скачать книгу бесплатно
Alex knew Cris was referring to the antagonistic relationship Alex and Wyatt had had on the surface for years before Alex had realized how deep the feelings ran. Because Ricky was present, she decided not to comment on Cris’s barely veiled allusion.
“You gonna put that on the ’frigerator?” Ricky asked, eagerly shifting from foot to foot as he watched his mother’s face.
“Yes, I am.” She held out the drawing, taking note of its size. It was bigger than most of the drawings he brought home. “But you realize that means I have to take down another one of your drawings,” she reminded Ricky. “We’ve only go so much room on the refrigerator—even if it is industrial-sized,” she added, winking at him affectionately.
The boy nodded solemnly. “I know, Mama. I’m not a dummy-head.”
“Ah, a new term from the playground I see,” Cris noted with a good-natured sigh. He seemed to have a new addition to his vocabulary at least once a week. Usually not of the best variety. “No, sweetheart, you’re not a ‘dummy-head’ and I hope you don’t call anyone else that,” she added, eyeing the boy.
Silky straight blond hair swung as Ricky shook his head in firm denial. “No, ’cause you said not to call people names even if they call me those names. Right?” he asked.
“Right. Because that makes you the bigger man,” Cris concluded firmly.
An unexpected little frown formed on Ricky’s forehead as he said, “Teacher says I’m not a man.”
Alex ruffled her nephew’s hair and laughed affectionately. “Your teacher doesn’t know you the way we do,” she assured the boy. “You’re more of a man than some guys three times your age.”
From the look on Ricky’s face, her nephew clearly saw no reason to contest that. He beamed at her as though she had just lifted a bad spell he’d been forced to endure for the sake of peace and quiet.
“You hungry, big guy?” Cris asked.
“Uh-huh,” he answered, once again bobbing his head.
“Okay, let’s see what we can find for you to eat,” Cris suggested.
As she slipped her arm around his shoulders, ready to usher him to the inn’s kitchen, Shane McCallister emerged from the section of the inn temporarily curtained off with sheets of plastic. They hung from the ceiling and went all the way to the floor to keep dust spreading to the rest of the inn at a minimum.
Behind the plastic sheets, the latest addition, as well as renovations to a previously constructed section, was taking place. Dust from his recent foray into carpentry had turned sections of Shane’s dark blond hair to a shade of off-white.
Ricky had taken to Shane astoundingly fast. Excited to see him now, the boy broke away from his mother and ran over to the contractor.
“Look at what I drewed, Shane!” he declared proudly, holding up the drawing.
Shane got down on one knee, the hammer that was hanging from his tool belt hitting the tiled floor with a thud. He gave the boy his complete attention.
One arm around the boy’s waist, Shane pulled Ricky to him as he held one edge of the drawing with the other. “You drew this?” he asked with the appropriate amount of wonder in his voice.
Pleased at the reaction he was receiving, Ricky grinned. “Yes, I did.”
“Cool. That’s a really fine family portrait,” Shane said. Releasing Ricky but still holding the drawing with one hand, he pointed with the other hand to what had previously been identified as a bird. “That angel your dad?”
Cris exchanged looks with Stevi, who watched from a distance. The latter shrugged in confusion, as clueless as Cris about how Shane could identify what still appeared to be an oversize bird. Cris couldn’t help wondering if perhaps Shane had somehow overheard the end of the conversation about the drawing. Shane’s startling interpretative ability seemed too much of a coincidence otherwise.
“Yes!” Ricky cried out, glancing over his shoulder at his mother. The glance all but shouted, See?
“You can tell it’s an angel?” Cris asked, gazing at the general contractor pointedly to see if he was pulling her leg.
“Sure,” Shane replied, the complete picture of innocence.
“Why didn’t you think it was a bird?” she asked suspiciously.
He regarded her as if the answer was obvious. “Because it’s a family portrait and Ricky doesn’t have a pet bird.”
Cris laughed as she shook her head. “You’re good,” she told him, impressed. “You make it sound so simple.”
The smile on his handsome, tanned face was utterly and frustratingly enigmatic. “Some things just are. Right, Rick?”
In response to hearing the adult version of his name, Ricky puffed up his small chest and beamed at this newest man in his life.
“Right,” he echoed with confidence. “Mama’s gonna make me lunch. You wanna have some, too?” Ricky asked, slipping his hand into Shane’s as if the man’s affirmative answer was already a foregone conclusion.
“Okay,” Shane readily agreed. He jerked a thumb toward where he’d parked his vehicle. “I was just going to take break and get my lunch out of the truck. Give me a few minutes and I’ll join you, Rick,” he said, pulling his hand out of the boy’s grip.
