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“If I could pick the perfect family, I’d pick yours,” Hannah said.
“Spoken like someone who never had to actually live with them.”
“How is Aunt Alice, by the way?” Hannah asked.
“Still boring.”
“Oh, she is not. You don’t know how lucky you were to have so much family living together in that big old house. I would give anything if—”
Lissa laughed and shook her head. “That’s my point. Here’s your chance, girlfriend. Go find that family you’ve always wanted.”
BY THE MIDDLE OF June, Hannah found herself driving a company station wagon loaded down with cartons of Super Korny Krunchies along a two-lane highway in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, squinting at directions taped to the dash and hoping fervently that she wasn’t lost. But, no. There it was. As promised.
“Welcome to Timber Bay,” Hannah read out loud as she drove past the sign made of rough-hewn logs. She glanced at the directions again and turned right at Ludington Avenue. The heart of the town lay before her, pretty as a picture from an old calendar.
She drove past a red brick courthouse with green benches scattering its lawns and sweet william lining the long walk that led to its doors. In the next block there was a barbershop, with an old-fashioned striped barber pole out front, alongside a grocery store that looked like the only thing that had changed about it in the last fifty years were the prices posted in the window. She turned right at Sheridan Road where a corner drugstore that advertised a lunch counter and a stately bank with a four-faced clock anchored the town square. Farther down Sheridan she passed a library with wide granite steps and a movie theater with an old-fashioned marquee jutting across the sidewalk.
“Perfect,” Hannah murmured reverentially. It all looked so perfect. It all looked so normal. Which, according to the data Hannah had gathered, is exactly what Timber Bay, Michigan, was supposed to be. Okay, maybe not normal by today’s standards. The town didn’t appear to run on the same clock as the rest of the country. Timber Bay, no matter what the calendars in the town’s kitchens read, was marching to the beat of a drum from 1952. From its unemployment rate to its crime rate, from its abundance of stay-at-home moms to its low number of high-school dropouts, Timber Bay was a town that could have stepped out of time. Exactly the image Super Korny Krunchies was looking for.
If the Henry Walker family, the family Hannah had chosen as Granny’s Grains Great American Family, looked as good as the town they lived in, Hannah was going to be adding that bonus Mr. Pollard promised to her bank account in no time.
The sound of children drifted through the open car windows as Hannah drove past a park. Mothers sat on benches watching children play on swings and teeter-totters. An old-fashioned wooden band shell, painted white, graced the edge of a boardwalk. Beyond it, the body of water that bore the same name as the town spread out toward the horizon, glittering bright blue in the sunshine.
She pulled up to a Stop sign across the street from an old hotel. It had probably been the pride of the town back in the days of logging and lumberjacks, but now it was abandoned, its windows boarded up, its front steps crumbling. A shame since the little coffee shop on the other side of the hotel looked as if it had been refurbished. Cute café curtains in the windows, a wreath on the door, and—
“Oh, my,” Hannah murmured when she noticed the man in front of the coffee shop.
He was sitting on a plain wood chair, tilted back far enough to raise the front legs off the sidewalk. His arms were up, elbows out, hands linked behind his head, eyes closed, his face tilted skyward, soaking up the afternoon sun. Above him was a sign that said Sweet Buns. And quite a delicacy he was, too. True, she couldn’t see his backside so she had no idea if his buns were sweet, but what she could see was pretty yummy. His muscles did a nice job of filling out his simple white T-shirt and battered, faded jeans. His brown hair, brushed back from his face, was a little long and attractively tousled. He had a square chin, a strong jaw, and a wide, full mouth.
Beefcake. Right out there on the main street of town. But sweetly meaty specimen that he was, what made him even more compelling was the look of pure, obvious pleasure on his face. Hannah was still staring when he lowered his head, opened his eyes, and looked straight at her.
She’d never seen eyes that blue before. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring but when she caught his mouth lifting into a wry little grin, Hannah decided she’d been looking too long already.
