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Caroline fixed her eyes on her father and added, “If Mama was alive, he would be ours.”
Sam pressed his lips into a thin white line.
Maybe she was overly sensitive because she’d been so lonely last night, or because she felt so guilty about Sam’s hat, or maybe because she honestly liked Sam and felt a connection to his daughters. Whatever the reason, Polly couldn’t stay quiet another minute. She hurried to the driver’s side door, her keys jangling in her hand.
“You know,” Polly said as she rushed to his rescue and put the key in the lock, “I think I’ll just take care of him until we find out if someone is looking for him. Right now I’ve got to go. The teachers aren’t supposed to be here when the kids and parents start to show up. Bye, girls, it was so nice to meet you.”
The girls all groaned.
Sam mouthed a thank-you that made her feel good and a little sad at the same time. How she longed to point out those missed clues with the girls. Why wouldn’t he allow them to have a dog? And the no-matchmaking deal?
Suddenly instead of seeing a funny, kind man of faith she perceived the hurt he hid even from himself.
As she drove away from the family scene, her gaze fell on the hat that she had left in the car last night. She couldn’t talk rules or matchmaking with Sam, couldn’t interfere with his parenting, but she could help him out here. She could do everything within her power to get this puppy back to his real home so that she could give the dog and the girls a happy ending. But to do that she had to act fast.
“You know, for someone who came to Baconburg to slow down the pace of her life—” she told her passenger, who woofed softly in response “—I sure have been in an awful big hurry ever since I met that Sam Goodacre.”
“So?” Sam’s younger brother, Max, called out the second Sam came blowing through the back door of Downtown Drug.
He had taken the girls back to the farm after they’d gotten their class assignments. The whole process had taken longer than he’d expected and he was late getting in to open the store. The girls had actually taken their assignments pretty well. Hayley and Juliette patting Caroline on the back as a kind of congratulations, even, and saying they didn’t mind. Until they learned just who the new teacher was.
Sam had met the cries of “unfair” and pleas for him to go to the school and let them all be in Miss Bennett’s class with his usual “let’s not let this slow us down” answers, which hadn’t helped much. Maybe it was because for the first time in a long time, he hadn’t really believed his own proclamations. In finding out Polly had this connection to his children, it wasn’t just the two girls in the other classes that felt just a little bit cheated.
“So?” Max’s voice rang out again. “Just how cute is this new teacher?”
The first thing Sam encountered was the last thing he had the time or patience to put up with.
“I spoke with her for five whole minutes in front of the school this morning.” Sam slipped the long white lab coat he kept hanging on the door of the pharmacist’s station over his street clothes. He strode farther into the old store where his little brother, Max, stood amid a disarray of power tools, how-to manuals and a row of still-crated restaurant-grade appliances. “Do not tell me it’s all over town already?”
“Hey, you belly crawl across the new lady in town’s driveway one evening, then get spotted talking to her in front of the school the next day?” Max grinned his famous cocky grin, and gave an unconvincing shrug. “People are gonna talk.”
“She’s Caroline’s teacher.” In Sam’s mind that was the end of the discussion. He moved on toward the front door, flipping on display lights and setting things in their rightful spots.
“So?” Max called after him, not budging so much as an inch to help prep the place for the coming day.
So. Max had a way of asking something that Sam had no way of formulating an answer to.
“Look, it’s Baconburg. Everyone is somebody’s teacher or scout leader or church youth-group leader or cousin or … You get it. As long as you keep things on the up-and-up and don’t give anyone reason for concern vis-à-vis the whole teacher-as-a-role-model thing, I think you could manage a few dates with the lady.”
Sam gripped the door’s ice-cold metal handle until the chill sank through all the way to his fingertips. He clenched his jaw and looked out at the town where he had grown up, the place that had cheered him in his youthful triumphs and embraced him in his time of deepest grief. He had fully prepared for his faith and this town to sustain him as he raised his girls and they grew up and had their own triumphs. That had been his sole priority.
Then he’d seen Polly Bennett trying to rescue that stray dog from under her car and for a split second his whole life hit Pause.
“She takes in strays,” he said loud enough for Max to hear, but not so much for Max’s benefit. “Raggedy, sad-eyed, not-too-great-smelling strays.”
“Great. That means you might actually stand a chance with her.”
“Very funny.” He glanced back and laughed at the brotherly jab. Max had always been the ladies’ man of the Goodacre boys, so Sam could understand why Max’s mind would immediately jump to the romance conclusion. “But really, how could I ever get involved with someone who wouldn’t hesitate to take in a lost dog, an animal she might have to give back if the real owners showed up? I can’t put my kids through that.”
