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“Yep.” She bobbed her head. “She’s not Snow White, though. She’s just Miss Kate.”
His eyes warmed toward the little girl, and then he turned his attention to Kate. “I’m afraid it isn’t always this eventful in my office, but I was called to get Emmie—” he tilted his head toward the little girl now sleeping on his shoulder “—at day care because she’s sick.” A lift of his mouth. “I guess you figured that out.”
“She going to be okay?” Kate asked.
“I’ll get her home so she can rest, and then hopefully she will be. The teacher said there’s a twenty-four-hour bug going around.” He looked toward the bigger desk. “I’m afraid I was just stopping by to get my computer so I could work from home while I’m taking care of her. I wasn’t prepared for customers, but if you want to write down your name and number, I can call you later to answer any insurance questions you may have. Are you looking for coverage? You must be new to Claremont.”
“I am,” Kate said. In fact, she’d crossed the city line only an hour ago. “My name is Kate Wydell. But I’m not here for insurance. I’m actually here for the position you advertised in the paper. I have a résumé.” She’d nearly forgotten that she still clutched it in her hand. She lifted the résumé.
He winced. “You said that earlier, didn’t you? That you were here for the job.”
“Yeah, she did,” Dee said, fiddling with one of the buckles on her sandals.
He gave Dee a grin, then to Kate said, “Sorry about that. My mind was on taking care of Emmie.”
“That’s fine.” She admired the fact that he was so dedicated to his little girls. Obviously they took priority over the potential employee. Kate wished she’d have put her own little girl as a priority three years ago, but she’d attempt to rectify that now, starting with a move to Claremont and a place in Lainey’s world. “Is the job still available?”
“It is,” he said. “And to be honest, I’ve never needed help more than I do right now. I’m behind on, well, pretty much everything and—” he patted Emmie’s back “—it looks like I may be taking a couple of days to work from home. Let me get my things, and I’ll take your résumé with me.” He turned toward the larger desk, which Kate now noticed had his nameplate perched at one corner, balanced Emmie a little more solidly in his arm and then used his opposite hand to close his laptop. Then he lifted a black computer bag from the back of the desk and started trying to put the laptop in one-handed.
Kate wasn’t certain whether the feat could be accomplished while holding his baby, and she could tell he wasn’t about to put the sleeping child down, so she quickly moved to stand beside him. “Here, let me help.”
He already had the computer in his grasp, and her hands brushed against his as she opened the case and guided the computer inside.
She zipped the bag and then realized that she was standing closer to him than she’d intended, his height catching her off guard as she looked up into blue eyes framed with reddish-blond lashes. The contrasting color only emphasized the brightness of his eyes, as well as the compassion of a daddy holding his little girl. Kate swallowed and felt another tug of her heart. This was a real parent, what she desperately wanted to be.
* * *
Mitch cleared his throat. “Thanks.”
He was thrown by the instant awareness of the woman standing so near. She was several inches shorter than Mitch, but it was her petite features, her tiny hands touching his as she helped him with the laptop, that made him feel taller. He grasped Emmie, protecting his sick baby girl by holding her close as she slept, but he found himself feeling the oddest sensation that this pretty lady needed protection, too.
And he felt another sensation as well, something he hadn’t experienced in quite some time. His skin bristled with the awareness of a definite attraction to the dark-haired beauty standing so near.
A sharp stab of guilt pierced his heart and he swallowed through the assault. He’d lost Jana only a year and a half ago, merely two weeks after they’d had Emmie. He wasn’t ready to feel attraction again. Didn’t know if he’d ever be ready.
He was exhausted from all of the work he’d had this week and worried about his little girl. Therefore, he wasn’t himself. That had to be what caused this unwanted feeling toward a woman he’d just met.
“Can we go home now?” Dee asked, pulling him out of the momentary trance.
He took a slight but noticeable step back from the woman. “Yes, we should be heading home,” he said, and wrapped his fingers around the handle of his computer bag.
“You want me to put my résumé in your bag?” she asked. She’d placed the single page on the desk while she assisted him with the laptop and neither of them had thought to add it.
“Sure.”
And again, soft hands brushed his as he released the handle and she quickly unzipped the bag, slid the paper in and then closed it. Mitch winced through the realization that even the touch of her hands caused an awareness he didn’t need or want.
“Do you think you’ll be making a decision soon? I have four years of experience as an office manager, although it was a medical office, but I do know word processing and can definitely stay calm in a crisis situation.”
Mitch had been looking for someone to help out in his office for over a month. A few high schoolers had applied, saying they wanted to work in the summer but then would need to head back to school. And they’d also wanted a couple of weeks off for family vacation, mission trips or cheer camp. No one over twenty had walked through his door, and no one had any experience. This lady had four years?
