by Jennie Marts
“It’s more than just funnel cakes,” Molly said, pushing her bottom lip out in an indignant pout.
“Look Gram, I know the festival is important to you,” Jocelyn said, resting her hand on Molly’s leg. “But you’re important to me.” Her voice caught, and she pressed her lips together to keep from crying.
Mack’s chest tightened at seeing her emotion, and he pushed his shoulders into the wall to keep from going to her. He hadn’t seen her in close to a decade, but he still couldn’t handle seeing her cry.
“I need you to take care of yourself,” Jocelyn told her. “Harmony Creek will understand if we have to postpone the festival for a few months. Or even if we have to skip it this year.”
Molly’s face drained of color. “We can’t skip it. We can’t even postpone it for a day. We have to have the festival. And it has to be the best one this town has ever seen.” Molly reached for Jocelyn’s hand. “Please honey, this is why I called you, why I begged you to come.”
“You begged me to come for the festival? I thought you called me to help take care of you.”
Molly huffed again. “I can take care of myself. But I can’t make the festival happen from a hospital bed and hobbling around on crutches. I need you to take it over.”
“Take it over?” Jocelyn’s eyes widened, and her mouth gaped open as if Molly had just asked her to plan the royal wedding. “Gram, I’ve got a job, a life in New York. You know I’m trying to land this promotion. I can’t just drop everything to organize the Harmony Creek spring festival.”
“You don’t have to organize it. I’ve done all the legwork.” She glanced down at her propped up foot. “No pun intended. But I need someone I can trust who knows the festival to step in and make sure it goes well.”
“You can trust me, but I haven’t been to the event in ten years.”
“But you’d been to every one for the ten years before that.” She squeezed Jocelyn’s hand. “I know you’re busy, and I’m not asking you to give up your job. But I really need you, honey. I wouldn’t be asking you at all if it weren’t really important to me.”
Jocelyn let out a sigh. Mack could see that she was wavering. “My boss did give me the next two weeks off, so I’ll be here anyway. I guess if I work in the evenings and if you agree to be a model patient and do everything the doctor tells you to do, I could probably work on the promotion and oversee the festival.”
Two weeks? Mack swallowed, and his stomach did a funny flip. Jocelyn Stone was going to be within arm’s reach for the next two weeks? Wait, not arm’s reach, at least not his arms, but a stone’s throw away. He wasn’t sure he could handle seeing the woman who’d broken his heart walking around the ranch where they’d shared so many memories, every day for two weeks.
A look of relief washed over Molly’s face. “Oh, thank you. And I will be the best patient you can imagine.”
Jocelyn raised an eyebrow.
“I will. You’ll see. This means everything to me.” She clasped Jocelyn’s hand tighter. “But you have to promise—promise me you’ll take over the festival.”
“Okay. Okay. I promise. But I can’t guarantee it will be as big as you normally do.”
“It has to be bigger. This is the 50th anniversary of Harmony Ranch. It has to be the biggest celebration yet. Loretta and I have been working our collective tushes off to bring in new attractions and to find more ways to raise money. We even talked about doing a 5K run this year. We’ve been planning it for months.”
Mack didn’t like the panic rising in Molly’s voice. He glanced from her to his grandmother, then back at Molly, whose free hand was gripping the side of the hospital bed. Something was up. He’d caught the look the two older women had just shared.
Jocelyn must have noticed, too. She narrowed her eyes at her grandmother. “All right. There’s obviously something more going on here than just corn dogs and a mini marathon. This really has you upset. So time to fess up. What’s really going on here?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”
“Cut the innocent act, Grandma. Just tell us what’s happening.”
“We just want the festival to be really nice,” Mack’s grandmother started to say, but Molly held up her hand, cutting the other woman off.
“It’s no use, Loretta. We might as well tell them the truth.”
Mack leaned forward, tension twisting his gut. He didn’t like the sound of this. He was used to Molly and his granny cracking jokes and being silly. This note of seriousness between them had him worried. “Yeah, I think I’d like to know what’s going on, too.”
“Yes. You should,” his grandmother said. “Since it concerns you, too.”
Jocelyn snuck him a worried glance before plopping herself on the end of the hospital bed. “Spill it.”
Molly said, “Well, you see, it takes a lot to run a ranch and a historic site like we have. It’s special, unique. And I manage. I’m not saying I don’t. Especially now that Mack’s come on board. He’s been a huge help.” She granted Mack a loving smile.
He appreciated the gesture, but had a feeling it was more of a stalling tactic than a compliment to his work. “And?”
“And, well…” She turned back to Jocelyn. “You know we went through a bit of a rough patch when your Grandpa died. And we had some setbacks a few years ago—had to replace the furnace and buy that new tractor. Which was all okay, we’ve been through rough patches before, and we just borrowed a little, or in this case, a lot, from the bank to get us through until things turned around. And they always do. And I’ve been paying this last loan back just fine, but the problem is that it comes due this year. This month, to be exact.”
Jocelyn furrowed her brow. “But that seems good if you’re at the end of it. Sounds like you can get out from under the payments then.”
