So far, she only had about a quarter of them back on herschedule. She was not going to allow that to worry her. She kept reminding herself that she no longer had a farm to pay for. She could afford to work less, if she needed to. All she needed to do was make enough money to feed her horses and hopefully have a little extra so that she could give Gilbert money for rent, even though he didn’t want her to. She just couldn’t live there for free.
Of course, she had to buy groceries too, which she knew would be a lot more than she was used to spending, since she didn’t typically cook for growing kids and a man.
“All right. I’ll depend on you from now until Christmas to drive the buggy on Mondays.” Mrs. Tucker blinked several times, and looked around, then she lowered her voice. “There’s a nasty rumor going around that you had sold your horses, but I knew it wasn’t true.”
Summer wasn’t quite sure what to say about that. It was true, but it wasn’t true anymore, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to stand there and explain it all to Mrs. Tucker, who was surely going to announce it to the entire town. She supposed the longer it took for everyone to figure out that she was living on the farm she used to own, and staying in the house with Gilbert and his three kids, the better.
Mrs. Tucker soon found someone else she needed to talk to and hurried off, leaving Summer and Sunny standing, bemused, on the sidewalk.
“Well, I didn’t see that coming. I should have been watching a little better.”
“Mrs. Tucker has a tendency to do that to people. I don’t know how someone of her size sneaks around as easily as what she does.”
“You said that so much better than I could have,” Sunny said with a giggle.
They hooked arms again and continued on their way to church, smiling and chatting, and since now Sunny had six dozen muffins to make in addition to everything else, Summer told her that she would help her if she could.
As she was trying to figure out her schedule for the week and when she could come in to help bake, she heard the bells then saw the sleigh/wagon pull up in front of the church.
It was easy to pick out Gilbert’s three kids as they bounded off the sleigh, but it was a little while until she noticed Gilbert standing halfway up the walk. And when she finally saw him, she realized that instead of watching his children run to him, his eyes had caught on her.
He smiled as their gazes met, and she returned it, nodding a hello.
Funny that her heart started beating an irregular rhythm and she suddenly felt like she was out of breath.
“So…that will work?” Sunny asked, and she ripped her gaze away from Gilbert. Why did he have that effect on her?
“Yes. Tuesday morning should work just fine. I only have a quarter of my clients back, and I’ll just make sure I tell them this Tuesday doesn’t work for me.”
“I don’t want you to lose work because you’re helping me.”
“You were willing to take me in, on such a short notice, and then have me work for a few days and I quit immediately, and you’re not angry about it. Of course I’m going to help you. You couldn’t have been nicer to me in any way.”
Sunny just grinned. “That’s what friends are for.”
That made Summer’s mouth turn up, and she almost forgot about Gilbert. Except, they happened to meet at the steps, getting there at the same time.
Sunny squeezed her arm, nodded a hello to Gilbert, and then hurried into the church on the heels of Gilbert’s children. Leaving Gilbert and Summer standing at the steps, which were suddenly deserted.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice sending shivers down her spine.
She tried not to allow that to show as she nodded serenely. “It’s a beautiful morning.”
“It sure is. It’s been so warm this whole fall, we’re going to get spoiled with all this nice weather.”
“We sure are,” she said, thinking about how good God had been to her. He had definitely been spoiling her.
“I wanted to offer to help tomorrow, if you have anything you need to move.” He lifted his shoulder and looked a little sheepish. “It looks like you left most of the things that were in the house, but surely you took some things, and I just wanted you to know that I would be available.”
“Thank you. I appreciate the offer, but everything is still in my car pretty much, other than the clothes I needed to wear. Sunny didn’t have room for it, and I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“I really miss the plants that were in the kitchen.”
Really? She had almost left them, but then she didn’t want to leave more responsibility, because while plants were fairly easy to take care of, they did require watering and occasional pruning.
“I’ll definitely bring them back,” she said easily.
How much information did she need to give him? Should she tell him that she was going to be at the tree farm every Monday after Thanksgiving between Thanksgiving and Christmas?
