Promise to a Boy

by Mary Brady

  She had no idea what this day would bring as far as Reed Maxwell was concerned, but she had to get Kyle to a birthday party and then she had to give him over to her mother. Then she had a visit to a patient outside town who had a knee replacement in Kalispell last week—with Reed in tow.

  She opened her eyes to see Kyle standing at her bedside.

  “Oh!” She laughed and gave him a big grin. It was what he deserved. “Well, good morning to you.”

  He grinned back.

  “Is it time for the party yet?” he asked, his voice clear without a sign of sleep. She wondered how long he’d been up.

  Abby laughed as she looked at the clock on her bedside table. “It’s six o’clock, sweetie. The party is at eleven. Let’s see. How many hours is that?”

  She held up her hand and they counted off the hours on her fingers.

  “Five. Is that a long time?” Kyle asked, looking perplexed.

  “Not so long, and we have things to do to keep us busy. We have breakfast to make and eat, and cleaning our rooms, and packing your clothes to stay a couple nights at Grandma’s.”

  “I get to stay at Gramma’s? Yippee.” He jumped up and down twice and the third time launched himself onto her bed.

  “Yippee,” she echoed his joy and caught him before he could land all knees and elbows on top of her.

  “How about if I get up and we have breakfast.”

  “Can we have butter eggs?”

  “Yum. Yes, we can.” Butter eggs. Kyle had named them. Apt, considering butter and eggs was the entire list of ingredients fried up in a pan. “I’ll be down in a couple minutes.”

  “Can I call Gramma?”

  Abby laughed at what her mother would say to a phone call at six in the morning. “I think we had better not wake Grandma so early. It might make her grouchy.”

  “Gramma Grouch. Gramma Grouch.” Kyle giggled.

  “Yeah, we’ll tell her her new name when we see her. She’ll like that, too.” She put a hand on his rosy cheek, knowing she never should have said the grouch thing and hoping he’d forget it. “You go down and set the table. I’ll be down soon and we’ll call Grandma later.”

  He barreled out the door.

  “And wash your hands first,” she called to him as he clomped down the stairs in the very loud, but very cute canvas hightops his grandmother had bought him because they had Velcro closures. “I don’t want any boy cooties on my breakfast plate.”

  His giggle faded as he rounded the corner and headed toward the kitchen.

  She closed her bedroom door, stretched and stripped off her nightgown. With a shiver that puckered every thing, she pulled on a fluffy old sweatshirt, panties, jeans and the pair of garish green-and-pink-striped slippers Kyle and Lena had picked out for her last Christmas. She suspected it was a tongue-in-cheek gesture on her sister’s part, but Lena knew Abby would wear them because Kyle gave them to her. Of course her sister was right.

  By the time she had finished all the necessities and had gotten down stairs, Kyle had set three places at the kitchen table. She smiled. Jesse always ate butter eggs with them.

  She had so far put Kyle off when he asked when Jesse was coming home, and now she took the extra place setting and put it away in the cupboard.

  “Kyle,” she called and then noticed the back door was slightly ajar. He didn’t usually play outside this early, but he didn’t usually get up before seven o’clock.

  She stepped outside to see her nephew standing on the top landing of the apartment stairs talking animatedly to Reed Maxwell. Reed looked as awake as Kyle was and he was nodding. After a moment Kyle turned and ran down the stairs and right up to where she stood in the doorway.

  “Jesse’s brother is comin’ and eat butter eggs with us.” Kyle’s bright blue eyes shined in the morning light.

  “You invited Mr. Maxwell?”

  “Yeah. ’Cause you said he was taking Jesse’s place.”

  She hunkered down in front of him.

  “I said he was going to be staying in Jesse’s place. I meant staying in Jesse’s apartment, not taking Jesse’s place.”

  Kyle looked stricken.

  “But don’t worry, sweetie.”

  She looked up at Reed as he stepped up onto her back porch.

  “Good morning.” They greeted each other as she stood.

