Page 6 of Where It All Began
“You’re pulling my leg.” She could see the edge of town up ahead and was anxious for it to reveal itself.
John shook his head and grinned at her. And Phoebe felt her stomach turn itself into knots.Wow.The man had a smile that could melt her Maidenforms right off her. She’d have to watch out for that. She was here for professional reasons, not to dip a toe into the local dating pool.
“I kid you not. They were so good-natured and ‘make love not war’ and ‘free lovey’ that no one in town minded them. We had a town meeting and decided to help them all resettle here. Most of them and their families still live here today. Blue Moon assumed the hippies would adapt to us, but as you can see,” he said, pointing to a sprawling Victorian decked out in purple and pink. There were dozens of wind chimes hanging from both porches and a paint splattered school bus parked in the front lawn. “We were wrong.”
“Is that decoration?”
“The Fitzsimmons think so,” John said, with the lift of a shoulder. There was no judgment behind his tone. Just a casual acceptance of oddity.
It was too bad that he couldn’t extend that acceptance to her,Phoebe thought.
“And everyone just went along with it?” she asked.
“We were just a tiny farming community before 1969. Now, we’re practically a commune. You won’t ever find a tighter knit town,” he predicted.
She frowned as John slowed the truck and abruptly pulled over to the side of the road. Phoebe Allen was no one’s fool, and they werenotout of gas. But she kept her comments to herself when John slid out from behind the wheel and ambled around the front of the truck. She saw it then. Something slim and black on the road. A hose?
“Oh gross!” The hose moved as John approached.
She stuck her head out her window as John crouched down within what looked like striking distance. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Moving him off the road.” John’s voice was beyond calm. It bordered on bored.
“You’re not going to touch it, are you?”
“Can you please stop shrieking? He doesn’t like it.” John stood up and Phoebe’s eyes bugged out at the five feet of snake he held in his hands as casually as a garden hose.
“Don’t let it bite you!”
“Harmless black snake,” he called over his shoulder as he walked it across the street to the wooded gully. Phoebe wriggled out of her seat and sat on the window ledge to watch John over the top of the truck’s cab.
She saw the hideous thing swing what was most likely its head in John’s direction. He side-stepped it and deposited the snake in the tall grass.
“Harmless?” Phoebe asked.
“Won’t kill you if it bites you,” he clarified.
“But it would still bite.”
He shrugged. John’s equivalent of a retort.
He climbed behind the wheel again, and Phoebe slid back into her seat, her pulse still racing. “You just picked up a snake.” She shook her head at the image. Her farmer was an idiot.
“He just needed a little help. They sun themselves on the road, and if someone came around too fast he’d have gotten hit.” John shifted back into gear and the truck rumbled down the road.
A ha! The misguided hero type,Phoebe decided, studying his profile. He certainly looked the part. That was something she could work with.
Satisfied, she looked out her window at the town. And then her skin began to crawl. She checked both of her feet and under the seat, knowing full well it was just psychological. She didn’t miss the smirk on John’s lips when she was finally satisfied there was no snake ready to take a bite out of her.
At least he was smart enough not to comment, she noted. Instead, he pointed out a sweet little cottage tucked into a wooded lot on her right with the word PEACE painted across its front in a rainbow.
“That’s insane.”
John leveled a look at her. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
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Named in recognition of the endearing wandering hippies, One Love Park took up a whole block in the very center of town. There were signs staked into the ground at varying intervals.
