WELCOME TO TYLER-TRY SOME CHEESECAKE

Britt Hansen’s started a new line of dairy products and it’s selling like crazy! Pull up a chair and savor the triumphs—and tragedies—of America’s favorite hometown.

A YOUNG WIDOW STRUGGLES TO SAVE FAMILY FARM

Britt is certain that her new venture will save her farm from bankruptcy—if she can convince the dairy, her biggest creditor, to give her the time she needs.

WILL THE DAIRY REP STAND IN HER WAY?

Jake Marshack’s future at the dairy will be assured if he can persuade Britt to sell her farm. But he hadn’t expected the mother of four to be so determined...or so attractive. Soon, he isn’t sure if their battle is one he wants to win....

Previously Published.

“I won’t sell this farm,” Britt said.

“Mrs. Hansen, you’re in considerable debt already, with little chance of fighting your way out. If you sell, you can pay all your debts and still have enough left over to start four college funds.”

She did not appear appeased. “You even know how many children I have.”

“Details are an important part of my job,” he said without apology. “You owe us a lot of money, Mrs. Hansen. One of us better do his research.”

She marched across the kitchen, yanked the door open and fixed him with a lethal stare. “I’m a 34B, I love silk underthings, mocha fudge ice cream, and I root for the Milwaukee Brewers. Anything else you’d like to know?”

Temporarily defeated, Jake smiled politely and went to the door. “We’ll deliver your supplies,” he said as he stepped out, “as soon as your bill is paid.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Mills & Boon’s Tyler, a small Wisconsin town whose citizens we hope you’ll soon come to know and love. Like many of the innovative publishing concepts Mills & Boon has launched over the years, the idea for the Tyler series originated in response to our readers’ preferences. Your enthusiasm for sequels and continuing characters within many of the Mills & Boon lines has prompted us to create a twelve-book series of individual romances whose characters’ lives inevitably intertwine.

Tyler faces many challenges typical of small towns, but the fabric of this fictional community created by Mills & Boon will be torn by the revelation of a long-ago murder, the details of which will evolve right through the series. This intriguing crime will culminate in an emotional trial that profoundly affects the lives of the Ingallses, the Barons, the Forresters and the Wochecks.

A hot baseball game is going on across the park, and, as usual, the whole town is turning out for the Fourth of July picnic. No doubt they’ll be sampling Britt Hansen’s delicious new yogurt products.

And there’s startling scuttlebutt, as well. The investigation of Margaret Ingalls’s death takes a dramatic turn. In fact, it seems Alyssa Baron is preparing to take over the family business. Judson just hasn’t been the same since the news.…

So join us in Tyler for a slice of small-town life that’s not as innocent or as quiet as you might expect, and for a sense of community that will capture your mind and your heart.

Marsha Zinberg

Editorial Coordinator, Tyler

Milky Way
Muriel Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Joe and Sally Rohne,

who have a beautiful farm, and a beautiful romance

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Muriel Jensen for her contribution to the TYLER series.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joanna Kosloff for her contribution to the concept for the TYLER series.

CONTENTS

Cover

Back Cover Text

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

JAKE MARSHACK TURNED his red Ford Explorer off the highway onto the gravel side road marked with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s official brown-and-yellow Rustic Road designation. The signs identified stretches of thoroughfare that retained the charm of days gone by, when life and travel were slower, when there’d been time to smell the wildflowers and listen to the birds. But the rich, verdant pasture spreading out to his left, dotted with grazing Holsteins, and the tall, lush green crowding in on his right went unnoticed. He didn’t see the gray clouds against the stormy spring sky, heralding rain, or the fat black-and-white Canada geese flying toward Timber Lake, a quarter of a mile away. His mind was ticking over figures.

As Winnebago Dairy’s sales manager in southeastern Wisconsin, Jake spent most of his time in a Chicago office. But several times a year he went on the road to collect outstanding receivables. He could be charming and firm, understanding but unshakable in his resolve to have the district with the best numbers. Still, the percentage of uncollectible debt was growing among the smaller farms in his district, and the struggles of their owners to hold on to what little they had left touched him as few things in life did.

But business was business. However much he hated this part of his job, he had to do it. When the big red barn and the white Victorian farmhouse beyond it came into view, he pulled over to review his notes.

“Hansen widow trying hard, but still unable to pay,” Buckley, the sales rep, had reported after his last call at Lakeside Farm. “Renting out large parcels of pasture in March and promises to pay outstanding balance at that time.”

Jake checked his printout. March had come and gone and there’d been no payment. In fact, there’d been no payment since the previous September. Policy was clear. The widow Hansen was cut off pending payment in full.

Jake closed his folder with a groan. Great. A widow. He had to stop feed delivery to some little old arthritic thing who’d probably lose the farm before the year was out and be forced to move in with one of her kids.

He shook his head as he pulled back onto the road and headed for the lane to the house. He’d never understand why generation after generation of farmers broke their backs and very often their hearts over a piece of land that was subject to every joke God, nature and the government could play. It was masochistic and senseless. He couldn’t imagine dedicating one’s life to something as completely unpredictable as a harvest.

Now, numbers made sense. Columns that balanced were easy to understand. A future that depended solely on what an individual could do was the only course worth plotting, as far as he was concerned. Needing and depending on others or on the beneficence of nature always led to a predictable end—disappointment.

Jake didn’t believe in disappointment. He believed in success.

He pulled to a stop behind a muddy blue GMC truck at the side of the house. A yellow Lab lying at the top of the porch steps raised an intelligent face to watch him. Jake leaped out of the vehicle, careful to miss a puddle, and took a moment to look around.

The house had a peaked roof with gingerbread finials and a wraparound porch. It was tidy but in need of a fresh coat of paint. A heart-shaped wreath of dried flowers hung on the front door, and scarlet May-blooming tulips and bright forget-menots trimmed the foundation and the porch steps. He imagined the little widow kneeling on a rug and pampering her flowers.

Maybe he’d get lucky, he thought, and she wouldn’t be home. He could send her a registered letter telling her she was customer non grata. No. He had the best numbers in the company because he dealt with people face-to-face. He made things turn out his way, but he did it openly.

He took two steps up toward the porch and was greeted by a hair-raising growl from deep in the Lab’s throat and a clear view of impressive canine incisors. The dog hadn’t moved, and Jake got the distinct impression it was because she didn’t feel she had to.

Accustomed to a fair amount of hostility, Jake had perfected an understanding manner and a conciliatory tone of voice that usually worked on dogs as well as people. He extended a cautious hand and asked, “Good dog?”

The Lab changed demeanor instantly. Rolling onto her back, she tucked her feet in in eager surrender, her strong tail wagging madly. She whined in helpless adoration as Jake reached up to scratch her sturdy mound of a chest. An upside-down tongue flicked at the sleeve of Jake’s suit jacket.

Jake laughed. “You are a good dog,” he praised. “You’re not much of a security system, but I’ll bet you’re a great friend.”

The dog rolled onto four big feet and followed him as he went to the front door and knocked. She sat on his right foot as he waited...and waited.

* * *

BRITTANY HANSEN STOOD on tiptoe on top of an eight-foot wooden ladder and groped for the shingle that was just beyond her reach. She growled impatiently when the tip of her longest finger refused to close the gap.

“Come on!” she said aloud. “One more shingle! I am not going to climb down and move the ladder again for one more shingle!”

She withdrew her aching arm and studied the shingle with hostility. Rubbing her aching biceps, she tried to remember why repairing the hole in the porch roof had seemed so important this afternoon. Because she wanted to put the porch swing out, she reminded herself, and a large drip had developed where she usually placed it near the kitchen window.

And because Jimmy had always brought the old swing out for her at the first sign of spring, and she wanted to prove to herself that although he wasn’t here to do it, it would still get done.

Sneaky, strong emotion rose up to sting her eyes and clog her throat. Having it out would be no fun, and she’d probably choke up every time she looked at it, but it would be in its place because she had put it there. It would be one small victory after a long dark winter of silent, corrosive grief.

Britt drew a deep breath, leaned her weight against the roof and stretched her right hand out as far as she could reach—and felt the toe of her right foot push the ladder out from under her.

She screamed, the palms of her hands scraping over the rough tiles as she slid down, then caught the rain gutter with her fingers.

Great, she thought with a gallows humor she was surprised to find had survived the winter. Hanging by my fingernails. Literally. The bank should see this.

She groped with her feet for the porch railing, but the extended roof had her too far out to reach.

She considered letting go, but the drop to the ground was considerable. She could not afford a broken limb at this point in time, and the way her luck had been running, a multiple fracture was bound to result.

“Dammit, Jimmy!” she shouted at the air. “Do something!”

* * *

JAKE AND THE LAB, still waiting at the front door were galvanized into action by a crash followed immediately by a piercing screech. With one loud Woof! the dog ran around the porch to the back of the house. Jake followed, his mind already in sympathy with the poor little arthritic old lady.

He jerked to a halt at the sight of a pair of long legs dangling at eye level. They were not arthritic legs. They were slender, shapely legs in snug denim. His brain took a moment to swap mental images and assimilate what was happening.

His eyes lifted to a baggy gray sweater and arms holding rigidly, desperately to the gutter. Pale blue eyes in a white face were wide with alarm and a curious resignation.

Jake wrapped an arm around a pillar to steady himself and reached out over the railing.

* * *

BRITT STARED at the man in the three-piece gray suit and wondered if her desperation had conjured him up. Before she could decide, he had a fistful of the front of her sweater.

“Kick a leg out toward me,” he ordered.

She blinked. He didn’t disappear. “Who are you?” she asked.

She heard his gasp of exasperation. “Does that matter at the moment? Kick a leg out.”

Reflexively, she complied, and felt a muscular arm wrap itself around it.

“Now drop a hand to my shoulder.”

She wanted to, but even the threat of falling couldn’t blunt the effect of a large male hand wrapped high around her inner thigh.

“I haven’t got a good grip on you,” he said when she hesitated. “If you fall now, we’re both going over. I don’t know about you, but weeks of traction wouldn’t fit into my schedule.”

“I...can’t hold on with one hand.”

“When you let that hand go, I’ll have you.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

She believed him. She wasn’t sure why. Possibly because she wasn’t in a position not to. Closing her eyes, she dropped a hand and reached out blindly. She uttered a little scream as her other hand lost purchase and she fell, landing solidly against hard muscle. Sitting on his arm, she was swung sideways over the railing, then deposited on her feet.

For an instant she couldn’t breathe or speak. All she could do was stare.

Her Good Samaritan was long-legged and lean, with just enough thickness in the shoulder to make her grateful he’d been the one to come along and not spindly Chuck Stuart, who rented part of her pasture.

With eyes the color of maple wood and dark blond hair side-parted and perfectly groomed, he bore a startling resemblance to Kevin Costner. His recent exertion hadn’t disturbed his good looks at all. There was a confident, capable air about him that was comforting and alarming.

