An Unlikely Mommy

Danny nodded. “The guys who wouldn’t be right for you in the long run, the guys who are too stupid to know how to change their own oil, the guys who only have One Thing in mind.”

“You mean like Dev?” she asked wryly.

“Exactly!” Devin flashed an unrepentant smile, then grimaced. “God forbid you go out with anyone like me. If you did, we’d have to kill him. You don’t want Kaitlyn and Ashley reduced to visiting Danny in prison, do you?”

It was time Ronnie got to work on a car. Interlocking automotive systems made far more sense than her knucklehead brothers. Besides, she felt like taking something apart with her hands. But Danny calling her name in a soft voice stopped her in the doorway.

She looked over her shoulder with mild curiosity. “Yes?”

“There isn’t someone…specific you’d like to date, is there?” he asked. “Someone like, well, Jason McDeere.”

“Jason McWho?” She felt herself go white. Literally felt all the blood drain from her face in an almost audible whoosh.

Danny held her gaze. “After we had dinner at Adam’s Ribs last week, Kaitlyn mentioned that you were watching Jason.”

Darn her sister-in-law’s keen powers of observation! “I was just admiring what a good father he is to that little girl,” Ronnie mumbled.

“See?” Devin’s posture relaxed. “She was melting over the kid, not the guy. Her biological clock’s probably in countdown mode.”

She was going to clock the next person who used that phrase! Still, hard to argue without invalidating her own alibi.

“But Kaitlyn said you were looking at McDeere the way I used to look at my old Thunderbird.”

Devin shook his head. “As much as I adore your wife, Danny-boy, I think she’s off base. McDeere’s a decent sort, but a high school English teacher? Not the most manly job, reading Lord Bryan and Edgar Allen Poe to kids all day.”

“It’s Lord Byron,” Ronnie snapped. “And how is shaping the minds of today’s youth and, by extension, the future of our country, somehow inferior to selling wiper fluid? Just because he doesn’t spend his time belching or scratching or chasing skirts at Guthrie Hall like you…Jason McDeere is an intelligent, charming, good-looking man, and any woman in town would be lucky to have him.

“Really good-looking,” she added in a breathless afterthought, temporarily recalling those eyes and that smile instead of her audience: two brothers who were now gaping.

“Well, I’ll be,” Devin said. “Kaitlyn was right.”

A slow smile spread across Danny’s face. “Ronnie’s in l-o-o-o-ve.”

“We may have to screen him,” Devin said thoughtfully.

“You stay away from Jason McDeere or I will bludgeon you unconscious with a crescent wrench!” On the heels of that threat, Ronnie spun around and headed for the repair bays.

Her interfering, overprotective brothers knew about her attraction to Jason. What were the odds that they wouldn’t mention it to her equally overprotective father? Ronnie groaned, inhaling the scent of gasoline and industrial cleaners. Was it too late to fake her own death, skip out of town and start a new life far from Joyous?

Preferably, a life without siblings.

Chapter Three

“Wiseshine, Daddy!”

Even from his nearly unconscious state, Jason was able to translate Emily’s message of rise and shine—a phrase he’d made the mistake of using sometime in the past. Because she liked the sound of it, his nearly three-year-old daughter used it frequently, whether it was technically appropriate or not. It would be more appropriate now, for instance, if the sun were actually up.

He cracked one eye open. “Morning, sweet pea.” The digital clock on the nightstand said that it was 6:26 a.m. His little girl hadn’t grasped the concept of sleeping in on the weekends and loved to bounce out of her toddler bed first thing Saturday.

At times like this, he really missed the retired crib, where she’d been confined to playing with her stuffed animals until at least seven. Was it wrong to keep your kid behind bars so you could get an extra half hour of sleep?

Emily was struggling to hoist herself onto the double bed that dominated what had once been Sophie McDeere’s guest room. The lavender wallpaper with its climbing vines of faded flowers had hung in here since his father was a boy.

Jason scooped his daughter up next to him and reached for the remote control nestled between the phone and the clock. While he hadn’t bothered to bring the queen bed he’d once shared with his ex-wife to Joyous, he’d brought all the electronics, like the first-class stereo system, the DVD player and the large television that sat on the rose faux-marble top of a white wooden dresser.

