Icicle Dreams (Mistletoe Meadows Sweet Christmas #2)

Chapter 1

Amy McBride scooped dog food out of the bin. She tried not to sigh at the sight of the bottom of the bin as she picked her scoop up.

There was enough left for maybe two days. Three, if the two dogs that were being boarded went home today. And if she was very, very careful.

Dog food had increased in price dramatically over the last four years, and she did not have enough money in her account for even one bag.

All she had in her own cupboard were dried beans and a few bags of rice along with some pasta and some cans of tomatoes. She didn’t even have sauce.

Lord, I know I’m not supposed to worry, but I feel like You’re cutting it a little close.

Immediately she felt bad. Her tone was not humble or respectful.

I’m sorry, Lord. You know best. If I’m supposed to keep these dogs, You need to provide for them. And if I’m not, please help me to figure out what to do with them before we all starve.

There. That was a little better. She really did believe God was in control and that God planned things, and she absolutely believed with all of her heart and soul that God had wanted her to open up this pet sanctuary .

But when they had lost the Richmond Rebel sponsorship because she had trained someone who opened a pet sanctuary closer to their garage, she’d been struggling.

She didn’t regret training Nolita to open up her own place, and she didn’t begrudge Nolita the funding that came with the Richmond Rebels. In fact, Blade Truax, one of the brothers who owned the garage, had specifically talked to her about it. She had told him it was fine. She had wanted Nolita to have as much funding as possible and the best chance of success. She didn’t want to be selfish.

But looking back, she wished she would have been just a little bit selfish. Although she figured even with the funding, Nolita was probably struggling the same way she typically did. There were so many animals and only so much money to go around.

Mocha shoved her nose through the wires as Amy poured dog food in the automatic feeder.

None of the automatic feeders were full. She was just putting in enough for one daily ration. She had checked the rations carefully and measured them out just as carefully. She wasn’t going to give one ounce more than what she had to, but she wanted all the dogs to have what they needed.

“You’re a sweetheart,” she said to Mocha. The little dog was so affectionate. Even though her food was ready for her to eat, and she hadn’t had anything extra in days, she still wanted to stay and have Amy pet her. She was some kind of terrier mixed with a large breed dog, which made her about fifty pounds, and all sweetness and affection. Mocha would make an amazing house pet for someone, but typically around the holidays, pet adoptions went down.

“You’ll probably spend Christmas with me, which...it’s not so bad, is it?” she asked, knowing that while she’d spend some time with the dogs, she’d also be with her family, her mom and her five siblings. They were all supposed to be in for Christmas, and there might even be some extra since she was fairly certain that her sister Terry would be bringing her... She didn’t say that he was her boyfriend, but Judd was going to have that title, or even fiancé, soon.

She smiled, the idea of Terry being happy making her happy. Terry had been an example to her all throughout her life. Growing up, she could look to Terry to know what she should do. Humans were hardwired to have examples to look at and to emulate, to follow. So many of her classmates followed whatever it was on their TV, but Amy had been blessed. She had Terry.

Moving to the next dog, she scooped out of the bucket she carried and measured carefully.

Boomer came to the wire and stuck his nose through, waiting anxiously for his breakfast.

“Hey, Boomer. What’s going on with you this morning?” she said as she scratched his ears while she poured the food in his automatic feeder.

He whined, and instead of going right over to his food like he typically did, he licked her hand.

The action made tears prick her eyes. He was so trusting. It was almost like he could tell that there was something on her mind. Something she worried about, and he wanted to make it better.

“I’m just going to trust God, Boomer. It’s going to be okay.”

She knew her words were true, but she also figured that if dogs could sense anxiety, they were probably sensing it in her right now. As much as she was trying to have faith and trust that God would take care of everything.

The dog licked her hand one more time and whined before going over and starting to eat his food.

She blinked back tears. She would figure something out. She had already been working part-time in her friend Jones’s veterinary clinic. She manned the desk when he needed it and worked with him as a vet tech, either on farm calls or in his practice. He was mostly a small animal vet, but when a farmer around Mistletoe Meadows called an emergency, Jones did not turn them down.

