Her Second Chance Family (Contemporary Romance)

by Holly Jacobs

  She took a quick gulp of her coffee and tried to ignore how distracting it was to find a half-naked man in her kitchen in the morning. She practically scalded her tongue. “You are very quiet,” she said.

  “That’s what you were thinking? That I’m quiet? I mean, last night, I don’t think we were quiet at all. So that myth’s busted.”

  Audrey felt her cheeks warm and Sawyer chuckled. “Do you mind if I help myself to coffee?”

  “No. Of course I don’t mind. Please, make yourself at home and help yourself to whatever you want for breakfast.”

  “Whatever I want?” he asked slowly.

  Her cheeks were no longer simply warm, they were aflame. “I meant...”

  “Sorry. I won’t tease you anymore. But you do look particularly cute when you’re all flustered.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll behave.”

  His kiss had been casual, just a quick good-morning one on the cheek, and yet it was enough to make her flash back to last night. That warm feeling of desire began to build. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. How I’m supposed to act.”

  He sat down across from her and set his cup down with a clunk. “I don’t think there’s anything you’re supposed to do. I guess the question is, what do you want to do? The kids aren’t home until late, right?”

  “Right. They’re heading to Fallingwater this morning.”

  “So we have the whole day. That is, if you don’t mind sharing your day with me.”

  “I...” She’d been about to say she’d love to, that she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do than spend a day with him. Weeding a garden. Reading the paper. It didn’t matter what. But her phone rang before she could blurt all that out.

  She checked the caller ID. “The kids are FaceTiming me. Please be quiet and stay out of the screen shot. I don’t want them to know...” We had sex.

  “I won’t make a sound,” Sawyer promised. He lifted his mug to his lips and took a long, slow sip. The sight was enough to fluster her all over again.

  She firmly tamped down the feeling and hit the button on her phone, accepting the call. Bea’s face was in the frame. “G’morning, Aud. Maggie said you might not be up, but I knew you were.”

  “I am. I’ve got a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper in front of me.” And a half-naked man across the table.

  “See, Maggie, I knew she’d be up,” Bea hollered.

  Audrey could hear Willow say in a loud voice, “Of course she’s up early. You all are always up early.” Then she shouted even louder, just to be sure Audrey heard, “You should take the paper and coffee and go back to bed.”

  Sawyer nodded, as if to say that sounded like a good idea to him.

  Audrey forced herself to ignore him and looked back at her phone screen.

  Bea must have turned the phone because suddenly Willow was in view. “You don’t have many weekends to yourself. You should enjoy...” Her sentence faded as she stared at something beyond Audrey’s shoulder.

  Audrey turned and saw Sawyer’s suit coat.

  “I haven’t exactly been by myself. Sawyer took me out last night. We—” she improvised “—had dinner on the bay. You can’t believe how cool it was here. I had to borrow his jacket. How’s the weather in Pittsburgh?”

  Willow smiled and winked at the camera. “It’s fine here. Maggie and Mr. L. want to get an early start, so we should let you go.” She sounded normal, and Audrey doubted anyone else noticed, but she could hear the laughter in Willow’s voice.

  Willow knew.

  “Hey, I wanted to talk some more,” Bea hollered. “And Clinton didn’t even say hi.”

  “Hi,” Clinton called from somewhere offscreen.

  “There, he said hi, Bea. We’ll talk to you later. Maggie said we should be home by eight or nine. I’ll text if something happens and we’ll be home earlier, just to give you some warning. Have fun today.” Willow winked again.

  Audrey punched the button. “She knows.”

  “Audrey, she’s sixteen. I’m pretty sure she knows about the birds and the bees. So I don’t think you shocked her. She didn’t sound upset about it.”

  “She didn’t look upset, either. She winked at me.”

  “We haven’t done anything to be ashamed of,” Sawyer said. “This wasn’t some one-night stand.” He paused, then asked, “Was it?”

  Audrey shook her head. “Not for me.” She wasn’t ready to label what she had with Sawyer, but one-night stand wasn’t on her list of options.

  “And since Willow didn’t seem traumatized by the thought, and didn’t seem inclined to tell the other kids, it’s all good.”

  “It’s just that she’s sixteen and Clinton’s fifteen. I try to set a good example. I’ve talked to them about sex and waiting and protection. I just don’t want them to think that casual sex is okay.”

  “We already established this wasn’t a one-night stand and it wasn’t casual, either. It’s...”

  “Let’s not define it. I mean, I agree, it’s not casual, but I don’t want to lock us into a definition.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I simply want to give it time, see where it leads.”

  He looked for a moment as if he wanted to argue, but instead he nodded. “Fine. But I’m going to suggest we take Willow’s advice. Let’s move our coffees and the paper up to bed.”

  Audrey smiled. “That sounds like a perfect way to spend a lazy Sunday morning.”

  They’d leave the deeper discussions and definitions for another time.

  * * *

  “YOU LOOK HAPPY,” Mr. Lebowitz said the following Friday morning.

  “So do you,” Audrey countered. She’d seen Mr. Lebowitz’s car at Maggie’s a number of evenings. It was always gone before she got up the next morning. She’d been practicing a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy.

