His Expectant Neighbor

He nodded eagerly. “Sure, there’s a freezer in the basement. She even has frozen fries.”

“Great. You go get those and I’ll start the grill.”

With Nate’s help dinner was ready in a little over half an hour. Just as Ben was preparing to put a tray together for Gwen, she entered the kitchen.

“This smells wonderful,” she said.

Ben studied her critically. Her cheeks had color. Her energy appeared to have returned. She was smiling. “I knew a good meal would revive you. Just smelling it put color back in your face.”

“I was tired,” Gwen said. “It’s not a crime. I’ll bet even you get tired, Ben Crowe.”

He shrugged. “I remember one time, when I was younger, I did get a little tired,” he teased. “But the next day I came down with the flu, so we never really knew if I was tired or if that fluke day was actually just the beginning of my illness.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Gwen said, sitting at one of the place settings Nathan had arranged at the table.

“Seriously,” Ben said as he served the steak, “you do look much better, and I’m sure you’ll feel better once you eat.”

“Yeah,” Nathan agreed, climbing onto the chair beside her. “You look better.”

Ben was abundantly relieved Nathan had taken the seat beside Gwen until he realized that sitting across from her would put them face-to-face. But as they ate, and as he watched her become more animated and more energetic, Ben was glad he could see her. He believed her when she said she was tired. He also believed that having a baby move inside you could cause pain. Still, it was good to have all that confirmed by the return of her high spirits and stamina.

As she and Nathan washed the dishes, Ben cleared the table, continuing to covertly watch her. Seeing her stretching to put the first glass on the appropriate shelf, he said, “Stack those below the cupboard and I’ll store them.”

“Nonsense,” she said with a laugh. “I can reach.”

“I know,” Ben agreed, finally comprehending that the way to get this woman’s cooperation wasn’t through quibbling. If you argued with her, she tried to prove you wrong. So the best thing to do was to pretend to agree, then point her in the right direction. “It’s faster if you make a stack to put away all at once, because you eliminate steps.”

“What are you? Some kind of efficiency expert?”

“What’s an efficiency expert?” Nathan asked.

“Someone who tells other people what to do,” Gwen said curtly.

“Someone who finds a better way to do things,” Ben contradicted, but he laughed. Because laughter was another way to reach this woman. After spending two days with her, he recognized she liked to laugh, and she liked seeing other people laugh. So if that’s what it took to swing her thinking around in the way he wanted it to go, that’s what he would do.

She turned to place a dish in the cupboard, but as she reached up he caught the plate. He didn’t take it out of her hand, just guided it to the countertop, and when she released it, he directed her hand to get the next one.

She gave him a curious look, but he didn’t stop long enough for her to realize he was monitoring her every move. He walked to the stove to wipe it clean, surreptitiously observing her from his peripheral vision. When she started to put another plate into the cupboard out of habit, he simply stepped beside her, seized the plate and guided it to the stack beside the dish drainer.

“Are you this annoying with everyone?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as she glared at him.

“Absolutely,” he said, but again he didn’t linger. Since the plate was on the pile and she was reaching for another dish, he walked away, busying himself with straightening her tablecloth. Once she and Nathan had finished washing and drying the few dishes and utensils used for their dinner, but before she got the chance to hoist them to the shelves above her, Ben shifted her attention to the table.

“Would you arrange those flowers?” he asked. “I think I messed them up when I returned the centerpiece to its place.”

Though he thought she might have questioned that, she looked at the centerpiece, giving Ben enough time to quickly stash her stacks of dishes and glasses into the cupboard. By the time she turned and said, “How can you mess up a bunch of wildflowers?” he had everything put away.

“My mistake,” he said. “Come on, Nathan, let’s go.”

Because she hadn’t noticed that he had more or less manipulated her out of disagreeing about who would do what in the kitchen, Ben knew he had been successful. He also knew that dinner and company had boosted her spirits. He had not intended to get involved with her, but, really, somebody had to. Not because she was an invalid, but because she was alone. A million and ten things could happen to her and no one would be around to even discover her, let alone rescue her. So if Ben made himself and Nathan her protectors for the next few months, he wasn’t doing anything but being a good neighbor. Besides, he was her landlord. He had a responsibility to make sure she was safe while she was on his property.

“I’ll bring Nathan around at eight tomorrow morning,” he announced as he grabbed his coat from a peg by the door and urged Nathan to do the same.

Gwen gasped. “No, you won’t! It’s one thing to have him come over after school, but a boy needs his Saturday to play. He doesn’t need to be baby-sitting me. I told you. I’m perfectly fine.”

Ben knew he could have found a way to contradict that without insulting her so Nathan would have the chance to earn his ten dollars, but he didn’t have to because Nathan said, “But I like coming here. I’d rather be with you.”

Instantly, he saw that the innocent tone of Nathan’s voice, coupled with the sincerity of his words, hit Gwen right in the heart. She swallowed hard. “I like having you here.”

