Kevin had patiently endured this long exchange and now dived for the book in Blake’s grasp. Blake held it up. “Hey, bud, don’t you remember your nightmare last night?”
Kevin shook his head. “I really, really wanna see the book. Pleeeeease?”
“Nightmare?” Amanda asked.
“He had a nightmare about insects,” Blake explained.
“And snakes,” Kevin added.
Blake turned on him. “Ah-hah! So you do remember!”
“A little.” Kevin shrugged his shoulders, his blue eyes pleading. “Can I see the book? Please? I won’t be scared. I promise.”
“Yeah, not now, anyway.” With an exasperated sigh, Blake handed him the book. “Can’t ever seem to say no to him,” he muttered. “Tell Amand—the lady thank you,” he added as the phone on the counter began its shrill ring. “Excuse me a moment.” He sprinted across the room and picked up the phone.
“Thank you, lady.” Kevin’s eyes barely met hers before they fell to the cover of the sticker book.
“You find the stickers inside and match them to the drawings.” She pointed to the stickers when he opened the book. “There are facts about each insect underneath the drawings.” She frowned. At four he wouldn’t know how to read them yet. “Ask your father to read them to you.”
“I don’t have a father.”
Amanda blinked twice, sure she had heard wrong. “What about, uh, Blake?” She looked at the man on the phone.
“He’s my uncle, but he’ll read it to me.”
“Good.” Amanda felt confused and more than a little angry at the sudden rush of hope that Kevin’s matter-of-fact statement had caused in her heart. Why hadn’t Blake told her the children yesterday weren’t his? Seemed an easy way to get out of an awkward situation. While she wouldn’t excuse his behavior, she would never have worried about the children so much if she had known he was only a temporary caregiver. Her eyes went to the baby. Maybe he wasn’t temporary at all. The baby could still be his daughter—she looked like him.
“Well, take care, Kevin.” Amanda decided to leave while Blake was on the phone. Since the children were obviously not in danger at the moment, now seemed like a good time to escape.
Kevin didn’t look up at her words, his eyes devouring the book and the cool-looking stickers. Amanda hoped they wouldn’t cause him nightmares. Funny how worried she’d been about Blake caring for the children when it was her book that had caused the child problems! She couldn’t have known that would happen. She usually dealt with fourth-graders, not four-year-olds.
“It won’t go off?” Blake was saying as she made her way past the counter. “Are you sure? The water’s still leaking all over the floor? Okay, calm down, Sister Fairbanks. I can’t understand what you’re saying. Can you turn the water off? It’s those round handles behind the washer. They look like the ones where you turn on your water outside. Stuck? Can you unplug the washer? Look, I’ll be right there. I’ll hurry as fast as I can, but I have to lock up the store. One guy has a day off and our other one’s out on a call. Doug and Rhonda are in Provo. Just block the water from getting on the carpet with towels or something. I’ll get there as quickly as I can.” He hung up the phone.
Amanda, hearing the stress in his voice, forgot about leaving. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“An old widow in my ward is having trouble with her washer.” Blake was moving toward the children as he spoke. “I tried to get her to end the cycle, turn off the water, you name it, but she just can’t get it to stop. She’s frantic and crying, so she’s not thinking straight. I’ve got to go over there.” He swept Mara from the playpen. “Kevin, we have to leave now.”
“I could watch them for you,” Amanda offered. “It’ll take so long getting the baby into her car seat—here and there. I promise, I’ll take good care of them. And the shop, too.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.” He wrapped the baby in a blanket, but she began to cry.
“Mara’s hungry,” Kevin announced, glancing up from his book. “You didn’t give her a bottle yet, ’cause that other lady came in.”
“Oh,” Blake groaned. “I forgot the bottle.” He raked a hand through his hair, shaking his head. He looked at Amanda for a moment, his brown eyes discerning. She felt he was studying her, measuring her worth. “Okay,” he said finally. “Thank you. I appreciate it. She only lives three minutes from here. I’ll be right back.” He put Mara in her arms and started for the door. “The milk is in the diaper bag behind the counter. Kevin knows where. Just add the powder to the water. Oh, and don’t let Kevin climb the shelves.”