“You did stay calm when I bolted to the back with Emmie,” he said, thinking God may have answered his prayer...but also given him something he wasn’t ready to handle. He found himself glancing to the embroidered Bible verse his mother-in-law had given him on his first Christmas without his wife, framed and hanging directly behind his desk.
God is faithful. He will not let you be tried beyond what you are able to bear.
“Yes, I did stay calm,” she agreed, and then smiled.
Her smile caught him off guard because it transformed her unique face into something beautiful. Fair skin, blue eyes, jet-black curls.
Mitch wasn’t so certain this was something he could bear. Could he push the bizarre attraction aside in order to hire someone who may be exactly what he needed to help him run this office...and have more time with his girls?
Her hands still rested on the computer bag, and Mitch waited until she moved them away. No need for another awkward physical contact toward his potential employee, because he was thinking about hiring her...and dealing with this whatever-it-was. If God had sent this lady as an answer to Mitch’s prayers, then God would also help him control this unusual response to her presence. The bottom line was that he needed help. And he wanted to be able to leave this place when Dee and Emmie needed him. “I’ll call your references tonight. If everything checks out, you could start tomorrow,” he said. “Would tomorrow be too soon? Like I said, I really do need some help.” A major understatement.
“Tomorrow would be great.”
“Dee, you ready to go? I need to get home and get some work done.” And put a little space between himself and his potential employee, for now.
She clamored up from the floor. “Just work? Or can we play some, too?”
“We’ll play something,” he assured her, hoping that Emmie’s tummy would stay settled and that he could somehow take care of her, play a game or two with Dee and also get all of today’s policies updated before midnight. He really did need some help.
They left the office, and he began putting Emmie in her car seat while Dee stood nearby waiting for her turn.
“Miss Kate,” Dee said, and the lady stopped walking toward her car.
“Yes?”
“You can help me get in my seat.”
Mitch had started buckling Emmie, but his hands fumbled over the fastener. He looked up in time to see the lady smile at his little girl and change direction to walk toward his car.
“I’d love to help you,” she said, her voice filled with so much compassion that Mitch thought she seemed on the verge of tears. He focused on her eyes, blinking more than normal and definitely fighting whatever emotion Dee’s request had evoked.
Mitch was fighting one himself, because other than their family members, Dee didn’t typically ask for help from anyone but her daddy. He kept his attention on securing Emmie, now snoring softly, into her seat, but looked up to lock gazes with Kate. Her dark, unruly hair framed her petite face as she focused on buckling Dee in and then gave his daughter a smile.
“How’s that?” she asked.
Dee examined the buckle on her car seat and nodded. “You did good.”
Kate’s face practically glowed at Dee’s praise. “Thanks.” Then she looked up, caught Mitch staring, and they both quickly got out of the close space and shut their respective car doors.
“I’ll call you after I’ve spoken with your references,” he said, attempting to sound as professional as possible given whatever had just passed between them.
It’d been eighteen months since he’d felt anything remotely near to this. Maybe it was because she was someone new, someone who wasn’t from Claremont and didn’t know him as the young widower in town, as Jana’s husband, or as Dee and Emmie’s dad. Those were the references to him nowadays, and rarely did he simply feel like Mitch. But he didn’t want to give up his new monikers because giving them up meant letting go of Jana.
Wasn’t happening.
“Can you tell me something before you go?” Kate asked.
Mitch paused, his hand on the door handle. “Sure.”
“I’m going to stay at the town’s bed-and-breakfast until I find a place to rent. Can you give me some easy directions to—” she pulled a small slip of paper from her pocket “—111 Maple Street?”
Mitch nodded. “It’s easy to find, only three miles away, but it’d be even easier for me to show you, since I live across the street from the B and B. You can follow me.”
Another one of those mesmerizing smiles blindsided him again. “Thanks!”
Mitch climbed in the car, buckled up and then checked the rearview mirror to see Emmie still sleeping and Dee looking directly at him in the mirror.
“I like Miss Kate,” she said.
“I do, too,” he admitted. Which was good. He would need to like his employee, as long as he made sure to control the extent of that “like.”
Dee peered out the window and waved to Kate before Mitch put the car in Reverse and backed up. “She’s like Snow White,” she said.
Mitch thought of Dee’s favorite story and of the lady who seemed out of her element and took care of everyone she met. And maybe that was why God had plopped Kate Wydell in his world. He needed to simply thank Him and accept the fact that he might finally have someone to relieve the workload at the office. “Maybe,” he said, “she is.”
Chapter Three
Annette Tingle walked ahead of Kate toward the last room on the second floor of the bed-and-breakfast. “I know you said you wanted a small room, but this is the only one that we have available for an extended stay.”
