Hello! :-) I have decided to posted another twofer. :-) I hope you will enjoy these two chapters, and I thank you very much for your support and kind reviews. I always enjoy reading them and hope you continue to enjoy my story. :-)

Chapter 22

"Mike," Lucas said, as he looked through the glass door while sitting at his desk, "I think you may be getting more breakfast treats. I see Rosemary heading our way holding a basket."

"This is great," Hickam said. "You are one popular person. No one ever brought treats to us when Henry was here."

"What can I say? It must be my charming personality."

Hickam chuckled. "I guess so."

"Good morning, gentlemen," Rosemary sang, as she entered their office. "I brought you breakfast goodies."

"Thank you, Rosemary," Lucas said, as he and Mike rose from their chairs. "You didn't need to bring us food."

"I'm sure you two need a break once in a while. I did not bake these tarts. I bought them at the café, but they are very tasty."

"Thank you, Rosemary," Hickam said. "If Lucas doesn't want them, I will take them. Although I really shouldn't be eating these either."

"You can share them with other people, Mike," Lucas said, and then grinned at Hickam's horrified look. "Or maybe not."

"Do I need to leave so you two can talk?" Hickam asked, after setting the basket on his desk.

"No," Rosemary said, taking a seat across from Lucas's desk. "I need to talk to both of you."

Mike sat in the chair next to Rosemary while Lucas returned to his desk.

"Is this about the festival?" Lucas asked.

"Yes."

"What festival?" Hickam asked.

"Christmas," Rosemary said.

"You're doing that again?" Mike asked Lucas. "You are not going to have time."

"I know. I'm not doing it. According to Rosemary, the residents of Hope Valley are."

"That's right. I wanted to talk to Lucas and you, Mike, to get this in motion."

"Here's my file," Lucas said, handing it to Rosemary. "That has a lot of the information you will need."

"Thank you. I will look at this today. I can count on your help, right, Michael?"

"Of course. Let me know what you need."

"Great. I want to set up a town meeting this week once I review this information to get an idea of how to proceed. Lucas, you will be available if I have questions, right? I'm not expecting you to do anything, but if you wouldn't mind being, oh, what shall we call you, like somewhat of a consultant?"

"Sure," Lucas said. "I know you will have some questions. I can help."

"Thank you."

Rosemary stood and so did the two men.

"I'm off to look at this at the dress shop. We have an exciting day ahead."

"Oh?" Lucas asked. "What's happening there that has you so happy?"

"Well, later today, Elizabeth is bringing your mother by so Clara and I can meet her. I can't wait! Bye!"

"Bye," both men said.

Lucas gave a small laugh. He looked forward to hearing the details of that meeting even as he realized he liked the idea of Elizabeth making sure his mother felt welcomed.

"Your mother is in town?" Hickam asked.

"Yes, she is. My mother arrived yesterday."

"How nice. Are you going to be able to spend any time with her?"

"I will see my mother in the evenings. I will probably show her this office at some point. I will make certain you two meet. I'm sure we will be able to have lunch on occasion."

"I hope you are able to spend that much time with her. The timing doesn't seem very good for your mother to be visiting."

Lucas smiled inwardly, thinking again of why his mother was here and with whom she would be spending the majority of her time.

"It's fine," Lucas said, because he knew that to be true.

"Good morning, Fiona," Carson said, upon entering the Infirmary. "You're here early."

"Good morning, Carson. I wanted to get more familiar with your set up in order to help keep things organized, so I decided to spend a little time here before the day got busy."

"Thank you for wanting to do that. I appreciate it. What is this you are reading?"

"A medical journal."

"Really?" Carson said, his eyes lighting up. "Has working here given you an interest in medicine?"

Fiona shrugged. "I'm not sure, but when I worked at the switchboard, I always kept a book from the library nearby to read when I wasn't busy. Since I'm now in this environment, I thought maybe I should familiarize myself more with medical terms than read fine works of literature."

Carson chuckled. "Are you saying medical journals are not fine works of literature?"

Fiona laughed. "Well, it's not Wuthering Heights that's for sure, but I am finding some of what I can understand to be very interesting."

Carson nodded approvingly. "Great. Keep me posted and feel free to ask questions. Just please don't start thinking you have any rare diseases. I have a lot more reading material where that came from."

"I will try not to, and I'm sure you do," Fiona said and grinned.

"Rosemary, what are you doing?" Clara asked, when she saw her reading through papers and writing notes but knew what she was doing had nothing to do with designing.

"I'm looking through the information Lucas gave me and trying to get my thoughts organized. We need to start working on the Christmas festival."

"That's right. We talked about that a while ago. Do you think we can do it?"

"Of course, we can do it," Rosemary declared, looking at Clara with determined eyes. "But we are going to need a lot of help."

