He’d purchased the baby and brought her home to his six-year-old son as a gift. An ironic compulsion for a man who regularly sat down to beef stew, but he’d seen the calf bawling for her mother, who’d already gone up the chute. There was even one gentle-eyed ancient cow Thomas’s father had rescued from a slaughterhouse. It had become somewhat of a tourist attraction, so they had a petting area fenced off beside the barn as well as a large paddock and grazing field with a pony, goats, chickens and a pack of pigs that roamed and rooted. It blended with the landscape and served as a landmark of a time long past. He’d always loved that about it, the quiet, powerful aura of permanence, stability. The building had been designed to feel like the farm stores of a hundred years ago. Thomas drew in a steadying breath, taking in the pleasing smell of old wood. There was no way that voice could belong to who he thought it did. Goddamn it, there was no way it could be… The sprawling wooden farmhouse and barn which his father had turned into a hardware store supplying this part of rural North Carolina area was hell and gone from New York City.
It was a male voice, the words as unintelligible as her response, but something about that voice stirred something in his lower belly.
But when he heard the customer speak to his sister, he raised his head.
He was in the back tagging a wood chipper for repair and Celeste was out front to handle visitors. When the shop bells over the store entrance rang, Thomas didn’t pay much attention.
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