  “Well, I have to say your besotted look is more appropriate for a girl your age than a man my age.”

  “I refuse to get involved with whatever you and Maggie have, but I will say, besotted is the perfect word to describe her the past week or so.”

  Mr. Lebowitz seemed pleased. He asked, “So what about the Gables’ plans?”

  Audrey pulled out the Gables’ construction drawings and placed them on her drafting table. The two of them bent over them together, all business. But every now and then, one of them caught the other’s eye and they both grinned like besotted loons.

  Yes, besotted was the word.

  She didn’t have a lot of experience with relationships. Okay, so she’d never dated a man long enough to call what they had a relationship. And now she had three kids. That was not typically something men put in the plus column of their dating ledger.

  But Sawyer was different. And she found herself hoping to find ways to be alone with him again...and soon.

  Did that make her besotted?

  She was pretty sure it did.

  The kids were happy and doing well. Willow seemed to be settling in. Between her new mowing empire and volunteering at the animal shelter, she was giving back.

  And Mr. Lebowitz and Maggie...having them together only added icing to her happiness cake.

  Her happy, besotted cake.

  * * *

  WILLOW SAT ON the porch on Monday after lunch, waiting for Mrs. Wilson to pick her up for mowing. Clinton and Bea were at Maggie’s. They were helping her make cinnamon rolls.

  Willow couldn’t help grinning. She knew that Maggie and Mr. Lebowitz liked each other.

  Just as she knew Sawyer and Audrey did.

  Not that any of them said anything.

  And not that Audrey and Sawyer were behaving any differently.

  They’d gone over to his house to swim a couple times this week. And he’d come
down to the lot with them yesterday and they’d built a second raised-bed area to plant stuff in. Audrey put some kind of grain in it, saying they’d plow it over in the spring and it would enrich the soil.

  Yeah, working in the field shouldn’t have seemed romantic, but with Audrey and Sawyer it was. They kept staring at each other when they thought she and the other kids wouldn’t notice.

  Those looks... Well, Willow had read enough romance novels to know that those looks said that Sawyer and Audrey were falling in love.

  If asked, she’d have scoffed at the notion, but to herself, she thought it was great. She liked Sawyer, and she...

  She loved Audrey. It had been a lot of years since she really loved someone. Maybe once when she was little she’d loved her mom, but if so, it was so long ago she couldn’t remember what it was like. Her mom was a druggie—Willow wouldn’t try to gloss over the situation, even to herself. She’d thought she was in love with a kid from school last year, but he was a jerk.

  She liked Austen, but she wouldn’t say it was any more than that. If it changed, if she thought she more than liked him, she’d still take her time. She’d learned her lesson.

  But Audrey? She tried to keep her distance. Tried to not care. But something about Audrey made that impossible.

  No matter what she’d planned on, Willow had fallen in love with her new family, every bit as much as Audrey and Sawyer were falling in love with each other.

  Yeah, she realized, life was pretty good right now.

  School started in just a few weeks and that was going to be her priority this year. She was going to pull her GPA up. She had a meeting next week with the principal about changing her math and science classes to the advanced ones.

  Sawyer’s car pulled into the drive.

  “Hi, Sawyer.” Willow smiled as she walked toward the car.

  She smiled. She felt as if she had a quinoa ally in him. And he seemed to make Audrey happy. “I was waiting for Mrs. Wilson.”

  He walked right up to her, his expression serious. Too serious. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Oh, she can’t pick me up? Is she sick?” She worried about Mrs. Wilson. She was so old that she made Maggie May seem young in comparison. And she was always so nice. They’d talked about books last week. Finding out she was a big reader gave them a lot of common ground.

  He shook his head. “No, she’s not sick.”

  Willow was relieved. “I’m glad. But I’m sorry that she called you. She could have just let me know. I’d have got Audrey to take me, or Maggie May.”

  “I’m not here about Mrs. Wilson at all. I think you might know why I’m here.” He still looked serious.

  “I don’t know. So you’d better tell me. What’s wrong, Sawyer?” She had a sinking feeling that it was something really bad. He stood right in front of her and looked her in the eye as he asked, “Did you break into the Mellons’ house down the street?”

  “What?” She tried to remember if he’d had someone named Mellon at his party, but she couldn’t place them. “I don’t even know who they are, but no.”

  Suddenly, she did know. That was the house where she’d picked up mail for Mrs. Wilson. “No, I didn’t break into their house or any other house. Yours is the only one I ever broke into, and it was the last one.”

  Sawyer didn’t smile and say, Wow, that’s a relief. Instead, he scowled. “Someone broke in and took all their electronics and jewelry.”

  Willow knew he thought the someone was her. He didn’t come here to just ask; he came to accuse.

  “It wasn’t me,” she whispered. He tilted his head, as if he couldn’t hear her, so she spoke louder. “It wasn’t me.”

  His voice was as grim as his expression. “You can understand why I have a hard time believing that?”

  Of course she could understand. She’d done one stupid thing, and no matter what Audrey said, there was no such thing as balancing your karma and erasing the past.

