Binding Ties
By Marnie L. Pehrson
Modern Romance
View the Soundtrack Songs for this Release!

Felicity Clausen, an ambitious young woman with a promising career, suddenly finds herself the owner of a cattle farm. Thrown into farm life, Felicity must learn to raise cattle, fix tractors, harvest corn and mend fences. 
    The neighbor assigned to teach her is the handsome Hank Tucker, an easy-going, ambitionless man whom Felicity perceives as going nowhere. Yet, as she comes to know her tutor, Felicity learns there's more to the man than she realized. In fact, Felicity's startling discoveries about Hank completely alter her priorities, her understanding of what brings joy in life, and her plans for the future.

Chapter 1  

Felicity rode faster and faster, letting the wind whip through her blonde hair, relishing the sound of hoof beats beneath her as the palomino bolted across the fields. There was nothing like riding across the countryside, nothing to compare with the exhilarating sense of liberation. Freedom lived in the scent of the horse and the caress of the wind against her cheeks. It connected her to the past, linking her to her ancestors who farmed the land.

Atop Sunset the stress of modern life remained behind her. She could get lost in the past – simpler days when business pressures and information overload did not exist.

In these early morning hours before the sun sizzled into a humid afternoon, there lay no pressures for advancement, no customers calling with complaints, and no scrambling to make everyone happy. There was only the cool morning mist, the wind, and the rhythm of the horse’s powerful legs as he galloped across her grandfather’s farm. Her family had owned it since the 1800’s, passing it down from one generation to the next. In this place she felt grounded somehow – connected to the part of the earth that never changes whether one lives in the rural 1800’s or the technological present. Somehow, in these moments she instinctively knew she breathed the same air, drank the same water, and galloped across the same terrain her ancestors did. It gave her a sense of peace – peace she couldn’t find anywhere else.

As the sun rose higher, so came the suffocating heat, and Felicity knew she needed to head back to the barn. It wouldn’t be long before the temperature climbed into the 90’s. She eased Sunset to an easy trot, reached for the bottle of water hanging at her hip and took a swig. The perspiration already beaded on her back.

Turning back toward the house, she galloped across the fields, passing Hank Tucker who hunkered down, mending a broken fence. He gave her a nod, flashed a boyish grin and raked his arm across his forehead to keep the perspiration from drizzling into his brown eyes.

“Mornin’,” he greeted, his bass voice appropriate for the rural setting.

“Morning,” she replied with a wave, then continued on, trying not to think about how handsome he was. Her grandfather harbored a not-so-secret hope that she would develop some fondness for his next-door-neighbor, but Felicity had no such intentions. She was a woman going places. Hank was going nowhere. He belonged in the past where cattle farming made sense. It wasn’t logical in today’s economy, and in Felicity’s opinion, Hank was just asking for financial ruin.

Even though she could appreciate the past and gain some sense of peace in riding across a piece of it, Felicity was too practical to bind herself down to someone who couldn’t see that farming was a dying enterprise.  A person might visit the past in her imagination, but trying to live in it was sheer foolishness.

Her thoughts went back to a conversation she’d had with Hank on her grandfather’s front porch. They were sitting there rocking, listening to crickets on an April evening. Hank and her grandfather were talking business, and Felicity, ever the businesswoman, couldn’t resist adding her two cents. She told Hank that he should give up his romantic notions and step into the modern world. The future was about technology, not farming.

Hank only winked at her then told her grandfather in his deep easy voice, “Evidently your granddaughter has experienced very little romance. Otherwise she wouldn’t be comparing it to cow patties and sizzling branding irons.”

Her grandfather broke into hearty laughter – laughter that broke the rhythmic song of bullfrog groans and cricket chirps.

Felicity had tried to defend herself, saying she meant the other meaning of the word romantic, as in impractical, unrealistic and wild-eyed dreaming, but it was too late, Hank had gotten the better of her. Even now in thinking of his comment, Felicity’s face blushed. Fortunately, it hadn’t been light enough that evening for Hank to see his remarks had hit a nerve.

Felicity shook away the memory and dismounted. Leading Sunset into the barn, she began to remove his saddle when she spotted her grandfather coming across the lawn in her direction. Just the sight of him made her smile. He still got around well for a man in his 80’s who’d been alone for nearly fifteen years. Of course, anyone who worked outside the way he did had to be in better shape than most.

She chuckled to herself as she watched him pick up a rock and toss it into a pile. Grandpa Luke was always working. When she’d arrived the prior evening, he’d been gathering rocks. He planned to repair the wall around her grandmother’s flowerbed. He still kept it up after all these years, as if she might arrive one day to enjoy it.

As he stepped into the barn Felicity waved at him, “I will never understand how you can tolerate working in this heat with those long sleeves!”

“Keeps the sun off,” he replied, removed his straw hat from his head, and propped it on a post.

“That’s why they invented sunscreen,” she teased.

“Ah, I never remember that stuff,” he grumbled, coming to help her with the saddle. Together they hung it up, and she reached for a towel to rub down the horse. As she did so, Grandpa Luke patted Sunset’s neck.

“He’s a good ‘un,” he commented with pride.

“He is,” she agreed.

“You’ll have to take good care of ‘im when I’m gone,” his serious eyes met hers and she felt uneasy, as if he were trying to tell her something.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she brushed aside his comment.

“All of us go home someday,” he rubbed his aged hand across the horse’s back.

