Free Welcome to Harmony by Jodi Thomas

different here. As if they’d stepped out of the real world and into the Sherwood Forest of their childhood dreams.
    The aroma of freshly watered soil circled around them. She wondered if Hank felt it, too, but she didn’t ask for fear of breaking the spell.
    When he raised his hands in surrender, she laughed, remembering how it had always been Hank who let her win when they were children and never her brother Warren.
    She looked at him, wondering if he, too, was remembering how the three of them had played in the trees as children. But Hank’s eyes were smiling. They were two outlaws now. Old man Truman had chased them off so many times, he’d learned their names.
    When they set the sticks in the bed of the cart, he grinned. “Thanks for the memory, Little John.”
    “You’re welcome, Robin,” she returned. “But next time, I want to be Sundance and you can be Butch.” She rubbed the mud off her boot on the dried grass. “We go for the gold on a train.”
    He touched two fingers to his hat. “You bet.”
    They climbed into the cart and drove back to the farmhouse. By the time they’d said good-bye to Jeremiah and were in her car, they were no longer outlaws—just two responsible people doing their jobs.

Chapter 11

    TYLER WRIGHT LEFT A NOTE FOR WILLAMINA AND DROVE out before dawn. He wanted to get to Oklahoma City and back before two. That was when he liked to send his first e-mail to Kate, his hazel-eyed pen pal. She usually didn’t answer until close to five, but it didn’t matter; he got a kick out of waiting, checking, anticipating.
    When she did e-mail back it had been the same answer for four days. Yes, she’d have dinner with him. He’d fill his plate and stare at the screen while he ate.
    He took the back roads so he could speed, knowing that on the way back, he’d stay on the main highway out of respect for dear Miss Beverly. She’d dropped by his office about a month after her husband died and made plans for her own funeral. She had little left besides her Social Security, but she wanted to pay for her funeral so no one would be out anything.
    Tyler doubted that her brother, Jeremiah, had any money. He was land rich and money poor, like most folks around. Beverly had said she didn’t want to bother anyone. She’d cried when she told him that her husband had borrowed money from almost everyone in town and never offered to pay any of it back. Her husband had thought of it as a game, but she’d been ashamed for years. Ashamed enough to change back to her maiden name after forty years of marriage. She’d paid for her funeral, then given Tyler a slip of paper with all the people in town she owed. She asked him to keep it until Jeremiah died and then ask whoever handled the family farm if they’d pay each one back with her half from the sale of the land.
    Frowning, Tyler doubted the slip of paper would hold up in any court. Jeremiah wouldn’t sell any of the land, not even to pay his brother-in-law’s debts, and now that he’d outlived Beverly, he owned all the land.
    As Tyler drove, the sun was coming up. He was forty years younger than old Jeremiah, but in a way they were the same. When they died, so did the family line. When Tyler had been younger, he’d always thought there was plenty of time ahead in which to have children. He had a business to run and his hobby to keep him busy. He was too young to marry in his twenties, not ready in his thirties, and now in his forties he could not think of a single woman he would want to date. Or, to be fair, who would want to date him.
    Tyler would never sell the funeral home, not for any amount of money. If he did, he’d have no home, no roots. But he had thought he’d have a wife and children living with him by now.
    Three years ago he’d had a blind date with someone’s cousin who was visiting Harmony after her divorce. They’d gone out a few times for dinner and managed to keep a conversation going, but when he’d reached for her hand,