First Time, Forever, page 3
“Oh, Mac, come here.”
He came, and even allowed her to put her arms around him and she found herself saying, “Everything will be fine.” With him snuggled against her, those words felt true, and it actually did feel as if it could be home here.
Mac tolerated her embrace for three seconds or so, then pulled away and walked down the narrow hall. “I guess I’ll have this room,” he said after a minute. “Auntie Kathy, you never answered me. Did you think that dust hopper was good-looking?”
“Dust hopper?”
“The goof with the truck.”
She didn’t answer, appalled by this creature who was her nephew.
“I thought he was real ugly,” Mac said. “Real. And way too young for you. Way.” He slammed his bedroom door.
She thought of him sitting in that empty room, nursing his own bad humor, and sighed. She looked around again at her homely house, and went into the bathroom. More aging linoleum. She thought of Evan Atkins being way too young for her, and him not even commenting, when he’d been given the opportunity, that the house was obviously years older than she was.
Howard’s new fiancée was young, blond, perky.
You broke up with him five years ago, Kathleen reminded herself savagely. You’re over it. She barely locked the door before the tears started to fall.
It had been a stupid thing to do, to take a job in a place she had never heard of. Stupid, stupid. Stupid. When she’d been hired sight unseen, when that letter had arrived, she’d actually thought, naively, whimsically, that it had been heaven sent. She had told herself this was her chance to start anew. To be somebody new. Somebody who worried less and laughed more. Who did daring and bold things—like moved to a town they had never heard of.
Kathleen allowed herself to snivel for ten minutes, and then came out, knocked firmly on Mac’s bedroom door and told him they had a great deal of work to do to make this house into their home.
Stupid or not, they were here, and she had to make the best of it.
She unlocked the U-haul and after some rummaging handed Mac a broom. When he rolled his eyes, she said, “Be thankful it’s not a shovel.”
“I don’t like this house,” Mac said.
“It didn’t live up to my expectations, either,” she admitted, “but I can make it clean, and in time it’ll be cute, too.”
“Oh, cute.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Did you think he was? Cute?”
“No,” she said, “not at all.”
Her response was completely honest. Evan Atkins cute? It would be like calling a grizzly bear adorable. Howard had been cute with his big brown eyes, his curly hair, his little potbelly.
Mac was clearly relieved with her answer.
She spent the rest of the day feverishly cleaning the little house from top to bottom, scrubbing walls and floors and appliances. Mac was surprisingly helpful, but only until his boom box came out of the trailer. By nightfall, Kathleen had only the energy left to move in two mattresses and a box of bedding.
“You don’t have to get up with me in the morning,” Mac told her. “You look really tired.” When she got up in the morning, he was gone, but he had found the coffeepot and made coffee for her. Just when she was about to lose hope in him, he would win her back by doing something sweet and thoughtful like that.
She walked the three blocks to work, noting they comprised most of the town. She spent the day at the Outpost, learning the inventory, which was extensive, and prices, and how to use the archaic cash register.
She was amazed by the number of people who came through the store, until Ma told her they were coming from miles around to check her out. She was asked on six dates before noon! It did wonders for her flagging spirits, even if she did say no to all of them.
At four she headed home, exhausted, knowing she had that U-haul to unload. Still, she had all the ingredients for Mac’s favorite spaghetti supper, and couldn’t wait to fill up that little house with the good smells of garlic and tomatoes and pasta.
But by five o’clock Mac still wasn’t home.
She scanned the road yet again. She thought she had heard a truck, but it proved to be a large farm vehicle.
Mac had left at five this morning. Twelve hours? Didn’t that seem a little long to work a twelve-year-old?
It occurred to her he might have been in an accident.
She laughed nervously at that. It would be the worst of ironies if she moved from busy Vancouver to sleepy Saskatchewan, mostly for Mac’s sake, only to have him maimed or killed in an accident.
Of course, she had never actually seen Evan pick him up. What if he had gone to the highway and hitchhiked away? What if even now—
Stop, she ordered herself. This was what her book on positive thinking said she must not do, think in negatives, create whole scenes and scenarios. The book, she recalled, instructed her to try to turn her negative thoughts around, to think now, of something positive.
She tried to picture Mac having a wonderful day. She pictured him on a farm. She pictured him chasing through tall grass after a butterfly, having just the kind of day she had pictured when she’d applied for this job.
She went back and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Why had she made so much?
Kathleen Miles, you are not inviting that man in for dinner.
Just then she heard a truck pull up. She set down the spoon in such a hurry it splattered sauce on her white blouse. She ran to the front window.
The right truck. She went out of the house and onto the porch.
Mac got out of it and slammed the door. He marched up the walk, his back straight, his clothes absolutely filthy, a pungent aroma following him.
She glanced anxiously at his running shoes.
Clean.
“How was it?” she asked him.
“How do you think?” he snapped.
“Oh.”
“Hey, none-of-your-business.” Evan Atkins had gotten out of his truck and was coming down the walk toward them.
Mac turned and glared at him.