“We’ll be fine. Go!”
When the roar of his engine signaled his departure, Amanda went to look for the formula. Mara had calmed down now and was playing with Amanda’s hair. “Kevin, I don’t see any di—never mind, here it is.” She picked up the bag and found several bottles with the water already in them. Amanda read the instructions on the formula can before adding the powder. “Shake well,” she said to Mara, who grinned at her and reached for the milk. “Just a second . . . let me shake it a bit and sit down on this chair . . . there.”
Mara greedily slurped at the bottle, but she couldn’t have been too hungry because not even an inch was gone before she stopped sucking to smile some more.
“You’re a cutie,” Amanda cooed, enchanted with the baby. “Come on, drink a little more. I see there’s some applesauce in the bag. Would you like that instead? Huh?”
Mara grinned again and started sucking.
Amanda stroked her fine dark hair, as soft as silk. “You are so pretty. Aren’t you?” Like your daddy, she thought. Was he her daddy? “Kevin?” Amanda called. “Could you come here, please?”
“I’m just right here.” Kevin came around the counter, stickers in his hands. “These are hard to get out.”
“Come here, and I’ll help tear them off. You can lick them and paste them in.” He handed her the book, and she saw that he’d already ripped two of the stickers in half. “That’s okay,” she said as she tore them carefully from the sheet. “We’ll just paste the two halves right together, and no one will even see that they’re ripped.” She handed the stickers to Kevin, and he pasted them into the book. “Very nice.”
They worked quietly together for a while, and then Amanda said, “Is Mara your sister?”
Kevin nodded. “Uh-huh.” He licked the back of another sticker.
“So Blake is her uncle, too.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your mom?”
Kevin shrugged, his mouth twisting slightly. “I don’t know. Her took us to Larry’s on Sunday and then Uncle Blake came to get us on Thursday.”
“A week ago? Today’s Thursday, you know.”
“Then maybe Friday or Wednesday.”
A smile tugged the corners of Amanda’s mouth. “So how many nights did you spend at Larry’s?”
“Just one. I slept on the couch. Mara was hungry. I gave her some of my chips.” He paused and then added quickly, “Her didn’t choke. I broke them up real small.”
“That was smart,” Amanda said gravely. She handed him another sticker. Mara was through with her bottle and now looked with interest at the pages of stickers. “No, Mara. You can’t touch these. Here, you can have this. We already took the stickers out.” Mara happily crushed the paper remnants in her hands. Amanda set down the rest of the stickers and hugged the child, who smelled like baby powder and rose-scented lotion. She was so precious!
“I need another one,” Kevin said.
Chuckling, Amanda went to work tearing out the insects, vowing next time to find a sticker book with peel-out stickers.
Chapter Five
Blake felt the worse for wear when he returned to the shop less than twenty minutes later. His hair was on end, one pant leg was completely soaked, and his shirt was dark where it had been spattered with water droplets. To his relief, Amanda and the children were in the shop playing peacefully with Kevin’s sticker book.
Blake hadn’t expected them to be anywhere else, but since he didn’t really know Amanda well enough to leave the children with her, he’d worried anyway. If it hadn’t been for Shelley Michaels’s glowing praise of the woman, he would have taken them with him, emergency or no.
“The water’s off,” he said. “I had to stay and help her mop it up—that’s what took most of the time.”
“What was the problem?”
He shrugged his head. “Didn’t stay to tear the machine apart. I’ll go back tomorrow. Any calls? Customers?”
“Nope. All quiet. I guess Thursday isn’t a big day for appliance parts. Then again, you weren’t gone long.”
“Good.”
Silence fell between them. Blake thought of how natural she looked sitting there with Mara in her lap. Her hair was straighter today, which he liked, but her green eyes were the same as he remembered—bright and riveting. She wore silky black pants, topped by a multicolored sweater, definitely more dressy than yesterday’s jeans, but she didn’t seem worried about dirtying her clothes with the baby.
