend, and its program, wherein residents took turns caring for a Noah’s ark assortment
