A Single Dad in Amish Country
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Patricia Johns
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
JOE CARTER HOISTED a bag of soil off the back of his pickup truck and carried it over to the garden plot in front of Butternut Bed and Breakfast. It was a popular little place in the Amish community of Danke, Pennsylvania. He dropped the bag of soil onto the grass and glanced over at his four-year-old daughter, who was crouching nearby, a few blond curls falling free from her ponytail to dangle in front of her eyes.
“What do you have there, Lottie?” he asked.
“A bug.” She didn’t look up, but she did poke at something with the wing of her die-cast metal airplane.
Joe smiled to himself and headed back over to grab the last bag of soil. He’d been hired by Belinda Wickey, the Amish owner of this bed-and-breakfast, to take care of the gardens and the lawn, since she was too old now to do it herself. He was glad to get the contract—he’d done this job for her before, and she always offered fresh baking as part of the deal.
Lottie had to come to work with Joe for the next week since her day care was temporarily closed, and it was rather nice to have his daughter around while he worked...so far. Eventually, she’d get bored, and then he’d be in trouble. But he was banking on a great big Amish yard being wildly entertaining.
This being the last day of May, Joe was putting the flowers into their beds. He’d brought a wide array of petunias, zinnias and some brown-eyed Susans for around the edge of the house.
“Hello!” Lottie called, and he looked up to see his daughter trotting over to a woman who’d emerged from the front door of the two-story house. She had on a white sundress and a pair of strappy leather sandals, and her sun-bleached blond hair tumbled in tousled waves around her shoulders. She looked to be about his age—late thirties.
“Hello,” the woman said.
“I’m not in day care,” Lottie announced. “Do you want to see my plane?”
“Sure, I’ll see your plane.” She smiled and held her hand out for it. Lottie handed it over and planted her little hands on her hips.
“Do you want to know why I’m not in day care?” Lottie asked.
“Lottie!” Joe called out in warning.
“It’s because we all got lice,” Lottie went on, ignoring him. “Somebody got it first and spread it all around to the whole class. And there was lice everywhere! Somebody did it.”
“Oh, my.” The woman didn’t look shocked or horrified, which was the response that would please Lottie most, and Joe could only be thankful for that.
“The somebody in that story isn’t my daughter,” Joe called.
A smile split over the woman’s face. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“No, it was my friend Julie,” Lottie went on. “She got lice from her big brother, who goes to big-kid school, and then she brought it to day care, and those bugs are everywhere! They’re in the toy bin, and in the curtains, and the carpet... Our teachers had to shut the whole place down!”
“For a few days,” Joe said, rolling his eyes. “This isn’t permanent.”
“But Daddy says you can’t just say who started it because then nobody would want to play with them, and that would be mean. Daddy says it wasn’t Julie’s fault she had lice,” Lottie said.
Joe grimaced. “This is a very exciting thing in her world.”
“I can tell.” The woman chuckled.
“And my daddy had to comb my hair very carefully with a tiny comb, and he had to wash all my clothes, and he threw my shoes in the garbage and got me new ones. See?”
She poked a foot out to be inspected.
“Thorough.” The woman looked up and met Joe’s gaze with an amused look of her own. “I get it. My daughter starts college in the fall, but we went through all of this, too.”
She looked too young for a college-age daughter, but a lot of people started their families a whole lot sooner than he had.
“So I get to come to work with my daddy!” Lottie exclaimed with a proud smile.
“Lucky you,” the woman said to Lottie.
Joe brushed some soil off his gloves and ambled over to where the woman stood on the step. The broad veranda was set up for comfort—there was a swing with cushions on it, and a little table arranged with some unopened cans of pop.
“My name’s Lottie,” his daughter said. “And I was named after my grandma.”
“That’s a lovely name,” the woman replied.
“What’s your name?” Lottie asked.
“I’m Hazel Dobbs.”
“Hazel Dobbs...” Lottie said thoughtfully. “If you went to my day care, I’d just call you Dobby. I like that. He’s an elf.”