“Same time, same place,” Evan said.
Mac gave him a dirty look and when it didn’t phase Evan, he gave it to her instead. Then he muttered a word she couldn’t quite make out and the porch door slammed shut behind him.
Evan Atkins continued down the walk toward her.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and suddenly felt very aware of the little splotch of spaghetti sauce on the front of her. She wasn’t going to let him see that she felt vulnerable!
He walked with the easy assurance of a man completely comfortable within his own body, a man sure of himself. His self-certainty annoyed her even more in the face of her own lack of it.
“I wish you wouldn’t call him none-of-your-business,” she said, far more sharply than she intended, sounding exactly like the aging spinster she was. “His name is Mac.”
“Actually, I know that. I’m just waiting for the invitation to come from him.”
His voice was low and calm, a faint thread of amusement running through it, though he wasn’t smiling. Did he find her amusing? Probably that spaghetti splotch. He stopped, rested one foot on her bottom step and looked up at her.
“Where on earth have you been?” Her voice was still sharper than she intended, but definitely the tone of a woman who planned to be taken seriously.
His eyes widened. “Ma’am?”
His eyes were dark ocean-blue, with flecks of the most intriguing gray.
“He left at five-thirty this morning!”
“My place is a good half hour drive from here, ma’am. That’s an hour round trip. I had a lot of work to do today. I couldn’t just stop everything to drive him back into town when he thought he’d had enough. Which was about five minutes after he started.”
“Twelve hours is a long time for a little boy to work.”
“He’s not that little. Besides, we stopped for lunch.”
“I don’t even think it’s legal to work a man that long!”
“Well, ma’am,” he said, a bit of a fire lighting in those cool ocean eyes, “if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t even make a dent in that anger he’s carrying around.”
“Mac is not angry!” She had no idea why she said that, when it was so pathetically obvious he was.
“Scratching that particular word in the side of a person’s truck can’t exactly be interpreted as ‘I come in peace.’”
“I don’t think he better work for you tomorrow.”
“Now, ma’am, it’s really none of my business, but I think that would be a mistake.”
“Really?” she said haughtily.
“I don’t think you want to be teaching that boy that he can behave any old way he likes, and that there won’t be any consequences for it. Mama Bear will bail him out.”
He was right, and they both knew it.
Still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying, “And you’re an expert on raising children, are you?”
She was sorry the minute she said it, knowing she was taking out all her anxiety about her move and Mac on him, and that he didn’t deserve it. Besides, as soon as she said it, in his eyes she caught a glimpse of a pain that was as raw as an open wound.
But his voice was steady, and completely unflappable. He answered slowly, measuring his words. “No, I’m sure not that. It just seems to me if you bail him out now, you’ll be bailing him out in quite a different way in the future.”
She took a deep breath, realized she was being both cranky and unfair and that he was right and she was wrong. She was completely unable to admit that. “I was worried about him. I was worried when he was gone so long.”
It was Evan’s look of genuine distress that soothed some of the irritation she had been feeling.
“I didn’t mean to cause you worry. I guess I should have called.” He smiled, shook his head and said, “I feel like I’ve said those words a few times before in my life.”
She just bet he had. Those charming dimples had probably won the hearts of hundreds of women who had waited by their phones with bated breath for his call. That never came. She planned never to be one of them. Never. That was one very good reason she couldn’t invite him to share spaghetti with them.
“I guess I thought I’d keep him out of your hair while you were at work,” he said.
He’d been doing her a favor, or thought he was, and she was giving him a hard time about it?
“He’s not such a bad kid,” she said defensively, and then realized, suddenly, how ridiculous she must seem—a mother bear protecting her cub, just as he had said.
“Ma’am, I can see that.”
“You can?”
His smile deepened and she was now certain she did not like his smile. It made him, in an instant, in to one of those men who can have anything. Anything. Had she really cooked that dinner just for Mac? Was she feeling prickly as a pear because her nerves were leaping with awareness of this attractive stranger resting his boot-clad foot on her front step?
“In the odd moment. I had him bring the mix out to my calves. I wish you could have seen the look on his face.”
“I wish I could have seen that, too.”
“Well, maybe you will one time.”
“Thanks. Maybe I will.” But since that would mean tangling her life a little more with Evan Atkins she decided she wouldn’t. She had pinned her hopes on Howard, and he had let her down, and the hurt was terrible.
And Howard wasn’t nearly as…compelling as the young, and gorgeous Mr. Atkins. In fact, Howard suddenly seemed very blah, boring. If a blah and boring man could hurt her so much she really didn’t want to think what an exciting and passionate one could do.
“How did things go your first day on the job?”
“Oh. Fine.” What made her think he was passionate? The smoky look in his eyes? The uncomplicated sensuality of his lips?
“Everybody within a hundred miles dropped by to say howdy?”
She felt some of the stiffness leave her and she laughed. “A thousand, I think.”
“Ma’am, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Quit calling me ma’am!” Why did her tone have to be so querulous with him? “Please.”
“All right.” He waited.