She watched him shrug his coat back into place and straighten his tie.

She began to emerge from her trance when she noticed the subtle elegance of everything about him. His finely tailored suit probably cost more than her monthly food budget. And he wore cuff links—gold and jade, if she wasn’t mistaken. Antiques, probably. His shoes were shined to perfection.

She pulled herself together and folded her arms. “You’re from the bank,” she accused.

“No,” he said.

“An attorney, then.”

“No.”

She frowned, her shoulders relaxing. “Then who are you?” Jake had never seen hair that color. It rioted around her face in soft curls and ended in a fat braid that rested on her shoulder. It was the shade of a ripe peach, a sort of pink-orange with gold highlights. He judged by the generous spattering of freckles on her face that the color was natural.

Aware that he hadn’t answered her question, he offered his hand and a smile he was sure had to be at least a little vague. “Jake Marshack,” he said. “And you are...?”

She studied him uncertainly for a moment, then shook his hand. Her fingers were long and slender, but her grip was firm. “Britt Hansen. Thank you for rescuing me.”

He indulged in a poignant memory of an armful of soft, round hip, then immediately dismissed it. “The...widow Hansen?” he asked.

She laughed lightly at the title. “One and the same. For a minute I thought you were the villain come to tie me to the railroad tracks. Instead you turn out to be a genuine Dudley Doright. Come on inside. A gallant rescue deserves at least a cup of coffee.”

She beckoned the dog with a slap to her thigh. “Come on, Daffy.”

Jake hesitated on the threshold as she opened the back door. Dudley Doright he was not. “Mrs. Hansen...”

But the ring of a telephone at the far end of the kitchen made her hurry inside. She gestured for him to follow and pointed to a chair at a large round table. The dog settled under it.

Feeling an annoying little niggle of guilt, he sat. He’d left his notebook in the car because he’d found that official papers and copies of bills always made people defensive, and he wanted them willing to work with him. Of course, in her case, he doubted she had anything to work with.

Chatting happily to someone he judged by the conversation to be a neighbor, she washed her hands, poured coffee into two mugs, then walked the full extension of the phone cord to hand one to him. He stood and reached across the table for it.

“No, I was happy to lend it to you, Judy,” she was saying, “but if you’re finished with it, I’ll come pick it up. I was trying to repair the porch roof with my short ladder and almost broke my neck!”

She grinned at him, and he heard a loud expression of dismay from the other end of the connection.

“No, no, I’m fine. Dudley Doright rescued me.”

“Who?” came across the line loud and clear.

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it when I pick up the ladder. I’m going to town tomorrow—want me to bring you anything?”

While she made notes on a pad stuck to the refrigerator, Jake sipped his coffee and studied the enormous kitchen. It was a large square room papered in a soft blue-and-cream pattern. The woodwork was Williamsburg blue and the high cupboards were oak. Children’s artwork and schedules covered the beige refrigerator, and something with a rich, beefy fragrance simmered in a deep pot on the stove.

The table at which he sat was bordered on two sides by sparkling countertops. The third wall was painted creamy white and covered with what appeared to be antique kitchen implements and an ancient pitchfork that must have been hand-carved all of a piece. He was wondering who had used it how long ago when three kittens, one white and two spotted black-and-white, suddenly ran across the kitchen from the room beyond. They tumbled over one another in a rolling heap, then raced back the way they’d come.

He had turned his attention to the pitchfork again when the widow Hansen joined him at the table.

Pale blue eyes smiled at him over the rim of her cup. “My great-grandmother pitched hay with that,” she said, “and once held an amorous neighbor at bay while my great-grandfather was off hunting. I believe her father carved it. Would you like something to go with your coffee?”

“Ah...no, thank you.” He straightened in his chair. It was time to state his business. “Actually, I’m from Winnebago Dairy. I’m here to talk to you about...” He looked into her eyes and experienced a glitch in his thought processes. His brain disengaged and he couldn’t remember simple words. All that seemed to work were his eyes, which couldn’t stop looking into hers.

They were like Lake Geneva under a cloudy sky, softly gray-blue and suggesting unimagined depths. He felt pulled in, like a diver who’d forgotten to draw a breath before jumping.

“About?” she prompted. She lowered her cup and a subtle change took place in her cheerful, friendly expression. That helped him pull himself together.

“About your bill.” He forced out the words and groped for his professional persona. “You’re eight months overdue, Mrs. Hansen.”

She looked at him levelly across the table, her eyes now like the lake in February—with a six-foot, impenetrable ice crust. “So you’re not Dudley Doright, after all,” she said, pushing away from the table.

Jake half expected her to order him to leave. Instead, she went to the sink, a deep old porcelain one with ancient faucets, around which a more modern counter and cupboards had been built. She looked out the window, and he supposed she could see the cows grazing.

“You’re here to cut me off,” she guessed.

He mentally went through all his options. It didn’t take long. There weren’t any. “I’m afraid so,” he said finally. He added, “The moment you pay the outstanding balance, I’ll send a truck out with the order you put in two days ago.”

She turned and leaned against the edge of the sink, both hands behind her, gripping it. “I can’t pay right now, but I’ve been to the bank about a loan. I should have an answer in a few days. And I’m getting a desserts business going on the side for extra money. I—”

“Our rep,” he interrupted quietly, “said you thought you’d be able to pay when you rented out pasture.”

She nodded. “It went to the mortgage. I thought having my payments almost current would give me a better shot at getting a loan.”

Robbing Peter to pay Paul was a sign of real trouble. But Jake knew that was how half his customers made it from year to year.

He shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry. We’ll ship to you the moment—”

“But I could have the money for you in a week,” she said, trying desperately to keep the plea out of her voice. She wanted to convey competence, reasonableness.

“Or the bank could turn you down,” he said gently.

She tilted her chin. “I believe they’ll approve me.”

Jake stood. If he had to hurt her feelings, he felt he had to do it on his feet. “I’ve seen your credit file, Mrs. Hansen. I think you’re deluding yourself.”

Anger sparked in her eyes, which were suddenly like the lake in an electrical storm. “At the moment, hope is all I have, Mr....” She hesitated over his name.

“Marshack,” he provided.

“Marshack,” she repeated. “If you’re going to tie me to the train track, let me at least hold on to the hope that the real Dudley will come along.”

Jake wanted out of the warm, cozy kitchen and out from under her judgmental glare more than he wanted anything else at that moment. Yet something rooted him in place. He guessed the reason was that she looked so touchingly brave that he couldn’t do anything cowardly.

So he decided to tell her what he thought. “Mrs. Hansen, small farms run by strong men are going under left and right. Why continue to fight the inevitable? We’ve offered to buy you out twice. Maybe it’s time you considered it.”

She was now rigid with anger, but he gave her credit for controlling it very well. Had their roles been reversed, he’d have had her on the porch by now, on the business end of the pitchfork.

“This is a heritage farm,” she said, her voice very quiet. “It’s been in my family for four generations—five, counting my children. I’m not interested in turning it over to a dairy that now owns more of Wisconsin and Illinois than the state park systems.”

He nodded. “I’ve been empowered to raise the offer.” He named the sum Stan Foreman, vice president of sales, had brought to his office that morning with the subtle reminder that acquiring her property for the company would speed Jake’s rise up the corporate ladder. The offer was generous and was intended to knock her off her feet and out of her stubbornly negative stance. It didn’t.

For an instant the blue eyes widened and he saw a flash of longing, then it was gone and he was treated once again to the February lake. “You don’t understand,” she said, her patience obviously strained. “Four generations of Bauers were born here. It’s been like a gift passed from hand to hand. I couldn’t sell this farm any more than I could sell one of my children.”

“How are you going to provide for those children’s education, Mrs. Hansen?” he asked. “You’re in considerable debt already, with little chance of fighting your way out without selling—or marrying a wealthy man. Would you rather the bank got your memories?”

She paled, holding both arms rigidly to her sides. “How dare you worm your way into my kitchen—”

“You invited me in,” he reminded her quietly, “after I prevented you from breaking your neck.”

“—drink my coffee,” she shouted over him, “then proceed to call me a deadbeat?”

This wasn’t going at all the way he’d hoped. “I said no such thing,” he denied, pushing the chair he’d occupied back to the table. “I mentioned only what is public record. If you sell, you can pay all your debts, buy a nice little place somewhere and still have enough left over to start four college funds.”

She did not appear appeased. “You even know how many children I have.”

“Details are an important part of my job,” he said without apology. “You owe us a lot of money, Mrs. Hansen. One of us better do his research.”

She marched across the kitchen, her braid flapping against her upper back. She yanked the door open and fixed him with a lethal stare, her cheeks pink, her voice wavering a bit as she said darkly, “I’m a 34B, I love silk underthings and mocha fudge-nut ice cream, and I root for the Milwaukee Brewers. Anything else you’d like to know?”

Jake tried to accept defeat gracefully. But his life and career were on a timetable, and her inability to pay her debts, plus her refusal to sell, were holding things up. The Winnebago Dairy board would be making the vice-presidency decision at the end of summer. He’d hoped to be district quota buster by then, or to have reeled in her property for the company so that he’d be the only possible choice.

On such short acquaintance he’d decided he liked her, even though she was making his life difficult. He’d try again. There had to be a way to reach her. But he had to regroup first.

He smiled politely and went to the door, resolutely keeping his eyes from the charming dimension she’d announced. “We’ll deliver,” he said, “as soon as your bill is paid.”

He stepped out onto the porch, but was swept back into the kitchen when a wave of children collided with him, then carried him along as they burst into the house. He heard the four of them yell, “Hi, Mom.” Four lunch boxes clattered onto the table, then the wave dispersed in four directions—the refrigerator, the cookie jar, under the table where the dog lay and to the small television in the opposite corner. A bouncy cartoon ditty filled the room. The kittens raced back in, seeking attention.

A slender boy about twelve or thirteen polished an apple and studied Jake from a careful distance. He wore jeans and a plaid flannel shirt open over a T-shirt. “Your wheels in the driveway?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jake replied.

The boy nodded. “Cool.” Then he looked from his mother’s frowning face to Jake’s unfarmlike attire and asked with an edge of hostility in his voice, “You from the bank?”

Britt put her arm around her older son’s shoulders and forced herself to smile. She tried so hard not to let her financial woes affect her children, but money, or the lack of it, had become so large a part of her life lately that the subject intruded everywhere. Determined to keep it from gaining more ground as long as she could, she said cheerfully, “Matt, this is Mr. Marshack. We were just talking about...about Great-Grandma Bauer.”

Jake saw the transformation take place on the widow Hansen’s face as, snacks secured and the dog and kittens petted, the children gathered around her. He guessed it was maternal reflex at first; she didn’t want them to know she was upset. Then the youngest boy and girl flanked her, each leaning in to her, and she seemed to visibly relax.

