Chapter One

With the taste of tacos lingering in his mouth, Ben Sterling opened the door to leave Taco Joe’s on West Main and hollered good-bye to Joe Paisley, the owner. A rush of icy pine-scented air surrounded Ben as he donned his tan Stetson and stepped onto the sidewalk. It smelled like home and reminded him how glad he was to be back in Mystic Creek, not just for a visit, but living on his ranch again.

Liquidating his business as a rodeo stockbroker hadn’t been an easy decision. He’d made damned good money. But it had kept him on the road most of the time, often in flat, arid country where only a few bushy trees dotted the landscape. He’d quickly grown tired of the constant traveling, but he’d stuck it out to build a nice nest egg. Now he had finally quit, returned to his roots, and was trying to build a real life.

Because it had been sunny when he left home, he’d forgotten a jacket, so all he could do was hunch his shoulders against the frigid temperature. His new Dodge Ram waited along the curb only paces away. Against the backdrop of late-nineteenth-century storefronts that characterized Mystic Creek, it looked futuristic in the grayish light that always bathed the town as the sun started its slide into oblivion.

The smooth soles of his riding boots lost traction, warning him that the concrete was icy. In mid-September, Mystic Creek sometimes had weather fluctuations, warm one minute and freezing the next. Stupid not to bring a coat, he thought. This is high-elevation Oregon. He guessed he’d been gone too long. Climatic habits ingrained in him during boyhood had lost their hold on him.

Walking to his vehicle, he saw his dog, Finnegan, watching him through the back cab window. Eight months old, the blue merle Australian shepherd had the mottle of black, gray, and white fur common to blues, but his markings were distinct, his narrow nose and forehead sporting a tapering white blaze. He bounced from side to side on the bench seat, acting as if he’d been alone for hours.

A smile touched Ben’s mouth. A bachelor and now thirty years old, he enjoyed having a dog. When Ben first returned to live on his ranch, the big, rambling house had felt empty when he stayed there alone. He’d grown up in a large family. He preferred noise buzzing around him. Finn had provided the perfect antidote, snuggling with Ben in the recliner while he watched TV or read novels, always eager to play, barking joyously, and offering a warm presence beside him in bed at night. Hello, when a man couldn’t find Miss Right, no matter how hard he searched, sometimes he had to settle for companionship from a four-legged friend. There were worse fates than being loved by a dog.

Not that Ben didn’t keep company with women. He just couldn’t find that one special lady he wanted to be with for a lifetime. Dating at thirty was a crapshoot with lots of promising beginnings followed by disappointing endings. He couldn’t find anyone who truly loved animals, for one thing, and his life revolved around all kinds of them. He’d met a few gals that had a cat, a bird, or a goldfish, but they didn’t want a dog in the house. Or they were afraid of horses. A number of them had even visited his ranch in high heels and gotten pissed if they stepped in manure. He couldn’t build a future with someone like that. He needed a down-to-earth person who didn’t run in terror from his free-range chickens or pick dog hair off her fancy clothes.

As he circled the truck to the driver’s door, delicious aromas drifted across the street from the Straw Hat, which served Mexican cuisine, and the Cauldron, another eatery in Mystic Creek, which specialized in home-style fare. Ben enjoyed eating at the Cauldron, and apparently so did many others. Through the front windows, he could see that the place was packed. The menu offered a wide variety of homemade choices, and the prices were also easy on the wallet.

There was only one fly in the ointment for Ben where the Cauldron was concerned: the café’s owner, Sissy Sue Bentley. She was a petite woman with cropped dark hair, blue eyes that dominated her heart-shaped face, and a figure that was perfection on a small scale. She’d caught his attention over a year ago, and he’d started patronizing her establishment, hoping to get better acquainted. Despite his efforts to be friendly, she’d treated him as if he had a contagious disease. After a couple of weeks, he’d started to feel like a stalker and chalked it up to bad chemistry. Now he avoided the place.

Sissy wasn’t the only pretty female in the area, after all. On weekend nights, he sometimes frequented the nightspots in nearby Crystal Falls, hoping to meet someone he could relate to. So far, he’d run across several gals who were stunning, and a few intriguing enough to date for a couple of months. In the end, though, even if the sex was great, there was always something to put the kibosh on the relationship. It was just his luck that the only local woman he found attractive had taken an instant dislike to him.

