Winning Over Skylar

by Julianna Morris

  It was Skylar and he glared.

  “What the hell is so amusing?”

  “You. Didn’t you ever mow a lawn when you were a boy?”

  Aaron stiffened.

  While his grandfather had believed in old-fashioned chores for children, he’d hired a man to mow the vast lawns around the house twice a week—probably to be sure every blade of grass was cut to a precise length. The Cooper’s twenty-four room Victorian was the only mansion in town, and it was meticulously maintained.

  Nothing ever changed there.

  He had eaten a Sunday dinner with his grandparents shortly after his return to Cooperton, and it had been like going back to his childhood—every stick of furniture was the same, along with the few pieces of expensive bric-a-brac. No personal photos for the Coopers on shelves or the top of the grand piano—the closest thing to a display of sentiment were the white roses his grandmother kept in a crystal vase beneath a portrait of Nelson Cooper, the town’s founder.

  “No, Skylar, I’ve never used a mower,” he said shortly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I gave Melanie a ride. The girls are in the house getting a glass of water.”

  “Oh.” He should have guessed the parent who brought his sister home would be Skylar.

  “That looks new,” she observed, looking at the mower. “A nice model, too. Mind if I have a go?” she asked.

  “Don’t bother. There’s something is wrong with it.”

  Skylar grinned and bent over the machine, first checking the gas tank. He would have told her it was full if she’d bothered asking. She shifted a U-shaped bar and fit it to the upper handle. Holding it there, she put a foot on the surface of the mower and gave a quick tug on the cord. The motor roared into life.

  Damnation. Aaron clenched his teeth, wishing he’d read more of the manufacturer’s handbook.

  Skylar continued grasping the handle as she looked at him. “This is a safety feature,” she called above the noise, gesturing to the U-shaped bar. “If you trip and let go, it either kills the motor or stops the blades from turning. See?”

  She let go and the thing went silent.

  He thought about the lawn mower he’d assumed was broken. It was probably fine; he just hadn’t known how to get it running. Hell, he wasn’t an engineer and had never claimed to be. And apparently it was something he’d missed in the safety manual, or hadn’t read yet.

  “You’ll have to do it in narrow strips. The grass is so thick and long it will choke the blades otherwise,” Skylar advised. She attached the grass catcher to the mower and started it again, running across a thin line at the edge of the lawn before turning it off. “I wouldn’t go any wider than that.”

  Aaron fought a battle with his pride and decided it was pointless. “I suppose the grass catcher has to be emptied frequently.”

  “With this much overgrown lawn, yes. I’m surprised you don’t have Joaquin’s Gardening Service out here taking care of things.”

  “They quit a few weeks ago—claimed they’d taken on too many clients. I offered to pay a premium, but it didn’t do any good. And there don’t seem to be any kids in the neighborhood who are interested in earning a few extra bucks.”

  The amused expression in Skylar’s eyes sobered. “Oh. Well, I’m sure you’ll discover that gardening is satisfying. And it’s autumn, so the growing season is nearly over. Fortunately the leaves haven’t started turning on the trees since it’s been such a warm October. However, I’d get the lawn mowed shortly before they do drop—it’s easier to rake or use a leaf blower that way.”

  The trees...

  Aaron looked up at the tall elms around the house. He’d been eight when he had come to live in Cooperton, and one of his first chores was raking leaves. Lord, his arms had ached. His grandparents’ property had numerous trees in addition to the spreading lawns, and he’d thought those leaves would never stop falling. Only sheer stubbornness had gotten him through the endless hours of raking and stuffing leaf bags, his arms feeling as if they were going to fall off.

  No way would he have given his grim-faced grandfather the satisfaction of saying it was too much for him.

  Pulling weeds in his grandmother’s kitchen garden was assigned the next spring, and when he got tall enough, washing the three cars was added—twice a week, whether they’d been used or not—and waxing them once a week, along with any other task his grandfather found to give him. It had never been wise to be caught goofing off. “Idle hands are the devil’s playground,” George would thunder with the fervor of an old-time preacher before telling him to go sweep the long brick driveway.