“This is Christy,” she said, putting a gentle hand atop a preadolescent with hair the same shade as hers. The child wore glasses with red frames and had eyes that studied him with the same suspicion her mother’s showed.

“David,” she went on, moving her hand to a boy about eight. He was the only one in the group with dark hair, and his blue eyes verged on green.

“And Renee.”

“I’m six,” the plump little girl reported. She was the spitting image of her mother and sister, but with the rounder features of early childhood. She smiled up at him. “You look like Robin Hood,” she said.

Britt’s eyes met his and said without words, But you’re more like the Sheriff of Nottingham. Aloud, she said, “Mr. Marshack was just leaving.”

“Stay cool,” Matt advised.

“Nice to meet you,” Christy said.

David waved at him from his mother’s side, and Renee followed him out to his truck.

“I’m in first grade,” she said, hopping on one foot beside him, then racing to catch up as he got ahead of her. “My birthday is in October. You know, January, February, March, April...”

She went all the way through to October while following him around the truck and watching him open the door and climb in.

He let her go on without comment because he never knew what to say to children. He always got the impression that, despite the less-sophisticated vocabulary and the smaller stature, they were smarter than adults. And this one fairly glowed with curiosity and intelligence.

As he consulted his calendar to check his next call, she pointed to the portable office that sat on the passenger seat. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Files,” he replied.

“What’s that?”

“Papers and stuff.”

“Oh.” Satisfied, she stood on tiptoe to study the dash.

“Renee, honey,” the widow said, appearing from around the hood and taking the child by the hand, “Mr. Marshack has to leave.”

She stepped away from the truck, pulling the little girl with her. “Goodbye, Mr. Marshack,” she said, her eyes hostile again. “Next time you wish to speak to me, please write or phone.”

Jake put the truck in reverse, checked that his rearview mirror was clear, then stepped on the gas, determined that the widow Hansen hadn’t seen the last of him.

The sound of metal crunching and glass popping under his rear tires made him slam on the brake.

CHAPTER TWO

“MY BIKE!” Matt stared down at the pile of contorted metal that had been his beloved twelve-speed, his dark blue eyes reflecting his horror. The other three children also stared, open-mouthed.

“Maybe Mom can fix it,” Renee suggested.

“I think it’s dead,” David said.

“You were supposed to put it on the porch,” Christy pointed out. “Mom told you—”

Matt rounded on her. “You shut up!” he ordered, then turned back to the “body” with a gasp of distress.

Jake, riddled with guilt, put an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll buy you another one.”

“No.” Britt’s voice was firm, though her expression was sympathetic. “He always leans it up against the most convenient prop, then forgets it. I’ve barely missed running over it countless times. He’s supposed to lock it up on the porch. He knows that. It wasn’t your fault.”

Jake had expected her to be grateful to have something to blame on him. He was surprised into feeling responsible.

“Look,” he began, “I’ll be happy to—”

“No,” she insisted, pulling Matt out from under Jake’s arm and putting her own around the boy. “We all have to pay the consequences of our actions. That’s one of life’s primary rules.”

“What about my paper route?” Matt asked plaintively.

“You’ll have to use my bike,” Britt replied.

He rolled his eyes in distress. “Mom, come on. Your bike is dorky! I can’t—”

“What are your alternatives?” she asked.

Jake could see the boy struggling manfully not to cry as he continued to stare at the twisted tubing. “I could ask Howie to take over my route.”

“Then he’ll get the money and not you. How are you going to pay your way on the Scouting trip?”

Jake bit his tongue. He’d never been a parent, but he considered her unreasonably stern. It didn’t seem fair to remind the boy of other things he couldn’t have while he was standing over the corpse of his bike.

“Could I speak to you for a moment?” he asked the widow.

She gave him a cool, reluctant glance, then shooed the children toward the house. “Matt, put the bike in the back of the station wagon,” she said. “I’ll see if Brick can do anything with it.”

As the children moved away, Jake took her elbow and pulled her down the drive, out of earshot of Matt, who was bending over the bike.

“No,” she said quietly before Jake could say anything.

“Look,” he countered reasonably, “I backed over the bike because I didn’t see it. I feel—”

“You didn’t see it because he parked it in the wrong place after repeated warnings.”

He folded his arms and frowned down at her. “You chew nails, too?” he asked.

She glowered at him for one long moment, then sighed and squared her shoulders. “Do you have children?” she asked.

“No, I don’t,” he admitted, “but if I did, I wouldn’t rub their noses in their mistakes.”

She shook her head at his naïveté. “How do you suppose they learn not to make them?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off. “By having to live with the results. Perhaps you can afford to be more understanding because if your child made such a mistake, you could simply buy him another bike. Matt’s reality is that I can’t afford to do that, so he has to take special care of the one he has.”

“I feel partly responsible.” Jake thrust a thumb at his chest. “And I can afford to buy him another one. Doesn’t that change the equation just a little?”

“No,” she said, “because you won’t be around to buy him yet another one when he forgets and leaves the new one in the wrong place because the message never really got through.”

Jake turned his head to watch the boy heave the wreck into the back of the car. “Do you really think he’d let that happen again?”

“Twice or three times more,” she said without hesitation. “Kids are thick, Mr. Marshack. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She glanced at her watch. “Christy has a piano lesson, David has a t’ai chi class, Renee has ballet and Matt has to deliver his route.” She started to walk up the drive but he caught her arm.

He was surprised by how small it felt in his grip. Her bicep was muscled and firm, but he could easily close his hand around it. She looked up into his eyes and he felt that shock again, as though water had closed over his head.

Then, unexpectedly, her eyes gentled and she gave him a half smile. “I know you mean well,” she said, “and I appreciate the generosity of your offer when you know it really wasn’t your fault. But it’s important that Matt live with this for a little while.” Then her smile took on a slightly wry twist. “Just as I have to live with the results of my inability to pay my bills. Life is hard, and that’s a truth no one escapes. Goodbye, Mr. Marshack.”

She caught up with Matt and put an arm around his shoulders.

Jake saw the boy stiffen stubbornly, refusing to respond to some teasing remark. Now he felt sorry for both of them.

She certainly had a lot to contend with—the fairly recent loss of her husband, the brink of financial ruin and four children, one of whom was on the threshold of puberty with all its attendant confusion and volatility. Not to mention a porch roof that leaked.

Jake got into his vehicle again and backed down the drive. There was nothing else he could do here. He’d delivered the company’s offer, then its ultimatum. He’d upset the widow Hansen and made her older son a pedestrian. That was quite enough for one day.

* * *

WITH CHRISTY, David and Renee piled into the station wagon, Britt drove the three miles into Tyler. While the children teased and argued in the middle seat, she pushed in a Clint Black tape about “living and learning” and turned up the volume. The music didn’t deter the children one bit but it helped her ease the knot of worry that had begun to grow in her stomach a year ago when Jimmy died, and that now threatened to cut off her breath and smother her heartbeat.

Not that she and Jimmy hadn’t struggled before. Life for the small farmers all across the country had come down to a basic truth: success was being able to break even; profit was an impossibility. And for her and Jimmy, debt had been a fact of life since she inherited not only the farm when her father died, but the high cost of new milking equipment. The four days Jimmy had spent in intensive care after the accident had almost bankrupted her.

When he’d been there by her side, dark-haired and lanky and determined to look on the bright side, she’d felt as though she could handle anything. But since he was killed, she’d lost sight of the bright side. Lakeside Farm’s cash flow was down to a trickle, and it was impossible to hire someone to do all that Jimmy had done. Already putting in a full day herself, she tried to take over as many of Jimmy’s chores as she could manage and still be there for her children. But she felt like something from one of the taffy pulls described in Great-Grandma Bauer’s diary—as though she’d been stretched so far she was now stringy and limp.

“Mom!” Christy shouted. “You passed Miss Gates’s house!”

Britt broke out of her thoughts, quickly checking her rearview mirror before braking to a halt.

“She’s not Miss Gates anymore,” Renee corrected importantly. “She’s Mrs....?”

“Mrs. Forrester,” Britt supplied, backing up to a curb canopied by tall old maple trees just acquiring green buds. “No, Chris!” she cautioned as her daughter would have opened the street-side door. “Get out on the curb side.”

“David’s in the way.”

“David, honey, tuck your feet in.”

“If she wasn’t so fat—”

Whap! Sheet music to “Dance of the Butterflies” connected with David’s cheek as Christy stepped over him and past Renee, who had raised both feet onto the seat and covered her head.

“Christy,” Britt began to scold, but the child was already running up the walk to her piano teacher’s charming cream-colored house. She knew she should correct David for insulting his sister, but lately it’d become such a major event when he said anything that she hated to discourage him, even for saying something negative. She decided to conserve her energy on all counts. She was bound to find something that would require it later.

“I’d like to live here,” Renee said as they proceeded along the street. Britt glanced out at the fussily trimmed and gabled Victorian houses, some with orderly picket fences and others with gardens that would soon be ablaze in a riot of colors. Already daffodils and tulips were blooming everywhere.

“You couldn’t play with the calves if we lived in town,” Britt pointed out, fighting the concern she felt when any of her children expressed a desire to live anywhere but on the farm. “And you couldn’t walk down to the lake.”

“Yeah,” Renee agreed vaguely, gawking out the window, “but I could walk home from school for lunch. And I could go to the drugstore and buy candy bars after school like Jenny Linder does. Can I buy one today after ballet?”

Pleased to be able to grant a modestly priced request, Britt turned toward the commercial district, then pulled up in front of the newly built concrete-block building that housed the Y.

David leaned over the seat to kiss her on the cheek, then climbed past Renee and pushed the door open.

“I’ll pick you up in an hour,” Britt reminded him. “Wait right inside for me.”

David waved assent, then ran into the building.

A block farther Britt stopped again, this time in front of a pink Victorian trimmed in purple with a wooden sign marked Teddy Bear Tap and Ballet.

Renee leaned over to peck her mother’s cheek and said, when Britt opened her mouth, “You’ll pick me up in an hour and wait right inside the door.” She smiled impishly. “Right?”

Britt patted her curls and held her face against her own for an extra moment. The most cheerful of her children, Renee had unknowingly saved her sanity more than once during the past year. “Right, baby. Have fun.”

Britt wondered how many errands she could fit into the quiet hour afforded her. She had to stop by Brick’s to see if he could do anything with Matt’s bike, but that would still leave her time to check at the bank about her loan application. She decided against that instantly. She didn’t have the heart to face more rejection this afternoon.

She would visit Judson Ingalls and see if he’d completed the nutritional evaluation of her cheesecake sample.

A little stir of excitement distracted Britt momentarily from her worries. Her cheesecake was wonderful; everyone said so. It sold out regularly at the lodge, and Marge Peterson claimed that customers arrived early or else had to fight for the dozen cheesecake Danishes sold every morning at the diner.