A loud rumbling sound came from Amanda’s lap, cutting through the silence. “Hold her up, quick!” Blake advised. “She sometimes explodes.”
Amanda held the baby up. Sure enough, a dark patch was just beginning in the back above the waistband of Mara’s outfit.
“Her is stinky,” Kevin said, grinning.
Blake sighed. “She is stinky, not her.”
Kevin lifted his chin stubbornly. “I said Mara’s stinky. I didn’t say her or she.”
“No way, Kevin. You said her.” Blake took the baby and said to Amanda, “She has diarrhea. I thought at first it was the diapers—wrong brand or maybe too small, but I’ve tried eight different kinds in various sizes. It’s got to be diarrhea.” Balancing Mara on the countertop, he reached for the diaper bag. Mara giggled. “Either that or she has powerful, uh . . . muscles.”
“A change in food can cause diarrhea,” Amanda said with mirth in her voice.
Blake scowled. “Yeah. I thought as much. I don’t know what she was eating before, but according to my sister-in-law, she’s on track now.”
“Then it’ll get better.” Amanda ripped out more stickers for Kevin as Blake changed the diaper, a skill he felt he’d perfected over the four days Mara had been with him. He also changed her clothes and put the soiled ones in a plastic bag with the two other sets she had already messed today. This was the last change he’d brought. In fact, it was the last clean thing he had left from the six outfits and five sleepers he had purchased on Monday. When he got home, he’d have to do laundry, and this weekend he would definitely pick up a few more sets of clothes. Too bad it wasn’t the season for garage sales. Thank goodness Kevin didn’t have this problem or he might have to take out another college loan.
When he was finished, Amanda set the stickers on the counter and stood. “I’d better get going.”
“Yeah, you said you were going shopping.” This was as close as he would come to saying he didn’t believe her. The truth was that if he hadn’t been so scared of losing the children, her concern would be touching, amusing even.
Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “I’m sorry if my books caused Kevin nightmares. I hope the stickers don’t do the same.” She picked up her purse by the chair. “You know, I was thinking that maybe if he knew insects better, held them and learned about them, maybe they wouldn’t be so scary. You could read him the sticker book. Or you might . . .” She trailed off, her teeth biting into her lower lip. “I have a lot of bugs at the school. We’ll be finishing our science unit tomorrow, but I’ll have them until Saturday morning. You could come by and show them to Kevin. He can even hold some.”
“You really think that would help?” Blake asked, trying not to stare too long into her eyes.
She shrugged delicately. “I really don’t know. I teach fourth-graders, not preschool. But a lot of the girls were afraid of insects, and now they’re not. Think about it. You could come by after school tomorrow, if you want. Grovecrest Elementary.”
He wanted more than anything to say yes, to have another chance to be near her, but he just nodded. “I know where it is. Thanks.”
She turned again to go, then stopped short, her eyes full of curiosity. “Why didn’t you tell me they weren’t your children?”
He was surprised that she knew. Kevin must have done more than paste on stickers in his absence, the little blabbermouth. Or maybe she’d grilled him. Irritation replaced the attraction Blake felt for her. “Why didn’t you tell me you really came here to check up on me?”
She threw up her hands, her face turning a light shade of pink, though whether from embarrassment or exasperation, he couldn’t tell. “Okay. You’re right. I came to make sure they were okay. My conscience wouldn’t let me alone until I did. Truthfully, I didn’t know what I was going to accomplish. I didn’t think they’d be here. I was just following my . . . my conscience.”
Her conscience or something else? For whatever reason she had come, Blake was glad—despite his present irritation. “They’re here because I haven’t found a sitter yet,” he told her, cuddling Mara to his chest. “They haven’t been with me long, and the sitter I used when Kevin was with me before has moved.” He was about to expound on the dangers of leaving children with people you didn’t know well when he realized he wasn’t a great example in that respect. He’d left Mara alone in the car last night and then with Amanda today. Besides, he was preaching to the choir because Amanda was obviously aware of the dangers to children. Probably a class in college teachers have to take, he thought. Signs of Neglected Children 101.
