CHAPTER FOUR
When Josh stepped outside a few minutes later, he found himself smiling at the scene before him. The little black and white pony basked in Deena’s attention while a young girl in Amish dress, who must be Grace, talked in quiet tones, working to unhitch the happy pony from the small cart.
Josh approached cautiously. He didn’t want to spook either the animals—for he could scent more than just the pony as he drew closer—or the females.
“Grace, this is my houseguest, Joshua,” he heard Deena say. She hadn’t turned, which meant she was becoming as aware of him as he was of her. Interesting.
The girl looked up, surprise on her face. Wide blue eyes met his, and he tried to look as unassuming as possible. He didn’t want to be the ogre that went around scaring little girls.
“Josh, this is Grace and her pony, Mergatroid. They live on the next farm over. Grace’s father and brothers run a dairy herd, and they’ve sent me a small patient. Would you give us a hand lifting him out of the cart?”
Josh had scented the calf in the back of the cart and moved around to peer down into the small compartment. Sure enough, there was a little black and white calf with what looked like a broken leg. Josh shook his head. To his admittedly limited knowledge, such an injury wasn’t something most people would even try to heal on this kind of animal.
Nevertheless, he scooped the calf into his arms as gently as he could and walked over to the barn, placing the little guy where Deena directed, on a pile of soft straw. The Amish girl trailed behind them, saying nothing.
Deena got right down on the floor with the calf, running her hands over its shaking body. She frowned a few times, but after a thorough examination, she looked up, her gaze skipping from Josh to Grace.
“Can you help him?” Grace asked in a piping voice that fit her small body.
“I think so. But it will take a long time before he can walk properly on this leg. He’ll be missing his mama, and his mama will be missing him too,” Deena said softly.
“Oh, no,” Grace answered. “His mama died in the accident that hurt his leg. My father said if you wanted the calf, you could have him. The injury was beyond him, and he said to leave the calf’s fate in the hands of the Almighty.”
Deena nodded solemnly. “We are all in the hands of the Divine,” she agreed. “I will take in the calf and do my best to help him heal. If it is the Almighty’s will, he will live. And you can come visit him anytime you like.”
That put a smile on the girl’s face. “Oh, thank you, Miss Deena. Thank you for taking him in.”
Deena nodded, smiling. “It’s all right. Do you want to help me set the bones?” Grace scrambled into the box stall and eagerly knelt at Deena’s side. “Josh, would you bring me the red nylon bag from the tack room and a bucket of clean water from the spigot?”
Josh went off to fetch and carry, bemused. He spent the next hour doing whatever Deena asked while she patiently taught Grace about how to set bones. She was a good teacher and a good doctor. She did her best to calm the skittish calf, and it lay docile while she worked on it with the medical kit Josh had fetched.
At one point, Josh looked up to find Mergatroid standing next to him at the entrance of the stall. He looked for all the world as if he was watching how the treatment was progressing before wandering off to snatch a bit of hay with his teeth from a small stack near the door. Other animals approached, though none got as close to Josh as the fearless pony. All the barn residents seemed interested at one point or another in what was going on in the formerly empty stall.
A short while later, the calf’s leg was set, and Grace bounded up, clicking her tongue to attract Mergatroid’s attention. The pony acted more like a faithful dog, prancing up to Deena for a pat on the head when she exited the stall. Mergatroid followed Grace back to the small homemade cart that sported bicycle tires and was custom made to the pony’s low height.
“I have to get back. I’ve got chores still to do,” Grace explained as she hitched the eager pony to the cart. Mergatroid was already heading towards home when Grace jumped aboard the cart, waving as she went back the way she’d come, over the grass tracks between cultivated fields.
Deena came up beside Josh, watching the young girl and the perky pony take off.
“Well, that did it. Every neighbor in the valley will know you’re here by tomorrow night,” Deena observed.
“But I thought the Amish didn’t have phones?” Josh asked, turning toward her and seeking her gaze.
She smiled at him. “Who needs phones when you have a professional grade grapevine? You’ll see. We might get a few visitors tomorrow. The neighbor ladies will probably drop by with innocent excuses to check you out and see if everything is in order around here.”
“In order?”
“That we’re not living in sin or getting up to ungodly hijinks.” She chuckled as she said it, turning back toward the barn.
“And what if we were?” Concerned, he followed her into the barn and over to the stall where the calf was now resting comfortably.
Josh stopped short when he saw the resident cow, Maisy, had found her way into the stall and had lain down behind the calf, so it could snuggle against her warm, furry side. Deena’s animals were really something. Independent thinkers with a compassionate streak that was pretty obvious if you observed them for a while.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble with your neighbors, Deena,” he told her in a quiet voice, not wanting to disturb the bovine bonding that was taking place a few feet away.
“It’ll be fine,” she said. “Just be polite and stay outdoors, working. Woodwork is preferable. They respect men who know carpentry. The Amish never stop working, and they appreciate industriousness in others. I’ll handle the nosy questions.”
Josh was silent as Deena moved back into the stall to check on the little calf. He left her to her healing work and decided retreat was the better part of valor at the moment.
They dined together in her kitchen that evening. The meal was plain but bountiful, and Josh realized Deena must have gone to some trouble to prepare so much food. He saw the way she lived. Simply. She kept a huge kitchen garden and seemed to live off the land. She’d told him the neighbors kept her supplied with things she couldn’t produce herself, and he saw evidence of that on the supper table.
He was certain, for instance, that she’d never had one of her animals butchered, but there was a big roast in the center of the table. She’d probably served meat knowing his wolf was a predator and therefore a devout carnivore. He had the impression that she hadn’t put the roast out for her own benefit, though she did eat a small slice.
Her thoughtfulness once again humbled him, but he didn’t know how to thank her without making things awkward between them. Scratch that. More awkward between them.
Ever since they’d kissed, that was almost all he could think about. Kissing her again. Taking it a little farther this time…if she’d let him.
After dinner, Deena went out to the barn to see to the animals and check on the calf before dark. Josh offered to help, but she politely declined. He had to work off some of his restless energy, so he decided to shift and take a prowl around the perimeter of Deena’s property as night fell in earnest.
He had about an hour to kill before the moon would rise. He’d be sure to circle around to the standing stones just before so he could keep his promise to join Deena for the full moon ceremony she’d invited him to earlier. He figured he’d go in his furry form, since the pull of the moon made it harder than usual to keep his human shape. He could participate in the ritual in either form, so it didn’t matter much to him.
Though, if he was being honest with himself, going in wolf form was a bit of a test for Deena. So far, she hadn’t really seen him in his fur. Oh, she might’ve glimpsed him prowling out of the yard the night before, on his way to do a perimeter check, but she hadn’t confronted him about it. He wasn’t sure she would be entirely comfortable with the stark evidence of his dual nature, but if he was going to get involved with her any deeper, he had to know if his wolf side was going to pose a problem.
He didn’t really know why it was so important, but it was. He could learn from anyone willing to teach, but if he was going to get involved on a more personal level, he didn’t want there to be any question of her acceptance of his wolf. For not only was his human mind nearly consumed with thoughts of kissing her again, but his wolf half was starting to have very serious thoughts about the future. With her. A future where the wolf ran in the cornfield behind this very farm, hunting unseen prey—or anything that might pose a danger to Deena. The wolf was feeling protective. Very protective. And more than a little possessive.
The thought should have frightened him, but it didn’t. In fact, it felt right. Comforting. Almost inevitable.
The wolf was thinking…mate.