All I Am. Nicole Helm

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 into the driver’s seat and began to pull out of his space when he noticed a bright splotch of green standing behind a truck, waving.

      The truck with a sticker that read Pruitt Morning Sun Farms on the side pulled away, and Cara stood there watching it go. She looked sad.

      Not his problem, but seemingly of its own accord, his foot tapped the brake as he drove next to her. “You okay?” What the hell was wrong with him? He was not the check-on-near-strangers type.

      Okay, checking on strangers was exactly the type of thing he’d do. Which was why he isolated himself on a few wooded acres. So he didn’t feel the need to help and come up short. So he didn’t feel the need to engage, then get laughed at.

      She shaded her eyes with her hands, looking up at him. “Yeah, I’m okay. I don’t think I’ve got rabies now or anything.”

      He almost, almost, smiled at that, which was kind of weird.

      She hopped up onto the step of his truck, sticking her face way too close to his for comfort. He backed away and felt like a coward. But a safe coward.

      Some stranger sticking her head into the window of his truck was not normal. Most people were too uncomfortable around him to do that.

      “Hey, can I ask you a question?” she asked.

      He braced himself for the inevitable. How do you manage? You are so brave! His good hand clenched into a fist.

      “What are their names?”

      “Huh?”

      “Their names?” She pointed at Phantom, then to the back where the other three dogs had arranged themselves.

      “You want to know my dogs’ names?”

      “Yeah, what did you think I was going to ask you?”

      He wasn’t going to answer that. Partially because it made him look like a tool, and partially because he didn’t want to talk about it. “Phantom, Flash, Toby and Sweetness—which was the name she came with, not the one I gave her, by the way.”

      Cara chuckled at that. “You must be good with training them. I’ve been thinking about getting a dog since Mia moved out. Where do you get yours?”

      “Wherever. Strays mostly. Except Phantom.”

      “Where’d you get Phantom?”

      He tapped a finger to his watch. “Sorry, busy day. Gotta get going.”

      Her eyebrows scrunched together, but he looked away, focusing on the road in front of him.

      Out of the corner of his eye he saw her hop back down onto the ground. With a little wave, she stepped away from his truck. He tapped the accelerator.

      But he couldn’t stop himself from glancing in the rearview mirror, and he wasn’t sure what that meant.

      Best not to let it mean anything, but he had a feeling a pretty woman in a bright green shirt was going to be on his mind a lot more than he wanted her to be.

CHAPTER TWO

      CARA STARED OPENMOUTHED at Mia, trying to formulate some response beyond are you crazy. “Are you crazy?”

      “It’s not crazy! It’s an amazing idea and opportunity.”

      “No.” That was a gut reaction. In reality, Cara should be jumping up and down saying yes, yes, yes, but everything about this made her stomach sink.

      She wasn’t a professional baker. Making pies for one of Mia’s clients’ restaurants was way, way, way beyond her skill level, or at least her experience level.

      “Cara. You make amazing pies, and Sam wants to add more desserts to his menu.” Mia stood on the porch of their parents’ house, hands at her hips, a determined look on her face. “It’s a match made in heaven. You always make filling with local ingredients in your fruit pies, and that’s exactly what he’s looking for.”

      If it was a match made in heaven, why did she feel nauseated? “He doesn’t want to hire some chick with no experience.”

      “You have experience.”

      “Not restaurant experience. I have baked pies for fun or the random family member’s wedding or event and occasionally for my sister’s farmers’ market stand. Not the same.”

      “Just talk to Sam. He’s experimenting. Nothing is permanent or guaranteed. Think СКАЧАТЬ