Molly cut her eyes to the bedsheet in front of her. “No, it’s not good. You don’t understand. That last one is a balloon payment. And it’s a doozy.”
Mack scrubbed a hand across his jaw. He’d known something was up with those two, the way they’d had their heads together so much lately, always whispering about something or other. He’d just figured the two of them were scheming to matchmake some poor unsuspecting couple in Harmony Creek. Ever since they’d cunningly brought together Paul Jenkins and Sally Thompson, the first of the wedded couples, they’d considered themselves matchmaking mavens. They’d taken credit for half a dozen of the latest weddings in town.
He usually rolled his eyes and tried to ignore their Cupid conversations, but right now, he dang sure would have preferred some romantic meddling to financial woes at the ranch. Especially since his livelihood was tied to it. “Just how big a doozy are we talking about?”
Molly shrunk smaller against the hospital pillow. “Pretty big.”
“How big?”
She twisted the sheet between her fingers, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Twenty-four thousand dollars big.”
“Twenty-four thousand dollars?” Jocelyn choked, her eyes growing wide. “Holy Frappuccinos.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say,” Mack said, leaning forward. “Why didn’t you tell me? As the caretaker, I think I have a right to know this kind of thing.”
Jocelyn whipped her head towards him. “Wait. What? You’re the caretaker?” She turned back to her grandma. “When did this happen?”
“A few years ago. I was going to tell you, but you always say you don’t want to hear about anything concerning Mack.” She clapped her hand over her mouth and shrugged at her granddaughter. “Sorry.”
Interesting. Why didn’t Jocelyn want to hear anything about him? Because she still had feelings for him? His heart did a little stutter at the thought. Or because she didn’t? And was that why she didn’t know about his divorce or his grandfather’s illness—because she’d told her grandmother not to talk about him?
&n
bsp; He’d have to ponder this later. Right now, they had more pressing concerns. Like how they were going to come up with twenty-four thousand dollars in the next few weeks. “Let’s stay focused. What do you have in place for the festival so far?”
“I told you, Loretta and I have done a lot of the work, and we’ve made tons of notes and all the contact information for the vendors and such are in the big binder I’ve got sitting on the kitchen table. Everything is there. We just need you to keep things organized, help set it all up, train the gate people, count the money, and try to come up with a couple of additional ideas for making some more cash.”
“Oh, that’s all,” Jocelyn said, shaking her head.
“And I can still help once they let me out of here.”
“None of that sounds like it involves resting or staying off your leg.”
“I can still make phone calls and work on schedules. I’m not totally useless,” Molly countered, her voice sounding a little miffed.
“No one has ever accused you of being useless,” Jocelyn told her. “But you still need to take care of yourself. And that’s why I came. To help you. Let me look at my schedule. Maybe I can take a little more time off.” She frowned as she pulled her phone from her pocket, then scowled at the dead screen. Digging in her bag, she found a charger and plugged it and her phone into the outlet on the wall behind her grandmother’s head.
“I’ve got this if you need to get back to New York,” Mack told her. “I’ve been helping put on this festival for years, and I’m sure I can handle what needs to be done.”
“But this year is different,” Molly said. “It’s bigger and more complicated than it’s ever been before. And it has to go well. For the ranch to survive, we need to knock it out of the park. There are jobs and livelihoods at stake here—including yours and mine.” She directed the last comment to Mack but included them both in the next. “You’ve both got great skills to bring to the table, but you’re going to have to work together. You’re going to need each other.”
He glanced from Molly to Jocelyn. “You know you can count on me.”
“Me too,” Jocelyn said, pushing her shoulders back. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. But he wondered if her firm stance came from the resolve to help her grandmother or the competitive spirit she’d always had with him.
She rubbed her hands together. “I guess now we just have to figure out how to put on one heck of a great spring festival. Which is where my skills as a marketer come in handy. I’ll come up with a whole social media package—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. So first of all, we need a better name—something that sounds bigger, flashier, more exciting.”
“It’s a living history museum,” Mack reminded her, bristling a little at her take-charge demeanor. He was the caretaker. She’d been here all of five minutes. “We focus on the past. Which means we don’t do flashy. Or any of that social media insta-whatever business.”
“You’re going to need that insta-whatever business to drive new people to the festival,” she said, dismissing his remarks. “Now let’s put our heads together. What else could we call this to make it sound bigger, different than years before, but also the same? How about the Harmony Creek Jamboree? Oh, how about the Harmony Hullaballoo?”
Mack’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “I am not calling this thing a hullaballoo.”
She grinned at him, a move that didn’t help his crusty response. “Okay, maybe hullabaloo is a little much. But what about Spring Fling? Or Spring Spree? A shindig? A wingding? A soirée?”
He shook his head. “Now you’re just trying to annoy me.”
“I like shindig,” Molly said. “And a wingding sounds like a heck of a good time.”
Jocelyn flashed him another impish grin. “See, it’s working.” She turned back to Molly. “Did you already have a logo? Signage? Brochures to put around town?”
Molly shook her head. “We just have the same sign we hoist up every year. And everyone in town knows it’s held the last weekend of May. But we did make a little flyer.” She gestured to Loretta. “Do you have a picture of this year’s flyer on your phone?”
