Chance Of A Lifetime by Kelly Eileen Hake Read Free Book Online Page A

fit, with little chance the stove would slide around and become damaged.
    “It’s incredible!” Daisy walked around it, looking from every angle. “A wood-burning stove, a kitchen range top, and even an oven built right in!” She opened the oven door experimentally and peeked inside.
    Bryce smiled at her excitement. The stove was a beauty all right, but he didn’t see how he could move it. If it had come in pieces or could be disassembled, he’d have managed. As it was, the thing was fully constructed with the pieces welded together. It had already been difficult to ease it out of the wagon onto a haystack and down to the ground. Bryce didn’t see how he could move it to the cabin.
    “I’ll go get the pie tins.” Daisy rushed off before Bryce could ask her what she was talking about. She returned in a moment with four metal pie tins.
    “Ready?” she asked expectantly, crouching beside one of the stove feet.
    “For what?” Bryce hated to admit it, but he had no idea what she was doing.
    “You lift up the edge, and I’ll slide the pie tin under the leg. We do it four times; then we can slide the stove to the door.” She blinked at him. “It’s too heavy to lift.”
    “Right.” Bryce hefted one corner of the stove. Pie tins weren’t wheels. He had his doubts about this scheme.
    Once the pie tins were in place, Daisy hopped around, pushing aside bits of wood to clear a path. When she gave the signal, Bryce got behind the stove and gave it a mighty heave, expecting the heavy thing to scarcely budge.
    He just about ended up on the ground for his doubts as the thing slid a goodly distance.
    “It works!” He couldn’t hide his amazement. The metal pie tins made the stove slide smoothly across the hard-packed dirt. He’d never have thought of this in a million years.
    “Of course it does,” Daisy teased him with an amused grin. “So how about putting those pie tins to work?”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Bryce put his hands on the stove and slid it to the doorstep.
    “We’ll have to lift this monster to get it inside on the wooden floor,” he mused. “I’ll go in backwards and lift while you push it on the two back feet. It’ll slide forward, and then I’ll yank it inside.”
    “Sounds good.”
    Bryce backed into position, stepping inside and crouching to lift the bottom of the stove the requisite few inches. “Now!”
    He pulled, Daisy pushed, and a resounding
cra–a–ack
rent the air as the stove lodged itself in the doorframe. Bryce let go, but the stove didn’t move. He put his hands on the range and leaned over it to get a view from the outside.
    “It’s splintered the doorway,” Daisy moaned, hovering close. She squinted and stepped back. “Mayhap if I try and yank it back—”
    “Nothing doing,” Bryce stated firmly. “If the weight of the thing itself won’t tilt it, there’s precious little you or I can do. The thing’s about two inches too wide to get inside the building.”
    “What’re we gonna do?”
    “Stand back, Daisy,” Bryce ordered. “I’m going to have to try and push it back out.”
    “All right, Bryce. Go ahead.”
    He gave the stove a quick shove, but the thing didn’t budge. He put his weight into it, digging in with his feet and using all the force he could muster.
    “I’m out of the way now,” Daisy clarified.
    Bryce couldn’t help it. After three days of miscommunication, hefting, and transporting the stove …
    “It’s stuck,” he admitted.

    “Stuck?” Daisy repeated dumbly. “Just how hard a push did I give that thing?” She walked up to the blocked doorway before venturing an opinion. “Mayhap if I wiggle it a little …” She grasped the edges and tried to move it from side to side, hoping to loosen the metal from where it jammed in the wooden doorframe.
    She leaned back as Bryce leapfrogged over the stove and slid down the flat range to stand beside her. Together they looked at the very heavy problem.
    “So … no new stove inside the