“This certainly isn’t the way I’d intended for this day to go,” Molly said, sighing as she settled her head back onto the exam table.
A nurse had already strung her up to an IV drip and a doctor had briefly visited, examining her ankle and ordering pain medication and an X-ray.
Her ankle still hurt, but now she felt a little loopy and much more relaxed than she had been on her ride over with Logan. It had been the most intensely painful few minutes she’d ever spent in her life. She could tell he was trying to drive carefully, but every bump and curve had been excruciating. Worse, she couldn’t think of a thing to say to Logan, and he’d appeared deep in thought, anyway.
A month ago, she wouldn’t have been able to imagine a single scenario in which she would spend time with Logan Maddox for any reason whatsoever, especially boxed up in the cab of a truck together. Or being hobbled for a three-legged race.
Now, not only was she his son’s teacher, but here she was in an urgent care exam room with Logan sitting beside her in a chair near her bed, his hands tightly clasped and a worried expression furrowing his brow.
In many ways, it was surreal just to consider.
In other ways, it was all too real. Logan was no longer the immature boy who had betrayed and deserted her all those years ago. From everything she’d seen of him since his return, he was a kind, compassionate man and a dedicated father.
Maybe it was the pain medicine talking—probably it was—but at this moment, her if only was sliding dangerously close to a what-if.
Was it even possible for them to cross the enormous chasm between them? Repair the damage and move forward?
It was conceivable that they might actually be able to become friends again, if only she could truly put his past actions in the past where they belonged. She knew that’s what she should do, for her own sake as well as his.
But that was an enormous if.
She couldn’t even believe she was thinking about such a thing. Yet for her own good, might it not be better not to be carrying the burden of anger and hurt?
“How are you feeling now?” Logan asked, his deep, concerned voice breaking into her thoughts.
“A little loopy.” She chuckled. “My ankle still hurts like crazy, though.”
One side of his lips curved into the half smile that had always made her heart do backflips. “I’m sure it does. Praying it’s just a sprain and not broken. Hopefully the doc will be able to get you all straightened out without too much trouble.”
Her chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh. “I think it’s going to take a lot more than a boot on my ankle to straighten me out.”
He snorted and shook his head. “I can’t believe you can make jokes at a time like this. No, wait. I can. I really can.”
“I’ve always believed it’s better to laugh than to cry.”
And that lesson had been hard-earned, courtesy of Logan Maddox.
Suddenly her smile dropped from her lips.
He stood and moved to the bedside. At first, he reached out to grab her hand, but he dropped his arm again when she pulled away from him.
“Is the pain getting worse?” he asked. “I can go find a nurse and get you more pain meds.”
She shook her head. All the pain medication in the world could not touch what truly ailed her, and it didn’t seem to be touching the pain in her ankle, either, so what was the use?
This wasn’t the time to try to repair her damaged heart.
“So, when we were back there on the field with Rufus, why did you have him sitting and lying down and sitting again so many times in a row?” He was clearly trying to get her mind off her pain with his question.
“It’s a strategy we use sometimes to snap a dog out of a particular action,” she explained. “For some reason, Rufus really got overexcited when he saw us running and decided to plow us over. I used the sit-down-sit maneuver to force him to pay attention to something other than licking all the whiskers off your face.”
He chuckled. “Well, I do appreciate that.”
There was a quick knock on the door, and the doctor entered, holding her X-ray scan in one hand. He clipped it to a light board on the side of the wall and then turned to Molly, his expression grim.
This time it was Molly who reached for Logan’s hand. He gave her a tender squeeze to let her know he was there for her, which Molly appreciated. She didn’t really want to be alone if the diagnosis was worse than she’d anticipated.
All that had happened was she’d taken a hard tumble and twisted her ankle, and even then, Logan had done all he could to cushion her from crashing on the ground. He’d been the one to receive the brunt of the fall. It should be him up on this exam table, not her.
“I’m afraid you have a hairline fracture,” the doctor informed her, pointing to her X-ray scan to outline the exact details. “The best way to help it heal properly will be to set it in a balloon cast. You’ll have to use crutches for the next six weeks.”
Molly sucked in a breath, gut-punched by the diagnosis.
Six weeks in crutches? She had things to do and big plans for her summer vacation time. A balloon cast and crutches would quite literally cripple all of those plans. In eight weeks she’d be back in school, and the summer would be over.
