Sweet Fortune (Sugarville Grove #9)

Chapter 1

ALLIE

Allie Lawrence flew down the stairs, her mind already tangled up in everything she wanted to do with her students.

Allie loved everything about being a teacher, except the early mornings. And she couldn’t even really complain about them, since she still lived on the dairy farm where she had grown up and almost everyone else in the family was up even earlier than she was to care for the animals.

“There she is,” her dad’s voice boomed as she stepped into the kitchen.

Daniel Lawrence claimed to have retired from the farm, but he was still up before the sun most days to cook up a big country breakfast while Allie’s mom, Maggie, saw to the calves or helped out with the first milking.

One of her five older brothers, Zane, was also in the kitchen today, pouring himself a mug of coffee.

“Morning, Allie,” Zane said in his usual quiet way.

“Morning,” she replied, grabbing her to-go mug from the cupboard and waiting her turn for the pot.

The kitchen was blessedly warm and smelled like the biscuits cooling on the counter and the bacon that was calling to her as it sizzled in the pan.

“Grab a plate, Allie,” her dad said. “It’s almost ready.”

“Sorry, Dad,” she said genuinely, as she took the coffee carafe from her brother and filled her mug. “I don’t have time.”

The front door banged.

“Shoes,” they all called out automatically.

Allie’s brother, Tripp, was sometimes so eager to see what was cooking that he forgot to take off his muddy boots. A moment later, he appeared in the doorway, looking ravenous as usual.

“Nice, Dad,” he groaned appreciatively, striding over to the stove in his socks and snatching a piece of bacon right off the hot skillet with his callused fingers.

“Tripp,” Allie said.

“What?” he asked. “Some of us have to do actual work for a living.”

He winked at her and she rolled her eyes.

Tripp loved to tease her for playing with kids all day in a heated classroom while he worked up a massive appetite out in the snow.

She went up on her toes and gave him a gentle smack on the side of the head as she headed down the hall. But the front door swung open before she could touch it, and her mother sailed in on a gust of frigid air, her cheeks pink from the cold.

Maggie Lawrence had a spring in her step and her blue eyes twinkled with energy. If it weren’t for the streaks of silver in her long brown braid, she could have been mistaken for another Lawrence sibling.

“You’re not eating with us?” she asked Allie.

“I want to get to school a few minutes early,” Allie told her. “I had an idea.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” her mom said fondly. “I hope those children know how lucky they are.”

“I’m the lucky one, Ma,” Allie said over her shoulder as she jogged down the porch steps on the way to her car.

The cold air and the fiery pink of the rising sun quickened Allie’s pulse, and she felt the last of her sleepiness lift away. A day full of crisp sunshine was just the thing to brighten everyone’s spirits.

The door to the old station wagon was icy enough to stick a little, but she muscled it open and then started the engine.

While it warmed up, she scraped the coating of frost from the windshield. When she was finished, she hopped in and turned on the radio to distract herself from the car’s still-frigid interior.

“Snow, snow, and more snow on the way by the weekend,” the forecaster sang cheerfully.

“Oh boy,” Allie said to herself as she thought about what that forecast meant.

Kindergarteners were her absolute favorite people in the world. She loved their energy, their uniquely creative outlook, and their instinctive generosity and kindness.

But they were also impulsive, endlessly distractible, and thrived on routine. When a real snow fell outside the window, their little feet would be carrying them out of their seats to go take a look at it before they even realized what they were doing.

Snow days were rare in Vermont, where the municipalities were prepared to salt and plow at a moment’s notice. There had only been a handful when she was a kid, but they were some of her fondest memories.

Of course caring for the herd in deep snow was extra work for her family.

But once the paths were dug, and the cows were all fed and cared for, the kids always had the rest of the day to themselves for building snow villages, having epic snowball fights, and making s’mores at the fireplace when they finally came inside to warm up.

Of course as a teacher, she now knew all too well that any extended time out of the classroom would mean extra work to get the students back into school habits when they returned.