“Then let them have their own dog, like lots of kids their age do.” Max sifted through the plans and pencils scattered on a makeshift table in the soon-to-be lunch-counter area of the store.
Sam’s throat constricted just enough to strain his words as he shot back, “Lots of kids their age haven’t suffered the kind of loss my girls have.”
“Did you ever think it might be good for them to have a dog to take care of, not to mention a nice lady in their life—in your life?” Max took up a pencil and tucked it behind his ear. “It might help them find a new kind of normal.”
“There’s a piece of the puzzle you’re not seeing.” Sam turned and headed back through the store. Time to get this subject and this day back on track. “This dog she’s found could be the model for the dog in those bedtime stories Marie used to tell the girls.”
“The ones Gina has written up and wants to publish?”
“The triplets have grown up with an idealized version of an adorable little dog who never gets sick, never gets old, never …” Sam gave a thumbs-down gesture rather than say what he meant. He met Max’s gaze and gave his final word on the matter. “No dog could live up to the one in their imagination. It wouldn’t be fair to the animal.”
Sam headed back to the pharmacy.
Max moved around the work space, putting himself in a place to make sure Sam could hear him as he folded his burly arms over his broad chest and asked, “Have you noticed, big bro, that every time you give an excuse for not letting the girls have a dog, it changes a little?”
“I have work to do.” Sam stood still for a moment, aware that Max had a point but that he also didn’t have any say in Sam’s life. “You have heard of that, right? Work?”
Max withdrew the pencil and a tumble of his shaggy, sun-streaked hair stuck out over his tanned ear. “Hey, I’m working on this.”
“If that were true we’d have an operational lunch counter by now.” Sam didn’t mean to sound mad, but he’d reached his limit on this subject today. No dog. No matchmaking with Polly Bennett. Why couldn’t anyone get that? “You know they call it a lunch counter because people expect to come in, sit at the counter and get served a hot, quick lunch, right? Not because everyone is counting the days until this project eats your lunch and you take off again.”
“You know you sound like a grouchy old man, don’t you?” Max laughed. “Go count pills.”
“I will. And while I’m doing that, can you handle taking care of the store? I do not need to be disturbed any more today.”
“Any more? You’re saying something … or someone … has already disturbed your tightly wound little world, bro?” Max chuckled. “Good for her. If she’s as cute as they say, good for you, too. It’s about time.”
Chapter Four
Getting her supplies from the school wasn’t going to work for her flyer project. Polly had taken her wriggling little wet-nosed charge back to her house and settled him in, then headed out to try to find a place to buy more paper. When she found herself at that crossroads between the Historic and Business districts of Baconburg again, she didn’t hesitate.
A few minutes later she was strolling down the sidewalk, soaking in every small detail of the lovely old historic buildings. Nothing was going to hurry her along again today. Brass fixtures, ornate cement trimwork, even the names of the old establishments spelled out in colored tile in the entryways leading to the doors. Try as she might she could not recall any of this from her childhood. She strongly suspected that her parents preferred to do their shopping someplace shiny and sophisticated, upscale and urban. She paused just outside her destination, a sweet little throwback to an earlier time, Downtown Drug.
She blinked at the image of a black-haired, dreamy-eyed young woman reflected back at her. She could easily imagine herself in a pillbox hat and gloves, proper Miss Bennett, grammar-school teacher, strolling downtown circa 1950. How could her family have not loved this town? How could they have run so fast and so far away from it?
If Polly didn’t look just like her sister, Essie, who so clearly belonged with the Bennett family, Polly would have wondered if she had been switched at birth. All of historic Baconburg, right down to the blue-, white- and silver-painted plateglass windows of Downtown Drug put a whole new spring in Polly’s step. She crossed over the threshold of the front door and felt as if she’d walked into another time, a sweeter time, a time when people made time for one another.
She stole a moment to take in the black-and-white-tiled floors, sunny-yellow walls and shelves filled with every sort of thing a person might need. The old store still had a gleaming wooden checkout stand, with a shiny computerized scanner and cash register attached. That didn’t dampen Polly’s enthusiasm for the quaintness of the old place. She could just imagine how for so many years people in Baconburg must have come here for the things they needed—medicine, candy, school supplies and who knew what else.
“Welcome to Downtown Drug. We’ve got whatever your little heart desires.” A warm, deep masculine voice called out from somewhere unseen in the store. “If you need help finding it, I’m back here at the lunch counter.”
“A lunch counter.” Polly sighed. “This I’ve got to see!”
She wound her way back toward the friendly voice, expecting to find a nice paunchy, slightly balding middle-aged man wearing a white bib apron getting a big grill ready for the day’s business.
