Christmas In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

Camden gave Jake a rub behind his ear and tossed a treat into the air. The dog snapped it between his jaws, swallowing it whole.

      “I might want to train dogs,” she said, and although the words sounded weak, saying them aloud made her stand a little straighter. As if saying them had woken up something deep inside Camden. The way walking away from Grant had woken something else. “I’d at least like the chance to try.”

      Calvin nodded. “We haven’t had sheep or goats around here for more than three years. Other than the cows Levi boards on the north side of the property, Jake and his buddies are the only livestock around.”

      The two then started toward the farmhouse where Camden had spent two of the best summers of her life. Before her mother married Darren Carlson, a rich lawyer from Kansas City. After that, visits to her father’s family farm stopped abruptly. Her grandparents came to Darren’s Mission Hills mansion a few times for Christmas dinners or the odd birthday, but she’d never been allowed to come back here after her father was killed in a drunk-driving accident.

      When she called her mother Thanksgiving morning to tell her she would not be coming back to Kansas City for a while and that she wasn’t marrying that two-timing weasel, Grant, Elizabeth Carlson had hung up the phone. She hadn’t called back. Hadn’t texted. She probably expected Camden to snap out of it and show up for their traditional Black Friday shopping marathon.

      Elizabeth would be shocked to see Camden in knee-high rain boots, nondesigner jeans and a hoodie instead of the high heels, designer jeans and cashmere sweaters she’d worn in Kansas City. Camden chuckled.

      She’d never been more comfortable than the past two days, and that included wearing the baggy sweat suit she’d borrowed from Bonita on Thanksgiving afternoon to go into town to get a few items of clothing from her old friend, Julia’s, store. Julia bought into Shanna’s boutique earlier in the fall, and had plans to run a destination wedding business here eventually. She’d taken the polish and poise she’d learned from pageants and turned them into something real.

      Camden wanted, desperately wanted, to turn her life into something real.

      The rain boots, a deep navy, the only pair Julia had in stock, rustled through fallen leaves. She had three more pairs coming, bought online just the night before—one with butterflies, another with little umbrellas, and a third with unicorns—and bought them all, along with several pairs of jeans, flannel shirts, tees, and a few tunics. It felt good to buy clothes that struck her as cute, that she liked, rather than clothes designed to impress others.

      Although she wouldn’t mind impressing a certain former football player. And that was a road she didn’t need to start traveling down. The little hairs on her arms stood up and her tummy did a flip-flop. No, not going there. She’d just walked out on an engagement only a couple of days ago. Jumping into something with Levi Walters just because he made every last inch of her stand up and take notice was dumb. Worse than dumb—it would likely blow up the very life she wanted to build in Slippery Rock.

      She needed to figure out who she was, without her mother’s input and without an ill-thought-out relationship distracting her.

      “Granddad?”

      Calvin tilted his head and watched her but didn’t say anything. It was his familiar way. He had been more talkative when she was a kid—at least that was how she remembered it. Now, he almost seemed like a functional mute, only speaking when he’d measured each and every word.

      “I’d like to train Six on my own, if that’s okay with you.” This was step one in the plan she’d been working on for roughly five minutes. A plan that seemed solid, despite its short life. She hadn’t been here forty-eight hours, but even she could see the dog school was barely hanging on.

      “Okay. He’s not big enough to be a working dog, not even for smaller livestock.”

      “I’d like to train her for showing, not real-world herding,” she added. Six was the youngest dog in what was left of Calvin’s stable. The small dog was still a puppy, really. Calvin had found it on the side of the road last summer, and brought it to the farm. He was a smart little thing, and in the five minutes it took to get his food and drink into the run, she’d seen his eagerness to learn. She didn’t care that she’d only met the dog, had only been back in Slippery Rock, for a little over a day.

      The “for showing” bit got a raised eyebrow from her grandfather. “I trained stock dogs for working conditions. Not show rings,” he said.

      She’d only planned to be here a day or so, and then had vague thoughts about going back to Kansas City to figure out what she would do with the rest of her life. Running the pageant business with her mother held no appeal, but there had to be something else she could do back in the city.

      But the rickety dog runs used to be solid. The handful of dogs remaining used to have dozens of friends, and the pastures around the farmhouse used to hold sheep and goats and a few ducks, too.

      Then, there was the silly, slobbering Six. The little puppy was a runt and had likely been dumped on the side of the road by a breeder who couldn’t sell him. But Six was all border collie—eager to learn, eager to please and eager to do. Camden fell in love with the little ball of fur that licked her face every time she picked him up. And she picked him up too often, she knew. Granddad treated his dogs well, but he treated them like workers. They received praise for a good job, treats, plenty of food and water. When the day was over, though, the dogs went into their runs for the night.

      When the other dogs piled on one another, Six was left outside the group. Camden felt a camaraderie with the little dog. She’d felt left out of so many things in her life—from decisions about pageant dresses to her actual college degree program. Before running away from the wedding, the only decision she’d made in her life was to stop pageanting after losing the national crown. And even then, she’d fallen right in line with her mother’s plan to open a pageant coaching studio in the city.

      Now she was here, and she was remembering how much fun she’d had with her grandfather’s dogs and the dogs at the trainer’s in Kansas City. This was something she could do, something that held value. Something that would keep her near her grandparents. After only a couple of days with them, Camden was already dreading leaving them again.

      Six clambered up to her when they stopped at the barn. When the older dogs went inside, Six stayed, looking up at Camden with excitement vibrating through his little body. She took the green tennis ball from her pocket and tossed it. Six took off at a run to chase it down. The three other dogs with them this morning watched Granddad for an opening, but he closed the kennel door, and they lost interest.

      “Six is too little for real stock work,” Granddad said. “He’d make a better pet than a working cow or sheep dog.”

      Six caught up with the ball and turned around, the neon green of the covering showing between his teeth. He dropped it at her feet and waited. Camden bent, tossed the ball again and watched the puppy chase after it. Granddad had stopped to watch, too. One of the dogs in the run whined. He shot the dog a look. It stopped.

      “I was thinking, if it went well, I could train a few others for showing. You know, stock-dog showing is popular at fairs and things. People who don’t have ranches or farms can be just as passionate about the training. About the sport of it.” Camden winced. Comparing her grandfather’s work to a sport was probably not the best wording. Other than baseball, she didn’t think he was interested in any sport.

      “The sport of it, huh?” he said after a long moment.

      “If it goes well, we could maybe build the dog school back up. It would create another way to make money for the farm. More people would bring their dogs to you. You might even have more outlets for runts like Six.” And she would have something to do. Something that was hers.

      Something she could be proud of doing—a kind of fulfillment she never found while competing in pageants and then training contestants.

      The beauty queen thing was never something Camden wanted—that was always her mother’s dream. And the irony of her walking