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Silas looked at his older son. “What about you?”
“No, I’m good,” Ollie said, pawing through two dozen stuffed animals for his ratty, shredded baby blanket which at this rate would accompany the kid to college. His bankie found, the kid pushed out a satisfied sigh and wriggled into the middle of the critters, giggling when Silas momentarily buried him in the comforter. Then his head popped out, his straight hair all staticky and his expression suddenly serious.
“Is Gramma okay?”
Silas sat on the bed beside him, rearranging the covers. “She’ll be fine, but her ankle really is broken. Which means she’s not gonna be able to take care of you guys.”
Worry instantly flooded big, brown eyes. “So who’s gonna watch us?”
“I have no idea. That’s tomorrow’s project. In the meantime, you get to hang out with me. Guess I’ll have to work from home for a while.”
“We tried that before, remember? You nearly lost it.”
As tired as he was, Silas laughed. “That was a year ago. You’re older now. It’ll be fine.”
The toilet flushed; Tad zoomed back into the room and flew into his bed again. Unlike his brother, Tad didn’t need to sleep with a menagerie. But God help them all if Moothy—a smelly, one-eyed moose with sagging antlers—went AWOL.
“Okay, you two,” Silas said, bending over to kiss Tad. “Lights out—”
“Book?” Tad flopped around to grab a Dr. Seuss from the skyscraper-high pile on the floor beside the bed.
“Not tonight, buddy. I’d pass out if I tried to read right now.”
“Besides, doofus,” Ollie said, “Jewel read like ten books to us already, remember?”
Curling himself around Moothy, Tad sulked. “S’not the same if Daddy doesn’t do it.”
Just reach in there and squeeze my heart, why not? “I’m flattered, squirt, but reading is not happening tonight. So lights out. Now.”
Grumbling, Tad reached over to turn off his light. Much to Silas’s relief, the kid nearly passed out before Silas finished with the nightly hugs and kisses routine, but Ollie still had enough oomph to whisper, “You know what?”
“What?”
“I think Jewel should be our babysitter.”
“She’s already got a job,” Silas said as he smoothed back his son’s soft, straight hair. “She was just filling in because it was an emergency.” And I would hang myself if she was the only option. “But … I’m glad you had fun with her.”
“Are you kidding? She’s like the coolest girl ever!”
Yeah, let’s hear it for the cool girls, Silas thought, returning to the living room. Like a hummingbird, Jewel madly darted from spot to spot, folding, straightening, picking up. At Silas’s entrance, she glanced over only to disappear behind a tablecloth as she stretched her arms to fold it in half.
“Nothing’s broken,” she said from behind the cloth, then reappeared, the cloth neatly folded into eighths in three swift, graceful moves. “In case you were wondering.”
Glued to the spot, Silas watched her zip, zap, zing around the room as he got grumpier by the second. “But where do you get off going into my room and getting my comforter off of my bed?” Silas said. Okay, whined. “I sleep under that! Naked! And now it’s dirty!”
In the midst of hauling a cushion larger than she was back onto the sofa, Jewel shot him a look. “Geez, it might be a little dusty in places, but it’s not dirty. And the boys brought it out, I didn’t go into your room and disturb your things. Trust me, I’m not that desperate.”
For what? floated through Silas’s brain, only to get shoved aside by Jewel’s “You sleep naked?” as she scooted across the room to smack at several large smudges on the comforter.
It took a second. “I sleep what?”
That got another look. A puzzled one, this time. “Naked. You know, without any clothes?”
“I know what it means! But isn’t that kind of a personal question?”
She frowned at him. “Um … okay … it wasn’t me who introduced the word into the conversation. You did.” “I did not!”
“Yes, you did,” she said patiently. “Because my imagination’s not that vivid. Not that it matters to me one way or the other.” Huffing a little, she dragged the king-size comforter off the dining table, only to have it swallow her whole as she tried to fold it, like she was wrestling a monster marshmallow. Finally she gave up and dumped it on the sofa. “But you don’t strike me as the sleeping-naked type.”
“Could we please move on?”
“You’re really cute when you blush. And it’s okay, really. Since I do, too.” “Do what?”
“Sleep naked. You hungry?”
Lord above, being in the same room with her was like riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair. Over the dizziness, Silas watched her zip to the kitchen, ignoring—more or less—the way her butt twitched as she walked. Then he opened his mouth to say “no,” that all he wanted was for this night to be over, but then he realized, one, that his stomach felt like it was going to eat itself and, two, that the house smelled like an Italian restaurant.
Against his better judgment, he let his gaze sweep what he could see of his kitchen from where he stood. As he feared, it made Armageddon look like a minor dustup. The sooner he got this chick out of his house, the better. Except—
“Damn. I should’ve run you home before I put the boys to bed.”
“Oh! That’s okay, I figured you’d get back late. So I called Patrice, asked her to come get me in a little while. We’ve got a couple clients to see early tomorrow out at Jemez, so I’ll probably crash at her house, since it’s halfway to the pueblo already.”