His practice was not big. His “clinic” was in an elderly couple’s garage, and he lived over the top. It was very unassuming, but that was Jones. He wanted to get his school bills paid off and a clientele established before he got his own building and sank a bunch of money into it.

She thought that was smart, and she knew that he was using everything that he made to try to pay his bills back after paying rent.

Regardless, she hadn’t made enough to supplement what she lost when she lost the funding, and she was slowly sinking down into the red to the point where she was going to have to close. Or do something drastic; she wasn’t sure what.

She emptied the last of the food in the bucket into the next dog’s feeder and went back to fill up the bucket again. As she scraped the dog food from the bottom of the barrel, she thought about Elisha and the widow with the cruse of oil.

Was this how she felt? Almost running out, only it wasn’t animals that were going to die with her, it was her son. That had to be worse.

Amy knew that she could always move in with her mom, but her mom already had her brother Gilbert, whose wife was dying of cancer, and their three children living there, and her younger sister Isadora was possibly moving in as well. Her husband had decided that he didn’t love her anymore and had found someone else, and had left. He had not been kind when he had done it, and Isadora, who had been a stay-at-home mom, had been crushed.

Amy had wanted to go and strangle her ex, but obviously that wasn’t the Christian thing to do. Still, it made her mad that someone could say vows, have a family, set up a home, and then just decide they didn’t want to anymore.

That showed such a lack of character. Such a lack of decency. She just didn’t understand it .

Well, in a way she did. She understood that human desires often affected human decisions. It was true for her.

Maybe that was why she was struggling so much. Maybe it hadn’t been God’s will for her to open this after all. Maybe she had just desired it so much that she had superimposed what she wanted as God’s will.

She’d seen people do that, excuse their sin, saying it was God’s will. She’d even seen a man, an assistant pastor, who cheated on his wife and left her and said that the woman that he left her for was God’s will for him.

Her jaw dropped open when she heard that, but how did she argue with someone who was blind? She could point out black-and-white in the Bible that adultery was wrong. That breaking his word was wrong. That lying was wrong. Making promises that he didn’t keep was wrong. That a man was supposed to provide for his family. And to not do so was wrong.

She just didn’t understand it. At least she hadn’t sinned, to her knowledge, in opening her pet sanctuary.

Just because things are hard, it doesn’t mean you should doubt God.

Wow. That was the thought that she needed. It was funny how those things popped into her head at the most random times. Things she might have heard in a sermon or read in the Bible, and then, when she most needed them, they popped into her mind, or she should probably give credit where it was due and say that God brought it to mind.

Carrying the bucket back, hunching her shoulders against the cold December wind, she walked back to the shelter where the front pens were. Each pen had an outside run, and all of those would need to be cleaned this morning as well.

At least it wasn’t below freezing. Where the dog poop froze before she could get it off the ground and then it just piled up until the ground finally unfroze and she had a huge mess .

Rain made things muddy and messy as well, and she was thankful that it was just cold and not miserable.

“Here you go, Alice. You thought I forgot about you.” She dumped dog food into Alice’s pan and patted the furry head before walking on.

Her brother Wilson and his friend, her sister’s almost-boyfriend, had just put up a whole side of new pens for her. She already had dogs in them, two of which were boarders, and she would be getting money for their stay, thankfully. It couldn’t come soon enough.

If you just told someone, you know a lot of people who would love to help you.

She sighed as she petted another wet nose and scooped more dog food out.

She didn’t want to burden her friends and family even more. When she lost the funding, she’d mentioned to them that she wasn’t going to have enough to make ends meet every month, and she’d been surprised at the people who had stepped up. That was why she had been able to go for a whole year without running out of money, and she was grateful to them, but she didn’t want to keep asking them to bail her out. Her family and friends would start running as soon as they saw her coming.

Of course, she would do that before she would let any animal starve.

She set the bucket down and reached under her sweatshirt for the belt that she had started wearing.

Her pants had gotten so that they hung on her, and it was cheaper to dig a belt out of her closet than it was to buy a new wardrobe of clothes that would actually fit.

