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A truly brilliant person wouldn’t have gone to sleep the last two nights thinking about a two-minute conversation with Levi Walters. Or woken up the past two mornings still thinking about the man and half dreaming more conversations with him. Camden shook her head, hoping to dislodge the Levi train of thought. She refocused on her grandfather.
“Let’s take him through one more time,” Granddad said, and Camden blew three whistles. Jake, the collie, lined up at the starting line. When Camden blew the whistle, he started through the course.
Jake was one of only a handful of dogs left at Harris Farms, and the pup of a dog Camden remembered from her childhood. When she was younger, there had been at least thirty collies, Australian cattle dogs and other working dogs on the farm. Her grandfather had trained them to work on ranches all over the United States, Canada and Mexico. Working cattle, sheep, llamas. She’d come here hoping to work with Calvin for a while until she found her footing again, but the dogs he had now were mostly old favorites. They liked the course work, but they were more pets than working dogs.
Still, it was nice to be out here in the bright sunshine, watching the big collie go through the paces. She wondered what Levi was doing this morning. She knew he was running the dairy his family had owned for several generations. Would he still be milking cattle at almost noon on a Friday?
Not that it mattered if he was. Levi was a childhood acquaintance; she was a recently unengaged woman who was not—repeat, not—looking for a one-night stand. No matter how cute the boy she’d known so many years ago had grown up to be.
He kept the hair she remembered as dense and curly nearly shaved now. His eyes—eyes that has mesmerized her as a young girl—were rich and brown with a few hints of hazel or amber in the depths. His skin a shade lighter than his eyes. His smile a bit crooked, but that only made him more memorable to her.
The breadth of his shoulders made her heart skip a beat, and she could still feel his hand on hers.
Calvin snapped off the timer as the collie crossed the finish line, and that snapped Camden back to the course.
She would not let her childhood crush on Levi Walters take hold. Not again. He was her grandparents’ neighbor, that was all. A guy she used to know.
“I think he could be ready for sheep or goats soon,” Granddad was saying.
“Do you still have sheep and goats?” she hadn’t noticed any early morning feeding runs, the pasture near the farmhouse was empty, and she hadn’t hear any distant lowing or bleating from a small herd.
Granddad shook his head. “Hasn’t been much need for a herd lately.” A wistful expression crossed his face. “Probably won’t be again, but it’s nice to consider the option. I’m too old for full-time training.”
“I’m not.” She snapped her mouth closed. Camden wasn’t a professional stock dog trainer. A couple of lucky runs, and a year or so of training lessons for competition dogs might have given her a little experience, but she didn’t know the first thing about running a working stock dog school. And if Calvin still wanted to run a school, wouldn’t he be running it?
The idea though, kept nagging at her. What if Granddad wanted to rejuvenate the school? For her time with the trainer in Kansas City, she knew competition dogs were sought after and could sell for high amounts of money. Training fees on top of that...
If she could get just one dog ready for competition, she could help her grandparents rejuvenate Harris Farms. Could have a real reason to stay here rather than return to Kansas City.
“You want to train stock dogs?”
“There’s a stock dog competition in Tulsa in a week. I couldn’t train a dog in time, but if you want to build the school back up, it might be a good place to start.”
Calvin turned an assessing eye on her. “That isn’t an answer.”
Did she want to train stock dogs? Camden blew out a breath.
Training dogs was something she’d done as a kid, something she’d done with her father and Granddad. It was miles away from training pageant contestants, a business she’d gone into with her mother after her last competition. Elizabeth always said to go into business with someone who was a success. Calvin Harris was a world class stock-dog trainer. His collies and Australian shepherds and cattle dogs were working cattle ranches and smaller llama and sheep farms all over North and South America. Cattle, llama, sheep. Camden gave Jake a rub behind his ear and tossed a treat into the air. The dog snapped it between his jaws, swallowing it whole.
“I might want to train dogs,” she said, and although the words sounded weak, saying them aloud made her stand a little straighter. As if saying them had woken up something deep inside Camden. The way walking away from Grant had woken something else. “I’d at least like the chance to try.”
Calvin nodded. “We haven’t had sheep or goats around here for more than three years. Other than the cows Levi boards on the north side of the property, Jake and his buddies are the only livestock around.”
The two then started toward the farmhouse where Camden had spent two of the best summers of her life. Before her mother married Darren Carlson, a rich lawyer from Kansas City. After that, visits to her father’s family farm stopped abruptly. Her grandparents came to Darren’s Mission Hills mansion a few times for Christmas dinners or the odd birthday, but she’d never been allowed to come back here after her father was killed in a drunk-driving accident.
