Sleigh Bell Dreams (Mistletoe Meadows Sweet Christmas #1)

Chapter 7

“So she actually rented from you?” Wilson McBride said as he stuck a foot on the shovel and shoved it into the dirt.

Judd nodded. “She did.” He slammed his own shovel into the ground. He’d found a kindred spirit in Wilson. Wilson was considered a golden boy, the favorite of the family, and the town favorite as well. It seemed like everything he touched succeeded, and everyone loved him.

But there was more to Wilson than met the eye, and Judd had gotten to know him pretty well over the last few years. They’d done a lot of things together to benefit their town.

“Until she figures out that your house isn’t really a duplex?”

Judd laughed. “Nah, I think the rule about the goats got her thinking too hard for her to be able to spend her brainpower on anything else.”

“That girl has a lot of brainpower to spare,” Wilson said, without any trace of hyperbole.

“I know.” Judd knew she was brilliant. That she could have done a lot more than just been a doctor in a family practice. She could have specialized in anything she wanted to do, but despite her intelligence, her goal had always been to come back to Mistletoe Meadows. At least that’s what Wilson had said.

Judd just remembered her being smart in school, and honest. She didn’t let people cheat off her, like other smart kids did. A backscratching thing often went on.

He shut the thought out of his head. High school was a long time ago, and until he had children of his own, he didn’t need to think about it anymore. Other than possibly catching a game on Friday nights.

“You know you’re asking for trouble having her there,” Wilson said conversationally as he continued to dig a hole for the fence that they were putting in. Amy had needed to expand for a while, and she didn’t have the money. So Wilson and he had gotten together to donate the materials and the labor to put in more pens for her.

Amy did not know where the material had come from. They had said it was an anonymous donation. It was something that they did a lot of.

Today was a lot colder, with a brisk wind blowing. The leaves that had already turned golden brown were floating down by the bucket loads over the fields that lined the high meadows.

The mountains in the distance looked less blue green and more blue brown.

Regardless of the season, Judd loved the way the mountains looked. And he’d endure a few colder temperatures to be able to live on top of one. The views were indescribable.

“I know,” he said in reply to Wilson’s comment as he dumped another shovelful of dirt next to the hole that he was digging.

They were about eight feet apart, although they could see and hear each other easily. Both of them were wearing gloves. It was just that time of year. They would still have some more decent weather before winter really set in.

“I’m just going to have to be careful, that’s all.”

“We could bring her in. She is the doctor in town. She probably has a few ideas of her own,” Wilson said. “Plus, Terry really does have a good heart. Despite all of her intelligence. I know, I grew up with her.”

Judd knew that Wilson was just four years younger than Terry and he admired his older sister a lot.

If Judd didn’t know better, he’d almost feel like Wilson and Amy were conspiring to push him toward Terry, but that was ridiculous. He’d barely graduated from high school, he was terrible in academics, and he didn’t really have a good job. He just...worked wherever he could, wanting to stay in town. He didn’t really have anything that he could do to earn money from the tourists, so he did odd handyman jobs and the other things on the side.

But he did know better. So he brushed it aside, just assuming that they were making him part of the family, as they had a tendency to do. After all, it’s what they had done with Jones, Amy’s best friend.

“Are you gonna be at Sunday dinner?”

He’d resisted going to their Sunday dinners for a long time. It was something the McBride family did, just every Sunday they gathered at their mom’s house. Everybody brought something, and they all ate. Anyone who could go went. Terry had been away at med school and residency and hadn’t made one for years.

Judd had gone a few times over the years, but he usually declined. Although, Wilson and Amy both had been more insistent lately that he go, and he’d been to three out of the last four.

“If I think of something to take,” he said, shoving his shovel down in the dirt. “Why didn’t we rent a skid loader and a post hole digger attachment?”

“We’d be done by now, wouldn’t we?” Wilson said with a laugh.

Judd knew why they hadn’t. They were saving money. It was easier for them to use their manpower and save the hundreds of dollars it would have taken to rent the equipment.

Both of them were old school that way. Plus, he didn’t go to the gym, so he needed to do something to beef up his biceps.

He almost laughed out loud at the thought.

They kept working, and his mind drifted to Terry. Although he knew it shouldn’t. Now that she was back in town, opening up a family practice, and ready to settle down, she wasn’t going to be looking at a guy like him.

There were a couple of law offices by the courthouse and some other professionals in town and scattered around the outskirts.

A couple of nice horse farms set lower on the mountain. He had no idea what those people did for a living.

There were some folks who worked in DC during the week and came out to Mistletoe Meadows on the weekends. Locals didn’t care for them too much, because most of the time, their views were vastly different from the folks who lived around there.

Their values were too.

But it was more of a live and let live situation, and whether their values aligned with the locals or not, their money was just as good.

That was probably the kind of husband Terry would get. She’d meet some bigwig from Congress hanging around town, and fall in love, or at least decide that he was good enough to get married to.

“I didn’t realize you guys were starting today! I would have come out to help you.” Amy came over, sounding a little breathless, with two dogs on leashes running around her.

“That’s the reason we didn’t tell you,” Wilson said, making Judd laugh.

“You guys are incorrigible,” Amy said. “I can’t give you a hand right now, because as soon as I’m done walking these dogs, Jones has time to do three cats for me. I’m going to run them over.”

“That’s fine. We weren’t planning on you. Although, if you want to throw food, go ahead.”

Judd envied the easy rapport that Wilson had with his sister. The whole family seemed to have it, just a respect for each other, and they actually liked each other. Of course, just having siblings would have been nice. But that hadn’t been his lot either.

“If you would have told me, I could have made you something. I don’t have time now. You can go in and make sandwiches if you want.”