As Ben pulled open the truck door, Finn leaped forward and slathered his face with doggy kisses. Ben laughed and gave the pup an enthusiastic scratch behind both ears. “I missed you, too.” He gently pushed the shepherd off the driver’s seat and started to climb inside the vehicle.

A familiar sound stopped him dead in his tracks. Berk, berk, berk. He swung around and did a double take. A white hen was strutting eastward along the street. Ben had seen some strange sights in Mystic Creek. One time a skunk had joined the participants of a Fourth of July parade and cleared the sidewalks of people with one threatening lift of its tail. More recently, a black bear had moseyed onto East Main and pushed its way through the swinging doors of the Jake ’n’ Bake and devoured everything in the pastry section while Jake hid in the cooler until law officers arrived.

Now it was a chicken invading the downtown area. Where had it come from?

Just then, two more hens fell in behind the white leghorn, all three of the fowl covering ground at a pace suggesting they were late to an appointment. Finnegan barked. He was used to seeing chickens at home, but never within the city limits.

What the hell? Ben looked in the direction from which the chickens were coming and saw more feathery pedestrians appearing from behind the last building on the opposite side of the street. It housed Marilyn Fears’s One-Stop Market, a small mom-and-pop shop. Had Marilyn decided to raise chickens? It was a popular hobby, and so far as Ben knew, the town had no ordinances against it.

Marilyn had space behind her building for a coop and run. A small distributary of Mystic Creek flowed behind the shops on that side of West Main, so the land back there hadn’t been developed. Diverting the stream’s natural course wasn’t an option. In this town, nobody messed with Mystic Creek. The waterway was thought to be magical by many people, and even a narrow brook originating from it was revered.

As Ben watched, the flow of hens didn’t abate. How many chicks had Marilyn ordered? As Ben stood there, dumbfounded, even more chickens appeared. Beckoning Finn out of the truck in case he needed the dog’s help with bird herding, he gingerly headed toward the store. If Marilyn’s chickens were loose, she’d need help collecting them. The ones he’d seen were pullets, not yet full-grown, and at an age when hens were sometimes warier of humans than they might be later. He didn’t want that nice older lady to fall on the ice and get hurt.

As Ben circled the store, he noticed the dim interior beyond the front window, which sported a glowing sign that read CLOSED. It was Friday night and only shortly after six. Though a gloaming heralded the approach of nightfall, full darkness wouldn’t descend for a while. He guessed the market mostly got business from nine to five on weekdays, allowing Marilyn, who lived in the upstairs flat, to lock up early.

The oncoming birds made Ben feel as if he were going the wrong direction on a one-way thoroughfare. As he turned the corner at the back of the building, his gaze followed the line of fleeing chickens to the property behind the Cauldron. Shit. Through the deepening gloom, he saw a tiny coop in Sissy’s backyard—one of those DIY kits. Attached to it was a pathetic wire run. She probably didn’t know her chickens were loose, and even if she did, the Cauldron appeared to be packed with customers. The last time Ben had eaten there, Sissy had still been doing a one-woman show, rushing to service tables, pinning slips to the order wheel, and then racing into the kitchen to cook.

Just then Ben saw her dart from behind the coop in pursuit of a brown hen. She lunged at her target, slipped, and did a belly flop on the ground. Ben winced. The lady had been unfriendly to him in the past, greeting his polite overtures with icy disdain. He owed her nothing and almost made a U-turn. But the fowl had fled in all directions, and Ben’s dad, Jeremiah, had raised him to always offer his help when someone else was in a jam.

Snapping his fingers to keep the dog beside him, Ben hurried across Marilyn’s lawn to Sissy’s dirt yard. Finn trembled with excitement. “Do you need some help?”

Startled by Ben’s voice, Sissy whirled to face him. Even with dirt smeared on her cheek and across the front of her white chef’s coat, she was still cuter than a button. Her short, dark hair, which covered her ears in wisps to frame her cheeks, was tousled and peppered with wood chips. Some of the old folks in town said Sissy was the spitting image of Audrey Hepburn. Not long ago, Ben’s mom and sisters had insisted that he watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s with them. Except for the difference in eye color, Sissy definitely resembled Hepburn.