“She’s Hogwarts waiting to happen,” Joe said with a laugh. “I’m Joe Carter—Carter Landscaping.”
“Hazel.” She held out her hand, and he pulled off a glove and shook it. She didn’t say what she did, but if she was here at the bed-and-breakfast, she was likely on vacation. She looked down at the airplane in her hand. “Do you know what kind of plane this is, Lottie?”
Lottie shook her head.
“It’s a Boeing seven fifty-seven,” she said, handing the toy back to Lottie. “That’s a very big plane for carrying passengers.”
“Oh... It’s a what?” Lottie frowned, fixing her gaze on Hazel’s face.
“Boe-ing...seven fifty-seven,” Hazel said slowly.
“Boeing...” Lottie nodded. “How’d you know that?”
“I’m a pilot,” Hazel replied.
Joe looked at her in surprise. “Really?” he asked.
“And I’m this close to being employed, too.” She held up her thumb and index finger spread about half an inch apart and grinned.
“That’s pretty neat,” Joe said. “Where are you going to work?”
“I’ve been hired by a Pennsylvania regional airline. I start in two weeks. This is my chance to relax before the pressure starts.”
He noticed a couple of official-looking books behind her on the swing. The hefty-looking one on top was called American Aviation Protocols: Updated Edition.
“She flies planes, Lottie,” Joe explained.
“You’re a plane driver!” Lottie exclaimed. “Really and truly?”
“Yep.” Hazel laughed. “You like planes, do you?”
“I love planes!” Lottie said. “My favorite show is Miley and Buster’s Airport, and when I grow up, I’m going to be a plane driver, too!”
The screen door opened, and Belinda came out onto the porch. She had a little wicker basket in one hand, and she passed it to Lottie.
“Lottie, dear, I need you to look around the yard and gather all the little purple things you can find,” Belinda said.
“Little and purple?” Lottie knew this game already from earlier.
“Little and purple,” Belinda said. “Can you do it?”
“I can do it!”
Lottie took off with the basket, and Joe called after her, “Not in the garden, though, Lottie!”
“Oh, it’s not a problem. Gardens are for enjoying for little people, too,” Belinda said with a wave of her hand.
“Maybe for Amish kids,” Joe said with a laugh. Lottie had been raised in a day care, and she wasn’t overflowing with the common sense that farm kids had. Lottie was an imaginative chatterbox who’d demolish an entire garden for one purple bloom.
Joe headed back to the garden plot and got to work spreading a nice thick layer of topsoil. He used a hand cultivator to mix it into the dirt below. Every once in a while, he’d glance up to see where his daughter was searching for her small purple treasures, and his gaze would pass that front porch.
Hazel had settled onto the swing with a can of pop and that thick book. The swing creaked softly, and he found his gaze drawn back to the slim woman. She had a quiet, sure way about her, and he couldn’t help but notice that tumble of thick blond waves... She was gorgeous...and he was grubby today. But that wasn’t what was on his mind. She’d mentioned having a college-age daughter—she had parenting experience that he didn’t have.
How weird would it be to ask her a few questions?
Joe had been raising Lottie alone since her birth, and while he was determined to do right by his daughter, he knew he’d come up against a lot of things he wouldn’t know how to handle. And girls were a different world. What he needed was some tried-and-true advice from someone who knew.
“Daddy!” Lottie called. “Did you know there’s a donkey over there?”
“Yeah, I know,” Joe said. “If you’re really good, maybe Miss Belinda will let you feed him a carrot later.”
“Can I feed him now?” Lottie asked.
“No!”
“Why not?”
“It’s not safe, Lottie,” he replied.
“Will he bite my hand off?” Lottie hollered back.
“Yes. Definitely. That’s why you have to wait.”
“Okay!”
Joe heard a stifled laugh from the porch and looked over to see Hazel had put her book down onto her lap.
“That’s a fun age,” she said.
“Yeah...a tiring one, too.”
“This is the sweet spot. After this is school, and separation anxiety, and emails from the teacher...”