She blushed, as if she had just turned sixteen and not thirty-four. “Kathleen.”
“Well, Kathleen, I’ll bet your dance card is full right up for the next year or so.”
“Pardon?”
“They all ask you out? The bachelors of Hopkins Gulch?”
“Oh. A few of them. I don’t do that. Go out.”
“You don’t? Why not?”
Why not? There was no Howard to be loyal to anymore. What kind of woman was loyal to a man for five years after he’d broken up with her? A dolt, that’s what kind.
“I don’t think it would be good for Mac.”
“How’s that?”
“In my experience—” admittedly limited, though she didn’t say that “—romance seems to be distinctly upsetting.”
“Distinctly upsetting,” he repeated thoughtfully. “I’d have to go along with you on that one. By the way, does Mac really have allergies? To horses?”
“No. Did he tell you that?”
“Deathly, according to him. One whiff of horse and immediate anaphylactic reaction. Said he forgot his kit at home. Like a beesting kit, only a horse whiff kit.”
She was staring at Evan trying to hide her horror. When had her nephew become such an accomplished liar? She didn’t even know Mac knew the word anaphylactic.
“I take it,” Evan said at her silence, “it would be quite safe to have him feed the horses tomorrow?”
“Quite safe,” she murmured.
“If he comes.”
“He’ll come.”
“I’ll be here at five-thirty, then.”
“All right.”
He turned and walked away. She was fascinated by the way he walked, loose-limbed and confident, like a man who owned the earth.
“So, what should I call you?” she called after him.
He stopped and looked back at her. “This is a pretty casual kind of place. Evan would do fine.”
“Thanks, Evan, for looking after his shoes.” Was she actually trying to keep him here? If she didn’t watch herself, she’d be inviting him in for supper in a minute.
He gave her a lopsided grin that chased the shadows from his face and made him look charming and boyish and about a hundred years younger than she.
“Did you really pay two hundred dollars for those shoes?”
“Not quite,” she said, “but close.”
He shook his head incredulously. “Why?”
“They’re magic shoes,” she said with a sigh. “They were supposed to make him happy.”
“If you got that in writing, I’d take them back.” He turned then, went down the walk and got into his truck.
She had to bite her tongue to keep herself from stopping him one more time, asking him if he’d like to join them for spaghetti.
It wouldn’t be a date. Not even close. Just a neighborly kind of thing.
Not wanting to look pathetic, she did not watch while he drove away.
She went into the house just as Mac came out of the shower, toweling his head. The freckles had darkened across his nose, and his cheeks were full of color from the sun.
“I really hate that dust hopper,” he told her. “I worked hard enough today that I shouldn’t have to go back.”
“Well, you do,” Kathleen said, glad that her resolve had been strengthened by her talk with Evan.
“He worked me really hard, and didn’t give me enough to eat or drink. I think there are laws against treating kids like that.”
“There are laws about damaging people’s property,” she said sternly. She tried to get him to think positive, just as the book said. “Tell me one good thing that happened to you today.”
He scowled at her. “There wasn’t one.”
“Oh, come on. Tell me about the calves.”
“They’re really stupid and they stink. Just like his kid.”
“His kid?” Kathleen asked, stunned.
“Yeah. He has a little boy named Jesse. He’s nearly three and he wears diapers. Is that normal?”
“I’m not sure.”
“He doesn’t talk much, especially when the Gestapo is around.”
“Who doesn’t talk much? And what Gestapo?”
“The baby doesn’t talk much. And the Gestapo is the dust hopper you think is so cute.”
“I never said I thought he was cute.” She was sure she was going to blush and give herself away, so she turned quickly. Over her shoulder she said, “Don’t call him that again. Gestapo. That’s dreadful.”
“Well, so is shoveling for no pay. That kid can’t say r. Is that normal?”
“I don’t know.” Why was it making her feel so inadequate that she couldn’t answer his questions? Making her feel as if she had missed something. A baby of her own. Another dream Howard had stolen from her. If she waited until Mac was grown up, another six years at least, wouldn’t it be too late then? She’d be forty!
“It doesn’t seem normal. He says wabbit for rabbit. Could I say r?”
“I don’t ever remember you not saying r.”
“That’s good because it sounds really stupid.”
“Where’s Jesse’s mom?”
“She died in a caw.”
“Oh, Mac.”
“It really stinks, doesn’t it, when mom’s die and leave their kids? At least he has a dad who cares about him, even if he is the Gestapo.”
Spoken carelessly, it failed to hide his pain. He was still grieving the loss of his mother, even though it had been nearly five years now. And his father. Kathleen felt a nameless fury. He’d never even seen his son. Abandoned her sister and his unborn child as soon as he’d learned she was pregnant.
And of course, then there had been Howard, who had told her, shortly after her sister’s death, “It’s Mac or me.” Not quite in those words, of course. Howard was always so good with words. Educated. Sophisticated. Things that had impressed her once.
“I care about you, Mac,” she said firmly. “I love you more than a leopard loves its spots.”