His gut tightened. He didn’t get what it was about Sissy that drew his interest, but when she turned that wary blue gaze on him, he wanted to reassure her.

She gestured at the fleeing chickens and cried, “Nobody ever told me they can fly! What kind of hatchery sells chicks to people without telling them that?”

Ben wondered if this was a trick question. “Um, well, they are birds. Right?”

She placed her fine-boned hands on her hips. “Not all birds can fly. Penguins, for instance! And emus! Name me one time you saw a chicken soaring in the sky!”

Ben struggled not to grin. For once, she was actually speaking to him without an order tablet in her hand. Now was not a good time to pop back with a smart-ass comment. “Not often, I have to admit.”

“Not often? I’ve never seen a chicken fly!”

Ben glanced at the hens going airborne to get over the sagging wall of the run. “That could be because all the chickens you’ve ever seen had their wings clipped.”

“Clipped?” She rolled her eyes. “What parts are clipped? All I know is my whole flock is loose, my café is filled with customers, I have food on the stove, and—”

She gulped and her cheeks puffed out with her deep breaths.

“I’d be happy to help,” he offered.

With a jerk of her shoulders and a lift of her chin, she stood tall—well, as tall as someone of her diminutive stature could manage. In her ice queen voice, she informed him, “I think I can handle it by myself.”

That stuffs it, Ben thought. She hadn’t even bothered to thank him for offering. His father may have raised him to be a good guy, but not a fool. Just as he turned to walk away, thinking up a rejoinder he’d never say aloud to her, a white leghorn flapped past him. Before he could stop himself, he shot out a hand, caught both its legs in his grip, and tipped it upside down, a quick, humane way to prevent all the struggling and squawking that might have ensued.

I need lessons in how to be a convincing jerk, Ben thought. She doesn’t want my help. She’s made that clear. And now I’ve caught one of her damned hens. Angry with himself for being a pushover, he started toward her pathetic excuse for a run. The brown hen she’d been chasing now perched on the sagging wire. Ben snatched it up by its legs, turned it head down, and met Sissy at the jerry-rigged gate.

She flashed him an incredulous look. “How did you do that?”

“There really isn’t much to it.”

She glanced at the two birds hanging almost lifeless at his sides. Not wanting her to think his technique was abusive, Ben said, “This is how many poultry wranglers do it. All the fight goes out of the chickens, and it’s safer for them.”

“You’re hired.”

Ben nearly told her she couldn’t afford him. But in good conscience, he couldn’t let the hens run free all night. They might die of exposure, or fall victim to predators. He glanced at his dog, still quivering with excitement. The pup was already proving to be a good herder, and Ben had used him often to round up his chickens after a day of free range.

He snapped his fingers and pointed at a buff Orpington. “Good boy, Finn! Bring ’em in.”

Finnegan leaped into action. While the dog expertly steered three terrified hens toward home, Ben dumped his captives inside the run, caught two more, and opened the makeshift gate to facilitate his dog’s efforts. After Finnegan had done his part, Ben entered the enclosure, pulling the gate closed behind him. He caught all the buggers and stuffed them into the coop to prevent more escapes. The run was useless. The wire sagged so low, even chickens with clipped wings could probably hop over it.

After securing the door, he exited the run. He looked at Sissy. “How many chickens do you have? I saw at least fifty on the street.”

In a small voice, she said, “Eighty.”

“Eighty?” Ben studied the structure. “That coop isn’t big enough for eighty grown birds. Twenty, maybe.”

She pushed tendrils of dark hair from her brow. “It seemed a lot bigger when they were small. I want to increase my breakfast business, and since a lot of my customers are farmers, I thought . . .” She flapped a limp hand. “Well, you know. They dislike commercially grown eggs. So I took courses online and passed a test so I’d be legal to raise layers and sell eggs. I even know how to grade them for size.”

In other words, she knew a lot of useless stuff about chickens and nothing practical. “And you think your breakfast crowd will go through eighty eggs a day?”