Stifling a yawn, he smiled at his daughter. “How about I find some cartoons?” Maybe she wouldn’t mind if he watched them from behind closed eyelids.

“’Kay.” She snuggled closer, instantly agreeable as long as she got to be in his company.

As it so often did, the fact that he was all she had weighed heavily on his shoulders. Sometimes he worried that Emily was more clingy than other kids her age, but who could blame her? Her own mother, after months of an extreme postpartum depression, had shoved a crying baby into Jason’s arms one day and walked out, never to return. More recently, “Gran-Gran” had, as Emily solemnly put it, gone to live in the sky. It was entirely possible Em would grow up with a few abandonment issues. Hell, after the way his marriage ended, he had abandonment issues.

He’d been fully aware of Isobel’s depression and escalating panic that she wasn’t cut out for motherhood, but he’d been trying his damnedest to help her through it, to solidify them as a family. He’d failed.

He refused to do so again. We’ll make it work, kiddo. I swear I’ll do everything I can to be a good father. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, breathing in the grape smell of her no-tears children’s shampoo. God, life should be like that. He should be able to protect this trusting little person curled into his side, be able to guarantee that everything would always come up smelling sweet, with limited tangles or tears.

For this morning, at least, she was coping better than him. While he spent twenty minutes worrying about all the ways he might potentially screw up as a parent, his daughter laughed—that unabashed, full-bodied sound that had taken him by surprise when she was a baby—at the antics of an animated rabbit and duck on the TV screen. Afterward, he made them a modest but healthy breakfast of cereal and strawberries.

“You get to see Zoë today,” he reminded her as he buckled her into her booster seat at the table.

The Spencers across the street had a four-year-old daughter. Emily had always loved having the older girl over or even playing in the Spencers’ yard when Jason stayed in view. It was only in the past couple of weeks that she’d consented to being in Mrs. Spencer’s care without Jason there; even then, he kept his cell phone within reach in case Em suddenly and vehemently changed her mind, the way children her age could. While people often referenced the “terrible twos,” he’d only seen real tantrums from Emily in the past month, and Wanda Spencer agreed that the worst trouble she ever had with Zoë was the transition from two to about four months after she turned three. Emily’s third birthday would fall just after Easter this year.

Today, Wanda was taking the two girls to see a new G-rated movie at King Cinema that was garnering rave reviews from parents. The outing would give Jason a chance to run by the hardware store and pick up his latest batch of supplies. Though he knew more about elements of myth than he did wiring ceiling fans, modernizing this house meant something special to him. His dad had been in the military, and the family had relocated from base to base throughout Jason’s childhood with Gran’s place serving as a touchstone, a nostalgic constant. During the winter they’d lived in Alaska, Jason’s mom had vowed that while she’d dutifully follow her husband all over the world during his career, once he retired, they were moving somewhere very, very warm. They now resided in Phoenix. With her only child out west and her husband passing away several years ago, Sophie McDeere hadn’t had much help keeping up with repairs on this place.

Until he’d returned to his lifelong refuge during the divorce proceedings, Jason hadn’t realized how much the house had suffered from neglect. He’d made it his unspoken mission to respectfully refurbish Gran’s place and, in the process, build a wonderful home for Emily. Of course, while he was learning as much as he could through various instruction manuals and painstaking trial, he didn’t have a knack for design. If he let Emily have input, she’d probably insist on pink for everything from the sofa cushions to the carpet. There were some projects that needed…more of a woman’s touch.

Sighing, he loaded their breakfast dishes into the washer, thinking about the magazine-perfect house he’d left behind. Isobel, always flawlessly put together, had had a natural talent for design. While pregnant, she’d decorated a baby nursery that looked like something out of a fairy tale. But no amount of unicorn switch plates or fanciful wall murals could make up for what Emily had lost.

Pushing aside thoughts of the past and his occasional demons of self-doubt, he helped his daughter get dressed and read her a few of her favorite picture books. Though he was unquestionably biased, he thought she had a great vocabulary for her age, which he attributed to the stories they shared. Afterward, they played in the yard until it was time to walk her over to the Spencers’.

