Huckleberry Spring Read Free

you want me? ” Emma said. The girl who’d accidentally burned down Zimmerman’s chicken coop last year? The girl their grandson found so unworthy?
    “I won’t settle for anyone else.”
    Anna’s adamant response took Emma aback. What could Anna possibly see of value in Emma’s help? Anna certainly didn’t act as if she felt any ill will toward her grandson’s ex-fiancée. Had she forgotten about the chicken coop?
    Emma pursed her lips. If Anna didn’t object to Emma’s tending pumpkins on Huckleberry Hill, then Emma would do her best to help. Perhaps Ben’s family would not think so badly of her if Ben’s mammi accepted her with open arms. “Okay,” Emma said. “I’ll do my best.”
    Anna all but burst with laughter. “That is wonderful gute. Felty will feel so much better knowing you are watching out for our pumpkin.”
    As long as the chickens didn’t protest. Every hen in the county was probably terrified of Emma Nelson, even if Anna wasn’t. No doubt Emma had a dangerous reputation among the chickens.
    She took a deep breath. “I can come three days a week to tend the pumpkin, and maybe I should plant some other vegetables for you too, so you’ll have plenty for canning come autumn.”
    Anna’s eyes strayed to the clock once again. “I love peas and beans.”
    “Okay. And some cucumbers?”
    “I love dill pickles,” Anna said, gushing like a newly drilled well.
    Emma couldn’t help but crack a smile. Anna’s enthusiasm rubbed off on everybody who came within ten feet. “I will go to the market and buy special pumpkin seeds and bring them back tomorrow so you can plant one in your pot.”
    Anna’s face lit up. “Tomorrow? That would be better than my wildest dreams.”
    Emma giggled. Sometimes the enthusiasm went a little overboard.
    A firm knock at the door caught their attention. Anna glided across the room and opened it.
    Emma’s throat constricted, rendering her unable to breathe while her heart hammered against her chest, making it all the more likely that she would suffocate.
    Ben Helmuth, looking as handsome and formidable as ever, stood on Anna’s doorstep with a suitcase in one hand and his straw hat in the other. His tousled golden hair framed his face like a halo, and the cleft of his chin made his jaw look as if it were chiseled out of stone.
    Their eyes locked, and Emma found it impossible to look away. A mixture of utter astonishment and undiluted pain flashed across his face. He was as shocked to see her as she was to see him. What was he doing here?
    “Emma,” he said, so softly it felt like a caress. She wanted to melt at the sound of that low, beautiful voice, even though he spoke as if it were torture to say her name.
    How she managed to talk, she would never know. “I . . . Anna . . . I’ve got to go look at your dirt.” Her sentence made little sense, but Emma wasn’t about to hang around to explain herself. Keeping her head down, she snatched her sweater from the hook and practically ran out the door, trying to ignore Ben completely even as she stumbled over his foot when she rushed past him. She couldn’t have helped it, even though he tried to step out of her way. He was so tall and broad that he left little room for her to pass.
    Halfway to Anna’s vegetable patch, she heard Anna call out cheerfully, “After you look at my dirt, you must stay for supper.”
    Stay for supper? If Anna thought for one minute that Emma would set foot in that house while Ben was there, she truly didn’t understand anything.
    Why, oh why had she ever agreed to come today? Horrible, horrible mistake.
    A groan tore from her lips as she tromped to the garden, scattering Felty’s chickens in her wake. Ben Helmuth was back. She might never feel happy again.
     
     
    Ben stood frozen in Mammi’s doorway while the great room spun around and around him as if he sat on a merry-go-round. At the barn raising seven years ago, he’d cracked his thumb so hard with the hammer that he’d