  Aaron had sworn to himself that once he got away from Cooperton, he would spend all of his time having fun and to hell with being responsible. That was probably why his father had been able to convince him to take a semester off from college to join the team competing for the America’s Cup. But he’d quickly learned the playboy life wasn’t for him, so George Cooper’s values about hard work must have rubbed off.

  “Is something wrong?” Skylar asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  Aaron forced a smile. “No, of course not.”

  All at once, Karin and Melanie came barreling out of the house, breathless and giggling.

  “Are we going now, Mom?” Karin asked brightly.

  Skylar looked surprised. “Sure. Get in the truck.”

  The girls whispered something to each other, and Melanie waved as the truck backed down the driveway.

  “Okay, what’s up?” Aaron asked.

  His sister gave him an innocent smile. “Nothing.”

  “I haven’t been a kid for a while, but I know when something is going on.”

  “Okay. See, I’ve been thinking. You had to rent this house because of me and it’s a pain having a kid to take care of, anyhow.”

  Aaron was appalled. He knew how it felt to be taken out of duty and treated as an inconvenience and had never intended to make his sister feel that way.

  “It’s not a pain. I’m very fond of you, Melanie.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sure you’d prefer working longer hours at the company and stuff, and when that new part of the factory is being built, you’ll be busier than ever.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that—we’ll work it out. I’m just sorry I’m not much of a cook. I bet you’re tired of take-out food.”

  “That’s okay,” Melanie said earnestly. “But since you’re getting along better with Mrs. Gibson, Karin and I have been talking. The way we see it, Mrs. Gibson already has Karin to take care of, and having one more kid shouldn’t be a big deal. Besides, they have an extra bedroom.”

  Aaron’s eyes widened as he realized what she was getting at, but before he could head her off, Melanie finished.

  “So I’d like to move in with them. It’s all right with Mrs. Gibson, so you just have say yes and get Mother and Father to agree. I mean, not that I’ve ask—”

  “No.” His refusal came out sharper than he’d intended and he took a breath. “I’m sorry, that isn’t possible. They aren’t your family. We can make another arrangement if you aren’t happy staying with me, but you aren’t moving in with the Gibsons.”

  “I don’t want to leave Cooperton,” his sister said hastily. “I just want to live with Karin and her mother. Mrs. Gibson is a great mom, just like I always wanted....” Her voice trailed and she blushed.

  “There’s nothing to discuss. It’s out of the question.”

  “But you must know how it feels not have a home.”

  “You’ve got a home, right here. And I’m going to do more to make it comfortable. You’ll see.”

  Melanie bit her lip. “It’s not the same. You’ve been nice, but next year I’ll have to go somewhere else. You got to stay with your grandmother and grandfather when you were growing up. You didn�
�t have to keep going to new schools and being with people you didn’t know and not being able to make real friends.”

  Aaron couldn’t explain that living with the Coopers hadn’t been any picnic, either. Home implied a place that was warm and inviting, but living with the Coopers was akin to living in a refrigerated museum, though it was more the way they’d acted than the place.

  “I do understand how you feel, Melanie. But you can’t move in with strangers.”

  “They aren’t strangers. Karin is my best friend, and Mrs. Gibson makes sure I do my homework, same as she does with Karin. And she helped with my history paper—you were real happy I got an A on it, remember? She does mom stuff all the time. The parents are raising money for the school, so she’s doing a hamburger stand at the carnival. And she makes yummy fruit smoothies for me because I was sick.”

  “Melanie, I—”

  “You were great, too,” his sister said hastily. “But you’re not a mom.”