Logan must have noticed her cringe, because he tightened his hold on her hand.
“Are you okay?” he asked her quietly. “Is the pain getting to be too much for you? Don’t be a martyr, Molly. Just say something.”
Molly shook her head. The pain she was feeling was all in her head and heart as discouragement washed over her.
“Your ankle will feel better once we’ve stabilized it in a cast,” the doctor said. “We’ll give you a second shot for the pain before I start manipulating your foot, and then I’ll send you home with a couple of prescriptions.”
Molly hesitated for a moment before she spoke. “Thank you, Doctor.”
She decided it was easier to just go with the flow than to try to explain what was really bothering her.
But the moment the doctor left the room to gather the supplies he’d need and find a couple of nurses to assist him with the procedure, Logan turned to her, his face full of apprehension.
“All right. Spill.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s been a long time since we were a couple,” he admitted, “but I still feel as if I can read your expressions. This isn’t about your physical pain, is it? What’s really going on?”
For a moment, Molly considered brushing him off and not telling him what was actually on her mind and in her heart.
She exhaled deeply. Did she really want to get into her personal business with Logan, a man with whom she’d once shared every tiny detail of her life?
“No, you’re right. It’s not the physical pain that’s bothering me so much. I’m frustrated, more than anything. I have—had—big plans for my summer vacation that I’ve been working on for months now. To have to put that aside—well, it really gets my goat.” She paused and despite everything, she chuckled. “Gets my goat. Oh, my.”
He frowned and looked at her as if she were crazy. At the moment, she was feeling pretty crazy, for such a joke to seem funny to her.
“Big plans?” Logan echoed, having caught the issue she’d first mentioned.
“Yeah. Because of my teaching job, I don’t have as much time as some of my brothers and sisters to work on the tree farm and dog rescue. I get that some of them have made their careers out of it, but I still like to help out when I can.”
She took a deep breath and sighed. “You know, it’s hard for me to believe that I ever wanted to leave, to live elsewhere than Winslow’s Woodlands. I just love it so much now. And during the summer and Christmas breaks, I actually get to help with the workload a little more. But as it looks right now, I won’t even be able to do my daily chores, much less put into motion any other plans I might have had.”
“Which are?”
Now that she was talking to him it didn’t feel quite as awkward as she’d expected, especially because he appeared genuinely concerned not only with her health, but her answers to his questions.
“I clean the dog run every evening. You know, our dog run isn’t like a typical kennel. It’s more of a large, fenced open space that I have to walk every night. With it being mountain terrain, there’s no way I can navigate it with crutches, and even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to carry my bin and rake.”
“You clean the dog run?”
“It’s not very glamorous, I know, but I actually don’t mind doing it. I let out all the dogs and we play around while I work. I hate to have to ask one of my siblings to take over when they already do so much. Sharpe and Frost run the tree farm, Felicity and Ruby are in charge of the rest of the landscaping items, and Avery runs the business end of the business. All I do is pitch in when I can.”
“I’d hardly say that’s all you do, Molly. You’ve got a very important job teaching the town’s children. I highly doubt your siblings resent you for that.”
She sighed. “No. They don’t. Which in my mind only makes it worse. I do love teaching. It’s my life’s passion. But my family is important to me, too.”
“So your frustration is all about not being able to clean the dog run?” he clarified.
“Yes. Well, that, and regularly I exercise some of the dogs on the agility course to relieve some of their energy and train them with certain commands. I definitely won’t be able to do that, as it requires a lot of running and gesturing on my part, neither of which I can do in a cast and crutches.”
“Hmm.” He dropped her hand and leaned his hip against the counter, which contained a small sink and drawers full of various medical items. “And for the summer project you mentioned?”
“Well, seeing as the most successful part of our family business is the Christmas tree farm, we’ve been trying to think of ways to bring in more customers year-round—something in the way of a winter wonderland, I guess. Where they can find a little Christmas in the middle of summer. At this point it’s just something we’ve all been talking over. Not a lot of specific plans. This isn’t all going to happen this summer, but I had an idea I thought I might be able to implement this summer. Not going to happen now, though.”
“The concept sounds interesting.”
“I think so. We’re trying, anyway, especially to make it so, you know, Winslow’s Woodlands isn’t just for the adults’ landscaping needs. We’re looking to make it something fun for the kids, somewhere they’ll ask to visit. During the Christmas season, picking out a tree is fun and exciting for everyone, including the littles. But how boring is it in the middle of summer when their parents are looking for bushes or aspen trees for their yard?”