Cris stared at him. “You’re brown-bagging it?” she asked, incredulously.
Granted the addition and the renovations had been going on for more than a week now, but to be honest, she hadn’t been all that aware where Shane and the men he sometimes had working for him took their meals. She’d assumed he was out in the dining area.
“Yeah,” he answered. “It saves time if I don’t have to drive over to one of those fast-food places. This way, I get done faster and I can spend the rest of the time working on the addition.”
A lot had been going on at the inn of late, what with Alex and Wyatt’s wedding swiftly approaching and Ricky beginning kindergarten, not to mention a mini-convention of historical writers coming to the inn to hold this year’s annual meeting. Consequently, Cris had been exceedingly busy, aware only that Shane had been in and out of the inn several times to take measurements and render estimates after being apprised of what their father and Alex wanted done.
She realized now that he’d only really been on the job a few days.
She had to focus, Cris upbraided herself. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to get done all the things done she needed to.
No time like the present, she decided.
“Saves more time if you just tell me what you’d like to eat and I make it for you,” she said with an easy smile.
A smile he found more than captivating.
He always had.
Even so, or perhaps because it was so, he shook his head, brushing off her generous suggestion. “No, that’s okay. You’re busy.”
She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “And you’re not?”
He wasn’t clear on what one thing had to do with the other. After all, this wasn’t a competition where the loser would wait on the winner. “Well, yeah, I am, but—”
“No buts,” she informed him. “You’re coming with us to the kitchen.”
“Yeah!” Ricky added his minuscule weight to the argument.
Then, to ensure that Shane would indeed comply with his and his mother’s wishes, Ricky once again slipped his small hand into the contractor’s callused one. Holding on with all his might, Ricky gave Shane’s hand as hard a tug as he could manage.
“Wow.” Shane lunged just enough to make it seem he’d been thrown off balance by the boy. “You sure are strong.” He pretended to eye the boy suspiciously. “You work out?”
Ricky giggled and shook his head, obviously pleased with the evaluation. “No. I’m strong ’cause Mama feeds me good.”
“I bet she does,” Shane agreed, glancing in Cris’s direction, a trace of his admiration showing through. “But just so you get it right the next time, what you should say is Mama feeds me well,” Shane explained, gently correcting the little boy’s grammar.
Her momentary connection with Shane’s intense dark blue eyes instantly quickened Cris’s pulse at the same time that his thoughtful method of correcting her son’s grammar gladdened her heart. She was always partial to people who were nice to Ricky.
“She feeds you good, too?” Ricky asked, surprised.
Cris did her best to stifle the laugh that rose to her lips, but Shane, she noticed, didn’t attempt to hide his reaction.
Instead, he laughed. “You’re going to be a challenge, I can see. Tell you what, maybe after I knock off for the day, you and I can find some time for a little grammar lesson.”
Excitement all but radiating from him, Ricky asked as he continued to tug the man to the kitchen, “Who are you gonna knock off?”
“No, not who,” Shane corrected. “What.”
That threw Ricky back into confusion. “You’re gonna knock off a what?” he asked, his thin, wheat-colored eyebrows knotting; he was clearly perplexed.
Shane laughed, charmed and delighted. “You are definitely going to be a challenge,” he told the boy as they crossed the kitchen threshold. “But it’ll give me a chance to practice my skills.”
“Practice what skills?” Cris inquired as she crossed to the refrigerator with the picture Ricky had drawn.
“Teaching skills,” Shane replied. When she looked at him quizzically, he explained, “I’ve got a teaching degree, and I majored in English.”
“I didn’t know that.” Something didn’t make sense. “So why aren’t you teaching?”
That was easy enough to explain. “Jobs aren’t exactly plentiful these days, even for teachers. And there’s no reason for you to know that I got a degree in teaching. You and I kind of lost touch after high school,” he reminded her.
They had at that. By then, she’d been going with Mike, and Shane had just been the older brother of one of her girlfriends, a guy she’d dated a couple of times before Mike had come into her life and swept her off her feet.
Seeing Shane again after all this time, she fleetingly wondered how things would have turned out if he had swept her off her feet instead. Burying the question that could never really be answered, Cris forced a smile to her lips as she opened the refrigerator and cheerfully asked, “Okay, men, what’ll it be?”
CHAPTER THREE
RICKY SCRAMBLED UP onto one of the stools that stood against the long stainless-steel service table where Cris did most of her food preparations. Rather than sit, he knelt on the stool so that he appeared bigger to his new friend, who took the stool next to his.
