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Of course, Sam came back into the kitchen in time to hear that remark. She seemed to have a genius for not impressing him.
“I used to feel that way, too,” Daisy said, “but I’m great with little Emmie. Here, you can stir this while I hold her.” She put down her spoon and confidently scooped the baby out of Angelica’s arms.
Susan walked over to the stove and looked doubtfully at the pan of something white and creamy. “You want me to help cook? Really?”
“Oh, never mind, I forgot. Sam, stir the white sauce for a minute, would you?”
“You don’t cook?” he asked Susan as he took over at the stove, competently stirring with one hand while he reached for a pepper grinder with the other.
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Nope. Not domestic.”
“You’ll learn,” Angelica said, stretching and twisting her back. “When you find someone you want to cook for.”
“Not happening. I’m the single type.”
“She is,” Daisy laughed. “She won’t even date. But we’re going to change all that.”
“No, we’re not.” Susan sat back down at the table.
“Yes, we are. The group at church has big plans for you.”
“My singles group? Who would run it if I somehow got involved with a guy?” Susan pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, taking in the large, comfortable kitchen with appreciation. Old woodwork and gingham curtains blended with the latest appliances, and there was even a couch in the corner. Perfect.
She enjoyed Daisy and enjoyed being here with her family because she’d never had anything like this. Her family had been small and a little bit isolated, and while Donny was great in his way, you couldn’t joke around with him.
She watched Sam stir the sauce, taste it, season it some more. This was another side of the impatient businessman. Really, was there anything the man wasn’t good at?
He probably saw her as a bumbling incompetent. She couldn’t succeed at waitressing, at cooking, at holding a baby. He thought she’d be bad for his daughter, that much had been obvious.
Too bad, because she needed the money, and Mindy was adorable. Kids were never the problem; it was the adults who always did her in.
Suddenly, the door burst open and Xavier rushed through, followed closely by Mindy. “Give it back. Give it back!” she was yelling as she grabbed at something in his hands.
“No, Mindy, it’s mine!”
Mindy stopped, saw all the adults staring at her, and threw herself to the floor, holding her breath, legs kicking.
Sam dropped the spoon with a clatter and went to her side. “Mindy, Mindy honey, it’s okay.”
The child ignored him, lost in her own rapidly escalating emotional reaction.
“Mindy!” He scolded her. “Sit up right now.” He tried to urge her into an upright position, but she went as rigid as a board, her ear-splitting screams making everyone cringe.
Sam was focused on her with love and concern, but at this point that wasn’t enough. Susan knew that interfering wasn’t wise, but for better or worse, she had a gift. She understood special-needs kids, and she had a hunch she could calm Mindy down.
She sank to her knees beside the pair. “Shhhh,” she whispered ever so softly into Mindy’s ear. “Shhhh.” Gently, she slid closer in behind the little girl and raised her eyebrows at Sam, tacitly asking permission.
He shrugged, giving it.
She wrapped her arms around Mindy from behind, whispering soothing sounds into her ear, sounds without words. Sounds that always soothed Donny, actually. She rubbed one hand up and down Mindy’s arm, gently coercing her to be calm. While she wasn’t a strict proponent of holding therapy, she knew that sometimes physical contact worked when nothing else could reach a kid.
“Leave me ’lone!” Mindy cried with a little further struggle, but Susan just kept up her gentle hold and her wordless sounds, and Mindy slowly relaxed.
“He has a picture frame that says...” She drew in a gasping breath. “It says, Mom. M-O-M, Mom. I want it!”
Sam went pale, and Susan’s heart ached with sympathy for the pair. Losing a parent was about the worst thing that could happen to a kid. And losing a wife was horrible, but it had to be even more painful to watch your child suffer and not know how to help.
To his credit, Sam regrouped quickly. “Honey, you can’t take Xavier’s picture frame. But we can get you one, okay?”
“It might even be fun to make one yourself,” Susan suggested, paying attention to the way the child’s body relaxed at the sound of her father’s reassuring words. “Then it would be even more special. Do you have lots of pictures of your mom?”
