Falling for a Father of Four

Mattie, meanwhile, smoothly took control. Calling Chaz forward with a crooking finger, she put Candy Sue on her feet and motioned for him to take the two younger girls out as his father had instructed. Casting curious glances in his father’s direction, Chaz silently complied, herding the girls ahead of him. When Orren turned back around, Mattie was sitting alone at the table, her hands folded in her lap. He shot a surprised look around the room, frowned, and leaned forward to place both hands flat on the table.

“How old are you?” he asked bluntly, determined to maintain control this time.

Mattie smiled serenely. “Nineteen, the same age you were when you made Chaz.”

Orren’s frown deepened. “Nineteen’s young to watch over four kids—and to be so damned direct!”

Her smile never faltered. “I’ll be twenty soon, if it really makes any difference. And it’s true, isn’t it? You were just nineteen when Chaz’s mother was expecting him.”

He couldn’t deny it, so instead he got defensive about it. “Girl, you’ve got some brass!” She ignored him, craning her neck to get a good look around, though what there was to look at, he couldn’t guess.

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

Her gaze was completely undisturbed. “Your wife.”

He felt like he’d been coldcocked. “I don’t have one!”

She looked askance at that. “Those children didn’t spring out of the ground.”

Orren threw up his arms. “She ran away with a rodeo bum! Anything else you want to know?”

She shook her head, but whether in answer to his sarcastic question or in response to his ill-natured revelation, he didn’t know. She looked him squarely in the eye and said, “I can start right away.”

Defeated, he plopped down in the chair he’d vacated earlier and sighed. “I bet you lead your daddy a merry chase.”

Mattie nodded unrepentantly. “He thinks I’m still twelve, which is how old I was when my mother died.”

Orren put his head in his hands. “I don’t know whether to slit my throat now or hold out a few years in hopes my own girls will run off with circus performers.”

“You don’t mean that,” Mattie told him, as if he didn’t already know it.

He dropped his hands and gave her a hard look. “Does your father know you’re here?”

“Of course.”

“How do you suppose he’ll feel about you working for a single man my age?”

She shrugged. “Hard to tell. He might assume you’re too old to be attractive to me.”

He couldn’t believe he’d heard that right. “What?”

She ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken and went on. “Or he might assume you’re too old to be attracted to me. Either way, I’ll be too young in his mind. But, it’s a baby-sitting job, and he’ll think that’s appropriate, so it shouldn’t be any problem, really. If he hedges, I’ll enlist my stepmother’s aid. She’s never had children so she doesn’t have these parental hang-ups. And if he outright forbids it, we’ll have a screaming fight. Then I’ll take the job anyway, because it’s what I want, and I am, after all, over eighteen. I have two years of college, by the way.”

Orren just stared at her for a second. “I think I will cut my throat.”

She got up from the table and said, “Can I look around?”

“No!”

She threw out a slender hip and propped her hand on it. Yes, indeed, she was over eighteen. But she was still a baby. Especially compared to Gracie. He frowned. Now why had he done that, compared her to Grace? She folded her arms and asked baldly, “So how long has she been gone?”

He nearly hit his chin on the table. Little shocker. Well, if she wanted the dirty details, he’d give them to her. He got up and put his hands flat on the table, drilling her with his baby blues. “Two years and seven months.” He waited a beat and added, “A week and three days.”

She batted her lashes at him. “Candy Sue was just a baby.”

“An infant,” he admitted. “I had to put her on a bottle.” Let her digest that.

She was outraged. A nursing mother had abandoned her baby, not to mention three other children and a husband! Then she started looking for acceptable reasons. “She must’ve been young when you married.”

“Older than me,” he said flatly, “but that didn’t keep me from getting her pregnant. Four times.”

Miss Matilda Kincaid lifted her chin a notch. “You’re trying to embarrass me.”

“And succeeding,” he admitted, looking at the splotches of color spreading across her cheeks. “Maybe that’ll teach you not to go around asking nosy questions.”

“Is there a better way to find out what I want to know?” she retorted saucily.

He grinned. Damned if she didn’t have him there. “You ever hear that curiosity killed the cat?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s pretty obvious I’m not a cat, and it wouldn’t be very responsible of me to walk into a situation blind, would it?”

