First Time, Forever

He looked like a young Redford, with his corn silk and wheat colored hair, though his grayish-blue eyes held none of Redford’s boyish charm, only a hard and intimidating hint of ice and iron. His features were chiseled masculine perfection—high cheekbones, straight nose, wide mouth, firm lips, a strong chin.

He was average height, maybe five-eleven, but the breadth of his chest and shoulders had left her with the impression of strength and leashed power. He was narrow at his stomach and hip, and his long, blue jean-encased legs looked as if they’d wrapped themselves around a lot of horses. And probably quite a few other things, too.

Kathleen decided Evan Atkins was not a safe man for her to be around. Lately she had noticed that her mind wandered off in distinctly naughty directions with barely the slightest provocation. Part of being old, she was sure. Not just old, but an old spinster.

She was kidding herself. It was because of Howard announcing his intention to marry someone else. Hope quashed.

“Thank you,” she called to him, half in and half out of her car. “Is that the house? I can manage now.”

He didn’t budge.

The house was hidden behind a tall hedge. Throughout the long drive here she had been so eager to see the accommodations that came with her new job. Now she had to get past the guard at the gate. Now she wasn’t nearly as interested in that house as she had been a thousand miles ago. He had a kind of energy about him that made everything else seem to fade into the distance, uninteresting and unimportant.

“Three days is too long to drive,” she muttered to herself.

“Auntie Kathy, you’re getting old,” Mac informed her, an unfortunate confirmation of her own thoughts. “You’re talking to yourself.” He glanced at the man standing at the gate, wriggled deeper into his seat in the car and turned a page of his comic book.

She made herself get all the way out of the car, and walk toward Evan.

“Really,” she said, “Thank you. You don’t have to—”

He held open the gate for her. The opening was far too narrow to get by him. She practically touched him. She caught a whiff of something headier than the lilacs blooming in wild profusion around the yard.

“I’m sorry about your truck,” she said, nervously. “Mac decided he was going to hate it here the minute I told him we were moving. I think he can get himself run out of town on a rail.”

“I guess if this town could survive me as a twelve-year-old, it’ll survive him.”

She realized she liked his voice, deep and faintly drawling, and something else.

“How did you know? Twelve?”

“Just a guess. Where are you coming from, ma’am?”

She realized what the “something else” was in his voice. It was just plain sexy. The way he said ma’am, soft and dragged out at the end, made her tingle down to her toes. She snuck a glance at him. It occurred to her he was younger than she. That should have made his raw masculine potency less threatening, somehow, but it didn’t.

“Vancouver,” she said. “We’re relocating from Vancouver.”

“That’s one hell of a relocate.”

“Yes, I know.” Though he didn’t ask, she felt, absurdly, that she had to defend herself. “The ad for the position at the Outpost said this was a great place to raise a family.”

He snorted at that.

“Isn’t it?” she asked, desperately.

“Ma’am, I’m the wrong person to ask about families.”

“Oh.” She snuck a glance over his broad shoulder at the house, and tried not to feel disappointed. It was very old, the whole thing covered in dreadful gray asphalt shingles. The porch looked droopy.

Feeling as if she was trying to convince herself she had not made a horrible mistake, she said, “Vancouver is starting to have incidents with gangs. There are problems in the schools. Children as young as Mac are becoming involved in alcohol and drugs.”

Of course she was not going to tell him the whole truth, her life story. That her boss, Howard, whom she’d once been engaged to, was going to marry someone else.

A little smile twisted his lips. “You don’t say?”

She bristled. “You’re not suggesting my nephew might be involved in such things just because of that incident with your truck, are you?”

“No, ma’am. I don’t know the first thing about your nephew, except he seems to have a talent for spelling. But I know I wasn’t much older than that when I first sampled a little home brew, right here in Hopkins Gulch.”

She stared at him, aghast.

“Kids as wild as I was find trouble no matter where they are,” he said, apparently by way of reassurance.

“And are you still wild, Mr. Atkins?” she asked. Too late, she realized she sounded as prissy as an old maid librarian.

