by Annie Jones
But Polly couldn’t get the quiet intensity of Sam’s words to the little dog out of her mind. She understood what was beneath the rules. A man with a broken heart who feared if he ever stopped moving forward, his loss would be his undoing. Polly got that. She had long suspected her own family’s drive had been more about working through the pain of their broken home than about money or accomplishment.
“Look, I haven’t had to think about the rewards and drawbacks of Baconburg’s small-town life since…well, never, really, because I was really young when we moved away from here, but I get it.” Polly went to the front door and held it open. “I have to be above even the suggestion of impropriety. Sam, I appreciate your help, but I can take it from here. Deb, thank you for the brownies. I have a dog to rinse off and some flyers to make.”
“That—” she told the little dog as she toweled him off in the closed bathroom after Deb and Sam had gone on their way “—is that. Why be in a hurry to find a guy? I have my hands full with you. Sam Goodacre? Well, he has his rules and his reasons and I have plenty of time to follow my dreams, right?”
The dog sneezed.
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t completely buy it, either.” Polly sank against the side of the tub and tried not to think of Sam coming through the front door of her little house wearing that brown trilby and a grin as he announced to her and the girls, “Honey, I’m home!”
Chapter Six
“He’s just so sweet and happy. Looking at him just lifts my heart.” The very next day Polly juggled her cell phone and adjusted the stack of papers clutched under her arm to walk down the sidewalk of the historic section of Baconburg, hoping to find more places that would post the lost-dog flyers. She glanced down at the golden-brown dog trotting along on a leash at her side and smiled. “I honestly don’t know how I am going to deal with not seeing him every day but that’s probably what needs to happen. It’s a small town, so I’m told it will be nearly impossible, but I’m going to have to find a way to avoid him.”
“I can’t believe it. One day in good ol’ Baconburg and you meet a great guy with all this baggage attached.”
Polly certainly did not think of Sam’s family or the issues they had with the dog as “baggage,” but before she could set her sister straight on that, she needed to make one thing clear. “I was talking about Barkley, the little dog I found.”
“I know you were and I was talking about the great big man you found.” Essie’s voice was soft and teasing. She absolutely knew how to push all of her twin’s buttons. “Oh, and I thought you were calling him Homer.”
“Now that he’s all cleaned up, he doesn’t look like a Homer anymore. I’m trying out some new names.” Polly paused to study the little fellow, who also stopped, circled around and then plunked his behind down on the sidewalk washed with late-summer afternoon sun. “Not that I have any say over it or that I can let myself get too attached.”
“To the dog or to the—”
“To the dog,” Polly over-enunciated each word before Essie could even suggest that Polly would allow herself to get too attached to a certain single-father pharmacist and former hat owner. Feeling quite pleased with herself for getting everything under control so neatly, she squared her shoulders, took a good breath and opened her mouth to continue.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Polly gasped at the three quick raps on the glass behind her. She whipped her head around.
“What was that? What’s going on?” Essie asked. “Are you okay?”
Polly’s tensed shoulders eased and she couldn’t help but smile at the familiar face looking out at her from the huge window of Downtown Drug.
“I’m fine. I’m just…” She paused to give Sam Goodacre a wave, then raised the flyers as if to ask if she could post one in his store. She might be able to avoid the puppy and its new owner in the future, but she was just going to have to get used to seeing Sam around. “I like to think of myself as embracing the realities of small-town life.”
“What does that mean?” Essie asked.
Sam gave her a nod, pointed toward the front door of the store and started that way.
Polly gave the dog’s leash a tug, not unlike what Sam’s smile had done to her heart, she thought as she told her sister, “It means I have to call you back later.”
“But I thought we were going to talk about my coming for a visit,” Essie barged on, never one to be dismissed.
“Give me a chance to get settled.” Polly reveled in the chance to be the bossier sister for a chance. Her heels clicked over the sidewalk at a happy, brisk pace. “We’ll talk later.”
“Later when?” Essie sounded snappish, but Polly heard the concern in her twin’s voice. “I need to know so I can make plans, Polly. You know how busy I am. How long will it be before I can come see you?”
“How long? Why, as long as it takes. And not a minute more, I promise.” Polly clicked off the phone and slid it into her pocket. When Sam didn’t meet her at the door, she stretched her neck to peer back into the window again only to find an elderly couple had sidetracked him. The older man kept gesturing with a bottle of some kind of pills while the woman, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, kept trying to read the label.
“I think Sam might be a while,” she told the dog. “So do we wait?”
A kid whizzed past on a bicycle so close and so fast that it set the papers under her arm flapping. Polly could hang around under the guise that she needed to ask Sam if he would post her flyer in his window.
“Or I could move on. I still have lots of flyers to distribute,” she told the dog.
Barkley, or Homer, or whatever name he’d end up with, gave his head a shake that sent his ears slapping against his head. The leash jangled where it attached to his collar. He sneezed, then looked up at Polly, his tail wagging.
She started to lean down to murmur, “Bless you,” when the front door came swinging open.