  Today he’d donned dark slacks, a navy blue golf shirt that stretched across the planes of his chest, and he had on his brown dress shoes again. His clothing showed off his body, made his eyes even darker and made her notice his hair glisten in the morning sun.

  He looked tasty.

  Jesse’s brother was now about to eat at her table because she wouldn’t be selfish and countermand Kyle’s invitation. If he didn’t want to eat with them, let him be the bad guy. Let the personality Jesse claimed he had come out into the open. It would make it a whole lot easier to send him away if he were a mean and angry man.

  “Can he eat with us anyway?” Kyle asked, his eyes wide.

  She cleared her throat before she spoke. “Of course he can eat with us.”

  She looked at Reed and raised her eyebrows in a silent question to see if eating with them was something he wanted to do.

  “I can go to the diner,” he said, addressing Abby.

  “And you’d get a great breakfast. You’ll get a great breakfast here, too, if you want to stay.”

  “It won’t be too much trouble?”

  “Not much if you like simple.”

  Kyle twisted back and forth between the two of them, eagerly trying to untangle the adult speak in his five-year-old head.

  “It’s my favorite.”

  “And since Kyle already invited you, I can’t very well turn you away.” She smiled at each of them.

  And then Kyle faced Reed. “You wanna eat with us, don’t you?”

  “If your aunt is sure it’s all right,” he said, and looked from Kyle to Abby.

  She kept smiling. What the heck else could she do? “Jesse used to eat butter eggs with us. We’d be happy to have you join us.”

  “Then nothing in the world sounds better than butter eggs,” he said, grinning down at Kyle. His perfect lips spread wide, white teeth in straight rows, his face shaved and smooth and crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

  Sexy in the morning.

  “Yippee.” Kyle jumped up and down.

  Uh-uh. Yippee, Abby thought, and when Reed looked up at her still grinning, the full force of his smile smacked her right between the eyes. “Oh, my.”

  “What?” Reed asked, his smile fading a little.

  “Oh, well, it’s just you, um, really look nice when you smile like that.” Shyness wasn’t usually her thing, but the men in her life weren’t usually stunningly gorgeous, ever, let alone first thing in the morning.

  “Thanks. My grandmother used to tell me that.”

  “And you, um—here’s a cliché—clean up nice,” she finished, and sighed at her lack of grace under pressure. Not peak mental performance for a former trauma nurse.

  He studied her attire, including her green-and-pink slippers. She wished she had put on a brassiere, but she had at least untangled her hair a bit.

  “And you do casual breakfast attire rather nicely,” he said after only a moment’s thought.

  She noticed her faded sweatshirt with only half a decal of a running grizzly bear remaining on the front of it.

  “You are also so very polite, so early in the morning.”

  “Grandmother taught me that, too.”

  Was it her imagination or did his eyes just sparkle?

  She badly needed to get away before she drooled.

  “Kyle, go in and get the eggs and butter out. I’ll be in soon.” She turned to Reed. “I haven’t started the eggs yet. You can come in or I can call you when things are ready.”

  “I could help. My kitchen skills are limited, but I can butter things really well.”

  “I bet you can.”

  Abby fled into the kitch
en before she could say any thing more to embarrass herself. Reed followed. What else could he do? He was polite after all and he had volunteered to help. Maybe she could pretend he was Jesse. Jesse would go play with Kyle while she cooked. Put this man with the boy? She wasn’t sure that was such a good idea, either.

  She grabbed the loaf of bread she had made the night before and the bread knife and turned intending to hand them to Reed. When she looked into his dark-lashed eyes, she knew why women in historical novels got all “vapory” when the hero gave them an unguarded smoking gaze.

  Up close in her small kitchen, Reed Maxwell radiated heat. Caveats about he might be Kyle’s uncle aside, he was all sexy muscle in that tidy rich-man way. And he smelled good, like a hot spicy afternoon in a mountain meadow.

  If she hadn’t been holding a loaf of bread and a knife, she might have spread her palms across his chest just to feel the power beneath that dark blue shirt. Drawn him close…

  She blinked.