She tightened the belt one last notch—the last notch on the belt.

Her pants gathered together and felt uncomfortable, but she would rather be uncomfortable in her clothes and have more dog food. So she shoved the end of the belt back in the loops and pulled her sweatshirt down.

There. That felt a little better.

As she finished feeding the last of the dogs, she heard a noise before barking erupted, and she looked up, seeing a blue midsize pickup coming down her short drive.

Jones. He often came to help her before he opened his clinic, and the sight of him always made her heart happy. They’d been best friends forever, and he knew of her financial struggles, although he didn’t know how desperate her situation was. She’d been getting up earlier so that she could have the animals fed before he came, so he wouldn’t see the barrel of food and know that she was almost out. He’d help her. She knew he would. He had before. But she was tired of being a drain on every person who knew her.

Lord, help me know what to do. Should I tell my friends and family how desperate it is? It’s close to Christmas, and I know money is tight. I don’t want to burden anyone.

Jones pulled in, and she stood, holding the shovel, and waited for him to get out of his truck and walk over to her. He held two steaming cups of coffee, and her heart swelled, grateful that she’d somehow been blessed with such a great friend.

“It’s chilly out this morning,” Jones said, handing her a mug. It didn’t matter which one, since they both took their coffee exactly the same—black.

“You are amazing,” she said, lifting her brows and meeting his gaze before she took the mug, blowing a little on the top and taking a hot, burning sip. It warmed her the whole way to her stomach, and she sighed. “Thank you.”

“You act like I’ve never done this before. When I literally do it every single morning.”

“I am grateful, every single morning,” she said, leaning the shovel against the end of the pole building and wrapping both hands around the mug .

“You should have gloves on,” he said, seeing her bare fingers. He laughed and held up a hand. “But, I know, you wouldn’t be able to pet the dogs as well if you wore gloves, you couldn’t feel them, and they couldn’t lick your hand. You’d miss all that stuff, and...” He stopped, and his expression said, did I miss anything?

“You’re right. Sometimes I wear gloves though,” she said, in her defense, although there really wasn’t much of a defense. How could she defend herself? It was chilly, her hands were freezing, and the coffee mug felt amazing. She wouldn’t need it though, if she were wearing gloves.

Jones rolled his eyes at her.

“Someday a study is going to come out showing that it’s actually good for people to touch things, to feel them, to interact with the environment around them, and that gloves stunt people’s spiritual and emotional growth and stability.”

She wasn’t sure such a study would ever be undertaken, but she was fairly certain that it was important, not just for her, but for the dogs, that she pet them every day.

“I’ll take your word on it,” he said easily, and that was Jones. He just didn’t argue. He was one of those people that were sure enough that he was right that he didn’t need to convince the rest of the world. He could stand alone if need be. It was one of the things she admired about him. It was part of the reason he’d done what he did when he opened his vet clinic. Instead of doing what everyone else in the world did, and either become a vet at someone else’s practice until he earned enough money to open his own or go into debt even more, to make sure he had all the latest and greatest when he opened his practice, he worked hard with what he had.

“Are you done feeding already?” he asked, noticing the shovel and looking inside at all the dogs who scarfed down their food.

“Yeah. I woke up this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so figured I’d get out and get started.”

She had been awake, that was true. But her bed had been so cozy and warm. It should be since she had every blanket in her house on it, because she’d turned the thermostat down as low as it would go without allowing anything to freeze.

It had been forty degrees in her house when she’d gotten up, but she’d gotten warm once she’d gotten out and started working.

“I see,” he said, taking a sip of his own coffee and gazing at her thoughtfully before he looked out at the beautiful view.

That was one thing about her kennels; her home was tiny, just a one bedroom with a miniscule kitchen and a small living room, but outside was a million-dollar view.

He took another sip and turned back to her. “That really the reason?”

She stared. He knew she was having financial difficulty, but she was sure he didn’t know how bad it was.

He seemed disappointed and glanced down at his coffee before he met her eyes. “I looked in the barrel last night after I left the house. It was almost empty. You would never leave it almost empty going into the weekend, unless...you didn’t have money to fill it.”