Where Love Lives by Patricia McLinn

Author:Patricia McLinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance
ISBN: 9781939215550
Publisher: Craig Place Books
Published: 2021-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“C’mon, Matt. It’s lunch time.”

He still felt half asleep. “Where?” The only food in sight was the bowl of fruit on the counter. But he could swear he smelled food. Real food. It smelled good.

“It’s a rare warm, sunny day this spring, so we’re out on the porch,” Val said.

“I’m not that hungry.”

Then he thought he heard a voice outside…

“You’re coming and you’re eating,” Taylor said firmly. “From the evidence around here you’ve been living on water and sandwiches.”

“Salad wasn’t even touched,” Val said.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled, but with a bit of a smile as he let them herd him out the back door.

He blinked at the daylight and at the people.

“Come sit here,” Taylor said, guiding him from behind as if he were an invalid.

“I’m okay. I—”

“Sit,” Ruth Moski said.

He sat.

The table in front of him was loaded with food. Fried chicken. That’s what he’d smelled. “Where’d this all come from?”

“Here and there,” Matty said.

He looked beyond the porch. “What’s going on?”

The donated trailer was out of the barn, sitting in full sun with every door and window wide open. It appeared to have just been washed.

“Zoe had us clean out the trailer under strict guidelines,” Dave said. “Masks, lots of ventilation, wet it down first, bagged up everything to be burned away from people or animals — good thing there wasn’t a lot of it — and special cleaners. When we were done with that fun, we had to pack up the clothes we wore for the work, shower out in the barn and put on clean clothes.”

“Simple precautions,” Zoe said from the opposite end of a long table that had been set up.

“Yeah, notice she managed to get herself assigned to checking on the horses,” Matty said.

“Jack needed help,” Zoe said with only a small grin. “And you and Dave and Cal did a great job on the trailer. It’s squeaky clean now.”

“You did all that? I could have—”

“No,” they chorused in response. Dave added, “Ruth and Hugh had the toughest job, keeping the kids out of trouble.

Ruth snorted. Hugh said nothing, because he was asleep on a lounge chair in the sun with two kids napping on his lap and a third curled up by his legs.

The older kids, accompanied by the dog Taylor had brought the other night and a second dog of broad-minded parentage, leaped around Cal as he emerged from the barn in clean clothes.

“We fed the kids and Hugh first,” Matty said. “Works great with Hugh and the little ones, but it just refuels the older kids.”

Jack joined the group and Matt saw him talking to the kids, who nodded their understanding.

Cal shooed them all toward the dried creek bed down by the ranch road, with the dogs on their flanks.

As Jack and Cal came up to the porch, Matt thanked them, too. They shrugged it off.

“The kids know these horses aren’t like they’re used to?” he asked.

“They know,” Cal said.

“Plus, Cal redirected them,” Jack added.

“Told them to look for Indian arrowheads in that creek bed.

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