  “Forgive me,” she said and handed the bread and knife to him. Lifting her chin to indicate the breadboard on the counter behind him.

  He turned away and she nearly fell over with relief. Reed Maxwell should go away. Far away. For all their sakes.

  Oh, God. How was it possible for her to go so long without a man and suddenly her heart was leaping in her chest at the nearness of this one, Mr. There’s No Way man?

  “Can I break an egg?” Kyle pushed the high stool up to the counter and clamored on top.

  “Yes, and tell you what. Every time you get all the egg in the bowl, you can break another.” Abby handed Kyle the bowl and then she put a dollop of butter in the frying pan and turned the burner on low heat.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Reed—once. Once was enough. One eyeful of flexing forearm muscles as he held the knife and sawed through the crispy crust of the bread had her gluing her attention to Kyle and the eggs breaking. She convinced herself she needed to watch carefully for shell fragments.

  She had no idea how she was going to get through butter eggs and no idea how she got so attracted to a man who might be the enemy. Yes, she did. She knew herself well enough to realize she believed in the good and honesty of all people—until they proved otherwise. Believing had gotten her in trouble in the past and probably would again. So be it.

  She could see herself raising a forkful of scrambled eggs to her lips and having them tumble into her lap as she gazed at the handsome man across the table.

  Oh, she was in trouble.

  REED LEFT THE APARTMENT above Abby’s garage and headed this time to the town square park. The day was as beautiful as yesterday had been. He had a feeling, though, the tough winters made up for the glorious summers, otherwise these mountains would be as heavily populated as any southern state. The peace and quiet held a certain allure.

  Breakfast had been great, as promised. Abby did eggs and butter so well, they melted in his mouth and if he forgot everything else in all their worlds, she and Kyle were a delight to spend time with.

  Reed usually had breakfast alone at home or at the counter at the deli, or in his office. Sometimes he ate with a client or with his partner, Denny, when they were out of town together. He never thanked God for his food and he never laughed over toast, or listened to a child giggle about the antics of a hamster called Piglet.

  Reed pulled up to the edge of the town square and found an open parking spot.

  In the center of the square was a flagpole surrounded by a riot of flowers. Leading up to the pole from all corners of the park were walkways flanked by ornate, old-fashioned looking lampposts. In the center of one of the triangles created by the sidewalks was a stage with a newly built sheltering roof supported by stout six-by-six pieces of lumber. Picnic tables and park benches were scattered around in random places, one bench was occupied by a woman rocking a stroller and one of the tables by people playing checkers.

  Two men sitting at a table in the shade of a group of large pine trees waved him over. When Reed approached, the men stood and introduced themselves. Clem worked at the post office and Harry at the feed store during the summer and taught juniors and seniors at the high school the rest of the year. On the table sat a carafe of coffee and a plate of doughnuts with dripping pale blue frosting.

  Reed was going to need some serious gym work and soon, he thought as he sat down at the table, just in time to frighten away a chipmunk that tried to seize the day, or the doughnut, as the case might be.

  “I had Jesse working for me for a few weeks unloading trucks and stacking shelves,” Harry said. “He was a hard worker, but he was too skinny for that kind of stuff. Not enough heft to balance the bags. Now you, you could do the job.”

  Reed looked down at his jeans and open-collared shirt and back up at the man.

  Clem was grinning big.

  “I get it,” Reed said. “Humor.”

  Both men laughed and then Clem got a serious look on his face.

  “What?” The look made Reed uneasy.

  “It’s just that, well, was Jesse okay? I mean, was there something real bad in his past?”

  Reed thought of Jesse’s embarrassment of never inviting his friends over because of their mother’s drunken antics. Then there was the time their father planned a weeklong trip for just the guys. Jesse was so looking forward to it, but when the day came, their father canceled without giving a reason. “What makes you ask?”

  “Well, I’m not a shrink or anything like that, but as a teacher they school us to recognize such things in the kids. Jesse always seemed kind of sad.” Harry looked uneasy as he spoke, as if there was more he wanted to say.

