“I’m sure. Sam speaks highly of your teaching abilities, too.”
Fiona studied him with interest. She’d known he was a supervisor, but Miss Minnie was making it sound like he headed the entire grounds operations. Most men tended to brag about their work, but Eduardo was always humble.
“Thank you for telling me that, Miss Minnie,” he said now and then looked at Fiona. “I’m taking the day off to get the house in order, but I’d also like to get a start on your garden project if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course, that would be wonderful.”
“I’m planning to dig out the grass where the raised bed will go. That’ll help drainage and weed control. And then sometime this week, I’ll pick up the boards to build the terrace walls. Sound good?”
“Perfect.” She watched him walk away, noticing the way the sun shone on his dark hair.
When she came back to herself, Miss Minnie was looking at her, one eyebrow lifted.
“So it’s like that, is it?” the older woman asked.
“Like what?” What had Miss Minnie seen in her expression? Had Eduardo seen the same thing, now or earlier? Was that why he’d kicked them out of the carriage house on Saturday?
Miss Minnie was still studying her and she didn’t answer Fiona’s question. “Do you have a Bible?” she asked unexpectedly.
“Of course!”
“Would you get it, please?”
“Um, sure.” She stood and headed into the house. What was this all about? Miss Minnie was, after all, a Sunday school teacher from way back. But Fiona, discombobulated as she was by Eduardo’s presence, didn’t feel like being preached at.
She schooled her expression before returning to the porch and handing Miss Minnie her Good News Bible. Miss Minnie ran her hands over the cover. “I love this translation,” she said. “And I think it has something to say to both of us.” She flipped the pages with the ease of long familiarity and then ran a weathered finger down a page. “Ah, here we are. Second Corinthians 5:17. Do you know it?” She looked up at Fiona expectantly.
“I’m sorry. I don’t.” Fiona felt inadequate.
“I’m going to read it to you,” Miss Minnie said, her voice taking on a teacher’s firm tone. “Verse 17: ‘Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ In other words, anyone who is joined to Christ is a new creation.” She looked up at Fiona.
Fiona nodded, processing the words.
“Sit down, dear. I have the sense that you’re focusing on the past and what went wrong in it. With your children, Poppy in particular. And that it’s hindering any possible connection with that handsome young man there.”
“Eduardo isn’t interested—” She stopped. “Anyway, I did make huge mistakes in the past.”
Miss Minnie held up a hand. “The point is, you’re joined to Christ, and you’re a new creation. You can put all that behind you. The old is gone, and the new has come.” Her face broke into a crinkly smile.
Fiona couldn’t help smiling back. “If it’s true for me, Miss Minnie, then it’s true for you, isn’t it? You need to open your mind to all the new possibilities ahead of you.”
Miss Minnie’s smile went wry. “So a certain gentleman keeps telling me,” she said.
As if on cue, a sedan pulled up. “I believe that’s my ride,” Miss Minnie said, color blooming in her cheeks.
Mr. Love got out of the passenger’s side, and a younger woman emerged from the driver’s seat. “That’s his granddaughter,” Miss Minnie said. “Could you help me up, dear? She claims she’s driving him around as a charitable act, but I suspect she wants to keep an eye on us as well.”
“Keeping you out of trouble?” Fiona couldn’t help smiling as she helped the older woman down the stairs and unfolded her walker for her.
“And rightly so,” Miss Minnie said tartly as she made her way down the sidewalk. “Men never change. Thank you for the tea and conversation, dear. You think about what we discussed.”
“I will.” Fiona watched as Mr. Love helped Minnie into the back seat and then climbed in beside her.
“Is it any wonder I feel like a chauffeur?” the granddaughter asked with good-natured exasperation. With a wave and a honk, they were off.
Fiona checked the time. Another hour and a half before she had to pick up Poppy. And there was Eduardo, working up a sweat, creating the garden of her dreams.