“Thanks, sis,” Wilson said. Judd knew that neither of them would go in. She barely had enough money to feed herself and buy food for the animals. They certainly weren’t going to take food out of her refrigerator.

“Will you have time to finish this up tomorrow?” Wilson asked after Amy walked away. Wilson had a farm he had to take care of, but once he had his animals taken care of for the morning, he didn’t need to go back until evening most days, unless he had hay to make or some other farm chores to do. Basically, they worked around Judd’s schedule.

“I told Mrs. Blackburn that I’d help her get her old refrigerator out of the house. She has a new one coming, and the store will deliver, but they were going to charge her to take the old one away.”

“Gotcha,” Wilson said.

They worked in silence for a while, and maybe it was because they had already put in two sides, this was their third, and maybe they were getting better at it. But it didn’t take as long as what he was thinking, and definitely one more good day would get them finished.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Wilson said as he shoveled gravel around the top of the last cement they poured.

All the posts to hold the outside wiring in place were in and cemented.

Judd put the level that he’d been using to keep the post straight in with the rest of his tools.

“Not bad work for a few hours,” he said easily. He had things to do, and Wilson would have to get back and take care of his animals.

“I know you’re going to go over there and pet those big galoots,” Wilson said as Judd finished putting his tools away.

“They have names,” he said, knowing that Wilson knew full well they had names. He’d helped him name them.

“I know. As big and scary looking as they are, I can’t believe how gentle and easygoing they are.”

“That’s part of what they’re bred for. You can’t have a horse that big and have them going crazy on you all the time like a Thoroughbred.”

“I think that was a slam.”

“Do you own Thoroughbreds?”

“Not yet,” Wilson said, and they laughed together. Wilson wasn’t exactly a horse lover. He had beef cattle that kept the farm in the black, although barely some years.

They went over to the horses together, and when the horses saw them, they came over to the fence.

Judd pulled out a sugar cube and held it flat on his hand as he reached up to scratch Bob’s wide head.

“They sure do look a lot better than the first time we saw them,” Wilson said as he scratched Belle, who sniffed him, hoping for a sugar cube.

“Here you go, you big galoot,” Judd said as he gave Belle the sugar cube that he’d saved for her.

Sugar wasn’t any better for horses than it was for people, so he tried not to go overboard and only gave them one or two treats a day.

“They sure do,” Judd said, running a hand down Bob’s powerful neck. It was soft and silky, although the winter hair was coming in nicely. He didn’t have much of a mane and even less of a tail which had been bobbed. But his old bones had filled in rather nicely, and Wilson and he had agreed that they were ready for some work, which was why they’d started using them to pick the kids up several weeks prior. They had rescued them from the kill pen down in the valley several months ago.

They had wondered for a while why their owner might have gotten rid of them, but it seemed like maybe because of foot trouble. Oftentimes, drafts weren’t trained to pick up their feet, and their hooves broke off naturally. The problem was, if they got an infection, it was difficult to treat them, since they weren’t used to having their feet handled.

Regardless, they found a good farrier, who had been willing to work with them, although at first, he’d had to sedate them.

He and Wilson had put up some stocks, which were basically things that made it easier for the farrier to work on their feet.

And while the problems hadn’t completely gone away, they’d been able to get them the care they needed. Judd had only been kicked once, by Bob, when he’d first started trying to teach him to pick up his back feet.

It had smarted for quite a long time.

If Terry had been in town, maybe he’d have gone down to the clinic, just to make sure he wasn’t going to have some blood clot end up in his lungs. Different people had asked him, and he just shrugged. He supposed if it was his time to go, it was his time. Although, he kinda thought that it wasn’t going to be from a kick in the thigh.

Regardless, they spent a lot of time and a good bit of money on the horses, but they were hoping that it would pay off as they were expecting to use them for a tourist attraction.

“These poor guys don’t know we’re about ready to put them to work,” Wilson said, and Judd nodded. “They’ve been doing great with the kids on Sundays. Especially Belle.”

“I kinda think Bob’s going to let her do the lion’s share of it.”

“Well, Bob’s going to have to pull his share too,” Judd said firmly.

He loved both horses equally, but he really did love Belle’s willingness and her heart to please her owner.

Horses were a little bit like dogs in that way. He had the feeling that he could ask Belle to do anything, and Belle would do it for him.

It was a heavy responsibility though, because he didn’t want to push Belle further than what she could go and end up hurting her. A horse like Bob, that probably wasn’t going to happen.

“All right, I’d better get home. I still have a couple hours’ worth of work to do.”

“Same,” Judd said, less about the hours of work and more about needing to get home. He was wondering what Terry had been doing. And was hoping to catch a few winks before he went in to clean the courthouse. He’d gotten the message from his boss that there was a heater panel that was broken, and they also wanted him to look at a window latch that seemed to be sticking.

Why in the world someone would want to be opening a window, he had no idea, but it was just his job to fix them, not try to make sense out of the things that other people did.

And he was happy that he had the work, so he wasn’t complaining.

“Don’t forget about dinner on Sunday,” Wilson said as he smacked him on the back and walked away. “Bring your poppy seed chicken casserole. It was pretty good last time we had it.”

He laughed. He’d forgotten about that. He probably could put that together pretty easily, and to his surprise, the first time he made it, he actually really liked it. He hadn’t realized that poppy seeds were a thing and that they could end up making chicken casserole taste really good. Different, like he’d made a completely new dish, but still good.

Maybe he’d do that. Although, he wasn’t quite sure what Terry was going to think when she saw him there. The idea made him smile. She couldn’t be any more surprised than she had been when he’d opened the door and she’d punched him in the face.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t even told Wilson the story. Not that he would. He wouldn’t want to embarrass Terry. Because Wilson would definitely rub it in.