  Birds chirped and the chipmunk scolded. The warm wind of the late morning felt clean and soothing, yet the look on Harry’s face didn’t reflect the effects of the wind. Clem munched a doughnut.

  Reed leaned forward on his elbows, picked up Harry’s gaze and held it. “If there is something I need to know about Jesse, tell me.”

  “I know it’s been a while since you’ve seen your brother and that you’ve talked to a lot of people in town about him, but do you think he might do something to himself?”

  “Hurt himself? Kill himself?”

  “Hurt himself, more like.” Harry looked a little relieved that Reed had caught on.

  “Continue,” Reed said.

  “He didn’t seem suicidal, more like reckless.” Harry gestured for patience and understanding and Reed relaxed his body language. “Jesse was never reckless with anyone else or with anyone’s things. He would go hiking alone and one time he practically crawled back to town. Now, there are plenty of people around here who like to hike. He could always find someone if he planned on a difficult one.”

  “And he—” this was Clem, who mostly sat nodding and eating doughnuts “—got sick once and didn’t tell anybody, and Abby had to get the EMTs to carry him out of that apartment and into the clinic where they could treat him.”

  “I’d like to say I don’t think he’d do anything too careless,” Reed said, feeling the regret of not having kept closer with his brother, “but I haven’t seen him in a few years and haven’t heard anything from him in over a year.”

  “He’s a tough nut to crack,” Harry added.

  Not if you knew his background, Reed thought.

  “I’ll let someone in town know if I hear anything from Jesse,” Reed said as he pushed up from the table.

  “It would be much appreciated if you did,” Clem said as the two men stood.

  Reed shook hands with the men and turned away. He had to ask himself what he was doing here, disrupting these people’s lives. And trying to clean up his family’s mess was probably not a good enough answer.

  He stopped at Alice’s Diner. If Abby was going to drive him out into the countryside, the least he could do was to bring lunch.

  A half hour later, he pulled into the driveway at Abby’s place and a pickup truck pulled in behind him. Kyle leaped out of the truck and darted toward Abby, who waited for him
on the porch. The truck left as quickly as it had arrived and Abby waved at the driver.

  “I got candy.” Kyle held up the colorful plastic bag of party junk and picked up his pace until he ran full speed at her. “Angus and I won some games and we got candy.”

  He thought of the Tootsie Pops on the kitchen table. He liked Kyle. Whether or not the boy was his flesh and blood, he liked him. He liked a kid. A first, he thought, in his entire adult life. What would be next?

  ABBY HELD HER SQUIRMY nephew and scrunched him to her, wondering if she would ever feel as enthusiastic about anyone else.

  “Can we go now? Can we go to Gramma’s now?” he asked as he hugged back and then wiggled to get away.

  “Run in and get the knapsack you packed this morning,” she said, and let him go. “And save that candy for Grandma’s house.”

  After Kyle ran into the house, she looked up and saw Reed standing beside his car. She smiled at the sight he made, arms crossed over his chest, strong lean legs spread in an open stance. There must be tongues wagging all over town about that guy Abby’s got staying over at her place. That handsome guy in the fancy clothes.

  Her next-door neighbors, Cora and Ethel, who ran the boardinghouse, were without a doubt peeking through the eyelet lace curtains at this very moment. Let them peek. They deserved a treat from time to time.

  He reached into his car and brought out a paper bag.

  “Thought I’d return the favor,” he said as he walked toward the porch. “If you haven’t eaten, that is.”

  The paper bag in Reed’s hand had Abby licking her lips. “Is that from Alice’s Diner?”

  Kyle burst out of the door with his candy bag in one hand and a small backpack in the other. She had, at his insistence, let him pack his own things. She hoped he had at least one pair of clean underwear in there.

  “Hi, Reed!” Kyle called as he ran past toward her small SUV parked on the other side of the rental car. The man had become “Reed” to Kyle over breakfast.

  “I have to take Kyle to his grandmother’s house and then we need to get started for the Harvey ranch.”

  Reed held his paper bag out to her and she took it and peeked into one of the cartons. “Is that Alice’s chicken salad sandwiches?”