He seemed to contemplate that for a moment, his eyes intent on her. “Life has tamed me some.”

There was something vaguely haunted in the way he said that, something that made him seem altogether too intriguing, as if the steel and ice in his eyes had been earned the hard way.

She reminded herself, sternly, that she was completely unavailable to solve the puzzle of mysterious men, no matter how compelling they might be. She had a boy to raise. When her sister had died, Kathleen had vowed she would give that job her whole heart and soul. Howard had broken their engagement over her decision, and after that she had decided that Mac didn’t need the emotional upheaval that seemed to be part and parcel of relationships.

It really wasn’t until Howard had announced his engagement a month ago at the office that she had realized she had held the hope that he would change his mind, or maybe even that he was waiting for Mac to grow up, that later would be their turn.

What had she thought? That he would wait until she was really old? And probably saggy, too?

Like this old house. She forced herself to look away from Atkins, to take note of the yard that was now hers. Behind it, through a hedge of more lilac, Kathleen could see the prairie, huge, undulating, without a tree or a shrub or a flower for as far as the eye could see. The yard itself was ringed with blooming lilac bushes. The flower beds had been long neglected and the grass was too high, but the yard was large and private and she could tell just a little bit of tender loving care could make it lovely. There was the garden space, at the side of the house. She took a deep breath of the lilac-scented air.

“What is that smell?” Mac asked, catapulting through the gate.

“Lilacs,” Kathleen told him.

“I think I’m allergic.”

“Mrs. Watkins told me there’s a pasture right on the other side of the hedge if you happen to decide you want a pony,” Kathleen said, hoping to find one thing he could like and look forward to.

“A pony?” he said, giving her a slightly distressed look, as if she had landed on earth after being hatched on a distant planet. “Is that, like, a brand of skateboard?”

She saw Evan duck his head, but not before she saw the quick grin. It changed his face, completely. Completely. He had beautiful teeth and deep dimples. He could look very boyishly attractive, after all.

“A pony,” she snapped. “Like a horse.”

“I’m allergic to horses, too,” Mac decided, and then added, sending Evan a sidelong look, “And also manure.”

Evan ignored him. “I’ll just take a quick look inside the house for you.”

“Why?”

“It’s been empty a spell, I think. You never know what might have taken up residence.”

She stared at him in horror. “Such as?”

“You never know,” he repeated, deliberately unforthcoming.

“Like a homeless tramp?” she asked unsteadily.

“No,” he said, his mouth quirking reluctantly upward at one corner. “Hopkins Gulch doesn’t have any homeless tramp problems.”

“Mice?” she pressed.

“Well, I was thinking of, uh, skunks, but sure, mice.”

She scanned his face, suspecting he wasn’t telling her the full truth.

“I’ll bet that place is full of mice,” Mac said, sensing a weakness. “I’ll bet they’ll be running over our faces at night when we try to sleep. I’ll bet we’ll find little paw prints in the butter. I’ll bet there are dinky round holes in the baseboards, just like in the cartoons. I’ll bet the only thing that keeps the mice under control are the skunks. I’ll bet—”

“I’d say that’s enough bets,” Evan said quietly, glancing at her face.

Mac looked mutinous. “It’s a very old house. Probably even older than you, Auntie Kathy.”

She felt Evan’s gaze on her face, again, but he made no comment on her age in relation to the house.

Mac flopped down on the grass, rolled his eyes, grabbed his throat and began gagging. Whether it was in reaction to the lilacs or the house she decided it would be wise not to ask. Following Evan’s lead, she ignored Mac who was now writhing dramatically, and went up the creaking steps.

The door swung open, and her first impression was one of gloom. Fighting not to show her disappointment, she followed Evan through the empty house. He was wearing a chambray shirt and faded jeans. This back view showed off the broadness of his shoulders to breathtaking advantage. The jeans were soft with wear and hugged the taut line of his backside and the firm muscle of his leg. He made all the rooms seem too small. He’d brought that smell right in with him—clean skin, faint aftershave, man-smell.