“Your daughter was a handful, was she?” he asked.
“No more than any kid,” she replied. “But there’s always something. Is Lottie an only child?”
“Yep.”
Hazel just nodded.
“I’ve heard about only children needing extra socializing and stuff.” He headed over to the porch again. She’d brought it up, hadn’t she? “Do you just have the one daughter?”
“Yes. Madison,” Hazel replied. “And don’t listen to what they tell you. Kids learn from their experiences. Some kids experience brothers and sisters, and other kids experience a whole lot more adult interaction. They all grow up. Madison is great. She’s smart, caring, a superhard worker... I couldn’t be prouder.”
“Any advice for this age?” He leaned against the railing.
“You seem like you’re doing just fine.”
“Anything coming up soon I should be keeping an eye out for?”
“A thousand things.” She chuckled. “But you’ll tackle them all one at a time and figure them out.”
“I was hoping for something more concrete.”
She shrugged. “Sorry. Just enjoy this age. I think that’s the secret, looking back on it. Enjoy her being little and all the funny things she says. Because soon enough she’ll be fourteen and she’ll know absolutely everything.”
Joe laughed. “Yeah, I guess, right? So how long are you in Danke for?”
“A little over a week. I arrived from Pittsburgh today.” She looked down at the book on her lap, then closed it. “My daughter got on the plane for England yesterday. She’s meeting her father’s family for the first time.”
“Wow... How tough is that for you?”
“Harder than I thought,” she said. “I’m distracting myself with work. Maddie wouldn’t approve, but she isn’t here to roll her eyes at me, either.”
He chuckled. “I can sympathize—with missing her, I mean. My daughter hasn’t reached the eye-rolling stage yet.”
“That comes faster than you think.” Her blue eyes sparkled with humor, then her smile faded. “After this trip, she’s going to college. So this is it. I’ve got an empty nest.”
“And a great kid,” he said.
“Yes, and a really great daughter.” She smiled. “I’m not saying this stage is easy, but I’ve been looking forward to it, too. After making being a mom my top priority for nineteen years, it’s my turn now.”
“What’ll you do?” he asked, but his gaze slid down to that book on her lap.
“I’m taking the job of my dreams.” A smile touched her lips. “And for the next week, I’m reviewing all sorts of protocols and some airplane specs of the machine I’ll be flying. I was supposed to relax for a week, but I’m just... I’m not used to all this quiet and solitude anymore.”
“Well, with us around, I’m not sure you’ll get the quiet.”
She chuckled. “My point is, enjoy this. It passes so much faster than you think it will. And when you have your turn to live your life and do whatever you want to again...you’ll miss her a lot.”
Joe couldn’t imagine a time when Lottie would be that grown up. It felt like this little-kid stage would last forever, and he just felt like a wild success when he managed to lie on the couch and catch a catnap on the weekend while Lottie watched TV. But she was right. Lottie would grow up.
“Sage advice,” he said.
“Thank you. It was hard-won.” She smiled again.
“If you think of any parenting hacks for this age, let me know,” he said with a laugh. “You know, like how to get her to tell fewer embarrassing stories to strangers, that kind of thing.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“I’m still looking.” He grinned. “I’d better get back to work.”
Joe headed back to the garden and picked up his hand cultivator. Some guys hated it when strangers gave advice, but he lapped it up. He didn’t have a wife to figure things out with, and while he wouldn’t take every piece of advice, there was always a nugget in there somewhere that worked wonders with Lottie.
And one of these days, someone would tell him the secret to getting his daughter to stop telling overly revealing stories. He was sure of it.
*
HAZEL WATCHED THE tall man’s forearms flex as he worked the soil, then she sighed and looked back down at her book. He was a good-looking guy, with dark brown hair that shone just a little bit auburn in the sunlight, and dark eyes. Traditionally handsome—that’s how she’d describe him to Madison later on. Imagining this vacation had been a whole lot different than the reality of actually slowing down. And she missed Maddie something fierce. Somehow knowing that there was a whole ocean between them made this trip harder.