“Yes, ’cause I’m afraid I’ll forget her and then she’ll never come back.”
Perfectly normal for a five-year-old to think her dead mother would come back. But ouch. Poor Mindy, poor Sam. She hugged the child a little tighter.
“Hon, Mommy’s not coming back, remember? She’s with Jesus.” Sam’s tone changed enough on the last couple of words that Susan guessed he might have his doubts about that. Doubts he wasn’t conveying to Mindy, of course.
“But if I’m really good...”
“No, sweetie.” Sam’s face looked gray with sadness. “Mommy can’t come back to this world, but we’ll see her in heaven.”
“I don’t like that!” Mindy’s voice rose to a roar. “I. Don’t. Like. That!”
“None of us do, honey.” Daisy squatted before her, patting the sobbing child’s arm, her forehead wrinkling. “I don’t know what to do when she’s like this,” she said quietly to Susan.
“Mommy!” Mindy wailed over and over. “I’ll be good,” she added in a gulp.
Sam and Daisy looked helplessly at each other over Mindy’s head.
“It’s not your fault. You’re a good, good girl. Mommy loved you.” Susan kept her arms wrapped tightly around Mindy and rocked, whispering and humming a wordless song. Every so often Mindy would tense up again, and Susan whispered the soothing words. “Not your fault. Mommy loved you, and Daddy loves you.”
She knew the words were true, even though she hadn’t known Sam and his wife as a family. And she knew that Mindy needed to hear it, over and over again.
She was glad to be here. Glad she had enough distance to help Sam with what was a very tough situation.
Very slowly, Mindy started to relax again. Daisy shot Susan a smile and moved away to check the stove.
“Shhh, shhh,” Susan whispered, still holding her, still rocking. Losing a piece of her heart to this sweet, angry, hurting child.
Finally, Mindy went limp, and Susan very carefully slid her over to Sam. Took a deep breath, and tried to emerge from her personal, very emotional reaction and get back to the professional. “Does she usually fall asleep after a meltdown?”
Sam nodded. “Wears herself out, poor kid.” He stroked her hair, whispering the same kind of sounds Susan had made, and Mindy’s eyes closed.
“She’ll need something to eat and drink soon, maybe some chocolate milk, something like that,” Susan said quietly after a couple of minutes. “Protein and carbs.”
“Thank you for calming her down,” he said, his voice quiet, too. “That was much shorter than she usually goes.”
“No problem, it’s kind of my job. Did she have tantrums before you lost your wife?”
Sam nodded. “She’s always been volatile. We thought it was because of her hand.”
Susan reached out and stroked Mindy’s blond hair, listening to the welcome sound of the child’s sleep-breathing. “Having a disability can be frustrating. Or she could have some other sensitivities. Some kids are just more reactive.”
“Did you learn how to be a child-whisperer in your special ed training?”
Susan chuckled. “Some, but mostly, you learn it when you have a brother with autism. Donny—that’s my little brother—used to have twenty tantrums per day. It was too much for my mom, so I helped take care of him.”
Sam’s head lifted. “Where’s Donny now?”
“Home with Mom in California,” she said. “He’s eighteen, and...” She broke off. He was eighteen, and still expecting to be going to a camp focused on his beloved birds and woodland animals, because she hadn’t had the heart to call and tell him she’d screwed up and there wasn’t any money. “He’s still a handful, that’s for sure, but he’s also a joy.”
Mindy burrowed against her father’s chest, whimpering a little.
“How long has it been since you lost your wife?” Susan asked quietly.
“Two years, and Mindy does fine a lot of the time. And then we have this.” He nodded down at her.
“Grief is funny that way.” Susan searched her mind for her coursework on it. “From what I’ve read, she might re-grieve at each developmental stage. If she was pre-operational when your wife died, she didn’t fully understand it. Could be that now, she’s starting to take in the permanence of the loss.”
“I just want to fix it.” Sam’s voice was grim. “She doesn’t deserve this pain.”
