What did she know about making a home for two little boys? And right before Thanksgiving, too!
She had to be crazy. This was the stupidest thing she had ever done, and was destined to end in disaster. The boys would hate her. She was sure to screw up, would probably scar them for life...
She caught herself before the wheel of negative self-talk could totally carry her away. She couldn’t lose sight of two boys who needed help, who needed a home. She had the ability to make a real difference in their lives. This wasn’t some token effort. Serving at the nursing home or making crafts with the Helping Hands was all for the good. This was something real—opening her home, her life, to two boys who needed her.
As long as she kept that in mind, she could handle anything.
* * *
THIS WAS GOING to be an utter nightmare.
Davy and Clinton were staring at her as if she were a Dementor, a Heffalump and an orc rolled into one.
“No!” Clinton exclaimed. “You didn’t tell us we were coming to her house. We don’t want to stay with her! You can’t make us.”
He turned back to the door, but Wynona placed a hand on his shoulder. “Why would you say that? This is a beautiful house, and Julia is one of the nicest people I know. And look! She has cats!”
That might not have been the most effective argument, since all three cats were perched on the back of the sofa, watching the proceedings with various expressions of disinterest.
“I like cats,” Davy said. He looked at his brother uncertainly. Julia hadn’t missed the smile that lit up the younger boy’s expression when he walked into her house and spotted her, but that smile had quickly dripped away in the face of his brother’s objections.
“So what if she has cats? She tricked us, Davy! If she hadn’t stuck her sneaky nose in our business, we would still be at home. She made us think she was nice, but then she called child welfare and now they’re trying to split us up.”
“Not unless we have to,” Wyn said. “That’s the whole reason you’re here. Miss Winston has agreed to take you in temporarily so you can stay together. We don’t have a lot of other options here, kiddo.”
“I didn’t want you to have to move away from Haven Point either,” Julia said. “You told me how well you are doing in school, and I hated the idea that you would have to start over with new teachers and classrooms.”
Davy gave her a half smile, then quickly hid it when Clinton glared. “You should have minded your business. We were doing fine. I was taking care of Davy. He wasn’t going hungry, was he?”
“You’re a wonderful brother, Clint,” she said softly. “Nobody is saying otherwise. I can’t believe how well you watched out for Davy, all on your own.”
Though she might not ever have proof, Julia sensed that while their mother had been missing for less than a week, the older boy had been watching out for his brother far longer than that.
“Here’s the thing,” she went on. “You’re only eight years old. It shouldn’t be your job to make sandwiches and tuck him in and help him get ready for school. Right now your job is to go to school and play with your friends and have fun being eight years old.”
He opened his mouth to answer but apparently couldn’t think of anything to say, because he clamped his jaws closed again and looked down at the ground.
“If you and Davy want to stick together, you need to give Julia a chance,” Wynona said.
“I want to go home,” Clint muttered.
“That’s not an option right now,” Wyn said gently. “You understand that, don’t you?”
Clinton crossed his arms across his chest and stuck out his chin, plainly not happy with that answer.
Wyn’s phone rang, and she glanced down at the caller ID with a harried expression. “This day just won’t stop. I have to take this. I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” Julia said. “You can go in the kitchen if you need quiet.”
When Wyn hurried away, she turned to the boys with a bright smile. “Do you want to see the room where you’ll be staying?”
Davy nodded, but Clint just looked stone-faced. She decided to ignore him for now and led the way to the biggest bedroom, the one her parents had used.
It had been empty since her mother had went into the nursing home. In the few hours since she spoke with Wyn, Julia had scrambled to figure out bedding for them. She had put out a call to the Haven Point Helping Hands, and Megan Hamilton had offered a bunk bed she had bought for one of the rooms at the Haven Point Inn but ended up not using. Her maintenance guy had dropped it off but had been on his way to visit family out of state and hadn’t had time to set it up for her.
“Tonight, you guys might be sleeping on mattresses on the floor, until we can put together the beds for you.”
“Like camping!” Davy said.
“Exactly,” she said with a smile. “But warm and without the bugs, I promise. You can leave your things in here. There are two dressers. You can decide which one each of you would like. I have two guest rooms down here, but I thought you would like to be together. If you’d each rather have your own room, we can do that, too. Whatever you’d like.”
“We’d like to go home,” Clint said. “We want our own beds and our own dressers and stuff.”
“For the next few weeks, I hope you can consider this your home.”
“We won’t,” Clinton snapped.
“Nope,” Davy echoed.
She decided to ignore their objections for now. “I’m afraid I don’t have any boy comforters since no boys have lived here in many years, since my father was little, but I tried to find a few quilts that might work for now. Maybe this weekend we can have the time to go to the store and pick up something you both like.”
“We won’t like anything you pick,” Clint said, stubbornly determined to oppose anything she said.
“Nope,” Davy said, crossing his arms just like his brother.
