Chapter Six
During the next few days, it became embarrassingly apparent to Rachel that everyone in her family had decided to champion Seth’s cause. Celia and Cody were blatant about it. Both asked her point-blank why she wouldn’t “just go out with the guy.” Neither accepted any of the standard excuses she gave them in reply. Her grandmother was only a bit more subtle, casually bringing Seth’s name into conversations, asking if Rachel had talked to him, repeatedly mentioning what a “nice young man” he was.
Even Adam, who rarely interfered in such things, brought Seth’s name up when he called Rachel at her office on Thursday to ask how she and Granny Fran were getting along. “He seemed like a decent guy,” he said. “Not quite as much the joker as Cody.”
Rachel murmured something noncommittal.
“Has he asked you out?” he asked with entirely characteristic lack of tact.
“Yes,” Rachel answered with a sigh, knowing just what to expect. “He has. I turned him down.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t want to get involved with anyone right now.”
“You should think about it,” Adam advised. “You’re still an attractive young woman. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life alone. Besides, you need someone to help you with the kids.”
“I’m perfectly capable of raising my children alone,” Rachel responded coolly, annoyed with his rather arrogant certainty that he knew what was best for her.
“I know you are. Don’t be so prickly. It was just a suggestion.”
“Hmm.” She turned the offensive right back to him. “What about you, Adam? Didn’t you turn thirty-eight on your last birthday? Isn’t it time you start thinking about settling down and making little Stones?”
“Point taken,” he said hastily. “Your social life is your own business.”
“Exactly.”
“But, you know, I never did ask—why have you retained Fletcher as your attorney? Are you in some sort of legal trouble?”
“Just a minor problem with an employee I had to fire,” Rachel answered lightly, deliberately downplaying the trouble. “It seems to be all taken care of now, and I probably won’t even need Seth’s services for that particular problem. Anything else I might need him for will just be the legal formalities required of any small business owner these days.”
“You’d tell me if it was more serious than that, wouldn’t you?” Adam asked suspiciously.
“Of course I would,” Rachel lied sweetly, and then disconnected the call as quickly as possible.
She’d barely gotten in the door that evening before Seth’s name came up again. “When are we going to see Seth again?” Aaron asked as he stood in Rachel’s bedroom, watching her lace her sneakers after she’d changed out of her work clothes and into jeans and a comfortable sweater.
“I don’t know, Aaron. I’m sure you’ll be seeing him again sometime,” Rachel answered, deliberately vague. “He’s Uncle Cody’s good friend.”
“He’s our good friend, too,” Aaron said.
“Yes, of course.” Rachel reached for her hairbrush.
“I like Seth.”
“Yes, dear, so do I. Um—how was school today?”
“Fine. Wesley Kirkpatrick’s father came to show us some animals in cages. It was cool. He had a raccoon and a possum and a bat.”
Since Rachel happened to know that Wesley Kirkpatrick’s father worked for the state parks service, she reacted without surprise. “Sounds interesting.”
“I like Wesley’s father. He’s nice.”
“Yes, Martin Kirkpatrick is a nice guy. He and I went to school together.” Having lived in Percy all her life, Rachel knew just about everyone who’d lived there more than a year or two. Many of Paige and Aaron’s friends were children of Rachel’s own childhood acquaintances.
“It must be nice to have a father,” Aaron said with a sigh, leaning back against Rachel’s bed. “I wish my daddy didn’t die.”
“So do I, sweetie,” Rachel said evenly, though her throat burned with the effort. It broke her heart that Aaron couldn’t even remember his father, would never know how much Ray had loved him, how proud he’d been of his children. What a wonderful, patient, nurturing father he’d been to them.
“Timmy Engel’s father died when Timmy was a little kid. Now he’s got a new daddy.”
Rachel bit her lip. Patricia Engel, whose husband had died of cancer a couple of years ago, had only recently remarried. Town gossip had it that Patricia was already expecting a new baby, and was blissfully happy with her new husband.
Since Rachel didn’t know quite what to say in response to Aaron’s musing, she changed the subject again. “We’d better go find Granny Fran and Paige, Aaron. I’m sure Granny’s almost ready for us to eat that pot roast she cooked for our dinner.”
“Do you think we could ever get a new daddy, Mama?” Aaron asked with the single-minded tenacity so typical of childhood.
“I don’t know, Aaron,” Rachel said helplessly. “But we’re getting along pretty well as we are, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but it would be cool to have a dad,” Aaron said with another little sigh. “Someone like Seth.”
Rachel somehow managed not to choke. “Let’s go find the others,” she said quickly.
She all but bolted from the bedroom, pausing only long enough to turn off the light. Aaron tagged at her heels, already babbling about something else that had happened at school, much to Rachel’s relief. It was bad enough that the rest of the family was playing matchmaker. She’d be darned if she’d let a five-year-old start organizing her love life!
* * *
She lay in bed that evening replaying the conversation she’d had with her son, wondering if she should have said something different, taken more time to talk to him. She shouldn’t have let herself get flustered.
