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A Roof Over Their Heads
M. K. Stelmack
She can’t have the man she loves…if it means losing her child!Alexi Docker’s a widow trying to adopt the child she and her husband had taken in. Except her new rental home turns out to be a disaster reno…and she, now single, has to prove she can give the boy everything he needs. That includes a roof over his head, four walls and running water! If not for the absentee landlady's cranky recluse of a brother, she wouldn't have been able to cope. But now Alexi has to choose between a man she's growing to love and the boy she needs to adopt…because Seth Greene has a past that could ruin the adoption process.
She can’t have the man she loves...if it means losing her child!
Alexi Docker’s a widow trying to adopt the child she and her husband had taken in. Except her new rental home turns out to be a disaster reno...and she, now single, has to prove she can give the boy everything he needs. That includes a roof over his head, four walls and running water! If not for the absentee landlady’s cranky recluse of a brother, she wouldn’t have been able to cope. But now Alexi has to choose between a man she’s growing to love and the boy she needs to adopt...because Seth Greene has a past that could ruin the adoption process.
M. K. STELMACK writes contemporary romances set in Spirit Lake, which is closely based on the small town in Alberta, Canada, where she lives with pets who outnumber the humans two to one and with dust bunnies the size of rodents—because that’s what happens when everyone in the household prefers to live in their imagination or outdoors—but she can also be found on social media, where you can share your comments on her stories or her breathless one-sentence bio on Facebook or at mkstelmackauthor.com (http://www.mkstelmackauthor.com).
A Roof Over Their Heads
M. K. Stelmack
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08091-0
A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS
© 2018 S. M. Stelmack
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Her hand was suddenly in his hand. He held her fingers in his tight, full grip.
This was nothing like his handshake. This was the hold of a man who felt her pain and wanted to bring her through it. “I’ll do it,” he said, his voice raw. “I’ll help. Just—just don’t beg me. I don’t want you thinking that I’m anybody other than a guy with a hammer.”
What a strange thing to say. Anybody could see he was more than that. He cleared his throat. “Besides which, Matt’s a good kid. You don’t have anything to give me, but Matt—well, you’re the only one who can give him what he needs.”
For a solid year, she’d had to prove that to teachers, adoption caseworkers, neighbors, the police. And on the worst nights, she’d lain curled on her side of the bed, knees to chin, with only the light from the phone, wondering if maybe she was wrong. To hear it now from a man who hardly spoke and when he did, it wasn’t ever complimentary... She squeezed his hand back.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
He nodded once, released her hand and crossed to the stairs. “Hey,” he called to Matt, “let me show you how to make a knot that lasts.”
Dear Reader (#u2f1dd2b2-3011-5f2c-ac7f-2306b161c122),
Thirteen years ago, my family moved to the house in the town where we still live and which has become the focus of my fictional town, Spirit Lake. Since moving here, the town has stretched, popped up a Walmart, Canadian Tire, Sobeys and—oh, the golden standard of an Albertan town having made it big!—a Tim Horton’s.
Tim Horton’s is wholly Canadian, our blue-collar alternative to Starbucks. Actually, that partly describes this story: a blue-collar Canadian romance about finding family. It stars a woman struggling to hold her family together and a man struggling to not surrender to yet another lost cause. The glue that sticks them together is a boy who longs for a father and for his grieving heart to heal.
Serious stuff, but everyone who’s read it so far has had plenty of LOL moments. Because that’s life, right? In telling this story, I had the pleasure of introducing the hero’s siblings, whose stories will appear later this year.
To peek at what’s happening with them, you are welcome to come to my website, mkstelmackauthor.com (http://www.mkstelmackauthor.com). You can also find me on Facebook at M. K. Stelmack (https://www.facebook.com/MKStelmackAuthor/).
M. K. Stelmack
In Memoriam
To Sheila.
I wish you were here to read your sister’s story of love and hope—your favorite kind.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Angela Spiller, who drew from her own experiences to share the emotional and bureaucratic journey of adoption, of cobbling together strangers, needing and worthy, into a family. Thanks also to Mark Matheson at the Red Deer office of community corrections for providing insight into how community service would look like for my hero.
Thanks to my editor, Victoria Curran, who gave my life a Point of No Return, and to Astrid Theilgaard, my tried-and-true critique partner.
With this book, I’ve gained a tribe in the form of the Heartwarming Sisters, who have filled me with the conviction that our stories matter.
May I dwell long among them.
And to the Holy Spirit, who daily drags me through my character arc, abiding and chiding through my every kick and complaint.
I am blessed.