She sighed. It was going to be a long few weeks if she couldn’t break through this antagonism.
“We’ll all have to make the best of the situation,” she said calmly, leading the way back to the living room as Wyn wrapped up her phone call and joined them, expression grave.
“I don’t want to just drop them off and run, but I have to, uh, drop them off and run,” Wynona said. “I’ve got another emergency. It’s that time of year.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
If she said that enough times, Julia just might begin to believe it.
“I’ll call you later to see if you need anything,” Wyn said.
“Thanks.”
“Thank you. It’s a good thing you’re doing here, Jules.”
She had to hope she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.
“Davy, Clinton, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you the last few days,” Wyn said. “I’m so happy you will have the chance to stay together, as you wanted. Julia’s one of my favorite people, and I’m sure the three of you will get along just great.”
Neither of the boys said anything, just continued scowling.
Wyn didn’t appear to let it bother her. She simply smiled at them both and headed for the door. “I’ll definitely call you Friday, but don’t hesitate to contact me before that if you need anything. Happy Thanksgiving!”
Thanksgiving. Oh, fiddle. Julia closed her eyes. That had totally slipped her mind in the last few hours. She hadn’t planned on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner. And she had promised Muriel Randall she would pick her up to go together and help out at the nursing home in Shelter Springs. She would just have to figure something out.
Something told her she would be saying that a great deal while the boys were here.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” she said, giving Wyn a hug.
“Call me if you run into any problems.�
��
As Wyn walked out into the lightly falling snow, Julia couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t so much a matter of “if” they would run into problems but “how many.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHAT THE HELL was going on downstairs?
Jamie looked down at the floorboards as another round of wails worked its way up.
Someone down there was not happy—which was a bit of an understatement. The wailing had been nonstop for the half hour he had been home, echoing through the house as if two or three of Julia Winston’s cats were in labor.
Whatever was happening on the floor below, he couldn’t hear any words, only the occasional high-pitched shouting, slamming doors and those piercing cries, with the occasional cat yowl thrown in for fun.
So much for renting a quiet apartment with a reserved, well-behaved librarian for a landlady.
Should he go down and see if she needed help with something?
The night before, she hadn’t seemed all that grateful for his help with the water heater. Julia Winston struck him as someone used to solving her own problems, mechanical problems notwithstanding.
He supposed he could put on some noise-canceling headphones. A little head-banging rock would probably drown out the commotion. On the other hand, he couldn’t shake the suspicion that something might be seriously wrong, that Julia Winston possibly could need his help.
It was none of his business, Jamie tried to remind himself. She could carry on with all kinds of caterwauling creatures if that was her thing. It was her house, after all.
What if she was hurt?
If Pop could see him up here minding his own business, he would definitely have a thing or twenty to say about it. Dermot Caine had taught all his sons not to stand by when a woman might be in distress.
“Nooo,” he heard a high-pitched voice cry out. That decided him. She might not welcome his help, but a real man offered it anyway.
The commotion grew louder as he headed down the stairs. In the vestibule outside her door, he could pick out three distinct voices, though he still couldn’t hear the words they were saying.
He raised his hand to knock, but before he could, the door jerked open. A young boy of about seven or eight stood there. His cheeks were red and tear-stained, and his eyes glittered with temper.
He didn’t appear to notice Jamie standing there.
“We can just walk to our house,” he said defiantly. “I know the way and you can’t stop us.”
From inside, Jamie heard his landlady. “Clinton Slater. For the last time, you can’t go anywhere. I know you don’t want to be here, but right now, none of us has a choice.”
“Do so,” the young boy retorted. “Come on, Davy.”
Before Jamie could move, the kid rushed through—right into Jamie—followed by another one who looked like a carbon copy but a few years younger.
“Clint, Davy. Get back in here,” Julia snapped as the older boy looked up at Jamie, those intense blue eyes wide with shock.
“There’s a guy out here,” Davy called. “Is he your boyfriend?”
An instant later, Julia’s surprised face popped around the door. Her color was high, too, and her hair was again falling out of the little updo thingy she wore. When she spotted him, he thought that color rose another inch or two.
“Oh. This is Mr. Caine. He’s lives upstairs. He probably came down because you both were making so much noise, with your tantrums.”
“It’s true,” Jamie said helpfully. “I thought the cats were fighting down here. Or maybe having kittens. What’s going on?”
“We don’t want to stay here, but she won’t let us leave,” the older of the two boys said, crossing his arms across his narrow chest.
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Kidnapping, Ms. Winston?” he teased. “That’s a felony.”
“Yeah,” the younger boy said, crossing his arms just like his brother. “A fella-me.”
“You’re not helping,” she snapped, her chest rising sharply.
“Why don’t we all go back inside?” he suggested. “We can all sit down, and you can tell me what’s going on.”
