No one was there. The bevy of news trucks hadn’t just dissipated. It had disappeared completely.
He breathed an audible sigh of relief.
But there—
On his side porch—
Were packages. A pile of packages.
Except he’d ordered nothing in days, so why were there packages on his porch? He went instantly to total cop brain.
Bombs.
Poisons.
Hate mail.
He kept driving to his parents’ place, sent the kids inside and called the station house once he couldn’t be overheard. He couldn’t risk there being something weird or dangerous in the packages. How would Nathan and Vangie ever feel safe in their home again if someone was targeting them?
He’d lie low over here and let the professionals handle it. Then he called the local postmaster at home and had her hold all of his mail and packages there. He hung up the phone, drew a breath and walked inside.
A counter full of cookies, brownies and cakes awaited him. “Is the church having a bake sale?” he asked as he grabbed street clothes from a stash he kept at his mother’s. Normally he wouldn’t wear his uniform home, but the sheriff had given him permission to wear it during the interview.
“Gifts,” replied his mother as she chopped canned peaches into baby-sized bites for Jonah. “From women who want to take care of you and the kids.”
He came to a standstill. Stared at her. Then the stacks of baked goods. Then her again. “You cannot be serious.”
“Just wait until you see the mail sack in the dining room,” she added cheerfully. “Your popularity suddenly knows no bounds,” she went on, not even trying to disguise her grin. “The power of social media and the US postal service.”
Unbelievable.
The food. The mail. And as he walked through the living room, Christa came toward him, holding Jeremy.
The boy reached out instantly. “Hey! Hey! Copper Guy!” He catapulted himself into Tug’s arms and held on for dear life, and as those little arms grabbed tight around Tug’s neck, and he spotted the look of sweet compassion on Christa’s face, the last thing he wanted to do was let go. And for a fleeting second, as he gazed into Christa’s big brown eyes, he wondered why he should. But he knew why, better than most. He’d dropped the ball once and wrecked the beautiful dream he’d called family.
No way was he going to take that chance again.
Chapter Six
Jeremy had fallen for the sheriff’s deputy. Big-time.
Based on the outpouring from women across the country—and a few international entries, according to Tug’s mother—falling for Tug Moyer wasn’t all that difficult. It was a good thing to recognize while remembering that he was off-limits. Totally. If Tug Moyer was a superhero, she was his kryptonite, and she didn’t need that on her conscience along with everything else.
But the little guy’s obvious affection was good to see.
“Despite all the packages, letters and baked goods, I think your number one fan is right here. In your arms.” She said the words just loud enough for Tug to hear. “You saved his life. Somehow he knows that. Nothing like the faith of a child, is there?”
“There’s not.”
“I’m glad you decided to come over tonight,” she continued as the boy snuggled into Tug’s shoulder. “He recognizes you as a friend. A hero.” And when Tug started to dismiss that, she raised a hand. “You’re going to say you were just doing your job, but he understands somehow that your job kept him and his baby brother safe. So it’s good for him to see you.”
“And I like seeing him, too.” Tug pulled the little guy back far enough to make eye contact, then tipped him halfway over. “That way I can tip him upside down!”
“Eek!”
For a brief moment, Christa wasn’t sure if Jeremy was going to laugh or cry, or if she should jump in to save him, so when he giggled out loud and Tug did it again, she breathed easier. “If you’re okay with him, I’m going to get Jonah so we can feed him. And since I’ve never in my life fed a baby of any sort, I’m still in watch-and-learn mode.”
“Never?” Tug sounded surprised as she moved toward the porch.
“No siblings. Marta was the only other relative we had in America and she came north a long time ago.”
“But neighbors? Friends with little brothers or sisters? Folks from church?”
She kept her face serene with effort. “None of those applied. I grew up in a tough neighborhood. Not much camaraderie.”
Sympathy smoothed the laugh wrinkles around his eyes. “That couldn’t have been fun.”