She jerked her gaze back to the road and started to ease her foot off the brake just as an elderly man with a cane stepped off the curb. She hesitated seconds too long and ended up having no choice but to wait for him to cross the street. Hannah concentrated on his shuffling feet, steadfastly ignoring the urge to look over at the coffee shop. She ran her hands through her windblown chin-length brown hair, trying to comb out the knots with her fingers, then took her time picking a piece of lint off her black suit jacket. But the pull from those blue eyes was stronger than the will to not embarrass herself again.
She gave in and turned her head—and found herself nose to nose with the beefcake in denim.
Oh, those eyes. They were enough to make a girl shiver.
“Lost?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said, using haughtiness to keep the shivers away.
The beefcake leaned his head farther into the car to look at the slip of paper taped to her dash. “That the address you’re looking for?” he asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but, yes, it is.”
“Then you might not be lost yet, but you’re on your way.”
“Excuse me?”
“You made a wrong turn.”
The last thing Hannah wanted to do was ask him for help, but she was already running late. She looked at her watch. The Walkers expected her for lunch and it was after one. She sighed. “Would you mind giving me directions, please?”
“That might be kind of hard to do, considering your bad sense of direction. Tell you what, I’ll show you the way.”
She thought he was going around to get into the passenger seat and she totally panicked. “I—I don’t think that will be necessary,” she yelled out the window. “I’d really rather you didn’t get into—” she broke off when he plopped himself down on the hood of the Granny’s Grains station wagon. Apparently, he had no intention of getting into the car.
“Make a U-turn,” he yelled.
She stuck her head out the window. “Are you insane? Get off my car.”
He rapped his knuckles on the logo emblazoned on the hood. “Doesn’t look like it’s really your car. Looks like it belongs to Granny’s Grains. So unless you’re Granny—”
“Save it. I’ve heard that same joke several times in several different ways all the way up from Chicago. I’m late. So if you would please—”
Behind her a car honked. And then another. She closed her eyes and groaned. Nice entrance. Holding up traffic in a town with such a low crime rate might be transgression enough to make the front page of the local paper. Mr. Pollard would not be pleased. Behind her, the honking started again so she set her jaw, stepped on the gas and made the U-turn, all the while hoping that the beefcake would fall off in the process.
He didn’t.
Instead he’d turned into a talking hood ornament. “Full speed ahead,” he commanded loud enough for her, and probably the whole town, to hear.
Hannah slunk down in the seat and started to drive, hoping to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Fat chance with the local hero waving and yelling at just about everybody they passed. Bad enough she’d had to drive all the way from Chicago in a bright red station wagon with the company logo displayed prominently in several places, now she had to arrive to meet the Walkers with the local beefcake perched on the front of the car like it was a float in the homecoming parade. She felt like she was hanging onto the last of her professional dignity by her very short, ratty fingernails.
Luckily, they’d only gone a few blocks when he yelled for her to pull over. She checked the address taped to her dash. Yes. This was it.
The house was large, its narrow clapboard siding painted lemon-yellow. The shutters on the windows that reached nearly to the ground were painted white, as was the trim. And there was a huge porch stretched low across the front with a swing swaying gently in the early June breeze.
“Perfect,” she murmured again. Just the kind of house Hannah had always dreamed about. It was even better than the one Lissa had grown up in.
“Want me to carry your cereal for you, sweetheart?”
While she’d gaped at the house, Hannah had nearly forgotten all about him. He was leaning in the passenger window this time.
“No, thank you,” she said stiffly as she got out of the car. She was glad she’d worn the black tailored pantsuit and the gorgeously tailored white shirt she’d borrowed from Lissa. It made her feel professional enough to put the beefcake in his place. He was draped attractively against the car, showing no sign of leaving. “I don’t think I’ll get lost between the front sidewalk and the front door,” she told him. “You can go now.”
