All I Am. Nicole Helm
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to push herself up, but someone stepped in.
“They’re supposed to be leashed,” a low, gravelly voice said.
Cara looked up at the man who’d intruded in the conversation, but all she saw were shadows against the bright sun.
“Pipsqueak has never hurt anyone in his life. He doesn’t need to be leashed. It’s inhumane. This woman must have done something to set him off.”
“It needs to be leashed. It’s the law,” the deep voice rumbled.
“Why, I never! If this is the way you treat a customer—”
Cara looked up from her spot on the ground and was surprised to find she recognized the man’s face. Wes Stone. She didn’t know him personally, only knew of him. He’d been at least five years older than her in school, but New Benton had made a big deal out of it when he went off to Afghanistan.
The town had made an even bigger deal when he came back severely injured after working with some bomb sniffing dogs or something. He didn’t look all that injured to her, but between all the hair and the flannel it was hard to tell anything. Except he was tall. And kinda scary as he scowled.
It took Cara a few seconds to realize that he’d held out his hand to her to help her up—that he was angry with this woman on her behalf.
Cara gathered her wits enough to take his hand and let him pull her up. She tried to remember what kind of injuries he’d suffered. Was it okay for him to be doing this? Of course, that’d been something like three or four years ago. Maybe he was all healed.
“You’ve lost a customer, mister.” The woman stalked off, kissing the evil little minion in her arms as she went.
“Your loss,” Wes muttered. His gaze didn’t meet Cara’s, and his question was mumbled. “You okay?”
She nodded. His dark blond hair was wavy and longish, his beard a touch on the side of grizzled rather than the trendily well-kept look. He was like a modern mountain man, one with piercing blue eyes.
Wait. Had she really just thought piercing in relation to eyes?
“It bite you?”
She looked down at her ankle and lifted the cuff of her jeans to inspect the skin. “Tried. Didn’t break the skin. I’ll live.”
“People.” He stalked back to his booth.
She looked up at the sign. Organic Dog Treats. No description of what that meant. No colors. No pictures. Just black letters on a white background. His table was just as sparse. Buckets of treats with black-and-white labels saying what they were and how much they cost.
An interesting contrast to most of the other vendors with their colors and logos and fancy spreads.
“Well, thanks for yelling at her for me, Wes,” she offered, giving his table a little pat. “Sorry if I cost you a customer.”
He stopped and looked at her quizzically. “Do I know you?”
“Um, no. I mean, you might know of me. I grew up in New Benton, too.”
He grunted. Well. All the rumors about him seemed to be true. Came back from the army, bought a hermit cabin in the woods, shut everyone out.
Except his legion of dogs. Sitting at his feet. Unfazed by Pipsqueak’s earlier “attack.” They swished their tails, three of the four napping. The other one panted happily in the sun.
Weird. Weird guy. Weird booth. Weird day.
She gave Wes a little wave and headed for the King’s Bread booth. When she glanced back at him, he was staring after her.
Very weird day.
* * *
WES WATCHED CARA GO. She was a colorful blur of light. Pink cowboy boots, vivid green shirt, bright pink lipstick.
He hadn’t recognized her at first, but eventually he’d placed the face with the name. New Benton had been home for so much of his life; it was impossible not to know the other whole-life residents, no matter how much he shut himself away.
Cara had been a few years younger than him, if he remembered right. Her family had a dairy farm, and someone she was related to had a stand here. Sister, maybe?
He shook his head. Trying to keep all the small-town bloodlines straight was asking for a headache, and he’d already given himself enough of one loading and unloading the truck and setting up the booth this morning.
It irritated him that after four years of recovery, his body still didn’t do what he wanted it to when he wanted it to. Maybe if it was just one thing. The hand or the hip. But it had to be both.
Lucky to be alive, remember?
He’d never been very good at counting his blessings or his luck. Receiving dream-crushing injuries, no matter how non-life-threatening, hadn’t exactly given him an optimistic outlook.
Cara glanced back at him, and he looked down at his money box, not quite sure why. So he was looking at her. So what?
He reorganized his buckets, focusing on this—on order and control. Like life in the army had, running his own business allowed him a sense of order and rules. Dealing with people, outside of selling them dog treats, had never been his strong suit, but even when he didn’t love his job, he knew what he needed to do. How he needed to do it.
A customer came up, smiling and chatty about how cute his dogs were. Direct sales were his least favorite part, but they were a necessity, so he forced himself to smile and talk about his product.
Since he cared about his product, that wasn’t hard to do. Just like the army. Tell people what they want to hear, and they bought his stuff and walked away. Long as no one knew who he was and asked how he was doing.
It was his first year at a market so close to home. He’d thought Millertown was far enough away, but Cara’s appearance reminded him it wasn’t. Maybe he should’ve stuck to the markets around downtown St. Louis, but that would be silly. If he really wanted to go without people, he could focus on the internet side of sales.
But there was something about coming to markets he liked. It wasn’t human interaction, because he hated that, but it was a reminder he existed. He’d survived.
He shook his head in a lame attempt to clear it. Why dwell on this? He should be paying attention to what kinds of treats were selling, so he could make more of those next week. Compare today’s popular sellers to his best sellers elsewhere. Be a businessman. Because, aside from his animals, that was all he had.
All he wanted.
The day went on without more New Bentonian run-ins. And no more yappy dogs with incompetent owners attacking people, either. Wes considered that a success.
At noon he started packing up, trying to ignore the pins-and-needles feeling in his arm. His hip ached. His head pounded, although he couldn’t blame that one on his injuries. He’d had migraines since he could remember. A lovely result of the anxiety he’d pretty much been born with.
Phantom nudged his knee, his black-and-brown snout demanding attention. Wes sighed. Phantom was his trained therapy dog, retired military, too, with his own minor injuries. A limp and a missing chunk of tail.
He was the one being in the world who knew what Wes needed. Wes took the break Phantom demanded and scratched the German shepherd’s nose and ears. Then, because his dogs were the jealous sort, he repeated the process with the other three.
When he went back to packing up, some of the headache had eased, and the tingling in his arm had stopped. It was the whole point of a therapy dog. He’d had Phantom for three years, and the fact the dog could do so much with so little still amazed him every time.
“All right, guys. In you go.”
At the command and the open truck door, his crew hopped into the back. Phantom took his usual spot in the passenger seat. Wes climbed