“Here.” Abby quickly pulled a lighter out of her purse and carried it over.
“You smoke?” His tone was smooth, yet she still felt the accusation.
“You sound remarkably like my grandfather used to.”
A full beat passed before his lips quirked. “My sister keeps telling me I’m getting old before my time,” he said. “Must be true if I strike you as grandfatherly.” He took the lighter and set the small flame to the newspaper. When he was sure it took, he straightened and left the lighter on the wood mantel.
“Abby’s my sister,” Dillon said so suddenly that she shot him a surprised look.
The man didn’t look surprised. And he wasn’t the least bit grandfatherly, though Abby didn’t figure it would be appropriate to tell him so. He simply nodded at this additional information, not knowing how unusual it was for Dillon to offer anything where a stranger was concerned. He set the fireplace screen back in place. “What grade are you in?”
But her brother’s bravery only went so far. He ducked his chin into his puffy down collar. “Second,” he whispered and hurried back to the couch. He sat down on the edge of a cushion again and tucked his bare fingers under his legs.
Abby knew the best thing for Dillon was to keep things as normal as possible. So she ignored the way he was carefully looking away from them and focused on the tall man as he straightened. She was wearing flat-heeled snow boots, and he had at least a foot on her five-one. Probably a good eighty pounds, too, judging by the breadth of his shoulders. “Do you have kids?” Maybe a second-grader who’d become friends with Dillon.
“Nope.” Which didn’t really tell her whether there was a wife or not. “How much more do you need to unload?”
She followed him onto the porch. “A few boxes and our suitcases.”
He grabbed the shovel as he went down the steps and shoved it into the snow, pushing it ahead of him like a plow as he made his way to the car.
“You don’t have to do that,” Abby said quickly, following in his wake.
“Somebody needs to.”
Her defenses prickled. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m perfectly capable of shoveling my own driveway.”
His dark gaze roved over her. “But you didn’t. And I’m guessing if you’d had a shovel in that little car of yours, you’d have already used it so you could get the car into the driveway.”
Since that was true, she didn’t really have a response. “My grandfather had a snowblower,” she said. “I didn’t really have a good way to move it here, so I sold it.” Along with most everything else that her grandparents had owned. Except the crystal. Ever since Abby had been a little girl, her grandmother had said that Abby would have it one day.
And now she did.
The reality of it all settled like a sad knot in her stomach.
She’d followed her grandfather’s wishes. But that didn’t mean it had been easy.
They’d lost him when he’d died of a heart attack two years earlier. But they’d been losing her grandmother by degrees for years before that. And in the past year, Minerva Marcum’s Alzheimer’s had become so advanced that she didn’t even recognize Abby anymore.
Even though Abby was now a qualified RN, she’d had no choice but to do what her grandfather had made her promise to do when the time came—place her grandmother into full-time residential care.
“So you’ll get another blower,” the man was saying. “Or a shovel. But for now—” he waggled the long handle “—this is it.” He set off again, pushing another long swath of snow clear from the driveway.
She trailed after him. “Mr., uh—”
“Sloan.”
At last. A name. “Mr. Sloan, if you don’t mind lending me the shovel, I can do that myself. I’m sure you’ve got better things to—”
“—just Sloan. And, no, I don’t have better things to do. So go back inside, check the fire and unpack that crystal of yours. Soon as you can pull your car up in the driveway, I’ll leave you to it.”
She flopped her hands. “I can’t stop you?”
“Evidently not.” He reached the end of the driveway, pitched the snow to the side with enviable ease and turned to make another pass in the opposite direction. At the rate he was going, the driveway would be clear of the snow that reached halfway up her calves in a matter of minutes.
She ought to be grateful. Instead, she just felt inadequate. And she hated feeling inadequate.
Short of trying to wrestle the shovel out of his hands—which was a shockingly intriguing idea—she could either stand there watching or do something productive.
Like checking the fire and unpacking.
She went back inside. The fire had already started warming the room. Dillon had shed his coat and was sitting on the beige carpet, setting his video games neatly inside the cabinet. “When’re we gonna visit Grandma?”
Abby stepped around his plastic crate and went to the fireplace. “I thought we’d go next weekend.” She moved the fire screen aside and took a piece of wood from the stack. She jabbed the end of it against the burning logs, sending up a blur of sparks before tossing it onto the top. Then she replaced the screen and straightened. “We can’t go every day like we used to.”
“I know.” He pushed out his lower lip, studying the cover of his video game. “Would she ’member us if Grandpa hadn’t died?”
Abby sat down on the floor next to him, pulled off her coat and put her arm around him. “No, honey. Losing Grandpa has nothing to do with it. But we remember her.” She ignored the tightening in her throat. “And we’ll visit her every chance we can, just like I’ve told you. Okay?”
She felt his nod against her cheek.
“Okay.” She pressed her lips to his forehead before pushing to her feet. “Why don’t we leave the rest of our unpacking until later and get the television hooked up. I’m finally going to beat you at ‘White Hats.’”
He snorted softly. “Yeah, right.”
Which just eased the tightness in her throat and made her smile instead. She turned away from him only to stop short at the sight of Sloan standing inside the door. She hadn’t even heard him open it.
“Driveway’s clear.”
She pulled at the hem of her long sweater. “Thank you. I’ll have to figure out a way to return the favor.”
His dark gaze seemed to sharpen. And maybe it was her imagination that his eyes flicked from her head to her toes, but then that would mean it was also her imagination that her stomach was swooping around. And she’d never been particularly prone to flights of imagination.
“That might be interesting.” Then he smiled faintly and went out the door again, silently closing it after him.
Abby blinked. Let out a long breath.
If Mr. Just-Sloan did have a wife, he had no business making new neighbors feel breathless like that.
“Come on, Abby,” Dillon said behind her. “I wanna play ‘White Hats.’”
“I know. I know.”
And if he doesn’t have a wife?
She ignored the voice inside her head and pulled the television out of the box.
Whether the man was married or not didn’t matter.
All she wanted to do was start her new job at the elementary school and raise Dillon with as much love as her grandparents had raised her.
Nothing