Hometown Honey

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s see this apartment.”

She walked up the stairs ahead of him, then stood aside on the landing so she could unlock the door, which led directly into the tiny kitchenette. They both entered, then recoiled from a nasty smell.

“Did something die in here?” Cindy asked, only half kidding.

“It’s been closed up for a long time,” Luke said. “Probably just needs a good cleaning and airing out.”

Cindy didn’t particularly look forward to that. She’d spent the last two days scrubbing down the boat to make it habitable. And it hadn’t smelled nearly this bad.

She moved on into the living room holding Adam tightly. She didn’t dare set him down in this nasty place. Luke, directly behind her, flipped on a light. Three huge, gray creatures jumped and hissed, then scuttled for cover beneath a reprobate sofa.

Cindy screamed and nearly ran over Luke as she tried to get as far away as possible from the critters. Adam started crying.

“Oh, my God,” she said from the relative safety of the kitchen. “What were those things?”

“Possums,” Luke said grimly. “Guess the carriage house wasn’t uninhabited, after all.” He laughed. “Those were some big ones, too. I think we scared them more than they scared us.”

“Speak for yourself. I’ll be waiting outside.”

She couldn’t get down the stairs fast enough. As she waited by the Blazer, calming Adam down, her terror receded. In its place a slow anger started to burn. She had a trailer full of stuff and nowhere to put it. She put Adam down on a small patch of grass. He liked grass, always had. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled slowly across it, stopping every second or so to pat the soft green blades with the palms of his hands, investigating the texture. He pressed his face into it.

Luke came down the stairs a couple of minutes later. “Well, I figured out how the possums got in. There’s a broken window in the bedroom. Also, there’s a pretty bad leak in the roof. That’s going to have to be fixed, and the carpeting pulled out.”

“So, in short, it’s not livable.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“And you’re just figuring this out now?” Whatever warmth she’d felt for him a few minutes earlier had dissipated like a morning fog.

“I guess I should have checked it out before—”

“Yeah, no kidding! The boat might not have been ideal, but at least it didn’t have disgusting creatures nesting in the furniture.” Other than a few spiders, but she’d dislodged them in short order.

“I’ll fix the damned place. You can bunk in my spare bedroom until I get the carriage house fixed up. Shouldn’t be more than a few days.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Luke looked surprised by her outburst.

“You knew all along the carriage house wasn’t livable,” she went on. “You just used that as an excuse to get us under your roof so you could…trap us.”

“Trap you?” he said incredulously.

“You think we’ll get so comfy in your big house that we won’t want to leave. And that will prove you’re right.”

“Right about what?”

“About how children should be raised. All along you’ve thought I was a bad mother for wanting to travel with Adam, take him away from Cottonwood. You’ve wanted to settle down with this white-picket-fence stuff since we were eighteen. Now you’ve got us—no place to go, no choice but to move in with you.”

Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to her. “I’m so stupid. It was you who made the complaint to Social Services, wasn’t it? And how convenient, that you just happened to be there when the social worker came to investigate.”

Luke’s face turned ruddy with anger. He folded his arms, as if to stop himself from throttling her. “How could you think I would do something like that?” he exploded. “And I have no hidden agenda here except to help you keep Adam. I’m sorry about the carriage house. If you don’t want to stay with me, fine. I’ll take you back to the boat and you can sink with it.”

Adam had pushed himself to his feet and was making tracks, heading for a row of bushes. Cindy caught him before he could disappear into the shrubs and never be seen again, gently swiveling him around. He toddled off in the opposite direction, seemingly unaware his path had been diverted.

What was she doing, attacking the only person in any position to help her? Beverly Hicks had been right—her damnable pride would defeat her if she let it.

She put a hand to her forehead. “God, I’m sorry, Luke. All right, I’ll move into your spare bedroom. But only temporarily, until I’m back on my feet.”

“I never intended for it to be a permanent situation.” His brief spate of temper dissipated immediately. “Come on, I’ll show you the room. I converted the attic into a suite. You’ll be on a completely different floor than me.”

The suite wasn’t just nice, it was dollhouse pretty, with shiny oak floors and pale yellow walls with white trim. There was one small bedroom, a larger, central room and a tiny, yellow-tiled bathroom tucked under the eaves.

“This is beautiful,” she said grudgingly. And in a flash, she realized what Luke had been thinking when he’d renovated his attic. He’d intended this area for a child, maybe two. The central room was a playroom. Her heart lurched slightly at the thought of Luke’s hopes for a family still unfulfilled after all these years.

