Christine Flynn: The Baby Quilt

The road ahead took a gradual rise over the gently rolling land and made a dogleg turn to the right. His glance narrowed on a house to the left.

The modest old farmhouse sat back from the road, a relic from the turn of last century and painfully austere. It stood ghostly white against the charcoal-gray sky, its stark appearance unrelieved by any hint of decoration except a single window box overflowing with blooms of bright-red. The porch was a utilitarian square, the railings utterly plain. But the land surrounding it burst with every imaginable shade of green. Nearest the road, row upon row of brilliant emerald plants glowed jewellike against dark, loamy earth. Farther back, miles of corn merged on a large square of land planted with what looked to be a vegetable garden. A windmill, its blades spinning madly, guarded a tidy utility shed and a chicken coop.

Relieved to know he wouldn’t have to walk ten miles in the rain to get to a phone, he set his sights on a woman disappearing into a greenhouse and jogged across the road and up the property’s long graveled driveway. Thirty feet from the building, he slowed his pace. The young woman had appeared again. With her calf-length blue dress tangling around her legs, she headed for a long rack of plants.

Slender as a willow branch and just as supple, she bent to hurriedly tuck a flat of plants under each arm and headed for the greenhouse once more. Wisps of flaxen hair had escaped the braid that dangled nearly to her waist. The wind whipped those gleaming strands into a halo around her head, but it was the way the gusts of air plastered the shapeless garment to her body that had most of his attention as he moved toward her.

The thought that she was probably half his age immediately jerked his attention from her intriguing curves. Mentally disrobing the farmer’s seventeen-year-old daughter wasn’t likely to make the farmer eager to lend him a hand. Considering the bolt of lightning streaking against the wall of black in the distance, he wasn’t interested in jeopardizing his welcome.

“Is your dad around anywhere?” he called, an instant before a crack of thunder shook the windows in the house behind him.

It was hard to tell which caused her footsteps to falter when her head jerked up—finding a large, male stranger in her yard, or the jarring boom that sent a covey of wrens screaming from the sweeping arms of the walnut tree shading the house. She’d been so focused on her task that she hadn’t even noticed his approach.

That task obviously took precedence. Ignoring him, she dropped her hand from where it had flattened at her throat and, with her hair streaming across her face, disappeared into the greenhouse.

“Great,” he muttered, looking around for signs of someone who might be a little more cooperative.

There wasn’t anyone outside that he could see. There weren’t any lights on in the house to indicate anyone was inside, either. Wondering if someone might be in the greenhouse, he looked through the plastic-covered windows that had already fluttered loose in places. The milky material rustled in the wind, echoing the snap of the blinding white sheets billowing on the clothesline. There were no shadows to indicate a human inside. The only other form of life seemed to be the chickens who were abandoning their wire enclosure for the white clapboard coop.

A flash of pale blue streaked from the greenhouse.

In no mood to wait until she decided to acknowledge him, he moved with her.

“Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but my car won’t start. It’s not far from here,” he explained when she’d kept going without giving him so much as a glance. “Is your dad around?” he called. “All I need is a jump.”

She hurriedly lifted two more flats of tiny green plants from the rack near the vegetable garden. “My father doesn’t live here.”

She finally looked up. Justin didn’t know which caught him more off guard, the velvet soft quality of her voice, her faint accent, or the angelic quality of her delicate features. Her eyes were the clear blue of a summer sky and her skin looked so soft it fairly begged to be touched.

His glance dropped to the lush fullness of her mouth. Soft and ripe, that sensuality was as unexpected as the innocence.

So was the jolt of heat low in his gut.

Her lips had parted with an indrawn breath when their eyes met the first time. When they met again, her glance faltered and she grabbed another flat.

“What about your husband?” he asked, forcing his focus to her hands. She appeared older than he’d first thought. Her left hand was hidden, but she could easily be married. “Can he help me?”

She was trying to balance a third tray between the two she held when he saw her hesitate. Harried, distracted, she darted a furtive glance from his dark hair to the logo on his polo shirt and murmured, “No. He can’t.”

An instant later, seeing she couldn’t carry more than two trays without smashing what she was trying to save, she hoisted a flat to each hip and took off again.

“Then, how about a telephone?”

Grabbing the plants she hadn’t been able to carry and another flat for good measure, he hurried to catch up with her.

“There is no telephone here,” she said, still moving. “The nearest one is at the Clancy farm. It’s up the road by the bend. I’d imagine Mr. Clancy is bringing in his cows. For a telephone, you’ll have to go to Hancock.”

“Isn’t there any place closer? A gas station?”

“Only in Hancock.”

“How about another neighbor?” He could jog to the little town if he had to. He ran four times a week as it was. But a ten-mile run in the rain wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he’d decided to play hooky. “I’d really like to avoid getting drenched,” he admitted, tossing her a rueful smile. “That sky looks like it could open up any minute.

“I drove out from Chicago to do a little fishing,” he explained, wanting her to know he wasn’t some lunatic out stalking farmers’ wives. “I’m taking the day off, you know?” he asked, wondering what the rush was with getting the plants inside. He’d have thought rain would be good for them. “I noticed the weather changing and decided to head back, but my car battery’s dead.”

She didn’t reply. Nor did she slow by so much as a step as they reached the plant-filled building. Not sure if he should follow her in—or if she was even listening—he stopped by the doorway while she shoved her load onto the nearest table and spun back toward the door.

Spotting the flats he’d carried, she pulled them from his hands, slid them next to the others and hurried back out.

He arrowed a frown at her back, practically biting his tongue to keep that scowl from his voice when he fell into step beside her. “Look, I can seen you’re busy here, but all I need is a jump. If there’s a vehicle—”

“What is this ‘jump?”’

“Jump-start,” he explained, never guessing that a farm girl would be as mechanically challenged as most of the women he knew. “You know. Hook up a car with a good battery to a car with a dead one to get the dead one going again?”

Puzzlement merged with the lines of concern deepening in her brow. But all she said was, “There is no car here.”

“Then how about a tractor?” he called to the back of her retreating head.

There was no tractor, either. She told him that as the first fat drops of rain soaked into his shirt and ticked against the tin roof of the utility shed. Another bolt of lightning ripped across the black horizon. In the three seconds before the thunder rolled in to crack overhead, the rain turned to pea-size hail and the woman had tucked herself over the plants she picked up to keep them from being shredded by the little pellets of ice.