His sympathy drew her, but she wasn’t into high-risk romance. She’d come here to create a whole new life. She’d pictured it as her and Marta, working together, familia. Now it was just her and the boys, and there was no way she could allow a doomed romance to lead her astray.
Glenn Moyer met her at the front door. He was holding Jonah. He spotted her and gave her a thumbs-up. “Swap. You get the cute little guy and I go start the pasta.”
“Deal,” she told him, and when the older Moyer passed Tug and Jeremy, he didn’t just walk by. He paused and gave the little guy a head bump, real gentle. The kind of thing fictional dads did on TV commercials, and the image of the two big men and the little boy engraved itself on her brain.
Perfect.
Jonah didn’t give her time to dwell on it.
He wriggled in her arms and pointed to the floor. “Down.”
“Uh-uh. Food first. Then down.”
He looked like he was going to protest until she turned the corner into the kitchen and he spotted a high chair with food. “Me! Me! Me!”
Darla drew the chair back from the table so Christa could set him down, and the moment he was in the chair, not even strapped in yet, his little hands grabbed at the food.
Seeing his hunger and his instant instinctive reaction, Christa swallowed hard.
She understood that reaction.
She’d known hunger as a child. Not starvation, since there were always soup kitchens to go to, but they didn’t always fit into Margaretta’s work schedule.
Yeah, she knew hunger, and that gnawing feeling of emptiness inside.
Tug came up alongside her.
She glanced up.
Big mistake, because he was studying her with the kind of look that made her want to draw close, or maybe be drawn close by him, tucked into the curve of his arm. If his expression was an invitation, she was pretty sure that hers was an answering acceptance.
He shifted gears. On purpose, it seemed. And while that was the sensible choice, it didn’t make her stop longing for the sweet moment they’d just shared. “Mom, what are we going to do with all of these baked goods?”
“If you guys could load them into the car, we can drive them over to the food pantry in Quincy tomorrow morning.”
“Nathan, you up for helping your dad and me move this stuff to the car so we can donate it?” Glenn asked as he set a kettle of water on the stove, then switched the back burner to high. “I expect we can get it done by the time the pasta’s ready.”
“All the stuff?” Nathan turned a glum look at the stacks of plastic containers. Some had ribbons. Some had bows. Some came with letters attached. “Can’t we keep some of it? Like the really good stuff?”
“We’ll see.” Darla filled Jonah’s plastic plate again. “We can always bake things, honey. I love doing that with you guys. The folks who get things at the food pantry don’t have that option. Some of them don’t have stoves and some don’t even have homes. I say let’s be as generous as we can be. Okay?”
“Like they don’t have a place to go?” Nathan hadn’t gotten his father’s reddish-brown eyes, but he’d gotten his big heart. It was there in the look of surprise he aimed at his grandmother. “Not a house or anyplace?”
“For some, yes. They don’t have a house or anyplace,” Darla confirmed. “These cookies and cakes will be a real blessing to them.”
Nathan grabbed a container from the overladen countertop. “Then we should take them some all the time, Grandma. Like not just now,” he persisted with a six-year-old’s logic. “Every single day because we always have cookies. And you make the best!”
“Out of the mouths of babes.” Tug palmed the boy’s head, then went to settle Jeremy into a seat.
Jeremy had other ideas. “No.” He gripped tight to Tug’s neck. “I stay with you.” He sent a very firm look up to Tug.
Tug held the boy’s gaze. Then he winked. “All right. You can be part of the Feed the Homeless Committee, my man.”
Jeremy didn’t have a clue what Tug meant, but he knew he got to stay safe in his hero’s arms. He aimed the biggest, brightest smile up at Tug, and when Tug leaned forward and kissed the little boy’s forehead, Christa’s heart fluttered again.
There was something sweet and engaging about the exchange, which was probably why romantic TV movies paired swoon-worthy guys with little kids all the time. The whole image had her thinking about things like happily-ever-afters, which meant she had to put more effort into blocking impossible thoughts and rogue ideas.