When she called her mother Thanksgiving morning to tell her she would not be coming back to Kansas City for a while and that she wasn’t marrying that two-timing weasel, Grant, Elizabeth Carlson had hung up the phone. She hadn’t called back. Hadn’t texted. She probably expected Camden to snap out of it and show up for their traditional Black Friday shopping marathon.
Elizabeth would be shocked to see Camden in knee-high rain boots, nondesigner jeans and a hoodie instead of the high heels, designer jeans and cashmere sweaters she’d worn in Kansas City. Camden chuckled.
She’d never been more comfortable than the past two days, and that included wearing the baggy sweat suit she’d borrowed from Bonita on Thanksgiving afternoon to go into town to get a few items of clothing from her old friend, Julia’s, store. Julia bought into Shanna’s boutique earlier in the fall, and had plans to run a destination wedding business here eventually. She’d taken the polish and poise she’d learned from pageants and turned them into something real.
Camden wanted, desperately wanted, to turn her life into something real.
The rain boots, a deep navy, the only pair Julia had in stock, rustled through fallen leaves. She had three more pairs coming, bought online just the night before—one with butterflies, another with little umbrellas, and a third with unicorns—and bought them all, along with several pairs of jeans, flannel shirts, tees, and a few tunics. It felt good to buy clothes that struck her as cute, that she liked, rather than clothes designed to impress others.
Although she wouldn’t mind impressing a certain former football player. And that was a road she didn’t need to start traveling down. The little hairs on her arms stood up and her tummy did a flip-flop. No, not going there. She’d just walked out on an engagement only a couple of days ago. Jumping into something with Levi Walters just because he made every last inch of her stand up and take notice was dumb. Worse than dumb—it would likely blow up the very life she wanted to build in Slippery Rock.
She needed to figure out who she was, without her mother’s input and without an ill-thought-out relationship distracting her.
“Granddad?”
Calvin tilted his head and watched her but didn’t say anything. It was his familiar way. He had been more talkative when she was a kid—at least that was how she remembered it. Now, he almost seemed like a functional mute, only speaking when he’d measured each and every word.
“I’d like to train Six on my own, if that’s okay with you.” This was step one in the plan she’d been working on for roughly five minutes. A plan that seemed solid, despite its short life. She hadn’t been here forty-eight hours, but even she could see the dog school was barely hanging on.
“Okay. He’s not big enough to be a working dog, not even for smaller livestock.”
“I’d like to train her for showing, not real-world herding,” she added. Six was the youngest dog in what was left of Calvin’s stable. The small dog was still a puppy, really. Calvin had found it on the side of the road last summer, and brought it to the farm. He was a smart little thing, and in the five minutes it took to get his food and drink into the run, she’d seen his eagerness to learn. She didn’t care that she’d only met the dog, had only been back in Slippery Rock, for a little over a day.
The “for showing” bit got a raised eyebrow from her grandfather. “I trained stock dogs for working conditions. Not show rings,” he said.
She’d only planned to be here a day or so, and then had vague thoughts about going back to Kansas City to figure out what she would do with the rest of her life. Running the pageant business with her mother held no appeal, but there had to be something else she could do back in the city.
But the rickety dog runs used to be solid. The handful of dogs remaining used to have dozens of friends, and the pastures around the farmhouse used to hold sheep and goats and a few ducks, too.
Then, there was the silly, slobbering Six. The little puppy was a runt and had likely been dumped on the side of the road by a breeder who couldn’t sell him. But Six was all border collie—eager to learn, eager to please and eager to do. Camden fell in love with the little ball of fur that licked her face every time she picked him up. And she picked him up too often, she knew. Granddad treated his dogs well, but he treated them like workers. They received praise for a good job, treats, plenty of food and water. When the day was over, though, the dogs went into their runs for the night.
When the other dogs piled on one another, Six was left outside the group. Camden felt a camaraderie with the little dog. She’d felt left out of so many things in her life—from decisions about pageant dresses to her actual college degree program. Before running away from the wedding, the only decision she’d made in her life was to stop pageanting after losing the national crown. And even then, she’d fallen right in line with her mother’s plan to open a pageant coaching studio in the city.
Now she was here, and she was remembering how much fun she’d had with her grandfather’s dogs and the dogs at the trainer’s in Kansas City. This was something she could do, something that held value. Something that would keep her near her grandparents. After only a couple of days with them, Camden was already dreading leaving them again.
Six clambered up to her when they stopped at the barn. When the older dogs went inside, Six stayed, looking up at Camden with excitement vibrating through his little body. She took the green tennis ball from her pocket and tossed it. Six took off at a run to chase it down. The three other dogs with them this morning watched Granddad for an opening, but he closed the kennel door, and they lost interest.
“Six is too little for real stock work,” Granddad said. “He’d make a better pet than a working cow or sheep dog.”
