A Change of Heart: A Christian Romance (The Callaghans & McFaddens Book 1)

by Kimberly Rae Jordan

  After Tami said grace for the food, the conversation quickly picked up around the table as food was passed from one person to the next. The aroma of the spaghetti sauce made his stomach rumble. Nerves about his appointment with James had robbed him of his appetite at lunch, but now that the meeting was out of the way, and he had some direction for which way he should move, Ethan was ready to eat.

  “Your appointment go okay this afternoon?” Bennett asked after they’d spent a few minutes eating in silence.

  Ethan nodded. However, not wanting to get into anything further, he didn’t give any details. “I still have a few things left to sort out from the move, but I’m slowly checking them off my list.”

  He knew it probably wasn’t right to lead Bennett to believe that his appointment had been related to their move from Calgary. Perhaps if Sierra hadn’t been present at the table, he might have been willing to share a bit more with Bennett, but the conversation he needed to have with his sister didn’t need an audience.

  “How’s your laptop working out?” Lee asked.

  “It’s been working great. Thanks so much for setting that up.”

  “It was my pleasure.” Lee shifted in his seat and looked down at the other end of the table “So, Makayla, a little bird told me that you’ve been getting an anonymous gift of chocolate each week. Do you have a secret admirer?”

  Ethan glanced to where Makayla sat, his thoughts suddenly going to the kiss—the chocolate kiss—she’d offered him. Warmth flooded him at the memory, and he had to turn his attention back to his plate of food to keep the stupid grin that popped up on his face from being visible to the rest of the people at the table.

  “Oh, I have a fairly good idea who they might be from,” she said.

  “Really?” Lee asked. “Because my source tells me that you aren’t really sure who might be leaving them for you.”

  Ethan glanced up in time to see Makayla roll her eyes. “Well, I can rule out the guys in the office since I’m pretty sure none of them would ever do anything like that. Which leaves me with only one or two other people, and I’m pretty sure at least one of them is lying.”

  “Would you like me to check the security footage?” Lee offered. “That would tell us beyond a shadow of a doubt who it is.”

  “I already checked,” Makayla said. “But I just can’t tell who of the people going in and out of my office before I get there are leaving the chocolate. Not to worry, however, I will get to the bottom of this.”

  “Isn’t it nice to get candy, though, Makayla?” Sierra asked. “Ethan always carries some in his pockets for me. If I’m having a bad day or feeling sad, he always has candy to brighten things up for me.”

  “Well, see there?” Lee said with a flourish of his hand toward Ethan. “Maybe there’s at least one guy in the office who believes that giving candy is a good thing.”

  As the gazes of the people around the table turned in his direction, Ethan felt heat climb up his neck into his cheeks. Did they really think that he was the one leaving candy for Makayla? And now with his flushed cheeks, he probably looked guilty.

  “While it’s true I do give candy to Sierra,” Ethan said then lifted his hands in the air in a surrender position, “I don’t go around giving them to anyone else. And if I did offer candy to Makayla, it would be because I could tell she was having a bad day. And it would be a strawberry candy because that’s all I carry with me. Pretty sure chocolate in the pockets would be a very bad idea.”

  “And so the mystery continues,” Tami said with a grin. “I still think someone...” Her gaze moved around the table landing on each of them, “is lying.”

  Ethan thought about insisting that it wasn’t him but then realized that protesting his innocence would just make him look more guilty. And the last thing on earth he needed right then was for people to think that he had some sort of crush on Makayla. It didn’t matter that it might, sort of, be true, he just didn’t want anyone else to suspect it.

  “To be honest, I’m not really that interested in finding out who it is anymore,” Makayla said with a shrug. “I figure if they wanted me to know, they would’ve told me the first day I went around asking about it. So if someone wants to spend their hard-earned cash on my favorite candy and leave it on my desk for me to enjoy, who am I to argue with them.”

  “I wish someone would leave candy on my desk,” Bennett said. “Just for the record. I’m partial to Reese’s Pieces myself.”

  Laughter rippled around the table at his comment, and then Mitch joined in. “I really like Twizzlers. The strawberry ones.”

  “I know I don’t work in the office,” Lee said with a grin, “but if someone greeted me with some Lindt chocolates when I showed up one day, I wouldn’t turn them down.”

  Bennett leaned over to punch Lee in the arm. “Well, look at you, going after the expensive chocolate.”

  “Hey! I’ve never claimed to be a cheap date.”

  “What about you, Ethan?” Mitch asked. “What’s your favorite candy?”

  Ethan frowned as he tried to think of what he’d consider his favorite. He even looked in Sierra’s direction as if she could give him some help.

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those health types that don’t eat sweets,” Lee said as he stared at him, one brow arched.

  Sierra snickered at the comment, no doubt because she knew very well that Ethan ate plenty of sweets. “He doesn’t eat much candy, but he really likes things like cupcakes and cookies, and he really, really likes brownies.”

  “Well, a man after my own heart,” Tami said. “I think I’d have to say that cupcakes, cookies, and brownies would win out over candy any day for me as well.”