“Hi, Miss Bennett. How are you?” A small redhead in a pink top with a ruffled collar came bounding out into the entryway of the store. “Dad says you have posters for your lost dog. If you want, I can take them all and hand them out for you.”
The way she stretched out the word all put the teacher on high alert. Polly had dealt with small children with their own big agendas before, so she wasn’t ready to oblige that quickly. “That’s a sweet offer, Juliette, but the dog and finding his owners is my responsibility.”
“I’m not Juliette. I’m Caroline.” The girl rose up on the ball of one foot and did a spin.
“That might work on other people, but you and your sisters are not going to be able to fool me that easily.” Polly smiled. “Now, if you want to take one poster to put up in your dad’s—”
“Deal!” Juliette snagged the page that Polly offered, turned around and ran back to the front door. As she swung it open she looked back and said, “Thanks, Miss Bennett. I’ll send Hayley and Caroline out to get posters, too.”
Before Polly could call out to tell the child that the goal was to get as many flyers out to different people who might actually help find the owners as possible, Juliette disappeared inside the store. Polly sighed, stole a look in the big window to spot Sam moving his finger as if emphasizing the small print on the large pill bottle to the couple, who were crowded in close to him. For all his talk about moving on, he sure knew how to take his time and take care of others, didn’t he?
“Miss Bennett!” A child in a green-and-white T-shirt came rocketing out the door so fast that she set the dog next to Polly woofing in surprise. “Hi, Donut!”
“Actually, I’m calling him…” Polly caught herself before she said anything that might lead the child to think Polly had even considered keeping the animal. “I’m sure whoever his real owners are have given him a perfectly good name. Let’s not create any confusion by call
ing him Donut, okay, Hayley?”
That was not a phony excuse. Allowing the triplets to name the little dog that everyone agreed resembled the character in their mother’s stories might well lead to emotional attachments and confusion, not to mention greater hurt when the little guy went back to the home where he truly belonged.
“But he looks like Donut,” Hayley insisted. “Oh, and I’m not Hayley. I’m Caroline. You know, the one who is going to be in your class this year?”
“Oh, I know the Caroline who is going to be in my class this year. And you’re not her.” She handed the girl one of the flyers as if it were a lovely parting gift for having played the game, then gave her a pat on the back. “Nice try, though.”
This time the child returned to the store with a bit of an obstinate stomp in her step. Just before she went over the threshold she gave Polly a narrowed-eyed glare. “Are you sure I’m not Caroline or are you just guessing to make us think you can tell us apart?”
“I can really tell you apart,” Polly assured her.
“Hmm.” And Hayley was gone.
Polly stood there for a moment not sure if she should go inside and tell Sam what the girls were up to or just move on with the task at hand. On one hand he might appreciate knowing, but on the other they were just testing boundaries and it wasn’t anything she and Essie hadn’t tried at that age.
The drugstore door swung open a third time. For one second, two, three, nobody came out. Then slowly, with two other sets of hands pushing her shoulders and hips, a redheaded girl in a strikingly familiar pink shirt with a ruffle at the neck, reluctantly appeared.
“Hello…Miss Bennett. Caroline asked me, Juliette, to come out and get a flyer for her like the one you gave me, Juliette, the ballerina.” The girl lifted her arm in an arc, halting but in pretty fair ballet form.
“Okay, but I don’t want to waste any of these. Promise you’ll try to share this with someone who can help get this poor lost doggy home again, okay…Juliette?”
She nodded without making eye contact, snatched the paper away, then moved back to the still-open door.
’Fess up. Polly willed Caroline to come clean and admit who she was and what she had been put up to.
For a moment Polly felt herself in Caroline’s place. Always the sister in the shadow. She knew that struggle between wanting so badly to be like her more outgoing sister and wanting to just be herself.
Caroline hesitated outside the doorway. Her head bowed slightly, she stole a backward glance. Her gaze fell to the dog.
Honesty is the best policy. I know that’s who you are, Polly wanted to urge the child. But she wasn’t going to push or make a scene. If she just waited, Polly felt certain the girl would do the right thing on her own, in her own time.
The child sighed and then raised her gaze to Polly, her expression open and vulnerable. “Oh, Miss Bennett, I’m not Juliette. I’m Caroline.”
Polly’s heart soared at the child’s decision to confess. “I know. I knew all along.”
“She knew. She knew all along,” Caroline said into the open door.
Suddenly two sets of hands yanked the girl back inside.
Polly rolled her eyes, laughed, then tugged on the leash to get her companion up and moving again. “I think maybe it’ll be better if we walk back down to the corner, cross over and see if we can put up flyers in the stores across the street.”
They had hardly taken two steps when the door to Downtown Drug swung open again.
“Whatever you’ve cooked up, you’d better understand right now I am not falling for…” Polly’s shoulders went back in her best full-on teacher-about-to-lay-down-the-rules mode. Her shoes squeaked quietly as she turned slowly to confront…Sam Goodacre. “You.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said softly.