Loretta nodded and found the right screen, then passed the phone to Jocelyn. Mack took a step forward and leaned over Jocelyn’s shoulder to peer down at the picture. It was designed to look like parchment paper and had a young girl in period dress running alongside a hoop that she was pushing with a stick, her pigtails flying behind her.
“Okay, I like this,” Jocelyn said, tapping her finger to her chin. “How about we use this and call it the Harmony Creek Hoopla?” She glanced around, waiting for their reaction.
The two older ladies smiled.
“I like it,” Molly said.
“So do I,” Mack’s grandmother agreed.
They turned to him. He raised one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t hate it.”
“Yay,” Jocelyn said. “I can start working on a media package tonight. We can get flyers and signage and put them up all over town and hang some in the next few towns around us too. And my social media strategy might bring up some folks from Colorado Springs, as well.”
“Sounds like we’ve got a plan.” Molly’s shoulders relaxed a little.
“I’ll look at the stuff you’ve put together and run some numbers,” Jocelyn said. “How much do you typically make in profits from the festival?”
“Oh, well…” Molly’s tension returned, and she looked down at her hands, evading her granddaughter’s eyes. “Um, usually about four or five thousand.”
“Four or five thousand dollars? And this year we need to bring in twenty-four?”
“That one year we made sixty-five hundred,” Mack’s grandmother reminded them. “Remember? That was the year we hired the petting zoo. They brought a camel. And we had kettle corn.”
“Sounds great,” Mack muttered. “We just need another camel and a kettle corn stand. And maybe an elephant and a giraffe. No problem.”
Jocelyn stood up off the bed and pushed her shoulders back. “Sounds to me like we’ve got a hoop-lot of work to do. And less than a week to do it. We’d better get out of here if we’re gonna get started.”
Chapter Three
Savage was still lounged across the passenger seat when Jocelyn and Mack made their way back to the pickup. Resigned to the middle, Jocelyn slid past Mack when he opened the door for her and scooted onto the seat. The basset hound lifted his head, then dropped it onto her leg. She scratched his chin, and he let out a blissful sigh as if he were telling her he’d been waiting for her and this very moment to make his life complete.
The drive back to Harmony Ranch didn’t take long. Jocelyn didn’t talk about the festival—she was still trying to wrap her mind around how much money they needed to raise, and how little time they had to do it. Instead, she and Mack made small talk about how the town of Harmony Creek had changed as they drove past new businesses and old ones that had been shut down.
“This place hasn’t changed a bit,” Jocelyn said as she climbed from the truck and surveyed the ranch. Everything about it still matched the photograph she carried in her mind. Rows of tall pine trees surrounded the meadow. Cottonwoods interspersed with the evergreens that circled the small pond. It sat at the ranch’s center, surrounded by the three historic homes, a small general store and gift shop, the chicken coop, and the large garden plot full of freshly turned soil.
The massive white barn stood sentinel over the ranch, home to several horses and cows, and the center of so many memories of learning to ride, of helping her grandfather bucket-feed a calf…and of kissing Mack in the rafters above the stalls. She could almost smell the earthy scent of dust and feel the scratchy hay that always found a way into her clothes. Two corrals branched out from either side of the barn, one holding the horses still used to pull plows and wagons, the other holding a few co
ws and several sheep and goats.
Molly’s home, an old Victorian, sat at the side of the property, a small stone path leading toward the caretaker’s cottage and the blacksmith shop set a little ways behind it. In between those homes and the pond sat a large grassy meadow where the spring festival had been held for the last several decades. And where Jocelyn and Mack needed to throw the biggest festival yet.
But what if they failed?
Failure wasn’t an option. They couldn’t lose Harmony Ranch. They just had to make it work.
“We’ve updated a few things and had to replace some stuff that broke, but most of it should be just like the last time you were here,” Mack said. “That’s the allure, and the magic, of the place—it doesn’t change. Visitors can count on it being the same every time they visit. I think it’s like visiting an old friend. And the connection to the past inspires comfort in a lot of folks—makes them remember simpler times.”
That allure of nostalgia and memories swirled around her as she inhaled a deep breath. “Gram’s lilacs are as beautiful as ever,” she noted, pointing to the long row of bushes lining the back edge of the home’s property. “I love the way they seem to announce spring is here. Every time I smell lilacs, I always think about being here in the spring and summer. I just love them.”
Mack nodded. “I remember. Back when you used to just come for the summer, it was always one of the first things you did when you got here—filled a big mason jar with water and stuffed it full of lilac sprigs. Then when you lived here, you always filled the house with them. I can picture you perfectly, standing at the bushes, a clipper in your hand, and your arms full of flowers.”
She smiled at the memory. “Gramps always had the clippers and some mason jars sitting on the table so I could fill them up as soon as I arrived.” She blinked back the sudden well of tears filling her eyes. “I miss him.”
“I know you do,” Mack said. His gaze stayed trained on the ranch. “So do I.”
“I miss everything about this place,” she whispered, hoping he knew she meant him too, even though she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.