by Judy Duarte
The boy scooted his chair away from the table, then entered the hall and took the receiver from his mom. “Hey, Dad. Are you home yet?”
His expression fell. “Oh.”
Apparently, the man was calling from the cruise ship.
“Yeah. Me and Meggie are doing okay. We’re eating dinner.”
Mac lifted his glass and took a swig of tea, but it didn’t taste nearly as cool and refreshing as the last sip had.
“We’re having tacos tonight. And guess what? Mac’s here. He’s Mom’s really good friend. He’s a policeman, and he’s been telling me all about the bad guys he caught.”
Mac slid another glance at Jillian, noted her rosy cheeks. Did she care if her ex-husband knew she was entertaining a man? Not that this was remotely datelike. But the boy’s explanation made it sound that way, and if Mac had been her ex-husband, he would have at least been uneasy about it.
“Meggie,” Tommy said, “Dad wants to talk to you.”
The little girl slid out of her chair and hurried to the phone. When she grabbed the receiver, her voice cracked and her tone turned weepy and whiny. “I miss you, Daddy. Come and get us and take us home.”
Mac stole a glance at Jillian, saw her standing ramrod straight, saw a slight roll of her eyes. He didn’t think the kids had noticed, but he had.
Was she sorry that Mac was privy to all of this?
“Why not?” Megan pleaded. “Why can’t you?”
Mac suddenly wished he was anywhere but here. The poor kid. Tommy, who’d apparently been the one harboring anger and resentment, seemed to take it in stride right now. Talk about kids being resilient. But Megan, who’d seemed fine earlier, was certainly showing her grief.
“A week is way too long,” Megan countered. “I don’t want to wait to see you. Please, Daddy!”
The man must have started sweet-talking the kid because her small shoulders hunched. “Okay, but hurry. I don’t like it here.”
Jillian stepped closer to her daughter. “Megan, don’t hang up. I need to talk to your father, but I’m going to pick up the phone in the other room.”
When Jillian had walked away and Megan returned to the table, Tommy continued quizzing Mac about the bad guys he’d caught, and Mac did his best to answer the onslaught of questions. Yet the little girl seemed to completely shy away from the conversation.
She hadn’t seemed all that bashful or sad in the car or at the park. But what did Mac know about little girls?
Not much. Yet that didn’t make him feel any more comfortable about being here, about observing the child’s disappointment and Jillian’s discomfort. Maybe he ought to call it a night and head home.
Jillian didn’t return right away, so he focused his attention on Tommy. And on completing the task he’d originally set out to do this morning.
“Do you like sports?” he asked the boy.
“Yeah, especially baseball and football.”
“Football, huh?” Mac sat back in his seat. “After dinner, maybe your mom will let me take you to my friend’s house. He was an NFL ref, and he has all kinds of photographs and autographed balls. I think you’d really enjoy it.”
“Cool.” The boy sat up straight. “Does your friend live very far away?”
“Actually, he lives right next door.”
Tommy furrowed his brow. “Which house?”
Mac nodded in the direction of Charlie’s.
“You mean Mr. Iverson?”
“Yep.”
“No way. He hates me.”
“Mr. Iverson—Charlie—isn’t so bad when you get to know him. When he finds out you like football, I’ll bet he warms right up to you. He loves talking sports with guys like us.”
Tommy nibbled on his bottom lip and furrowed his brow. “I don’t know…”
“What could happen?”
“He could turn the sprinkler on me or something. He did that once before. Or he could shoot me full of buckshot, like he said property owners used to do to trespassers when he was a kid.”
Mac blew out a sigh. What was he going to do with Charlie? Apparently Tommy had been right. Charlie had been “messing” with him.
“I think you need to know something about Mr. Iverson so you can understand him better. His wife died earlier this year, and his good friend and neighbor died shortly after that. He’s crippled up with arthritis, and the cold, wet weather has been making it worse, so he hurts all over. I think what he really needs, even if it doesn’t seem like he deserves it, is kindness and friendship. What do you say?”
Tommy thought about it for a moment. “Do you have your gun?”
Not with him. “Why?”
“In case he flips out or something.”
“If he does, just leave it to me.”
“Okay.”
When Jillian returned, Mac told her what he wanted to do. “I came over here this morning to try and help the problem you’ve been having with Charlie. And I think taking Tommy to visit him this evening might do the trick.”
“Are you sure?”
No, he wasn’t. But he had a hunch it would help. “It can’t hurt.”
“All right. I’m willing to give it a try.”
Minutes later, Mac and Tommy stood on Charlie’s porch, the wet umbrella collapsed at their side. The television still blared inside, so Mac opted to ring the bell rather than knock.
As they waited for Charlie to answer, Tommy scanned the lighted yard. His gaze seemed to skip the animated snowmen and zero in on the lit nativity scene. Was he checking out the missing angel?
Charlie swung open the door, wearing a green plaid robe and a pair of brown slippers. He’d finally removed the Santa hat, but he still held his cane. He offered Mac a ready grin, but when his gaze drifted down to Tommy, he stiffened. “What’s this all about?”