She had just told Sam she wasn’t falling for him. She hadn’t meant it as a proclamation, but now that it was out there, Polly sort of wanted to take it back. “I was just… Your girls were trying to…”
He held his hand up. “I know. Or rather, the minute I saw Juliette and Hayley making Caroline trade shirts with Juliette I knew what they were up to. Sorry they pulled a fast one on you.”
“They didn’t pull anything on me.” She smiled and wriggled her fingers at him to wave goodbye before she pivoted and began walking again. “I knew which one was which from the start.”
“You did?”
“Yep.” She heard his footsteps hurrying behind her but she didn’t look back. She just kept walking with a spring in her step, not unhappy to have him following along. “And don’t be too hard on them. Juliette wasn’t really trying very hard to fool me and when I told Hayley I could tell them apart, I think she took that as a challenge.”
“Sounds like her.” And just like that, he was walking alongside her.
Following was one thing, even calling out to her, but walking through town with her? “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”
“I think it will be okay.” He grinned at her and sidestepped the dog’s meandering gait. “I know the boss.”
She had to hurry to keep up with his long, determined strides, and the dog, seeming to pick up on Sam’s energy, rushed ahead, yanking Polly’s arm out in front of her. How had her leisurely stroll through the old part of town become a mad dash? At least she had already made stops at the stores they passed along the way.
“Look, I don’t want to pressure you or anything.” A car passed by and the driver tooted a quick honk. Sam waved.
“Pressure?” Polly waved, too, even though she had no way of knowing who it was. It just seemed the neighborly thing to do even as she rushed along trying to figure out what pressure Sam was about to put on her.
They reached the corner and Sam turned to look down at her. “I just wanted to ask you how the search for the dog’s owners is coming.”
“Oh.” The light turned red. Polly hoped her face was not as bright a shade. “Yeah, um, Barkley.”
“What?”
“I started calling him Barkley.”
“You’re keeping him, then?” Sam’s mouth had a serious set that had not been there moments ago.
“No, I’m not. I’d like to…like to? I’d love to.” She looked down at the dog, who gazed up at her with those sweet brown eyes.
The light turned green. The dog jerked on the leash. For a split second Polly didn’t know whether to go or stay. Finally she took a deep breath and stepped off the curb. “But I can’t. It’s not right.”
“Because he doesn’t belong to you?”
“Because it wouldn’t be fair to you,” she shot back over her shoulder.
“Me?” He hurried into the street after her, caught her arm and spun her around to face him. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re the one who told me about the realities of small-town life, how paths cross and you see each other everywhere. And you’re the one who doesn’t think the girls are ready to deal with a dog so similar to Donut. So it just seems like I need to respect that and not keep the dog, especially because I’ll be teaching Caroline and seeing her every day, probably telling the class about what the dog and I are doing…”
“You’re giving up the dog for the sake of my girls?”
She nodded.
“Polly…I…” He stared into her eyes.
A car honked.
Polly jumped and started to scurry across toward the other side of the road.
Sam, his hand still cradling her elbow, headed back the way they came. They ended up doing a spin right there in the intersection. At least it gave the driver the opportunity to swerve around them.
“Just kiss her and stop holding up traffic,” the man called as he whisked by. “What are you waiting for?”
�
�Kiss her? I hardly know…” Sam’s gaze swung from the moving vehicle to the face of Polly Bennett and in that instant all the intensity of his denial evaporated. Another place, another time, another intersection, even, and he might have just thrown away all his reservations and swept this pretty little schoolteacher up in an impulsive kiss. “I didn’t mean that as a slight. It’s just that…”
“I know. You have your rules,” she murmured softly. Her words confirmed that she understood, but her eyes told a different story.
Or maybe that was Sam just wishing he had seen disappointment where there was actually relief that he didn’t let the moment get the better of him. It would have made quite a story to live down, after all. New teacher steals smooch with local single dad!
He and Polly might as well have taken a billboard out proclaiming their mutual attraction. As it was, Sam still had time to save this mess. He backed away from Polly, stepping carefully over the leash to do so. With his smile fixed, he jogged back to the corner of the street while Polly tugged the puppy along, letting it stop and sniff around along the way. Finally they all hopped up onto the curb on the opposite sides of the street. Now, there was the perfect metaphor for the two of them, he thought. Two people heading toward their own goals, moving at their own pace, too much between them to really ever move forward together.
He looked at her, fussing to untangle herself from the dog’s leash. The more she chased after it, the more the dog wound himself around her. Polly Bennett. She was enough to make a guy rethink his whole reasons for his unbreakable set of rules.
She jerked her head up and looked right at him, then lifted her shoulders and laughed at her predicament.
Sam raised his hand to say thanks and…
“Hey, Dad! Uncle Max says to invite Miss Bennett to dinner tonight,” three little voices all hollered in unison as they ran full blast down the sidewalk toward him. But when they reached the corner, they all turned and put every last ounce of their considerable energy into making Polly hear the message. “Uncle Max says you have to come out to our house tonight. He’s gonna cook!”