“Judah is really good at entertaining himself no matter where we are, but I guess I can see what you mean.”
“Right. Judah is really smart that way.” She smiled softly at the thought of the sweet little boy. “Anyway,” she continued, “here’s where my summer project crashes and burns. I came up with the idea of putting together a petting zoo. I thought that would be a good start, even before we lean into the whole Christmas-all-year-round, winter wonderland thing. We can keep it open in the summer and fall as easily as in the winter.”
“Now, that idea I can grab on to. I know Judah would love to visit a petting zoo. We’d probably have to visit once a week.” He paused, and his lips curled into a smile. “I guess you could say it’s your pet project.”
Molly groaned and rolled her eyes. “That was bad. Really bad.”
Worse than her goat pun, for sure.
Logan just shrugged and chuckled.
“I guess all I can do now is hope I can at least do the organizing part while I’m on crutches—talk to local ranches and purchase some friendly animals. I’m thinking donkeys, goats, sheep, maybe a couple of miniature horses.”
“That’s a good start.”
“Yeah, but I won’t be able to bring them home with me until I am able to build an enclosure for them—which won’t be until I’m out of this dumb cast.”
“I could build it for you,” Logan offered, sounding happy to find a way to help.
“What? No.” Molly’s response was immediate, a protective gut instinct that had come from years of guarding her heart.
He might be offering out of kindness. He may even be the changed man he appeared to be today.
But Molly was no longer the innocent young woman who had believed in Prince Charming and happily-ever-afters.
Molly’s heart was on the line, and the closer she became to Logan, the more time she spent with him getting to know the man he now was, the more the warning sirens were going off in her head, blaring caution that she’d gone down this path before.
She wasn’t quite ready to risk getting hurt again.
The next day as Logan was cleaning up after breakfast, he accidentally sliced his finger on a butter knife.
A butter knife!
His mind had been elsewhere. He was still reeling from Molly’s reaction to his offer to help her build an enclosure for her new petting zoo.
She had responded so quickly it was as if she’d physically slapped him in the face.
Up until that point, he’d thought they’d made some good progress in their relationship, but clearly he’d been mistaken on that, if her rejection could pop up so quickly and without the least bit of forethought.
If he had the sense of a billy goat, he would learn from this experience and back off, giving Molly the time and space she obviously needed to resolve her feelings for him—if indeed there were any emotions to resolve.
If he kept pushing her, he ran the risk of driving her away completely, when all he’d really wanted to do was regain her trust one tiny step at a time. It seemed the right thing to do, now that he was back in town for good.
But maybe not.
Still, his ego was involved, and he couldn’t quite find it within himself to walk away. He was a changed man. Which was why, like the stubborn billy goat he was, he would charge in and butt heads with her trust issues and prove himself to be a man on whom she could truly rely.
“Ready, big guy?” Logan asked Judah, who was playing a game on his video console. “Want to go hang out with me and Miss Molly?”
At the sound of his teacher’s name, Judah immediately shut down his game and headed for the front door.
“Whoa. Wait a second, big guy. Where are your boots? You can’t go outside barefoot or you’ll step on a sharp rock and get hurt.”
Judah didn’t like shoes—or any clothes, really, as they rubbed up against his sensitive skin, and the moment he got home from school or church, he always shed his boots and socks and often his shirt.
Logan looked around and found Judah’s boots right where he’d kicked them off—one under his bed and the other in the corner of his bedroom.
As he helped Judah put on his boots, he quietly prayed he wasn’t making a huge mistake in taking Judah along today. He really needed God’s guidance in this.
It was a strategic move on his part. He thought bringing Judah along with him would probably be a good idea. Molly enjoyed spending time with Judah, and she would be less likely to reject Logan’s offer to help outright if Judah was with him. Which was probably not playing fair, but a man had to do what a man had to do.
When they arrived at Winslow’s Woodlands, Logan parked over next to the dog run. He spread a blanket on the grass underneath a nearby aspen tree and gave Judah his bag full of the books and toys he particularly enjoyed.
Molly’s brother Sharpe approached him from the barn. He remembered the last time he’d encountered Sharpe on this land, when he’d thought he might get laid out flat just for being there.
