Fetching Sweetness Read online

  Fetching Sweetness

  Number II of Love Unleashed

  Dana Mentink

  Harvest House Publishers (2016)

  * * *

  Tags: Romance

  Romancettt

  Standing Between Stephanie and Her Dream

  Is One Hundred Pounds of Lovable Trouble

  It should have been so simple for Stephanie Pink: Meet up with Agnes Wharton in a small town in California, retrieve the reclusive author's valuable new manuscript, and be promoted to a full-fledged literary agent.

  But Agnes's canine companion, Sweetness, decides to make a break for it before Stephanie can claim her prize. Until Agnes has Sweetness safely back at home in Eagle Cliff, Washington, Stephanie will never set eyes on the manuscript she needs to make her dreams come true.

  When Stephanie tracks the runaway mutt to a campground, she meets Rhett Hastings - a man also on the run from a different life and a costly mistake. Rhett agrees to help Stephanie search for the missing dog...thus launching a surprising string of adventures and misadventures.

  Once Sweetness gets added to the mix, it's a recipe for love and loss, merriment and mayhem, fun and faith in the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest.

  Love Unleashed Series

  Love Unleashed

  Sit, Stay, Love

  Fetching Sweetness

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Scripture quotations are taken from

  The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  The New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  The King James Version of the Bible.

  Cover by Left Coast Design

  Cover photo © Jess Wealleans / Shutterstock

  The author is represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  FETCHING SWEETNESS

  Copyright © 2016 by Dana Mentink

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  ISBN 978-0-73696623-8 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-0-73696624-5 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Mentink, Dana, author.

  Title: Fetching sweetness / Dana Mentink.

  Description: Eugene Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016002899 (print) | LCCN 2016006937 (ebook) | ISBN 9780736966238 (softcover) | ISBN 9780736966245 ()

  Subjects: LCSH: Man-woman relationships–Fiction. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction. | Christian fiction. | Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.E496 F48 2016 (print) | LCC PS3613.E496 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6–dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002899

  All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.

  Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

  MARK TWAIN

  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

  JEREMIAH 29:11

  Contents

  Love Unleashed Series

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  About the Author

  Sit, Stay, Love

  Paws for Love

  About the Publisher

  One

  Stephanie regretted driving over the wedding cake. She’d had hours of bus travel during the last leg of her endless journey from New York to mull over her actions when her seatmate, Mrs. Granato, had dozed off. Regret bit at her with needle-sharp teeth. It had been a lovely cake, white with strawberry filling, frilly little rosettes, and the odd string of pearls which were somehow edible. The cake was certainly not deserving of being flattened. And reversed over. The memory made her cringe. Who would imagine Stephanie Pink indulging in a moment of madness? Plenty of people, she thought ruefully.

  As the bus wheezed to a stop, she straightened her aching shoulders, stowed her regret in the under-seat compartment, and listened to the driver who announced, “Big Thumb.”

  Mrs. Granato awoke with a yawn in the seat next to her, smiled, and patted her bunker of hair into place. “I’ll be praying for you, Stephanie. No more running over desserts or anything else, right? God’s got a better plan for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Stephanie felt her cheeks grow warm. She’d shared too much in the four-hour ride, but Mrs. Granato was such a good listener. Compassion seemed to ooze out of her, extracting all of Stephanie’s secrets. She was like a Christian Svengali.

  “Here, love.” Mrs. Granato pressed a miniature book in Stephanie’s hand. “Read it when you can, since you didn’t bring your Bible. And drink lots of water. It’s hot here.”

  At least the woman wasn’t foisting a manuscript on her. Nope. Mrs. Granato was one of the few people in the known universe who did not seem to be writing a book. This volume she’d been handed, smaller than her cell phone, was entitled Divine Promises. She no doubt felt it would be of help to someone with Stephanie’s destructive tendencies. Mrs. Granato was a glass-half-full kind of gal.

  Stephanie thanked her and peered through the bus windows, excitement building. This had to be the place. What other town could possibly be better for an assignation to hand over a priceless package? She couldn’t have written a finer scene in a novel. Tiny, brick-fronted buildings lined the streets and the smell of hay and diesel fuel drifted in through the open bus door. One man in overalls—real overalls, yet—sat on a bench in the shade of a gnarled tree, reading a newspaper. Imagine that. A newspaper. She’d thought they’d gone the way of the dodo. Scanning the street, she looked for her quarry, her stomach tightening into delicious prickles. So close.