“I’m not sure if anyone formally introduced you to our new neighbor, but this is Tommy, and he’s a big sports fan.” Mac put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, felt the small muscles tense. “I told him about your collection of football memorabilia and wondered if you’d let him look at the photographs and the autographed balls you have displayed on your living room wall.”
Charlie seemed to give it some thought, shot Mac an are-you-sure-about-this? grimace, then stepped aside and let them into his house.
Mac wiped his feet on the mat, glad to see that Tommy was following his lead.
Charlie turned off the television, then led them to the built-in, cherrywood bookshelf near the fireplace that displayed the finest and most impressive pieces in Charlie’s collection. As the old man proudly pointed out pictures of himself standing next to such football greats as Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, and Joe Namath, the boy stood transfixed.
Before long, it appeared that a temporary truce had been reached, just as Mac had hoped.
“Wow,” Tommy said for the umpteenth time in just a matter of minutes. “It’s super cool that you know those guys, Mr. Iverson. And I’m lucky to live next door to you.”
Charlie, who’d finally begun to let down his guard around the kid, puffed up like a peacock.
As they turned away from the shelves, Mac said, “While we’re here, Charlie, we want to ask you about that missing angel. Tommy and I’d like to help you find it. So can you describe it for us?”
The old man stretched his hand about three feet from the floor. “It was about this high, and it had long gold hair, a white flowing robe, and wings. It was hand painted, although a few places on the face had cracked. After Christmas, I planned to take all the figurines to an antique shop and see if they could refurbish them for me.”
“I’m sorry about your angel,” Tommy said. “But at least you still have that cool snowman that moves his head. No one else on the street has one of those.”
Charlie snorted. “Those snowmen are a dime a dozen, but that angel is priceless. My wife’s parents gave us that set the first Christmas after we were married, and every year we’d put it up. The angel was her favorite piece.”
Tommy, who was studying the photograph, brightened. “Hey, that’s a cool dog she’s holding.”
Mac took a peek over the boy’s shoulder, noting a longhaired, cream-colored poodle/terrier mix that sat on Grace’s lap. It wore a pink collar adorned with faux jewels.
“That’s Bobbie Sue,” Charlie said.
Tommy handed the photograph back. “She looks a lot like our new dog.”
“Just in size.” Charlie was obviously thinking about the mangy creature that had leaped up and put its dirty, rain-soaked paws on his pants.
A dog that seemed compelled to run to Charlie’s house every chance it got.
Mac’s gut knotted. “I didn’t know you and Grace had a pet.”
“Yep. I bought that dog and gave it to her the Christmas before last. It was her pride and joy.” Charlie’s thoughts seemed to drift. “We had a lot of people in and out that last week before Grace passed on, and little Bobbie Sue was acting skittish. I don’t know if she sensed what was happening or not, but she spent a lot of time either on Grace’s bed or underneath it.”
“What happened to the dog?” Mac asked.
“Someone left the front door open, and from what I can piece together, she must have dashed outside. While the fellow from the mortuary was loading Grace into the hearse, Bobbie Sue jumped in back. Either way, when he got back to Crandall’s Funeral Home, he opened the door and found her. When he tried to pick her up, she got away and ran off. I checked the pound each day for a month, but no one turned her in. And since she was an indoor dog, she didn’t have any street smarts. I suspect she may have been hit by a car. Who knows?”
The knot in Mac’s gut swelled, then twisted with a vengeance. He couldn’t be sure, but it was certainly possible that Princess Leia was Bobbie Sue. And if so?
It was only right to return her to Charlie, yet how could he ask those kids to give up the dog they’d just adopted?
Mac didn’t have a clue how to handle the latest development.
Not if he wanted to keep the neighborhood peace.
Chapter Eight
Jillian sat in an overstuffed easy chair in the living room, listening to the rain splatter the window and waiting for Mac and Tommy to return from Mr. Iverson’s house. She sure hoped Mac knew what he was doing, but she’d never had any trouble with her neighbors before and didn’t want any now.
With Tommy gone and Megan in her bedroom playing with Princess Leia, the house was quiet—other than the steady tick-tock of the antique clock on the mantel and the occasional crackle from the fire in the hearth.
Dinner had been pleasant this evening—until Jared had called. Yet it wasn’t just the call that had surprised her. She’d also sensed something in his tone. Something…off.
He seemed a bit down, but she wouldn’t try to analyze why. She was just glad that he’d thought about the kids and had wanted to talk to them before bedtime.
Megan’s desperate outburst had clearly caught him off guard, though, and Jillian understood why it had. Early on, the six-year-old had been brokenhearted about the split, but up until this evening, she seemed to have been taking it much better than Tommy.
Jillian combed her fingers through her hair. Would her life ever get back to normal? Not that she hadn’t accepted the divorce and adjusted to being a single mother, even if it wasn’t what she’d signed on for. She’d come to grips with that reality months ago. It’s just that she was sorry about what the kids had been forced to endure—all because of the choices their father had made.
Of course, Jared had always had a selfish side, even though she hadn’t realized it at first. When they’d met during her last year of college, she’d been charmed by his good looks and his outgoing manner. But what she’d considered self-assurance had been egotism in the classic sense of the word.