“I’ll be looking for a house to rent,” Kate said, “but I’m assuming I won’t be able to move in until the first of the month.”
“That’s probably true,” the lady agreed. “Hard to believe it’s nearly June already. The year is flying by, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Kate said. Life, in fact, had flown over the past year and a half.
“Well, this is your room.” Annette opened the door to a spacious bedroom complete with a canopied four-poster bed. A simple old-fashioned coverlet topped the mattress with embroidered pillows in shades of blue and rose adding a subdued hint of color. An enormous bay window with a window seat upholstered in the same shades overlooked Maple Street and consequently offered a direct view to the antebellum home across the street, the one where she’d watched Mitch pull in a short while ago.
Unable to stop herself, she walked to the big window, peered at his home and wondered how he and the girls were doing.
“Your bathroom is connected through this doorway,” Mrs. Tingle said from behind her, “and you have extra linens in your closet if you need them at night. We’ll charge you the regular room rate, even though this is master-sized, since that’s what you’d have preferred.”
“Thank you,” Kate said, still focusing on the house across the street.
“And you said you’re moving to Claremont?” Mrs. Tingle asked, causing Kate to reluctantly turn away from the window. She’d so enjoyed her time with Mitch’s little girls. Maybe that was an indication that she could be a good mother, which was the entire reason she was here. “Are you here for a job, or family?” the woman continued.
Kate swallowed. Family would be the most correct answer, a little girl who was the same age as Dee Gillespie and whom Kate had abandoned nearly four years ago. But she wasn’t ready to divulge that colossal secret. She focused on answering the woman’s question instead of breaking down in tears. “I’ve applied for a job at Gillespie Insurance Agency as an office manager.”
Mrs. Tingle clasped her hands together. “Well, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad Mitch is getting some help. He’s been trying to find someone for quite a while now, but it’s a small town, you know. Not a lot of people with the kind of experience he needed. I told him that someone would turn up, though, and here you are.” She smiled so broadly she practically beamed.
“Yes, here I am,” Kate said, her voice raspy with emotion. Would Mitch still be so happy about her presence when he realized that Kate was the one who had hurt his friend?
“That young man stays so busy with work and raising his girls by himself and everything,” Annette said. “It’ll be good for him to have some help in that office. He’s our neighbor, you know, lives just across the street.”
“I know,” Kate said, wondering why Mitch was raising his girls “by himself.” “I was putting my résumé in at his office and asked him where I could locate the B and B, and he told me I could follow him, since he lived across from y’all.”
Mrs. Tingle frowned. “He’s home already? That’s surprising. It’s only four-thirty. He usually doesn’t finish at his office until five o’clock, then he goes to get his girls and then comes home.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “I bet that sounds like I’m nosy. I’m not, really. It’s just that L.E. and I try to watch after our neighbors, and they do the same for us. Mitch has a fairly regular schedule. Usually he doesn’t come home until his day is done.”
“His little girl was sick, so he went home early,” Kate said, then explained, “I’d stopped by to drop off my résumé, and he was there getting his computer so he could work at home.”
The worry on Annette’s face was instant. “Oh, bless that boy’s heart. I wonder if he’s got some soup for her. I bet he doesn’t. And some food for himself. If he’s trying to work from home and take care of both of the girls, too, he’ll need help, especially if one is sick.” She paused. “Which one is sick?”
“Emmie,” Kate said, touched by the concern the woman showed toward her neighbor.
“Poor little Emmie,” Annette said. “Well, okay, I’d normally have L.E. take some things over for them, but he’s gone to Stockville to pick up some supplies. And I’ve got a few more guests that are supposed to arrive within the next hour, so I shouldn’t leave. Do you think you’d mind running a little care package over to Mitch from us, dear? You did meet him already, right?”
“I did, and I’d be happy to.” In fact, she hadn’t been able to get the girls off her mind. Emmie was so sick, and Dee had seemed sad that her daddy’s attention would have to be focused on his youngest daughter instead of playing with her. Following along as the woman returned to the hallway, Kate thought of Mitch, holding Emmie and promising Dee that he’d find a way to play a game with her, too. What a wonderful parent he was, someone whom she could watch and learn from, for sure. Because she desperately wanted to be a parent, a wonderful parent, to Lainey. If Chad would give her a chance.
Annette stopped halfway down the hall and indicated a different staircase than the one they’d taken earlier. “This leads to the kitchen,” she said, heading down with Kate following in her wake. “So if you ever get hungry for a snack or would like iced tea or coffee, it’ll always be available for you down here. But for now, we’ll use it to get some things together for Mitch and the girls.” She crossed the room and removed a patchwork quilt from the top of a chest freezer.