“There’s a mortality rate with chicks.” She pushed her fingers through her hair, making it spike in all directions. “I can’t remember the percentage, but I ordered plenty of chicks just in case some of them didn’t make it.”

She looked exhausted. Even worse, an expression of utter defeat played over her face.

“But then nobody died!” Her tone was laced with frustration. A horrified expression flashed in her eyes. “Not that I wanted anybody to die.” She dropped her hand from her hair to press it over her heart. “I love them. They were such cute babies. I kept them in troughs in my bedroom under heat lights like they tell you to do. And then they got pasty butt, and I had to wash all their bums every night.” She gave him an imploring look. “They became my pets.”

He tried to imagine washing the encrusted butts of eighty chicks every night after a hard day’s work. As for loving chickens, they were just livestock, filthy creatures and so dumb they took dumps in their drinking water.

Ben went after another hen. Before he closed in, a rooster just old enough to be feeling randy grabbed the chicken by her neck feathers and threw her to the ground.

Sissy, hurrying along beside him, cried, “Some of them are getting vicious with the others. Just look at her, being so mean! It started a couple of days ago. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. Margie! You quit that!”

Ben realized that Sissy didn’t know how to tell the difference between male and female birds when they were still so young. The ground had grown slick with a layer of ice, and his boots provided little traction. He barely managed to slide to a stop before he knocked the birds over with his shins. Startled, the two chickens parted company, the hen going one way while Margie the rooster went the other. He chased the hen, letting Margie escape. A male bird was less likely to skedaddle. No guy in his right mind abandoned a place where he could score countless times a day.

Finn had herded several chickens into the run and was standing guard at the open gate to make sure none of them tried to dart back out. It would be a race against time before they took flight over the short wire walls of the enclosure. Ben needed to stuff this hen and all the others into the coop.

Sissy ran in to help as Ben deposited birds inside the shelter. Her black work shoes, soled for grip on smooth floors, didn’t perform well on ice. Just as she neared the coop, her feet shot out from under her and she landed hard on her backside, losing the captured bird in the process. With so many hens squawking, Ben didn’t hear her teeth snap together, but he felt certain they had.

She scrambled erect and began helping him get hens into the coop. The first two she caught squawked, twisted in her arms, and flapped their wings. From then on, she grabbed them by the legs and flipped them upside down. Quick learner, he noted.

When Ben exited the run, he saw Finnegan disappear around the corner of the building. Ben guessed the dog was going out to the street where hens were running helter-skelter along West Main. Finn was accustomed to cars. On the ranch, Ben had started training him early to respect them. If the pup saw an automobile coming, he’d dart out of harm’s way.

Within seconds Ben heard hens approaching, and an instant later, they came around the corner of the building, legs scissoring and wings flapping to take them airborne in fits and starts. Finn ran back and forth in a broad fan pattern behind them, blocking the way of any bird that tried to retreat.

“Wow!” Sissy exclaimed, her face even dirtier now than it had been earlier. At her side dangled a hen, its wings spread and motionless. “He’s really good at this.”

Ben’s chest swelled with pride. “He’s a great herder.”

Soon at least ten chickens were racing around inside the run. Ben and Sissy wasted no time in capturing them. Once it grew dark, it would be difficult to find them.

After securing all the captives inside the coop, Ben turned to see Sissy kneeling outside the gate with her arms around Finnegan. “Thank you so much,” he heard her say above the raucous cries of the birds behind him. “You’re a wonderful—no, fabulous—dog!” She ruffled Finn’s fur and planted a kiss on his forehead before releasing him. “Good boy! Bring ’em in!”

After scrambling to her feet, Sissy began chasing other escapees. Ben joined her. Finn had left to bring in more strays from the street, so they were temporarily on their own. Ben regretted telling Sissy that catching chickens was easy. Without his dog, he pretty much sucked.

Ben lunged after a black rooster that was determined to avoid capture. The male darted behind a pine and used the large trunk as a barricade. The yard was dotted with smaller trees near the back boundary. Ben wished the gump had chosen to hide behind one of them. He feinted to the right, one hand on the bark of the ponderosa to help steady his balance. The rooster shrieked and circled the other way. This is my chance, Ben thought. Pushing for speed, he switched direction to meet the bird head-on. His boots slipped on the ice. His legs shot sideways. All that saved him from doing the splits was his momentum, which, as he waved his arms to keep his balance, flipped him onto his back.