The idea of this woman being responsible for bringing someone’s baby into the world made him shudder. But then, childbirth was a messy business, too, so he supposed she felt right at home. He looked at his kitchen again.
“There’s actual food in there somewhere?”
“Just something I tossed together out of whatever you had on hand,” she said, shoving aside … stuff to plunk a casserole dish onto the counter. “Go on, you sit—” she pointed at the formal dining table behind him “—I’ll warm some of this up and bring it right over. I see you’ve got beer—you want one?”
He sat, becoming one with the chair. “Please.”
A minute later she set a heaping dish of her concoction in front of him—pasta and tomato sauce and sausage and peppers and cheese and heaven knew what else. And you’ll eat it and love it, he thought, almost too hungry to care.
“Huh,” he said, taking a second bite over the clatter of pans, water rushing into the sink. “This is really good.”
“Thanks. Tell me if you want more, there’s plenty. You eat while I clean.”
But once he’d taken the edge off his hunger, he felt weird sitting here while she was in there cleaning. So he got up and moved his plate and beer to the breakfast bar, climbing up on the stool.
“Aw … didja get lonely?” she said with a little smile as she wiped down the island. A throwaway question, hardly meant to cause the pang it did. When he didn’t answer she tossed him another glance, then sashayed to the sink to rinse out the sponge. “So how’s your mom?”
“Looks like she’ll be out of commission for a while,” Silas said around another mouthful of food. “She’s in a splint until the swelling goes down enough to put on a cast. It’ll definitely put a cramp in her style, that’s for sure. And mine. I’ll have to make other day-care arrangements.”
“Well …” Jewel’s entire face scrunched in thought. “I’ve heard lots of good things about the Baptist preschool. And there’s that place out on the highway, in the old convenience store Thea Griego used to live in?”
“With the big jungle mural across the front?”
“Yep. I know the gal who runs it, she’s the real deal. Although they might be full up at the moment—”
“It’s okay,” Silas said, almost irritably. “I’ll check around in the morning. So … what all went on in here while I was gone?”
Jewel laughed. “What didn’t go on, is more like it. And I apologize for keeping them up so late, but they were having so much fun—well, me, too, but that’s something else again—I didn’t have the heart to play mean old babysitter and make them go to bed. Especially since I doubted they would’ve gone to sleep on time, anyway. They missed you,” she said with a little smile. “And they were so worried about their grandma. And no way was I gonna let them sit in front of the TV all night, no, sir.”
Dinner dishes scraped and rinsed, she pushed down the dishwasher door and pulled out the bottom rack. “So we made cookies—they’re on that dish over there if you want some—” she nodded toward a foil-covered plate at the end of the bar “—and read a bunch of books—I made Ollie read a couple to me, he sounds like he could use the practice—and then we played about a million games of Snakes and Ladders, and then we played Secret City.”
“Which called for wholesale destruction of my living room.”
She straightened, shoving a piece of hair off her forehead with her wrist. Even with her glasses, he could see the knot between her brows. “Kids learn by playing, Silas. By using their imaginations. Okay, so maybe we sorta went overboard—I’m sorry about your living room. But I put it all back together, didn’t I? And the boys had fun. Isn’t that kinda the whole point of being a kid?”
Life’s not all about having fun, he wanted to say, except even he knew how stuffy and ridiculous it would have sounded. And of course he wanted the kids to have fun, but …
But, what? Yeah, that’s right—no answer, huh?
His dinner finished, Silas reached for the foil-covered plate. Catching a whiff of the peanut butter cookies lurking underneath, he smiled. Despite himself.
“You might want to put peanut butter on your list,” Jewel said, her back to him as she continued cleaning. “I got carried away with that, too.”
Silas bit into one, sighing at the taste of childhood, of innocence against his tongue, and felt like a heel. “Where’d you get the flour?”
“One of your neighbors. Which reminds me, you owe Mrs. Maple two cups of flour. And an egg.”
Silas hesitated, hoping she’d turn around. She didn’t. “These are delicious, too.”
She shrugged. Silas sighed.
“Jewel, it’s been a long day and I’m ready to drop, but that’s still no excuse for me acting like I did when I came home. Especially considering you basically saved my butt. You not only survived my kids for—” he squinted at the microwave clock “—nearly six hours, you obviously took excellent care of them. Not to mention going above and beyond with dinner and the cookies. So I apologize for acting like a bozo.”
Finally she looked at him. “You didn’t—”
“I did.”
A smile teased her mouth. “Okay, maybe a little.”
Silas smiled, then ground the heel of his hand into his slightly aching temple. “This single fatherhood business,” he said, dropping his hand, “it’s not for sissies. I remember what my brothers and I were like when we were kids and it gives me the willies, to think those two carry my genes.”
“You mean you weren’t always this … this …”
“Uptight?”
She lifted her hands. Whatever.
“No,” he said on a soft laugh. “But I’ve gotten so used to who I am now, I guess I’ve forgotten what it’s like to drape cloths over the dining room table and pretend it’s a fort. Used to make my mother batty. Especially the time we used her best lace tablecloth.”
