Dream of Me (Harmony Falls, Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dream of Me (Harmony Falls, Book 1)

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR NOTE

  Coming Soon!

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Gaelen Foley FREE Book Offer!

  DEDICATION

  Also by Gaelen Foley

  Copyright & Credits

  HARMONY FALLS, BOOK 1

  DREAM OF ME

  Gaelen Foley

  &

  Jaz Kennedy

  CHAPTER 1

  “Better get a move on, Honey-Bea!” Grandma Jean yelled from the kitchen window of the old farmhouse, peeking through the billowy white curtains. “It’s practically Saturday night. You’re supposed to be out having fun!”

  “Almost done, Gram, I promise!” Beatrice Palmer flashed a grin as she traipsed in her boots through the dirt, carefully balancing three crates of zucchini in her arms. She rested them on the tailgate of her beat-up produce truck, and finally slid them into place beside her blazing-red, prize-winning heirloom tomatoes.

  At last, Bea straightened up and stretched her sore back muscles a bit, feeling her damp t-shirt clinging to her skin between her shoulder blades. After a hard day’s toil in the mid-July sun, she smelled of sweat, soil, and sunscreen, but at least by now the heat of the day had broken.

  A slight breeze wafted down from the emerald mountains that encircled the Palmer Family Farm, heralding the cool of evening, and stirring the wind chimes hung from Gram’s porch. The little bells tinkled softly, joining the nonstop cadence of the crickets’ summer chorus and the raucous party of the birds fluttering all along the tree line, where one of Pap’s cornfields bordered the vast state forest.

  It was shaping up to be another beautiful summer night, but evening had snuck up on her, and Bea’s stomach rumbled at the smell of someone’s distant barbecue on the breeze. Only now did she notice the green shadows that sculpted the rolling pastures, where their twenty dairy cows and their calves grazed in contentment.

  Likewise, the cool gray shadow of the hulking, weathered red barn and its attendant silo stretched across the drive, almost reaching her sparkling new greenhouse.

  “Geez, where did the day go?” she murmured, glancing at her watch. Quarter past six. She’d been out in the fields since dawn and had apparently been so absorbed in her work—she was kind of obsessed—that she hadn’t even noticed how the hours had flown by.

  But although her mind whirled with rhubarb and cherries, plums and the mountain of blueberries she had harvested for the farmers’ market tomorrow with the help of her loyal farmhands, Bea knew she had to hurry.

  Her girlfriends had estimated they’d be trudging back into civilization by seven PM. She hadn’t been able to join them on their annual backpacking weekend, since it was the height of the growing season, but she had promised to be there to greet them for a celebratory pint when they hiked into the Knickpoint Brewpub, not far from the trailhead.

  It was the favorite hangout spot for their whole group of friends, snuggled into a curve of the gorgeous river there, and owned by their buddy, Jack, which made it even more welcoming. The Knickpoint served good food, too, so she decided to eat dinner there to save time.

  Whew, she thought, moving her straw hat back to wipe the sweat off her brow. One of Jack’s hand-crafted summer ales and a fat, juicy burger sounded tempting right about now. She’d worked her butt off today, getting ready for the Sunday farmers’ market tomorrow morning in the town square.

  She should do a brisk business there. Now that her fields were starting to mature, she was finally starting to make a little profit on them. The weekend tourists from the city were loving her organics. “Ah, damn.” She wrinkled her nose when she saw a rogue tomato that had gotten squished between two colliding crates. Its seedy juice dribbled down into the grooves of the truck’s bed.

  There goes another fifty cents.

  Every penny counted, considering she was saving up the daunting sum of sixty thousand dollars as her ten percent down payment to buy the farm outright from her grandparents, fair and square.

  So far, she was a long way off with her savings, and sometimes it felt like she’d never reach her goal. It was such a lot of money—even though, in reality, her grandparents were giving her a serious family discount. Like, two hundred thousand dollars under market value, with all the equipment and livestock thrown in, so Bea sure as heck wasn’t complaining.

  Six hundred grand was more than fair.

  This huge sacrifice on her grandparents’ part filled her with reverence; they said it was worth it to them to be able to pass on their heritage to one of their descendants. They were just glad that finally one of the grandkids had fallen in love with the farm life.

  Bea vowed she wouldn’t let them down. As far as she was concerned, she was making the world a better place, one organic fruit and veggie at a time.

  Spurred on by the grower’s passion, she was determined. In fact, even after the farmers’ market closed tomorrow, she’d be heading out to her quaint little roadside farm stand on Clover Highway to try to move whatever produce didn’t sell in the town square.

  Just then, the screen door banged and her beloved Pap clomped out onto the wooden porch: Eddie Palmer, the locally famous corn farmer, wide-shouldered, with gunmetal-gray hair.

  His darkened glasses and stern, square jaw always added a menacing air to any situation. The old farmer was tougher than a whole box of nails, but behind his gruff demeanor, his granddaughter knew better than most that the old curmudgeon was kind of a teddy bear.

  “Get going, kid,” he ordered, marching toward her. “I’ll finish this.”

  “You sure, Pap?”