As Britt drove to Ingalls Farm and Machinery at the edge of town, she frowned at the road, thinking that there had to be something big she could do with it. At the moment she was simply toying with the idea of wider distribution. But that meant more time baking and less time running the farm. She simply couldn’t spare the hours.

Unless the nutritional breakdown was so outstandingly low fat, low calorie and superbly nourishing that she had no choice but to market aggressively. Britt laughed as she pulled into the F and M parking lot. At least her sense of humor was still alive.

* * *

SHE FOUND JUDSON in his office in a rear corner of the building. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie pulled away from the open collar of his shirt, glasses far down on his nose as he studied a piece of correspondence. He looked up at Britt over the glasses as she peered around the door.

“Britt! Come in,” he said, standing and coming around the desk to draw her into the office. “I was going to call you in the morning. I put a report together for you today.”

“Wonderful.” She smiled, touched by his gallantry as he retained her hand until she was settled in one of the two chairs that faced his desk. She could haul fence posts by herself and he knew it, but he considered it important to see her properly seated.

Descended from one of the Tyler founding fathers, Judson was a generous, well-respected citizen who worked hard for his community, but whose favorite place was the laboratory off his office where he’d tinkered and dreamed most of his life.

Tall, gray-haired and gravelly voiced, he was possessed of a touching kindness and caring that reminded Britt sharply of her father. Judson had worked with her dad on several service projects. Despite the differences in their social standing, they’d become friends. When her parents were killed in an auto accident right after Matt was born, Judson had taken care of all the expenses the insurance hadn’t covered. When Jimmy died, he’d paid for the funeral. Those were kindnesses she would never forget.

“How are you, first of all?” she asked, sincerely interested. There was always a hint of tragedy and sadness behind the kindness in his eyes. Now, since the traumatic discovery of his ex-wife’s body during the renovation of Timberlake Lodge, once Judson’s home, he’d seemed to retreat even more deeply within himself.

Tyler was abuzz with speculation. Britt ignored it, figuring the truth would come out one day, and that it probably wouldn’t be the lurid tale gossip had embroidered.

Though she didn’t believe for a minute Judson had been in any way involved with his wife’s death, recent developments in the case were bizarre and inexplicable. She just wished the whole mess would go away. She wanted to see that haunted look gone from Judson’s eyes, wanted to know he was happy.

“Not bad, not bad,” he said in answer to her question, his smile broadening quickly, “for a man my age.” Just as suddenly he sobered and studied her closely.

“You’re looking a little peaked,” he said. “I saw Brick at the lodge.” A cloud passed quickly over his features, then was gone. “He says you’re working much too hard.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s that or lose the farm. I just can’t do that to all the Bauers who worked so hard to pass it on to me.” She smiled at Judson. “You know how that is.”

He nodded, fixing her with an expression of paternal affection. “The past keeps its hold on us, all right. I just hate to see you work yourself sick against impossible odds. The world’s different now, Britt. Your ancestors fought Indians and the elements and the market, but they never had to deal with monster dairy conglomerates who could outproduce and undercut you a hundred times over.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “So, is my cheesecake recipe going to make me a contemporary food industry marvel and help me save the farm?”

He pulled a thin folder out of a lineup of books and cleared a place for it, opening it on the desktop. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said.

She leaned an elbow on the armrest and grinned. “Just tell me the good news. Bad news always finds me anyway.”

He folded his arms on the report. “First, I think you do have something with potential here. It’s delicious. We’re all agreed on that.” He consulted the report, running his index finger down a line of figures. “Using low-fat milk and cheese brings it in at a caloric and nutritional level that should thrill the gourmet dieter.”

Britt felt her adrenaline begin to flow. She knew it! She resisted the impulse to leap across the desk and hug Judson, and instead asked with what she hoped was professional cool, “Then you don’t think I’d be crazy to develop more yogurt products and widen my market base?”

He considered a moment, removed his glasses and nodded with obvious reluctance. “Yes, I think it would be crazy.”

Britt’s adrenaline flow reversed, blocking a gasp in her throat. “I...don’t understand.”

Judson leaned back in his chair. “Britt, the market’s already clogged with low-calorie, high-nutrition products. All the big dairies are jumping on the bandwagon. You might do all right, but not well enough to outsell, say, Land o’ Honey Foods. And there’s the extra time and effort this will cost you just to put yourself in a position to try to compete.”

“Those products aren’t really all that healthy,” she argued. “The producers play games with numbers and trick the consumer with labeling. They call a product 95% fat free, but when you check the breakdown, with 150 calories the product has 9 grams of fat. At 9 calories a gram, that’s 81 calories of fat—more than half the 150. How can that be called 95% fat free?”

He smiled at her vehemence. “You can make numbers mean anything you want. They’re talking about a percentage of the product’s weight, not of its calories. A product like milk, for instance, has a large amount of water and minerals that add to its weight, but not its calorie count.”

“My product really is better for people. I’ve used low-fat everything and a sugar replacement.”

Judson sighed. “You know how much it’d cost you in advertising to let the consumer know that?”

Britt got to her feet and paced the office, trying to organize her thoughts. “Judson, I’ve researched the market. Fortune magazine says the consumer’s self-indulgent phase is winding down. The new shopper is eating his cancer-fighting cruciferous vegetables, having his cholesterol tested and striving to prolong his life. He isn’t buying gourmet ice cream anymore.”

Judson shifted in his chair and consulted the report again. “I’m not denying there’s a market for it. I’m just trying to tell you that scores of food manufacturers have gotten there before you.”

She folded her arms. “Is their cheesecake as good as mine?”

He chuckled. “I seriously doubt it, but I can’t say with any authority. Shall I send someone to the grocery store so we can conduct a taste test?”

She frowned good-naturedly. “Don’t laugh at me. I’ve had a rough day and I’ve got to do something to get out of this chasm of debt.”

“Britt, you have an excellent product here,” he said. “But that freezer aisle in the store represents a cutthroat market. Your cheesecake is scrumptious, but I don’t think you have the capital or the...the distinction to be noticed.”

She continued to pace. “Distinction?”

“You know, something that makes you unique, that screams out at the buyer. A gimmick.”

“Gimmick,” she repeated thoughtfully, falling back into her chair. “Why should something delicious have to have a gimmick?”

He smiled sympathetically. “The world turns on gimmicks. For a little guy like yourself, the gimmick would have to be big to get you noticed. But I think if you could find it, you’d be successful, because your product is superior.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “In your personal or professional opinion?”

“Both. Because I don’t have to conduct a lab analysis to know what you’re made of, Britt. If anyone can do the impossible, it’s you.”

Britt couldn’t help herself. She was encouraged. And it was so long since she’d felt a spark of enthusiasm for anything but her children that she let herself enjoy the sensation. She would remember all the negative aspects Judson had pointed out later. Right now she’d just hold on to the fact that he thought her cheesecake was delicious, and that he had faith in her.

This time she didn’t stop herself from hugging him. “Thanks, Judson. That means a lot to me.” She stepped back to dig into her purse. “What do I owe you for the lab work?”

“A dozen cheesecake Danishes,” he said, closing her purse and walking her to the door. “By the time I get to Marge’s they’re always gone.”

She hugged him again. “I’ll bring them by tomorrow. Thanks again for your help and your honesty.”

“Any time. Good luck, Britt.”

* * *

BRICK BAUER LOOKED into the back of the station wagon at the crumpled bike and halted Britt’s efforts to pull it out. “Don’t bother,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid it’s DOA.”

She hated to believe that, but Brick never lied to her. He’d been looking out for her since they were children, and Jimmy’s death had made him even more caring and protective.

“You’re sure?”

“Trust me. Someone did a very thorough job. Matt park it behind the truck again?”

Britt smiled at her cousin. “You have a detective’s instinct. Insightful and cleverly deductive.”

He grinned. “Of course. It’s the Bauer way.”

“Are you just coming home, or leaving for work?”

“I’m just off duty.” He glanced at his watch. “Karen should be home in half an hour or so. I can’t believe our shifts coincide for once.”

Britt squashed the surge of jealousy she felt that his marriage was fresh and new and hers was so prematurely over. “Who starts dinner in a two-cop family when the wife’s a captain, and the husband...isn’t?”

He made a pretense of polishing his badge. “Why, the better cook, of course. Sauerbraten. Want to stay?”

“Thanks. I’ve got to pick up the kids.”

Brick frowned. “Is Matt walking his route?”

“He’s using my bike,” Britt said, her expression wry. “A ‘nerdy’ comedown for him, I’m afraid. Marshack wanted to buy him a new one, but I wouldn’t let him. Matt’s got to take responsibility—”

“Marshack?” Brick asked.

“Winnebago Dairy’s district sales manager.” Her forced smile slipped a little. “He came to try to collect. When he left, Matt had propped his bike up against his Explorer and he backed right over it.”

“Matt needs the route if he’s going to go to that Boy Scout thing.” He grinned apologetically. “And your bike is nerdy. Want to borrow my credit card?”

She frowned her disapproval. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

“I know.” He put an arm around her and held her close for a sober moment. “How’re you doing with him? Is he still moody and remote?”

She nodded, happy to lean against her cousin’s strong shoulder. “Yeah. But then, so am I. He’s fairly cooperative. No worse than any other prepubescent boy dealing with the loss of his father.” She sighed, then pushed away, afraid of becoming too comfortable with Brick’s support. “I appreciate your interest, but you’ve got your own household to worry about now.”

“Karen has a meeting Friday morning and I’m off,” he said, opening her door for her. “I’ll come by and fix the porch roof for you.”

She smiled sheepishly. “I already did. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Well, I was using the short ladder because I’d lent the twelve-footer to Judy Lowery, and I overreached.”

He frowned in alarm. “You fell?”

“No. Marshack caught me.” She had a sudden, vivid memory of his hand wrapped around her inner thigh. A deep blush caught her completely unaware.

Brick noted it and raised an eyebrow. “Do tell, Brittany.”

She got into the car, pulled her door closed briskly and lowered the window. “Nothing to tell. He just happened to arrive at a very timely moment. Cut off my supplies, but saved me from breaking my neck.” She smiled and turned the key in the ignition. “That’s life. You have to take the bad with the good.” She blew him a kiss. “Love to Karen. See ya.”

As Britt drove back through town, she cranked up her Clint Black tape to put thoughts of Jake Marshack out of her head. She couldn’t imagine why images of him lingered there anyway. He was just another big-dairy bully making her life more difficult than it already was.

So he was nice looking. Actually, he was a lot more than nice looking. Since she was having to deal with serious realities lately, she could admit to herself that he was gorgeous.

