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Felicity Clausen, an ambitious
young woman with a promising career, suddenly finds herself the owner of
a cattle farm. Thrown into farm life, Felicity must learn to raise
cattle, fix tractors, harvest corn and mend fences.
Chapter 1 Felicity
rode faster and faster, letting the wind whip through her blonde hair, relishing
the sound of hoof beats beneath her as the palomino bolted across the fields.
There was nothing like riding across the countryside, nothing to compare with
the exhilarating sense of liberation. Freedom lived in the scent of the horse
and the caress of the wind against her cheeks. It connected her to the past,
linking her to her ancestors who farmed the land. Atop
Sunset the stress of modern life remained behind her. She could get lost in the
past – simpler days when business pressures and information overload did not
exist. In
these early morning hours before the sun sizzled into a humid afternoon, there
lay no pressures for advancement, no customers calling with complaints, and no
scrambling to make everyone happy. There was only the cool morning mist, the
wind, and the rhythm of the horse’s powerful legs as he galloped across her
grandfather’s farm. Her family had owned it since the 1800’s, passing it
down from one generation to the next. In this place she felt grounded somehow
– connected to the part of the earth that never changes whether one lives in
the rural 1800’s or the technological present. Somehow, in these moments she
instinctively knew she breathed the same air, drank the same water, and galloped
across the same terrain her ancestors did. It gave her a sense of peace –
peace she couldn’t find anywhere else. As
the sun rose higher, so came the suffocating heat, and Felicity knew she needed
to head back to the barn. It wouldn’t be long before the temperature climbed
into the 90’s. She eased Sunset to an easy trot, reached for the bottle of
water hanging at her hip and took a swig. The perspiration already beaded on her
back. Turning
back toward the house, she galloped across the fields, passing Hank Tucker who
hunkered down, mending a broken fence. He gave her a nod, flashed a boyish grin
and raked his arm across his forehead to keep the perspiration from drizzling
into his brown eyes. “Mornin’,”
he greeted, his bass voice appropriate for the rural setting. “Morning,”
she replied with a wave, then continued on, trying not to think about how
handsome he was. Her grandfather harbored a not-so-secret hope that she would
develop some fondness for his next-door-neighbor, but Felicity had no such
intentions. She was a woman going places. Hank was going nowhere. He belonged in
the past where cattle farming made sense. It wasn’t logical in today’s
economy, and in Felicity’s opinion, Hank was just asking for financial ruin. Even
though she could appreciate the past and gain some sense of peace in riding
across a piece of it, Felicity was too practical to bind herself down to someone
who couldn’t see that farming was a dying enterprise. A
person might visit the past in her imagination, but trying to live in it was
sheer foolishness. Her
thoughts went back to a conversation she’d had with Hank on her
grandfather’s front porch. They were sitting there rocking, listening to
crickets on an April evening. Hank and her grandfather were talking business,
and Felicity, ever the businesswoman, couldn’t resist adding her two cents.
She told Hank that he should give up his romantic notions and step into the
modern world. The future was about technology, not farming. Hank
only winked at her then told her grandfather in his deep easy voice,
“Evidently your granddaughter has experienced very little romance. Otherwise
she wouldn’t be comparing it to cow patties and sizzling branding irons.” Her
grandfather broke into hearty laughter – laughter that broke the rhythmic song
of bullfrog groans and cricket chirps. Felicity
had tried to defend herself, saying she meant the other meaning of the word
romantic, as in impractical, unrealistic and wild-eyed dreaming, but it was too
late, Hank had gotten the better of her. Even now in thinking of his comment,
Felicity’s face blushed. Fortunately, it hadn’t been light enough that
evening for Hank to see his remarks had hit a nerve. Felicity
shook away the memory and dismounted. Leading Sunset into the barn, she began to
remove his saddle when she spotted her grandfather coming across the lawn in her
direction. Just the sight of him made her smile. He still got around well for a
man in his 80’s who’d been alone for nearly fifteen years. Of course, anyone
who worked outside the way he did had to be in better shape than most. She
chuckled to herself as she watched him pick up a rock and toss it into a pile.
Grandpa Luke was always working. When she’d arrived the prior evening, he’d
been gathering rocks. He planned to repair the wall around her grandmother’s
flowerbed. He still kept it up after all these years, as if she might arrive one
day to enjoy it. As
he stepped into the barn Felicity waved at him, “I will never understand how
you can tolerate working in this heat with those long sleeves!” “Keeps
the sun off,” he replied, removed his straw hat from his head, and propped it
on a post. “That’s
why they invented sunscreen,” she teased. “Ah,
I never remember that stuff,” he grumbled, coming to help her with the saddle.