“Hello?” she called out. She rounded the end of a row of shelves and stopped inches from a pile of red vinyl benches and tables that must have once been booths. Beyond that a bright yellow strip of plastic, the kind she’d seen around crime scenes marked off an area filled with power tools, sawdust and chaos.
Middle-aged? Maybe if the average life expectancy was around sixty. Balding? Not even slightly. Her gaze moved from the shoulder-length waves of light brown hair topped with sun-washed blond streaks to his tanned face and two- or three-day growth of beard. He wore a chain around his neck with a cross on it, and a faded T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves to reveal bulging biceps.
He smiled. “Hey there, pretty lady. You got a question? I don’t actually work in the store, so I’m not sure where you’d find that. If you’d like, I can ask the old man.”
He raised his voice on the last two words and directed them toward the raised platform framed in black-painted wood with sliding glass-panel windows and Pharmacy lettered in gold.
In response, one of the panels slid almost closed.
The man in front of her burst out laughing. “They do get cranky when they get old, don’t they?”
“I like older people,” Polly said in the unseen man’s defense. “And I like older places. I think it’s a shame you’re tearing up this wonderful old piece of local history. Please tell me you’re not going to install one of those fast-food kiosks like they have in quick markets and all over the airport in Atlanta.”
“Atlanta! You’re …” He pointed at her and his face lit up like a kid’s at Christmas.
“I’m what?”
“From Atlanta,” he said as if that was what he had been reacting to—and fairly unconvincingly, too.
What did this construction worker in surfer dude’s clothing know about her? Should she be uneasy or flattered?
“Maybe I should talk to that old man.” She turned and skirted sideways, keenly aware of the smiling carpenter’s eyes on her. Even when she heard the squeak of a door, she did not turn toward the pharmacist’s station. Her gaze locked on the other man, she raised the piece of paper. “I have a list. I just need to get in, get out and get back to getting this little dog I found back where he belongs.”
“I thought you were keeping the dog.”
Polly gasped at the sound of Sam’s voice. The slip of paper with her supply list on it slid through her fingers, flipped in the air and fell between her feet and Sam’s cowboy boots.
“I can’t … That is … you convinced me …” Polly looked at him, her mouth open. Sam Goodacre. The guy who showed up in her driveway. Then at the school. Now … “I can’t believe we keep running into each other.”
“Welcome to life in a small town. The upside is that you tend to make a tight-knit circle of friends and associates who are always there for each other. The downside is that you have a tight-knit circle of friends and associates and they’re always there for each other, whether you want them there or not.”
She thought of her life in Atlanta where she barely knew anyone in her building, or even her church. Where her job meant she rarely worked with the same people more than a few days in a row, and even so, half the time they rarely had time to make eye contact. Of course, not everyone in the city was like that, but that had been her experience and so … “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
“Oh?” He tipped his head to one side. “I guess sometimes it is kinda nice.”
Her heart fluttered. She took a breath and held it just long enough until she noticed her head felt light. She let her words rush out in a whisper, “What are you doing here?”
“I own the place. Bought out my father-in-law when he retired last year.” He stuck his thumb under the name tag on his white lab coat, closing the already-too-close distance between them with the starched white fabric.
Polly pressed her lips together to keep from actually reading the tag aloud as she tried to ignore how this man’s nearness made her so aware of everything from the rasp of his coat over his shirt to the pounding of her pulse in her temples.
“You’re …” She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the lunch counter. “You’re the old man?”
He chuckled softly. “I see you’ve met my brother, Max.”
“Your brother …” Suddenly the guy seeming to know something about her made sense. It also made her wonder if it was Sam who had told his brother about her, and just what Sam might have said. Never in her life had she had this kind of instantaneous reaction to a man. Just being around him filled her with anticipation and the expectation that something good was coming her way. She liked that. Liked him. A good guy. A good dad. A Christian and …
“I thought you were a farmer.”
“Close. I’m a pharmacist.” He walked over to the raised platform and slid the glass back to reveal a plaque with all his credentials engraved under his name. “I just live on a farm.”
“But the truck I first saw you in …”
“Belongs to our family farm. My sister and I trade off depending on our cargo. Her organic produce gets the truck, my redheaded progeny get the minivan.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Those girls seem like pretty precious cargo to me.”
“Yeah, they are.” He nodded as if he really appreciated her saying that, then suddenly his brow furrowed. “Did you come in here for something special?”
“Oh! My list!” She bent immediately to retrieve the list.
“Let me …” Sam did the same.
They both reached out. Polly clenched her jaw, bracing herself for that dull, painful, embarrassing head clunk. Surprised when it didn’t come, she jerked her head up.
He was standing there, his face inches from hers. In the space of a heartbeat she lost herself in those caring brown eyes.