  No, Aaron didn’t have the equipment, though perhaps motherhood was more a state of mind than whether you were a man or woman. It was a curious thought for him. His own mother had always seemed like a lovely butterfly, flitting from flower to flower. And while a few of his stepmothers weren’t bad women, his father never stayed married to them long enough to have a noticeable impact on his children’s lives.

  Actually, Aaron had always wondered what would have happened if Jake’s mother, Josie Chambers, had been willing to marry Spence. Spence still carried her picture in his wallet...the only ex-lover whose picture he’d ever kept. Aaron could see the appeal. Josie was stunning. She was also an independent nonconformist who’d decided that being a wife would interfere with her life as a globe-trotting photographer. But motherhood hadn’t. She’d given birth to Jake while on a photo assignment in Iceland, and had taken him everywhere with her.

  When it got down to it, Jake was probably the only one of Spence’s kids who’d enjoyed childhood. He’d seen more of the world by the time he was ten than Aaron expected to see in a lifetime. And the constant travel and periodic dangers must suit him since he’d become a photographer himself.

  “I know things have been tough for you, Melanie,” Aaron murmured. He cared about his sister and hated to see her unhappy. “But you can’t join a family the way you’d join the Marines. Now go inside. I want to get the lawn done before we leave for the carnival.”

  Melanie looked utterly crushed, and Aaron wished there’d been an easier way of letting her down.

  Damn it all. What did Skylar hope to accomplish by giving Melanie permission to move in with them? And was Melanie just looking for attention? She knew he didn’t approve of the Nibble Nook and was defying him by continuing to go there. Yet in a way, the defiance was reassuring. He didn’t want to deal with an out-of-control teenager, but she had been so quiet and anxious to please when she’d arrived in July that it bothered him. Her moments of rebellion since then were probably a good sign.

  As for Karin, he was enjoying her, too. It was even possible that she was a healthy role model for Melanie.

  He started the lawn mower—it was absurdly easy now that he knew the trick—and directed it along the edge of the grass that Skylar had already cut. Back and forth, taking only a few inches of the overgrown section at a time, and emptying the catcher every five or six passes.

  Hell, Skylar must have loved seeing him yank on that cord when there wasn’t a prayer of it going. He didn’t appreciate being the butt of a joke, even by accident.

  I want to live with Karin and her mother.

  The words echoed in his head, inescapable however hard he tried, and he wondered how Melanie had ever gotten the notion that he’d approve of her living with virtual strangers.

  And yet it was just as disconcerting to know that she’d rather live with those strangers than with him.

  * * *

  KARIN SAT WITH Melanie on a bench at the edge of the midway, munching a corn dog. The carnival was raising money for a new computer lab, and everybody was donating the money they made on food and stuff. Her mom and grandparents were running a booth for hamburgers and fries and it had the longest line of all.

  “Aaron wouldn’t even consider me living with you, ’cause you aren’t family.” Mellie kicked a clod of dirt. “I was so nervous, I said it was okay with your mother even though we haven’t asked yet. But I guess it doesn’t matter since he refused.”

  Karin made a face. “It’ll be okay with Mom. Tell your brother we are family, we just aren’t related.” It was what she’d heard her grandparents say to their employees and it sounded nice.

  “I don’t think he’ll buy that. He’s awfully stubborn.”

  “Maybe we can think of something else to do.” Karin had put a ton of mustard on her corn dog and kept having to turn it back and forth to keep the mustard from dripping. Grandpa Joe always teased her for using so much, but she loved how the sour mustard tasted with the sweet, crispy cornbread around the hot dog.

  In some ways Karin felt older than Mellie, instead of younger. Mellie’s father wasn’t dead like hers; he just wasn’t around much. And her mom and stepdad traveled all the time, leaving her with relatives she hardly knew...this year with a half brother that nobody in town liked. Karin’s own mother had to work a lot, but she was always there. And she came to school events and stuff, no matter how busy it was at the Nibble Nook.

