Read New Leaf for Free Online Page B

markets to find a choice cut? He was fast approaching thirty. Wasn’t it about time he took women more seriously and found out what was between their ears instead of what they had to offer from the neck down?
    He headed over to his brother Jeb’s place during his lunch break. Huckleberry Road still wore a blanket of snow that glistened as if it were sprinkled with diamonds. He started to park in front of the large post-and-timber home, then changed his mind.
No point in walking out back to the shop when I can drive
.
    He circled the house and cut the engine of the Dodge just outside the cavernous building. Smoke trailed from the stovepipe chimney, a sure sign that Jeb labored inside on a woodworking project. He made fine furniture and cabinetry, a career that had started as a hobby years ago. Now Jeb worked at it full-time and made good money doing what he loved.
    As Barney swung out of the truck, he heard a rhythmic swishing coming from inside the shop. He’d been around Jeb while he worked enough times to recognize the sound and knew his brother was patiently sanding one of his creations. His boots crunched on the frozen snow as he strode to the front personnel door. He took an appreciative sniff of the wood smoke that canted in the breeze and rekindled old memories of his dad’s shop fires on cold winter days. The frosty doorknob chilled his palm as he turned it and stepped inside.
    “Yo, bro!” Jeb flashed a broad grin. “What brings you out this way?”
    After closing the door behind him with a bump of his hip, Barney chafed his hands as he circled piles of scrap to reach the woodstove. The musty smell of sawdust enveloped him. “It’s colder than a welldigger’s ass out there. April in Mystic Creek. You gotta love it.”
    Aside from being older, Jeb looked enough like Barney to be his twin, same hair, same eyes, same build. It had always bewildered Barney that he and his brothers could look so much alike and have such different personalities. Jeb worked with wood. Ben, the next oldest, raised, trained, and leased out rodeo livestock. Barney loved law enforcement, and Jonas, the youngest, was studying psychology. His sisters, Sarah and Adriel, had taken after their mother, Kate, all three of them petite dynamos with expressive brown eyes. The only trait they had inherited from their father was the color of their hair.
    Jeb ran a palm over a beautifully carved cabinet door to test for smoothness and then resumed making passes with the fine-grain sandpaper. “Coffee’s on. Help yourself.”
    Barney knew from experience that Jeb started the shop coffeepot at around five in the morning, and by early afternoon, the brew had turned to sludge. In fact, he caught the scorched stench even over the smokiness emanating from the stove. “No, thanks. I’ve had my coffee for the day.” Turning from the heat, he walked through another obstacle course to where Jeb labored. He sat on a nearby stool, which his sister-in-law Amanda often occupied. A playpen for their son sat off to the right. “Maybe that’s why I’ve got the jitters and all-over itches . . . too much caffeine.”
    Jeb glanced up to study Barney’s face. “Uh-oh.That doesn’t sound good.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I know that look. You’re ruminating on something. What’s up?”
    Barney shrugged, fiddled with his hat before settling it back on his head, and then sighed. “I’m not sure what’s up with me. You ever met Taffeta Brown, the lady who opened the health store over on East Main?”
    Jeb nodded. “I can’t say I’ve met her, exactly, but I’ve been in the shop. Why?”
    Quickly recounting the shadow dance story, Barney said, “I never paid her much mind. But now she’s like a chigger that’s gotten under my skin.”
    “She got your attention, did she?”
    “Boy, howdy, did she ever! I took two coffees to her shop this morning and stayed to chat. There’s something about her that has me interested in getting to know her