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“And you’re in way over your head.”
She thrust her chin up stubbornly. “And just what does that mean?”
“It means that Granny picked the wrong person to run her contest.”
HANNAH WAS BARELY ABLE to enjoy her meat loaf. The family dinner she’d been so looking forward to wasn’t exactly cozy. Henry, still in his grimy coveralls, was hiding behind the sports section. Every once in awhile his fork would sneak out the bottom, load up some food, and disappear under the baseball scores again. Kate was fretting over a list that had something to do with her church group and Uncle Tuffy had taken his plate into the living room to watch cartoons. None of this was, in her opinion, Great American Family behavior. But what was even worse was the fact that Hannah had to, once again, sit across the table from Danny.
Danny Walker was shaping up to be the worst problem in the family. His demeanor was definitely not Great American Family caliber. She could clean up Henry and Uncle Tuffy. She could find a way to get Kate to keep her thoughts—and her greenhouse—to herself for the duration of Pollard’s visit. But how on earth was she going to get Danny to stop acting like something out of a Tennessee Williams play?
She sure hadn’t done much of a job controlling him that afternoon. She was still angry at herself for getting into his truck. But what else could she have done when he’d started waving and yelling madly at the mayor? What on earth would the Honorable Ed Miller have thought of her for standing out on the street of his low-crime-rate town having a shouting match? It just wasn’t like her.
Big surprise. Danny Walker had the power to make a woman forget herself.
But even worse, she couldn’t get what he’d said out of her head. Granny picked the wrong person to run her contest. It rankled big time—mostly because she’d wondered the very same thing once or twice that day herself.
Was Danny Walker right? Was she in over her head?
She raised her eyes from her untouched mashed potatoes to sneak a look at him. He caught her at it. Maddeningly, he winked at her and it filled her with the ridiculously childish urge to stick out her tongue at him. Instead, she filled her mouth with mashed potatoes, and filled her mind with new resolve. Danny Walker was not going to be right. Granny’s Grains did not pick the wrong person to run their contest.
After dinner, Hannah insisted on helping Kate with the dishes.
“Besides,” she said after everyone else left the kitchen, “this will give me a chance to ask you a few questions.”
“What sort of questions, dear?” Kate asked as she poured pink dish soap into the running water.
“Oh, just family things. For instance, did your children eat breakfast before school when they were young?”
“Well, yes. Of course, dear. Breakfast is, after all, the most important meal of the day.”
Yes! thought Hannah with relief. Kate was a normal mother, even if her taste in gardening was a bit bizarre.
“I’m sure your mother felt that way, too, didn’t she?” Kate asked.
“I wish I remembered,” Hannah murmured.
Kate looked at her, her eyes wide. “You don’t suffer from amnesia, do you, dear? The people in my soaps are always coming down with it, but I’ve never known anyone in person who had it.”
Hannah grimaced slightly. You never knew what was going to come out of Kate’s mouth. She was never malicious, of course. She couldn’t be sweeter. She was just a little—um—dizzy. The fact that Danny’s word was a perfect fit didn’t help Hannah’s mood.
Hannah sighed. “No, Kate. I don’t have amnesia.”
“Oh,” Kate said with a disappointed little frown on her face.
“My mother died when I was very young. My father raised me.”
“Then who fixed your breakfast, dear? Your father?” Kate asked.
The image of Orson Ross trying to flip a pancake with that perpetually distracted air almost made her laugh. He’d have the pancake turner in one hand and an open book in the other and the pancake would end up on the floor, totally unnoticed, while he read. “I doubt if my father ever even thought about breakfast,” she said. “Or any other meal, for that matter.”
And it was true. Her father was a dear, but when he wasn’t in a classroom or lecture hall, he was in his study with his papers and books. “I learned to order takeout when I was five and to make simple meals when I was six,” she told Kate. “I used to bring him a plate in his study at night.”
“You mean you didn’t even eat together?”
Kate’s face was all soft and concerned and Hannah realized she’d crossed a line. She was supposed to be asking the questions, not revealing personal information about herself. “Oh, I wanted to ask you about that,” she said, segueing into the next question quite nicely. “Did your family always eat breakfast together?”
Luckily, Kate was easily distracted.
“Oh, yes! Always.”
“Did you ever have a problem getting everyone to the breakfast table?”
“Why, no, I never did.” Kate thought for a moment. “I think it was my meal system that did it.”