She didn’t wait to see if he did. This was too exciting a moment to let him spoil it. Okay, so maybe this wasn’t a real scientific research study, but Lissa had been so right. It was going to be quite an adventure—getting to know the family that was going to represent not only Super Korny Krunchies but also her fondest fantasy.
It wasn’t until she was standing at the Walkers’ front door, ready to ring the bell, that she realized that she wasn’t alone.
He was lounging there next to the door, his wide mouth quirked into a grin, his blue eyes glittering.
“Look, do you mind?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said while his gaze wandered suggestively down to her mouth. “That depends on what you’re asking me to consider.”
“I’m asking you to consider leaving.”
“I already considered it. I decided not to.”
Hannah groaned. This was ridiculous. The Walkers were her ideal family. She couldn’t show up at their front door with this lunatic—albeit very attractive lunatic—at her side.
“Aren’t you going to ring the bell?” he asked. Before she could stop him he reached past her and rang it himself.
Hannah was trying to decide if she could manage to disappear before anyone came to the door, when it opened.
“Hi, Ma,” the beefcake said. “What’s for lunch? I’m starved.”
2
BY THE TIME HANNAH HAD met Kate Walker, her husband Henry, and Henry’s older brother, Tuffy, who lived with the Walkers, she was starting to recover from the shock of finding out that her beefcake hood ornament, aka Danny Walker, was a member of Granny’s Grains Great American Family. It helped that he’d disappeared right after introductions. She knew it was probably very un-Great American Family of her, but Hannah fervently hoped Danny was having lunch elsewhere.
Mrs. Walker led her through a bright, charming living room and a dining room with crystal candlesticks and real flowers on the table to the kitchen at the back of the house.
It couldn’t have been better if Hannah had dreamed it up herself. The cupboards were painted white and the walls were papered in tiny blue flowers. There were blue gingham curtains at the windows and needlepoint on the walls of a spacious alcove that held a big oak table already set for lunch. Something was bubbling merrily in a pot on the stove and the aroma was enticing enough to make her mouth water.
“This place is for you, Miss Ross,” Uncle Tuffy said as he pulled out a chair for her then bowed in a courtly fashion.
“Thank you, Mr. Walker,” she said as she took it.
Tuffy chuckled delightedly. “I’m not Mr. Walker,” he said. “Henry there—he’s Mr. Walker. I’m Uncle Tuffy.”
“Then, thank you, Uncle Tuffy,” she said.
He grinned and Hannah tried not to think of lawn ornaments. He was short, slightly built and wiry, except for a rather large potbelly that strained the buttons of his red plaid shirt. With round cheeks above a whiskered chin and white hair that stood out in wispy tufts from his pink scalp, he looked like a gnome. All he needed was a stocking cap.
From her seat Hannah could see out the windows to the backyard where a lilac bush was in full bloom and a swing hung from an old oak tree.
“I see you have a greenhouse.”
“Kate raises her babies out there,” Uncle Tuffy said.
“Her babies?”
“That’s what I call my plants, dear,” Kate Walker answered from the stove where she was dishing out plates of food.
How sweet, Hannah thought. Calling her plants her babies. Kate came over and put a plate of food down in front of Hannah. Creamed chicken on popovers. How classic was that? Served on china that was edged with blue forget-me-nots, it looked like a picture from the pages of a woman’s magazine. Hannah raised a forkful to her mouth. Heaven.
“Mrs. Walker, this is delicious. But I hope you didn’t go to all this trouble because of me. We do want you to just be yourselves, you know. I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Why, I didn’t go through any trouble at all, dear. Just creamed Sunday’s leftover chicken, as usual,” she said as she sat down to join them. “And please call me Kate.”
Leftovers. The word brought back memories. Until she’d started hanging around at Lissa’s house, the only leftovers Hannah had been familiar with were cold pizza or congealed Chinese. But at Lissa’s the leftovers morphed into what Mr. Hamilton called surprise pie. He loved to joke that you never knew what would be under the crust. Hannah had made it a point to eat at Lissa’s house whenever they had leftovers.