Felicity stopped drying the horse and met her Grandfather’s blue eyes with her own, “Are you trying to tell me something, Grandpa? Are you feeling all right?”

He shrugged his lanky shoulders, “I’m just fine.” He patted his stomach, “Fit as a fiddle.”

“Good, ‘cause you were scaring me there for a minute,” Felicity put her hand on her grandfather’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze.

He placed his hand over hers, “No need to be scared, sugar. It’s all part of life. Besides, I’m fine. I’ll be around so long you’ll be sick o’ me.”

The twinkle returned to his eyes, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t imagine life without him. She was closer to him than she was to her own parents. Her father was a successful stockbroker and her mother a legal secretary. Their busy schedules afforded little time for visiting Grandpa Luke. Then again, as busy as Felicity was, she still made time. The truth was her father had escaped the rural life long ago and had no desire to return to it.

Grandpa always said the love for the land had skipped a generation and had fallen upon Felicity – even though she tried hard not to admit it. He said it was in her blood whether she liked it or not.

After they’d turned Sunset out to pasture, Felicity put her hand on her grandfather’s shoulder, “So, what are we working on today?”

“How about Grandma’s flowerbed? I’d like to get the rocks laid and maybe you could plant the marigolds.”

“That sounds like fun,” she agreed.

Felicity gathered the gardening tools and the marigolds while Grandpa Luke started placing rocks.

“How’s your Web site going?” he asked as he hunkered down, adjusting a rock’s location.

“It’s really taking off,” she nodded with a smile, then knelt in front of the flowerbed.

“When can you quit your day job and just focus on it?”

“Oh, I don’t trust it completely for that yet,” she shook her head as she plunged her spade into the dirt.

“Are you making as much from it as you are working at the insurance company?”

“A little more some months – a little less others,” she let her head tilt side-to-side in a waffling motion.

“You should quit your job and come out here to live. Then you could get rid of that apartment in Chattanooga and just work from here,” he suggested with excitement. “I’d love to have you.”

Felicity offered him an obligatory smile . . . one of her humoring grins, but did not comment. As she dug holes in the dirt for the marigolds, she thought about what he’d suggested. She had no intention of leaving a steady job with benefits at this stage of her life. Besides, she was building her business up in preparation for the time she married and wanted to stay home to raise a family. If she hid out at Grandpa’s working online, she’d never meet anyone decent.

The only social event in Chickamauga , Georgia was “Down Home Days,” and that was hardly the place to find a quality husband. She’d thought a lot about the type of man she wanted to marry. What she wanted probably didn’t even exist – the perfect blend of her father’s ambitious, enterprising nature with Grandpa’s family-man loyalty. While she might find a faithful man in Chickamauga , she’d be hard-pressed to find an enterprising one. The last thing she needed was to get trapped here.

“Oh,” Grandpa interrupted her thoughts. “I invited Hank over for lunch.”

Felicity’s eyes widened, feeling as if Grandpa had been reading her mind. He was always trying to fix her up with Hank, but Hank didn’t seem any more interested in her than she did in him.

“I told him you’d fry some okra the way he likes it,” Grandpa continued.

“Okay,” she nodded and put a marigold into a hole and raked the earth around it.

“After you’re finished with those flowers, would you mind pickin’ a mess?” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder indicating the direction of the garden.

“Sure,” she grinned, happy to help in the garden. Harvesting the vegetables was always her favorite part of the endeavor, weeding being her least.

After she finished planting, Felicity went inside the house for a basket. She poured two tall glasses of ice water, drank one herself and took the other out to Grandpa. He thanked her, and she set out for the garden. Soon her basket brimmed with fresh tomatoes, corn, okra, zucchini, green beans and yellow squash. It was a wonderful feeling to pull everything for a meal from one’s own garden. Granted, it wasn’t technically her garden, but it felt like hers since she’d helped Grandpa plant and weed it on the weekends.

She took the produce inside and found Grandpa sitting on his recliner sipping a glass of water.

“You doing all right?” she asked, thinking it a little unlike him to sit down this early in the day.

“Just got a little overheated,” he explained.

“It’s a good idea to pace yourself,” she agreed and set the basket of vegetables on the kitchen counter by the sink.

“Come over here and sit a spell,” he motioned toward the couch.

“After I wash these vegetables.” She glanced at him, “When did you tell Hank to come over?”

“Around noon ,” he replied and reached toward the end table for his crossword puzzle and pencil.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 10:20 . She turned on the faucet and as she rinsed off the vegetables she thought of Hank, remembering the last time she’d cooked lunch for him and Grandpa. Hank’s favorite meal consisted of pinto beans, cornbread, coleslaw, fried okra, and creamed corn, with tomato slices on the side. It was Grandpa’s favorite meal as well.

She went to the refrigerator to double check that there was cabbage. Finding some there, she pulled it out and set it on the counter. She’d make that meal today – for Grandpa of course. It wasn’t for Hank. In fact, it was only logical to cook the vegetables from the garden. She and Grandpa enjoyed this traditional lunch all the time. She told herself that she’d be making it today even if Hank wasn’t coming.

Felicity never did sit down and relax with Grandpa. Instead, she prepared the food.  Time passed swiftly. When she heard rapping at the kitchen door, her heart gave a little leap, accelerating not from being startled, but from the handsome man smiling back at her through the glass.

Copyright 2008, Marnie L. Pehrson. All Rights Reserved.