“Your meal system?”
Kate nodded. “Pancakes on Monday, over easy on Tuesday, waffles on Wednesday, scrambled on Thursday and French toast on Friday.”
Hannah frowned. Kate hadn’t mentioned cereal. “But, didn’t you—?”
“Oh, no, dear. I never varied it. That was the whole point, don’t you see?”
Hannah forgot about cereal for the moment. “No, I’m afraid I don’t see.”
“Well, if you knew that you had to wait a whole week for another waffle Wednesday, wouldn’t you eat them when they were put in front of you?”
It made a wacky kind of sense, Hannah had to admit. But where did cereal, particularly Super Korny Krunchies, fit in?
“Kate, when did you serve cereal?”
“Oh, I never served cereal when my kids were growing up. I always insisted they eat a cooked breakfast because everyone knows that—” Kate broke off, her hand flying out of the water to her mouth, sending little puffs of soap suds into the air around her head like a housewife’s halo. Only the halo was a little crooked. “Oh, dear,” Kate said.
Oh crap, thought Hannah. Another glitch. A huge one this time. Big. Very big.
“Got a problem, professor?”
She didn’t have to look to know that Danny Walker would be leaning in the doorway, hip cocked, mouth quirked, wry twinkle in his eyes. With all the twists and turns this day had taken, one thing she could be sure of. If she had a problem, Danny would be sexily draped somewhere nearby, ready to give her a hard time.
“You don’t look so good. Meat loaf upset your tummy—or is it the taste of failure? Didn’t I tell you that studies and surveys were bogus?”
Hannah glared at him. “As I said earlier, there is a margin for error in every research study. But if a subject is going to lie—”
“Watch it,” Danny warned as he came away from the doorway. “Lie is a strong word.”
“But it’s the right word,” she retorted. “I could go upstairs right now and produce the original entry form that states that your entire family eats Super Korny Krunchies. And that’s not the only problem with that entry form, either. Several answers are definitely misleading.”
“Or maybe you just asked the wrong questions,” Danny said.
Hannah threw her hands into the air. “What difference does it make what the question is if the entrant is going to lie?”
“Uh—excuse me, professor, but I think that’s an argument for my side. How can you possibly know what is and what isn’t a lie when you read those forms of yours?”
“Oh—” Kate cut in “—I’m sure Uncle Tuffy didn’t think he was lying.”
Hannah forgot the insult she’d been about to hurl at Danny. She swung around to face Kate. “Are you saying that Uncle Tuffy filled out the original entry form?”
Kate nodded. “Tuffy is Henry’s brother—not the—um—brightest in the family. So he might have gotten some things wrong. He’s always needed someone around to take care of him. But he’s got a kind heart and he really does love your cereal and he eats it every day,” Kate assured her eagerly. “And he wanted so badly to win. It’s just that the rest of us don’t eat it. But when Tuffy figured out that he ate enough for a family of four, why he thought—”
Hannah held up her hand. “Wait—let me get this straight. No one else in the family eats Super Korny Krunchies?”
“Have you tasted it?” Danny asked.
“Of course, I’ve tasted it,” Hannah answered impatiently.
“Then don’t ask stupid questions.”
Hannah thrust her hands into the pockets of her pants. “You know I’ve about had it with you getting a laugh at my expense, Walker. This isn’t very funny to me. First I find out that no one is really quite like they’re supposed to be. You’re like a family picture taken out of focus. And now I find out that nobody but Uncle Tuffy even eats the cereal you’ve been chosen to represent. And you stand there, with that mocking look in your eyes and—”
“Wait!” Kate cried. “Susie and Andy eat it!”
Hannah jerked her focus away from those mocking eyes and back to Kate. “Sissy’s children?” she asked.
Kate nodded. “Whenever they’re here they always eat it with Uncle Tuffy. Every morning and then again before bed. I try to get them to put fruit on it, but—”
“That’s wonderful!” Hannah interrupted. She was desperate and could care less if the kids put crushed candy bars on it, just as long as they could eat a bowl of it in front of Mr. Pollard without gagging.
Whew. Close call with disaster, thought Hannah as she slumped against the counter. But just to be on the safe side, she had better ask a few follow-up questions.
“Is there anything else I should know? Any other information that might not be entirely correct?” she asked. “Sissy is a stay-at-home mother, right?”
“Yup,” said Danny, his eyes twinkling. “In fact she never stops talking about it.”