  “Sawyer, I’ve been on the straight and narrow ever since that first time. You can ask my probation officer. I’ve showed up at every meeting, done everything they asked me. I thought getting caught was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it might have been the best. I got to come live with Audrey and the kids. And I met you. I thought we were friends.” She shouldn’t have said that last part because, from his expression, Sawyer didn’t think of her as a friend and it only made her seem pathetic.

  Sawyer’s frown slowly gave way to a look of sadness. “I thought we were friends, too. I did everything I could to help you, not because it was the right thing to do. I wanted to help you because I genuinely liked you. I thought you’d learned your lesson, and now?” He shrugged as if he didn’t know what came next.

  Liked. He used the past tense.

  She wasn’t surprised.

  “I didn’t do it, but you don’t believe me.” It was a statement, not a question.

  He didn’t answer directly. He simply said, “I called Audrey and she’ll be here soon.”

  “Yeah, fine.” Willow could imagine Audrey’s disappointment. She’d believe Sawyer. Sawyer was an adult and Audrey was already in love with him.

  And frankly, Willow had to admit, she didn’t come out of this situation looking too good.

  Technically, she did know the Mellons’ house. And she was in the neighborhood every week mowing for Mrs. Wilson and Sawyer. Plus she’d been caught stealing stuff from someone before.

  Seeing Sawyer’s sad face had been tough, but she knew that seeing Audrey’s would be worse. Much worse. And she knew what would come after that.

  “You’re not going to defend yourself?” he asked.

  “I already did. I told you I didn’t do it. You either believe me or you don’t.”

  No matter what, she’d leave here taking something valuable with her.

  “Audrey—” her voice caught, but she continued “—Audrey taught me that I can’t control anyone else’s actions. Only mine. I didn’t do it—I did not break into anyone’s house—but I can’t make you or anyone else believe me.”

  She walked into the house and Sawyer followed her. “Make yourself at home while you’re waiting for her. I’ll be up in my room. You can tell Audrey when she gets here.”

  Willow went upstairs and pulled her suitcase out from under the bed. Audrey had offered to store it in the attic, but when Willow had first come to the house, she’d known that someday she’d need it again.

  It was an old, hard-shelled, avocado-green suitcase. It was so old there were no wheels on it. But it was hers. One of her few possessions.

  Gingerly, Willow pulled up the lining of the suitcase and hid her e-reader between the shell of the suitcase and a big piece of cardboard she’d outfitted it with, then she replaced the lining. She methodically started to pack her clothes on top of it.

  When the adults or kids in the new place where she’d end up went through her stuff, hopefully they wouldn’t find the e-reader there.

  It only took a few minutes to pack.

  She glanced around the room and spotted one other thing that was hers. It was a framed picture that Audrey had given her from that first trip to the peninsula. Audrey had called it a family selfie. They’d all put their backs to the sunset, and smiled. Well, Audrey, Bea and Clinton were smiling. She was...not smiling, nor was she scowling. She stared at the picture for a moment.

  She looked sort of dazed and confused.

  Bea had just finished explaining the hiss for the first time. They were all bundled up in coats and hats.

  “Sunset is special,” Bea had said. Clinton and Audrey had nodded as if she were knowing and wise.

  Willow thought about leaving the picture where it was. But in the end, she took it, jostled her clothes to one side and slid the picture under the cardboard with her e-reader.
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  Then she sat on her bed and waited for Audrey and, inevitably, the social worker.

  She’d be fine. And she wouldn’t blame them at all. Like Audrey said, when you messed up, there were repercussions. Well, she’d messed up big time. Sure they’d suspect her of breaking into this new house.

  Only she didn’t do it.

  She thought she knew who had.

  She could tell them, but she wouldn’t.

  She might be a thief, but she wasn’t a snitch. There was a certain code you learned in foster care...never tell the adults.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AUDREY DROVE QUICKLY across town after Sawyer’s call. He’d been cryptic. He hadn’t told her what the problem was, only that there was a problem with Willow and she needed to get home ASAP.

  He was sitting on the front porch waiting for her when she pulled in the driveway. She hurried out of the car. “What happened?”

  “I asked the other kids to wait at Maggie’s,” he said.

  His look of abject misery scared her more than his cryptic call had. She sat down next to him and repeated, “What happened?”

  He sighed. “A house down the block from me got broken into. The Mellons were on vacation and someone ripped off a bunch of stuff while they were gone.”

  “And you think it’s Willow.”

  Sawyer agreed, but there was a pained expression on his face. “I don’t want to, but I do. Mrs. Wilson said she had Willow go pick up the Mellons’ mail last week after she’d mowed for her. So Willow knew they were gone. She knew the house was empty.”

  “And when was she supposed to have gone over to their house? I know I didn’t drive her to a house in your neighborhood and wait while she broke in. Sawyer, it doesn’t make sense. She’s been here with me or Maggie. The last time she was out with friends was when we were all downtown for the fireworks or at your party. And she’s driven with Austen to volunteer. I can call and verify that’s where they went, but I don’t see you sitting with Austen’s parents, so I’m assuming you don’t think he’s in on it.”