Home Family My Books
Upcoming
Releases
About Me Links
Q & A
Reviews
Conference pictures & More
Wellspring of Love
(From the RESCUE collection)
When firefighter Blaine Carson receives a frantic call about a cat stuck in a tree, he never dreams that "Cat" is short for "Catherine"---a beautiful woman caught in the branches of a large oak! Unlikely victims---and heroes---are par for the course in this delightful collection of four romantic novellas. You'll love them all! 352 pages, softcover from Barbour.
__________________________________
One
“Show me! Show me! Please?” Huge blue eyes shone
wistfully from a face smudged with strawberry jam. “Pretty please with lotsa
chocolate sprinkles an’ whipped cream an’ cherries on top?”
Cat McGregor eyed her five-year-old nephew with a
mixture of love and frustration. “I haven’t thrown one of those things in a
long time, Sport. I’m not even sure I’d remember how. Besides the ground is
too muddy.”
Trey lowered his head and kicked at a knothole on
the wooden porch with the toe of his tan cowboy boot. “Aw, Aunt Cat. You
always say that. All it ever does here is rain!”
Her heart twinged at his crestfallen look. Well,
what was a little mud? Besides, didn’t mud and boys go together? And it was
such a nice day . . .
Grinning, she tousled his mop of wavy blond hair.
“All right then. Let’s see you give it a try.”
Uncertainty crossed his features, but he awkwardly
raised the hand holding his new glow-in-the-dark Frisbee to his opposite
shoulder, concentrated on the wide area off the back porch, and slung it hard.
The disc shot at a downward angle and sliced through the new shoots of green
grass.
“See,” he moaned. “I don’t know how. I need
you to show me!” He clomped down the wooden stairs, retrieved the Frisbee, and
returned to Cat, offering it to her.
She blew out an exasperated breath. Her gaze swept
over the acreage of huge backyard--once her great-granny’s farm--then back to
Trey. The look in his eyes would have put a begging puppy dog to shame.
“Oh, all right.” She pushed up the sleeves of
her beige windbreaker. “Let’s see what your old Auntie can do.”
“Aw, you’re not old, Aunt Cat,” Trey said with
a smirk, exposing the gap of his missing front tooth. “Lonnie Miller says
you’re one of the purtiest gals in the whole county, an’ that he’s gonna
marry you someday!”
Her cheeks burned. “You shouldn’t tell tales,
Trey. It’s not nice.”
Hurt furrowed his brow. “But I’m not telling
tales! He really said it. Honest, he did! I heard him tell his friend at the gas
station last week when you were pumping gas.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” How dare the man! Having
him for a fellow classmate in grade school and junior high had been bad enough.
Cat continually had endured spit balls shot into her hair from behind, and the
pencils and pens he borrowed never returned--since alphabetical seating always
found her directly in front of the class clown.
“Well, let me tell you something, Trey
Stockton,” she fumed, anger at the absent culprit making her words come out
with the speed of pelting BBs. “I am not now, nor ever, going to get married
to anyone--no how, no way. Is that clear? I don’t need any man! And you can
tell him I said so. Now, gimme that thing!”
She seized the plastic disc with one hand. Turning,
she hurled the Frisbee with the force of a superhero. They watched as it sailed
high and fast through the air in an upward arc, past the decorator well, to come
to a sudden, rustling stop--high in the branches of a nearby oak.
Cat waited for it to fall. It didn’t. Of all the
crazy . . . how could it get stuck up there when there was no full-grown
leaves--only buds—-blocking it?
“Aunt Cat . . . how we gonna get it down?”
Her gaze swung to her nephew. His eyes were starting
to tear and his mouth trembled. It wasn’t often he received new toys--just the
occasional used one from the thrift store. Since the fire at the day care center
took Cat’s job two months ago and their only income now came from her
sister’s occupation as a teller at the bank’s drive thru window--and the
pretty jars of homemade preserves they sold to Brady’s souvenir
store--they’d needed to pinch pennies.
She looped an arm around Trey’s bony shoulders,
drawing him close. “Don’t you worry, Sport,” she said, her gaze lifting to
the tree. “Aunt Cat has a plan . . .”
Blaine Carson fiddled with the silver dial of the
ancient radio, trying to find anything but country music and political talk
shows. Too bad his CD player was broken. After sending the red marker clear
across the numbered screen, he frowned and clicked off the radio. What else
could he expect in this small Texas town? Still, he was glad he’d moved to
Loggin’s Point. Big city life had been exciting, and his job as a Dallas
firefighter rewarding . . . until
last year had changed things, that is.