The boys eyed the doorway, but must have sensed they couldn’t juke past him. He hadn’t been a linebacker on the Hope’s Crossing High School championship football team for nothing.
They reluctantly turned around and went into her living room.
“I’m Jamie.”
“My name is Clinton Scott Slater, and this is my brother David Joshua Slater.”
“Clint and Davy are going to be living with me for a while,” Julia said.
“Only until we run away and go home and find our mom,” Clinton responded.
“You know your mother is not at home,” Julia said through her teeth. Something told him they had covered this ground a few times already that evening. “You can’t go back to an empty house.”
“Why should we believe you? We thought you were our friend, but you were just spying so you could call the welfare people on us.”
“I’m hungry,” the younger boy whined.
Julia sighed and ruffled his hair. Despite his alleged unhappiness, Davy leaned into her hand a little.
“I know you are, buddy. I’m working on dinner. I’ll remind you both that I would have been done twenty minutes ago, if I didn’t have to keep coming out to make sure you weren’t trying to sneak out the door when my back was turned.”
She tried to tighten her mouth into a stern expression, but something about the quiver in her lower lip stirred all the chivalrous instincts ingrained in him since birth. She appeared very much like a woman completely out of her comfort zone.
“Tell you what,” Jamie said, “we can help you finish that delicious-smelling dinner. With all of us working together, the work will go faster—then you can invite me over to eat with you, since I’m starving, too. See, it’s a win all the way around.”
He winked at the boys, earning a giggle from the younger one. While the older boy didn’t look as convinced, he appeared a little less belligerent.
“We can’t ruin your whole evening,” Julia protested.
“What are we cooking?” he asked, ignoring her to lead the way into the kitchen. “Smells like spaghetti.”
Julia and the boys both followed him. It was obvious she didn’t want to accept his help—just as it was obvious to both of them that she needed it.
“Lasagna, actually. It should be done in about fifteen minutes.”
“What can we do in the meantime? Besides wash our hands, of course.”
“I only need to make a salad and set the table.”
“You sit down. You’ve done all the hard work on the lasagna. Clint, Davy and I can handle the salad.”
“Can you?”
He had plenty of nieces and nephews and was quite an accomplished child-wrangler, if he did say so himself, but he decided to let his skills do the talking.
“No problem,” he said. “Just watch us.”
“I’ll set the table,” she said, looking disarmed and more than a little overwhelmed.
“Excellent division of labor.”
He steered the boys over to the sink, where he supervised while they washed their hands, then washed his own.
“All right, guys. What do we need for salad?”
“Lettuce,” Davy said promptly.
“And tomatoes. Except Davy doesn’t like tomatoes.”
“We’ll put those on the side, then.”
All the necessary ingredients for a good tossed salad were in a colander draining in the other sink from the one where they had washed their hands. Jamie put the boys to work ripping up the lettuce into bite-sized pieces while he found a knife and started cutting up the tomatoes, green onions and celery for the salad.
A
fter a few minutes, Julia wandered over to see how they were faring.
“You can handle a kitchen knife,” she said with surprise as she watched him.
He smiled, cutting the avocado in half and slicing it into strips inside the skin with an expert flourish. “My family has a café back home in Colorado. My Pop is more than seventy but still works there every single day. My parents made sure all of us knew our way around a kitchen, so I spent most of my school breaks working there—busing tables, washing dishes, prepping food, working the grill. There’s not much I can’t do.”
What he hadn’t learned at the Center of Hope Cafe kitchen, he taught himself after he first went to school, then military training. A guy could only eat at the mess hall so often—and he quickly got tired of frozen pizzas.
“I can cook,” Clint boasted, bony chin up in the air.
“He makes super good toast and mac and cheese and microwave popcorn,” Davy attested.
“That’s an excellent start. Now you know how to make a basic green salad, too,” Jamie said.
Who were these boys and what were they doing in Julia’s kitchen?
A hundred questions chased around his brain. When she introduced them to him, she said they were staying with her for a while. There was obviously a story here.
You know your mother is not at home. You can’t go home to an empty house, Julia had said to them. Where was home? And where was their mother?
The timer went off before he could figure out a subtle way to probe for some of those answers.
“That’s the lasagna,” she said unnecessarily. She slid on oven mitts then opened the oven, releasing a delicious meaty tomato smell that made his stomach rumble in a rather embarrassing way.
She pulled out a pan full of a gooey, wonderful-looking lasagna, set it on a waiting rack on the stovetop, then slid in another foil-wrapped bundle.
“Boys, I put the plates out, but we need silverware now. Forks and knives. Four of each.”
“I was only joking about you inviting me for dinner,” Jamie said, a little embarrassed about his forwardness.
“You saved the day. Feeding you is small repayment,” she said. “There’s plenty of lasagna, as you can see. We’ll have enough leftovers for a week.”
Sugar Pine Trail--A Small-Town Holiday Romance Page 7