  Her cell phone informed her it was a few minutes before nine. If she believed in that sort of thing, she’d have chalked her timely arrival up to a miracle. Two endless flights and a miserable delay due to some mechanical mischief in Phoenix. Then deplaning in what passed for a municipal airport in Redding, where she’d caught a bus. Bumping along
in this big metal sarcophagus for hours, she had actually managed to arrive on time, if somewhat rumpled. The travel pains would be forgotten, every dusty mile of them, as soon as she bagged her quarry.

  She said one more goodbye to Mrs. Granato, who kissed her on the cheek and looked into her eyes. An odd clog formed in Stephanie’s throat. Travel-induced emotional meltdown? Had to be. Business at hand, Pink. She unkinked her five-foot-three frame and marched down the steps. The bus rumbled away, leaving her in a cloud of exhaust and triumph. Stephanie Pink, literary agent’s assistant, had arrived. Flush with confidence that she was about to cross a threshold she’d waited for all her life, she mechanically reached for the journal in her suitcase to jot a quick note.

  Words formed in her head. I’m here, Ian. We’re here.

  Fingers twitching, she whirled around. Her suitcase, the pink one with the matching luggage tags, was not there. She’d left it on the bus that had just rattled out of town. She stood dumbly as this information sank in. Three deep breaths. The old Stephanie, the one who drove over wedding cakes, would have pitched an ugly fit, but not now, not with her destiny waiting. The new Stephanie Pink was not even flustered…much.

  “I’ll be on a plane home in a couple of hours anyway,” she muttered to no one.

  She scanned for the café, the only eating establishment in the town of Big Thumb, California, south of Redding and north of nowhere. There it was, tucked under the shade of a cottonwood tree across the street from a gas station with one pump and a post office with an attached bait shop.

  She scurried across the road, trying to pat into place the ponytail that had lost its chic some sixteen hours prior. Where are you, Mrs. Wharton?

  The last time she’d seen Agnes Wharton had been thirteen years before, when she’d appeared at a bookstore event in Manhattan that Stephanie and her twin brother, Ian, had skipped their seventh-grade algebra class to attend. Back then, Wharton had been a twitchy, middle-aged woman with her hair plaited into a braid that left frizzy tendrils around the temples. She was in no way the literary giant they’d expected, but Stephanie had subsequently learned that authors were seldom what one expected. Back then, the group had drilled Agnes Wharton with the one question on everyone’s mind.

  When?

  When would the precious sequel to Sea Comes Knocking, the memoir that had become an instant classic, be delivered? When?

  The answer is today, Stephanie thought with a thrill of victory.

  Today, Stephanie Pink would take possession of the novel that the hungry world had been waiting for, fifteen long years after the first installment. So what if Agnes had become a recluse, without so much as a cell phone? It was charming, in a way, that they’d corresponded exclusively by letter to arrange the meeting in this wee town that had some sort of sentimental meaning for Agnes. Rumors abounded that the eccentric author had not left her remote off-the-grid property in the wilds of Washington since that book signing thirteen years ago in Manhattan, but Stephanie did not believe it. Nor did she care. She would get that manuscript if she had to crawl across the country on her hands and knees, and she would finally see her name neatly lettered on the frosted glass office door. She’d measured one morning in between coffee runs. Klein, Gregory, and Pink Literary Agency. It would just fit. Good thing her last name only had four letters. Pinkerton would never do.

  How her brother would have crowed. I’m close enough to taste it, Ian.

  She shouldered her purse more securely and marched into the Thumb’s Corner Café. A quick scan of the tables netted no solitary, literary types.

  “Hello,” she said to the teen boy behind the counter. “I’m supposed to meet someone here. Her name is Agnes Wharton.”

  “Haven’t had anyone but regulars today ’cept one woman with a braid.”

  Her breath hitched. “That’s her. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She came in and asked for a bowl of water about ten minutes ago and then left. Hasn’t been back.”

  “Great, thanks…” Stephanie suddenly stopped. “A bowl of water? For what?”

  He shrugged. She was already pushing back outside. “Never mind. Thank you.”

  The July sunlight in this rugged part of the world dazzled her eyes. She slipped off her silk blazer, beginning to wish she’d worn a skirt instead of her dress slacks. At least her pumps were low heeled.

  Bowl of water? Stephanie sped along the sidewalk toward the only vehicle she saw, an old Chevy Suburban parked one block down, with the passenger door open.

  Stephanie stopped alongside it when she noticed the overturned bowl and the stain of spilled water drying rapidly on the sidewalk. There was no one in the car. On the floor of the front passenger seat was a bag with a loaf of bread sticking out of the top. The front seat was crammed with plastic bags stuffed with recently purchased batteries, bags of flour, toothpaste and dental floss, a carton of copier paper, and three scattered white rose petals. The backseat had a blanket spread over it and an old cardboard box on the floor, the perfect size to hold a neatly typed manuscript.

