A Family Kind of Gal

by Lisa Jackson

  “Don’t you?” He laughed wickedly, and she blushed to the roots of her hair.

  “Look, Santini, instead of bothering me—”

  “Bothering you? Oh, lady, you don’t know how much more I could bother you if I set my mind to it.”

  Maddening. That was what he was. “Why don’t you make yourself useful? Pour orange juice or set the table or something.”

  “I’ve got a better idea.” He kissed her cheek, and she shot him a glare she hoped could cut through steel. “Call me when it’s time to eat.” Taking his cup of coffee with him, he walked to the back porch, then sauntered to the garage. Pretty high-handed of him, she thought, until she saw him return with a carpenter’s belt slung around his waist and a ladder over his shoulder. Within minutes he’d propped the ladder against the side of the house and had climbed to the second story where he started pounding, presumably to secure one of the shutters surrounding one of her bedroom windows—a shutter that had hung at an angle ever since she’d moved in.

  She shouldn’t trust him, she told herself, as she started frying bacon and added the last of the berries to her pancakes. She always suspected him of having his own agenda, and yet the memory of his touch caused her insides to melt.

  With a clang of ancient pipes, water from an upstairs faucet began running. Obviously Stephen was up and showering.

  Soon both of her children had padded downstairs. Christina was still in her pajamas and dragged her blanket with her. Stephen was wearing distressed jeans and a faded T-shirt. His hair was wet and his expression was sour, which wasn’t unusual and often didn’t disappear until his second helping of eggs or bowl of cereal.

  “Mommy!” Christina ran across the kitchen and flung herself into her mother’s waiting arms.

  “Good morning, kiddo.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Well, breakfast is ready.” Tiffany helped her daughter into a booster chair. “How about you?” she asked Stephen.

  He slumped into one of the wooden chairs that surrounded the table and slid a glance toward the window where the ladder and the toes of J.D.’s boots were visible. “What is it?”

  “Blueberry pancakes and bacon. Eggs if you want them.”

  “No eggs!” Christina cried, shaking her head as Tiffany snagged an oven mitt from the counter and pulled out the platter of pancakes. She slid one on to a plate, drizzled it with blueberry syrup, then pronged a slice of bacon from the frying pan.

  “Careful, it’s hot,” Tiffany said, placing the plate and a small fork on to the place mat in front of Christina. “What about you?” she asked Stephen. “Eggs?”

  “Naw. Just pancakes.”

  As she was fixing a plate for her son, she opened the window over the sink and invited J.D. to join them. Christina grinned as she saw her uncle climb down the ladder, but Stephen’s mouth tightened at the corners.

  “Are we goin’ to the wedding?” he asked when the eggs were cooked and they were all seated around the table. He stared at Tiffany through a fringe of too-long hair.

  “No.” She didn’t bother to elaborate. “I think you’d better go down to the barbershop this week.”

  “I want to go to the wedding,” Christina insisted. “I want to see brides.”

  Stephen snorted contemptuously. “There’s only one.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t even know who’s getting married.”

  “Who is it?” the little girl demanded.

  “Our grandfather, that’s who,” Stephen said.

  It was on the tip of Tiffany’s tongue to argue with her son and tell him that John Cawthorne would never be his grandfather, but she held the hateful words back. Why lie? Who knew what the future would bring? Though she saw no reason to celebrate his marriage to his longtime mistress, she hoped she wasn’t so bitter about her lonely childhood that she couldn’t someday be civil to the man and his wife.

  “Have you considered going?” J.D., seated across the table from her, cut into his stack of pancakes with the edge of his fork.

  “Fleetingly.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not ready. Not yet” Using her fork, she shifted her scrambled eggs around on her plate and realized the turn of the conversation was affecting her appetite. “I’m not sure I ever will be.”

  “I think we should,” Stephen said, settling low on his chair.

  “Why?”

  “Why not? He wants you to.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Are you chicken?”

