Christmas In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

returned, and she held the ball until he quieted. “One more time, then into the run. Okay?” The little dog’s tail wagged, and he seemed to smile at her. “Last one, ready?”

      The dog vibrated a bit harder. Camden threw the ball, and Six took off like a shot.

      Camden knew she wasn’t being fair about the pageants. There were legitimately good reasons to take part. The scholarships opened educational avenues for a lot of women. Pageants taught poise, even if they focused a little too much on appearance, in her opinion. They also celebrated talents like music and creative writing and put a focus on charity work.

      But she didn’t particularly care that she wasn’t being fair; competing hadn’t been her choice.

      It had been her responsibility.

      When her mother was floundering after her father died, Camden competing in pageants seemed to lessen Elizabeth’s depression.

      Camden knew a lot of beauty queens who were smart, who were passionate about their work. Maybe if her mother had let her choose her talent or her volunteer work, she could have been passionate about pageanting. But Elizabeth Camden Harris Carlson had only cared about winning. As a Kentucky Miss and then a North America Miss herself, she knew what it took to win, and she hadn’t allowed Camden to veer from the chosen path. Camden had worn the same color dresses as her mother, had sung the same song her mother sang during competitions and used the same platform her mother had used during her days as a pageant girl.

      Hell, even if she’d chosen something of interest to her, Camden wouldn’t have liked parading around on those stages, smiling until her cheeks hurt. That was what made it so easy to walk away, not only from the pageant world, but from the rest of her life. She only regretted that it had taken until now to walk out.

      “Showing at fairs, huh?”

      “It could be fun. Challenging,” she corrected. Not once in her twenty-six years had she won a conversation with her mother or stepfather by describing something as “fun.” How ridiculous was it that she hadn’t realized until she was twenty-six that she’d made only a handful of decisions about her own life?

      “Nothing wrong with doing something just for the fun of it, kiddo,” Granddad said. “You think I’d’ve trained dogs all my life if I was only in it for the money?”

      She’d never thought about her grandfather as liking anything. “I, um...”

      “I trained dogs because it was fun. It was challenging, too, but so was accounting. I hated accounting. Hated sitting at a desk all day just to come back the next and do the same thing again.”

      “You were an accountant?”

      Granddad grinned, and it was the first smile she could remember passing over his face since she’d come back. “Did the books for most of the businesses in Slippery Rock at one time or another. Until I decided there had to be more to life than sitting at a desk fifty weeks out of every year. I didn’t start the dog school until your daddy was in school. And I didn’t start it because it was challenging, I started it because Bennett Walters needed a new stock dog to help keep the dairy cows in line.”

      Camden blinked. This was more information than she’d ever known about her grandfather. “You started the school on a whim?”

      He shrugged. “I liked dogs. I didn’t like the way the dogs were being treated when the trainer Bennett hired brought a few to his place. Figured it was something I could do that would get me outside a little more, especially during the summer months. So I trained that dog for Bennett, then a few more area ranchers asked for dogs, and within a couple of years I was spending nearly all my time training the dogs. Shut down the accounting business and haven’t worried about it once.”

      “Then why aren’t you training any longer?”

      “A man has to retire at some point, Camden. I thought it was time.” She started to protest, but Granddad held up a hand. “Why don’t you tell me more about stock competitions.”

      “They use sheep, goats, chickens. A few calves. One trainer works a few dogs to get the animals from one pen to another, and they’re judged on speed, agility and time.”

      “Sounds like what I did when I was training.”

      “It’s a lot like a training session, actually.” Camden couldn’t get the thought of her grandfather retiring out of her mind. He wasn’t that old, maybe in his midsixties. Sure, it was the age when a lot of people retired, but he’d loved working the dogs. How could he just stop? “That competition show in Tulsa I mentioned? Six couldn’t compete in that one, but you could get an idea how the show circuit differs from the working circuit. If you wanted to go.”

      “Your grandma’s not going to want to go to Tulsa this close to the holidays,” Granddad said. He opened the run for Six. The dog went in and began sniffing. Probably for water. Camden grabbed an empty bowl from a shelf and filled it from the sink on the wall. Granddad did the same for the other dogs. “All these runs used to be full,” he said after a while.

      “I remember.” She’d come out here every morning that last summer, watching Granddad and her dad and the collies from the hayloft above. Listening to the men talk about training methods. Elizabeth never set foot in the barn. She’d rarely left the porch, insisting that the dirt would ruin her shoes. God, her mother had hated this place. It was no wonder she had never wanted to come back.

      Camden looked around. How could anyone hate the smell of fresh hay and summer sunshine? Even the gray November sky today couldn’t take away the smells that lived in her memory. She remembered traipsing over these fields with Levi when the sun was high and the temperatures much hotter than on this chilly morning. He’d had this sky and these smells all of his life. Did he know how lucky he was?

      “Your dad wanted to train a few dogs for the show circuit.”

      “I remember.” He’d been so excited about the prospect. Her father, Bobby Harris, liked his job in the marketing department of the television station in Kansas City, but he’d loved coming back to Slippery Rock for vacation every year. Had been talking about getting a dog for the city, not a cattle dog, but a retriever or something.

      “You don’t have to train dogs because it was something your dad liked to do. Not even because it’s something I like.”

      “I know. I just liked working with them. I’d like to work with them again.” She didn’t want to live her life in a quiet office, watching girls try on dresses and perfect their makeup.

      “Then you should do it.”

      She inhaled, deeply. “Yeah?”

      Calvin nodded.

      Camden grinned at her grandfather, and he swung his arm around her shoulders the way she’d seen him embrace her father so many times in the past. “I’m glad you came home, kiddo.”

      “So am I,” she said.

      In the kitchen, her grandmother Bonita was just taking toasted cheese sandwiches off the stove. “You two are back early.” She wore a neon-orange hoodie with black yoga pants and sneakers with bold orange, green and yellow striping on them. Her bobbed hair, dyed a crisp black, was perfectly arranged, and she’d put on lipstick.

      Camden hung her jacket on the peg in the mudroom, slipped the muddy boots off her feet and smoothed her hands over her long brown hair.

      “Couldn’t stay away any longer.” Calvin put his arms around his wife’s waist, pulling her back against his chest and nipping her earlobe with his teeth. Bonita slapped at his hand and blushed as a grin spread over her face. “Camden wants us to hit Tulsa for a dog show in a week.”

      “Tulsa in the middle of the holiday shopping season?” Bonita shook her head. “I’m going into town this afternoon. Groceries. And then I need to stop in at the boutique. They’re holding a pair of earrings for me. Want to come along?” Bonita looked pointedly at Camden. “I don’t know what you could need after the five