“More?” Jonah peered up at her and Darla as the guys began loading the cartons and tubs and even the occasional shoebox of treats. “More?”
Darla handed him some cheesy crackers and a little chopped chicken, then poured herself and Christa a mug of coffee. “You’re lost in thought,” she noted as she set the mugs down. The guys trooped in for another load. Then back out. And when they were out of hearing, Christa answered.
“When I was little, Marta would share her stuff with me,” she told her. “All her stuff.” She watched as Jonah picked between the bits of meat to snag the little crackers. It wasn’t until he chewed the last cracker that he gave the bites of meat a chance. “If she got a treat in school, she brought it home to me. If she had candy from a neighbor, she shared half with me. Back then she always thought of others first.
“But all that changed when she got to be a teenager,” she continued. “Suddenly she focused on what she had and what she couldn’t have, and she wasn’t afraid to break the law to get what she wanted. It was a complete turnaround. That’s why my mother gave her an ultimatum, which I didn’t understand when I was twelve. My mother said Marta was becoming a bad influence on me, and that she had to straighten up or leave the house. So she moved out after a huge fight and a lot of angry words between them. I was so mad. Mad that she was gone, mad that I was alone so much of the time and mad that we had nothing.” She sighed softly. “I became a trial to my mother, and no matter how well I do now, I still feel the guilt of how I behaved back then.”
“‘When I was a child...’” Darla began quoting Paul’s poignant words to the people of Corinth.
“I love that verse,” Christa admitted. “And I believe it, but it doesn’t soften the guilt for being a first-class jerk to the one person who loved me more than anything.”
“Is your mother alive?”
“No.” She drew another breath, a firmer one this time. “She died before I finished my undergrad degree. Before I became a teacher. But I like to think that she can see what I’ve done. What I’ve become. She’d be pleased after years of so much worry.”
“She’d be proud of her beautiful daughter,” Darla agreed. “So how did you reconnect with Marta?”
“She found me on the internet and sent letters a few years ago. I was a long-term substitute teacher in a suburban California district. She sounded good. She told me about her life up here, how beautiful it was. How she was working in housekeeping at the hospital and building a new life.” She got quiet as the men came through again. When they’d taken the last stack of containers to the SUV, she faced Darla. “How do things go from that to this so quickly? Two hungry, neglected little boys.” She gripped the back of the chair tightly because it made no sense. None at all.
“The lure of drugs overshadows a lot.”
“It must. But I don’t get it, Darla.” Christa whispered the words as the toddler worked to get sticky fingers around slippery bits of food. “A choice that leaves children in danger? I don’t think I can ever understand that.”
“And yet here you are, at just the right time. A new job in the very same county that oversees the boys’ welfare. I don’t think that was coincidence, Christa. Maybe somehow Marta knew you were coming. Maybe she got your letters. Or maybe God’s timing brought you here when you would be most needed. You wanted to reconnect with family. And you did, but in an unexpected way.”
Christa refilled Jonah’s sippy cup and set it on the table. “A part of me longs for normal.” She watched the boy grasp the two-handled cup and draw on the top with amazing gusto for such a small person. “I don’t care about some big American dream. I just want the everyday goodness and kindness you see on TV and in magazines. When you come from so little, everything grows in magnitude.”
“Wise words.” Darla patted her hand. Jonah must have found their serious conversation boring, because he smacked his cup down and offered the two women a most delightful grin.
“Down! Down! Down!”
“After a good washup, my man,” Darla told him. She reached for him, but Christa intervened.
“I’ll scrub him up. I’ve got to get good at all this and I watched you at the sink, although I am amazed at how quickly he moves and how adeptly he avoids the washcloth,” she added a minute later, when the little one kept ducking his head.
Tug came in. The minute he spotted the struggle for cleanliness, he moistened a second washcloth and sprang into action. “This means war!”