Together they hung it up, and she reached for a towel to rub down the horse. As
she did so, Grandpa Luke patted Sunset’s neck. “He’s
a good ‘un,” he commented with pride. “He
is,” she agreed. “You’ll
have to take good care of ‘im when I’m gone,” his serious eyes met hers
and she felt uneasy, as if he were trying to tell her something. “You’re
not going anywhere,” she brushed aside his comment. “All
of us go home someday,” he rubbed his aged hand across the horse’s back. Felicity
stopped drying the horse and met her Grandfather’s blue eyes with her own,
“Are you trying to tell me something, Grandpa? Are you feeling all right?” He
shrugged his lanky shoulders, “I’m just fine.” He patted his stomach,
“Fit as a fiddle.” “Good,
‘cause you were scaring me there for a minute,” Felicity put her hand on her
grandfather’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. He
placed his hand over hers, “No need to be scared, sugar. It’s all part of
life. Besides, I’m fine. I’ll be around so long you’ll be sick o’ me.” The
twinkle returned to his eyes, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t
imagine life without him. She was closer to him than she was to her own parents.
Her father was a successful stockbroker and her mother a legal secretary. Their
busy schedules afforded little time for visiting Grandpa Luke. Then again, as
busy as Felicity was, she still made time. The truth was her father had escaped
the rural life long ago and had no desire to return to it. Grandpa
always said the love for the land had skipped a generation and had fallen upon
Felicity – even though she tried hard not to admit it. He said it was in her
blood whether she liked it or not. After
they’d turned Sunset out to pasture, Felicity put her hand on her
grandfather’s shoulder, “So, what are we working on today?” “How
about Grandma’s flowerbed? I’d like to get the rocks laid and maybe you
could plant the marigolds.” “That
sounds like fun,” she agreed. Felicity
gathered the gardening tools and the marigolds while Grandpa Luke started
placing rocks. “How’s
your Web site going?” he asked as he hunkered down, adjusting a rock’s
location. “It’s
really taking off,” she nodded with a smile, then knelt in front of the
flowerbed. “When
can you quit your day job and just focus on it?” “Oh,
I don’t trust it completely for that yet,” she shook her head as she plunged
her spade into the dirt. “Are
you making as much from it as you are working at the insurance company?” “A
little more some months – a little less others,” she let her head tilt
side-to-side in a waffling motion. “You
should quit your job and come out here to live. Then you could get rid of that
apartment in Felicity
offered him an obligatory smile . . . one of her humoring grins, but did not
comment. As she dug holes in the dirt for the marigolds, she thought about what
he’d suggested. She had no intention of leaving a steady job with benefits at
this stage of her life. Besides, she was building her business up in preparation
for the time she married and wanted to stay home to raise a family. If she hid
out at Grandpa’s working online, she’d never meet anyone decent. The
only social event in “Oh,”
Grandpa interrupted her thoughts. “I invited Hank over for lunch.” Felicity’s
eyes widened, feeling as if Grandpa had been reading her mind. He was always
trying to fix her up with Hank, but Hank didn’t seem any more interested in
her than she did in him. “I
told him you’d fry some okra the way he likes it,” Grandpa continued. “Okay,”
she nodded and put a marigold into a hole and raked the earth around it. “After
you’re finished with those flowers, would you mind pickin’ a mess?” he
pointed his thumb over his shoulder indicating the direction of the garden. “Sure,”
she grinned, happy to help in the garden. Harvesting the vegetables was always
her favorite part of the endeavor, weeding being her least. After
she finished planting, Felicity went inside the house for a basket. She poured
two tall glasses of ice water, drank one herself and took the other out to
Grandpa. He thanked her, and she set out for the garden. Soon her basket brimmed
with fresh tomatoes, corn, okra, zucchini, green beans and yellow squash. It was
a wonderful feeling to pull everything for a meal from one’s own garden.
Granted, it wasn’t technically her garden, but it felt like hers since she’d
helped Grandpa plant and weed it on the weekends. She
took the produce inside and found Grandpa sitting on his recliner sipping a
glass of water. “You
doing all right?” she asked, thinking it a little unlike him to sit down this
early in the day. “Just
got a little overheated,” he explained. “It’s
a good idea to pace yourself,” she agreed and set the basket of vegetables on
the kitchen counter by the sink. “Come
over here and sit a spell,” he motioned toward the couch. “After
I wash these vegetables.” She glanced at him, “When did you tell Hank to
come over?” “Around
She
glanced at the clock on the wall. It was She
went to the refrigerator to double check that there was cabbage. Finding some
there, she pulled it out and set it on the counter. She’d make that meal today
– for Grandpa of course. It wasn’t for Hank. In fact, it was only logical to
cook the vegetables from the garden. She and Grandpa enjoyed this traditional
lunch all the time. She told herself that she’d be making it today even if
Hank wasn’t coming. Felicity
never did sit down and relax with Grandpa. Instead, she prepared the food. Time
passed swiftly. When she heard rapping at the kitchen door, her heart gave a
little leap, accelerating not from being startled, but from the handsome man
smiling back at her through the glass. Join the Clean Romance Club to Read the Full Story
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