He took Emily’s hand as they climbed the four steps to the spacious front porch, where one of Zoë’s dolls sat in the glider-swing. “Are you excited about the movie, sweet pea?”

She nodded and said something about princesses, which he understood was a major selling point to the female preschool demographic. Emily was rarely without the tiara that had been part of the Halloween costume Gran put together for her. But despite his daughter’s eagerness for the princess film, he noticed her glance nervously his way when Wanda Spencer opened the screen door. Would Em fuss when he left? During the week when he went to work, she stayed home with a mother of two who had her days free while her own sons were in school. Emily still cried about half the time when he left, and it continued to break his heart. He’d hoped she’d be better adjusted to her daytime caregiver, Miss Nina, by now.

Wanda Spencer had plenty of experience with little girls, however. She bent down to Emily’s level, overlooking the girl’s wide green eyes and trembling bottom lip. “Hey there. Zoë and I were just talking about how we couldn’t wait for you to come over. She wants to show you a special bubble-blowing toy she got. We have plenty of time to play out back before our movie. Want to see?”

After a brief hesitation, Emily nodded, managing a smile when Zoë appeared in the doorway behind her mom.

As he watched the two little girls greet each other, Jason couldn’t help making visual comparisons. Emily’s dark hair was sliding out of the ponytail he’d attempted, and there was a sticky spot of strawberry residue he’d missed on her chin. Her clothes were clean, but her favorite green T-shirt, scuffed sneakers and purple skirt, worn over pull-up training pants, didn’t quite have the panache of Zoë’s pink-and-white shirt underneath pink overalls. She’d accessorized with pink-sparkle tennis shoes and ribbons at the end of two fancy braids. French braids? Braided pigtails? They reminded him of Dorothy’s hair at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. Did mothers take some sort of special class to learn how to do stuff like that? Plaiting 101. Every time he picked up the small lavender brush to fix Em’s hair, he was all thumbs.

“She’ll be fine,” Wanda Spencer said, misreading his expression. “You go ahead, and we’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Thanks.” He hugged Emily in farewell and turned to Zoë’s mother. “Really, thank you.”

The people in Joyous were nosy and interfering, no doubt about it, but they were also generous of spirit and especially quick to help those they considered part of the fold. He knew that in a town this size, you could go a long while and still be thought of as an outsider, but Sophie had been well loved and locals had automatically extended that affection to him. He should try harder to remember this feeling of warm gratitude the next time someone was telling him about a woman he just had to meet.

“You’re welcome.” Wanda touched his arm, briefly, companionably. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be to go it alone. Zoë’s a good kid, but if I didn’t have Brad to help me…Well, I hope you and Emily know we’re here for whatever you need.”

As he walked back across the street, he found himself hoping that Wanda didn’t regret the open-ended offer of assistance. It was already becoming clear he’d have a lot of questions to deal with. Now that he was working with Emily on the concept of potty training and she was old enough to start voicing questions, he was increasingly aware of situations that he, as someone of the opposite gender, didn’t feel equipped to handle.

Recalling Principal Schonrock’s entreaties to bring a date to the Spring Fling, Jason made a face. He needed a woman, all right—not for some school dance, but someone who could braid hair and tackle delicate scenarios with a light touch. Emily was growing so fast that, before he knew it, she’d be a young woman getting her first—

Sheer panic filled him, so he squelched the thought immediately. Toddlerhood was terrifying enough; he didn’t even want to contemplate puberty. One day at a time. It wasn’t the most original or inspiring motto, but it had brought him this far. Whatever life threw at him next, he’d handle.

His daughter was counting on him.

SINCE SHE WASN’T SCHEDULED to work this particular Saturday, Ronnie had planned to use today to pack. Yet it had taken depressingly little time to box up her belongings.

Her father had shocked her that morning when he’d suggested she take the dining room table and china cabinet with her. “Your mama would’ve wanted to you to have them.”

“Oh, I can’t!” She’d glanced around the room, appalled by the thought of a big empty space. “I appreciate the thought, Daddy, but my place is too small. Besides, where would everyone sit at Thanksgiving and Easter and plain ol’ family dinners?”