Six caught up with the ball and turned around, the neon green of the covering showing between his teeth. He dropped it at her feet and waited. Camden bent, tossed the ball again and watched the puppy chase after it. Granddad had stopped to watch, too. One of the dogs in the run whined. He shot the dog a look. It stopped.
“I was thinking, if it went well, I could train a few others for showing. You know, stock-dog showing is popular at fairs and things. People who don’t have ranches or farms can be just as passionate about the training. About the sport of it.” Camden winced. Comparing her grandfather’s work to a sport was probably not the best wording. Other than baseball, she didn’t think he was interested in any sport.
“The sport of it, huh?” he said after a long moment.
“If it goes well, we could maybe build the dog school back up. It would create another way to make money for the farm. More people would bring their dogs to you. You might even have more outlets for runts like Six.” And she would have something to do. Something that was hers.
Something she could be proud of doing—a kind of fulfillment she never found while competing in pageants and then training contestants.
The beauty queen thing was never something Camden wanted—that was always her mother’s dream. And the irony of her walking away from a world that required training only to go into a different sort of training wasn’t lost on her. The difference was that the dogs she’d train would have a skill that required more than good genes.
Six returned, and she held the ball until he quieted. “One more time, then into the run. Okay?” The little dog’s tail wagged, and he seemed to smile at her. “Last one, ready?”
The dog vibrated a bit harder. Camden threw the ball, and Six took off like a shot.
Camden knew she wasn’t being fair about the pageants. There were legitimately good reasons to take part. The scholarships opened educational avenues for a lot of women. Pageants taught poise, even if they focused a little too much on appearance, in her opinion. They also celebrated talents like music and creative writing and put a focus on charity work.
But she didn’t particularly care that she wasn’t being fair; competing hadn’t been her choice.
It had been her responsibility.
When her mother was floundering after her father died, Camden competing in pageants seemed to lessen Elizabeth’s depression.
Camden knew a lot of beauty queens who were smart, who were passionate about their work. Maybe if her mother had let her choose her talent or her volunteer work, she could have been passionate about pageanting. But Elizabeth Camden Harris Carlson had only cared about winning. As a Kentucky Miss and then a North America Miss herself, she knew what it took to win, and she hadn’t allowed Camden to veer from the chosen path. Camden had worn the same color dresses as her mother, had sung the same song her mother sang during competitions and used the same platform her mother had used during her days as a pageant girl.
Hell, even if she’d chosen something of interest to her, Camden wouldn’t have liked parading around on those stages, smiling until her cheeks hurt. That was what made it so easy to walk away, not only from the pageant world, but from the rest of her life. She only regretted that it had taken until now to walk out.
“Showing at fairs, huh?”
“It could be fun. Challenging,” she corrected. Not once in her twenty-six years had she won a conversation with her mother or stepfather by describing something as “fun.” How ridiculous was it that she hadn’t realized until she was twenty-six that she’d made only a handful of decisions about her own life?
“Nothing wrong with doing something just for the fun of it, kiddo,” Granddad said. “You think I’d’ve trained dogs all my life if I was only in it for the money?”
She’d never thought about her grandfather as liking anything. “I, um...”
“I trained dogs because it was fun. It was challenging, too, but so was accounting. I hated accounting. Hated sitting at a desk all day just to come back the next and do the same thing again.”
“You were an accountant?”
Granddad grinned, and it was the first smile she could remember passing over his face since she’d come back. “Did the books for most of the businesses in Slippery Rock at one time or another. Until I decided there had to be more to life than sitting at a desk fifty weeks out of every year. I didn’t start the dog school until your daddy was in school. And I didn’t start it because it was challenging, I started it because Bennett Walters needed a new stock dog to help keep the dairy cows in line.”
Camden blinked. This was more information than she’d ever known about her grandfather. “You started the school on a whim?”
He shrugged. “I liked dogs. I didn’t like the way the dogs were being treated when the trainer Bennett hired brought a few to his place. Figured it was something I could do that would get me outside a little more, especially during the summer months. So I trained that dog for Bennett, then a few more area ranchers asked for dogs, and within a couple of years I was spending nearly all my time training the dogs. Shut down the accounting business and haven’t worried about it once.”
“Then why aren’t you training any longer?”
“A man has to retire at some point, Camden. I thought it was time.” She started to protest, but Granddad held up a hand. “Why don’t you tell me more about stock competitions.”
“They use sheep, goats, chickens. A few calves. One trainer works a few dogs to get the animals from one pen to another, and they’re judged on speed, agility and time.”
“Sounds like what I did when I was training.”
“It’s a lot like a training session, actually.” Camden couldn’t get the thought of her grandfather retiring out of her mind. He wasn’t that old, maybe in his midsixties. Sure, it was the age when a lot of people retired, but he’d loved working the dogs. How could he just stop? “That competition show in Tulsa I mentioned? Six couldn’t compete in that one, but you could get an idea how the show circuit differs from the working circuit. If you wanted to go.”