This time, Logan had called Sharpe in advance, not only so he could gain access to the dog run, but hopefully to explain what he was doing so he would have at least one of Molly’s siblings who understood his thought process here.
At first, Sharpe wasn’t too thrilled with the idea, and Logan could tell he still held some resentment for the way Logan had treated his sister. Then again, Logan would be cleaning the dog run, and there was some poetic justice to that. Logan and Sharpe had been friends once, so at the end of the day, Sharpe had agreed to Logan’s plan.
He would really prefer not to have everyone believe he was on a fool’s errand, which he probably was, or worse yet, facing down an angry, fire-breathing woman, which was what he most hoped to avoid.
“Hey, bro,” Sharpe greeted with a familiar hand clasp and shoulder bump. “Good to see you.”
“Glad to be here,” Logan responded, letting out the breath he’d been holding and grinning at his friend.
Sharpe tipped his white felt cowboy hat up his forehead and chuckled.
“You sure about that? You haven’t exactly signed up for the most glorious chore at the farm. Are you feeling a little crazy here, or what?”
Logan met Sharpe’s gaze straight on. “What helps Molly, helps me.”
Sharpe snorted and shook his head. “Whatever you say, man. You must be desperate to get back into Molly’s good graces to go to this length.”
Logan continued to hold his gaze and jerked his chin once in acknowledgment. “That’s a fact.”
“You know I’m going to have to break something if you hurt my sister again. Arms, legs—maybe your nose.”
“I would expect no less.” Logan had no doubt he would have the whole Winslow clan watching him with eagle eyes, and they’d be the first to confront him if they thought something wasn’t right. Molly’s sisters would be just as liable to lay him out flat if he did anything to hurt their sister. The Winslows had always been a tight-knit clan. He counted himself blessed that any of them were willing to give him a second chance.
“Does Molly know you’re here, man?” Sharpe asked.
Logan cleared his throat. “Nope.”
“Then I’m going to have to go tell her you’re here, you know.”
“I know.”
It wouldn’t be fair to ask Sharpe to keep this to himself. Anyway, Logan was bound to be found out sooner or later, and he didn’t want Molly going into shock if she accidentally wandered outside and discovered he was here doing her chore for her.
“It’s your head on the platter,” Sharpe warned him.
As if Logan didn’t already know what he was risking.
“Where’s the shovel?” He had no intention of standing around all day discussing the pros and cons of this idea. He didn’t want to talk himself out of it, and he was already feeling jittery. Besides, he was a man of action—and his current mission was to clean out the dog run, a large, open, fenced-in area where the dogs could stretch their legs and take a run or find shade underneath some well-placed trees. There were two plastic kids’ swimming pools for those dogs who enjoyed a splash, and toys were scattered throughout—as was the evidence that over a dozen dogs frequented the facility.
“There’s your rake and bin,” Sharpe said, pointing in the direction of Logan’s new equipment. “Just let me know if you have any questions.”
Logan chuckled. “I think this job is fairly self-explanatory.”
“Okay, well, I’ll be in the stable grooming the Percherons if you need anything.”
Logan checked on Judah, who was busy finding his way through mazes in a workbook, the edge of his tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth as it often did when he was deep in thought.
Judah would be able to see him from anywhere in the dog run, and Logan could see him, so Logan put on some earphones, cranked his favorite country music and went to work cleaning up the mess.
He’d been working on the area for several minutes when suddenly he felt something repeatedly poking him right between the shoulder blades.
He pivoted on the toes of his boots to find a glowering Molly pointing one of her crutches straight at his chest like a weapon.
He yanked out his earphones and backed up one step.
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” she asked, punctuating each word with a jab of her crutch, which he only half-successfully tried to avoid.
He shifted the rake and bin to one hand and held up his free palm outward in a sign of surrender.
“Now, before you get upset with me—” he started, but she cut him off before he could say another word.
“I think that ship already sailed a long time ago.”
She had a point. But still—
“Look. I’m just trying to help you out here. For better or for worse, you can’t do it, so I thought I would. You don’t need to get all up on your high horse about it.”
Her cheeks pinkened and Logan mentally kicked himself. Way to make things worse. Not only had he insulted her, but he’d managed to do it using words taken directly out of a wedding ceremony.
Where was his head at?
“Go home, Logan.” She didn’t sound angry as much as tired and maybe a little frustrated. He certainly couldn’t blame her for that.