He scratched his chin at that. “Guess not. You’ve just got an awful frank way about you.”

“Yes, I do. Now, is the job mine or not?”

He shook his head, chuckling, and said the one thing guaranteed to get her dander up. “Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to your dad first, clear it with him.”

The color in her face blossomed to full red as she struggled to tamp down her temper. It took several seconds, actually, of breathing through her mouth and working her jaw, but she finally got it in hand. That hip flew out again, and she was clearly fuming, but she managed a nearly polite, “Fine.”

He went to the phone, figuring it would be dangerous for him to laugh outright. “What’s his name?”

“Evans Kincaid.”

“I want you to know I’m doing this because you said earlier that he’s a police officer, which seems a good recommendation. Are you really nineteen?”

“Yes!”

“What’s the telephone number?”

She ground it out through bared teeth, and he punched it into the telephone. The conversation was fairly short. Kincaid was obviously pleased that he’d been consulted. It marked Orren, he said, as a conscientious father himself. Orren politely but honestly explained that he was divorced and fairly desperate as he hadn’t generated much interest in the position, the hours being tricky and some housekeeping being required. Actually he was hoping for more than some housekeeping, but he wouldn’t mention that. He couldn’t exactly demand it, considering the wages he was able to pay, and he knew he had no right to expect it. Since his days off as manager of the car repair shop were Sunday and Monday, he pointed out that he would expect Mattie to work Saturday. He didn’t say that he could easily keep her busy seven days a week by taking small jobs on the side, but he was hoping Mattie would welcome the extra money as much as he did. At any rate, Kincaid made it plain that he would not approve of Mattie working Sundays, and Orren made special note of it, figuring that Kincaid was a religious man who wouldn’t take kindly to having his little girl’s ears scorched more than they already had been.

Mattie, her father promised, was great with kids and a hard worker. She knew her way around a house, too, having pretty much taken over the domestic duties after her mother died. “She’s a great little organizer,” he said proudly, “and neat as a pin.”

Orren looked around at his hastily cleared combination kitchen and living room and wondered if Mattie would last a week here in this madhouse with her penchant for order and neatness. He could only hope.

“Between you and me,” Kincaid went on, “I think, she’s felt a little displaced since I remarried. She and Amy are fast friends, but I’ve noticed that Mattie is a little restless and uncertain when she’s home from school. This might be good for her.”

“I hope so,” Orren said warmly, but privately he had his doubts. He loved his kids, but sometimes he thought he’d go stark raving mad. It was always one crisis after another around this place, and there was never enough money, what with the cost of child care and all. Sometimes he wanted to just walk out, not forever, but maybe long enough to get blind drunk on occasion. Still, he couldn’t afford that much beer, and he sure couldn’t afford the hard liquor for it, not with someone constantly outgrowing shoes or coming up with ear infections and such. He hung up the phone and turned to take the new sitter’s measure one more time.

“You heard?”

She nodded. “When do I start?”

He was surprised, really, that she still wanted to. Maybe she didn’t understand everything involved. “I work ten to seven, five and sometimes six days a week. I’ll try to get breakfast for the kids before I go, but lunch and dinner are part of your job.”

“All right.”

“I can fend for myself,” he went on, “but the kids have got to eat regular meals.”

“I understand. I don’t see any reason for you to do without, though, considering I’m going to be cooking anyway.”

That was good news. “Well, dinner, maybe,” he conceded gratefully. “I usually skip lunch, though sometimes someone will take me out.”

She shrugged. “What about the grocery shopping?”

He hedged that. “I try to do it on Mondays, but sometimes it’s Tuesday evening before I can get to it.” Or Wednesday, he thought. Or Thursday. If at all.

“I’d rather do it myself, if you’ll give me a budget,” she said. “I prefer to make out weekly menus and shop with a list. It cuts down on impulse buying and makes use of things that might otherwise go to waste. I do the shopping on Mondays, floors on Tuesday, bathrooms on Wednesday, dusting on Thursday, and laundry on Friday, though I suppose my Monday will be Tuesday, so we can push everything back a day, if you want.”

He couldn’t believe it, not coming from this small, delicate girl. He put his hands together and said in a dramatic voice, “Oh, Lord, if this is Your idea of a practical joke, I’m going to become an atheist, I swear.”