She wouldn’t remarry just to give her children a new father, of course. That was certainly no basis for a successful marriage. And even if she were to remarry for the sake of the children, it wouldn’t be someone like Seth, but someone older, more settled. Someone like...she searched her mind for a viable candidate. Someone like Dan McNeil, she finally decided, picturing her insurance agent, a divorced forty-year-old who’d asked her out a time or two. He’d taken her gentle refusals graciously enough, but had made it clear his interest was still there. All she’d have to do would be to give him a little encouragement.
Maybe it was time to start thinking about going out again, she thought, looking somberly at the photograph on her nightstand. Ray wouldn’t have wanted her life to end when his did. He wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone. Maybe it had taken Seth’s attentions to make her aware that it was time she considered what she wanted for herself besides her children and her work, if anything.
The problem was that she couldn’t really work up any enthusiasm about going out with Dan or with any other man. Except, perhaps, Seth Fletcher, the most likely candidate for heartache she could imagine at the moment. Damn it.
* * *
Aaron turned six that Saturday, the last weekend in September. Rachel had carefully budgeted during the preceding weeks to allow her to buy the gift Aaron most wanted—a swing set. She bought the nicest set she could afford, with two swings, a plastic glider shaped like a colorfully painted horse, a lookout tower on one end and a bright yellow plastic-clad slide on the other. Of course, the boxes were all marked “Assembly Required.”
“How long do you think it will take you to put it together?” she asked Cody on the telephone Friday afternoon.
Cody had volunteered to put the set together while she and the children were away for Aaron’s party.
“Keep the kids at the pizza parlor for a couple of hours. Everything will be ready when you get back home,” Cody promised confidently.
Rachel mentally added an hour to his estimation. Surely Cody and the friends he’d claimed to have recruited for the project could have the set assembled in three hours. Aaron’s birthd
ay party was scheduled at Pizza Palace for twelve o’clock, and she pictured his excitement when she brought him home at three to find the swing set in his backyard, ready for play. She’d bought an inexpensive toy to give him at his pizza party, so he’d have something to unwrap from her, and to serve as a red herring.
The birthday party arranged by the long-suffering staff of the Pizza Palace was everything a six-year-old could have desired. Thirteen noisy guests, all the pepperoni pizza they could eat, followed by chocolate cake and ice cream, pitchers of sugar-and-caffeine-laced soda to turn them into hyper little motion machines, birthday hats, balloons and noisemakers, organized games that didn’t stay organized for very long, party favors for everyone and a mountain of brightly colored gifts for the birthday boy to open.
Rachel and Granny Fran were exhausted when the last child departed with her parents at two-fifteen. The pizza parlor staff looked a bit frazzled but were already setting up for the party scheduled for three o’clock. Aaron and Paige were still full of energy.
“Can we go home now so I can play with my new toys?” Aaron demanded, greedily eyeing his stacks of gifts.
Rachel glanced at her watch. “We have to stop by the grocery store first,” she said, stalling for extra time. “I need to pick up a few things for this evening. Aunt Celia and Uncle Cody are coming over to bring you their gifts.”
“Are we going to have another birthday cake?” Aaron asked, his hazel eyes lighting up in anticipation.
“Of course we are,” his great-grandmother replied. “I’m making it myself.”
Rachel smiled at her son’s delight. Giving her children pleasure was all the joy she could ask for herself, she thought contentedly. She’d felt the same way after Paige’s birthday party last June, which Paige had declared to be the very best slumber party anyone had ever had.
She tried not to even think of the inevitable time when her children would leave home. Each birthday celebrated was a step closer to their independence. There were times when she wished she could snatch them into her arms and keep them small and innocent forever.
She deliberately took her time at the grocery store. Her coconspirator, Granny Fran, helped by pausing occasionally to read labels on cans and exclaim over rising grocery prices. The children quickly grew restless, though they were too well trained to make a scene in a public place, and too fond of their great-grandmother to risk hurting her feelings by rushing her through her shopping.
It was five minutes after three when Rachel guided her car into her driveway. She was already frowning at the sight of the black sports car parked at the curb, the only vehicle in sight.
“Isn’t that Seth’s car?” Paige asked innocently from the back seat of Rachel’s car.
“It certainly looks like it,” Rachel murmured. She’d specifically asked Cody who he was bringing to help him with the swing set. He’d named two longtime friends, neither of them Seth, to her unspoken relief. She should have known better.
Arms loaded with groceries, Rachel led the way into the house, followed by her grandmother and the children, all of whom were carrying Aaron’s birthday presents. The house was empty. “Where’s Seth?” Paige asked, puzzled.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you and Aaron take his gifts to his room and I’ll go see if he’s here.”
“Maybe they aren’t finished putting the swing set together yet,” Rachel said to her grandmother when the children followed her instructions. “See if you can keep the kids inside until I call them, okay?”
Frances smiled and nodded. “I’ll get them started playing that new board game one of the little boys gave Aaron. It looked like it would take a while.”
“Good idea. Thanks.” Rachel headed for the backyard to check the progress of the swing set.