Contents
Cover (#u8b4ed04d-a972-5423-a2ef-7956497ff9cb)
Back Cover Text (#u0f2ba5db-728a-5125-a84f-c7e335a98a8f)
About the Author (#ue4d85c82-047a-5594-b256-adca0ad8e649)
Title Page (#uf7741de9-dc71-5c54-8d87-f0f2ddc98cde)
Copyright (#ue45eb954-8da6-5acb-8020-25c4fbf5a5ad)
Introduction (#u36c96f79-251a-538d-9856-724a658bd506)
Dear Reader (#u55edf230-c542-5df8-aa78-5d5bc5ca7481)
Dedication (#u85f79de9-6cf3-565f-9726-ceb20595153b)
CHAPTER ONE (#u17b30065-5b2d-5f31-b086-877a00593ce8)
CHAPTER TWO (#uefbb9962-7bc2-5bec-a809-f580d9fbd892)
CHAPTER THREE (#u9fdfb8dc-16fd-5e19-a4b2-0162114e90a4)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u1529c3ba-dd8e-5965-9adf-9e8c2d232441)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ufa7d3032-b35a-5092-8332-87b61d39aabc)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u2f1dd2b2-3011-5f2c-ac7f-2306b161c122)
SWEAT WAS A thin glue coated on Alexi Docker, sticking her T-shirt to the driver’s seat and her hot jeans to her legs, the slimy by-product of four hours on the road with no air-conditioning and a tire change in a highway ditch.
She crawled the van with the U-Haul trailer to a stop in front of the new home, and turned to her four kids in the back seats. “So, what do you think?”
Please, please like it. Or, at least, don’t hate it.
While three-year-old Callie, behind the front passenger seat, kept her brown eyes fixed on Alexi, the other three kids regarded the white split-level and attached garage with a kind of hopeful hesitancy, as if waiting for someone to throw open the front door and boom out a welcome.
When, not surprisingly, that didn’t happen, Matt said, “Cool.”
“Where’s the backyard?” asked eight-year-old Bryn from the bench seat he shared with six-year-old Amy. The big backyard was the prime selling feature for the kids.
“Duh. Behind the house. In the back,” Amy said.
Bryn unbuckled himself. “Okay, I’m going there.”
“How about I get a picture with—” Alexi began, but Bryn had already activated the side door and hopped out. Two more buckles unclicked, and Matt and Amy cleared the van with Bryn and were racing past the house, straight for the promised land of the backyard.
“Matt,” she called, as she rounded the hood. “Stay together, okay?”
Matt, her eldest at eleven, was the family border collie, patrolling boundaries and herding the strays. He nodded once and disappeared.
That had gone rather well. No outright mutiny, at any rate. Alexi stretched, a breeze wicking away her sweat and fanning her warm face. If a bit of fresh air could do this, imagine the powers of a dip in the lake.
“How about,” she said to Callie, unclicking her car seat straps, “we all walk down to the lake this evening? Play in the water. Watch the sunset. That would make a pretty picture, wouldn’t it? Whaddaya say?”
Callie stretched out her dark arms.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Now, let’s check out our new home.”
With Callie tucked against her left hip, Alexi opened the passenger door and leaned across for her water bottle. She took a pull from it and drew in warm air. Empty. As it had been for the last sixty miles. As were all the kids’. She needed to refill their bottles fast because a run in the backyard was going to dry out the kids even more.
She pressed to her other hip the box of essentials—toilet paper, phone charger, soap—with the water bottles piled on top. Making for the door, she looked around as she matched reality with the emailed pictures from Connie, her landlady. She didn’t remember the lawn grass rising above her ankles and the front garden a solid green rectangle of weeds. Never mind, she could mow while the kids weeded. A family activity.
Inside an old work boot by the door she found the house key as planned and, juggling it, the box and Callie, Alexi opened the door.
Fresh paint fumes gagged her and Callie buried her face against Alexi’s neck. Alexi breathed shallowly as she lowered the box to the floor. If plywood counted as a floor. The stairs, the hallway and the living room were completely stripped. Alexi stepped across protruding nail heads and wet, coppery paint splotches to the kitchen. Or where it should’ve been. There weren’t any cupboards or appliances, not even a kitchen sink. Just a space with pipes, hoses, outlets hooked up to nothing.
Was she in the right house? The address and the pics of the outside matched. The key was in the right place. She hadn’t got the dates confused. She’d talked to Connie last week, and all was a go.
Was there even water?
She hurried to the hallway bathroom, which actually had a sink and a toilet, if not a tub. She turned on the faucet and heard sputtering and a great wheezing of air in the pipes. That was it.
Seriously?
“Right. Okay,” she explained to Callie, who still had her face rooted in Alexi’s neck. “All I have to do is go to the basement, find the main water valve and turn it on.”
But first—she looked out the kitchen window into the backyard. All three were there, though Bryn was fiddling with the latch on the fence gate. She started toward the back door but then heard Matt call from the fire pit, “Hey, Bryn. Look!”
It was a stick. Bryn loved sticks. Had invented a million uses for them, and sure enough he changed course for Matt, who’d always known not to run after someone ready to bolt.
Callie pointed to them.
“Do you want to go play?” Fixing the water would go a lot easier without Callie.
Callie squirmed to get down.