And maybe it was also knowing that when Maddie came back, she was heading straight to college. Maddie was moving into her adult years...and at thirty-eight, Hazel was ready to finally do the stuff she’d missed out on as a single mom for the last nineteen years.
Hazel’s parents, a lawyer and a dentist, had raised her for “better things,” and they’d been deeply disappointed when she had ended up pregnant at eighteen. Almost as old as Maddie was now, and the thought of her daughter stopping to have a baby at this age was a little heartbreaking for her, too. Maddie deserved some freedom, and a chance to build her life on her own terms. But Hazel was lucky—she had supportive parents who’d helped pay for both her private and commercial pilot’s licenses, and those didn’t come cheap. And they’d been enthusiastic grandparents who’d taken great joy in spoiling Maddie rotten whenever they got the chance. Maddie might not have had her dad in her daily life, but she hadn’t suffered like some kids did. Hazel got to fly, and Maddie was going to college—her parents had made sure of it.
Hazel could hear the chatter of the little girl behind her, a running commentary of what she was doing that suddenly changed tone from searching for her treasures to playing with her plane. Then she was chattering about some art at day care—at least that’s what it sounded like.
“And you put your hand in the paint, and put it on the paper,” Lottie said. “And then it will go on the wall, and we can go see it!” There was a pause. “Daddy! Daddy!”
“Yes, Lottie?”
“We’re making a handprint art to go on the wall and everyone can walk past and see it!” she hollered.
“That’s great, Lottie.”
“Will we go see it on the wall?”
“Sure thing.”
Hazel couldn’t help but smile. Back when Maddie was little, she hadn’t had any interest in airplanes. She’d been polite about it, but she’d been much more interested in her plastic ponies. Hazel could still remember trying to explain it to Maddie when she got her private pilot’s license.
“Your mom flies planes, Maddie. Your mom can fly a plane all by herself! That’s a big deal, you know. I bet you don’t know anyone else whose mom can do that, do you?”
Maddie had just shrugged. “Nope. That’s very nice, Mommy. Very nice. You want to smell my scented marker?”
Hazel read the next few pages of her book, murmuring aloud to herself as she went over the pertinent information, and she looked up when Lottie came up the steps and leaned against the railing, looking at her. Her hands were dirty now, and there was a streak of soil down the front of her T-shirt.
“What are you doing?” Lottie asked.
“I’m reading.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to study so I don’t make a mistake.”
“Oh.” The little girl looked down at her airplane.
Maybe that had been a little too heavy for a child that age. Preschoolers didn’t need to know that mistakes could cost lives during a takeoff and landing.
“Where did you get that airplane?” Hazel asked.
“Santa gave it to me.”
“You must have been very good,” Hazel said with a smile.
“Oh, yes. I’m always good. But I didn’t ask Santa for an airplane. I asked him to find me my mommy.”
Lottie looked down at her toy, her lips pursed in a thoughtful little pout. Hazel’s heart gave a squeeze. What could she say?
“Santa specializes in toys,” Hazel said after a beat of silence. “He does his best, but toys are really where he shines.”
“I know...” Lottie came up to the swing and looked up hopefully. “Can I sit on here, too?”
Hazel moved over and Lottie climbed up. Then Hazel started them gently swinging again. Lottie leaned back and heaved a sigh.
“My mommy left when I was a little baby,” she said. “She went away, and she never came back.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Hazel said.
“Yeah... My daddy says it’s okay and that we’re just fine the two of us, but my friends have mommies.”
“Every family looks different,” Hazel said.
She’d told Maddie something similar when she was young. They’d sort out life, just the two of them. There was nothing to worry about... But Maddie had missed having her dad around more often, and Hazel knew it. But what could Hazel do? She couldn’t wave a wand and give her daughter that fairy-tale family. So she’d said exactly what Joe had told Lottie—that they’d be just fine.