Instead of the three or four men she expected to find, there was only one—and it wasn’t her brother. Wearing faded jeans and a red-and-white Arkansas Razorbacks sweatshirt that had seen better days, Seth was standing at the top of a stepladder, an instruction manual in one hand, a wrench in the other, and a deep frown creasing his forehead. The swing set was only half-finished, and that half was leaning precariously.
“What in the world—?”
At the sound of Rachel’s voice, Seth jerked, dropped the manual and the wrench and nearly managed to fall off the ladder. He caught himself with one hand against the top railing of the swing set, then looked down at her with a half guilty, half sheepish expression. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not quite finished.”
“Seth, why are you here alone? Where are Cody and the others who were going to help him with this?”
“Cody was here,” Seth explained. “The other two guys who were going to help him canceled out at the last minute, so he called me. He and I had just gotten started putting the set together when he was called away. Some sort of problem came up at the club, apparently, and Jake couldn’t handle it alone. Cody said he’d be back as soon as he could, but I guess the problem was worse than he’d anticipated.”
“So he left you to take care of this alone,” Rachel concluded.
“I told him I didn’t mind,” Seth assured her. “The only problem is, I’ve never put a swing set together. To be honest, I’ve never put anything together that was larger than a model airplane. I’m sorry, I know you wanted this finished by the time you got home.”
Rachel shook her head, touched despite herself that he was apologizing when he’d certainly had no obligation to give up his Saturday afternoon to put together her son’s swing set. “You really don’t have to do this. You must be tired and thirsty. Why don’t you come on into the kitchen for a cold drink and I’ll have someone finish this later.”
Seth immediately looked offended. “I can finish it,” he insisted. “I’ve been studying the manual and I know now what I was doing wrong before.”
“I’m sure you can finish it,” Rachel hastened to assure him, realizing she’d accidentally stepped on his male ego. “I just thought you might be ready for a break.”
“No. I want to finish this first. It shouldn’t take much longer.”
“Then I’ll help,” Rachel said, pushing up the sleeves of the apple green hand-knit sweater she wore with neatly pressed jeans and comfortable flats. She’d dressed for comfort for the birthday party, and now she was glad she’d chosen such casual clothing. “What can I do?”
Seth smiled down at her. “Why don’t you read the instructions aloud as I get to them? It’s hard for me to hold the manual and put this together at the same time.”
Hoping Aaron would be engrossed in his new toys long enough to give them time to finish, Rachel retrieved the instruction manual from the ground where Seth had dropped it and turned to the page he named.
During the next hour, Rachel saw exactly how determined Seth could be when he put his mind to it. She wondered if he looked this serious and stubborn in court. He attacked the swing set as though it were the opponent and he was determined to win at all costs, and he looked far different from the man she’d caught building card houses on a lazy weekday afternoon in his office. She couldn’t help wondering a bit nervously if he went after every challenge with the same single-minded pursuit of victory.
They worked well together. After the first few minutes, she found herself able to almost anticipate his requests, handing him tools before he asked, stepping forward to help him steady a particularly heavy piece of equipment, knowing just when to repeat an obscure bit of instruction from the confusing manual.
“I think these directions were written by someone to whom English was a second language,” Seth muttered at one point.
Rachel chuckled. “This from a lawyer? I thought you guys specialized in making the English language especially difficult to understand.”
He growled and waved a wrench at her in a mock-threatening motion that didn’t intimidate her in the least. To her surprise, she was actually having fun, a realization that only made her nervous again.
A sudden, s
hrill squeal came from behind them. Aaron stood in the kitchen door, studying the almost-finished swing set with blissful excitement. “A swing set! Thank you, Mama!”
Paige appeared at Aaron’s heels, followed by Frances, who looked apologetic at being unable to stall them any longer. “Hey, cool!” Paige exclaimed. “Can we play on it?”
“It’s not quite ready,” Seth explained. “Give us just a few more minutes.”
“Yeah, Paige,” Aaron muttered, sounding quite superior now that he’d reached the mature age of six. “Can’t you see the swings aren’t even on it yet?”
Paige glared at him. “I can see that,” she retorted. “I was just asking if it was almost ready to play on.”
The children insisted on “helping” with the final steps in the assembly of the set, which added a good half hour to the process. It was almost five-thirty when Seth announced that he was finished. He refused to let the children play on the set until he and Rachel had tested every part of it for sturdiness and safety, checking to make sure there were no exposed metal parts and no loose connections, climbing into the tower to determine its steadiness, even sliding down the slide and swinging on the swings to verify that they’d hold his weight, as the promotional materials had assured him they would.
The horse glider was rated only to hold a hundred pounds. “You try it, Rachel,” Seth urged.
Rachel gave him a reproachful look. “Don’t I wish.”
He looked surprised. “You weigh more than a hundred pounds?”
“Of course I do! I’m five-seven. If I weighed a hundred pounds, I’d be nothing more than skin and bones.”
“I certainly didn’t mean to imply that there was anything lacking in your figure,” he murmured, giving her a quick, appreciative head-to-toe glance. “Just the opposite, in fact.”
She blushed and cleared her throat. “You can test it, Aaron,” she said quickly. “Seth can stand close by to make sure it looks safe.”
A Man for Mom Page 8