She grabbed a pair of gloves and a shovel from the shed and approached him. “Need a hand?” she asked. “I hate to sit and watch while you’re slaving away.”
He stopped, leaning on his shovel. “Truthfully? No.”
She’d already lifted her shovel to start digging. She froze in midair and looked at him. “How come?”
“You hired me to do the job. If you’re going to be uncomfortable with me working for you, we should call it off right now.”
“I didn’t say I was uncomfortable with you working for me,” she said, although she kind of had said that. “I said I wanted to help. Does that make you uncomfortable?”
He hesitated and then looked away across the yard, still leaning on his shovel. Which gave Fiona the time to analyze his answer and come up with the unpleasant truth.
“Look,” she said, “if you don’t want me to help, if it’s too much togetherness, that’s fine. I didn’t even consider that you might enjoy having your day off to work by yourself, without having to talk to someone else all the time.” She was babbling. Totally babbling, because she felt so mortified and embarrassed to have forced herself on him.
What was that Bible verse Miss Minnie had insisted on reading to her? Something about how she was a new creation.
She wasn’t the same person who’d been betrayed, rejected and made to look ridiculous by a man who had vowed to cherish her. No, she’d grown beyond that...sort of.
But that still didn’t make her the type of woman most men wanted to spend time with. She pulled off her gardening gloves and turned away.
A hand on her shoulder stopped her. “Fiona.” Eduardo’s voice was closer than she expected behind her. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you.”
She half turned back, not meeting his eyes. “It isn’t?”
“No,” he said, “it’s that I want to be with you too much.”
“You don’t have to say that, Eduardo. I’ll get out of your hair.” And she hurried off toward the house, before he could say more painfully kind but empty things.
Chapter Five
The next Saturday, Eduardo was washing dishes when Sofia and Diego burst into the carriage house. “Dad!” Diego cried. “Lauren and Ryan and Maya and Poppy got a dog!”
Eduardo turned, his hands soapy, as both of his kids crashed into him. “Hey, slow down.”
“It’s a hound-pointer mix, like, this big.” Sofia held her hands a yardstick apart.
“They got him at A Dog’s Last Chance and his name is Brownie, ’cause he’s mostly brown!”
“He has the softest floppy ears,” Sofia said.
“Come out and see!”
Their excitement made him smile. “You go ahead. I’ll be right out.”
“Hurry!” They rushed outside, letting the screen door slam.
Eduardo rinsed the last of the dishes and dried his hands. If he had any sense, he’d stay inside and ignore the feelings that roiled in his chest whenever he thought of the family across the yard. Particularly the family’s mother.
He needed to focus on work and his own kids, like he’d been doing for the past week, ever since he’d made his idiotic pronouncement about wanting Fiona around too much.
Why had he gone and done such a foolish thing?
Because he didn’t have any sense, obviously. And because it was the truth.
But it also had to do with the vulnerability in her eyes as she’d said he probably didn�
�t want her around. He couldn’t let her keep assuming that, putting herself down, believing that all men were like her ridiculous, deluded husband who’d betrayed her.
Except who had appointed him caretaker of the world? He was the worst candidate for that job.
Maybe Fiona wouldn’t be outside with her kids. Maybe he could come out and meet the new pup and skulk back inside without encountering the tall redheaded beauty who’d been haunting his dreams.
But of course, that wasn’t how it played out. When he crossed the lawn to the side yard near Fiona’s house, she was right there on the ground with her kids and an ecstatic brown-and-white hound, who was bounding from one kid to the next, barking madly.
She glanced up at him, gave a brief wave and then focused on the dog. “Ryan, let your sister have a turn,” she said to her son, who’d grabbed the new dog by the collar.
Maya scooted over and wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck, fearlessly, and stuck out her tongue at her brother.
“Poppy needs a turn, too,” Lauren said, looking up at her mother for approval, as the dog bounded away again.