“Your grandma’s not going to want to go to Tulsa this close to the holidays,” Granddad said. He opened the run for Six. The dog went in and began sniffing. Probably for water. Camden grabbed an empty bowl from a shelf and filled it from the sink on the wall. Granddad did the same for the other dogs. “All these runs used to be full,” he said after a while.
“I remember.” She’d come out here every morning that last summer, watching Granddad and her dad and the collies from the hayloft above. Listening to the men talk about training methods. Elizabeth never set foot in the barn. She’d rarely left the porch, insisting that the dirt would ruin her shoes. God, her mother had hated this place. It was no wonder she had never wanted to come back.
Camden looked around. How could anyone hate the smell of fresh hay and summer sunshine? Even the gray November sky today couldn’t take away the smells that lived in her memory. She remembered traipsing over these fields with Levi when the sun was high and the temperatures much hotter than on this chilly morning. He’d had this sky and these smells all of his life. Did he know how lucky he was?
“Your dad wanted to train a few dogs for the show circuit.”
“I remember.” He’d been so excited about the prospect. Her father, Bobby Harris, liked his job in the marketing department of the television station in Kansas City, but he’d loved coming back to Slippery Rock for vacation every year. Had been talking about getting a dog for the city, not a cattle dog, but a retriever or something.
“You don’t have to train dogs because it was something your dad liked to do. Not even because it’s something I like.”
“I know. I just liked working with them. I’d like to work with them again.” She didn’t want to live her life in a quiet office, watching girls try on dresses and perfect their makeup.
“Then you should do it.”
She inhaled, deeply. “Yeah?”
Calvin nodded.
Camden grinned at her grandfather, and he swung his arm around her shoulders the way she’d seen him embrace her father so many times in the past. “I’m glad you came home, kiddo.”
“So am I,” she said.
In the kitchen, her grandmother Bonita was just taking toasted cheese sandwiches off the stove. “You two are back early.” She wore a neon-orange hoodie with black yoga pants and sneakers with bold orange, green and yellow striping on them. Her bobbed hair, dyed a crisp black, was perfectly arranged, and she’d put on lipstick.
Camden hung her jacket on the peg in the mudroom, slipped the muddy boots off her feet and smoothed her hands over her long brown hair.
“Couldn’t stay away any longer.” Calvin put his arms around his wife’s waist, pulling her back against his chest and nipping her earlobe with his teeth. Bonita slapped at his hand and blushed as a grin spread over her face. “Camden wants us to hit Tulsa for a dog show in a week.”
“Tulsa in the middle of the holiday shopping season?” Bonita shook her head. “I’m going into town this afternoon. Groceries. And then I need to stop in at the boutique. They’re holding a pair of earrings for me. Want to come along?” Bonita looked pointedly at Camden. “I don’t know what you could need after the five packages that were delivered this morning, but you might find something.”
“I was going to—”
Bonita held up a hand. “Play with the dogs, I know.”
“Train Six,” Camden corrected. Bonita and Calvin exchanged a look.
“We’re going to reopen Harris Farms,” he said after a long moment.
Bonita’s smile grew wider. “He’s been pretending to be retired and complaining about having nothing to do for nearly a year now. Yet on only your second day back in town, you got him to agree to reopen? That is reason enough for a little celebratory shopping. You can help me pick out a few things for Tulsa, because while he’s only going for the stock, I’m thinking I can get him to agree on at least one fancy restaurant.”
Granddad frowned at his grilled cheese. “This is a business trip, Bonnie.”
“Everyone has to eat, Cal. Who says we only have to eat at fast food restaurants?”
Camden watched the two of them bicker and thought it was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. She had been too young to realize whether or not her parents bickered, but her mother and stepfather didn’t. Her stepfather made the decisions about schools and household budgets, and her mother made the decisions about vacations. There was something odd about parents who presented logical, spreadsheeted presentations about everything from the type of shoes needed for tennis to a summer spent sailing in the Caribbean.
“I’d like to work with Six a little this afternoon,” Camden said when they’d agreed on one fancy dinner and the purchase of at least two new collies.
“You aren’t reopening today, and you can’t train a puppy for a competition set for only a few days away,” her grandmother said. “Come on, woman does not live by dog obstacle courses alone.”
Bonita made a good point. And there had been that really cute tunic at the store yesterday. “I guess training could start tomorrow.”
* * *
NINETY-NINE PERCENT of the time, football held zero allure for Levi Walters. What fans saw as a couple of hours of playing on television he knew was actually six hours in the weight room, another three watching film and a minimum of two more hours of on-the-field practice. He’d been out of the game for nearly three years and could honestly say he didn’t miss the grind of the football life.