He opened the closets and looked through the cupboards. She didn’t follow him into the basement, but he came back up the stairs, and proclaimed her new home varmint free.

Mac, obviously disappointed that his lilac-induced collapse on the front lawn had failed to convince anyone of his distress, came through the door, a sour expression on his face.

“What a dump,” he proclaimed. “This whole town is like the dumpiest dump that I’ve ever seen and I hate it here.”

Evan ignored him. “Ma’am, do you need a hand with your things?”

This was offered only politely.

“No, thanks,” she said proudly.

She wanted the man out of her house. So she could concentrate. So that she could deal with Mac, figure out what had to be done to make the place livable, and then shut herself in the bathroom and cry.

Chapter Two

“Thank you for giving it a fair chance,” she said icily to Mac, after Evan had left. “I cannot believe you behaved like that. Broke Mr. Atkins’s antenna off his truck, wrote that word. What on earth has gotten into you?”

Mac looked at his toe, clad in expensive sneakers that he had to have, and that seemed to have brought him joy and contentment for exactly ten seconds, and then shoved his hands deep into his pockets before he shot her a look loaded with defiance. “I hate it here, that’s why. I want to go home.”

“This is going to be home,” Kathleen said with determination. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom in the room, and she noticed the floors were old gray linoleum, peeling back in places, the walls needed paint desperately, there were spiderwebs in the corners. She went over and tugged at a blind. It rolled up with a snap, and the sunlight poured into the empty room, but did nothing to improve it. This was going to be home? She thought of her and Mac’s cozy little apartment in Vancouver and felt heartsick.

“You won’t believe how rotten I can be,” Mac warned her.

She let none of her own doubts show. She said calmly, “Then you will just have to get very good at shoveling manure. I’ll bet there is no shortage of that around here.”

“Well, you got that right,” Mac said heatedly. “How could you do this to me? You’ve ruined my whole life. Me. Mac Miles in Poop Gulch, Saskatchewan.” Only he didn’t say poop.

“The first thing I’m going to do at work tomorrow is find out about that soap,” Kathleen said.

“And what am I supposed to do while you’re at work?”

“You already sorted that out, Mac. You’ll be shoveling manure.” Only she didn’t say manure, either.

He stared at her, obviously stunned that his aunt would use that word. He changed directions swiftly. “I suppose you thought that guy was good-looking.”

And for the briefest moment, she saw the little boy in him, and saw how scared he was. He was sad and scared and he was too anxious to be a man to say so.

“Oh, Mac, come here.”

He came, and even allowed her to put her arms around him and she found herself saying, “Everything will be fine.” With him snuggled against her, those words felt true, and it actually did feel as if it could be home here.

Mac tolerated her embrace for three seconds or so, then pulled away and walked down the narrow hall. “I guess I’ll have this room,” he said after a minute. “Auntie Kathy, you never answered me. Did you think that dust hopper was good-looking?”

“Dust hopper?”

“The goof with the truck.”

She didn’t answer, appalled by this creature who was her nephew.

“I thought he was real ugly,” Mac said. “Real. And way too young for you. Way.” He slammed his bedroom door.

She thought of him sitting in that empty room, nursing his own bad humor, and sighed. She looked around again at her homely house, and went into the bathroom. More aging linoleum. She thought of Evan Atkins being way too young for her, and him not even commenting, when he’d been given the opportunity, that the house was obviously years older than she was.

Howard’s new fiancée was young, blond, perky.

You broke up with him five years ago, Kathleen reminded herself savagely. You’re over it. She barely locked the door before the tears started to fall.

It had been a stupid thing to do, to take a job in a place she had never heard of. Stupid, stupid. Stupid. When she’d been hired sight unseen, when that letter had arrived, she’d actually thought, naively, whimsically, that it had been heaven sent. She had told herself this was her chance to start anew. To be somebody new. Somebody who worried less and laughed more. Who did daring and bold things—like moved to a town they had never heard of.

Kathleen allowed herself to snivel for ten minutes, and then came out, knocked firmly on Mac’s bedroom door and told him they had a great deal of work to do to make this house into their home.