“I bet,” Jewel said, giving the now-bare kitchen table one final swipe. “Speaking of mothers … do the boys ever see theirs?”
The unexpected question made his breath hitch in his chest. “She died in a car crash when the boys were very little,” he said quietly. “Not long after our divorce.”
“Ohmigosh …” Spinning around, Jewel pressed her hand to her mouth, then lowered it. “How awful,” she whispered. “Do they even remember her?”
“Ollie does, a little. At least he thinks he does. But Tad was still a baby.”
“Oh. That accounts for …”
Silas tensed. “For what?”
“Why you’re so protective of them,” she said gently. “And no, that’s not a criticism, anybody in your position would be.” She leaned across the counter and touched his wrist, only to remove it almost before it registered. “You’re obviously a really good dad, Silas. But man—” her eyes twinkled “—you’d be a pain in the butt to live with. There,” she said, surveying the much cleaner kitchen, a big smile on her face. “All fixed. Although I have to say my own place—well, Eli’s, I suppose—never looks half this good. Suzy Homemaker, I’m not.”
Somehow, he wasn’t surprised. “I never could understand how people could live in clutter. Noah and Eli shared a room when we were teenagers—I think my mother was ready to call the HazMat team at one point.”
“Sounds like Noah and me would get along great, then,” she said, and he glared at her, which got another shrug. “Driving myself nuts trying to keep a place clean when it’ll only get messy again simply isn’t a big priority. And it’s not like I’ve got the kind of wardrobe that needs padded hangers. Or any hangers, for that matter. I’m not dirty,” she said to his appalled expression, “but I’m the only one living there. Nobody comes to visit much, so if the mess doesn’t bother me, who cares?”
Silas’s eyes narrowed slightly. Did she even hear the loneliness weighing down her words? A loneliness he might not have even noticed if his own hadn’t been all up in his face that night, whispering insane ideas in his ear, like … like maybe they could use their respective loneliness to their mutual advantage—
The idea caught him so short he actually had to grab the edge of the counter. Fortunately, Jewel had bopped back into the living room to continue straightening, so she missed it. Whew.
Silas swiveled unsteadily on the stool to watch her righting pictures, putting lamps back, as it struck him how little he actually knew about her. Except for whatever floated in Tierra Rosa’s ether, like a free-for-all wireless signal. “You have any family nearby?”
“My mother’s in Albuquerque, but we don’t see each other much. Haven’t seen my dad in years. Or my stepdads, for that matter.”
“Stepdads?”
“Dos,” she said holding up two fingers. “One’s in Denver, the other’s in Montana. Or Wyoming. I forget which. Both remarried. No, wait, the one in Denver is divorced again. I think. Can’t keep track, don’t really care.”
Although she still periodically flashed smiles in his direction as she talked, her “chipper” was definitely fading fast. So when she bent over to gather the boys’ cars—affording Silas a nice, long look at a rather appealing backside, actually—he said, “Forget it, if the boys dragged all that stuff out here, they can clean it up tomorrow before school. Besides, you’re obviously exhausted.”
She straightened, stretching out the muscles in her back. “And it won’t drive you insane in the meantime?”
“Yes. But that’s my problem, not yours.”
Laughing, Jewel dumped the cars she’d already picked up, a moment before headlight beams streaked through the frosted glass insets alongside the front door. She went to gather her jacket and purse—both somewhat long in the tooth, Silas noticed—and it occurred to him she probably wasn’t exactly raking it in, doing what she did. Not that he was, either, but the ends tended to overlap more than not. He pulled his wallet from his back pocket, digging out several bills.
“Here,” he said, laying the cash on the counter. “This is for you.”
She turned, frowning at the money as if it was foreign currency, before aiming the frown at Silas. “Excuse me?”
“For watching the kids. Cooking my dinner.” When she stood there, gawking at him, he added, “If nothing else, consider it hazard pay.”
Her face went bright red. “Ohmigosh! I was just helping out! Being a good neighbor! I c-can’t.”
She said, eying the money like it was a candy bar and she’d given up chocolate for Lent.
“And I’m sure you don’t want to make me feel bad, like I took advantage of you. Please, Jewel. Take the money.”
Her gaze flicked from the money to him, then back to the money. “You sure? I mean … maybe we could come to some sort of other arrangement.” When his brows lifted, she said, “Like you helping me with my taxes or something.”
Which, since he doubted she had pension plans and investments and the like to sort through, would probably take him ten minutes. Tops. He got up, scooped the bills off the counter and walked over to her, pressing the money into her palm, and her hand was warm and soft and strong all at once and he liked the feel of it in his way too much. Sad. “Doing your taxes is a given. Now get out of here before Patrice wakes the entire town with her horn honking.”
For a long moment, their gazes tangled. Damned if he didn’t like that way too much, too. Which was even sadder. “You’re nuts, you know that?” she said with a little smile, stuffing the cash in her pocket. Then she yanked open his front door and fled.