Ben’s head hit the frozen earth with such force it stunned him, and in the second it took for him to regain his wits, he felt his sprawled body sliding at a fast clip over the ground. He thought he heard Sissy scream. The next second he plowed into something, groin first. Pain exploded between his legs. He saw stars. His stomach clenched on a wave of nausea. Blinking to clear his vision, he heard someone groaning. It took him a moment to realize it was him.

Through a reddish haze, he stared up the slender trunk of a new-growth pine. The canopy of green branches at its top seemed to swirl above him in an eerie pattern against the darkening sky. He couldn’t move, couldn’t cuss. All he wanted was to roll on his side and curl up into the fetal position, but he couldn’t manage that, either. He’d taken a few hard blows down there over the years, but nothing had ever hurt like this.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Sissy’s voice trilled above him. “Are you all right?” He felt her drop to her knees beside him. Ben blinked, swallowed back another wave of nausea, and finally got her face in focus. “There was nothing I could do!” she cried. “You sped toward that tree like a race car. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. You wouldn’t be out here if not for my stupid chickens.”

She rested a hand on his shoulder and kept talking. Nothing she said made much sense to him until the pain subsided a bit. Even then, he was so captivated by the raw emotion in her voice that her words didn’t register in his brain.

For the first time, Ben was seeing her without the mask of indifference, allowing him to glimpse the young woman she really was under the facade, a person with feelings that ran deep, not only for chickens, but also people. She wasn’t as cold as she pretended to be.

“I can run inside and make an ice pack,” she offered. “Maybe that’ll help.”

The suggestion startled Ben back to reality. Considering the location of his injury, he almost groaned again. Finn had returned. Opposite Sissy, the dog stood over Ben, licked his face, and whined. Ben realized that the throbs of pain under his cupped hands were growing less intense, and he was starting to see a glimmer of humor in the situation.

In a high-pitched soprano voice, he said, “I think I’m going to be fine.”

Caught off guard by his joke, Sissy giggled and sat back on her heels. Ben gazed up at her pixie face, taking in her large, expressive eyes, her delicate bone structure, and the softness of her lips. The thought flitted through his mind that he wanted nothing more in that moment than to kiss her senseless. If a woman could turn him on now, when his nuts still ached, he guessed he really was going to be fine.

He dug his elbows into the ice-encrusted dirt to lever himself up into a sitting position, which prompted Sissy to scramble back to her feet. She leaned forward with her arm outstretched.

“Here, I’ll help you,” she said.

Ben accepted the offer, noting that his hand nearly swallowed hers. She inched closer to the tree and braced her body against the trunk to pull him up. Her shoes slipped on the ice, but she caught her balance.

Tightening her grip, she said, “Ready? On the count of three. One. Two. Thr—”

The next instant, Ben lay flat on his back again, only this time with her weight angled across him. “Well, if this isn’t a hell of a situation.”

Finn gave a happy bark and bounced forward to slather the side of Sissy’s face with kisses. Two humans were down and at his mercy. She sputtered and then started to giggle again. As dazed as Ben still was, he appreciated the melodious sound of her laughter. It reminded him of his mom’s dainty wind chimes.

She held up her hand to shield her mouth, not seeming to mind when Finnegan licked her cheeks. “I think he’s lost interest in chickens. Two people tumbling around in the dirt are a lot more fun.”

“He’s still a pup.”

After Sissy rolled off him, Ben sat up. “I’ll try standing by myself this time.” He shifted onto his knees, curled his arm around the tree, and finally gained his feet. The pain had ebbed to a dull ache. Still using the pine for stability, he grasped Sissy’s hand and helped her stand. The rooster, watching from a distance, cackled in dismay because his pursuer might soon be back in the game.

“Well, that slowed us down.” With a glance at the sky, Ben added, “We’re losing daylight. If the cold doesn’t kill those hens, predators might. We have to get them inside the coop.”

