by Ellie Hall
Was he saying he wanted to marry her someday? The thought made her giddy.
“So, what do you say?”
“To what?”
He laughed. “Courting you. Can I court you?”
She kissed him and then pulled back. “Yes.”
They kissed again and again, and she knew … that she would definitely be late for work.
And…she would definitely be going to visit him in South Port.
Connect with Taylor Hart
Taylor Hart is a best-selling author of over seventy books with fans in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and all over the world. Her focus is on Sweet and Christian Romance.
She loves swoon-worthy heroes, the kind of heroes that are strong and would take a bullet for you, but also want to open your door and listen to you pour out your heart.
Taylor is a mother and wife. She has four amazing boys that are like ninjas running around. She loves them and she adores her amazing husband who doesn't get intimidated by all of the billionaire men in her life.
Taylor’s love of Jesus Christ and her gratitude for the healing and forgiveness in her life is a theme in many of her books. Taylor is also grateful to be an American. She is so proud of the men and women that support and preserve freedom.
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Jude and the Matchmaking Llama
Carina Taylor
Jude messed up. Big time. And what should have been a happy reunion with his high school flame turned into chilly-ville. If he wants to make it past Ruby’s freeze out, he’s going to need some help. But a crazed llama wasn’t exactly what he had in mind…
1
Jude
I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve it.
Good guys didn’t deserve the fate I’d been handed. I’d always assumed I was a good guy, but now I wondered if I’d done something in the past that had finally caught up with me.
Maybe I’d cut someone off at a red light last week. Maybe I put the milk jug away empty when I was ten.
It didn’t matter.
What was done was done. And now I was paying for whatever I did.
It was official.
I was the not-so-proud owner of a chariot-racing llama.
Don’t ask. Some things can’t be explained—like chariot llamas and pigeon racing.
The worst part about being gifted a llama? I was going to need help to deal with it. The most experience I had with llamas was driving past them in a field.
What I needed was the help of an expert—an expert that wasn’t speaking to me at the current moment.
With a fortifying gulp of fresh Oregon air, I pushed open the glass door into the local feed store, knowing exactly what would greet me on the other side.
Two cats immediately circled my ankles. A border collie puppy wiggled happily back and forth as it ran across the concrete floor toward me, pausing to pee next to a display of dog treats. Someone should do something about that. Just not me.
“I’m so sorry!” a voice called from the other side of a tall shelf. “I usually try to pen up the puppy before anyone comes in.”
The squeak of tennis shoes told me she was coming my way. Her.
A white-blonde head with hair piled on top walked my way. She held three mineral blocks stacked on top of each other as she shuffled to the front. She couldn’t quite see where she was going over those blocks.
I scooped up the puppy as it ran forward. Each mineral block weighed nearly fifty pounds. She didn’t need to trip over the puppy as she made it to the front desk.
She set them down on the sturdy counter with a loud grunt and turned around to face me.
“Oh,” she said. “You.”
So enthusiastic.
It wasn’t a, “Hey, Jude! So great to see you, you sexy beast!”
Nope. It was a mediocre greeting, at best. But more accurately, a hostile one.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and took a step forward, right onto a cat’s foot. It screamed in agony—way overdramatic. I hadn’t even stepped with my full weight.
Ruby, the unenthusiastic blonde, glared at me like I killed cats for fun.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I bent down, setting the puppy down and feeling vulnerable under her watchful gaze as I pet the indignant cat on the back. He quickly forgot his anger and began purring, rubbing himself against my leg as he walked circles around it. His orange fur left trails on my dark jeans.
“What can I help you with today?” Ruby’s brisk, businesslike tone grated on my nerves. It was as if she didn’t recall our history. It was as if we hadn’t had that amazing kiss two summers ago.
Granted, it was the fallout after that kiss that led us to this tense dynamic.
It should have been the kiss that reignited everything. But I’d made things awkward with my big mouth. I should have kept my lips busy kissing instead of talking.
“I need something,” I croaked as I stared at her mouth.
She tapped an index finger against the wood countertop as one cat climbed her like a tree to sit on her shoulder like a parrot. Was I jealous of a cat? Yes. Yes, I was.
“And I thought you were here to be a scratching post.” She glanced down at the orange cat trying to sharpen its claws against my jeans.
“I meant to say, I don’t know what I need exactly. But I think I need your help.”
“All right…what is it?” she asked as she knelt and scooped up the wiggling puppy, all while keeping the cat on her shoulder.
I rolled my shoulders back as I pretended to study the chalkboard behind the counter. It was a handwritten list of the types of grain and feed she had in stock in the warehouse out back. “I have a llama.”
“A llama?” Her guarded look disappeared, replaced with an incredulous one.
“Yes. You know. Like an alpaca but uglier, meaner, and bigger.”
This time I was sure I saw the corner of her mouth twitch with a hint of a smile. “Yes, I know what a llama is. I had one for a little while last year before I sold it to Mrs. Boone.”