  Ethan followed Tami’s gaze to her friend in time to see Makayla scowl at her. Once again, Ethan was reminded of how little he knew about how to interact in larger social settings. And even participating in the lighthearted banter around the table was challenging for him. There had been lots of joking around when he’d worked with his crews in Calgary, but a lot of that was off-colored humor and dirty jokes that he just hadn’t wanted to participate in, so he’d kept his head down and his mouth shut.

  “I guess it’s a good thing we made brownies for dessert,” Danica said, sharing a smile with Sierra.

  Once the conversation moved on from the sweets topic, Ethan breathed a sigh of relief. There seemed to have been some undertones to that whole conversation that he hadn’t picked up on. He might have considered asking Sierra about it, but something told him that he was better off leaving it alone. As it was, Tami’s comment had made him a little uncomfortable. He didn’t know what he’d do if he found out that she was interested in him. The awkwardness that would follow that discovery was something he didn’t even want to contemplate.

  As soon as the meal was done, Ethan offered to help clean up and do the dishes when the others mentioned finding a game to play.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Makayla said in response to his offer.

  “I know, but the deal Sierra and I have is that if one cooks, the other cleans up. Since you guys cooked, let me clean up.” Ethan really hoped that she would accept his offer because nothing appealed to him more right then than being away from the chatter of the group. He knew it was too early to leave, so having a little bit of quiet in the kitchen would be the next best thing.

  “I’ll tell you what. How about you help me clean up?” Makayla suggested. “That way I can make sure you load the dishwasher correctly and can help you out if you need to know where something goes.” She smiled at him. “And I promise not to talk your ear off.”

  Ethan stared at her for a moment, surprised that she seemed to have picked up on what he needed. He nodded and before he knew it, she’d shooed everyone else out of the kitchen and dining room into the living room. She allowed the girls to come get the brownies and cookies but then sent them back out again.

  True to her word, Makayla only spoke to him to give him directions on how she wanted her dishwasher
loaded. When it was full, he stood looking down at it for a moment, wondering how anyone could have loaded it differently.

  “Is something wrong?” Makayla asked as she came to stand next to the open dishwasher.

  “No. I was just trying to figure out how I would’ve done it differently if you hadn’t told me what to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Though it felt a bit strange to discuss dishwasher loading habits with Makayla, Ethan said, “It’s just that the way you want things put in the dishwasher is pretty much identical to the way I would do it myself.”

  “Really? Tami thinks I’m nuts that I have to have the plates set a certain way as well as the cups and the cutlery. I’m constantly redoing it after she loads it, which bugs the life out of her.”

  Ethan chuckled at that. “Thankfully, I’ve been able to train Sierra from a young age to load it correctly.”

  “Well, you are definitely a kindred spirit,” Makayla said with a grin.

  “As long as that doesn’t make me Diana Barry, we’re all good.”

  Makayla’s eyes widened as her mouth dropped open. “You know Anne of Green Gables?”

  16

  E than shrugged. “I read it to Sierra a couple of years ago.”

  “That’s amazing! Have you seen the movie?”

  Ethan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “No, but I think Sierra has.”

  “If you enjoyed the book, you should really watch the movie with Megan Follows. It’s an older movie, but it was great. She will always be Anne for me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Ethan said as he put the pod into the dishwasher and started it up.

  “I guess we’ll have to do the rest of these by hand,” Makayla said after she’d put the last of the food away. “Do you want to wash or dry?”

  “I’ll wash. That way you can put things away where they need to go since I won’t know,” Ethan said.

  As Ethan tackled the remaining dishes, he relished the feel of the warm water around his hands. Though Makayla had promised to not engage him in too much conversation, it wasn’t long before she broke the silence. Surprisingly, he didn’t mind.

  “So did you read a lot of different books to Sierra?” Makayla asked as she plucked a dish from the strainer and began to dry it.

  Ethan scrubbed at a large glass dish in the sink. “It started when she was in grade one, and I realized that she needed help learning to read.”

  He’d had to work with her hard on the weekends since his dad had kicked him out of the house when he graduated and not long after he turned eighteen. They had wanted to move into a nicer condo, but there wouldn’t have been room for him. Thankfully, Bob had been thrilled to hire him full-time once he was out of school and that had enabled him to afford a small studio apartment on his own. He supposed that his dad and stepmom hadn’t realized how much he did for Sierra until he was no longer there. That was no doubt why they’d had no problem taking him up on his offer to have her stay with him each weekend.

  “She’s always been interested in books, so it didn’t take her long to catch on. But for some reason, she seemed to enjoy having me read to her.” Ethan shrugged as he ran a dish under the water to rinse it and put it in the strainer.

  “What kind of books have you read together?”

  “We’ve read through the Little House on the Prairie series and all the Narnia books. We also read the Lord of the Rings trilogy.” Ethan placed another dish in the strainer. “That was a tough one. I almost would’ve rather her watch the movies.”

  “I’ve read all of those, and I have to agree about the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I can’t imagine reading it aloud.” Makayla leaned a hip against the counter as she waited for him to place another dish in the strainer. “I don’t have as much time to read as I’d like to. Do you like to read yourself? Or do you just read for Sierra?”