“Then it’s settled,” Ben said. Not giving anyone a chance to think about it too much for fear of a change of opinion, he reached for the doorknob.

“But I’m not an invalid,” Gwen said, the defensive comment pulling Ben’s hand away from the door and causing him to face her again.

“I just like company.”

“Right,” he concurred guilelessly. He already knew that arguing with her only made her want to prove her points, so no matter what she said, he would agree.

“Right,” Nathan said, too, apparently catching on to the same things Ben had.

“You’re not sick. You just want company,” Ben repeated to be sure she knew they understood her. Because, he supposed, in a way they did. She wasn’t ill. But she also shouldn’t be alone. They all agreed on that.

He just couldn’t get too attached to her, which would be the tricky part if he had to spend too much time watching her smile, listening to her soft voice and enjoying the very fact—so clearly demonstrated by her pregnancy—that she was a woman.

The next morning, Gwen awoke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She felt wonderful, refreshed, alive, and she was waiting with French toast and tea when Ben dropped off Nathan.

The little boy entered the unlocked front door without knocking. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Gwen said. “Where’s Ben?”

“He can’t come in. He’s got work to do.”

When disappointment swamped her, Gwen wondered if her good mood hadn’t been caused by knowing she would be seeing Ben that morning. But she told herself she couldn’t let that be true. She wasn’t in the market for another man. She couldn’t be. The ink was hardly dry on her divorce papers. Getting involved with another man should be the last thing she wanted to do.

But as she served breakfast, she couldn’t stop the small debate going on in her head about why Ben might have chosen not to come in with Nathan. While she and Nathan ate their French toast and drank their tea, she considered that he really might have work to do. But she countered that by speculating that she might have repulsed him by being so grouchy the night before. The debate went around and around until Gwen knew the only way she would stop the madness would be to take her mind off things with work. A few hours of occupying herself with earning a living were exactly what she needed. But since she felt duty-bound to entertain Nathan, she didn’t see how she could do that.

After doing the dishes and enduring the internal argument about Ben for another fifteen minutes, Gwen knew she didn’t have a choice. She had to work.

“Come on, Nathan,” she said, directing him to the sun-room at the back of the cottage, the space she used for an office.

As they entered the cluttered area, Nathan glanced around in awe. “Wow!” he said, fingering her drafting table as if it were solid gold.

“You like to draw?” she asked.

“Do I ever!” he said, and turned those big brown eyes on her again.

“Good.” She reached for some older chalk, colored pencils and a new tablet. “I can teach you anything you want to know. But first, this morning, we’ll let you draw as many pictures as you want, the way you want to draw them, and we’ll see what you need to learn. And we’ll also see where your natural talents lie.”

He looked at the art supplies she was handing him and blinked up at her. “All this is mine?”

“Sure. But you have to keep them at my house. Because this is where you’ll be doing your lessons.”

He nodded, reverently glanced at the supplies, then peered up at her as if stunned by her generosity. “Thanks.”

Gwen was struck again by the way this little boy appreciated everything she did for him. Because she had spoken with his foster mother to let her know that she had invited Nathan to visit her every day, she knew the woman genuinely cared for him, but she could also hear the age in his caretaker’s voice. An energetic, intelligent boy like Nathan needed to be challenged. And though Gwen wouldn’t take anything away from his foster parents, knowing that they cared for him and were doing the best they could, she vowed to continue providing as many opportunities for Nathan as possible without overstepping her boundaries.

As if he understood that Gwen couldn’t be disturbed while she finished her projects, and also having accepted the task of providing samples of his abilities for her inspection, Nathan worked quietly. His presence was not the distraction Gwen feared it might be, but more than that, she soon found that having him in the room with her was a comfort of sorts. Like Nathan, she labored industriously and without a break until her back began to ache.

She recognized she’d worked too long at the same moment that she heard Ben’s truck pull into her gravel lane. Looking at the clock and seeing that it was past noon, she groaned.

“Oh, Nathan, I’m sorry.”

He peeked up. “What?”

“I keep losing track of time, and one of these days I’m going to starve you to death. It’s already past lunch, and we haven’t had a break.” Another thought struck and she groaned again. “And I don’t have anything out of the freezer to make, either.”

“That’s okay,” Nathan said, kneeling on the ledge built in front of the wall of glass to create something of a window seat. “Ben’s bringing big bags of stuff.”

“He’s brought lunch?” she asked, peering over Nathan’s head so she could see.

“Looks like,” Nathan said.

They scrambled out of the sunroom to the front room to get the door for Ben because he had his hands full. As he stepped inside, Gwen saw the yellow bread wrapper hooked over the rim of the top of the brown paper bag.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said immediately.

“What did I tell you yesterday?” Ben asked, depositing his packages on her table. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. So if I do something it’s because I wanted to.”

“Right,” she said, though she still felt uncomfortable.

“Okay,” Ben said. “I brought salami and Swiss cheese, bologna and roast beef. Which do you want?”

“Roast beef,” Gwen said, unconsciously sitting down as Ben pulled his purchases from the brown bags. “I think that’s probably the only one of those I can eat without getting heartburn.”