“When I grow up, I’m going to be an airplane driver, and I’m going to find my mommy,” Lottie said. “I’ll look out the windows until I spot her. She might have gotten lost, or something. I think she’d be very happy to see me. I think she must miss me by now, don’t you think? Don’t you think she misses me?”
What could Hazel say to this little girl? She knew nothing about the situation. Kids often got an idea about what had happened that was filled in with their own guesses. It sounded like Lottie had come to the conclusion that her mother had just wandered off and gotten lost. And Hazel didn’t dare say the wrong thing.
“Oh, Lottie...” she said softly.
“Charlotte!” Joe called. Hazel felt a wave of relief.
Lottie straightened, and her expression turned alert. “What, Daddy?” she hollered.
“There you are.” Joe came over to the porch, the cultivator tool over one shoulder. He cast Hazel an apologetic look. “Sorry about that.” Then he hooked a finger at his daughter. “Come on, you. This lady wants to read her book on the porch, and you need to let her do that. We’re here to work, not bug Miss Belinda’s guests.”
“You can call me Hazel,” she said with a small smile.
“Sorry. Hazel.” Joe shot her a boyish smile, and the way his dark gaze caught hers for just a moment made her breath catch. Wow... He was charming when he put in some effort, wasn’t he? She forced herself to look down at her book again, the information swimming across the page. But she wasn’t here to flirt with landscapers.
Belinda pushed open the screen door and looked out at them. She was an older woman, portly, and neatly dressed in a pink Amish cape dress. Her hair was white, and her kapp was a shade whiter than her hair. She wore a pair of rimless glasses that made her blue eyes sparkle.
“Did you find your purple treasures?” Belinda asked, leaning against the railing.
“Let me get my basket!” Lottie ran off around the house and returned breathless a moment later. “I only found one purple thing.”
“What is it?” Belinda asked.
“A flower.”
“How wonderful,” Belinda said thoughtfully. “I know of another purple thing you might like. It’s a thing with purple in the center of it. I have doughnuts.”
“Doughnuts?” Lottie asked softly, then her eyes brightened. “What’s in the middle that’s purple?”
“Blackberry jam,” Belinda said. “Why don’t you come inside and have one, Lottie? Is that okay with your daet?”
Lottie looked over at Joe. “Can I, Daddy?”
“Sure,” Joe said. “Go on inside.”
Lottie followed Belinda into the house, her clattering footsteps echoing.
“Save one for me!” Joe called after her, and he smiled, shaking his head. “It’s harder than I thought to get anything done with her here, but what can you do, right? I don’t think any timing would be great for the day care to shut down for a week, so it might as well be in the summer. This would be a whole lot harder if I was plowing snow.”
“She really loves planes, doesn’t she?” Hazel asked.
“She really does.”
Hazel eyed the man for a moment. Was she overstepping if she told him what his daughter had said? It wasn’t the easy thing to do, but it was probably the right thing.
“She told me that she wants to use a plane to look for her mom.” Hazel winced. “She said she thinks she’s lost and misses her. I’m only telling you because I’m a parent, too, and I thought you might want to know.”
“She said that?” Joe pressed his lips together, his gaze moving toward the house.
“Yeah.”
“Shoot...” He sighed.
And now he might feel like he’d failed or messed something up. She knew that feeling all too well.
“My daughter told her entire second-grade class that her father was a duke who had a castle in England,” Hazel said. “Kids make things up about their missing parent sometimes. It’s normal!”
“No castle?” Joe asked with a short laugh.
“No dukedom, either, although he does live in England. She just...made up a story she preferred. It sounds to me like Lottie is doing the same thing.”
“Thanks.” Joe rubbed a hand through his hair. “She’s been obsessed with her mom recently.”
“That does happen,” Hazel said.
“She’s never met her mother, though.”
“That might make her more mysterious, more intriguing.”
“Yeah, that and she’s just figured out that other kids have moms and she feels the lack,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is,” he said with a shrug.
“I raised my daughter without her father for the most part. I mean, he did visit her sometimes, but the day-to-day was just the two of us. So I get it. I had to go through all of the why-doesn’t-my-dad-live-with-us questions, too.”