  The light banter fell away. Tiffany’s heart squeezed hard. “No,” she replied. “It has nothing to do with fear. I just don’t think I should…honor—if that’s the right word, or maybe validate would be better—this man’s decision.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story. Goes back to when I was a little girl and he wasn’t around.”

  “But he wants to be around now. Doesn’t that count?” Stephen asked, eyeing her with such scrutiny she wanted to squirm out of his line of vision.

  “It counts. A little.”

  Stephen reached for the syrup and poured a rich purple river over his stack of pancakes. “I thought you always said it’s important to forgive.” Tiffany’s throat constricted. Her son had a point, and there was more going on here than the typical teenager-parent argument. Stephen might be trying to tell her that she was lucky to have a father—even a latent, unconventional one like John Cawthorne. After all, Stephen had lost his own dad and was a little like a ship without an anchor, drifting emotionally. He probably needed a positive male role model in his life. Somehow John Cawthorne, who had kept a mistress for years while married to another woman and who had fathered two children out of wedlock, didn’t seem the best candidate.

  “I’ll probably forgive John someday.”

  “But you won’t call him your father?” Stephen prompted.

  “Being a father is more than a question of biology and genetics.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Stephen shot her a look that called her a liar and a hypocrite as he pronged a forkful of pancakes. “You’re always telling me to give people a chance.”

  “Is that what you want?” she asked and her son looked away.

  “Dunno,” he admitted, then nodded. “I think we should go to the wedding.”

  “Too late.” She felt a sheen of perspiration coat her body.

  “I want to go!” Christina said, her face smeared with syrup, her hands a sticky mess.

  “Not this time.”

  “He’s our grandfather!” Stephen challenged.

  “I know, but—”

  “This is something your mom has to deal with in her own way,” J.D. interjected, and Tiffany felt as torn as she had when she’d first learned of John Cawthorne’s wedding.

  “Maybe later we can all get to know each other,” she said, realizing that her son was somewhat isolated down here. He’d left friends in Portland when they’d moved. The few he’d made here were trouble. She took a long swallow of her coffee and thought about the cousins that he had. Her half sister Katie had a boy, Josh, a few years younger than Stephen, and Bliss was going to marry Mason Lafferty, who had a daughter, Dee Dee, from his first marriage. Surely there would be a baby on the horizon. And Katie had three brothers, none of whom were married, but who might link up with women who already had children.

  With bone-chilling certainty Tiffany realized that Stephen was reaching out for a family, longing for more than he had, searching for a father figure. Just as she had when she’d been his age.

  Tears stung her eyes, and her hands shook as she set her cup on the table. “We can’t go to the wedding today, but—”

  “You mean you won’t go,” Stephen interrupted.

  “But I’ll see that we get together with your...grandfather and his new wife soon.”

  “Goody!” Christina said, throwing up her hands and losing a piece of bacon from her fist. It fell to the floor only to be sniffed at disdainfully by a curious Charcoal who h
ad been sunning himself near the window.

  J.D. looked as if he had more to say, but one glance at Tiffany seemed to tell him that she was having trouble with the discussion, so he quickly changed the subject to fixing up the house with Stephen’s help.

  “What do you mean?” Stephen asked when J.D. suggested they start with the fence.

  “We’ll shore it up, replace a few boards and then work on the porch or the windows.”

  “I don’t know how to do anything like that.”

  J.D.’s eyes glinted. “Then it’s time you learned.”

  Though Stephen acted as if he’d do just about anything to escape from his uncle’s proposed list of duties, he finished his breakfast, dropped his plate into the sink and followed J.D. outside. Tiffany, still recovering from her son’s interrogation, cleaned the kitchen, then helped Christina take a shower while J.D. and Stephen tackled everything from the gutters to the back porch.

  It was almost as if they were a small family.

  Be careful, Tiffany, she cautioned herself. That kind of thinking might land you in trouble. Big trouble. J.D. is your brother-in-law. Not your husband!

