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