Love by the Yard Read online

  Copyright

  ISBN 978-1-59789-455-5

  Copyright © 2007 by Gail Sattler. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of Truly Yours, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 721, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. niv®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  One

  “Hey! Come back here with that!”

  Shanna McPherson cringed at the sound of her landscaper’s angry voice. A loud crash immediately followed the outburst.

  She winced, hoping against hope, waiting to hear Boffo bark. But he didn’t.

  The only reason he wouldn’t bark would be because he had something in his mouth. Which meant that Boffo was up to more mischief.

  Shanna peeked out of the window above her desk, over the expanse of torn-up grass, mounds of debris, rocks, broken cement, and piles of dirt, trying to see what the trouble was this time.

  “Mommy, is Boffo being bad again?”

  Shanna sighed, almost welcoming the distraction from her four-year-old daughter, who was playing with her stuffed toys on the floor beside her desk, as she did every day while Shanna worked. “Yes, Ashley, he is.”

  Ashley squealed and jumped to her feet. “I’m gonna see what he’s got!”

  “No, Ashley,” Shanna said as she began pushing her chair out from behind the desk. “Mommy will. . .”

  Shanna didn’t complete her sentence. Ashley was already outside.

  “Boffo! Boffo! You can’t do that!” Ashley yelled as she ran, waving her tiny arms in the air, running toward Boffo from one direction while the landscaper chased him from the other. As Boffo ran, something Shanna couldn’t identify dangled from Boffo’s mouth.

  Shanna sprinted from the cement patio onto what once was grass, but her feet sank unevenly in the loose mud, slowing her too much to catch her daughter or her dog. “Ashley!” she yelled, louder than she probably should have. “Come back here! Mommy will get whatever Boffo took!”

  She finally caught up to Ashley at the same time her landscaper caught up with Boffo.

  He held Boffo firmly by the collar, halting the wayward canine’s movement. “You mangy mutt,” he ground out from between clenched teeth while his closed fist moved toward Boffo’s face.

  Shanna gasped. “Stop! He’s just. . .”

  The man opened his hand directly in front of Boffo’s nose, displaying a large dog biscuit.

  Without hesitation or guilt, Boffo dropped his prize and latched onto the offering, his tail wagging, completely oblivious to the disruption he’d caused.

  Mr. Gafferty didn’t wait for the crunching to stop. He immediately scooped his tool up from the ground. Just as Shanna bent down to hold Ashley, the landscaper turned around and saw them.

  He froze for a moment, then stiffened to his full height. “Your dog still seems to think this is a big game, Mrs. McPherson.”

  Shanna looked up at Brendan Gafferty. Way up.

  She’d always considered him tall, but from her position near the ground, Brendan seemed like Paul Bunyan.

  Slowly, Shanna rose to her feet.

  At her full height, he towered above her by about a foot—which meant that Brendan was six feet five inches tall. The only thing about him that wasn’t like Paul Bunyan was his hair; Brendan’s was dark blond. Yet he did have a well-manicured beard and neatly trimmed mustache. Also like Paul Bunyan, Brendan had broad shoulders with a he-man physique to match. He was even wearing a red plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He didn’t have a huge ax, but he was holding some kind of pointy gardening tool in his hand. All that was missing was the blue ox.

  Shanna wanted to back up, but she didn’t want to let him see that he made her nervous. She looked up at him as he looked down at her. “I’m so sorry about Boffo,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with him.”

  Brendan raised his free hand to his head, as if he were going to run his fingers through his hair; but a few inches before he actually touched his hair, his hand froze. He studied his hand, rubbed his fingers together, then lowered his arm to his side. “I don’t know, either. Yesterday, when you tied him up, I’d never heard a dog make a noise like that before. I thought he was going to die or something. Then, when one of your neighbors yelled at him to shut up, he yowled even louder.”

  Ashley nodded repeatedly. “His feelings was very hurt. Boffo doesn’t like to get tied up.”

  Shanna’s cheeks burned as she remembered the incident. Most of her neighbors were amused by Boffo’s antics until he started making too much noise, as he had yesterday. “I don’t know what gets into him. He’s fine on a leash, but if the dog chain comes out, he goes crazy.”

  As if he knew they were talking about him, Boffo returned. He sat in front of Brendan, raised one paw, and brushed it against Brendan’s jeans, leaving a huge black smear extending from midthigh to just below his knee.

  “If you want another biscuit, forget it, dog. They’re reserved for the next time I need to bribe you.” He patted his pocket. “This hasn’t been a good day. I don’t have many left, and it’s not even lunchtime yet.”

  Shanna checked her watch. It was 9:57, which meant she had an hour and thirteen minutes to do three hours’ worth of work before she had to pick up her son, Matthew, from kindergarten.

  She reached for her daughter’s hand. “Come on, Ashley. Let’s go into the house. The nice man has a lot to do, and we’re keeping him from his work.”

  Ashley’s eyes widened as she looked up at her mother. “But what about Boffo?”