Speaking of this evening’s looming supper…Her brothers had been suspiciously silent on the subject of Jason McDeere since teasing her at the beginning of the week. Lulling you into a false sense of security, no doubt. Heckling was a Carter family tradition, and she wondered what might be said later. Especially since insightful Kaitlyn, who had first clued Danny in about Ronnie’s unspoken feelings, would be present. Ronnie still couldn’t believe her sister-in-law had said anything without first broaching the subject with Ronnie herself. Sharing thoughts with a spouse must trump gal-pal confidences.

At any rate, there wasn’t much left to pack that she wouldn’t need between now and the move, so Ronnie decided to get out of the house for a few hours. Cranking up an old Bon Jovi CD she’d found while emptying out her desk, she drove to the town’s main hardware supply store. She wanted to start thinking about the specific changes she planned to make, putting together a list of priorities and a preliminary budget.

Once inside the spacious warehouse, she grabbed a cart. Armed with a notepad of scribbled measurements and a calculator, she began at the far left, intending to make her way systematically across the aisles. She was only four rows in, however, when she halted. Her breath caught in her throat.

Jason McDeere.

He was standing in front of a section of white plastic strips dotted in colorful squares representing paint shades. Apparently he was interested in one of the color schemes on a lower shelf, because he’d bent over for a closer look. She couldn’t help but notice the way the denim of his jeans—

“Veronica.” He straightened, giving her a smile that was just a touch self-conscious.

“Hello.” Too formal. “Hi.” Yeah, that was better. “Hi.” Except that now she’d greeted him three times and was probably coming off as manic. On the plus side, anything she said from here on out was bound to be an improvement as long as she didn’t say it in triplicate. “How’s it going?”

“Okay, I guess.” He ran a hand through that thick hair—light brown with touches of burnished gold. “I consider myself an educated man, but hell if I can tell you the difference between ‘apricot’ and ‘tangerine.’ Or ‘cranberry’ and ‘pomegranate.’”

She laughed, a combination of nerves and genuine amusement. “Are you wanting to paint something, or make a fruit salad?”

“Exactly!” Moving closer, he extended a strip with various shades of green. “Kiwi? Honeydew? They can’t just call it yellow-green?”

“Maybe they thought they could charge more for honeydew.”

He nodded, studying the selection in front of him with befuddled exasperation. “I always thought choice was a good thing, but this is overwhelming. Where do I start? Now I know how my students feel when I tell them to pick a topic for their research paper each semester.”

“You could try flipping a coin. It’s what my brother Dev would do.” But she was secretly pleased that Jason approached decisions more thoughtfully.

“Better yet, I could get a second opinion. Help a guy out, Veronica?”

Something rippled through her, a foreign intimacy at hearing her name again from his lips. “Actually, it’s just Ronnie. Hardly anyone’s called me Veronica since my mom died.”

“Ronnie, then.” After a moment, he asked gently, “Do you still miss her?”

“Some days more than others.” Was he thinking of his grandmother? “Have I ever told you how sorry I was for your loss? Sophie was a lovely person.”

He smiled. “She was, wasn’t she? I like to think she’s with Grandpa Bert now. I don’t think she ever truly got over him.”

Ronnie thought back to the photo of her mom in her dad’s office. “Some people really do find that once-in-a-lifetime true love, don’t they?”

This time, his smile was tinged with the barest hint of bitterness. “I might be the wrong person to ask.”

Stupid, she chided herself. In light of his divorce, her babbling was probably insensitive. “So, um, paint samples?” Smooth segue. Yeah, it’s a real mystery why you never date.

He glanced down at the stick in his hand as if he’d forgotten he held it. “Right. I’ve been putting off drastic changes to Gran’s house because it seemed somehow disrespectful to her memory, but I can’t ignore the needed repairs. There’s one section of the roof I should reinforce so we don’t end up with a leak, and the whole place could use some updating. My bedroom definitely needs a change.”

Mine, too. It needs a man in it. Ronnie blinked, as horrified by the uncensored thought as if she’d said it aloud. She tried to squelch the idea, but when she glanced into Jason’s eyes her nebulous fantasies took on new clarity. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cursed her redhead’s fair complexion so thoroughly. He’d have to be blind not to notice she was blushing. There was a question in his eyes, but he didn’t voice it.