“No one deserves it, but it happens.” She put a hand over Sam’s. “I’m sorry for your loss. And sorry this is so hard on Mindy, too. You’re doing a good job.”
“Coming from you, that means something,” he said with a faint grin.
Their eyes caught for a second too long.
Then Angelica and Daisy came bustling back into the room—when had they left, anyway?—followed by Xavier. How long had she, Sam and Mindy been sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor?
“Hey, the potatoes are done,” Daisy said, expertly pouring the contents of one pan into another. She leaned over and called out through the open window. “Troy, how about those burgers?”
“They’re ready.” Troy came in with a plate stacked high with hamburgers, plus a few hot dogs on the side.
Sam moved to the couch at the side of the kitchen, cuddling a half-asleep Mindy, while the rest of them hustled to get food on the table. Susan folded napkins and carried dishes and generally felt a part of things, which was nice. She hadn’t felt this comfortable in a long time. Being around Mindy, she felt as if she was in her element. This was her craft. What she was good at.
Again, she couldn’t help comparing this evening to those she’d spent with her own family. The tension between her mom and dad, the challenges Donny presented, made family dinners stressful, and as often as not, the kids had eaten separately from the adults, watching TV. Susan could see the appeal of this lifestyle, living near your siblings, getting to know their kids. Cousins growing up together.
This was what she’d want for her own kid.
And where on earth had that thought come from? She totally didn’t want kids! And she didn’t want a husband. She was a career girl, and that was that.
So why did she feel so strangely at home here?
Chapter Three (#ulink_33dd3255-ea90-550d-bea4-625ede93af91)
A while after dinner, Sam came back into the kitchen after settling Mindy and Xavier in the den with a movie.
The room felt empty. “Where’s Susan?”
“She left.” Daisy looked up from her phone. “Said something about packing.”
“She’s going on a trip?” That figured. She seemed like a world traveler, much too sophisticated to spend her free summer in their small town. Applying for the job as Mindy’s nanny had probably been just a whim.
Then again, she’d mentioned needing to help support her mother and brother...
And why he was so interested in figuring out her motives and whereabouts, he didn’t have a clue.
“No...” Daisy was back to texting, barely paying attention. “She’s gotta move back home for the summer.”
“Move?”
“Yeah, to California.”
“What? Why?”
Daisy was too engrossed in her phone to answer, and following a sudden urge, Sam turned and walked out into the warm evening. He caught up to Susan just as she opened her car door. “Weren’t you even going to say goodbye?”
“Did I hurt your feelings?” she asked lightly, turning back to him, looking up.
She was so beautiful it made him lose his breath. So he just stared down at her.
It must be the way she’d helped Mindy that had changed her in his eyes, softened her sharp edges, made her not just cute but deeply appealing.
And he obviously needed to get on with his dating project, because he was having a serious overreaction to Susan. “Daisy said you’re leaving town.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, in a few days. Got to go back to California for the summer.”
“You’re not driving that, are you?” Lightly, he kicked the tire of her rusty subcompact.
“No! I’m taking the Mercedes.” She chuckled, a deep, husky sound at odds with her petite frame. “Of course I’m driving this, Sam. It’s my car.”
“It’s not safe.”
She just raised her eyebrows at him. As if to ask what right he had to make such a comment. And it was a good question: What right did he have?
The moonlight spilled down on them and the sky was a black velvet canopy sprinkled with millions of diamond stars. He cleared his throat. “Does this mean you don’t want the job?”
“Does this mean I’m still in the running?” There was a slightly breathy sound to her voice.
They were standing close together.
“You are,” he said slowly. “I liked... No. I was amazed at how you were able to calm Mindy.” He couldn’t stop looking at her.
She stepped backward and gave an awkward smile. “Years of experience with my brother. And the coursework. All the grief stuff. You could call a local college, find someone with similar qualifications.”
“I doubt that. I’d like to hire you.”
“We don’t get along. I wouldn’t be good at this. I mean, nannying? Living in? Seriously, ask anyone, I’m not cut out for family life.”
