the house with the smallest tractor. The jingling sound it made as it rode by was the telltale jingling of metal fence posts. He pulled on his jacket and boots and said, “Crap!”
It didn’t take him long to find not only Junior sitting atop the tractor, motor running like he might make a fast getaway, but the black, furry rumps of four bears ambling away from the orchard. Mother and her triplets. They were almost a hundred yards away before Junior turned off the motor.
Tom was on foot. “Did you run them off?” he asked.
“Yup. I saw one in a tree and went for the tractor. I’m going to put a post every two feet on this section now,” Junior said.
“I’ll help. You get coffee yet?”
“I don’t need coffee to wake up. I’m pissed. That got my motor running.”
By the time the fence was double repaired and half the orchard chores done, it was noon. Right now the last thing he felt like doing was spending a day with a bunch of little kids at a party on a farm, but he’d made a commitment. He’d be late to Nora’s; a shower and shave was absolutely necessary. By the time he made it to her house, it was twelve-thirty. And he was exhausted.
But the second he saw her, he felt a little surge of energy.
“Sorry,” he said. “I meant to be on time”
“Oh, Tom, please don’t apologize—it’s all right. Would you like us to go in separate cars?”
“Why?”
She gave a shrug. “Maybe you don’t want to give the impression that we’re, you know…”
“Friends?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said and unconsciously brushed her lips with her fingers.
“We’ll take your car so we don’t have to move car seats to mine. I’m going to throw the chairs in the trunk.”
“With the stroller, please?”
In the backseat, Berry chanted, “Punkin, punkin, punkin, punkin.”
Soon the blanket was spread on a grassy spot not far from the big Victorian and Berry was pulling at Nora’s hand, begging to go see the pumpkins. Someone had hooked up a few ponies for rides for the kids and there was a line for apple bobbing—apples compliments of Cavanaugh’s, brought earlier by Maxie.
Maxie greeted them like old friends and took Berry right off Nora’s hands.
“I’ll take her around and wear her down,” she said.
“Would you rather stay here with Fay?” Nora asked. “Berry’s getting fast!”
“I think I can keep up for a little while,” she said, disappearing.
Tom gave a wave to a group of men who were standing around the grill. “I’ll be back,” Tom assured her.
“By all means, take your time. Visit with your friends—I’ll be fine.”
And Nora was not without friends of her own—her neighbor Leslie wandered over and sat on the blanket for a little while. Not long after, Martha joined them. Within an hour Maxie was back with Berry and other men and women Nora knew came visiting—Noah and Ellie Kincaid, Mel Sheridan and Paige Middleton, Becca Timm, the schoolteacher and soon-to-be Mrs. Cutler—she was marrying Denny, who was farmer Jill’s assistant. Kelly Holbrook introduced her fifteen-year-old daughter, Courtney, and Courtney’s best friend, Amber—the girls put in a pitch for babysitting and as a favor, loaded Fay into the stroller and took charge of her for a while.
From her place on her blanket, Nora kept catching sight of Tom, laughing and enjoying a beer with a group of guys, helping to haul big pumpkins to cars for women he knew, throwing a ball with some young men Nora hadn’t yet met.
Friends.
The trouble with women, she thought as she admired her handsome, sexy friend, is that when a guy kisses us, we think he loves us. Women think kisses make relationships when really, kisses make kisses. And besides, was there really room in her life for a relationship? Probably not, even though there was nothing about Tom to suggest he could be as thoughtless, irresponsible and cruel as Chad had been. Not only were there too many differences in their characters, she had to remember that back in the days of Chad, he was a traveling ballplayer. She rarely saw him and when she did, she was so overwhelmed with her crush, she gave in to him quickly, easily.
She saw Tom every day. She spent many an evening at his dinner table. She witnessed firsthand how he cared for his grandmother. The