Hannah ignored the twinkling and asked, “And she has a traditional husband?”
Danny seemed to find this even more amusing. “Traditional is the perfect word for Sissy’s husband Chuck.”
So far, so good, thought Hannah. “When am I going to meet them?” she asked.
Danny nodded toward the windows. “Any second now.”
Hannah looked out the window. Two children, a boy and a girl, were dashing across the yard, while a young woman carrying a huge tote bag was just coming down the alley behind the Walker house. She was followed by a young man who looked enough like Elvis to be the ghost of the King of Rock and Roll. He was talking urgently and gesturing a little wildly with his hands as he walked but the woman didn’t bother to turn around. When she came through the gate to the backyard, she locked it behind her, leaving the Elvis look-alike on the other side, still pleading his case.
The children clattered up the steps and across the back porch. The screen door slammed against the wall as they tumbled into the kitchen. They were both towheaded and as golden-brown as their uncle.
“Children!” Kate exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Mommy left Daddy again,” the little girl said as if she’d announced nothing more important than what she’d just watched on television. Then, barely missing a beat, she asked, “Can we have some cereal?”
4
“MA DON’T YOU DARE give them any of that sugary junk. They’ve already had dinner,” said the young woman who’d slammed in the back door with just as much force as her children.
“Sissy,” Kate said, her hands on her hips, “what are you thinking?”
Sissy looked taken aback. “What? All of a sudden I’m not welcome in my own parents’ house?”
“Sissy, this is Hannah Ross,” Kate said pointedly. “From Granny’s Grains.”
It took a few moments for it to register on Sissy’s face. When she finally got it, her hand went to her mouth much the same as Kate’s had earlier. “Oh my gosh! I forgot all about Uncle Tuffy’s contest. I guess I picked a lousy time to leave Chuck again, huh?”
Again? The word leapt out at Hannah and said boo! How could this be happening? Sissy and Chuck had looked perfect on paper. They’d been so absolutely—right. Now it looked like they were just another thing that was absolutely wrong.
“I think you better sit down, professor,” Danny said.
Hannah automatically sat down on the chair Danny had pulled out for her. She was too dazed to even bother being irritated when Danny sat right down next to her.
“Does this happen often?” she asked him.
“So often the kids keep a second wardrobe upstairs in Sissy’s old room. ’Course old room isn’t really the correct term. The bed hardly ever has a chance to get cold before Sissy shows up at the back gate again in yet another skirmish in the employment wars.”
“Employment wars?”
“Remember you asked if Sissy’s husband was traditional?”
Hannah nodded.
“Chuck is so traditional that he won’t hear of Sissy working. While Sissy, who can cook up a storm, is on a constant crusade to transform the kitchen of the Belway family tavern. Make it like some bistro in Paris she read about. So every time Sissy sneaks something onto the menu, Chuck sneaks it back off again. And Sissy comes home.”
Hannah leaned her elbows on the table and shoved her hands into her hair. “How long does she stay?”
Danny shrugged. “Varies. Anywhere from two days to two months.”
Her head jerked up. “Two months!” The situation had gone from bad to worse with just those two words. If Sissy and Chuck weren’t back together before Pollard and the rest of the crew showed up, Hannah was going to have a lot more to worry about than a taunting blue-eyed devil and a bunch of plants you could take out for a burger.
“We’re not exactly what you planned on, are we, professor?” Danny asked softly.
Oh, fine. Danny Walker had picked a great time to talk nicely to her. And wasn’t his smile just a little sweet, as well? The back of her throat started to ache, just like it always had when she was a little girl, forcing back tears. She’d be damned if she was going to cry in front of Danny Walker. She sat up straighter. “A few minor glitches,” she said with a shrug. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she added nonchalantly, then turned to look out the window just in time to see Chuck finish climbing the fence.
“Time to play the helpful uncle,” Danny said as he stood up. “Hey kids, I’ve got to run something over to the shop. Want to ride in the truck?”
The kids immediately lost interest in cereal. “Can we, Mom?” Susie asked.
“Go ahead,” Sissy answered, then mouthed a thank you to her brother over the children’s heads.
Danny shepherded the two children out of the kitchen just as Chuck appeared at the screen door and started rattling the knob.
“Come on, honeybunch, unlock the door,” Chuck cooed, his face pressed against the screen.
“Don’t you honeybunch me, Chuckie Belway.”