  Mellie tossed her own corn-dog stick into the trash can. “It must be legal stuff. You know, because he’s my temporary guardian while my mother and father are gone. Maybe I should have asked them before talking to Aaron. They usually don’t mind what I do, but now he’ll tell them that he said ‘no,’ and they might think they have to go along.”

  “Legal stuff...” Karin repeated absently as she took another bite of mustard and corn dog.

  On one of her weekends with Grandma Grace and Grandpa Joe they’d watched the three Back to the Future movies, all in one night. In the second movie, the inventor guy said justice moved swiftly in the future because they had outlawed lawyers. Grandpa Joe had laughed and laughed and said he was sure it would happen someday.

  “What if we talk to a lawyer?” she murmured.

  “How would that help?”

  “Well, if moms and dads can get divorced, then kids should be able to divorce their parents and live where they want.”

  Mellie’s eyes widened. “I never heard of someone doing that.”

  “Me, either, but it can’t hurt to try. The problem is, it probably costs a bunch. I wasn’t supposed to hear about it, but after my dad...that is, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Grace went to a lawyer a few months ago and had a will made. Mom started crying and told them they shouldn’t have spent so much money, but they wanted to be sure we’d be okay. I’m not sure why it was such a big deal.”

  “I’ve got money,” Mellie said. “My mother and father are always sending me checks or cash, and Aaron gives me more than I need. I put most of it in a bank account, so I bet there’s enough.”

  Karin’s brain worked furiously. “Okay, we’ll start calling on Monday during lunch. I’ll look in the phone book and get the names and numbers of the lawyers in town.”

  Mellie began to look excited, too. “My stepfather says that an attorney can get people to do practically anything you want.”

  “And your mom and dad can come visit you at our place, same as at your brother’s house.”

  “They don’t visit much, anyhow. My mother and stepfather take me someplace every summer, but if I’m staying with you, my mother won’t have to talk anybody else into keeping me for the school year. She’ll like that.”

  Karin didn’t understand the way Mellie’s family did things. Mellie had said that some of her half brothers and sisters had ended up in boarding schools when they were growing up and she was really glad she hadn’t gotten sent to one so far. Bu
t apparently it had been touch-and-go this year until Aaron agreed to take her.

  It was weird. Karin had never been away from her mom for more than a week, and that was just for science conservation camp and other school trips, or hanging out in Trident with Grandpa Joe and Grandma Grace.

  “Where is your brother, anyhow?” she asked, glancing around for fear that their talk about lawyers might have been overheard. “You said he brought you tonight.”

  “I don’t know. When we got here the principal was trying to talk him into selling tickets or something. He said Aaron would be great for the dunk tank, ’cause they’d make a bunch of money, but somebody else said that his employees would be afraid to dunk him because he was their boss. Aaron didn’t seem too happy about that, but I didn’t hear what happened because he handed me a bunch of money and told me to go enjoy the carnival.”

  “You don’t think he’d fire someone who dunked him, do you?” Karin nibbled the last crusty bit of dough from her corn-dog stick and threw it away.

  “I don’t know. He got awful mad when he caught an employee putting six boxes of beef jerky in their car without paying for it, but that was different.”

  Karin blinked. “Six whole boxes?”

  “Uh-huh. He didn’t say who it was, but he was hopping mad when he came home that day. Say, let’s see if the line is shorter at your mom’s hamburger booth. I’m still hungry.”

  “Me, too.”

  She followed Melanie and even though the line was still huge, they decided to wait...mostly because Nick Jakowski had gotten there just ahead of them.

  “Oh, hi,” he said when he turned around. “You’re Karin, right? The coach was talking about you the other day. He said you played soccer in junior high and was wondering why you didn’t try out for the high-school team.”

  Karin shrugged, tongue-tied.

  They went to a small school where you knew practically everyone’s name, but it was dazzling to think that Nick remembered anything else about her. After all, he was the captain of the football team and absolutely gorgeous with his athletic jacket and crooked smile.