  But Christina didn’t know it. She seemed to be in heaven hanging around outside, a satellite who orbited around her uncle. Stephen, on the other hand, made no bones about the fact that he felt used and overworked. He grumbled continuously as he and J.D. cleaned the gutters and straightened the fence. He complained that he was supposed to meet friends, that his back hurt, that he was tired, but his uncle would have none of it and ran the boy ragged.

  They stopped around one for sandwiches and lemonade, then went back to fixing the back porch where it sagged. Meanwhile, with the sound of hammers pounding nails ringing through the house, Tiffany changed the beds, did the laundry and caught up on some neglected paperwork.

  Christina had protested vehemently against a nap and was starting to get cranky around three-thirty. By that time, Stephen looked exhausted, and J.D. finally released him from his duties.

  Stephen was on the phone in a second and had made plans before Tiffany could say anything. “We’re going swimming,” he announced.

  “Who?”

  “Me and Sam.”

  “Sam and I,” she automatically corrected.

  Stephen rolled his eyes while Christina chased a grasshopper through the dry lawn.

  “Be back by six for dinner,” Tiffany told her son as he grabbed his scarred skateboard and sailed down the sidewalk.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You will be,” she called after him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said before adjusting his balance and coasting agilely around the corner.

  “He’s not such a bad kid,” J.D. said, watching Stephen vanish past a stand of pine trees and draping an arm familiarly over Tiffany’s shoulders. They stood at the edge of her rose garden near one side of the house. Honey bees buzzed around the blooms, and their fragrance filled the hot air. Why did it feel so natural for his hand to rest on her shoulder? Why did the scent of his aftershave tickle her nostrils and make her think of tumbling into bed with him?

  “Never said he was.” She shrugged and slid away from his touch.

  “I was kidding, Tiff. You’ve always stood up for your kids and your family. Even Philip.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  His eyes narrowed on the distant horizon, but Tiffany suspected he wasn’t watching the jogger and the black Lab running along the sidewalk, or that he noticed a van full of kids and a harried mother drive by. No, his mind was turned inward, and he was focused on his own vision, his private viewpoint. “Philip wasn’t a saint, you know.”

  “And you are?” She plucked a dying rose from its thorny stem, and an angry bumblebee, buzzing indignantly, flew out of the petals as they dropped to the ground.

  J.D.’s laugh was without a drop of mirth. “A saint? Far from it.”

  “What is it they say about casting stones?” She twisted another dying bloom from the nearest rosebush, then decided to wait until she’d located her gardening shears to finish the task. “I know Philip gambled, Jay.” She squinted up at him as the late-afternoon sun was still bright, the day hazy and hot. Perspiration began to collect on her scalp. “And I realize that he cheated on his first wife.” Her brother-in-law’s eyes registered surprise. “He told me about sneaking around on Karen when Robert and Thea were still toddlers,” she admitted. “Granted, he didn’t confess until after we were married, but still, he told me.”

  “Maybe he thought it would be better coming from him rather than hearing it from a stranger.”

  “Well, he was right. As far as I know, he never betrayed me, and even if he did, what good would it do now to know about it?” she asked, searching his face for any kind of clue as to what he was trying to say. She’d known Philip’s flaws as well as anyone. “The fact of the matter is that he died saving Christina’s life.”

  “So he is a saint.”

  “Just a good man. With his share of faults.”

  J.D., if he was going to argue, didn’t get the chance because at that moment Christina finally caught the bug she’d been chasing and let out a horrified squeal. Brown stain covered her fingers. “He’s bleeding on me.” She dropped the grasshopper as if it had bitten her.

  “It’s just his spit,” J.D. said with a laugh.

  “Spit?” Christina was horrified.

  “We used to call it tobacco juice,” Tiffany said, hauling her daughter into her arms.

  “It’s icky!” Tears rolled down her eyes.

  “Come on, let’s clean you up, then get something to eat.”