I should have known. She had a herd of sheep, several goats, and some cows. What was one more animal to add to the mix?
“When did you decide you liked llamas? Where’s it from?”
Next, she’d be asking me questions I couldn’t answer, like, “What was your llama’s grandparents’ names?”
“I didn’t mean to end up with a llama. It just happened,” I tried to explain.
She shook her head as her smile grew. “And where is the llama right now?”
“That’s the problem. I’m supposed to go pick it up this morning, but I don’t even know what llamas eat or how I’m going to get it in the back of my truck.”
Ruby reached up to brush some flyaway hairs from her face—or maybe hide her smile. I wasn’t sure which. “Jude. Why are you getting a llama?”
“Oh, I don’t want the llama. Nothing like that!” I replied, a little horrified that she might think I had a llama-hoarding problem. Animal hoarding was a very normal thing in Boones-Dock, but I wasn’t sure it was a problem in other parts of the world. “It’s a chariot-racing llama.”
She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. She obviously didn’t believe me. I wasn’t sure I believed me.
“Jude,” she said my name slowly, like she wasn’t sure I could comprehend it. “What do you need?”
I could tell her I needed feed. Minerals. A water tub. A llama whisperer. Instead, I let out an exasperated sigh. “Help. I need some help.”
She nodded. “All right. That I can do. Why don’t you start at the beginning?” She reached up and lifted the fat tabby off her shoulders. The feline clung to her with desperate claws, but that didn’t stop Ruby from setting it down on the counter.
“I was clearing out a
fence line at a hobby ranch outside of town. You know the old dairy close to the horse-boarding facility?”
“Yes,” she dragged out that word. The horse-boarding stable was a place of contention for many Boones-Dock residents. The riding arena had once been open to the public, but the new owners had changed it into a breeding facility, not bothering to remain involved in the community.
“Well, there’s a piece in between there. An elderly couple owned it, but they passed away this year within a couple of weeks of each other.”
Ruby leaned forward and rested her elbows on the counter, unimpressed by how my story was going. “And this has to do with you and a llama, how?”
On a reflex, I reached out and pushed her jaw closed with my index finger. “I’m getting to that. Be patient.”
She looked as surprised as I felt at my touch. It was the first time I’d touched her in two years. And she was holding her breath. I quickly pulled my hand back and continued with my story. “I was clearing brush on the old dairy.”
My business was running equipment and building fences. If people had lots of brush they needed to be cleared out, I was the guy they called. If they wanted to hire a professional fence builder, I was the guy they called. “The owners were explaining about their neighbors passing away.”
“Jude. Land the plane.” Ruby almost rolled her eyes and made a motion for me to wrap up the story.
Didn’t she understand I needed to explain myself? I wasn’t the guy who went around collecting llamas.
I leaned forward and rested my arms on the counter so that we were eye to eye. The puppy struggled to lean out of her arms and lick my face. “The neighbors that passed away had a llama. The new owners of the dairy had promised to take care of the llama for them, but they aren’t even living on the property yet. They asked me to take the llama home since I have secure fences, and they don’t. And now I’m the owner of someone’s chariot-racing llama, but I don’t know how to haul it back to my place.”
“So, you’re saying you got a free llama out of the deal?”
“I don’t want the dang llama!” I groaned. “But someone has to keep an eye on it. I guess it keeps getting out and harassing the horses at the stable next door.”
Ruby didn’t bother to hide her grin anymore as she set the puppy on the counter. “So, you need my help to find a home for it?”
“And preferably, your help catching it. I need to bring it back to my house so that it can’t keep escaping. I don’t even know what type of food they need.”
She waved a hand through the air. “Your pasture has a nice clover mix in it. All you’ll have to do is put out some minerals and an automatic waterer. You probably don’t even need me.”
I furrowed my brow and tried to look pitiful. “Please don’t make me catch this llama by myself.”
Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip as she tapped a finger against the counter. “Fine. I’ll take an early lunch.”
“I could kiss you.”
Wrong choice of words. Ruby straightened abruptly and snatched her keys off the counter. “Don’t be that way.”
She lifted the puppy and headed out the door, flipping the sign over to say that she was out to lunch.
I stepped outside, and she shooed the cats back inside, shutting and locking the door with a key from her key ring.
“You don’t get to come with us,” she told the cats as they looked at her forlornly through the glass door. Turning to me, she said, “Come on, we’ll take my truck. I already have the trailer hooked up. I had to haul Lily to the vet yesterday.”
“Lily?” I couldn’t remember which pet that was. It had been a few years.
“The cow.”
“Oh, of course.” I nodded as though I understood. I didn’t. Most people in Boones-Dock didn’t take their cows to the vet. They waited for the large animal vet to make their rounds out here, which he regularly did.
“Dr. Frost retired this year,” she explained after noticing my confusion. “No one replaced him yet, so we’re stuck taking things into the worthless vet in town.”
“How do you really feel about the vet?” I teased.