  All three heads turned at the same time. Boffo was gone. He had moved quietly to the corner of the yard, where he was in the process of digging a hole in the soft, freshly dug dirt. As they watched, he dropped something into the hole, then began to cover his prize by pushing the dirt back into the hole with his nose.

  “No! Not again!” Brendan yelled as he took off at a run toward the dog.

  Ashley squealed, clapped her hands, and danced in one spot.

  “Boffo! No!” Shanna yelled, running behind Brendan.

  Brendan pushed Boffo away with one hand while he brushed away the mud with his other one. He pulled up a dirty, but otherwise undamaged, roll of some kind of rubber product that Shanna couldn’t identify.

  He released the dog and shook the dirt from what he’d recovered.

  Shanna stared at what looked like a piece of a rolled-up mat, something she couldn’t see a use for outside of the bathroom. “What is that?” she asked.

  He brushed off the last clump of mud. “It’s bark wrap. I brought a few rolls today to put around the base of your trees. It’s a way to protect them when I’m digging and using the rototiller. I can protect your trees from me, but I can’t seem to protect them from your dog.”

  She turned to stare at Boffo, who was sitting beside the mess from the freshly dug hole, his tongue lolling from his mouth, happy as could be. The dog wasn’t bothered at all that his plan had been foiled and his buried treasure had been taken from him.

  “I think I’ll have to take him in the house.” Shanna cringed inwardly as she spoke. Since Brendan had dug up what w
as left of her pathetic grass in the backyard, Boffo’s feet were always muddy. Today, with both Boffo and Brendan digging, his feet were even worse than usual.

  She didn’t have enough time as it was, but now she had to bathe the dog. Otherwise, she would have to add ruined carpeting to the growing list of everything else Boffo had destroyed—inside and out—since she’d hired Brendan to fix her yard.

  She glanced at the house. She didn’t want to think of what Boffo would do once he figured out that he was locked inside. The day before yesterday, when she’d tried to restrict his access to Brendan’s work, he’d gone berserk. Boffo had burst through the screen door, creating a gaping hole. Fortunately, Brendan happened to have a piece of screen in his truck, so he’d fixed it. However, the process had taken more time from what he was really there for, which was to make her yard fit for her clients to see as they passed through it to get to her office in the back of her house.

  Brendan turned toward his truck, then back to Shanna. “I know you don’t like to close the big door, but I used the last of my screen the other day. I don’t know if it’s such a great idea to put him inside. Is it possible to leave him at a friend’s house or something?”

  Shanna couldn’t fault the man for being frustrated with her ditzy dog. As a professional landscaper, Brendan had other clients, and Boffo’s antics had put him behind schedule. “I’ve already asked around. No one is volunteering.”

  She couldn’t afford to put Boffo in a boarding kennel. She could barely afford the landscaping, but it was a must. She couldn’t make ends meet just taking on residential customers who only needed her to do their income tax in the spring. She needed to contract out to businesses that required accounting work done throughout the entire year, which meant competing with the services that had their offices in the expensive high-rises downtown.

  She’d taken a number of potential clients whom she’d needed to impress through her house on the way to her office. Not that her house was messy, but she did have two small children. Instead of giving them a professional tour, she’d looked like a harried single mother trying to earn a few bucks in an extra room.

  They’d taken their business elsewhere. Shanna couldn’t afford for that to happen again. To get ahead, she had to present herself as a professional accountant with an efficient home office.

  The room she’d converted into an office was on the ground level at the rear of the house, so she’d hired a contractor to create a door leading directly outside. That way, no one would have to go through the living area of her house to get to her office. It had been a tremendous expense, but it worked, creating a professional separation between home and office. The next step was to make the entrance through the yard look professional, which was why she’d hired Brendan Gafferty.

  If he could get the job done in spite of her children—and her dog.

  Ashley wrapped her arms around Shanna’s leg. “Mommy, please don’t take Boffo to Uncle Ray’s house to play with Killer!”

  Brendan suddenly stopped shaking the dirt off his bark wrap. “Killer?” He looked down at Ashley. “That doesn’t sound like your average house pet.”

  Shanna squatted rather indelicately, wanting to speak to Ashley at eye level but not wanting to kneel in the mud. “No, Ashley, we won’t do that. Killer isn’t very friendly.” She looked up at Brendan. “Killer is a pit bull and rottweiler cross. My brother-in-law keeps him as a watchdog, but he’s not trained; he’s just mean. I don’t consider him safe around Boffo, even though Boffo is bigger. I especially don’t trust him around the children.” She’d seen her brother-in-law in action around his dog. He was unkind to Killer on purpose, to keep the animal agitated. The worst part was that Ray was proud of it.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. McPherson. I’ll figure out something. Besides, Boffo has been pretty active since I got here. He’s got to be ready for a nap soon. I hope.”

  She knew Boffo wouldn’t sleep if she bathed him. He would only run around more than usual because he was wet.

  For now, Brendan was being very patient. Shanna didn’t know how long that would last or what would happen when he reached the end of his tolerance.