Then she gave herself a mental slap. He was only twenty-eight. He had lots and lots of time to find that settling-down girl he’d always wanted. And it wasn’t as if he had to be alone. With his sexy good looks, he could have women lining up to marry him if he really tried.

She’d spent a lot of years feeling guilty because she hadn’t been the one. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about that anymore. She had enough to worry about.

LUKE HADN’T REALIZED HOW anxious he was about Cindy’s plans until she finally agreed to stay in his spare room. As soon as she said okay, his muscles relaxed and the tightness in his chest eased. They were going to be fine. Cindy and Adam had a safe haven, and there was no way Beverly Hicks would object to Adam’s housing.

He called his brother, Mike, who lived only about ten minutes away, and together they moved Cindy’s furniture into the attic suite while Cindy fed Adam. The pieces that didn’t fit, they stored in the garage.

Cindy didn’t take an active role in the arrangement of her new space. When Mike asked her where the table and chairs should go, she shrugged. “Any place it’ll fit, I guess.” She busied herself with more practical things, such as putting sheets on the twin bed and on the crib, which Polly had brought over.

Polly hadn’t stayed—she had five kids, her current batch of foster children, to fix dinner for. But she’d paused long enough to fuss over Adam and give Cindy a warm hug, drawing the younger woman against her ample bosom and patting her on the back with her large, bony, work-roughened hands.

No one could fail to feel better after a hug from Polly. Luke remembered the first time he’d felt it himself. Fourteen years old, kicked out of his last three foster homes, belligerent and secretly terrified. And there was big, soft Polly, with her unapologetically gray hair and her ever-present apron. She’d smelled like fresh-baked cookies. And though Luke had just cursed at her and told her to get the hell away from him, she’d forcibly wrapped her arms around him and whispered to him, “It’s all going to be different from now on.”

People had told him that before, but he’d never really believed it until Polly said it, her words so confident, no question in her voice or in her mind.

Luke had walked her out to her car. “Thanks, Polly. I knew you’d come through.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She’d waved away his gratitude. “Luke, are you sure you know what you’re doing? I mean, I’ll always have a soft spot for Cindy. But she broke your heart last time you gave her a chance.”

“I’m not involved with her,” Luke had said quickly. “I’m just helping her out.”

Polly had raised her eyebrows in question. “That so? You don’t have some ulterior motive? Like proving how good a husband and provider you could be?”

“Aw, Polly, come on.” But that was exactly what Cindy had accused him of not two hours earlier.

“Well, just be careful. Call if you need anything. You know I’d be pleased to babysit little Adam anytime.”

Polly had driven off in her old rattletrap station wagon, and Luke had just stood in the driveway, staring down the street at nothing in particular, wondering if Cindy’s and Polly’s suspicions about him weren’t just a little bit true.

He really hadn’t realized how bad a condition the carriage house was in. And he certainly hadn’t been the one to call Social Services and report Cindy as a bad mother—he wasn’t that overtly devious. But maybe there was some part of him that cheered at the idea of Cindy and Adam living under his roof, the surrogate family he’d never had. Maybe in the back of his mind he did believe he could convince Cindy that she’d made a mistake not marrying him in the first place.

It had been a year since Jim’s death. And hadn’t Luke planned to reignite his and Cindy’s passion once that year had passed? Never mind that Marvin Carter had fouled up his plans for a while. That scumbag was gone now. If Luke lost his chance again, if some other opportunistic jerk swooped in and plucked up Cindy now, it wouldn’t be because Luke was sitting on his thumbs.

At the very least, he was obligated to protect her from con men and scam artists while she was in this vulnerable state. And what better way to protect her than to have her living under his roof? What unscrupulous guy would dare approach her while she was living with a deputy sheriff?

All these alien thoughts were a little frightening for Luke, who’d never thought of himself as devious. But the plan that was formulating now was definitely less than aboveboard. All was fair in love and war—right?

LATER THAT EVENING, CINDY was almost out of diapers for Adam. She checked her wallet—three dollars and twenty-eight cents. She had some cloth ones and rubber pants she could use in a pinch, but she’d gotten spoiled by the disposables, which honestly were as good as the TV commercials made them out to be. All at once, she was overwhelmed with unreasonable anger, and she finally knew who to aim it at. Not herself, for being naive. Certainly not Luke, whose only sin was trying to help. And not Jim or her mother, for dying and leaving her alone. The person who deserved her anger was Marvin Carter. Because of him, Adam would probably get diaper rash.

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