The Happiness Pact. Liz Flaherty

      Except for its fully finished and beautiful kitchen, the old farmhouse was a construction zone. “It will be wonderful someday,” said Alice.

      Tucker looked around, at framework with doors but no walls, at the living room subfloor partially covered with area rugs, at the beautifully curved stairway without a rail. He saw where the children had hung their coats inside the back door in what would eventually be a mud/utility room. He watched as Dan Parsons patted his wife’s stomach, high-fived his son over the birth of the calf and knelt to talk seriously to little Mari about how the new baby would be all right sleeping in the barn with her mama.

      It will be wonderful someday. “No.” Tucker met Libby’s eyes. This is it. This is what I want. “It’s wonderful now.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      LIBBY SLEPT ON an inflatable mattress on the floor of Mari’s room. When Stripes, the kitten, crawled into bed with her, Mari followed, bringing her own pillow. The blow-up mattress was twin-size, so it didn’t leave a lot of room, but Libby slept well anyway, the little-girl scent and warmth of her roommate making for a comfortable night.

      She woke before dawn, dressed in the clothes Tucker and Dan had brought in from the car last night, and plaited her hair into a messy braid. She tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen, stopping on the landing to look through the window and find Venus, clearly visible in the post-storm sky. “Hi, Mom,” she whispered, and went down the rest of the stairs. She found her hostess at the table with a cozied pot of what smelled deliciously like Earl Grey. “Ah,” said Libby, keeping her tone hushed, “a girl after my own heart.”

      Alice waved her to a chair. “And one after mine, who knows any voice over a whisper will wake my children at the crack of dawn on a snow day. We homeschool, but we adhere to the public-school schedule.”

      By the time she and Alice had drunk two pots of tea and told each other most of their life stories, she’d constructed a quiche guaranteed to make the kids happy. “But don’t call it a quiche,” Libby warned. “Call it something else so they don’t know that’s what they’re eating. In the tearoom, we call it yellow junk with bugs in it. They all know it’s not really bugs, but they do love the whole gross-out part of the story.”

      “Do they know it’s spinach?” Alice slipped the pie plate into the oven.

      Libby gave her a blank look. “Know what’s spinach?”

      After breakfast, Dan drove his tractor up and down the driveway, a blade on the front pushing snow out of the way. Tucker, with Gavin’s help, shoveled out from under the Camaro so that the wheels had a place to go when Dan pulled it out. There was some damage done to the bumper and the spoiler, but they were repairable. More importantly, the car didn’t want to pull in one direction or the other when Tucker drove it. If the roads were semiclear, they should be able to get home without encountering any more ditches—provided they didn’t meet other trucks whose drivers had homicidal tendencies.

      They visited the barn, where Joanna was munching cheerfully on some hay and little Liberty was gamboling about the stall. “Do you mind?” said Gavin. “Mom said not everyone would want to have a cow named after them.”

      “Well, I would.” Libby gave the boy a hug before he could get away and grinned at his mother. “We had a cow named Alice, too. I think she had an even dozen calves. My dad really liked her.”

      Alice grabbed her stomach and groaned. “Three’s going to be enough for this Alice!” She hugged Libby, then reached past her to hug Tucker, too. “We’ll be down to see you in spring.”

      “We’ll be waiting,” Libby promised. She knelt to smile into Mari’s eyes. “Thank you for sharing Stripes with me. When you come see me, I’ll introduce you to Elijah.”

      “Will he like me?”

      “Yes, he will.”

      “I’ll bring him a present.”

      “Thank you.” Libby wanted to cry. She made her eyes really wide and blinked hard against the tears. They didn’t come, of course. Libby often wanted to cry, but she never did.

      Tucker was beside her then, taking her hand when she straightened. “I have to help her walk,” he explained to Mari, “so she won’t slip.”

      “You could carry her,” the little girl suggested. “Daddy carries me sometimes so I won’t fall.”

      Libby gave Tucker a none-too-gentle push with her elbow, almost knocking them both off balance. “It’ll be okay. He might hurt his back.”

      A few minutes later, they were in the Camaro and back on the freshly plowed road headed toward Miniagua. Tucker reached to tweak her braid. “I’m sorry about the adventure.”

      She laughed, clasped his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I thought that was a pretty good one, myself. How do you beat making a whole family of new friends and having a calf named after you?”

      * * *

      “THE NEW NURSE-MIDWIFE at A Woman’s Place—” Libby looked around the tearoom to be sure no one needed anything and almost flinched at the Valentine’s Day decorations she thought she might have overdone. Satisfied everyone was taken care of, she took the empty chair at the table Arlie shared with her stepsister, Holly, and her stepmother, Gianna. “Is she single?”

      Arlie nodded. “Divorced.”

      “How old is she?”

      Arlie tilted her head thoughtfully. “Thirty.”

      “Ish,” Holly added.

      “Very pretty,” said Gianna.

      “What’s her name?”

      “Meredith.”

      “Kids?” Libby poured some tea into her cup.

      “Two.” Arlie set down her fork and stared fixedly at her. “One of each. Six and eight. I think maybe she’s a Taurus. She puts purple highlights in her hair and it looks great—I might hate her a little for that. Anything else you want to know right off the top of your head?”

      Libby thought of Allison’s little boy. And of Allison. No chemistry, Tucker had said, and when Libby had urged him to at least give it a chance, he’d caved and asked Allison out to dinner. She’d gone, and they’d ended up back at Anything Goes laughing because their chemical disconnect was so complete they thought maybe they were siblings separated at birth. Tucker had introduced Allison to an engineer who worked at Llewellyn’s Lures and now they were dating.

      Next had been Cindy, who worked at the winery, followed by Risa, who taught algebra and coached middle school volleyball. After Risa, Libby had threatened Tucker’s life if he used the word chemistry in her presence ever again.

      “Well,” Libby explained, taking in the three pairs of curious eyes at the table, “Valentine’s Day is in two weeks. I thought maybe I could find Tucker a good date for the party at the clubhouse. My last day off, he took me to the casino at Rising Sun and gave me two hundred dollars. When I won two thousand and he lost five hundred, I tried to give the two hundred back, but he wouldn’t take it.” She was a little embarrassed. “I think I could really like gambling, so I probably don’t want to go back.”

      “Seriously? You won?” Holly’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”

      Libby nodded. “Yes. I’d won before, but to me winning just meant not losing, as in I went home with the same twenty dollars I took to gamble with. So two thousand was great.”

      “What did you do with it?” Arlie went back to eating.

      Libby sighed blissfully. “I got a new stove. I’d been getting by on the two four-burner ones I bought used when I opened the tearoom ten years ago. They were okay for a long time, but I was down