Just then, hungry café customers spilled out the rear door of the building. Leading the crowd was Crystal Malloy, a striking redhead about Ben’s age who owned Silver Beach, an upscale salon and spa. Her coppery hair, which fell nearly to her waist, sported brilliant stripes of pink and green. She wore a fitted black jacket over a green knit top and a gathered black skirt that ended well above the knee. Spike-heeled black boots that clung to her shapely calves finished off her outfit.

“We decided to come help!” she called. “I turned off the stove so nothing will burn.”

Ben wondered how she hoped to walk on ice wearing footwear more suited to a dominatrix.

In a deep voice, someone behind Crystal yelled, “It’s our only hope if we want to eat before midnight!”

The speaker, Tim VeArd, co-owner of the VeArd Boat Dock on Creek Crossing Lane, threaded his way through the people on the porch. Around sixty with a thick thatch of white hair, a tall, robust build, and blue eyes that always twinkled with humor, he was still a fine figure of a man. Ben had heard that Tim had been in the navy, acquired a love of boats, and turned his passion into a thriving business. His wife, Lynda, more often called Lighthouse Lady because she loved lighthouses, was a spirited redhead with a kind heart who worked tirelessly at her husband’s side. The majority of their profit came from buying old vessels and restoring them for resale.

“You know how to catch chickens?” Ben asked.

“Do horses know how to buck?” Tim’s boat shoes didn’t appear to slip on the ice. “I was raised on a farm, son.”

Crystal stepped off the porch behind VeArd, and she, too, seemed able to keep her footing. Ben guessed the spikes on her boots acted as picks. Before Ben knew it, everyone else descended the steps, some slipping and sliding, others wearing shoes with soles made for slick surfaces. Ben saw Chuck Berkeley, a lofty young guy with black hair who’d just purchased Beer, Wine, and Smokes, a business near the town center on Huckleberry Road.

Tim pointed a finger at Sissy. “You, back to the kitchen to fix our dinners. The cavalry has arrived.”

Sissy glanced at the chickens darting around the yard. Ben noted her worried expression. “I’ll show everyone how to catch them. Your hens won’t be hurt.”

As she walked toward her building, brushing at the grime on her apron, she called over her shoulder, “I’ll have to clean up before I cook. Otherwise you’ll have feathers and wood chips in your food.”

A rumble of approval followed her into the building.

After Sissy disappeared, Ben taught the volunteers how to catch chickens. He wondered if these people had offered to help only because they were hungry, or if they considered the café owner to be a friend. He decided it had to be the latter. Apparently Sissy wasn’t an ice queen with all individuals, only with him.

After everyone knew how to catch a chicken, Ben allowed them to spread out. There followed a comical roundup. At one point, Crystal Malloy bent over to grab a hen, lost her footing, and sprawled on the ground with her skirt flipped above her waist. She flashed a red thong at every man still in the backyard. Even Ben froze in midmotion, and he’d never found Crystal to be that attractive. Her brand of beauty, as flashy and stunning as it was, did nothing for him. Even so, the sight made him momentarily forget that his mission was to rescue pullets.

When people spilled out onto West Main in pursuit of Sissy’s flock, Fred Black, aka Blackie, the local pawnshop owner, slipped on the ice and wrapped himself around a parking meter like the stripe on a barber pole. Tim VeArd, while attempting to save Lynda from a spill, lost his footing and fell spread-eagled over the hood of someone’s car. Chuck Berkeley nearly rammed his head through the display window of Needles in a Haystack.

When every last bird had been caught and put away in the coop, Finnegan received many congratulatory pats for being such a fine helper. After all the volunteers had reentered the building for dinner, Ben, still a bit achy between his legs, cast the pup an accusing look.

“I wanted to be hero of the day,” he told the dog. “How can I catch Sissy’s eye if you steal all my thunder?”

Finn barked and wagged his stubbed tail as if to say, “I’m sorry, bro. It’s not my fault you can’t measure up.”

Ben crouched to hug his dog. “Thanks, buddy. Sissy’s flock is safe for the night.” He settled a thoughtful gaze on the tiny coop. “At least it soon will be,” he amended. “Unless I miss my guess, it’ll be really cold tonight. Without some heat, those chickens could freeze to death.”