Page 21 of Maggie’s Match

It wasn’t even light outside yet, and Maggie realized how used to waking up before dawn she’d gotten. She doubted she could sleep to sunrise anymore, after running her own bakery for the past few years.

“Why are you so chipper?” Maggie groaned.

“I have a good feeling about today.” Becca bounced on the bed next to her and hugged her with one arm. “This is going to work out better than before, though it’ll probably set our opening back a month.” She turned to her and narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have to stick around the entire time.”

“Nonsense. My employees can handle the shop back home until I return.”

“Are you sure?”

As an answer, Maggie hugged her cousin. “One hundred percent.”

“What about Rick?” Becca asked when she pulled back.

“What about him?” Maggie pulled on her shoes.

“Think he’s going to stick around until you return home?” Becca asked as she got dressed.

“Who cares.” She tried to sound unconcerned but failed so miserably that Becca turned on her, her eyebrows raised. Rolling her eyes, she shrugged. “Probably. Something tells me he’s going to stick around until they catch whoever is killing your cattle.”

“Stick around until you leave, you mean,” Becca teased.

Just then they heard a commotion downstairs and rushed out of the room and down the stairs to see what the loud shouting was all about.

Her uncle was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a bloody towel to his left arm, and Maggie almost passed out. She hated blood.

Rick rushed past them wearing only a pair of jeans that he must have hastily pulled on when he heard the noise.

Rick went to work cleaning up her uncle’s arm while she tried to not faint. She liked how he took control of the situation. Thankfully, Becca shoved Maggie into a chair before she hit the floor.

Maggie was so light-headed that she didn’t see or hear much during the entire ordeal. She knew that Rick patched up the large cut on her uncle’s arm. It wasn’t until her aunt cleared out all the bloody towels that Maggie finally felt better.

“Here.” Becca handed her a glass of orange juice. “It helps,” she said, forcing her to take a sip of the juice.

“What happened?” she asked when her mind cleared.

“I snagged my arm on some barbed wire,” her uncle said.

“Three stitches,” Rick said, washing his hands in the sink. “Nothing too bad.”

But Maggie saw it, the look between her uncle and her cousin.

“What? You’re not telling us something,” she said, taking another sip of the juice.

Her aunt turned to her husband and son with a stern look on her face. Everyone had been too busy cleaning up the blood to notice that her uncle and cousin were hiding something from them.

“What happened?” Bridget demanded after scanning both of their faces.

Her uncle sighed. “I spotted someone leaving the water shed on the outskirts of the east field. When I took off to chase him, I forgot all about the new fence we installed a month ago. It was still dark out and…” He shrugged and lifted his arm to show the proof of his error.

“Whoever it was, they’d been in the well house, which means they could have contaminated the water,” Bent said.

“I’ll go check it out now.” Rick headed back to his room to get dressed.

“I’ll go too,” Bent added, and everyone waited until the two men left.

“What were you thinking?” Bridget sat next to her husband and took his hands in her own. “If I’d known you were going to chase down someone by yourself, I would have never agreed to let you sit out there all night.”

“I didn’t plan on running them down. I just wanted to see where they were going.” He shook his head.