Mattie frowned. “That’s not very funny. I’m trying to tell you what you can expect from me, and if that’s not what you have in mind, well, then, the whole thing’s off.”

Orren shook his head and clapped a hand over his heart. “Miss Mattie, my love, you’ve already exceeded my expectations by far. I’d be happy as a hog in slop if you just fed my kids and kept Red from stringing up her sisters. But since you have a system you want to use, you just go right ahead. I’m tickled pink. And if it doesn’t work out quite like you have planned, well, then, we’ll just make do. That’s mostly what we do anyway. Now, I hope you’ll go before those four hellions troop back in here and scare the daylights out of you. They can, and they probably will, but I’m hoping you’ll at least get the grocery shopping done before you quit. See you in the morning at nine-thirty.” He grabbed her backpack from the back of the chair and shoved it and her toward the door.

Mattie dragged her feet, but he got her through the door before she could tell him to take his job and shove it. He didn’t get it closed, though, because she beat him to the doorknob. She glared up at him from the doorstep and said, “You are insane, you know.”

He smiled benignly. “And you’re going to join me a lot sooner than you realize.”

She rolled her eyes at that and pulled the door shut in his face. He couldn’t hold back the relief that flooded him, though he knew it was much too early to celebrate. Chances were the poor thing wouldn’t last a week, but then again, she just might. She had fortitude, that girl, and she was young enough to take the punishment. Maybe Miss Matilda Kincaid was the answer to his prayers. He hoped so. He very fiercely hoped so.

Chapter Two

Mattie carefully made no mention to her father of the utterly gorgeous Orren Ellis. She said nothing about his well-muscled six-foot frame and carefully kept her thoughts to herself concerning his finely honed, square-jawed face with its sculpted lips and gold-tipped brows. She made no comparisons with bronze and gold and platinum and his slightly curly, sun-streaked hair, which, in her opinion, could use a good cutting. Most of all, she kept secret how shocking were the electric depths of his light blue eyes, fringed lavishly with gold and bronze lashes.

She spoke instead about his four adorable children, about Chaz, the little man, and the challenging Jean Marie of the wild red hair, and golden Yancy who adored her big brother, and the picture-perfect little doll baby Candy Sue, whom everyone called Sweetums. They were bright children. They were beautiful children. They were sweet and fun and exciting and just a little needy, and she couldn’t wait to get started with them. She just didn’t expect to get started with them two hours early the next morning.

Orren was extremely apologetic and even more frantic than the day before when he called at seven in the morning to ask, to beg, her to come over early. “The mechanic on the early shift has called in sick,” he explained, “and I took yesterday off to stay with the kids and interview sitters. I have to go in to cover him. Please say you’ll come. I don’t dare leave these children here alone.”

“I’ll be there,” she said sleepily. “Give me half an hour.”

“Thank you, Mattie. Oh, thank you.”

Her father was waiting for her when she stepped out of the bathroom. “That call for you?”

“Umm-hmm, Mr. Ellis has been called in early.”

“So have you, I take it.”

“Right-o.”

“Off and running, I guess.”

“So it seems. If you don’t mind, Dad, I really need to get dressed.”

Evans nodded and moved toward the door, but he stopped, pulling the belt of his bathrobe tighter. “I’ll make some coffee.”

“That’d be great, Dad. Thanks. Uh, you wouldn’t mind filling the thermos, would you?”

“Sure. No problem.”

She smiled at him as he went out the door, wondering what he’d say if she told him that the thermos of coffee was for Orren, not herself. She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and got out her sneakers and a pair of thick socks. Something told her she was going to be on her feet a lot today. She yawned and reached for the heavy comb with which to detangle her wet hair.

Her wet hair was hanging down her back when Chaz let her in the door. Orren saw that at a glance, which was all he had time for unless he was going to work without socks. “Mattie, thank God! I’m really sorry about this.”

“I brought you something,” she said, placing the thermos on the corner of the table while he dug through the mountain of laundry he’d dumped on the couch, Sweetums clinging to his side, her grasping little hands twisting wrinkles in his pale blue uniform shirt. “It isn’t a pair of clean socks, is it?”

“Just coffee.”