In retrospect, she wasn’t totally convinced that she’d been in love with Jared back then, but at the time, her father had been fighting a losing battle with cancer, and she’d known that he was worried about dying and leaving her on her own. So marrying Jared had seemed like the right thing to do.
Tommy had been born ten months after her wedding, and Megan had come along three years later. Jillian adored her children and had been happy with her life. Her only complaints had been that her husband traveled a lot on business, and that she spent too many nights alone.
Last Thanksgiving, after her dad died, she’d found herself lonelier than ever. She began to realize that she’d been so tied up caring for her children and her ailing father that she and Jared had drifted apart. Yet she’d soon learned that Jared’s job hadn’t been the only thing drawing him away from home.
Jillian stood and made her way to the window, where she peered out into the rainy night, her breath fogging the glass. There was no sign of Tommy and Mac yet. Hopefully, that meant Mac’s plan was working.
It had been a godsend when he’d shown up on her front porch earlier today, and she couldn’t help thinking that her prayers for some kind of relief had been answered.
She suspected that Tommy thought so, too. His excitement had been obvious when he’d talked to his father on the telephone earlier—so much so that Jared had quizzed Jillian about Mac when they’d talked privately afterward.
“Who is that guy?” Jared had asked.
“Just someone I went to high school with,” she’d replied.
When her ex had pushed for more information, she’d downplayed the relationship she’d once had with Mac. After all, their time together today and their dinner tonight hadn’t been anything more than old friends reminiscing—even if she found herself increasingly attracted to the man he’d become.
There’d always been something about Mac that had drawn her to him, something dark, edgy, and sexual. Something wounded and gentle, too.
Thinking back, they really hadn’t had anything in common when they’d been younger, although she suspected that might not be the case any longer.
Of course, if her father were still alive, he’d probably argue that point. He never had liked Mac, even though he’d refused to even give him a chance.
One day, suspecting Jillian hadn’t been honest about where she was going and who she was meeting, her father had followed her to The Creamery, where he’d found her and Mac cuddling in the corner booth. Mac had stood up and extended a hand, but her father had refused to take it. He hadn’t made a scene, but he’d insisted that Jillian leave with him. She’d decided it was in everyone’s best interest if she quietly got into his car.
Once they were alone, he’d blown up.
Jillian had never rebelled a day in her life, but she’d been determined to stand up to her dad, to tell him that he couldn’t choose her friends. But then he’d dropped the bomb and told her he’d been diagnosed with cancer.
Her whole world had fallen apart at the seams. Afraid to put any more stress on her dad than necessary, Jillian had told Mac she couldn’t see him anymore.
As footsteps sounded on the porch, drawing her from her musing, she turned toward the door, eager to know what had happened at Mr. Iverson’s house. And, if truth be told, she was eager to lay eyes on Mac again, too.
When he’d gazed at her and skimmed his hand along her cheek earlier this evening, he’d sent her senses reeling. Still, she was afraid to read too much into that. She doubted a good-looking bachelor would find an overweight single mom attractive. Yet every now and then, she’d caught him looking at her, and her fantasies would take flight.
As the door swung open, Mac reminded Tommy to wipe his feet. Then he closed the wet umbrella and left it on the porch. A hank of sandy-blond hair fell over his forehead,
and Jillian had the strangest urge to brush it aside.
She stood to greet him, yet she forced her arms to remain at her sides as she waited for Mac and her son to give her a report.
“You ought to see all the cool stuff Mr. Iverson has,” Tommy said, his eyes bright, a blush on his cheeks. “He’s not as mean as I thought he was.”
“I’m happy to hear that.” Jillian glanced at Mac. His grin set her heart on end. Then she returned her focus to her son. “Why don’t you take your shoes off and leave them on the rug by the door? Then tell your sister it’s time to get ready for bed.”
“Okay.” The boy did as he was instructed before dashing off.
“Tommy and Charlie seemed to have gained a new respect for each other,” Mac said.
“Good. That’s a step in the right direction.”
Mac scanned the living room, then lowered his voice to a near whisper. “How’s Megan doing?”
“She’s been pretty quiet.” Jillian nodded toward the stairway. “She took Princess Leia to her room.”
An awkward silence filled the air, and Jillian wasn’t sure what to do about it. She supposed she could thank Mac and walk him to the door, indicating their time together was over. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that. There was still so much she wanted to know, so much she wanted to say.
The girl she’d once been pressed her to ask if he was seeing anyone special right now. She suspected that he wasn’t, but the woman she’d become wouldn’t allow her questions to get that personal.
“Do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked, letting him make the decision to stay or to go.
Something told Mac he ought to decline and head home. He’d hoped to solve a neighborly dispute earlier today, and it appeared that he’d succeeded. Sure, now he had the Bobbie Sue/Princess Leia dilemma to contend with, but he wasn’t ready to tackle that one yet and had already decided to sleep on it.
Yet, while he passed on the coffee, he wasn’t ready to say good night. “I know it’s none of my business, but what did her father have to say about her sadness?” It would have turned Mac inside out if he’d had a daughter and heard her cry like that, begging him to come home.