Guilt and confusion filled her simultaneously. Why did that matter, anyway? And how did thoughts of him form when her entire man-woman awareness was always focused on Jimmy—or, rather, his absence?

“You’re losing your grip,” she warned herself. “Work with me here, Britt. Get your brain going on things that are going to mean money, not trouble.”

“All right,” she told herself. “Today was just fated to be a disaster. You can’t fight that. But tomorrow things are going to be different. Tomorrow you are not going to try to fix the roof, you will not have to deal with Jake Marshack, there will be no more bicycles to be run over. Tomorrow you will deliver Danishes to the diner and to Judson, you will take cheesecakes to the lodge, you will visit Grandma Martha. And you will come up with a gimmick.”

There. She felt herself relax. It always helped to hear her problems or her plans spoken aloud. It gave them substance, somehow, and made her better able to deal with them.

Jimmy had always laughed at her when he came upon her talking herself through a dilemma. “You should have gone into politics,” he told her more than once, “then you could have gotten paid for filibustering.”

She enjoyed the memory for a moment, smiling absently at the road, feeling warm and happy. Then the truth crashed in on her, as it always did. It was just a memory. It would always be just a memory. And she and Jimmy would never ever make another one.

Darkness threatened to suck her in like the core of a tornado. But she pulled to a stop at the side of Main Street, grinding her foot into the brake, holding her ground.

She drew one even breath, then another one. “You can do this,” she told herself bracingly. “Four kids are counting on you to get yourself together. A hundred acres that have belonged to a Bauer since the middle of the last century are waiting for you to come up with a gimmick so they don’t become part of some hybrid, megamonster farm.”

Feeling the return of control, she drew another deeper breath and let the car roll forward. She was smiling when she pulled up in front of the ballet school to pick up Renee. “And the food industry is just waiting for your gimmick.”

CHAPTER THREE

JAKE FELT the resentment the moment he walked into the diner. The place had been abuzz with conversation when he opened the door, but it fell silent in the few seconds it took him to walk to the counter. Men in coveralls and baseball caps, men in suits and women dressed for work in town watched him every step of the way. As he settled on a stool at the L-shaped bar, talk started up again, but he got the distinct impression he was the subject of it.

He tried to take it in stride. News got around fast in small towns, and he’d paid four calls yesterday, trying to collect. He was the good guy when he could provide products needed, but the bad guy when he had to collect for them in hard times. He was getting used to being treated like the biblical tax collector or the contemporary IRS auditor.

He indicated the pile of newspapers on the counter between himself and the police officer seated beside him. “Finished with this?” he asked with a courteous smile.

The officer gave him a long, measuring look, then nodded. “Help yourself.”

“Thank you.” Jake found the sports page and decided to lose himself in the Cubs’ spring-training stats.

The woman behind the counter ignored him, while second-guessing the needs of everyone else. A second waitress raced from the kitchen to the banks of booths against the wall. He gathered from the teasing going on back and forth that the woman ignoring him was named Marge and that she owned the diner.

He finally commanded her attention with a loud but courteous “Ham-and-cheese omelet, please. Hash browns. Sourdough toast. And coffee with cream.”

She glared at him and he added with a pointed look, “When you get around to it. Thank you.”

She came to stand in front of him, the coffeepot held aloft. He got the distinct impression she intended to pour its contents on him if he made one wrong move.

“Fresh out of ham and cheese,” she said aggressively.

He put down the paper. He pointed to the officer’s plate, where half of a ham-and-cheese omelet lay fluffy and plump beside a wedge of wheat toast.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Brown eyes looked back at him evenly. “That’s his ham-and-cheese omelet. He protects the people around here. He doesn’t take food out of children’s mouths and make life miserable for young widows who are barely—”

“Marge,” the officer said quietly, his expression mildly amused. “That’s harassment. Get him his omelet or I’ll have to take you in.”

Marge put down the pot and offered both wrists across the counter. “Here. Do it now. Put me in solitary, but don’t expect me to do anything for this monster who—”

“What is going on?” a familiar voice demanded near Jake’s shoulder.

He turned to find the widow Hansen standing in the small space between his shoulder and the police officer’s. She wore jeans and another baggy sweater, this one a soft blue that was the color of her eyes. She had a wide, flat plastic container balanced on one hand and a big purse hung over her shoulder.

“Hey, babe.” The officer snaked an arm around her and pulled her to him, kissing her temple. He rubbed her shoulder. “Buy you breakfast?”

She smiled at him affectionately, and Jake felt the irritation that had been building in him since he walked into the place develop into anger. “Thanks, Brick. Had it two hours ago.” She placed the container on the counter, then frowned from him to Jake to Marge, whose hands were still held out sacrificially. “You’re arresting Marge?”

Brick grinned. “She refused to serve this gentleman his ham-and-cheese omelet. That’s unconstitutional.”

Britt blinked at Marge. “Why?”

“Because he—”

Jake folded his paper and put it aside. “Forget the omelet. I was just leaving.” He tried to stand, but a soft but surprisingly firm hand on his shoulder held him in place.

Britt’s blue, blue eyes flashed at him. “You stay right there.” She turned to Marge. “Why won’t you order his omelet?”

Everyone in the restaurant was absolutely still, waiting for her answer.

“Because I know he’s from Winnebago Dairy, and that he cut you off yesterday because you couldn’t pay. Nobody does that to my friends and gets away with it.” Marge’s eyes filled briefly, then she sniffed and swiped at something on the counter that wasn’t there. “Not after what you’ve been through. So Officer Bauer here—” she glanced in his direction “—threatened to take me in.”

Britt drew a breath and sat Jake down a second time when he tried again to get up. “Margie, he was just doing his job,” she said reasonably, almost surprised to hear the words come out of her own mouth. It was one thing to feel personal resentment at the bind his actions had left her in. But to see him unfairly treated by her friends in a public place for having done nothing more than what was required of him made her furious.

“I ordered the stuff,” she said, “and I couldn’t pay. His company has waited eight months already, while still supplying me. Do you think I’d keep making Danishes for you,” she asked, tapping the plastic container, “if you didn’t pay me?”

Marge folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”

Britt wedged herself in between Jake and Brick so that she could lean over the counter toward Marge and give her the full effect of her stare. Brick grinned at Jake behind her back.

“You get this man his ham-and-cheese omelet,” she said firmly, placing a hand on top of the container, “or I won’t give you these extra Danishes you ordered for the Kiwanis breakfast. Whoever told you I’d been cut off apparently neglected to mention that when Mr. Marshack arrived at my place I was hanging by my fingernails from the roof. He saved me from falling, at considerable risk to himself.”

That was somewhat overstated, Jake thought, but Marge’s spine seemed to relax a fraction. She looked suspiciously from him to Britt.

“That’s true,” Brick confirmed, taking a bite of toast. “She told me yesterday afternoon. Even blushed when she said it. I don’t think she’s half as mad at him as you are.”

Britt turned on Brick and whomped him in the stomach with the back of her hand. He choked on the toast and had to reach for his coffee.

She turned back to Marge. “Get the omelet now.”

With one last, distrustful look at Jake, Marge made notes on her order pad, tore off the check and, scooping up the plastic container, went toward the kitchen.

“Spoilsport,” Brick said, finally recovered. “That would’ve been my first collar in a the week.”

Britt rolled her eyes at him. “You’re a nut, Bauer.”

“Runs in the family,” he returned. “Faulty chromosomes or something.”

Britt gave Jake an uncertain smile. “You okay?”

He was having palpitations over the nearness of her eyes, but he suspected she wouldn’t want to know that. “Fine,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Jake Marshack—” she swept a hand toward the officer “—my cousin, Donald Bauer, known among family and friends as Brick because his head bears a remarkable resem—” Her fingers traced a square in the air as Brick reached around with one hand to cover her mouth. He thrust the other toward Jake.

“Actually, it’s a name from my football days. Pleased to meet you. And thanks for saving her neck. I offered to do that roofing job for her, but she finds it impossible to wait for anything.”

Britt pulled Brick’s hand from her mouth. “He’s been promising for weeks. I’d hoped to enjoy the porch before snow sets in again.”

Listening to their affectionate banter, Jake felt a wave of loneliness he usually kept at bay with long hours in the office and at his desk at home. But here in Tyler the pace was slower, and after calling on her yesterday, he hadn’t been able to turn off his mind.

He wasn’t even sure why he was still here. Though he’d made another call after visiting her yesterday, he’d easily have gotten back to Chicago in time for a late dinner. But it had started raining, and he’d told himself rush hour would be slick and ugly and he might as well stay the night.

He’d watched cable television in the small motel room he’d found on the outskirts of town and had wondered how in hell the widow Hansen could be expected to make it with no feed, four kids, and everybody from bank to grocer breathing down her neck.

Then he remembered Brick saying a moment ago that Britt had told him about being saved from the roof, and that she’d blushed while telling him. Every time he thought about grabbing her thigh in his hand and scooping her bottom toward him as she’d dangled there, he felt a catch in his chest, a hitch in his pulse. Something subtle had happened to him yesterday. And it was possible something had happened to her.

“I’ve got to go,” Britt announced, her purse bumping him as she slipped out from between them. She turned to give him a quick smile, one that on the surface held only courtesy. But her eyes were so close to his that he saw deep inside a vague little longing that flashed when their eyes met, then was gone. “Safe trip home,” she said. Then she leaned over to kiss Brick on the cheek. “Have a good day, cuz.”

“Where you off to?” he asked.

“Worthington House to see Grandma and Inger.”

When she was out the door, Jake couldn’t resist asking Brick, “What happened to her husband?”

“He was plowing near a ditch,” Brick said grimly. “Got too close. Tractor turned over on him.”

Jake closed his eyes. That ugly accident happened all too often in farm country, but it was hard for him to think it had happened to someone Britt had loved.

“She’d gone to Milwaukee with a friend for a weekend of shopping,” Brick went on. “The first time she’d ever left Jimmy and the kids alone. She carries a lot of guilt over it.”

“God,” Jake said quietly, feelingly.

“Yeah. You can see why Marge got testy. Britt’s fighting an uphill battle, and we’re all pushing and pulling for her.”

As though on cue, Marge appeared with a steaming plate. The omelet was fat and beautiful, the hash browns golden and the toast buttered in every little corner. She poured coffee into a cup, put a pot of cream beside him and a jar of jam. “Anything else?” she asked, her tone a shade more congenial, but only just.

Jake looked down at his breakfast, then up at her again. “Something to eat it with,” he said, “and I’ll be a happy man.”

“Oh.” She looked surprised that she’d forgotten utensils. She retrieved knife, fork and spoon and a generous-size napkin, then leaned on her elbows across from him as he peppered the omelet.

“So you can’t see your way clear to get her a month’s extension?” she prodded. “She’s got big plans, you know. She makes the best low-calorie cheesecake east of the Rockies, and she’s going to pick up more clients and make more different products with her yogurt.”

