Sasha's Dad. Geri Krotow
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glowed from the corner bookstore’s front window, forming a backdrop to a group of women who sat around a table. Holding needles—knitting.
The table between them was loaded with what looked like woolen items in different colors. Sweaters? Afghans? Scarves?
But it wasn’t the colors she noticed. It was the women, their oblivion to everything except what was happening around that table.
Laughing. Enjoying one another’s company. Happy, living in the moment.
Claire made a lightning-swift discovery then: She didn’t want to work so hard for the rest of her life, with no time for the sense of serenity the knitting women in the bookstore exuded. Even through the bulletproof glass of the limo she rode in and the windowpane of the bookstore, Claire felt the joy those women shared with one another.
She’d known in that instant that she had to go home. She’d been no more than two hours away, in Washington, D.C., for the past decade, but rural Maryland might as well have been the far side of the moon. Claire never took time off back then, not even to see her family or childhood friends.
“Ewwwwwww.”
Stormy’s mewl of pain brought her mind back to the present and elicited a shock of nausea. As a political reporter anxiety had been her constant companion and she’d actually believed she thrived on it.
She’d been insane.
“I’m here, Stormy.” The words struggled through her dry throat as Claire stroked Stormy’s long, graceful neck. Claire’s stomach twisted again as she recognized that Stormy wasn’t going to make it through this. Twins were too much stress on the llama’s body, especially since it was her first birth.
Claire fought back tears. This was the llama who’d got her through her first year back in Dovetail. Who’d helped her start to heal over her many too-raw emotions. It felt as though Stormy was part of Claire.
“Hold on, Stormy! You have to.”
DUTCH PULLED into the long drive that led to the farmhouse Claire had purchased from the Logan family on her return to town almost two years ago. The headlights of his pickup arced across the large painted Llama Fiber Haven sign she’d erected at the end of her property, but he didn’t pay attention to it. He’d already focused on the huge job that lay in front of him and the llama.
He’d managed to avoid Claire this entire time. There were at least three other vets she could go to, and had. Whenever her name or her farm came up in conversation with his colleagues, he’d been grateful he had no involvement. It was a relief that Charlie Flynn had taken her on as a full-time client.
The large-animal vets in town and surrounding environs all ran individual offices but worked together to help one another out. They had an agreement that any of them would fill in during an emergency.
Charlie was away, visiting his new grandbaby. That baby had come early, too, as the twin llama crias were arriving for Claire. The other two vets in their circle lived too far out of town to get to her place in time, so the night-duty call service had contacted Dutch.
He shook his head.
She wasn’t going to be pleased when he walked into her barn.
Over the past year they’d avoided each other with all the skill of secret agents. When he’d heard she’d returned, he thought she wouldn’t stay more than a few months. Claire had wanted to leave Dovetail since they were twelve and running through the sunflower fields on the south side of town. Thinking about it, he could still feel the heat of the sun on his head. Those impromptu hide-and-seek games, when they teamed up against Natalie and Tom, had been the freest time of his youth.
That was when his masculine strength was starting to surface, but before his hormones took over his motives.
He remembered how Claire used to look at him with wide-open sea-green eyes, before her curiosity and intelligence had been warped by at first an academic and then later professional drive that obliterated everything in its path. Collateral damage included Claire’s best friend since toddlerhood and Dutch’s deceased wife. Sasha’s mother.
Natalie.
He sighed, and recalled what he’d learned in the grief support group.
“Remember to breathe.”
He took in three deep breaths, exhaling completely after each one. The constant ache of loss had eased over the past three years. He still had his moments of sharp grief, but not the knee-buckling waves of it that nearly did him in during those initial months.
His resentment toward Claire, however, hadn’t abated. Her lack of compassion for Natalie during Natalie’s life-stealing illness was simply…unforgivable.
Especially at the end. Claire had said she’d come to see Natalie, and then didn’t. She wasn’t even in the country for the funeral.
“Damn it!” He pounded the leather bench seat next to him as he made the last arc up the long drive.
He had to let go of all of this, at least for the moment. He had animals to save.
CLAIRE LOOKED at her watch.
“C’mon, Charlie.” Her words were hushed in the open barn. She’d renovated the space the best she could afford for her llamas, which included providing an exit for them wherever they stood. The stalls opened to the large grazing area adjacent to the barn.
She sighed and sank down on the stool she’d kept in the barn for this reason. Waiting for Stormy to give birth.
She glanced over her shoulder at the two-hour-old cria, who remained in front of the warming fan. The newborn llama watched her while it soaked up the heat from the blower. That piece of equipment had cost her several hundred dollars six months ago. Claire didn’t regret a penny of it.
She’d read every agricultural manual she could get her hands on when she made the decision to leave her reporter’s career in D.C. and come back here. She’d talked to countless llama and alpaca farmers on the phone and spent whole weekends on the Internet gleaning anything that would make her transition, and that of her llamas, easier.
She heard the slam of a truck door.
Finally.
She stroked the side of Stormy’s neck.
“It’ll be okay now, gal. Dr. Charlie’s here.”
At the slap of boots against the barn floor Claire looked up and saw the tall male figure at the other end of the building.
She stood.
“Over here, Charlie.” She waved, then sat back down next to Stormy.
“It’s not Charlie.”
At the sound of his voice, she felt instant shock—and despair.
“Dutch.” Her whispered response floated over the hay-strewn stall floor.
She forced herself to look at him as he approached, to keep her expression neutral.
He’s not twenty anymore.
Unlike the other times she’d seen him since she’d moved back, she made herself stand tall and take in his full length. He was leaner than she remembered, more sharply defined. The barn’s fluorescent lighting harshly illuminated her observations. His eyes were the same inky blue, but his hair was no longer the same shade—it was moon-silver, shockingly so. Only a small patch of blond hinted at the color it’d once been. The lines around his mouth and eyes had deepened, but not, she suspected, from laughter as much as the sorrows of his life over the past several years.
He stopped a stride away from her, his gaze steady and guarded.
“Claire.” One word of greeting, but it sounded more like a condemnation.
She stood too quickly. Her knit cap slid over her eyes and she shoved it back.
“Dutch.” Adolescent awkwardness