  He grunted in assent. Ed Palmer had been through hell over the last year, but it hadn’t made him any less ornery.

  At least I know where I get it from, Bea thought in amusement, her heart warming at the sight of him. She’d do anything for the rugged old man and that tiny, silver-haired whirlwind of a woman bustling around inside.

  “Go on. There’ll always be more work to do,” Pap grumbled in his usual commanding monotone.

  “If you’re sure you’re feeling up to it—”

  He snorted sharply with disdain at her tactful reminder of his illness, and Bea gave up with a chuckle. “You win. Thanks, Pap. But don’t overdo it, okay? Remember your doctor’s orders.”

  While he grumbled something about doing this since before she was born, she turned away with a smile, rested a hand on her hip, and glanced around at her burgeoning crops, running through a mental checklist to make sure she hadn’t left anything important undone.

  Earlier today, the densely packed lettuce field before her had been lush with leafy greens, the cornfield bristling with sweet corn. Farther off, on the bosom of the gently rolling hills beyond the cow pasture, the mature orchards Pap had planted decades ago had been bursting with their usual summer yield of peaches, cherries, plums. Even the blueberry bushes had drooped under the weight of all their fruits until Bea and her trusty farmhands had gone through hand-harvesting all that was ready to be picked for tomorrow’s market.

  The stack of crates in her
produce truck were solid proof that she was actually, thank God, starting to make this business work.

  She let out a sigh, weary but hopeful. Farming could be a white-knuckled way to make a living, every bit as hard as the old-timers down at the Grange liked to warn, and yeah, she didn’t have the world’s most dazzling track record of past success in her two previous almost-careers.

  But this time was different, she swore to herself. This time was do or die. In fact, her entire self-esteem was kind of riding on it.

  In any case, she was pleased with today’s progress. She was right on track for a great growing season and decided she had earned a night off. With that, she clapped her grandfather affectionately on the shoulder. “Thanks, Pap. I’m outta here.” Heading for the house, Bea glanced at her watch and gasped. “Oh, crap! I gotta be there in twenty minutes!”

  She dashed inside to grab a lightning-fast shower and make herself presentable.

  Before long, she was leaning out the window of her clunky old pickup, waving to her grandparents as she sputtered down the winding dirt road. “Don’t worry, I won’t be late!”

  “Oh, stay out and kick up your heels for once, Worker-Bea!” Grandma Jean teased from the porch, hands on hips. “Who knows? You might actually have some fun!”

  “Love you!” Laughing, she drove on. Following the long, bumpy drive, she wound among the fields and then into the wooded section of the Palmers’ three hundred acres that, God willing, would belong to her by next spring, if not sooner.

  Then her grandparents would also be free to follow their hearts, because they had retirement dreams of their own. They’d been tied down here for decades, and now that Pap had had six months of scans coming back clean, they were eager to go exploring across America in a nice RV.

  A simple dream for two dear, simple souls, Bea thought with a tender pang, longing to make it happen for them, just like they were helping make her dream come true. Unfortunately, things grew at their own pace and Mother Nature always got the last say. She was already working around the clock. There was simply no way to make things go faster. She just had to be patient, like Gram said. Take one day at a time.

  After carefully navigating the cobblestone bridge that crossed over the babbling stream, Bea exited through the wildflower meadow, but as soon as she turned onto Clover Highway, she shifted gears and stepped on the gas.

  If she sped just a little, she could make the short jaunt in time to beat the hikers to the Knickpoint to celebrate their twenty-mile accomplishment.

  Buzzing through a mossy, boulder-speckled forest, she followed the roller-coaster mountain highway, curving this way and that. Soon the road settled into a snuggling valley gorge and narrowed as it approached the outskirts of town.

  She scowled when she passed a lone billboard, where the smug, artificial grin of her nemesis beamed down on passersby: the highly coiffed, platinum-blond, middle-aged glamor girl, Tammy Reese.

  Find Your Mountain Dream Home! the headline proclaimed, and below it: Moving? List With Tammy and Get It Sold Fast!

  “Grr,” Bea said under her breath, and clicked on the radio. That woman was as good at inflicting guilt trips on her as her mom was.

  Tammy Reese was still technically their real estate lady, and she had been none too happy when Pap informed her that he no longer wished to sell. That Bea would be buying the farm from him instead of some stranger, and that it would be a private family sale, closing after the agent contract expired. Sorry, no commission.

  Unfortunately, the listing agreement Pap had signed with Tammy ran until the end of September. Until then, the audacious real estate lady kept dropping by uninvited every now and then, bringing interested parties around “just to take a peek,” as she coyly put it.

  The message was clear. Tammy—just like Mom and Dad—didn’t rate Bea’s chances of succeeding as a farmer very highly.

  But contrary to what they all might say, Bea refused to fall on her face again and pull a third major fail.

  It was hard enough to handle Mom scoffing at her unglamorous choice of careers and complaining that she’d never meet a suitable future husband with a penny to his name out there in the boonies. Mom would be perfectly content if she followed in her footsteps and became just some rich man’s trophy wife.

  Then there was Dad, who’d grown up on the farm, and kept telling her he wasn’t sexist, but single women didn’t do well at farming. That she had no idea what she was getting into. That, once again, she was being totally impractical.