Jake frowned, knowing how overworked she had to be already. “By herself?”

Marge sighed. “That’s how she does everything since Jimmy died.”

Jake couldn’t see how that was going to make any difference—provided she could even do it. Cheesecake, however elegant, would have to be produced by the thousands to affect the kind of debt on her books....

Though she’d been gone ten minutes, he could still see deep into those blue eyes and that little flash of longing in them. Business was business, but it was hard to step on someone who was trying so hard.

Marge was still waiting for an answer.

“I’ll try,” he promised with a thin smile.

A cheer rose from Marge’s Diner’s clientele. Jake looked around from the counter to find himself being applauded.

Brick slapped him on the back. “All right,” he said.

Jake turned back to his breakfast, mystified. He’d visited Tyler a dozen times in the past few years, but he’d never stayed overnight, so he’d never stopped in for breakfast. He’d never spoken to anyone but the people from whom he’d been trying to collect, so he’d never gotten below the surface of the pretty little lake town.

Now that he had, it was a little scary. For a boy who’d lived with his mother in a tenement in Chicago, crowded in with an aunt who’d made it clear every day that they were there on the sufferance of charity, this warm caring of one person for another was something alien and new. As an adult, he’d certainly never seen it in the corporate world.

Marge topped up his coffee and gave him a brilliant smile. Brick picked up his tab. When Jake tried to protest, he offered his hand again, then was gone.

Jake dug into his succulent omelet, feeling as though his world had slipped a little out of orbit.

* * *

WALKING ACROSS the parking lot toward the rest home that sprawled on a corner of Elm Street, Britt tried to stop her mind’s erratic jumping, from Jake Marshack to cheesecakes, to Jake Marshack to money, to Jake Marshack.

She’d seen a lonely man in the diner. Though she missed Jimmy abominably, she had friends and relatives who were always generous with emotional support or a more substantive helping hand. She hated to think of anyone trying to get through life without them.

Of course, why she was worried about a man with a secure, high-paying job when her personal economy was about to bottom out, she couldn’t imagine. There was just something in his face that touched her.

Topping the stairs and blindly turning down the corridor, Britt collided with George Phelps, who was perusing a chart.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Phelps,” she apologized breathlessly. “Did I hurt you?”

He grinned at the question. Tall and fit, with graying brown hair, he twirled the end of his elegant mustache in a parody of villainy. “Hardly. It was the nicest thing that’s happened to me this morning. How are you, Britt?”

“Good. How are things with you?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, his expression failing to match his words. He waved a typewritten sheet in the air. “Except for the resignation of Finklebaum, my nursing supervisor. She’ll be missed around here. But how’re the kids? I don’t recall seeing any of your brood since back-to-school checkups.”

Britt rapped on the paneled wall. “Knock on wood. I think they move too fast to catch anything.” She began to back away. “I’m on my way to visit the ladies. Take care, Doctor.”

Britt turned down the corridor toward Inger Hansen’s room, bracing herself for the ordeal. She visited Jimmy’s great-aunt before her grandmother because the woman’s irascible personality made it more of a challenge than a pleasure. With that chore behind her, Britt could then relax and enjoy her Grandma Martha.

The theme music from “The Price is Right” blared from the television as Britt entered the room. The woman sharing the space with Inger, apparently cursed with good hearing, wore large orange ear protectors as she concentrated on her cross-stitching.

“Hi, Inger,” Britt said, coming up beside her to put a bag of goodies on her bedside table.

“Shh!” Inger snapped, her sharp eyes focused on the television as she held Britt out of the way with one arm. “This guy’s about to blow it. He is so stupid! You wonder how some people get by!”

The television audience cheered for a correct answer and Inger slapped her blanket in disgust. “One live brain cell. Big deal!” She turned to Britt and shouted over the loud television. “How are you? You look like a refugee. Don’t you ever eat?”

Britt smiled and gave her a hug, tuning out her considerable annoyance quotient in deference to her age and her status as family.

“I’m fine, Aunt Inger. How are you?”

“Old. Arthritic. God knows what else. I hope that bag isn’t filled with more cheesecake.”

“No.” Britt allowed herself a smile, grateful her small success didn’t depend on Inger. It was interesting, she thought, how differently time and loss of loved ones aged individuals. Some, like her grandmother, drew others toward them. Inger pushed everyone away, as though telling the world that if she couldn’t have the people she wanted, she didn’t want anyone.

Britt delved into the bag and held out a Linder ball, a chocolate confection wrapped in colorful foil. They were Inger’s weakness.

Inger’s eyes softened for an instant, then she snatched the candy from Britt. “Thank you,” she said, almost resentful at having a reason for gratitude. “How are your little monsters?”

Britt poured water into Inger’s glass from the small carafe and tidied her tray. “Oh, you know. Monstrous. Anything I can get you?”

“No.” Inger made a shooing motion toward the door. “Go on. Get back to your kids and your cows. And for God’s sake, eat something before somebody puts old clothes on you and sticks you in a cornfield.”

Britt leaned down to hug her again and felt the old woman’s surprisingly strong response before she pushed her away and turned her concentration back to the television. When Britt paused at the door to wave, Inger had the bag of Linder balls in her lap.

She found an earnest game of gin rummy in progress in Martha Bauer’s room. The tiny, fragile woman was propped up against her pillows, her white hair in a neat braid coronet atop her head, her bony shoulders adorned with a soft blue bed jacket.

“Brittany!” Martha’s deep voice was slightly fractured with age. From the bank of pillows, her bright blue eyes smiled behind wire-rimmed bifocals. She patted the side of her bed for Britt to join her, then returned to the serious business of winning the hand. She tilted her head slightly backward to focus on the spread of cards she held. She considered for a moment, then placed everything in her hand in threes and fours on the swivel tray serving as a card table. “Gin!” she said with satisfaction.

Martha’s round, gray-haired opponent occupied a room down the hall but visited Martha regularly to play cards and cadge treats. Britt knew her simply as Lavinia.

Lavinia looked at her full hand of cards, then down at the table in disgust. “I don’t know why I drag my arthritic carcass all the way over here just to get beaten day after day. How much am I in your debt now?”

“Ah...” Martha consulted the score sheet. “Nine hundred and fifty-seven dollars.”

“You cheat!” Lavinia accused with a smile. “If it wasn’t for the food your granddaughter brings—” she winked at Britt “—I wouldn’t come back.”

She stood laboriously, and Britt went around the bed to help her untangle herself from the chair and position herself within the protective rails of her walker. Someone in Lavinia’s family had made a colorful little calico pouch that snapped on the side of the walker, and Britt stuffed a bag full of soft cookies she and the children had made into it.

“Bless you,” Lavinia said, leaning heavily on one hand to put the other arm around Britt in a hug. Then she started for the door, moving surely, but at a snail’s pace. “Here I go,” she said. “Like a turtle with her tail on fire. Out of my way. Watch my dust. That’s not an explosion you hear, it’s me, breaking the sound barrier. Hi, ho, Silver! Awayyyy...” Her voice trailed after her as she made her way down the hall.

Britt and Martha giggled.

“How are you today, Grandma?” Britt asked, settling herself on the edge of the bed again. “Do you really cheat?”

“Of course. She’s a better player—it’s the only way I can win.” She looked more pleased with herself than apologetic. Then she tilted back her head to study Britt through the lower half of her bifocals. “How are you? You look more like your mother every day. Except for the circles under your eyes.”

Britt delved into the bag she’d brought. “Well, I’m no spring chicken anymore, you know.”

“Thirty-two. Still a baby.”

“Thirty-three,” Britt corrected, handing her the current supermarket tabloids. “Here’s your Globe, Inquirer, Star, Shalimar, and a small piece of cheesecake.”

Martha frowned at her playfully. “Small piece?”

“Got to watch that waistline.” Britt put the cheesecake on her tray, pulled off the plastic wrap, then poured a cup of milky coffee from a thermos she’d brought.

Martha rolled a bite of cheesecake on her tongue and made an appreciative sound. Then she pointed at the cake with her fork. “You know, my mother used to love rich things. Torte with custard filling and meringue. And she made the most beautiful lattice crust you ever saw.”

This was a story Martha loved to tell, so Britt smiled encouragingly and listened patiently as time rolled away and the old woman focused with misting blue eyes on her childhood. “’Course, she was only ten years old when her family came here from Germany, so she remembered life there very clearly. She was scandalized when stores started carrying cake mix in a box. She and our neighbor, Mrs. Olson, made a pact never to bake anything that was prepackaged.”

“Hi, Martha!” An enthusiastic voice interrupted the old woman’s reminiscences. “That’s right, isn’t it? I’m trying to learn names today.”

Martha looked up with a bright smile, and Britt turned as a woman she guessed to be somewhere around her own age walked into the room. She was plump and red-haired, and was wearing the pale green uniform of the Worthington House staff. She spoke deliberately and with the childlike need to please of the developmentally disabled.

Martha beckoned her closer. “That’s right, Freddie. You’re doing very well. Come and meet my most favorite person in the whole world.”

Britt stood and Freddie came forward shyly.

“Freddie, this is Britt Hansen, my granddaughter,” she said, “Britt, this is Freddie Houser. Dr. Phelps just hired her a few days ago and she’s fitting right in. She helps me with my bath.”

Freddie beamed at the praise.

Britt offered her hand. “I’m happy to meet you, Freddie. I’m glad to know you’re taking such good care of Grandma.”

“I work very hard,” Freddie assured her. “And I try to do everything just the way Mrs. Finklebaum showed me.”

“Freddie?” One of the other aides appeared in the doorway. With a wave and a smile for Britt and Martha, she asked Freddie, “Can you come and help me with Mrs. Norgaard?”

“Okay.” Before she left, Freddie whispered to Britt conspiratorially, “I’ll take special care of Martha, don’t you worry.”

“Thank you, Freddie.”

As the aides disappeared down the hall, Martha shook her head sadly, pulling Britt closer. “Poor Freddie,” she said quietly. “She lived at home until her mother died. Lavinia told me Phyllis had been diagnosed as terminally ill, but lately had been in a kind of remission. Then, suddenly, she just died without warning. Now Freddie’s all alone. Dr. Phelps hired her to help out around here and she’s trying so hard.” She sighed. “Imagine being not quite up to snuff and having nobody.”

“That would be tough,” Britt commiserated. “Well, she really seems to like you, so you keep encouraging her. Now finish that cheesecake so I can take the plate with me.”

Martha tucked back into the treat with fervor. “My mother used to make something kind of like this. Though she never liked using cow’s milk. She always wanted a goat, so that we could have goat’s milk, but my father raised dairy cows and was horrified at the idea. She insisted goat’s milk was healthier and tasted better. He said it tasted like—” She stopped abruptly and grinned. “I won’t tell you what he said it tasted like. She tried to tell him goat’s milk could be delicious if the goat ate the right things, and that it was easier to digest. Often, people who are allergic to dairy products can still drink goat’s milk. But he wouldn’t hear of it and she never did get a goat.”