  Delicious tension spiraled through her body. “You don’t suppose…” she whispered, reaching for the cardboard box. Was she inches away from the sequel to Sea Comes Knocking? Her fingers went icy.

  She was startled when a woman ran out of the clustered trees. A silvered braid, intense brown eyes. Agnes Wharton. It could be no one else.

  Stephanie beamed, feeling like a starstruck teen. “Ms. Wharton, I’m Stephanie Pink from the Klein and Gregory Agency. I’m so…”

  The woman ran past her, slammed the passenger car door, and raced to the driver’s side.

  “Ms. Wharton,” Stephanie called. “I’m—” She was about to launch into her introduction for the second time, but Wharton leaped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine.

  “Wait,” Stephanie said, waving her arms. “I’m here to meet with you. You can’t just drive off.”

  Wharton jammed the car into gear.

  The old Stephanie, the one who drove over wedding cakes, sprang in front of the car and whacked her palms on the hot metal of the hood.

  “Stop!” she yelled. “I’m trying to talk to you.”

  Wharton jerked as if she hadn’t before noticed the sweating, well-dressed woman sprawled on the hood of her Suburban.

  She honked the horn, which made Stephanie jump.

  “Get in, or I’ll run you over.”

  Stephanie thought it over for millisecond. Agnes Wharton was clearly nuts. Then again, all writers were a little nuts, and this particular nut held the keys to Stephanie’s future. One second ticked by. Two. Hauling open the door, Stephanie hurtled onto the passenger seat.

  Rhett Hastings opened one eye and rubbed the shoulder he’d bruised trying to force the trailer door closed that morning. It had been a Herculean effort to park the 1953 Lighthouse Travel Trailer in the first open space he saw at the Big Thumb Campground. He hadn’t even hooked the behemoth up to electrical or water. He’d simply unhitched his truck and crawled into the trailer. Sprawled on the musty living room sofa, he’d mumbled an awkward prayer that he was doing what God commanded and not simply making the most colossal mistake of his life, and then he’d fallen asleep until nearly dinnertime on Tuesday.

  When he finally swam his way fully into consciousness, he sat up. The sunlight that had streamed in through the window all day left the trailer oven temperature. Sweat dampened his brown hair into those curls that annoyed him. He reached for his phone to text the guy who would come and give him a two-hundred-dollar haircut. Then he remembered. You don’t live that life anymore, Rhett.

  Right. Shoving his fingers through his hair did not improve his look, nor did the stubble of beard on his unshaven chin. He felt the thrill of something again in his stomach, and he wasn’t sure if it was fear or exhilaration. Didn’t matter. He was way past the penny or pound stage. God had directed him to this hulk of a trailer, which was the symbol of the way forward, the rusting, unwieldy bridge to a new life for Ka
ren. Unless He hadn’t, and it wasn’t, and Rhett was delusional. It was a possibility.

  The trailer needed major renovations. The thing had already been on the rickety side two decades ago when he and his sister had lived in it. The paneling was water damaged, and he had a feeling the entire ceiling in the upper level bedrooms needed to be replaced. As he paced a few steps and tried to get the kinks out of his six-foot-three frame, he noticed a soft spot in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen near the bathroom.

  In days gone by, Rhett had been tolerable at helping his Uncle Mel fix up the old trailer, but replacing a ceiling and floor might take some research. He didn’t stew about it. A couple of YouTube videos, and he was sure he’d be up to speed on the how-to. He rummaged through the kitchen cupboards until he found the meager supplies he’d purchased the day before. Dried Turkish apricots and Marcona almonds would have to do until he got the power up and running—if he even bothered. One day to get the tire replaced and the door fixed, he figured, and then back on the road. He had a deadline, after all. Schedule, deadline, plan. The words soothed him.

  Something flashed by the window, a blur of white. He opened the door to investigate, but he saw nothing except for a thick forest of shrubs. A squirrel chattered from an old tree stump. He chewed a couple of apricots. Now that he was fully alert, he saw he’d managed to select a pretty isolated camping spot. Down to the left, a trickle of water, which was probably closer to a river in the winter, burbled weakly. The ground was covered by pine needles, and the little camp store and pool were so far away he could not even hear the chatter of summer visitors getting in that last swim of the day. If there were any visitors. Big Thumb was not exactly a tourist mecca. He wouldn’t have stopped either if he wasn’t exhausted, emotionally and physically.

  He heard his Uncle Mel repeat in that quiet way of his. “Rhett, you sure about this?”