Christmas In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

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      “I practiced,” she said. “Mom had me in pageants, playing piano. I wanted to work a cattle dog as my talent, but she insisted piano was more ladylike.”

      “She wasn’t wrong about that.” His voice was gruff, and he put the stopwatch he’d been using in his pocket. “He’s dropped three seconds, and it’s not because of me.”

      “It’s just a fluke.”

      “You said you’d been practicing.”

      “I did, for a while. Mom didn’t care that I hated piano, and I wanted to do something else. So I found a dog trainer whose wife taught piano. I was obnoxiously horrible to every piano teacher in the Kansas City metropolitan area until she worked her way to the teacher with the dog-trainer husband, and I made that teacher a deal. I’d get Mom to spring for two hours of lessons if I could use half the time to work with the dogs.”

      Granddad chuckled. “And the teacher went for it?”

      “She’d heard how obnoxious I could be.”

      “Sneaky. And a little bit brilliant.”

      Camden wasn’t so sure about the brilliant part. Desperate was more to the point. And somehow dumb seemed to fit, too. Because a truly brilliant person would have stood up to her mother about the pageants in the first place.

      A truly brilliant person wouldn’t have gone to sleep the last two nights thinking about a two-minute conversation with Levi Walters. Or woken up the past two mornings still thinking about the man and half dreaming more conversations with him. Camden shook her head, hoping to dislodge the Levi train of thought. She refocused on her grandfather.

      “Let’s take him through one more time,” Granddad said, and Camden blew three whistles. Jake, the collie, lined up at the starting line. When Camden blew the whistle, he started through the course.

      Jake was one of only a handful of dogs left at Harris Farms, and the pup of a dog Camden remembered from her childhood. When she was younger, there had been at least thirty collies, Australian cattle dogs and other working dogs on the farm. Her grandfather had trained them to work on ranches all over the United States, Canada and Mexico. Working cattle, sheep, llamas. She’d come here hoping to work with Calvin for a while until she found her footing again, but the dogs he had now were mostly old favorites. They liked the course work, but they were more pets than working dogs.

      Still, it was nice to be out here in the bright sunshine, watching the big collie go through the paces. She wondered what Levi was doing this morning. She knew he was running the dairy his family had owned for several generations. Would he still be milking cattle at almost noon on a Friday?

      Not that it mattered if he was. Levi was a childhood acquaintance; she was a recently unengaged woman who was not—repeat, not—looking for a one-night stand. No matter how cute the boy she’d known so many years ago had grown up to be.

      He kept the hair she remembered as dense and curly nearly shaved now. His eyes—eyes that has mesmerized her as a young girl—were rich and brown with a few hints of hazel or amber in the depths. His skin a shade lighter than his eyes. His smile a bit crooked, but that only made him more memorable to her.

      The breadth of his shoulders made her heart skip a beat, and she could still feel his hand on hers.

      Calvin snapped off the timer as the collie crossed the finish line, and that snapped Camden back to the course.

      She would not let her childhood crush on Levi Walters take hold. Not again. He was her grandparents’ neighbor, that was all. A guy she used to know.

      “I think he could be ready for sheep or goats soon,” Granddad was saying.

      “Do you still have sheep and goats?” she hadn’t noticed any early morning feeding runs, the pasture near the farmhouse was empty, and she hadn’t hear any distant lowing or bleating from a small herd.

      Granddad shook his head. “Hasn’t been much need for a herd lately.” A wistful expression crossed his face. “Probably won’t be again, but it’s nice to consider the option. I’m too old for full-time training.”

      “I’m not.” She snapped her mouth closed. Camden wasn’t a professional stock dog trainer. A couple of lucky runs, and a year or so of training lessons for competition dogs might have given her a little experience, but she didn’t know the first thing about running a working stock dog school. And if Calvin still wanted to run a school, wouldn’t he be running it?

      The idea though, kept nagging at her. What if Granddad wanted to rejuvenate the school? For her time with the trainer in Kansas City, she knew competition dogs were sought after and could sell for high amounts of money. Training fees on top of that...

      If she could get just one dog ready for competition, she could help her grandparents rejuvenate Harris Farms. Could have a real reason to stay here rather than return to Kansas City.

      “You want to train stock dogs?”

      “There’s a stock dog competition in Tulsa in a week. I couldn’t train a dog in time, but if you want to build the school back up, it might be a good place to start.”

      Calvin turned an assessing eye on her. “That isn’t an answer.”

      Did she want to train stock dogs? Camden blew out a breath.

      Training dogs was something she’d done as a kid, something she’d done with her father and Granddad. It was miles away from training pageant contestants, a business she’d gone into with her mother after her last competition. Elizabeth always said to go into business with someone who was a success. Calvin Harris was a world class stock-dog trainer. His collies and Australian shepherds and cattle dogs were working cattle ranches and smaller llama and sheep farms all over North and South America. Cattle, llama, sheep. Camden gave Jake a rub behind his ear and tossed a treat into the air. The dog snapped it between his jaws, swallowing it whole.

      “I might want to train dogs,” she said, and although the words sounded weak, saying them aloud made her stand a little straighter. As if saying them had woken up something deep inside Camden. The way walking away from Grant had woken something else. “I’d at least like the chance to try.”

      Calvin nodded. “We haven’t had sheep or goats around here for more than three years. Other than the cows Levi boards on the north side of the property, Jake and his buddies are the only livestock around.”

      The two then started toward the farmhouse where Camden had spent two of the best summers of her life. Before her mother married Darren Carlson, a rich lawyer from Kansas City. After that, visits to her father’s family farm stopped abruptly. Her grandparents came to Darren’s Mission Hills mansion a few times for Christmas dinners or the odd birthday, but she’d never been allowed to come back here after her father was killed in a drunk-driving accident.

      When she called her mother Thanksgiving morning to tell her she would not be coming back to Kansas City for a while and that she wasn’t marrying that two-timing weasel, Grant, Elizabeth Carlson had hung up the phone. She hadn’t called back. Hadn’t texted. She probably expected Camden to snap out of it and show up for their traditional Black Friday shopping marathon.

      Elizabeth would be shocked to see Camden in knee-high rain boots, nondesigner jeans and a hoodie instead of the high heels, designer jeans and cashmere sweaters she’d worn in Kansas СКАЧАТЬ