Read Online Farmed and Dangerous by Edith Maxwell - Free Book Online

and tie and not yet displaying the stocky build of a farmer, beamed at his bride. They’d had a long and happy marriage, and Marie had lived into her eighties before dying from pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis had come so late that no treatment would have been effective. The illness was short and not overly painful, but it gave Marie time to say good-bye to her loved ones.
    Albert had told Cam once that Bev had been incredibly kind and helpful to both of them while Marie lay dying. When Bev wasn’t tending to Marie, she cooked meals or helped Albert with the farm chores. He’d seen through Bev’s cantankerous attitude to a good heart within. Now Bev was dead, without her own chance to live into her eighties.

Chapter 7
    A n hour later, dressed and caffeinated, Cam drove toward Pete’s house. She’d finished her early morning chores. The chickens were fed and watered and free to go outside. She’d watered the seedlings in the hoop house, grateful that she’d had the water source put deep enough underground that it didn’t freeze, although they didn’t need much water in the winter, since growth was so slow. Today dawned another one of those clear, cold winter days, but at least with little wind to drive the cold deeper inside. The ten-degree air made her pull her wool scarf closer around her neck under the robin’s egg–blue sky.
    But now she was about to meet her new boyfriend’s difficult ex-wife and bring home a dog she had never met, an even chillier prospect than a morning of shoveling snow. What was she supposed to do with a dog? She’d never owned one, not as a child, not as an adult. Albert and Marie’s farm dog, Scout, had been a working dog, kept mostly to ward off foxes and woodchucks. In her view canines were needy animals, always making eye contact and wanting approval.
    She pulled on sunglasses when she passed an open field on the left. The sun bounced off the snow cover and into her eyes. She tried to adjust the glasses so she could see better. They’d gotten bent when she sat on them once. Scratches on the lenses also made looking through them resemble peering through a spider web. She supposed she could get new ones at the drugstore. If it ever were a priority for her.
    The heater in the old Ford started to warm her feet only minutes before she arrived at Pete’s. A shiny SUV sat idling in front of the house, a woman in large square-lensed sunglasses at the wheel. Cam pulled into the driveway and slid out of the cab.
    The woman—it had to be Alicia—now stood at the back of the car. Slender and petite in a puffy, pale pink jacket over ironed jeans tucked into snow boots with furry tops, she shoved her shades onto her head and pulled open the rear door. A plastic mat protected the floor of the compartment, and a grate walled the compartment off from the passenger section. A dog crouched with his paws in front of him.
    â€œCome on, Dasha,” the woman said in an impatient tone. “I’m already late.”
    Cam walked toward her. “I’m Cam Flaherty. Pete asked me to pick up his dog.”
    â€œ His dog. Right. I know. He told me.” Alicia looked Cam up and down.
    Cam glanced down at her own outfit. Dirt stains on the knees of her jeans. Her winter boots that doubled as work boots, now with flecks of chicken manure and sawdust stuck to them. Her navy blue parka with the rip on the front pocket where it had caught on a nail in the attic once. She was suddenly back in high school, ever the over-tall, gawky geek, being checked out by an immaculately put-together cheerleader.
    Alicia turned to the car. She reached in and pulled Dasha by his collar until he jumped out onto the shoveled sidewalk.
    â€œHere he is,” she said out of pursed lips. “Pete couldn’t pick Dasha up himself. Nothing ever changes. His precious work is more important than anything else.” She raised the side of her top lip and