Page 21 of The Wedding Ranch
“Hey, buddy. Did you know your dad is marrying the lady from puppy school?”
It was bad enough Craig had left her for the other woman, but to marry her? And so soon? No, she’d never seen that coming.
It took him five years to pop the question to me. Maybe Tiffany’s pregnant. She has a two-year-old already. It’s possible, and it would explain the rush to get married.
“He never wanted children. I’m glad he gave me you. You’re the next best thing. Tiffany has a two-year-old.” She looked the dog square in the eye. “Did you ever meet her toddler?”
Mister pulled his head back and turned away.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t put you in the middle. It’s okay.”
Can’t live your best life on yesterdays.
Her laptop lay on the end table. She reached over and grabbed it to search online for information about the county fair. The website was well done with bright graphics and lots of smiling faces.
It was an occupational hazard that she could never just look at a website without a critical eye. Years of experience in marketing had ruined that for her. A checklist of missed opportunities always took over, but the county fair did look fun. Well, not the rides—she wasn’t the ride type—but there were lots of shows. Even pot-bellied pig races. That could be fun to watch.
She found the schedule of free craft classes. Pottery, mosaics, even a birdhouse-building session. She’d quickly grown to love all the different birds in her backyard. She had some flexibility in her schedule, maybe she could catch the birdhouse class. Anything to keep her mind occupied and off of Craig and Tiffany’s upcoming wedding.
The next thing she knew, her fingers were flying across the keyboard, typing in “Craig Walker,” searching for engagement announcements. At least they hadn’t been so tacky to have posted anything so soon after the divorce.
But it was just timing. It didn’t change the fact that they had to have been planning their wedding for a good long while. It takes time to book and plan a wedding in a venue like The Wedding Ranch, and from the sound of it this was going to be a big one.
A picture of Tiffany at the Golf Club Fund Raiser with that Yorkie in her purse popped up on her screen. She zoomed in on the picture.She isn’tthatpretty.
Craig’s comment about Lorri not being a purse-sized-dog type of woman irked her. At the time she’d thought it was a compliment.Who wants to be a purse-dog woman anyway?
She reached for Mister, giving him a pat on the back.
Not me. Let all this go about Craig and Tiffany,she told herself.I’m living the life I dreamed of in a beautiful home, with this sweet dog, in a town of nice people. Working from home in pajamas is pretty awesome, and I’m in the best shape of my life.
“You know what I’m going to do, Mister? I’m going to make a forget-about-it jar and put it on my desk.” She got up and went into the kitchen. Scouring the cabinets for something that would work, she tiptoed to reach a mason jar on the top shelf. With a grunt she stretched just enough to tip the jar and grab it before it fell. “This’ll work.”
Mister stayed right at her hip. Ever curious, he pressed his nose to the glass jar. “There’s nothing in it. Not yet.” She walked back into the living room and sat down at her desk.Pulling broad-stroke permanent markers out of the caddy in her drawer she started decorating the front. She hadn’t hand-lettered anything in a while. She used to love doing that.
Finally, happy with it, she turned the jar toward Mister. “What do you think?” He stuck his nose inside the top of the jar and sniffed, then backed out and sneezed. “Every time I waste a minute thinking about my old life, I’m going to put five dollars in this jar. The goal is to keep it empty.” She set it in the right front corner of her desk. “Can I get a high five on that?”
Mister lifted his huge paw and tapped her hand.
“I probably owe it twenty dollars just for today, but we’ll start now.” The jar wasn’t a painting, but at least it was a little crafty. She got up and walked upstairs to the loft. She flipped through the paintings she’d stored there, along with the old projects in different stages of completion.
She pulled out a canvas. One beautiful tree on a rolling hill. It had never seemed quite finished. It needed some balance. She placed it on the easel. Pressing her finger to her lip, she stared at the image before her.
What the painting needed became clear. It was darn near a recipe for her own life. She knew now what was missing.Life.
Balancing a palette in her hand she squeezed a dab of three different colors and then stood back for a moment before dipping her brush into the paint and pulling the brush across the canvas. That first stroke filled her with inspiration.Maybe I do still have this gift.
Chapter Six
The next week on Tuesday morning, Ryder sat in his truck in the Ruritan barn parking lot while the 4-H-ers loaded their goats into his livestock trailer for the short ride to the county fairgrounds. It was a much better-looking group of meat goats this year. Couldn’t have made a good soup out of some of the entries last year. They’d been mostly dairy goat culls. Sure, any goat can be a meat goat, but people were finally learning that the conformation of meat and dairy goats was very different.
Joe slapped the side of the trailer. “All in. All clear.”
Ryder raised his hand and inched forward, the trailer lurching as a few wild bleats rose from the back as the truck bounced over the unlevel terrain.
By the time Ryder got to the main road, there were two pickup trucks full of kids—the two-legged kind—following behind him. He waved them around, then followed them into town.
The children’s voices filled the air as they belted out “OldMacDonald Had a Farm” at the top of their lungs as they cruised by.