She stopped and glared at me. “He thought only chickens could get coccidiosis. I’ll pass.”
“But you took Lily to him…”
“It was a moment of weakness. It won’t happen again.”
“How’s Lily?” I asked as I followed her to her truck.
She stopped abruptly, and I bumped into her.
I wrapped an arm around her front, flattening my hand against her stomach, trying to save her from tumbling forward.
Her sharp intake of breath matched mine. The puppy in her arms leaned down and licked my hand.
She spun around and jabbed a finger at my chest. “Jude, can we address the elephant in the room?”
“Well, it’s actually a llama…”
Ruby shook her head, trying not to smile. “Let’s just admit that things are weird between us. I’ll help you catch this llama and move it to your house, as long as you promise that will be it. We can go back to avoiding each other.”
“What if I don’t want to avoid you?”
“Don’t make things any weirder than they have to be.” She turned around and climbed into her pickup, which was still attached to a small livestock trailer. Setting the puppy in the backseat, she whistled, and a full-grown border collie came running up to the pick-up from out of nowhere. It launched itself inside, climbing over the console and into the backseat.
“Let’s hurry and get this over with. I have a shipment of minerals coming in this afternoon.” She fired up the diesel pickup and slid it into gear. It was all warmed up from her driving into work earlier.
I could either jump in or get left behind. But at least she wasn’t avoiding me like usual.
2
Ruby
Why had I agreed to help Jude? I couldn’t even look him in the eye—heck, I could barely look in his general vicinity without blushing.
My heart had crumpled up into a mortified little raisin when Jude had moved back into town. I’d done everything in my power to avoid him since then.
I wore a wig and sunglasses anytime I went grocery shopping. (Okay, maybe not, but it seemed like a good idea.)
I’d developed all manner of imaginary illnesses that prevented me from going to social events in Boones-Dock.
My Jude-radar had developed into something the NSA could learn a thing or two from.
But did I have the ability to turn him down when he asked for a favor? No. Apparently not. I’d readily jumped at the chance to “help” him.
Because I still enjoyed being around him. Even now, sitting in the small space of my truck, his cologne wafting around me, I felt sweaty. Nervous. It would be so easy to slip back into our old camaraderie—if it weren’t for THE incident.
The incident where I’d completely misread the signs and ruined our friendship. Yeah. That incident.
There was no retracting the moment where I’d planted a sloppy kiss on him our senior year of college—the year he had a girlfriend, it turned out.
So much for waiting for me like I thought he was. I shouldn’t have expected him to keep a silly promise that two eighteen-year-old kids had made to each other. But when I saw him that day, four years later, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that he might not have been waiting for me. I greeted him with a big ol’ I-haven’t-seen-you-in-almost-four-years kiss.
And then he blurted out four words that made me want to curl up in a ball. “I have a girlfriend.” I slowly turned into a mortified puddle of embarrassment. There was an embarrassment hall of fame dedicated to me now.
I was not the girl who kissed a guy who was taken. I also wasn’t the kind of girl who wanted to be pitied for unrequited love.
When I’d come back to Boones-Dock to run the feed store, I’d fielded all the questions from well-meaning—and some not well-meaning—people who knew of Jude’s and my history.
“High school sweethearts.”<
br />
“Attached at the hip.”
“Most likely to get married and have ten babies by thirty.”
All things attributed to Jude and me as a couple.
Ha. Joke’s on them. I was almost twenty-four. And Jude and I had been in the same small town long enough for me to realize that we were never going to happen.
The citizens of Boones-Dock hadn’t gotten that memo yet.
They’d probably already scheduled out the church for our wedding. Jude and Ruby. Our names were carved into many a tree and park bench in the area. We were the ones crowned as prom king and queen. (Not because we were overly popular, but just because a Boone or a Graham wasn’t allowed such levels of power. It had to be innocent bystanders.)
We’d done the mature thing as high school seniors. We promised each other that we would go live our lives—go to college, travel, discover what we wanted out of life. Then, we would get back together our senior year of college and see where we stood. If things were right, we would get back together and be Jude and Ruby again.
Except. That wasn’t what happened. While four years at college had widened my horizons, it hadn’t diminished my young love for Jude. Whereas he had gone and gotten himself a girlfriend.
So, I returned to Boones-Dock with my tail between my legs and a promise to not wear my heart on my sleeve for anyone else.
A year later, Jude had the unmitigated gall to move home too. Without the girlfriend. We’d barely said two words to each other in the past couple of months, thanks to my avoidance techniques.
Until this morning.
“So….” Jude dragged out the word like he was about to launch into a ballad.
I kept my eyes on the road, slowing down as Ford Hutchings (an honorary Boone) whipped out in front of me, driving a front loader. Typical.
“It’s been a while,” Jude finally said.
I hummed my agreement and leaned forward to drop my arms over the wheel as I stopped in the middle of the road, letting the Walking Club cross the gravel road in front of me.