“You know what I like, Mama,” Ricky piped up in response to her question.
Like everyone else in the family, she indulged her son, but not when it came to his nutrition. “Yes, I do, and you know what I say to that.”
“What?” Shane asked, the exchange arousing his curiosity. He glanced from Cris to her son. “What is it you like, Rick?”
“Hot dogs!” the boy declared, his high-pitched voice all but vibrating with enthusiasm. Cris had a strong feeling that if she allowed it, the boy would eat hot dogs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. “I love ’em best of all!”
“I like them myself,” Shane told Ricky, getting a big grin from the boy and a reproving glare from his somewhat frustrated mother. “But you know,” he continued without missing a beat, taking his cue from the expression on Cris’s face, “they’re really not very good for your insides. That’s why they should only be eaten on very, very special occasions. Right, Rick?”
The boy appeared torn between siding with his newfound friend, whom he wanted to impress, and campaigning for his beloved meal of choice. When Shane continued eyeing him as if waiting for backup from an equal, Ricky finally capitulated, shrugging his small, thin shoulders as he did so.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You know what else I like, Ricky?” Shane asked the boy.
There was a wary look in the child’s eyes as he inquired, “What?”
Shane leaned in closer and ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately. “Vegetables.”
Ricky appeared horrified at the mere thought. “Oh, yuck.” The response rose to his lips automatically.
Shane pretended to consider what he’d said. “Well, maybe they don’t taste quite as good as hot dogs,” he allowed, “but they do taste pretty good. I like them mashed in with potatoes, or fried with a little oil and bread crumbs. And not only do they taste good,” he continued, focusing exclusively on Ricky rather than on his mother, “but they help make your insides healthy and they make you strong. Pretty cool, huh?”
Ricky regarded him with eyes beyond huge. “They really make you strong?”
“They really make you strong,” Shane echoed. He gazed at Ricky solemnly and drew his thumb across his chest in the form of an X. “Cross my heart,” he told the boy.
Ricky shifted on the stool, planting his seat on the plastic cushion, and looked up at his mother. “Can we have that, Mama? Can we have vegeta-bib-bles with mashed potatoes and bread crumbs?”
“No,” Shane said, laughing and jumping in to correct him, “it’s either with mashed potatoes or fried with bread crumbs.” It occurred to him that maybe he had overstepped his boundaries. Turning to Cris, Shane tendered a veiled apology. “I didn’t mean to put you out.”
“You didn’t,” she assured him quickly. “Trust me, any suggestion that’ll get this one—” she nodded at Ricky “—to eat his vegetables is greatly appreciated. Any particular vegetable I should be using?”
Shane thought only a moment, remembering the combination his mother used to make to get his elder brother and him to eat their vegetables. “Well, how about spinach? That goes pretty well with mashed potatoes.”
“Spinach?” Ricky cried, clutching his throat and pretending to fall over, poisoned, while emitting a rasping noise that, Shane assumed, was supposed to be a death rattle.
Shane laughed at the impromptu performance. “Oh, most definitely spinach,” he told Ricky with certainty. “That makes you really strong. You ever hear of Popeye the Sailor?”
“Uh-uh,” Ricky said, shaking his head so hard that if he’d been a cartoon character, his head would have gone spinning off.
The boy’s answer didn’t surprise Shane. He was convinced that kids today were missing out on a very special collection of imaginative cartoons from a classic era.
“No?” he said, pretending to question. “Well, have I got a treat for you. Why don’t I tell you all about him while your mom makes us lunch?”
She had to hand it to Shane. He was handling her son like a pro. She caught herself wondering if Shane had gotten married. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but then a lot of men didn’t. And he seemed like such a natural with kids it was difficult for her to imagine that he’d gotten that way without having one of his own to practice on.
The thought of Shane having a family made her happy for him, but at the same time, it came with an accompanying sense of...well, sadness, for lack of a better word.
“Anything else you two men would like to go with those vegetables?” Cris asked, doing her very best not to laugh.
Shane shrugged casually. “Anything you’ve got will be fine.”
“Yeah, fine, Mama,” Ricky said, emulating Shane.
“How about fried chicken?” she suggested.
Rather than agree, Shane first looked at the boy to have him weigh in. “What do you say—you up for that, Rick?”
This time, Ricky bobbed his head with the same enthusiasm he’d displayed when asking for hot dogs.
“Fried chicken it is,” Shane told Cris, placing their “order.”
“One last question,” Cris promised. “Light meat or dark?” The question was for Shane, since she already knew which her son preferred.