“I’ll just get …” she murmured.
“Here, let me …” he said at the same time.
Both bent slightly forward, hands extended and faces close. Static electricity in the very air drew a strand of Polly’s hair toward his. For a split second, if anyone had caught a glimpse of them with those words on their lips and their gazes entwined, they might have thought they were just about to kiss.
“Um, I have to go.” Polly jerked her body upright and raked her curled fingers through her hair, pulling it back into place. “I left the dog and … I have to go.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, just spun on her heel and ran. For an instant she listened for his footsteps behind her, or for him to call for her not to leave. Not a sound, not as she fled with her face flushed and her throat tight, not as she hit the door and pushed her way out onto the sidewalk.
In the glass storefront she no longer imagined the daydream of prim Miss Bennett but saw herself. Polly, who wanted to find her place in the world but who never quite fit in had just met a man who made her feel as if anything was possible—except a match made between the two of them.
Sam couldn’t get the near kiss out of his mind the rest of the day. Thoughts of Polly Bennett popped up uninvited in the seconds between the phone ringing and his answering it. Could it be her calling about whatever she had come in to get from the store?
Her image formed slowly in his thoughts as he walked by the spot where Polly had stood. When he caught the whiff of sawdust and bubblegum, the scent in the store surrounding them earlier. So it pulled him up short when, shortly after four, his sister came in to deliver the triplets to him and his brother simultaneously made an announcement.
“All right! Gina’s here.” Max clapped his hands together, then swung his legs over the tarp-covered lunch counter. “I’m off.”
Hayley clambered up onto one of the dozen stools planted around the covered counter. Juliette went on tiptoe, gave a twirl and took the seat next to her. Sam reached out to help Caroline climb up to another stool, frowning at his brother as he asked, “Where you going, Max?”
“To pay a visit to that pretty new teacher.”
“Why?”
“Because she came in here this morning with a list of things she needed and after two minutes in your presence she ran out of here without getting any of it.” The small rectangle of paper caught between Max’s fingers crackled. “So I thought I’d do the neighborly thing—fill her list and take it over to her.”
“We want to go.” Hayley spoke for all three girls.
“I have a motorcycle, girls. One of you can ride behind me and one on my shoulders, but the other one …” He squinted at Sam. The girls understood this was just another example of Uncle Max’s outrageous humor, but Sam recognized the challenge in his younger brother’s tone. He was baiting Sam. “You got a skateboard and some clothesline in this place?”
“Very funny.” Sam met that challenge with his feet planted firmly in front of his daughters, on the floor of his place of business. He wasn’t going to let his younger brother goad him into getting riled up about Polly Bennett. That no-matchmaking rule did not just apply to the triplets.
Max made an exaggeratedly casual shrug, ending with both hands held out as if weighing the two options. “Somebody’s got to stay here. Somebody needs to take these to the lovely Miss Bennett.”
“Dad can do it,” Caroline volunteered, because they clearly all knew Sam wasn’t going to speak up for himself.
Max gave a big ol’ self-satisfied grin. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Sam opened his mouth to launch into an explanation of his special set of rules to Max, then reconsidered. It wasn’t as if Max ever listened to the rules, anyway.
“How about Gina?” Sam fixed his gaze on his sister, who had paused long enough at the counter to drop some change into the drawer and sell herself a pack of gum. “It would be perfect. You take the girls and deliver this stuff to—”
“Sorry.” She leaned down, rummaged around under the counter, then popped back up holding Sam’s spare truck keys. “I have an appointment with a seed catalog.”
As soon as Gina reached the door, she pitched Sam the keys to the minivan. “See you tonight.”
The keys hit the floor with a metallic clank.
Max bent down to scoop them up and dangled them in front of Sam. “I can hold down the store while you pay a visit.”
“I don’t want the girls getting attached to that dog,” Sam muttered through clenched teeth, not from anger but from trying to disguise the sentiment from his daughters.
“Fine. They can stay with me.” He pressed the cluster of keys into Sam’s palm. “I could use the girls’ help picking out paint colors.”
“Green!” Hayley jumped in the air.
“Pink!” Juliette gave a twirl.
“Can you use wallpaper?” Caroline squinted at the wall as if already taking mental measurements for the job.
The girls threw themselves into the assignment with the kind of enthusiasm that only a chance to do an end run around their dad’s no-matchmaking rule could inspire.
What was he going to do about it? Haul the girls over there and risk their falling in love with that little lost pup? Or send his brother over to Polly Bennett’s house and risk her falling in love with his hound dog of a brother? That shouldn’t matter, but …
He sighed, snagged the bag with the goods gathered up by Max and headed for the door. “I’ll be back in an hour. I’m going to make a delivery.”
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