Inheriting the Farmhouse by Catelyn Meadows

Author:Catelyn Meadows
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cortney Pearson

Chapter Fifteen

Weather like this gave me permission to slow down. Sunlight blazed. Every sight was a work of art: picturesque blue in the sky, trees that had been green now standing out with vibrant orange courage as if they’d found their true selves. The leaves they shed speckled the grass and the fields. Fields were lazy with straw bales deposited every handful of feet, waiting to be stored.

Luke and I sat together, more comfortable in the silence than if we’d known one another all our lives. The moment expanded itself, granting us enough space to exist as we both needed. Just as all good things eventually spend out, so did this. Luke’s hand slipped from my shoulder to my side, and he knocked his knee into mine.

“You ready to go?” Luke asked.

I stretched my arms before me. “Not yet. I need just a few minutes to collect myself. Then I’ll hitchhike into town.” I slid him a smile.

“Hitchhike?”

“I don’t exactly have a carburetor or other engine parts for Old Blue hidden up my sleeve. Unless…did you change your mind about taking me?” He had offered to take me before, but things had shifted so rapidly, I needed to pin down what his feelings were now after our chat.

“I think you could talk me into it. What do you want to do in the meantime?”

Was that hopeful curiosity in his tone? Shrewd. I could imagine that getting swept up in kissing Luke again would be all too easy. Might need to avoid either of our houses.

“Let’s go see the llamas,” I said. “They’re one animal I don’t have experience caring for.”

“You got it,” he said. Luke rose and offered me a hand. Once I was on my feet, he didn’t let me go but instead led the way past the goat pens where a horde of at least ten goats bleated and scratched in the hay. Several corrals were situated behind the barn, and the field just beyond, visible from the driveway, was a portioned-off segment of lawn where a white llama with a long neck and thick fur stood chewing something over in his masticating jaws. On the opposite end, near the fence that bordered Grandpa’s apple trees, stood the black llama.

“Which one is Hector, and which is Berlioz?” I asked. “And why did Grandpa choose those names?”

“The white one is Hector,” Luke said, resting an arm on the top of the fence and hitching his boot on the bottom rung. He pointed toward the black one. “And that one there is good old Berlioz. As for the names, he never quite told me where they’d come from.”

“Did he have the llamas when you started working here?”

“Not from the start, no,” Luke said. “After I’d begun healing enough to walk around a bit, he mentioned getting something new, changing things up. He asked what I thought could be a good addition to the farm.”

“So you suggested llamas?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did.”

“You named them, didn’t you?”

Luke lifted his hands in surrender. “I didn’t.

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