“I had goat’s milk a couple of times in college,” Britt said, trying to remember the circumstances. “We were on a health kick, I think, to get in bikini shape by the summer. We’d been impressed in class with how low in fat and...”

Something clanged in her brain.

Goat’s milk. Lower in fat than cow’s milk. Snob appeal. Gimmick!

Martha ate and chatted while Britt’s heart began to pound and her brain ticked over with the idea. At the moment, yogurt was the ordinary consumer’s fair-haired child. Goat’s milk yogurt would probably bring them running. No. Would it? Would they go for it? Of course. All she had to do was think it through carefully and find the right approach.

She had to make some. Now. Today.

* * *

A BLOND EYEBROW went up disbelievingly. “You’re going to make what?”

“Goat’s milk yogurt,” Britt repeated, taking her friend and neighbor, Judy Lowery, by the wrist and dragging her across the yard toward the pen where she kept three Alpine goats.

“You’ve got to be joking. You ever tasted the stuff?” Judy was a writer who kept the goats for company. She was a newcomer to the Tyler area and a cynic, but a wonderful friend.

“I’m going to scope it out in detail at the library, but my grandmother says goat’s milk can be delicious if they’re properly fed. Can I rent one of your goats for a couple of days? Long enough to get milk and make yogurt and try a few recipes?”

Judy, half a head taller than Britt, put her hands on her friend’s shoulders and said gravely, “Why don’t you come inside and lie down? I’ve seen this coming. You’ve blown a fuse. I knew this was—”

“Go ahead and scoff,” Britt said, undaunted by her attitude, “but I’m going to produce a yogurt that’s lower in fat and calories than anything currently on the market. And I’m going to make a bundle.”

Judy folded her arms. “Why don’t you just find a rich man and remarry? You’ve still got it, you know. Tight body, great hair, unconscious sex appeal. Why put yourself through this?”

This time Britt took Judy’s arms and gave her a shake. She’d thought about her idea in the car all the way over here and it just felt right. “Judy, I’ve spent my life living everyone else’s dream. I came home from college to take over the farm when my dad had a heart attack. I worked beside Jimmy toward his plan of what Lakeside Farm should be. This dream is mine. I’m going to save the farm with the hottest damned food product on the market.”

Judy shifted her weight and cleared her throat. “Britt,” she said, “as a dream, goat’s milk yogurt kind of lacks the cosmic quality.”

Britt swatted her arm. “This is going to work. Can I rent a goat or not?”

“No,” Judy replied, “but you can borrow one. Take your pick.”

“Which one’s your best milker?”

“Mildred.” Judy pointed to the doe in the middle, which was tan with white-and-black markings on her face and hindquarters. She was angular with prominent hipbones, thin thighs and a long, lean neck and body. Britt knew the uninitiated might consider her underfed, but a good dairy goat was neither fat nor meaty. Mildred looked like a good prospect.

Britt stretched a hand toward her and all three goats edged forward to nip at her fingers and sleeve. She patted Mildred between the stumps of her horns.

“Okay, Milly,” she said. “You and I are going to take the world by storm.”

Though Britt was pleased with Mildred, Mildred didn’t appear to be thrilled with Britt. She complained loudly as the two women lifted her into the back of the truck. Britt raised the tailgate and locked it. Mildred looked at her with sad, accusing yellow eyes.

Britt patted her flank. “It’s just for a couple of days, Milly. You’ll have fun.” Britt walked around the truck to the driver’s side, then turned to hug Judy. “Wish me luck. If this works, it could be the end of my problems.”

Judy smiled skeptically. “Don’t be silly. This is life, Brittany. Problems never end, they just rest between eruptions.”

“How’s the book coming?”

“So-so. I think it needs more violence, but I’m not very good at that. I hate to hurt anyone I create.”

“I’ll lend you my kids,” Britt said, grinning at her little play on words. “Fair exchange. They do violence to one another without a second thought or hint of remorse. Would that help?”

Judy smiled blandly. “Thanks awfully, but I’ll pass. Let me know how it goes.”

Britt waved out the window as she headed home.

Her mind glutted with ideas, she tried to make herself relax and take it one slow and careful step at a time. First, she’d make Mildred comfortable. Then she’d see that she had just the right things to eat to produce the perfect milk for her recipe. Then she would make the recipe work.

Everything would come together; she just felt it would.

Britt pulled into her drive, noticing the young spring green on the tips of everything, then turned into the yard.

She was just beginning to relax when she saw the red Explorer parked behind her station wagon. Her heart gave an involuntary and rather violent lurch. Jake Marshack was back.

CHAPTER FOUR

HE WAS SITTING on the top step of the porch, Daffodil beside him, licking his ear. The dog gave one loud bark and went running toward the truck. Jake got up more slowly and wandered down the steps while Britt came around the truck, eyeing him suspiciously.

She was as pretty as he remembered. After breakfast that morning, as he’d gone around on his self-appointed chores, he’d been plagued with a vivid memory of her, pink-cheeked and clear-eyed, insisting that Marge order his omelet. He’d finally concluded that she couldn’t be as beautiful as he remembered. He was simply flattering himself because she’d come so wholeheartedly to his defense.

But he could see now that his memory had been sharp and true. She’d torn out the braid at some point since he’d seen her this morning, and her gold hair hung loose and a little wild in the early-afternoon wind. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright, though he noticed a bluish bruised effect under them. That hurt him in a way he didn’t entirely understand and couldn’t have explained.

She stopped halfway across the yard as he came toward her. “Mr. Marshack,” she said coolly. “What is it now?”

He fought an overwhelming urge to take her in his arms, carry her into the house and put her somewhere where she could rest undisturbed for a week. Instead, he moved past her to the truck and examined the goat, his hands in his suit pants pockets. “New transportation for Matt so he can keep his paper route?” he asked.

She fought a smile, then gave in. “No, he’ll get by on my old bike. Actually, the goat’s part of my plan to ruin your plan.”

“My plan?”

“To make me sell.”

It wasn’t his plan, it was someone else’s higher up the chain of command. But he didn’t want to talk about that.

“That’s not why I’m here,” he said.

Her heart skipped a beat as she looked into his quiet brown eyes. She’d seen them over and over in her mind last night, then this morning after their meeting in the diner. There was a message in them she was afraid to read.

She dipped her head in mock apology. “My mistake. Why are you here?”

“Actually,” he said, gently taking her arm and leading her toward the porch, “it’s part of my plan to ruin your plan.”

“I’m getting confused,” she admitted. Then she noticed the bike leaning against the porch railing. It was a shiny new Huffy with a water bottle, a carry-bag attached to the frame and other options she couldn’t even identify. She gasped at the beauty of it, smiled instinctively at the way she knew Matt would react to it. Then, when she’d had time to think, she frowned.

“I thought I explained—”

“You did,” he said appeasingly, “and I understand and appreciate all your parental concerns. But the fact remains that your son wasn’t completely at fault, and it bothered me all night. If you insist, he can pay me five dollars a month or something until it’s paid off.”

She looked at the spiffy top-of-the-line model with all the extras. “It would take him until he’s twenty-one.”

“Hardly.”

“Mr. Marshack. I don’t think...” she began halfheartedly, hating to deprive Matt of this beautiful bike, but knowing in her heart he’d be careless with it again and she’d never be able to come close to replacing it.

But the yellow school bus at the end of the lane expelled her children, and the dog ran to greet them. They were halfway to the house when their attention homed in on the bike. Matt shouted and started to run, the others following quickly behind, the dog weaving in and out of them in suicidal patterns. From the truck, Mildred complained loudly. Unnoticed by the other children, the goat brought Renee to a dead stop. At the sight of it she veered toward the truck.

Matt skidded to a halt at the porch steps, Christy and David flanking him breathlessly, all sets of eyes on the bike.

Britt watched Matt’s face as his gaze caressed every shiny inch of it. He looked up at her, obviously afraid to draw any conclusions about what the bike’s presence meant.

“Hi, Mom,” he said. Then, apparently deciding his best behavior was called for in this uncertain situation, he extended his hand to their guest. “Mr. Marshack. Nice to see you again.”

Britt melted as Jake shook hands with her son. Even knowing Matt had probably realized displaying good manners could only be to his benefit, it was such a deep-down, genuine pleasure to find that he’d absorbed something she’d taught him. She put an arm around him and squeezed.

“Mr. Marshack thinks the two of you should make a deal about the bike.”

Joy flashed in Matt’s eyes. He turned to Jake, and took the nobility just a little further. “It was all my fault,” he said. “You’d never have seen my bike in your mirror. You aren’t responsible.” For good measure, he glanced at his mother. “Mom’s got a thing about responsibility.”

Jake nodded gravely, lifted the bike by the handlebars and seat from its leaning position against the steps and steadied it in front of Matt. “She’s absolutely right. And most mistakes we have to pay for, but with some we deserve a break. I figure we can split the cost. You can pay me back for your half at five bucks a month. And you don’t have to start until after the summer trip you’re saving for.”

Matt turned to his mother, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“Wow!” Christy breathed.

“Boy,” David said, his voice filled with awe as he stared at the bike. “Are you lucky!”

“Hop on,” Jake said. “Make sure everything works before I leave.”

Matt watched Britt’s eyes for the firm refusal he seemed to feel sure was coming.

She nodded. “You are lucky,” she said, “to have had your bike run over by someone so understanding and so generous.”

Matt smiled from ear to ear as he threw a leg over the bike. It was the first free, open smile she’d seen on his face in a year. He started to thank Jake and couldn’t. He tried three different times, but the words refused to string together with any kind of coherence.

“Go,” Jake said finally. “Be careful at first, though, just to make sure everything’s all right.”

They all watched as he did a careful circuit of the yard, then a faster, more complicated one. Then Matt shouted gleefully and headed down the drive to the road. “I’m gonna do the loop!” he called. “Be right back.”

Christy and David ran to the fence to watch him.

“The loop?” Jake asked.

“A road around the woods that leads back here.” She looked up into his brown eyes and saw satisfaction there. Making her son happy had made him happy. It was difficult to remain angry with him under those circumstances. “Thank you, Mr. Marshack. He hasn’t been this thrilled about anything since...well, in a long time.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said. “And I have something else to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

Before he could reply, there was a squeal from Renee, who was hanging from the side of the pickup. Mildred had a mouthful of her hair.

With an exasperated groan, Britt ran to the truck. Renee dangled helplessly, giggling and shrieking. Jake supported her while Britt tried to ease her hair from Mildred’s mouth. The goat nibbled at Britt’s hand as she pulled gently.

