All I Am. Nicole Helm

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      She walked toward King’s Bread and glanced around the market. The first day of the season was usually pretty slow, but because of the warmish temperatures and increased advertising this year, there were groups of people squeezing through the rows of tables.

      She meandered through one row of booths. This wasn’t her scene—she’d much prefer shopping at the new outlet mall in Millertown, even if it was out of her price range—but there was something fun about tables of honey, jam, vegetables and all manner of homemade, home-picked, home-baked things.

      The sound of a dog’s incessant barking stopped her in her tracks. A little white blob of fur stood at her feet, unleashed.

      “Shoo, little doggy.” Apparently, the shooing motion she made was asking for a fight. The dog lunged at her. As she tried to sidestep it, she tripped and fell square on her butt.

      The ball of fur latched on to her pant leg, growling and biting. Cara wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to kick the little booger, but then its jaw clamped down on her ankle. It had bitten her! Probably not hard enough to break the skin, but some strange dog seriously had bitten her.

      “Ow, you little jerk!” She didn’t want to actually kick this tiny thing, but she did nudge it a little with her foot.

      “Pipsqueak! Pipsqueak! Come here, right now!” The dog finally responded to its screeching owner and hopped into the middle-aged woman’s arms. “Oh, are you all right, sweetheart?”

      Cara scowled at the woman. “Yeah, I’m peachy after getting bit by your little terror.”

      The woman wrinkled her nose and clutched the demon dog to her chest. “I was talking to Pipsqueak. I don’t know what you did to provoke him.”

      “Provoke him?” Cara started 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, СКАЧАТЬ