"You know Jesse and I will do whatever we can. We had a lot of fun last year even though it was also a lot of work. Lucas did a great job, and he and Jesse became friends during the festival which made me so happy."

"Well, unfortunately, we can't depend on Lucas much this year, but he will be available if we have questions."

"That's good," Clara said, "because I am sure we will have plenty."

"I want to finish going through his notes, so I can figure out when we should all meet. It needs to be this week, but tomorrow may be too soon. Let's try for Wednesday."

"Okay. We can start letting people know as they come in and at the café and the mercantile. Fiona can let people know at the Infirmary. Jesse can help me put up flyers."

"Sounds good. I also enlisted Julie's help while she's still here, so I will talk to her, too. Speaking of Julie, I almost forgot to tell you. Lucas's mother, Helen Bouchard, arrived yesterday to help Elizabeth finalize her book. Elizabeth is going to bring her here today so we can meet her."

"Wow! That is so great. I look forward to meeting her. Elizabeth sure has kept her novel writing under wraps. The only reason I know is because of you. Do you think she will tell people she is about to become a published author? It would be huge news."

"I agree. She has sworn me to secrecy except to tell you, of course, because we work together, and she thinks so highly of you, but you know, you're right. She really should start telling people. Maybe now that Lucas's mother is in town, Elizabeth will feel more comfortable sharing her news."

"I hope so," Clara said, sounding gleeful. "I want to celebrate with her."

Rosemary smiled. "Yes, I agree. There are a few things we could be celebrating. All in due time, Clara. All in due time."

"Mrs. Thornton, are you all right?" Opal asked.

Elizabeth, standing at her board with chalk in her hand, turned around to look at her concerned young student sitting in the front row. "Yes, of course, Opal. Why do you ask?"

"Because we did that math problem five minutes ago."

"And the one before that, we did twice because nobody wanted to tell you," Robert added.

The other students nodded and giggled.

"Okay, class," Elizabeth said, as she erased the math problem. "Settle down. I guess I lost my place, but this will be a good lesson for you. I want each of you to work on the next ten math problems in your workbooks by yourselves. Don't forget to show your work. Go."

After the groaning by the students ended when she gave them her searing look, Elizabeth sat down at her desk and once she knew they were working on their math problems, she lowered her head to review her lesson plan, but she actually needed a moment to compose herself. This had been the longest day, and she couldn't wait to dismiss her class so she could pack up her things and head to the Queen of Hearts.

After Julie had gone to bed the previous night, Elizabeth had remained downstairs and on a whim while drinking a cup of tea, she had pulled out her manuscript. She had not looked at it since she had received the telephone call from Branson Publishing. She had wanted to wait to read through it with fresh eyes once she had been assigned an editor and when Helen Bouchard had agreed to be her editor, she decided to hold off until Helen had arrived. But last night, she'd realized she wanted to review it. She had already thought of a few areas where she knew she could improve the dialog and the tension as Helen had mentioned in her letter, but Elizabeth did wonder if they were thinking of the same chapters or if Helen would suggest even more areas where her novel needed work. She'd wanted to be prepared so she went through her manuscript well into the night, trying to honestly critique her own work before hearing Helen's thoughts. Unfortunately, as she'd combed through her writing, she became anxious and starting thinking none of it was good enough and it all needed to be rewritten which, of course, was not true, but Elizabeth couldn't calm the unease she felt at suddenly having her writing discussed and edited. Why hadn't she gone to sleep and left the manuscript alone?

A few hours later, Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief when she finally dismissed the class.

Opal asked Allie if she wanted to come to her house; Allie said she did. Elizabeth smiled that things had seemed to calm down between her and Allie. She felt she had Allie's respect as her teacher. She knew they still needed to work on how they would interact outside of school but, for now, she was pleased Allie had returned to excelling in her classroom. She knew Nathan had to be happy and relieved about that, as well.

Elizabeth realized, with everything going on, she had not seen Nathan in a few days. She hoped he was doing okay and that she would see him at some point. It had not escaped her notice that lately he seemed to avoid being around the schoolhouse whenever he could. She surmised he had been trying, in his own way, to get close to her when he would appear with Allie or by himself quite often at various times, but she also realized he never truly would or could make the effort to be able to speak to her the way she would have appreciated during those moments.

The fact that Lucas had been able to communicate so easily with her and made every effort to do so, regardless of where they were or who was around was another sign of contrast between the two men and how they viewed her that she realized she probably should have recognized sooner, but Elizabeth was grateful she had heeded the most important sign of all: where her heart had been leading her. Straight to Lucas.

She certainly wished Nathan no ill will and wanted them to be friends. She wanted Lucas and Nathan to reach an understanding, too, but she was not sure that would ever happen, and she knew better than to broach that particular subject with Lucas. Especially when he was already feeling burdened.

