Beyond the Storm: Quilts of Love Series Read Online Free PDF

me at Dan-the-Handyman? There is a little hardware store in front of the lumberyard?”
    “I know where it is. What time?”
    “I’ll be locking up for Dan Strohacker tonight. He’s got an ultrasound up near the hospital in Southshire with his wife after work tonight, so . . . six?”
    “Fine.”
    Justin smiled at his phone as he dropped it into the cradle. This town was filled with some pretty interesting women. He wondered what this one looked like.
     
     

     
     
    “Abby? She’s cute. Kinda reminds me of a tall Tinker Bell.”
    Justin laughed at Dan Strohacker’s description of Abigail Durham. They were outside in Dan’s lumberyard and had just finished loading Justin’s truck for a job he was starting today. If Justin trusted anybody’s take on another person, it was Dan’s. In the time he’d known him, Dan had never said a bad word about anybody. But he was a great judge of character. What he had to say about people went a long way toward helping you understand exactly who they were.
    Dan was a great big teddy bear of a guy. An ex-marine, he was intimidating to look at with his meaty fists, barrel chest, silvery military buzz cut, and salt and pepper goatee, but on the inside? Dan was pudding. Rescue pet commercials on TV would regularly reduce him to tears, and if you were in need, you could always count on Dan to give you not only the shirt off his back but also the rest of the outfit, including his shoes.
    “Tinker Bell, huh? You sure you don’t mean pit-bull? She doesn’t bite, does she?”
    Dan rested his forearms on Justin’s tailgate and squinted. “Not that I know of. Why?”
    Justin dabbed at his temples with his wrist. Man, it was hot. He couldn’t understand how a big guy like Danny could look so cool. Must be the fact that he grew up in this sauna. As he squinted off in the distance behind the lumberyard, the panorama was so flat, Justin thought he could see the earth’s curve in the horizon. Spring wheat crops were just beginning to fuzz the ground and irrigation sprinklers shot water in an arc like the swish, swish, swishing tail of a horse. Cicadas whined in a high-pitched drone the way electricity charged across power lines, and overhead the sky that had been so blue only an hour ago, had taken on a hazy quality.
    Turning his attention back to Danny, Justin gave his shoulders a jerk. “We had a little tiff on the phone today. She wasn’t happy about the new awning codes for the food cart. I don’t think I can get her permits in time for the Quilt Fair’s Rawston Taste, and she was bent out of shape. Sounds like the boosters are low on dough.”
    “That’s why you donate the labor and I donate the wood, my friend.”
    “She didn’t exactly come across as grateful,” Justin grumbled and pulled off his leather gloves and slapped them on his thigh. “What’s her story, anyway?”
    “Sorta hard to explain in just a few minutes, but she had it kind of rough, growing up. She was in my youth group at church. Always asked me a lot of the questions a kid would normally ask her dad.” Dan pushed away from the tailgate of the truck, pulled his own gloves off and tucked them into the back waistband of his jeans. “She was raised by a single mom. Karen Durham’s not that much older’n me. Late forties to early fifties. Lives in California now. Abby’s daddy left on her eleventh birthday, which I get the feeling she never got over. He sold TV’s and stereos out there at Dave’s World on Fisher’s Mill Road. Still lives on the other side of town, but as far as I know, Abigail never sees him. Even after all these years, she’s havin’ a hard time forgiving him.”
    “What’d he do, tell her he couldn’t put an awning on her doll house?” Justin smirked.
    Danny laughed as he plucked a red plastic flag from a cardboard box and tied it to the end of the longest board sticking out over Justin’s tailgate. “Wish it was that simple. Nah, I know Dave is the first one to admit he