Stupid or not, they were here, and she had to make the best of it.

She unlocked the U-haul and after some rummaging handed Mac a broom. When he rolled his eyes, she said, “Be thankful it’s not a shovel.”

“I don’t like this house,” Mac said.

“It didn’t live up to my expectations, either,” she admitted, “but I can make it clean, and in time it’ll be cute, too.”

“Oh, cute.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Did you think he was? Cute?”

“No,” she said, “not at all.”

Her response was completely honest. Evan Atkins cute? It would be like calling a grizzly bear adorable. Howard had been cute with his big brown eyes, his curly hair, his little potbelly.

Mac was clearly relieved with her answer.

She spent the rest of the day feverishly cleaning the little house from top to bottom, scrubbing walls and floors and appliances. Mac was surprisingly helpful, but only until his boom box came out of the trailer. By nightfall, Kathleen had only the energy left to move in two mattresses and a box of bedding.

“You don’t have to get up with me in the morning,” Mac told her. “You look really tired.” When she got up in the morning, he was gone, but he had found the coffeepot and made coffee for her. Just when she was about to lose hope in him, he would win her back by doing something sweet and thoughtful like that.

She walked the three blocks to work, noting they comprised most of the town. She spent the day at the Outpost, learning the inventory, which was extensive, and prices, and how to use the archaic cash register.

She was amazed by the number of people who came through the store, until Ma told her they were coming from miles around to check her out. She was asked on six dates before noon! It did wonders for her flagging spirits, even if she did say no to all of them.

At four she headed home, exhausted, knowing she had that U-haul to unload. Still, she had all the ingredients for Mac’s favorite spaghetti supper, and couldn’t wait to fill up that little house with the good smells of garlic and tomatoes and pasta.

But by five o’clock Mac still wasn’t home.

She scanned the road yet again. She thought she had heard a truck, but it proved to be a large farm vehicle.

Mac had left at five this morning. Twelve hours? Didn’t that seem a little long to work a twelve-year-old?

It occurred to her he might have been in an accident.

She laughed nervously at that. It would be the worst of ironies if she moved from busy Vancouver to sleepy Saskatchewan, mostly for Mac’s sake, only to have him maimed or killed in an accident.

Of course, she had never actually seen Evan pick him up. What if he had gone to the highway and hitchhiked away? What if even now—

Stop, she ordered herself. This was what her book on positive thinking said she must not do, think in negatives, create whole scenes and scenarios. The book, she recalled, instructed her to try to turn her negative thoughts around, to think now, of something positive.

She tried to picture Mac having a wonderful day. She pictured him on a farm. She pictured him chasing through tall grass after a butterfly, having just the kind of day she had pictured when she’d applied for this job.

She went back and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Why had she made so much?

Kathleen Miles, you are not inviting that man in for dinner.

Just then she heard a truck pull up. She set down the spoon in such a hurry it splattered sauce on her white blouse. She ran to the front window.

The right truck. She went out of the house and onto the porch.

Mac got out of it and slammed the door. He marched up the walk, his back straight, his clothes absolutely filthy, a pungent aroma following him.

She glanced anxiously at his running shoes.

Clean.

“How was it?” she asked him.

“How do you think?” he snapped.

“Oh.”

“Hey, none-of-your-business.” Evan Atkins had gotten out of his truck and was coming down the walk toward them.

Mac turned and glared at him.

“Same time, same place,” Evan said.

Mac gave him a dirty look and when it didn’t phase Evan, he gave it to her instead. Then he muttered a word she couldn’t quite make out and the porch door slammed shut behind him.

Evan Atkins continued down the walk toward her.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and suddenly felt very aware of the little splotch of spaghetti sauce on the front of her. She wasn’t going to let him see that she felt vulnerable!

He walked with the easy assurance of a man completely comfortable within his own body, a man sure of himself. His self-certainty annoyed her even more in the face of her own lack of it.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him none-of-your-business,” she said, far more sharply than she intended, sounding exactly like the aging spinster she was. “His name is Mac.”

“Actually, I know that. I’m just waiting for the invitation to come from him.”