As the children filed out of the school, Allie and Opal saw Lucas standing off to the side, not wanting to interfere with the many happy and chatty students exiting class for the day.

"He's been here before to see Mrs. Thornton," Opal said.

Allie rolled her eyes. "I know. He's the one Mrs. Thornton decided to be with instead of my uncle."

Opal looked at her friend with sympathetic eyes. "Really? I'm sorry. I know you wanted your uncle to be with Mrs. Thornton."

Allie shrugged. "Yeah, I thought it would be neat. But Mrs. Thornton likes Mr. Bouchard better than my uncle."

"That's too bad, but," Opal said, looking back at Lucas and hoping her friend wouldn't get upset, "he is kinda cute, and Mrs. Thornton did look happy that one time I saw him talking to her in the classroom. I wonder if he's why Mrs. Thornton couldn't do the right math problems."

Opal giggled as she remembered the flustered look on their teacher's face when she pointed out they had already done the math problem. Mrs. Thornton's face sort of reminded Opal of how their teacher used to look when she was around Mountie Jack, but when she heard Allie snicker after she made her comment about Mr. Bouchard, Opal knew she had to say something nice to her friend. She didn't want Allie to be unhappy or mad.

"Your uncle is very nice. I hope he's not sad."

"He was, but then he got a letter from a friend of my mom's, and she wants to visit Hope Valley. Of course, Uncle Nathan wouldn't tell me if he, you know, liked her, but I kinda got the feeling he did. I'm excited about her visit. Maybe she can tell me more about my mother."

"That would be great, Allie. You have to tell me what happens."

"Of course, I will. Come on. Let's race the rest of the way."

"Lucas!" Elizabeth said, spotting him standing off to the side a little while later when she closed the door to the schoolhouse. "This is a very nice and most welcomed surprise."

She met him at the bottom of the stairs; they began to walk towards the Queen of Hearts.

"I love that you're here, but should you be?"

"My uncle needed to use my office to make a couple of phone calls, so Mike and I decided to take a break. He wanted to talk to Fiona; I decided to come here."

"Did you talk to your uncle?"

"I did. He agreed to your suggestion. Thank you for sharing it with me."

"You're welcome. I'm happy for you and for him."

"We'll see how it goes. He does have some things he is working on. That's why he needed to use the phone. My mother and my uncle want me to contact my father about Gowen Petroleum. I'm thinking about it."

"You haven't said much about your father during this situation. I hope it goes well if you get in touch with him."

Lucas nodded his thanks. He wanted to explain his relationship with his father to Elizabeth, but he knew this was not the right time.

"I wanted to thank you for offering to introduce my mother to Rosemary and Clara. I'm sure she will enjoy meeting them and looking around the dress shop. It's very nice of you to make my mother feel so welcome. We both appreciate it."

"It's my pleasure. The dress shop is on the way, so I told Rosemary I would bring your mother to meet them. Rosemary is very excited 'the book editor' is in town."

They shared a smile.

"I know. I spoke with Rosemary this morning."

"About the festival?"

"Yes."

"I hope you didn't overextend yourself. I know how persuasive Rosemary can be."

"She was very agreeable. Said she understood I'm busy and basically, just wanted my file. I wish I could do more and maybe I can, down the road, but right now…"

Elizabeth halted her steps and so did Lucas. She gave him a serious look.

"You cannot, Lucas. Please do not let Rosemary even think you are willing to get involved. She will handle it, and she will do it well. Planning and organizing events is what she loves to do."

Lucas gave her an almost reluctant smile. "I'm sure she will do a masterful job."

Elizabeth frowned. "Please don't look like that, sweetheart. I know you loved what you brought to Hope Valley last year, and I know why you did it. We all loved it, too, but it's too much for you to take on. You will get to enjoy the fruits of our labor this year, and there's nothing wrong with that."

"If you say so," he said, not convinced.

"Well, I do," she challenged, standing firm in the face of his uncertainty.

"Okay," he acquiesced, knowing he had no choice.

"Good," she said and then she treated him to a heartfelt smile.

He did love and admire her spirit.

He treated her to his own signature smile which she loved.

Holding hands, they resumed walking in companionable silence, both lost in their own thoughts. When they arrived at the Queen of Hearts, Lucas smiled tenderly and then kissed her cheek. He wanted to let Elizabeth meet his mother alone. They did not need him hovering nor did he think his mother would appreciate his presence.

"I'm sure everything will go well this afternoon," he said. "Enjoy your time with my mother. I will see you both later."

Elizabeth offered him a hope-filled smile and nodded. Elated he had surprised her at the schoolhouse, she watched as he headed for Gowen Petroleum and once he had gone inside, she took a deep breath and entered the Queen of Hearts, ready for her journey into the publishing world to begin.