Give Me a Break (Walnut Grove #3)

George Gardner had lived near Walnut Grove all his life. He had always been a large man; it’s why he had become a blacksmith. He liked being a blacksmith. He was his own man and his own boss. He didn’t like how lonely he was all the time. He was a shy man. Most women didn’t feel comfortable talking to him as large as he was. Because they shied away from him, so did he. He avoided them like the plague. Mostly it was men who came to get their horses and oxen shoed anyway. The only women he ever talked to were Amanda Newel at the general store, but she was married, and to the wives of his friends.

Then, one day a women came to his shop to see if he could shoe her two horses. She was in a hurry to get home; she didn’t come to town very often. She’d wait while he did it. George told he would, but then she did the oddest thing. She offered to clean his stalls while he shoed her horses. George told her she couldn’t do that in her dress; she told him she had just bought a pair of pants and shirt at the resale store. It would only take her a minute to change into them. In minutes, she was changed and cleaning out the stalls and George was shoeing her horses. They were talking like they were old friends instead of just meeting. She was on her way in a few hours. George was shocked at how much he had enjoyed talking to her…a woman, and a stranger at that. Her wagon had been loaded down with spring supplies…heavy hundred-pound bags of flour, sugar, and such, not to mention feed for her animals and seed for her fields. How was she going to get that all unloaded from the wagon by herself? At best, she only weighed a hundred pounds herself!

George put the closed sign on his blacksmith shop, saddled up his horse and followed the wagon out of town and to her farm. When he showed up, to say she was surprised, was an understatement. George told her that she had cleaned out his stalls, he was going to carry in all her hundred-pound bags of supplies into the cellar, house, and barn. Mavis was surprised and thrilled. It began a friendship that just might be more than a friendship if they could just get a break on love for both of them.