Doing her best to sound nonchalant, she asked, “Then you’re planning to paint your room?”

“Probably. The wallpaper that’s in there now has got to go. No offense to Gran’s taste, but I’m not really a roses kind of guy.”

She smiled. “When I was seven, my mother painted my room pink, hung frilly white curtains and got lacy pillow covers for my bed.”

“Sounds like my daughter’s idea of heaven,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I coveted the monster truck decor in Will’s room. So I empathize on not loving the roses.” It occurred to her that as lone occupant of her new house, she could fix up the entire place in a monster-truck motif. She chuckled at the image.

Jason raised an eyebrow. “What’s funny?”

“It’s silly.”

“Try me. I have a two-year-old, I’m fluent in silly.”

“I’m buying my first house this week,” she said. Just saying it out loud sent joy glowing through her. “I suddenly pictured all the rooms done in that truck theme I wanted when I was a kid.”

He grinned. “I’m starting to think maybe I shouldn’t ask your decorating advice.”

“Definitely not. I’m doing well just to pick out clothes each morning that don’t actively clash.”

“Looks like you do okay.” As he spoke, his eyes swept downward in automatic observation. Yet long before he’d reached her navy shirt and white shorts, his gaze slowed, became something less casual and more reflective.

Her skin tingled in the wake of his visual caress. She was unused to prolonged perusal from a man, was even less accustomed to the elemental admiration she saw dawning in those indescribable eyes. Her heart sped up in her chest, and she wondered if he could make out the rapid flutters beneath the thin cotton.

She swallowed. “Thank you.” It should have been a simple acknowledgment of a perfunctory compliment, but it was something more than that, husky and personal.

His eyes returned to hers, the expression in them dazed. A thrill of heady, feminine power shot through her—she’d put that look on Jason McDeere’s face. It was surreal, so unexpected that she found herself emboldened enough to blurt, “Would you like to go have lunch with me?”

He hesitated, and she felt sure he would say no. After all, he’d just finished telling her how much work he had to do revamping his—

“I’d love to.” His smile was boyish. “I’m as bad as my students. I always tell them not to procrastinate, but when faced with the prospect of slogging through more paint samples or a meal with a pretty girl…Well, it’s a no-brainer. You’ve rescued me from a kiwi-pomegranate-tangerine meltdown.”

In turn, he’d rescued her from going to bed tonight with the heavy feeling that she’d let one more day pass her by, full of quiet longings and missed opportunities.

Chapter Four

They crossed the parking lot toward Jason’s car, a small four-door that got good mileage and consistently high consumer ratings, and he asked Ronnie if she had a specific restaurant in mind.

Hardly—she was making this up as she went along. “Have you tried out the new one a couple of streets over, near the drugstore?”

The establishment had changed management multiple times, trying to find its place in the culinary community. It had briefly been a barbecue joint (put out of business by the superior Adam’s Ribs), a pizzeria, an Irish pub and—for about a week and a half—a sushi bar. Turned out, the citizens of this particular Tennessee town weren’t clamoring for sashimi and unagi. Ronnie kind of missed the wasabi, though.

He opened the passenger door for her. “I haven’t been there yet, but I’m game if you are.”

“I have no idea what kind of menu to expect. How do you feel about surprises?”

His grin was wry. “Some are more welcome than others.”

As soon as they walked into the restaurant, Jason indicated a framed oil painting of a dark-haired woman in a white cotton dress, which hung next to a sequined black velvet mariachi sombrero. “I’ll go out on a limb and guess they serve Mexican.”

A blonde with a bright smile met them, two laminated menus tucked against her chest. “Welcome to Tennessee Tacos, y’all.” Her hair had been pulled back in a sleek topknot, a large silk flower pinned to the side, and she was dressed much like the woman in the painting.

Tennessee Tacos? Ronnie followed the hostess to an orange booth, sending a silent prayer heavenward that this wouldn’t turn out to be a disaster.

There were actually quite a few patrons inside, although it was always difficult here to tell whether crowds were pulled in by great food or morbid curiosity. However, after her first bite of complimentary salsa—which cleared her sinuses and made her eyes water—Ronnie decided this place got her stamp of approval.

Yow. She grabbed the glass in front of her.