His voice was low and calm, a faint thread of amusement running through it, though he wasn’t smiling. Did he find her amusing? Probably that spaghetti splotch. He stopped, rested one foot on her bottom step and looked up at her.

“Where on earth have you been?” Her voice was still sharper than she intended, but definitely the tone of a woman who planned to be taken seriously.

His eyes widened. “Ma’am?”

His eyes were dark ocean-blue, with flecks of the most intriguing gray.

“He left at five-thirty this morning!”

“My place is a good half hour drive from here, ma’am. That’s an hour round trip. I had a lot of work to do today. I couldn’t just stop everything to drive him back into town when he thought he’d had enough. Which was about five minutes after he started.”

“Twelve hours is a long time for a little boy to work.”

“He’s not that little. Besides, we stopped for lunch.”

“I don’t even think it’s legal to work a man that long!”

“Well, ma’am,” he said, a bit of a fire lighting in those cool ocean eyes, “if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t even make a dent in that anger he’s carrying around.”

“Mac is not angry!” She had no idea why she said that, when it was so pathetically obvious he was.

“Scratching that particular word in the side of a person’s truck can’t exactly be interpreted as ‘I come in peace.’”

“I don’t think he better work for you tomorrow.”

“Now, ma’am, it’s really none of my business, but I think that would be a mistake.”

“Really?” she said haughtily.

“I don’t think you want to be teaching that boy that he can behave any old way he likes, and that there won’t be any consequences for it. Mama Bear will bail him out.”

He was right, and they both knew it.

Still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying, “And you’re an expert on raising children, are you?”

She was sorry the minute she said it, knowing she was taking out all her anxiety about her move and Mac on him, and that he didn’t deserve it. Besides, as soon as she said it, in his eyes she caught a glimpse of a pain that was as raw as an open wound.

But his voice was steady, and completely unflappable. He answered slowly, measuring his words. “No, I’m sure not that. It just seems to me if you bail him out now, you’ll be bailing him out in quite a different way in the future.”

She took a deep breath, realized she was being both cranky and unfair and that he was right and she was wrong. She was completely unable to admit that. “I was worried about him. I was worried when he was gone so long.”

It was Evan’s look of genuine distress that soothed some of the irritation she had been feeling.

“I didn’t mean to cause you worry. I guess I should have called.” He smiled, shook his head and said, “I feel like I’ve said those words a few times before in my life.”

She just bet he had. Those charming dimples had probably won the hearts of hundreds of women who had waited by their phones with bated breath for his call. That never came. She planned never to be one of them. Never. That was one very good reason she couldn’t invite him to share spaghetti with them.

“I guess I thought I’d keep him out of your hair while you were at work,” he said.

He’d been doing her a favor, or thought he was, and she was giving him a hard time about it?

“He’s not such a bad kid,” she said defensively, and then realized, suddenly, how ridiculous she must seem—a mother bear protecting her cub, just as he had said.

“Ma’am, I can see that.”

“You can?”

His smile deepened and she was now certain she did not like his smile. It made him, in an instant, in to one of those men who can have anything. Anything. Had she really cooked that dinner just for Mac? Was she feeling prickly as a pear because her nerves were leaping with awareness of this attractive stranger resting his boot-clad foot on her front step?

“In the odd moment. I had him bring the mix out to my calves. I wish you could have seen the look on his face.”

“I wish I could have seen that, too.”

“Well, maybe you will one time.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.” But since that would mean tangling her life a little more with Evan Atkins she decided she wouldn’t. She had pinned her hopes on Howard, and he had let her down, and the hurt was terrible.

And Howard wasn’t nearly as…compelling as the young, and gorgeous Mr. Atkins. In fact, Howard suddenly seemed very blah, boring. If a blah and boring man could hurt her so much she really didn’t want to think what an exciting and passionate one could do.

“How did things go your first day on the job?”

“Oh. Fine.” What made her think he was passionate? The smoky look in his eyes? The uncomplicated sensuality of his lips?

“Everybody within a hundred miles dropped by to say howdy?”