  For once her daughter didn’t protest, and after a bath, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and glass of milk, she settled down to watch television. Tiffany started dinner by cooking pasta for a salad and mixing the dressing in the blender. J.D. stopped his work for a bottle of cold beer, then continued to work outside, fixing a leaning handrail and several window latches. Exhausted from a long day, Christina dropped off in her chair, and rather than rouse her for dinner, Tiffany carried her upstairs and tucked her into bed.

  After she’d picked up a few scattered toys in Christina’s room, Tiffany finished making the salad and checked the time. Stephen was already half an hour late, and she was a little nervous. The kid always pushed her and was forever ten or fifteen minutes late, but a half hour was longer than usual.

  “Don’t borrow trouble,” she told herself as she tossed shrimp, green onions and artichokes into the pasta salad, then turned on the oven to preheat. Stephen would be home soon. After all, he’d mislaid his watch a few weeks back. He’d probably just lost track of time.

  Chiding herself for being a worrywart, she glanced up the drive as she walked outside to the corner of the house where J.D., wrench in hand, was fixing a broken outdoor faucet. The handle had fallen apart, and he was replacing the worn piece with a new one.

  “You don’t have to do all this, you know,” she said. “It’s not part of the rental agreement.”

  “Just wait till you get my bill.”

  “Oh, right. And how much will that be?”

  His eyes glinted wickedly. “Well, Ms. Santini, we’re not talking dollars and cents, you know.”

  “No?”

  “Uh-uh. I was thinking more along the lines of a trade. Tit for tat. I scratch your back, you scratch mine...”

  She laughed. “I don’t even want to know what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s twisted,” he teased.

  “Mmm. Sounds interesting.”

  “If you only knew.” He winked at her, then turned his attention back to the task at hand. Setting his jaw, he gave a final tug on the wrench and twisted on the faucet. For the first time in months water spewed out of the tap and didn’t spray at odd angles from the spigot.

  “You’re a natural,” she said with a laugh.

  “If you think this is good, just wait until you see me sink my teeth into a double valve, if there is such a thing.”

&nb
sp; At the sound of tires crunching on gravel, they both looked toward the street. Tiffany thought Stephen might have found a ride home, but her son wasn’t anywhere in sight. She began to worry a little more.

  A Dodge pickup that had seen better days rolled into the drive, and the man behind the wheel, a lanky stranger, climbed down from the cab. Tall and slow-moving, he crossed the expanse of grass and approached them. “You in charge?” he asked J.D.

  “Not usually.”

  The man, his hair a dark shade of blond, nodded toward the Apartment for Rent sign in the front yard. “I’m lookin’ for a place to stay for a few months.”

  “I’m Tiffany Santini, and this is my brother-in-law, J.D.” She offered her hand. “This is my place,” she said and noticed J.D.’s mouth tighten a bit.

  “Luke Gates.”

  He shook her hand, then offered his to J.D., who hadn’t smiled since the pickup had stopped in the drive. Obviously Jay had reservations about the stranger who looked like he was more comfortable in a saddle than in the bucket seat of a truck.

  Tiffany sized him up. His clothes were clean but worn, pride kept his spine straight, and his eyes, she thought, had seen more than their share of pain. Crow’s-feet fanned from his eyes, and calluses on his hands suggested that he wasn’t afraid of hard work. “I’ve got two units available, one in the basement of the main house, the other over the old carriage house. I ask for first and last month’s rent, a security deposit, cleaning deposit and references.”

  “I imagine you do.” His smile was slow, and his west Texas drawl nearly imperceptible. “Got both. Let’s see the one over the carriage house.”

  “This way.”

  J.D.’s limp had nearly disappeared as he followed them around the house, then went back to work cleaning a patch of asphalt on the far side of the garage. He’d already told Tiffany he thought it would be a good place to hang a basketball hoop for Stephen. “A boy needs something to do when he’s got time on his hands. He can shoot baskets, hit a tennis ball against a wall, or work out with a punching bag, but you need to give him something to do here, preferably something that he can do alone or with his friends, so that they’ll hang out at the house. Assuming that’s what you want.”