  Ethan scrubbed at the large bowl in the water. “I enjoy reading for myself as well. I imagine once things settle down a bit, Sierra will pick a new book for me to read.”

  “What does Sierra do while you read to her?”

  “She usually sketches, but she’s been known to crochet as well.”

  “Crochet?” Makayla asked, surprise clear in her voice.

  “Yeah, go figure.” Ethan smiled as he slipped a pan into the water. “I think she picked that skill up from YouTube.”

  “On YouTube? That’s so cool.”

  They worked in silence for a few minutes as Ethan finished up the last of the dishes that had been piled beside the sink. The quiet between them was a little bit awkward, but Ethan didn’t feel compelled to fill it with meaningless conversation. As it was, he could hardly believe that he’d shared as much as he had with Makayla. He never talked much with anyone about having Sierra in his life. Was there a point where he would share too much?

  Ethan pulled the plug of the sink and waited for the water to drain. He turned on the faucet and quickly wiped down the sink before wringing out the dishcloth. He felt a touch on his arm and looked down to see Makayla’s fingers resting there. Surprised, he looked up into her blue eyes.

  “I don’t know everything about the situation with Sierra, but I just want you to know that I think you’re a great big brother for her.”

  Her hand moved away, but the warmth of her touch lingered on his skin. Ethan gave her a quick smile before returning his attention to the sink. “Thank you. She makes being her big brother very easy.”

  Makayla laughed lightly. “I’m pretty sure that’s not something Bennett or Kenton would ever say about me.”

  This time, the smile Ethan gave her was a little wider. He knew that she could be feisty with her brothers at times and could only imagine what she might’ve been like at Sierra’s age.

  “Maybe that’s true, but I’m sure that they love you as much as I love Sierra.”

  They lapsed into silence again as they finished up in the kitchen. Once everything was done, they joined the others in the living room. Ethan was surprised to see that there were still a few brownies and cookies left, so he made sure to snag one of each before settling onto the floor next to Sierra.

  In spite of his initial misgivings regarding spending the evening at Makayla’s, Ethan found himself relaxing and enjoying the company around him. He was just over a month into his three-month probation and already he was coming to know each of the members of this group in a way he hadn’t thought possible.

  At times, he wondered if they tolerated his and Sierra’s presence in their social circle simply because they were taking pity on them. Ethan hoped that wasn’t the case and would never take for granted the friendship they offered to him and to Sierra.

  *

  Makayla watched as Ethan sat down on the floor beside his sister. He set the plate containing a brownie and a cookie down in front of him. As he drew one leg up and propped his arm on his knee, Makayla found herself happy to see him more at ease. She didn’t know if it had anything to do with their conversation in the kitchen, but she knew for herself that finding common ground with people often helped to make a situation more enjoyable.

  Of course, that may just be how she was. Though she didn’t think she had dragged answers out of Ethan with her questions, it was fairly apparent that he wasn’t entirely used to—or comfortable with—talking about himself. That knowledge just made her all the more curious about the man and about the situation with Sierra. She hadn’t queried the young girl about her living situation, but it was pretty clear that for whatever reason, Sierra much preferred to live with her brother than with her parents.

  It was a definite point in Ethan’s favor that he took such good care of his little sister. The huge age gap could’ve meant that they would never have gotten close, but it was apparent that that wasn’t the case for the two of them. Even now, Makayla saw a smile wider than any he’d given her cross Ethan’s face in response to something Sierra said to him.

  She also knew that the way Ethan valued Sierra was somethi
ng that her dad appreciated as well. There really was no doubt in anyone’s mind, except maybe Ethan’s, that, at this point, the three-month probation wasn’t really a probation at all. So while she may initially have been upset about the changes that brought Ethan to the company, she was now very interested in Ethan as a person. Unfortunately, the interest didn’t seem to go both ways.

  As she watched Ethan talk with Sierra and Danica, Makayla wondered what she would have to do to make him more comfortable interacting with her. It was a bit of a new situation for her to be in. Most of the time, men were the ones who approached her. It was rare that she had an interest in someone who was not also interested in her. Would she have to be the one to make the first move if she wanted something more than friendship between them?

  Just the thought of that made her stomach clench, and suddenly she had a more sympathetic view of the men who had approached her over the years. There was nothing like putting yourself on the line and ultimately facing the possibility of rejection. Makayla wasn’t sure that she was brave enough for that.

  As June counted down on the calendar, the Callaghans and McFaddens began planning the first family gathering of the year out at their cabin. Danica and Dalton had finished up school at the end of June, and Canada Day was looming right around the corner. Every year the family would get together at the cabin for the few days around the July first holiday.

  Though technically they called it a family get-together, it always included more than just their family. Grace and Franklin would join them along with Tami, and Makayla had it on good authority that Ethan and Sierra would also be there. The only ones still up in the air were Ryan, Kenton, and Gabe.

  Makayla was looking forward to a break from work as well. Though she loved her job, she always appreciated being able to get away from it for a little while. When they’d first all started working for the company, they’d had to put a rule in place regarding time at the cabin. There was to be no work discussions unless it was an emergency. Otherwise, it was just a time to get away and enjoy being with family and close friends.