Kate moved to stand beside her and got there just in time for Annette to fill her arms.
“Here we go,” she said, handing her a large bowl labeled Chicken Noodle Soup. Then she balanced a Ziploc bag labeled Corn Bread on top of the bowl. And then she withdrew another flat container with Pecan Pie written across the side. “You can take the soup over to the microwave for me, if you don’t mind,” she said. “There’s a defrost button we can use for that and the corn bread. We’ll have everything ready to eat, in case they’re all hungry now.” She continued rummaging through all of the labeled containers in the freezer.
Kate nodded. “Okay.” She found the oversize microwave, took the lid off the soup container and then started defrosting. She found it oddly comforting to hear the woman instruct her around the kitchen. She hadn’t had those experiences growing up that she often saw in commercials or on paintings, where the little apron-clad girl stood on a chair beside her mom and poured the chocolate chips into the cookie batter. Her stepmom hadn’t liked the kids in the kitchen, so Kate’s first attempts at cooking hadn’t occurred until she was in her first apartment. Assisting Annette Tingle in the kitchen touched her heart, and again, she found herself swallowing past tears. Wouldn’t it be something if she could help her own little girl make cookies one day?
By the time Annette joined her with a breakfast casserole and another large bowl labeled Potato Soup, Kate had harnessed her emotions, defrosted the soup and corn bread and was moving on to the pie.
“We’ll just defrost the pie and leave it that way for him to put in and heat up a piece at a time. But the soup and corn bread we’ll go ahead and heat so it’s ready to go,” Annette said, taking the other frozen items in her hand with her to a set of side shelves organized with plates, cups, utensils and a couple of picnic baskets. She brought the largest basket to the table, placed the potato soup and casserole in the bottom and then situated several red-and-white-checked fabric napkins over them. “We’ll put the heated things on top, and you can let him know to put the food for tomorrow in his fridge.” She smiled. “That’ll help him out a bit. He’s such a sweet man and a great daddy to his girls. I’m sure you will enjoy working for him, too.”
Kate continued heating the food for tonight but found the courage to ask what she wanted to know most. “You said he takes care of the girls all by himself?” She attempted to sound nonchalant. She remembered meeting the pretty lady who had been Mitch’s wife three years ago, though she couldn’t recall her name. And she also remembered that the two had appeared very much in love and absolutely thrilled with their little baby. Dee.
“Oh, yes,” Annette said, placing the pie in the basket and putting more napkins around it while making room for the soup and corn bread. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking that you wouldn’t know. I’m sure Mitch wouldn’t mind me telling you since you’ll find out soon enough working for him and all. He’s a widower, poor dear. His sweet wife, Jana, had breast cancer, and it got really bad when she was carrying little Emmie. She wouldn’t have treatments while she was pregnant because she was afraid, you know, chemo and radiation might hurt the baby.”
“But you can be treated while you’re pregnant,” Kate said. She didn’t explain why she knew. Luckily, the lady didn’t ask.
“Oh, I know. That’s what they told Jana and Mitch, but she was so afraid that it might hurt the baby that she didn’t want to risk it. You know, they’re always finding out new things, and she didn’t want to be treated and then find out later that they just didn’t realize it’d hurt Emmie.”
“And the cancer got worse?” Kate guessed.
Annette pulled the steaming soup from the microwave and put it on top of the napkins in the basket. “By the time Emmie came, there wasn’t any chance of survival. Jana lived a couple of weeks after the baby was born.”
Kate’s stomach pitched. A year ago, she’d thought that she wouldn’t have the chance to ever see her little girl. Mitch’s wife had barely met Emmie before she died. “That had to be so hard for him.”
“It was hard on him and on the whole town really,” she said. “Everyone loved Jana. Her family has lived in this town for as long as I can remember. And everyone loves Mitch.” She placed the corn bread in the basket and closed the lid, then winked at Kate. “We all try to take care of him and those girls. That’s the way this town is, you know. Everyone is like family.”
Kate nodded, remembering Chad trying to sell her on the move to Claremont by saying that very thing. And remembering how she’d stayed here only a few days before leaving him, the town he loved and her baby girl behind.
“So would you mind taking this over to him?” Annette asked. “And I’ll finish getting those other rooms ready for our guests.”
“I’m happy to do it,” Kate said, meaning every word.
* * *
Mitch poured apple juice into Dee’s sippy cup and handed it to her while he looked at the bare shelves of his refrigerator. He had eggs, so he could scramble some for dinner. That should be easy enough on Emmie’s stomach. But then if he cooked those tonight, what would they have for breakfast in the morning?
“Daddy, I’m hungry,” Dee said, echoing his problem.