Mondays were hard enough, but if a storm hit around the weekend and they got an extra day or two off on one side of it or the other, she would have to plan to meet them where they were when they got back, much like she had to do after the winter holidays and spring break.

“When did I lose my sense of fun?” she asked herself as she pulled the mostly-warmed-up wagon out and headed down the drive to the street.

Allie reached the covered bridge on Fox Hollow Road and rolled down her window to listen for another car coming before proceeding across the one-lane structure.

Normally, neighbors honked their horn once when they reached the bridge. But now that the Johnsons who lived just north of the bridge were retired, no one liked to beep super early in the morning or late at night.

After the bridge, the beautiful countryside melted into suburban homes and before she knew it she was making a left onto Maple Street and heading into the parking lot of the elementary school as the sun peaked over the mountains.

It was early, but kids were already arriving, spilling out of cars and across the front lawn, shouting greetings to each other and laughing their heads off.

Allie felt the same tug of happiness she always did when she remembered that she worked here, at the same beloved school she had attended as a child.

She parked the station wagon in her usual spot and headed across the lot to the back door.

On the way, she spotted a familiar red pickup truck pulling up at the car drop-off. She smiled, knowing that she would see Maya Tailor fly out of the backseat in a moment.

Maya was one of her morning kindergarten students, and she was as full of pent-up energy as Allie remembered being when she started school herself.

As expected, Maya came scrambling out of the backseat, her red coat a cheerful contrast to the gray asphalt.

But today, instead of pulling out, the truck stayed put. A moment later, a man so tall, dark and handsome that he looked like a movie star got out with Maya’s green and blue dinosaur backpack and called after her.

Allie didn’t mean to stare, but she couldn’t help herself.

Maya had shared in class that her daddy made drinks for people, so Allie figured he was either a bartender or he worked in a local café.

Looking at him now though, she couldn’t help thinking that for someone in the service industry, he held himself like a king.

Maya scampered back through the snow to grab her bag, and her father caught hold of her hand and bent to say something. Maya hugged him hard around the waist before she took off again for the playground.

So sweet, Allie thought to herself as she hurried into the school. As far as she knew there wasn’t a Mrs. Tailor, so it was good to see that Maya got lots of love from her dad.

Maya was actually the reason that Allie was trying to get in a few minutes early today. The energetic little girl had a hard time sitting still, so Allie had researched some extra activities they could do between lessons that might help her release some of that extra energy.

Allie had drawn out a sketch in her notebook last night of a plan to rearrange the children’s seating area a bit so that there would be a bigger space to move around and do the animal walks and superhero training exercises she had found online.

Jogging up the steps, she passed a few other teachers who waved to her and said good morning on her way past.

She stepped into the classroom, where warm sunlight bathed the small desks she currently had arranged in clusters so that they felt more like shared tables. The children’s artwork filled the walls with bright color and the brilliant work of their imaginations.

Allie grabbed a tape measure from her desk and used it to be sure that she would be able to set things up the way they were in her sketch before she started moving things around.

A few minutes later she was huffing and puffing a little, but the room looked great and she had bought them another two feet of space in the open part of the classroom where she normally read aloud to the children while they sat in a semicircle.

“Whoa, it’s different,” Victoria Spencer squeaked as she entered the classroom.

“Different, different, different,” Stevie Reynolds chanted, shoving his backpack into his cubby a little too hard, as usual.

“Hi, Miss Lawrence,” Maya said, running right up to Allie for a high five.

“Good morning, Maya,” Allie told her fondly, lifting her hand to accept.

“Maya is in trouble, Miss Lawrence,” Victoria said, her eyes wide. “She got in trouble in the bus line yesterday.”

Maya’s big smile disappeared instantly, and she looked down at her feet.

“We don’t need to talk about that right now,” Allie told Victoria firmly. “It’s time to work on our weekly words so we have time for a new activity today.”

The morning passed quickly, though Allie’s thoughts kept going to Maya. The little girl was unusually downcast for the first part of the morning, though she got wiggly by the time they had reached the end of their first ten-minute lesson.

Instead of trying techniques to help her focus, Allie called out to the class to meet her in the back of the room.