Joe nodded. “Does it get easier?”
“Not really,” Hazel admitted. “As soon as you think they’ve made peace with one level, they start asking more complicated questions.”
“I was afraid of that.” He brushed some dirt off his forearm. “How did your daughter deal with it all?”
“She’s done pretty well,” Hazel said. “She’s nervous to meet her half siblings for the first time, but I’m glad that Todd stayed in her life. And to his credit, he never missed a child-support payment.”
Todd’s family had been very well off, and Todd had never seriously considered a future with Hazel. That had been a rude awakening—that he’d sleep with her, whisper sweet nothings and have no intention of committing. They’d broken up while Hazel was still pregnant, and Todd had gone to England shortly after Maddie’s birth and started his life there. He worked in the family business—sportswear. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was lucrative.
“That’s good he kept up his responsibility there,” Joe said.
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to Lottie’s mom?” Hazel asked.
“She...” Joe sighed. “She didn’t want to be a mother. It was a fling. We fell fast, and she got pregnant, and only then did she make it clear she didn’t want kids. Ever. But she was willing to have Lottie...and give her up for adoption. I wanted to raise Lottie myself. So we came to an agreement.”
“I guess it’s a similar story—a fling that made a baby. Never simple, is it?”
“Never.”
Hazel let her gaze move over the large green lawn. Some apple trees lined one side of the lawn, and in the other direction she could see an Amish farm. All was quiet. Then a susurration of birds swung up like a flapping sheet from a copse of trees, circled around and then settled back into the branches. Hazel had chosen Butternut Bed and Breakfast for the solitude and quiet, but now that she was here, she wondered how much peace and quiet she could actually tolerate. Even thick technical books couldn’t fill up all this silence.
“I’m planning on visiting a local airplane hangar tomorrow,” Hazel said. “It’s a historic site—the original structure was used in World War II. But, full confession? I just want to check out the planes.”
Joe laughed. “Good for you. Make the most of your visit.”
“I bet your Lottie would love it,” Hazel said. “A lot of times you can get tours of the planes and the hangar. The guys who work there aren’t always busy, and they enjoy talking about anything aviation.”
“I might do that,” he said. “But I’m just a guy with a four-year-old who likes planes. I don’t know anything about it myself, so I can’t talk shop with them. I’m not sure I could just waltz in there and ask to let my preschooler look around an airplane.”
True. Flyboys could be a territorial lot—she knew that from experience.
“I don’t know if you could...but I could.” Hazel met his gaze.
“Yeah, but you’re one of them,” he said.
“Then come with me,” she suggested. “I don’t have much else to do around here besides reviewing protocols, and I’d like the company. Besides, it’s nice to light a passion for aviation in little girls. I feel like I’m doing something for our future.”
Joe looked toward the house, thoughtful. “She’d really love it...”
Hazel waited, watching him as he thought it through. He turned back to her and a smile touched his lips.
“Sure. Yeah. Let’s do it. As long as you’re sure we won’t be in the way. You don’t have a car here, do you?”
She shook her head. “I’d take a taxi.”
“Forget that,” Joe said. “You get us in for that tour, and I’ll drive you. A way of evening the score a bit. Besides, Lottie will get to tour the hangar with a pilot. She won’t know how lucky she is.”
“They never do,” Hazel said with a grin. “And thank you. I’ll take you up on that offer.”
Joe angled his head back toward the garden plot.
“I need to get back at it,” he said.
“Of course.” She picked up her book and tried not to let him see her as she watched him saunter back to his truck, where a flat of flowers was waiting.
She might regret making friends with the landscaper, but right now it was better than facing all that peace and quiet on her own. This was her fresh start, her chance to do the one thing she’d dreamed of as Maddie had grown up... And she was afraid to stop and feel it, because if she did, she might start getting scared and start second-guessing if she was good enough to step into the role of regional airline pilot.
Focusing on her material to make sure she was successful from day one was key. She’d do what she did best—jump in and prove herself.
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