“That’s a kind thought, Lauren.” Fiona brushed a hand over her daughter’s reddish-brown hair. “But I’m not sure Poppy wants a turn just yet.”
“Yes, she does! C’mere, Brownie!” Ryan had knelt beside Poppy, and Maya ran to squat on her little sister’s other side.
Gamely, the dog bounded their way, placed oversize paws on Poppy’s lap and proceeded to lick her face.
Poppy jerked back and wailed.
In a flash, Fiona was there, picking Poppy up and frowning at Ryan and Maya. “We never force people to play with the dog. You know it takes your sister some time to warm up.”
“Aw, Mom, she liked him at the farm,” Ryan said.
Fiona just raised an eyebrow at him, holding Poppy on her hip and stroking her hair.
“I’m sorry, Pop,” Ryan said.
“Me, too. C’mon, let’s throw a ball for him!” Maya matched word to action, grabbing a ball and throwing it surprisingly far for a child her age.
All three of Fiona’s older kids, plus Eduardo’s two, ran after the dog, leaving Fiona, Eduardo and Poppy to watch.
Eduardo blew out a sigh and tried not to notice the way the sun set fire to Fiona’s hair. Or the curve of her smile as she watched her kids play. Or the unconsciously warm and motherly way she made little sounds in her throat to soothe her youngest, who still rested her head on Fiona’s shoulder.
He didn’t want to notice what a deep-down good person Fiona was. But being around her so much made that reality impossible to ignore.
Maybe he needed to start looking for a new place to live. Before he did something crazy again, such as tell her how much he liked being around her.
“Five more minutes, kids,” she called, clearly oblivious to his inner turmoil. Then she turned to him. “I told them they needed to let him rest today. Even though he’s having a good time, making a move is stressful on an animal. He’s not used to this kind of craziness.”
“He sure is cute.” There. That was an innocuous comment anyone would make, right?
Abruptly, the kids’ voices rose in unhappy tones, shouting back and forth. “Uh-oh,” Fiona said, and they both started walking toward the noise.
Around the corner of the house, Fiona’s kids knelt, holding the dog.
Eduardo’s two stood shoulder to shoulder six feet away, faces stormy.
“He’s our dog!” Lauren was saying.
“We know that, but you could at least let us pet him.”
Ryan squeezed the dog against his chest. “You don’t know how to take care of a dog like we do.”
“Oh, like you have all this experience with dogs,” Sofia said cuttingly. “You only got one this morning.”
Maya sat on the ground and wrapped her arms around the dog, half tugging it out of Ryan’s lap. The dog responded with a plaintive yelp.
Fiona marched over to her kids and Eduardo to his. Behind him, Eduardo heard Fiona remonstrating.
“They’re being selfish, Dad.” Diego was almost crying. “I just want to play with him. I wasn’t trying to steal him.”
“He’s an ugly dog, anyway,” Sofia said, just loud enough to set off another wave of outrage among Fiona’s kids. “And he runs around like he’s crazy.”
“Hey.” Eduardo knelt and gripped a forearm of each of them, not tight, but firm, so they couldn’t escape. “When our friends get something new, we celebrate with them. We don’t try to take it away.” He frowned at Sofia. “And we don’t talk it down. That’s unkind and it’s uncalled for.”
“I’m sorry,” Sofia said, looking away.
“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”
She pressed her lips together and glared at Eduardo.
He glared right back.
She yanked her arm out of his grip and crossed her arms over her chest. “Sorry,” she yelled over toward the Farmingham kids. Then she spun and ran toward the house.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Diego said, sounding much more sincere than his sister. “Can I go tell them?”
“First tell me how you’re going to act toward the new dog.”
“I’m going to watch him and talk to him and only pet him if they say I can.”
“And not argue?”
“Yeah.” Diego was practically bouncing, looking over at the four kids, who were sitting around their mother while she held the dog at her side and patted it gently.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Eduardo watched as Diego approached the Farminghams, said something and was welcomed to join the little group. A minute later, Lauren ran toward the carriage house, where Sofia had disappeared.