“So are you their uncle?” Her eyes held him.
Boy, she is gorgeous, he thought, drowning in those eyes. He was having a difficult time maintaining his irritation. Why isn’t she married? Now that would be the question to ask.
“Well?” she pressed.
“I am their uncle—sort of. They’re my cousin’s children. But if you want to know the truth, Kevin has spent more of his life with me than with his mother.” They continued to stare at one another, and this time there was no denying the electricity between them. Blake felt alive and tingling. What’s more, he knew beyond doubt that she felt it, too. Her face flushed deeper, and her eyes were wide with an emotion he couldn’t name.
She looked away first, glancing over to where Kevin now stood on a chair by the shelves of parts.
“Get down, Kevin,” Blake told him. With a disappointed sigh, Kevin jumped to the carpet.
“I know a sitter for you,” Amanda said into the silence.
Her voice was rushed, and Blake wondered if she was anxious to get away from him. What had he been thinking? She was a schoolteacher, and he was an appliance repairman saddled with two children who weren’t even his own. He couldn’t fool himself that he would measure up to her intellectual standards. Maybe he’d have a chance if he mentioned he was a senior at BYU, where he would soon finish a degree in business management. Maybe if he told her this shop was really his older brother’s dream and not his.
Ridiculous, he thought. She’s not here about me. Even if she had been, there was a pride in him that would only be accepted for who he was—and a big part of that was this shop. He’d spent ten years of his life working for Doug, two during high school, one before his mission, and seven afterward. He’d been happy and content for at least three or four of those years. And the rest . . . well, the money had put him through college.
“Uh, that’s okay,” Amanda said, her face rigid. “It was just an idea.”
“What? No! I’m sorry.” Blake struggled to focus on her words instead of the emotions she had evoked. “I wasn’t ignoring you, I was spacing off. Sorry. I haven’t gotten much sleep lately. Trust me, I’d be glad for a recommendation.”
The stiffness left her face. “Mara doesn’t sleep well?”
Blake shook his head. “She’s fine. It’s just that I’ve been up late getting things done.” He didn’t want to tell
her he’d been studying.
As though sensing his reluctance, she nodded. “And then last night Kevin had the nightmare. I’m sorry for that. As for your sitter problem, my sister has three children, and one’s a girl Kevin’s age. She’s absolutely wonderful with children. I don’t know that she’d watch them long term, you’d have to discuss that with her, but certainly she’d do it until you could find someone. She loves kids. I’ll give you her number.” She grabbed the pen from the counter and wrote down a name and number on a sheet of paper she pulled from the planner in her purse. “Well, good luck,” she said. “Bye now, Kevin. Take care of that book! I’m sure your uncle will rip out the rest of the stickers for you.” She turned and practically ran from the shop.
Eager to get away, Blake thought with a surge of self-pity.
He looked to make sure Kevin wasn’t climbing anything, but the child was seated on a chair looking through his new book. The bells above the outside door rang, and Blake turned quickly, expecting Amanda. What had she forgotten?
A tall, white-haired, barrel-chested man was standing there instead. “Can I help you?” Blake asked, fighting his disappointment.
The man looked at Mara with interest. “Now there’s a cutie.”
“Thank you,” Blake said with a smile, feeling more pride than he should have. After all, he’d had no part in bringing Mara into this world.
The old man chuckled. “Her eyes are so heavy she can’t seem to keep them open.”
Sure enough, Mara was nearly out. “I’ll be right with you,” Blake said.
“Go right ahead. Had eight myself. They have to come first.” The old man gave him a wink.
Blake went to the playpen and carefully placed Mara inside, covering her with the blanket. She opened her eyes, smiled once, and shut them again. He prayed she would stay asleep.
Business picked up, and for the next hour Blake was kept busy with customers and phone calls, but everything calmed down at five-thirty. Blake had to be at his class by seven, so if Rhonda was late getting back from her sales appointment, he’d close the store early and go home to get ready. He should feed Mara dinner before the baby-sitter came over.
Huntington Family Series Page 6