Giving a rueful shake of his dark head, he
determined to forget the past. There was no going back and changing it.
He glanced out the streaked window of his blue Ford
pickup and smiled, waving to old Mrs. Celina Partridge sitting on the wooden
porch of her cracker-box home. She continued swinging back and forth in her
rocker, not acknowledging his greeting. He sighed and turned onto the street
that would take him to the cramped apartment he shared with his old college
roommate and fellow firefighter Matt Higgs. He looked forward to a steaming hot
shower and some R & R. The guys who shared his shift had been noisy, sitting
around the table in the kitchen, playing dominoes, while Blaine stretched out on
a cot in the bunkroom. Blaine didn’t know the game forty-two, but it
would’ve been nice if they’d at least asked him if he wanted to join in.
Three months at Loggin’s Point hadn’t gained him
the people’s trust or acceptance. Not one bit. Even most of the guys at the
station treated him as an outsider, playing practical jokes on Blaine, never
considering him their equal. He wondered if it was because he was the youngest
and newest of the bunch, or if it was because he’d seen a lot more action,
coming from a big city, and they were jealous of his experience.
Staring out the windshield at the pasty gray sky
above the newly furrowed fields, Blaine pursed his lips in thought. Thankfully
the three days of rain had stopped, and the rest of the week promised sunshine.
He looked forward to the singles’ Bible study--since he’d been on duty and
missed out the last time they’d met. At least that group didn’t reject him.
The computerized sound of “Charge!” came from
the passenger seat. He plucked up his cell phone--his goodbye present to himself
before he’d left Dallas--and flicked it open and on.
“Carson here.”
“This is Rogers. Tried to page you, but your pager
must be off. Got an emergency. Truck is out responding to another call, and I
need you to check it out.”
Blaine sat up straighter, alert. Two calls at the
same time? Having two calls within a twenty-four hour weekday shift was rare
enough in this sleepy little town. “I’m listening.”
“You still got that slide ladder in the back of
your pickup truck?”
“Yeah.”
“Need you to head over to the McGregor place on
412 Mercer Lane--off the state highway, about four blocks from where you live.
White frame house--green shingles--tall cedar trees out front. Cat’s up a
tree.”
Blaine stared straight ahead, his hand tensing on
the wheel. A cat? They were sending him out for a cat?
“You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” There was no masking the
disgust in his voice.
“Martha took the kid’s call and dispatched a
squad car, but they probably don’t have the equipment they need. Are you on
it?”
“Yeah, I’m on it,” Blaine growled and punched
the cell phone off. This had to be another practical joke. He’d never thought
Earl Rogers would gang up on him, too. He was a play-by-the-book professional
who took his job seriously . . . come to think of it, so did all the
firefighters at the station. Their pranks had only been issued between calls and
during off-duty hours--never during emergencies.
But a cat? That was considered an emergency?
Blaine shook his head and gunned the motor as he
drove up the road leading to Mercer Lane. He didn’t know much about small-town
living. Maybe a cat up a tree was an emergency here at Loggin’s Point. Still,
he felt like ten kinds of a fool. He supposed he’d better get over his
aversion to furry felines and fast, if he was to do this job.
Within minutes, Blaine found the location, pulled
into the long, tree-lined gravel drive beside the patrol car, jumped out of his
truck and grabbed the slide ladder resting in the back among his other emergency
supplies. As he approached the rear of the neat little farmhouse, two policemen
hurried around the bend and toward him, one with a radio in his hand.
Good. Maybe they’d already taken care of the
problem.
The stocky one acknowledged Blaine, a look of relief
in his brown eyes as he tugged on the brim of his tan cowboy hat, his fast-paced
gait never wavering. “Glad you’re finally here. We just got another call--a
robbery at the Food Mart. Takes priority over this, I’m afraid.”
Blaine nodded, resigned.
“Don’t think you’ll have much of a problem,”
the policeman threw over his shoulder as he wrenched open the driver’s door of
the marked car.
“Wanna bet?” his younger partner said in a quick
aside to Blaine as he hurried past. “She’s spitting nails. Watch those
claws!”
Blaine wistfully eyed the patrol car as it tore out
of the drive, its red and blue lights flashing, its siren wailing. He wished he
could go with them. Helping to apprehend a gunman would be preferable to the
next few minutes, he was sure.
Sighing, he hefted the metal ladder under his arm to get a better grip and headed toward the back.
Home Family My Books
Upcoming
Releases
About Me Links
Q & A
Reviews
Conference pictures & More