“I’ll make a note of that,” Ben said, arranging the cold cuts and bread on the table in front of him. Then he removed a bag of cookies.

“Oh, chocolate twirls,” Gwen said, her mouth watering. “I love those.”

“Good,” Ben said. “Nathan, how about checking the refrigerator for mustard.”

“Bottom shelf,” Gwen said, hardly realizing the men were waiting on her, though she did notice that it didn’t seem as if there was anything for her to do.

“What do you like on your sandwich?” Ben asked.

She shrugged. “I can make my own sandwich.”

“I already have the bread on a plate,” he said, displaying the paper plate holding two slices of bread. “I know you want roast beef, but do you want anything else?”

“Put a piece of cheese on,” Gwen said. However, the minute the words were out of her mouth, she recognized she was letting him make her sandwich. “I can do that.”

“Done,” Ben said, and handed her the paper plate.

“Thanks,” Gwen said, but she started to rise. “I’ll make coffee.”

“I brought cola,” Ben countered, producing it from a bag on the chair beside him. “You get glasses, Nate.”

Nodding vigorously, the little boy jumped from his seat, opened the cupboard and was back at the table with glasses in seconds.

Gwen started to sit again, but seeing Ben open the mustard, she changed directions. “You’ll need a knife for that.”

He eased her back down. “Nate can get that. Right, Nate?”

“Right,” Nate said, then ran to her silverware drawer. He extracted a knife and presented it to Ben.

“What kind of sandwich would you like?” Ben asked Nathan.

“Bologna,” he said with a grin.

“Just bologna? Nothing else?”

“Just bologna.”

All in all, making the sandwiches, distributing potato chips, pouring the cola and settling everyone into a seat took less than ten minutes. But Gwen wasn’t oblivious to the fact that she’d done nothing to put this little impromptu lunch together.

Which, as hostess, made it all the more important that she come up with some good mealtime conversation. “So what did you do this morning?” she asked Ben, then mentally chastised herself because that hardly sounded interesting, let alone stimulating.

“I’m having trouble with my accountant,” he said simply, then downed half a glass of cola. “But it’s not a big deal. If he’s messing up, I can fire him and replace him in a minute. I just don’t like to get rid of somebody who doesn’t deserve to be let go. I like to be sure.”

“Good idea,” Gwen agreed. “I’ve never been on the firing side of being an employer, but I’ll bet it’s no picnic.”

“It doesn’t have to be a disaster, either,” Ben said. “The only real problem I ever had was firing someone unfairly. That will keep you up at nights and make you just plain miserable. I’ll never do it again.”

Though she didn’t know Ben very well, certain things about his character were obvious. “I can’t imagine you letting somebody go without good reason.”

“Oh, I did,” Ben assured her. “I found out too late I’d gotten bad information from someone who had a grudge against the guy.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, you’ve got to be really careful about who you trust,” Ben agreed. “Anyway, I had to hunt the man down and bring him back with a raise. But in the end my conscience was clear.”

Ben’s comment about trust didn’t escape Gwen’s notice. If she’d been romantically interested in him, she would have taken it as something of a warning. Since she wasn’t romantically interested in him—couldn’t be—she focused on the fact that Ben’s generosity was only outdone by his integrity. Then she glanced at Nathan, saw he had finished his sandwich and was just about to ask him if he wanted another, when Ben beat her to it.

“All done, Nate? Or would you like something else?”

“More chips,” he said, and Ben promptly complied with the request.

Gwen stifled a laugh. The way they interacted was cute, but more than that it was now obvious that they were deliberately keeping her from doing anything. Which was kind of sweet, though very impractical. She doubted they would stop if she told them she’d caught on, but she wasn’t so stupid that she couldn’t beat them at their own game.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” she asked slyly.

“I’m going south to look at some horses.”

“Long trip?”

“It depends. If I find what I want at the first stop, I could be back before dinner.”

“Good. I’ll be sure to make something that won’t get cold or ruin if it sits while we wait for you.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed as if he’d finally figured out she had tripped him up. She smiled ingeniously at him. His eyes narrowed another notch.

Deciding it best to change the subject as quickly as possible, Gwen said, “Nathan and I started art lessons this morning.”

Ben shot Nathan a look, and though the little boy’s eyes widened, he said nothing. Ben continued to peer at Nathan, but his question was obviously addressed to Gwen. “You didn’t do anything too strenuous, did you?”

“Even though I’m pregnant, I can still draw. Besides, I do it every day. Drawing textbook illustrations is how I make a living.”

Seemingly content with the answer, Ben glanced at her. “Can’t Nathan help you?”

“Not really. But even if he could, Nathan is busy with his own projects.”

This time the look Ben shot Nathan was openly questioning.

“I’m making pictures,” Nathan said apologetically.

“And I’m going to examine them so I can see what Nathan knows naturally and what he needs to be taught. I don’t want to disturb his talent, but I do want to correct what he’s doing wrong.”

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