He looked up at that. “Oh, you’re good. You’re very good.”

“Thanks. Need some help?”

“Could you take the baby?” he said, going back to his search. “I know I washed socks. Where are the darned socks?”

She reached for Candy Sue, but the baby was always clingy when she first woke up, and it didn’t help that the telephone had jangled her awake hours earlier than usual. She clamped on to him like a leech and shrieked in his ear when Mattie laid hands on her. A crash in the kitchen announced that Mattie’s attention was more urgently needed elsewhere.

“Uh-oh.” She turned and hurried away in that direction.

“Son,” Orren called anxiously, still pawing through the laundry. “Everything okay in there?”

Mattie stuck her head around the short partition wall and said, “A hot waffle iron is melting a hole in the floor vinyl.”

“Well, unplug it!”

“I did!”

“Blast!” Orren groaned and staggered as Jean Marie bumped into him, feeling her way along sleepily from behind a curtain of hair.

“I want doughnuts,” she said, yawning.

“Not this morning, Red,” Orren answered, giving up the search for socks. “See if you can get Sweetums to come to you.”

“Let Chaz,” Jean Marie grumbled, stumbling toward the kitchen. Yancy screamed from the back bedroom just then, offended at waking up alone, and Candy Sue promptly threw up on his shoulder.

“Aw, baby!” Orren jumped away from the mound of clean laundry and held Candy out at arm’s length. She immediately started to wail. Lord help him! “It’s okay, Sweetums. Chaz, bring the antacid! Candy Sue’s nervous stomach is acting up again.”

He placed Candy Sue in the chair and spread a towel over her in case she threw up again, then ripped his shirt off and threw it on the floor, muttering, “Only clean shirt I had!” He felt like sitting right down and bawling, but that’d make three of them, and he didn’t think he could stand it.

Mattie appeared, Chaz on one side, Jean Marie on the other. She was holding the bottle of antacid and a spoon. “Set the water glass down on the end table, Chaz,” she directed smoothly, “then take Jean Marie and go quiet Yancy.”

Chaz obediently complied. Jean Marie stuck her chin out and opened her mouth. Mattie bent down to her face level, parted the hair curtain with a fingertip and said, “Unless you don’t want me to cook breakfast.” Jean Marie whirled and stomped after her brother. Mattie straightened and thrust the bottle and spoon at Orren. “You dose the baby,” she said, “I’ll take care of the shirt. Where’s the iron and ironing board?”

He took the medicine, watching as she bent and picked up the soiled shirt, and said, “I don’t know. My bedroom, I think.”

“I’ll find it,” she said airily, carrying the shirt away from her.

Orren gratefully sat down next to the baby, spread the towel over the two of them and began the chancy process of coaxing the medication down her. Ten minutes and three attempts later, he judged that he’d gotten enough of the stuff in her to calm her stomach and began rocking her into a better mood. Shortly thereafter she dropped off in his arms. He stood, towel and all, to carry her to his own room, where she might be able to sleep undisturbed by the other children. He was surprised—and oddly disturbed—to find Matilda Kincaid bent over his bed, straightening out his sheets. She certainly looked adult from the back. She glanced over her shoulder, something very like censure on her face, but then her expression softened and she stood, turning, to smile down at the frothy-haired angel in his arms. He smiled, too, proud of the little beauty cuddled so trustingly against him.

“She’ll never be able to stay asleep in the kids’ room,” he whispered. “She sleeps most often in here.”

Mattie nodded and moved away to retrieve the clean and pressed shirt from the ironing board as he tucked the little one into his bed. She stepped out into the hallway; a second or two later, he joined her, pulling closed the bedroom door. She shook out the uniform shirt and held it up for him, her eyes roaming over his bare chest. Orren resisted the urge to turn his back, and instead dipped one hand into a sleeve hole. She carried the shirt around him and slipped the other sleeve over his arm, settling the shirt over his shoulders.

“I tried to iron it dry, but it’s still damp,” she said quietly. “At least it didn’t stain.”

Nodding, he began pushing the buttons through the buttonholes. “That’s all right. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Mattie said, presenting him a pair of matched socks from her belt. “They had dropped down between the bed and the wall.”

He clutched them gratefully. “You are a lifesaver!”