  Bea dealt with her parents as respectfully as she had been raised to do. But she figured she sure as heck didn’t have to take it from the real estate lady. So she had finally snapped and told Tammy off a few weeks ago.

  Pap hadn’t minded, and at least her outburst had worked. The over-perfumed lavender queen hadn’t been back with any “interested parties” since.

  Bea drove on with a harrumph, trying to shove Tammy out of her mind. But the sight of the woman’s simpering, elven face in giant size had riffled the anxious self-doubt that seemed to gnaw constantly at her just beneath the surface.

  Most of the time, she was able to tell herself she had simply just run into bad luck in the past. That helped her ignore the fears that every young entrepreneur had to live with, especially every young farmer. The myriad possible disasters. Weather, water, blight, plant or livestock diseases, downturns in the futures prices, crippling new regulations…

  Her only hedge against the biggest threat—weather—had been the greenhouse she’d invested ten thousand dollars in building a few months ago. It was money she would’ve much rather have put toward the down payment. But this would allow her to keep growing her most profitable items well into the autumn, and just having it there as a fallback gave her peace of mind.

  Overall, she was holding her own. But a three-hundred-acre farm was a big responsibility, and carrying around the daily burden of stress left her little patience for dealing with other people’s doubts in her, never mind her own. Especially when, in the back of her mind, she could still hear her ex-best-friend and roommate back in the city yelling at her, “You’re a curse, Beatrice Palmer! You ruined my life. You wreck everything you touch!”

  “It’s not true,” Bea whispered fiercely to herself. She gripped the steering wheel, fixed her sights on the road ahead, and drove on.

  Her new friends were waiting, and they believed in her.

  Still, she thought with a mild shudder, she would feel a lot better once the farm was safely in her name and her grandparents’ road-trip adventure was underway. Until then, all she could do was stay positive, try to make the best decisions possible for her fledgling agribusiness, and keep plugging away.

  As for the doubters, someday, she’d show them all. With that, Bea slowed her truck as Clover Highway turned into Main Street. A quaint wooden placard greeted visitors with the town motto: Welcome to Harmony Falls! Work hard, Play hard ~ Live like you mean it!

  Damn straight, Bea thought. Around here, it was a philosophy to live by. Pausing at the stop sign, she leaned to peer out the window of her truck, past the rustic wooden footbridge spanning the river that hugged their nature-lovers’ town.

  On the far side of the bridge, the hiking trail pitched upward, snaking deep into the mountains. She scanned the tree line, a dense green wall of towering firs and oaks, trying to see if she could make out any hikers emerging from the forest.

  That was where the girls would be coming out; the trail led right down from the state forest to the edge of town, meandering alongside the river as it flattened out.

  There was no sign of them, but Bea hoped the lovable trio hadn’t beaten her to the pub. She was supposed to be the welcoming committee, after all.

  She pressed on, sighing to think of all the fun she must’ve missed on their hiking adventure. It had been ages since she’d visited the big, dramatic waterfalls up on the mountain that had given the town its name.

  Wasting no more time, she stepped on the gas, passing through th
e quaint town square with the gazebo, the bronze Union soldier statue on horseback, and the redbrick courthouse and colorful rows of clapboard shops.

  Miraculously, she found a parking spot right on Main Street, and as she jumped out of her pickup, she could already smell traces of malt and barley boiling inside Jack’s enormous copper kettles in the brewery.

  Bea slammed the door of her truck, slung her leather satchel over her shoulder, and hurried toward the pub, passing gangs of friends relaxing with their beers and burgers at the picnic tables out front.

  The bike rack was packed this evening, she noticed, which was typical. Bea caught a whiff of aromatic hops coming from the trellis off in the side yard. Pausing to inspect the conical green pods on their vines for a moment, she was impressed by how nicely they were growing.

  Way to go, Jack, she thought in tickled approval. Looked like the marine had a bit of a green thumb to go with all those muscles and tattoos.

  Ever since her large, imposing friend Jack Brand had bought the place, he had poured his heart and soul into renovating the nineteenth-century redbrick building—once home to a disreputable saloon known for its brothel upstairs and barroom brawls in the main hall.

  Now it was the place for free spirits to converge after a long day on the trails or the slopes to down delicious hand-crafted ales with friends. From time to time, it also proved a spot where trysts could flicker to life, and hearts could be won or lost. After all, Jack had named his establishment after the geological feature in plain view out back—the point at which a river’s slope suddenly changed. So the Knickpoint had been born at a curious bend in the river, at a place where, sometimes, the flow of life changed drastically.

  The pub’s name was carved into a rusted steel sign out front in a style Jack termed “vintage industrial.” He’d hung festive white lights around the patio, piped music outside, and also updated the bland entryway with a heavy teak door.

  Bea heaved the thing open by its modern stainless steel handle and marched into the pub’s main hall. Intricate tin panels covered the high ceilings. The old oak bar sat to the left, lined with tall iron and leather stools fastened into the hardwood floors. Mirrors adorned the Victorian redbrick walls behind Jack, who stood at the taps even now in his tight blue muscle shirt.