She took another forkful of food. It was so yummy that she wondered why the Walker family would want to eat the bland, oversugared cereal they would soon be representing. But eat it they did, and, according to Hannah’s data, they ate it in very large quantities.
“How long has your family been eating Super Korny Krunchies, Kate?”
“Well—um—let me see.” Kate seemed a little flustered suddenly.
Uncle Tuffy beamed. “I been eatin’ it since they been makin’ it,” he said proudly.
“And how long have you been hawking it?” Danny Walker asked as he came into the room and started to fill his plate at the stove.
“I do not hawk cereal,” she answered. “I am a research sociologist, working as an independent consultant.” It wasn’t Hannah’s style to sound so haughty, but Danny Walker seemed to bring it out in her.
“What’s a consultant?” Uncle Tuffy asked.
“That’s what some people do, Uncle Tuffy,” Danny said as he slid into a chair right across from her, “when they can’t find a real job.”
Kate looked up from her plate. “Oh, you poor dear. Have you been out of work long?”
Hannah gave Danny a look she hoped would freeze his mouth shut. “I am not out of work, Kate. I feel very privileged to be working with a company modern enough to hire a sociologist for this project.”
“Contest, you mean,” Danny said as he poured himself iced tea from the glass pitcher on the table.
Hannah preferred to think of it as a project. “As I was saying—this project—”
“But, Miss Ross, it was a contest, wasn’t it?” Tuffy asked, worry puckering his forehead. “We won, didn’t we? We get the year’s supply of cereal, don’t we? I’m gonna be on the box, aren’t I?”
“Yes, of course, you won—”
“Then it was a contest,” Danny said, his blue eyes mocking her like the devil. “So what did we have to do to win? Send in the most box tops?” he asked as he raised a glass of iced tea to his mouth.
“No, Danny,” Tuffy answered enthusiastically. “We won for being normal.”
Danny nearly spit out his iced tea. “Normal? Sweetheart, do you have any idea what normal is?”
Why couldn’t the man have an addiction to fast food, thought Hannah with a sigh. Why couldn’t he be out somewhere supersizing instead of sitting across from her, being super-irritating? “Your family was chosen, Mr. Walker, because they embody standards and values that Granny’s Grains wants to project.”
“So basically, sweetheart, this is just an advertising gimmick.”
“No. Of course not. And I would thank you not to call me sweetheart. I have a master’s degree in sociology. This contest—I mean project—was conducted in the same manner a scientific study would be.”
He gave a short laugh. “Well, that explains it then, professor. I always knew those studies weren’t worth the price of a two-penny nail.”
Hannah wished she’d taken her suit jacket off. It was feeling a little tight what with all the bristling she was doing. “Exactly what does that mean?”
“It means, professor, that if you think you’re going to find normal around here you’ve definitely taken another wrong turn.”
Forget mocking like the devil. Danny Walker was the devil. Her own personal devil. Just what she needed. How on earth had he slipped through the cracks of the carefully prepared questionnaires the finalists had had to complete? He’d taunted and ridiculed her from the moment his blue eyes had first locked on hers. He was cocky and obviously irresponsible. Jumping on her car like he was some kind of teenager, Hannah scoffed inwardly.
According to her data, Danny Walker was thirty years old. He owned his own building company but still lived at home with his parents, which was one of the reasons she’d chosen the Walker family. Multiple generations of a family living together was a trait that Hannah’s research determined a large number of Americans approved of today and looked to as an ideal worth upholding—and one of the reasons Hannah had always envied Lissa’s hodgepodge of a family. So Danny had definitely been a deciding factor when she chose the Walkers as Granny’s Grains Great American Family. But Hannah was beginning to wonder if she should have looked more closely at the family in Boise, Idaho, that had four children under the age of five. The fact that only one of the children could talk was definitely beginning to look like a plus.
Hannah decided to ignore Danny’s last remark and turned pointedly to his father.
“Mr. Walker, I believe you always come home for lunch. Is that right?”