“Just part of the service.”

“Listen, I’m sorry to run off so quick. I meant to show you around, explain things, but I really don’t have the time this morning.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said cryptically. “I think I can find plenty to keep us busy today.”

He was already moving into the living area, only half listening, when he remembered the grocery shopping. He immediately turned back, whipping his wallet from his hip pocket. Emptying it of the last seventy bucks to his name, he thrust it at her apologetically, saying, “Uh, there really isn’t anything much here to eat. If you could do the shopping, I’d appreciate it, but this is all I have until the end of the week. We’ll, um, discuss a budget later.”

“What about your lunch?” she began, but he waved that off, snatched up the thermos and swung out the door. A glance at his watch told him that he just might make it—barely. These days, he reminded himself grimly, barely was the best he could hope for.

Mattie shook her head at the boards nailed over the door, the bare gypsum walls and the electrical wires hanging loose. While Candy Sue slept and the other girls watched an educational program on public television, she’d looked over the house in the helpful company of Chaz. It hadn’t taken long to get a full picture of Orren Ellis’s house, his unfinished house. Chaz had told her proudly that his daddy had built the house with his own two hands, and she could understand his pride, but the place was woefully inadequate. For one thing, the kids had been squeezed into a single small room, while this third unfinished bedroom and its badly needed second bath had accumulated debris and gathered dust. Actually, the whole house was a dustbin, not to mention a jumble of chaos. Ah, well, she’d wanted a challenge.

After a scant breakfast of buttered griddle cakes sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, which the kids wolfed down gleefully, Mattie had found a piece of paper and a pencil and made a list of the family’s favorite foods. It wasn’t a very extensive list, but it was enough from which to conceive a frugal menu for several days. She then went through the refrigerator and pantry, listing the available supplies and mechanically rearranging the shelves. Everything needed a thorough cleaning, but that would have to wait a bit. First she had a shopping list to make out, carefully estimating the cost of each item and tabulating the whole to be certain that the cost remained safely within the amount allotted.

That proved a simple task compared to getting the children properly dressed for their outing. Their clothing, both clean and dirty, was scattered over the whole house, but eventually she put together outfits for each of them and, by standing over them with an implacable expression, a bar of soap and a tube of toothpaste, saw them dressed and made presentable. It took some time to persuade Jean Marie to brush her hair, but by promising that each of them could choose a favorite food item from the grocery store, she managed even that.

The shopping excursion was a nightmare, with Jean Marie and Yancy playing hide-and-seek in the aisles, Candy Sue begging for everything she laid eyes on, and Chaz desperately badgering, pleading and threatening his sisters while trying all the while to coax Mattie into buying the same items his father always bought. To make matters worse, Candy Sue suddenly developed a pressing need to visit the rest room, while Jean Marie flatly refused to go along. What should have taken an hour at most took more than twice that time, but finally Mattie had the groceries stowed in the trunk, the kids belted in and the little red car on the road to the Ellis house.

By making a game of putting the groceries away, Mattie managed to complete that chore relatively quickly. Then she ferreted out a ragged notebook, sharpened her pencil and set about making her plans. The first order of business, she told an anxious Chaz, was the kitchen, to which he replied, “What’s wrong with it?”

So much was wrong with it, to Mattie’s mind, that a detailed explanation would take inordinate time and effort, so she settled for pointing out that it was poorly organized and not exactly “sterile.” Jean Marie took violent exception to the slightest perceived criticism. Eyes narrowed suspiciously, she declared that the kitchen was forever kept just exactly as their mother had left it. When a gaping Chaz declared aloud that Jean Marie was “cuckoo,” she summarily bit him. Luckily, the skin wasn’t broken. Mattie marched the little hoyden straight to a corner and stood over her for an entire half hour to keep her there, while Chaz comforted Yancy, who wept loudly on his behalf.

Afterward, Jean Marie disappeared into the bedroom, barricaded the door and shouted insults at Mattie. She was mean and stupid. Her hair was an ugly black color. She was too short and had “baby hands.” Chaz helpfully explained that Jean Marie thought “big girls” had long, red fingernails like their mother’s. Once the subject of Orren’s unfaithful wife had been broached, Mattie found she couldn’t quell her curiosity without first asking just a few questions.