Finally freed, Renee turned into Jake’s arms, wrapping hers around his neck. “Hi,” she said warmly, making no effort to get down. “You’re back.”

“Yes.” She looked like her mother, he thought, with something in her smile that tugged at him the way Britt’s did. There was openness in it, and a touching need.

“Did you bring the goat?”

“No, your mom did.”

“How come?”

“Because we’re going to make yogurt from Mildred’s milk,” Britt explained, stepping around a mud puddle. Taking Mildred’s lead in one hand and opening the tailgate with the other, she added, “And use it in my cheesecake.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll be lower in calories.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s less butterfat in goat’s milk.”

“Why?”

Jake admired Britt’s patient answers to Renee’s favorite question. But she was distracted now by Mildred’s refusal to come to the back of the truck. Apparently deciding that the neglect of the past few moments didn’t bode well for a stay of any duration in this place, Mildred refused to budge.

Britt climbed lightly into the truck and, putting a shoulder to Mildred’s rear, pushed until she reached the rear edge. “Mr. Marshack,” she said breathlessly, “would you grab her collar so she doesn’t back away while I jump out?”

Jake put Renee down and complied. The goat looked at him with resentful amber eyes. Britt leaped down and wrapped her arms around Mildred’s four legs. Mildred baaed unhappily.

Jake put a halting hand on Britt’s shoulder. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

Surprised by his tone and a little annoyed with his interference, she replied over her shoulder, “Lifting her down. Get out of the way.”

“You’ll hurt yourself,” he said, pulling off his suit coat.

Holding Mildred’s collar, Britt straightened and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Mr. Marshack, I carry fifty-pound bags of grain, heavy bales of hay, even Renee....”

Ignoring her, Jake pushed her aside, wrapped his arms around the goat and lifted. Mildred stood quietly in his arms long enough to give him a false sense of security, then began to struggle wildly as he lowered her to the ground. He held fast, afraid a sudden drop might break a spindly leg.

Determined to break free, Mildred pitched forward. Jake overbalanced and they landed together in a shallow but messy mud puddle.

Britt caught Mildred’s tether before she could prance away and handed it to Renee, who was giggling uproariously. Then she hunkered down beside Jake and considered him, elbows on her knees. Holding back the laughter was choking her.

“I could have done that,” she said, “And without getting muddy.”

The impulse to yank Britt down beside him was overwhelming. Had Renee not been standing there, he might have done it. Mud squished through his clothes and he felt splashes of it on his face.

“You’re walking a fine line, Mrs. Hansen,” he warned quietly, fighting his own urge to laugh. “A sympathetic hand up would be appreciated.”

She straightened to her feet and offered her hand, still biting her bottom lip. “I told you I was perfectly capable of—”

“What can I say?” he groaned, taking her hand and using it only for balance as he pushed himself to his feet. “I was born and bred in Chicago—as a gentleman, I might add. I had this foolish, chivalrous notion that a woman shouldn’t have to lift a goat.”

“Farm women aren’t like city women,” she said, grimacing as she examined the mud covering most of the back of his elegant suit. “You’re a mess, Mr. Marshack. You’d better come inside.”

He stopped as she tried to lead him toward the house.

“Considering I’ve humiliated myself on your behalf,” he said, “do you think you could call me Jake?”

She let her laughter loose then, looping her arm in his. He was forced to laugh with her and allowed himself to be guided up the drive to the porch steps and into the familiar kitchen.

“Keep Mildred company for a few minutes,” Britt called to Renee. “I’ll be right back.”

The other three children piled into the house after them as Jake followed Britt through the kitchen to a dark hallway, then up the back stairs toward a long line of bedrooms.

“The bike’s cool, Mr. Marshack!” Matt reported from the bottom of the stairs. “The thumb-shifters are radical, and the brakes really work.” Then he seemed to notice the condition of Jake’s clothes. “What happened?”

“I was trying to help your mother with the goat,” Jake said. “I didn’t do very well.”

Matt frowned at Britt. “Yeah, I saw it. What’s it for, anyway? Renee says you’re gonna cook it.”

“No,” Britt called over her shoulder, stopping at the doorway to her bedroom. “I’m going to cook with the milk the goat gives us. I’m trying a new recipe for goat’s milk yogurt.”

“Oh.” The word contained very little enthusiasm.

“Are you staying for dinner, Mr. Marshack?” Christy asked, eyes wide and interested behind her glasses. She and David had followed them up the stairs.

A dinner invitation hadn’t been in Britt’s plans, but she quickly decided that since his present predicament had been precipitated by a sincere desire to help her, it would be only hospitable to ask him.

But before she could, David said coaxingly, “We’re having stew.” David always checked the stove when he came home from school.

“Salad, corn bread,” Britt added, “and cheesecake.”

Jake got the impression the children really wanted him to stay. Britt was less easy to read, but he thought he’d be foolish to let that stop him.

“I’d love to stay.”

The children cheered. Some strange emotion stabbed Jake in the chest.

Britt sent the children down to their after-school chores and led Jake into the bedroom. It was green and apricot, with a large window that looked out onto the pasture. Jake wondered if the furniture had come west on a covered wagon. The bed was a four-poster in a light wood with large cannonball-size finials. It had the patina that came from age and caring hands.

She pointed him to a bathroom at the far end of the room. “Shower’s in there. I’ll leave some of Jimmy’s things for you on the bed.” Her blue eyes did a quick, businesslike perusal of him from head to toe, one that made his pulse thrum. “They should fit...just fine.”

She stammered as she looked into his eyes and saw something there she couldn’t define but understood even so. It was related to the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat. The bedroom that had been practically like a convent for the past year, where she read and prayed and mulled over her problems, suddenly hummed with a curious power source. She wasn’t sure where it had come from or why it had sprung to life so suddenly, but she suspected that if she were to touch Jake at that moment, electricity would arc between them.

She sidled past him, between his muddy body and her pristine bedspread, to the door. “I’ll be in the kitchen when you’ve washed off the mud,” she said, then ran from the room as though something had chased her.

* * *

JAKE FOUND showering in Britt’s bathroom an unusual experience. The soap was scented, the shower curtain had green sea grass and pink seashells on it, and the bathroom counter held a modest lineup of cosmetics and colognes. It smelled like she did—vaguely floral and fresh.

On one level he felt uncomfortable because he didn’t want to dirty anything, and he feared in his present condition that was going to be impossible. But on another level, the femininity was curiously comforting.

His condo was all brown and beige and leather. His cream-colored bathroom had a functional shower stall and brown towels. His counter was bare, thanks to a three-sectioned, mirrored cabinet.

He showered quickly, washed his hair and buffed himself dry with a fragrant pink towel. He found a pair of jeans, a chambray shirt and a set of underwear on the foot of the bed. The jeans were a tad short, but fit well. The shirt was perfect. Apparently Jimmy Hansen had been pretty much his size.

The thought had no sooner formed than he was confronted with its confirmation. Sitting down on the bed to put on the slippers Britt had left on the carpet, he found himself eye to eye with a photograph of the man himself in his wedding clothes.

He was surprised to find himself feeling suddenly aggressive. Jimmy Hansen had been nice looking in an unremarkable sort of way, tall and broad and smiling. What showed through and made Jake look twice was what must have been a basic kindness. It was in his eyes, in the way he held the laughing woman in the bridal gown, in the way Britt looked at him with complete trust and open-hearted love.

He felt their unity like a jolt. No wonder Britt could look so bright one moment and so fragile the next. A love like that would be a beacon, but without someone to direct it to, it would be a powerful force to deal with day after day.

He went downstairs feeling unsettled.

He heard the shouting before he reached the kitchen door. “She is not!” a girl’s voice said adamantly. He guessed it was Christy’s.

“She is,” a boy’s voice said reasonably. David. “I heard her talking on the phone to Judy.”

By the time Jake reached the doorway, Christy, wooden spoon in hand, was waving threateningly at her younger brother, who was placing silverware in orderly precision around the table. “Mom would never sell the farm. She couldn’t. We’d have nowhere to live.”

A quick glance around the room showed Jake that Britt and Matt were missing. Matt was delivering papers, Jake knew, but where was his hostess?

Renee followed David with plates and stopped to ask in horror, “You mean...we’re gonna go away?”

“Of course not!” Christy said with conviction, moving back to the pot of stew. “David’s just being dumb.”

“Then how come Mom was crying?” David demanded.

“She wasn’t.”

“She was.”

As though in sympathy, even though the issue wasn’t clear, Renee began to cry. “I don’t want to go away,” she wept, confounding Jake by turning to him, arms raised, as he walked into the room.

Panic seized him. He was alone with three children, two of them fighting and one of them crying. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to tell himself this was no different from a sales meeting, and proceeded to take charge.

He picked up Renee and gently hushed her.

“I don’t want to go away!” she complained, taking his neck in a stranglehold and weeping into it.

“I’m sure nobody’s going away,” he said, one-handedly finishing the placement of plates the child had started. “There. What else do we need to do?”

“Salt and pepper and napkins,” Christy said, pointing to the caddy on the counter. Her own composure looked a little tenuous, Jake thought. “I’m sure Mom’ll be right back.”

The silverware placed, David followed Jake and Renee from the table to the counter, then back to the table. “She was crying,” he told Jake, almost as though he wanted him to do something about it.

“Where’d she go?” Jake asked.

Christy turned away from the stove. “To the barn with the goat.” Then she added in a very mature tone, “I think she just needed a minute to herself. The bank called.”

David looked up at him with solemn dark blue eyes. “They’re not gonna give us the money.”

Jake felt a rush of unreasonable anger. He’d seen her credit profile. Loans-R-Us wouldn’t lend her money. It was only good business. But she wasn’t just a statistic in a ledger to him anymore. She was a brave and beautiful woman pitting herself against impossible odds to try to save her family’s past for her children’s future. Wasn’t that what life was supposed to be about? Taking the love and knowledge of those who came before to make a better world for those who came after?

Jake was just about to put Renee down and check on Britt when the back door opened with a sudden crash. Matt strode into the kitchen, pulling off his delivery sack, its giant pockets emblazoned with the Tyler Citizen logo, and tossing it into a corner between the refrigerator and the wall.

“Mr. Marshack!” he said, his nose and cheeks bright red, a fresh out-of-doors smell clinging to his clothes. “The bike takes the hills like it’s got a motor and I did the most radical wheelie you ever saw on the pad at the gas station.”

Jake smiled at his ingenuous excitement. “Glad to hear it. Maybe we’d better get you a helmet.”

“All right!” Matt agreed as he swept descriptive hands around his head. “One with an eagle with its wings swept back.”

The back door opened and Jake looked up to see Britt walk into the kitchen. She’d apparently stayed in the barn long enough to make certain there would be no evidence of tears when she came back. But on just a little over twenty-four hours’ acquaintance, he knew her well enough to know she felt lower than a hole.

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