He brandished the washcloth like a cowboy with a lariat, and when the little guy burst out laughing at his antics, Tug swooped in with a gentle but clean sweep of one side of the toddler’s face. “Almost there!” He acted ridiculous again, and when Jonah started giggling helplessly, Tug swept in and swiped the cloth gently over the opposite side of his rounded cheeks.
“But how do we do the hands while he’s sitting?” asked Christa, and Tug’s answer made perfect sense.
“That would be a fruitless gesture,” he told her. “Bring him over here. We can wash them right under the faucet. It removes any possible ammunition on his part and the hands don’t stay sticky.”
She slipped Jonah out of the chair, then kept him out-turned to save her shirt from the onslaught of dropped food. Tug had turned the water on. Warm, not hot. Not cold. While she held the boy in her arms, Tug drew his tiny hands beneath the stream of water.
The toddler declared an instant ceasefire.
He stopped squirming, enthralled by the feel of warm water. He splashed his hands, clapped them, then laughed when water spattered all three of them, but within seconds his little fingers were washed clean.
Tug turned the water off.
He lifted a hand towel and wiped the boy’s hands, then face, and then—
He reached out and gently passed the soft cotton towel across Christa’s cheek. First one. Then the other. And he held her gaze while doing it, as if he couldn’t stop holding her gaze.
Danger zone.
She knew it.
He didn’t. Or maybe he did, but he didn’t realize how real the danger zone could be to his life. His career.
She needed to squash the attraction right now, but when he took the towel and tapped her nose with it, his grin wiped rational thought away. “The kid’s got a wicked splash pattern. Now you’re both good to go. Dad?” He stepped away as if totally unaffected by the last thirty seconds while her heart tripped into race-pace mode. “Water’s boiling.”
“I’m on it.” Glenn came in with Nathan and Jeremy.
Tug’s phone rang right then. He answered it, and his expression went from concern to chagrin in
quick motion. “Cookies? Cakes? And photographs?”
She couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but when Tug rubbed a hand to the back of his neck, she got the gist. “Dad and I will gather them up and donate them. Thanks, Bill, and, yes, I will expect the entire station house to haze me for the foreseeable future. Thank you all for saving us from such dangerous baked goods.”
With Jeremy’s hand tucked firmly into his, Nathan was leading the younger boy into the front room. “Dad, can I show Jeremy how my race cars work? I think he’ll like really, really like them.”
“Sure. But don’t leave a mess for Grandma to pick up, okay?” He shifted his focus to Glenn as he stirred the rapidly boiling pasta. “Dad, you sure you don’t mind dropping that stuff off in Quincy in the morning?”
“Shall I grab whatever they found at your house, too?” His father’s droll tone said he’d eavesdropped on his son’s phone conversation.
Tug sent him a rueful grin of acknowledgment. “Yes, thank you. I saw a pile of boxes on the side porch and went into cop mode, which means the bomb squad just rescued our family from cookies, cakes and nut breads.”
“How can you guarantee that the food is safe?” asked Christa. “The food shelves where I grew up would only take things purchased in grocery stores. Or commercial shops.”
“We’re in a pretty down-to-earth part of the state,” Tug replied. “I can’t be totally sure they’ll take this stuff, but we’re a little looser out here than in the city.”
“Although you did call out the bomb squad,” noted Christa.
Her quick comeback made him smile. “I did. And I’ll never hear the end of it, so that just makes the week even more special. My interview on the local news airs tomorrow morning, so that should make things interesting all over again. But then—maybe—peace. That’s the hope.”
He didn’t overreact.
She loved that. Her early life had been rife with overreactions, except at school. School had been her safety net. She’d been blessed with a great memory and good teachers, so even when things grew bad at home—as the neighborhood spiraled downhill and the lure of belonging pulled her into bad decisions—she was on safe, steady ground at school. In the end, being a good student and a hard worker had pulled her out of the decay and into a new light. She just wished it hadn’t taken her so long.
Learning to Trust Page 6