Eduardo busied himself pulling a few early weeds, keeping his ear tuned toward his place for any signs of an argument. But a few minutes later, Lauren came back out with Sofia, the two of them talking like old friends. And the next minute, all six kids were running and playing with the dog and each other.
“Disaster averted,” Fiona said, coming to stand beside Eduardo. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you we were getting a dog, but this little trip came up suddenly. Once we were there, seeing all the dogs who needed homes...” She shrugged and lifted her hands. “What can I say, I’m a sucker for big brown eyes.” Then she looked at him and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Eduardo couldn’t resist smiling a little, enjoying the way her cheeks were going pink. Of course, she hadn’t meant anything by it. No way had she been flirting with him. She wasn’t the type.
“I didn’t mean... I meant, a dog’s brown eyes... Oh, wow. I’d better stop talking.”
“No, don’t worry. I understand. I didn’t think you meant anything.” Wasn’t there some yard work he could do, rather than trying to hold an intelligible conversation with the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen?
The unbidden thought shocked him. Was Fiona more gorgeous than Elizabeth had been?
Guilt rose, but he firmly tamped it down. Every woman was beautiful in her own way; he truly believed that. Elizabeth had been, and Fiona was.
It was just that Fiona was right here, smelling like hyacinths...
“Hey, Dad!”
“Mom!”
The six kids came running toward them, Lauren carrying Poppy, the dog bounding alongside. “We want to talk to you,” Sofia said, offering him a winning smile.
“Okay.” Eduardo could tell some kind of con job was coming, but he still welcomed the interruption.
“Families are important, right?” Sofia said.
“Yes, of course,” Eduardo said, cocking his head to one side and looking skeptically at his daughter.
“And it’s important to be with your family, to be all together,” Diego said. “That’s why we go visit Mexico sometimes.”
“Right.”
“But this dog—” Sofia indicated Brownie “—this dog was taken away from his mother.”
Eduardo frowned. “He’s not a little puppy. It’s okay for him to be taken away.”
“But, Dad, Brownie’s mom is still at A Dog’s Last Chance,” Diego said. “And she was really sad to be left behind. Right?” He turned, and all four Farmingham kids nodded solemnly. Even the dog seemed to agree, eyes fixed on Eduardo, tongue lolling.
“And she’s old, Mr. Delgado,” Ryan said. “She has grey hair on her nose.”
Eduardo was starting to see where this was going. Automatically, he shook his head.
“So we were wondering...” Diego started and trailed off.
Sofia put a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Could we get Brownie’s mother and have her be our dog?”
“No.” Eduardo drew in a breath. “No, we’re not ready for a dog.”
“Aww, Dad!” Diego’s face crinkled into a pout.
“Come on, my kids,” Fiona said. “Lunchtime, and time for Brownie to have a rest.”
The kids complained, but they did as Fiona said. She gave him a little wave and a rueful look—perhaps an apology for stirring up his kids’ desire for a dog—and then followed them toward her house.
She didn’t invite them to join in. Not that he wanted to, not that he would have, but he noticed the omission because she was usually quick to offer hospitality.
She was guarded around him now. As well she should be, but it was hard. “Go on inside,” he told his sulky kids. “I’ll be along in a minute. I need to pull the rest of these weeds.” In reality, he needed to collect his thoughts before entering into the get-a-dog fray.
When he did go inside, the kids were already pulling peanut butter and jelly out of the cupboard and arguing. He started into the kitchen to break it up and then heard what they were saying and froze.
“That wasn’t why she died, Diego. It didn’t have anything to do with you knocking over that lamp.”
Diego didn’t speak. His head was bowed over the sandwich he was making.
“I’m the one who made her sicker. I wanted her to come to school like the other moms, and she didn’t, and I yelled at her about it. She went to the hospital the next day, and she never came home.”
A Family for Easter Page 6