“Just let me do this one thing for you—only until you get your cast off, and then I’m done. I feel somehow responsible for your injury. You were tied to me when it happened, and it’s because of the way I twisted that you fractured your ankle.”
“Yes, but we fell down because my dog plowed into us,” she pointed out wryly.
“Please. Let’s not go back and forth with this. I talked to Sharpe before I started, and he’s fine with it.”
“He didn’t try to run you off the farm?”
Logan chuckled. “Surprisingly, no.”
“He should have. Anyway, it’s none of his business.” She turned awkwardly, taking three steps where once she would have taken one.
It looked as if she intended to leave, but in Logan’s mind, nothing had really been settled yet.
“So, we’re good to go, then? Me taking over this chore until your cast comes off?”
Molly sighed loudly. “If you’re really that keen on it, scoop away. Although don’t you have better ways to spend your time—like trying to find a permanent job in town and hanging out with Judah?”
“I already have a full-time job,” he informed her. “The church was looking for a bookkeeper, and I fit the bill.”
Molly carefully turned back to face him. “A bookkeeper? You work with numbers? I didn’t think you liked math.”
He scoffed and shrugged. “I don’t. Never have.”
She raised a brow.
“Well, there’s math and then there’s money. I may not understand calculus very well, but money I get. Even negative money.”
He was trying to get a chuckle out of her, but she remained serious.
“You can touch money. Count it. Move it around,” he continued.
“Still, it surprises me that you’d take an office job such as bookkeeping, even for the church. You were always more of an outdoors type—football, baseball, rodeo. Definitely not the math club.”
He really, really didn’t want to go here, but Molly deserved a truthful explanation, and wasn’t that what he was trying to do in his new life? Be honest and truthful?
He took a deep breath.
Lord, help me.
“After I married Brianna—” The words stuck in his throat. “We had Judah before we tied the knot. Suddenly I had a wife and a newborn baby to support.”
Her eyebrows rose, and he shook his head.
“I know. Backward. My mom and dad said the same thing. Anyway, I wasn’t able to finish my college degree. I didn’t want to end up working retail or fast food, and we were in Boulder so I looked for an office job that would pay well and that I would be qualified for.
“I know God was in it, because the man who ended up becoming my boss attended the same church we did. He knew of my circumstances and hired me on as a small-business bookkeeper. He personally worked with me and showed me the ropes and stayed with me until I got the hang of it. It was mostly a process of organizing monthly receipts and creating financial documents—you know, a balance sheet and a profit-and-loss statement. I owe this man my life—and my family’s life—for giving me a skill set I can actually use to make a decent living.”
A grin crept up Molly’s lips. “I don’t know. I still can’t imagine you sitting at a desk hunched over a spreadsheet full of numbers. I was never any better at math than you were, and bookkeeping sounds incredibly painful. More so than my ankle, any day. But I’m glad you were able to find a job so quickly after returning to Whispering Pines.”
She sounded sincere, and Logan’s gut turned over. After all of these years as a screwup, it felt good to have done something right for a change. And for some reason, it meant even more coming from Molly.
What a crazy, mixed-up way for his life to have turned out.
“So, your parents watch Judah after school while you work at the church?”
“Actually, most of my work is done at home. I handle the money and banking on Monday mornings at the church and then work in my home office the rest of the week so I can be near Judah if he needs me. I appreciate everything my parents are doing for me, but Judah is my responsibility, and the more I can interact with him, the better. That’s especially important during summer break.”
“It is. I’m glad you’ll be there for him. He really does need you in a special way. It will mean a lot. You’re a good dad.”
“You think so?”
“It’s obvious to anyone with eyes how much you love him.”
Logan didn’t much care what anyone with eyes thought, but Molly’s impression meant the world to him.
“Speaking of Judah—where is he?” she asked, glancing around.
“What? I left him right underneath that aspen tree over there with his books and games.”
He pointed to the tree in question, but while his bag was still there and toys and books were spread over the blanket, there was no sign of Judah anywhere.
Logan’s heart leaped into his throat.
What kind of father was he now?
The kind who let his kid wander off?
“Logan,” Molly said, her alto voice rich with emotion as she nudged his shoulder with hers, her crutch knocking against his elbow. “Look.”
She nodded toward the fence at the far end of the spacious dog run.
“Well, I’ll be,” Logan murmured, completely dumbfounded by what he was witnessing with his own eyes. “That is completely amazing.”