  She stood. “I can’t leave him out here to annoy you any more than he already has. I think it’s best for me to take him inside and see if he’ll sleep.” Dirty or not. She could always wash Boffo’s blanket. The carpet probably needed steam cleaning anyway. “We have to go, Ashley. It’s almost time to pick up your brother, and I still have lots of work to do. Come on, Boffo. You, too.”

  ❧

  Brendan stood with his fists resting on his hips as Shanna McPherson led her daughter and her wayward dog across the uneven surface of the yard, slogging through the mud, before they all disappeared into the house.

  He’d done a lot of residential work, but he’d never had a project like this one.

  He should have known something wasn’t quite right. After he accepted the contract, his friend Harry, who happened to be Shanna’s pastor, offered to pray for things to go well. Then he’d thanked Brendan for his kindness in agreeing to do the work.

  It wasn’t kindness. It was a job.

  Or at least it was at first.

  Initially, Brendan had given Shanna McPherson a reduced rate because she went to his friend’s church. However, the reduced rate became even more reduced when the job didn’t go quite as planned. Already, he’d spent too much time trying to outmaneuver her daffy dog and find ways to put her kids to work when Shanna was busy in her office.

  He continued to stare at the closed door.

  Quitting wasn’t an option. Besides giving his word that he would finish the job, to make things even more complicated, Harry had told Brendan a few things he really didn’t want to know.

  The life insurance and protection on the mortgage payment were void when her husband died, something she’d discovered the hard way. Because she hadn’t worked outside her home since before her kids were born, she couldn’t find a job that paid well enough to support herself and her family and still pay the mortgage. The small accounting business that she ran out of her home wasn’t enough. In a last-ditch effort, she had used the last of her savings for renovations. If that didn’t work to generate enough new business, she would have to sell the house.

  Thinking of what Harry said made Brendan remember his childhood in painful detail. Brendan knew what it was like to need help, watching his world crumble around him, praying and hoping for something good to happen. His gut churned, knowing the same thing was happening to Shanna and her little family.

  Brendan’s father had died when Brendan was a young boy. Like Shanna, his mother struggled to support them when he was too young to understand the big picture and all the hardships. Only by the grace of God and the goodness and generosity of the people in their church had they come out relatively unscathed. Through it all, his mother had taught him two important lessons: The first was to trust in God, no matter what. The second was that God’s way to return a favor was to pass it on.

  The way things were going, by the time he finished, his profit margin would be so slim that landscaping Shanna McPherson’s yard would indeed be a favor. All he could do was chalk it up to the Lord’s work and finish cheerfully.

  He sighed, then returned to his task, which he now could do uninterrupted—at least until Shanna brought her son home from school. Then the boy would want to help. Today, though, Brendan could give the boy something genuinely useful to do. Matthew could fill in the hole the dog had made.

  Instead of dwelling on everything that had gone wrong, Brendan rolled up his sleeves and set to work on digging up more rocks and boulders, then painstakingly moving them to their designated locations. He intended to use them to make rock gardens, which, according to their agreed plans, would be on top of two boulders in the yard that jutted out above ground level. When the house was originally constructed, the contractor had left them where they were in the backyard, not quite buried. Without the proper equipment, which was very expensive
to hire in, Brendan couldn’t dig them out and remove them. Nor could he dig underneath them to bury them all the way. All he could do was put more rocks on top and grow something in the pile to make it look like he’d done it on purpose.

  After he rolled one more boulder into place, he smiled with self-satisfaction, mentally picturing what it was going to look like once he packed in some good soil, planted flowers in it, then surrounded his artwork with ground cover shrubs. He had big plans for this yard, regardless of the price he was doing it for.

  He was going to do a good job, despite “helpful” kids and a digging dog.

  Halfway through digging up another boulder, the door opened. Shanna and Ashley walked out with Boffo on a leash, obediently staying beside Shanna. It was the only time he ever saw the dog behave, which was a good thing, because the dog probably outweighed her.

  Shanna smiled and handed him a glass of iced tea. “I had a feeling you’d be thirsty.”

  He accepted it with a smile. “You’re right; I am thirsty. Thank you, Mrs. McPherson.”

  She smiled back. “You’re welcome, Mr. Gafferty. We’ll be back in about fifteen minutes with Matthew.”

  Brendan rested one fist on his hip and watched them until they disappeared around the corner of the house, headed in the direction of the school.

  With any new job, Brendan always initially addressed clients by their last name; because, after all, this was business. However, his clients always insisted that things be more casual and that they talk with Brendan on a first-name basis.

  Shanna McPherson was the only one who didn’t. It unnerved him, maybe because it had never happened to him before, especially with a woman, married or single. He didn’t like the formality, which was another reason he would be glad when this job was over and he could move on to his next contract.

  As happened every day, Shanna, her children, and her dog returned right on schedule. As usual, Shanna tried to coax the kids to go into the house, and they weren’t cooperating.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. McPherson. I can give them something to do. I don’t mind.”