hope it was a good surprise.” Conor seemed to be accusing him of something. The serious look on the child’s face and his crossed arms brought Alex’s memory to the surface. It wasn’t a pleasant one, and he wished that he’d been able to leave it buried.
This was a replica of his kitchen when he was a kid, or at least one of them. His dad’s navy career had put them through at least a dozen kitchens by the time Alex had left home at sixteen.
It wasn’t the look of this kitchen that reminded him of his mother’s kitchens, but more the feel of it. Everything was spare and stark, clean but somewhat empty. The very basics were there, but very little else. No cute little canisters held tea and homemade cookies. Other than the kid art on the refrigerator gallery, there wasn’t much that added color to the room.
Alex wondered if there was a reason Holly’s kitchen reminded him of those his mother had tried to make into homes twenty years ago. He hoped there was little cause at all, other than the similarity of two harried mothers raising kids virtually alone under tight circumstances.
Conor definitely had the serious air he’d had as a child, protective of his mother. Alex had never felt as if he’d protected his own mother enough, even though he’d been a child at the time. But this mother he could help in several ways. “Come on, Conor,” he told his companion. “We’re going to make a breakfast run.”
Holly’s alarm beeped insistently, and she groped for it. Just ten more minutes of sleep would feel so good. Her eyes opened as her fingers hit the button, and in an instant she was sitting straight up, feet over the edge of the bed, ready to spring into action. It was much too light out for this to be her normal time to get up. She must have hit the snooze alarm without knowing it, maybe even several times already.
She could hear voices in the kitchen. At first hearing three voices, one of them a deep adult male, disoriented her. Then she remembered last night and all its surprises. Alex was in her kitchen with the boys. Knowing that was enough to get her up and out of bed all the way in a hurry. She pulled on sweatpants to go with the T-shirt she’d slept in and raced out to the kitchen, oblivious to what she must look like.
Holly wasn’t sure what she had expected in the kitchen, but she certainly hadn’t anticipated the breakfast party she found. “Hi, Mom.” Aidan backhanded a suspiciously dark milk mustache, grinning. “Alex got doughnuts. The good kind with sprinkles. And chocolate milk, but only a little bit.”
“What happened here?” Holly didn’t know whether to be stunned or gratified that Alex had gotten the kids breakfast. It wasn’t what she would have allowed them to have, but they’d have to deal with that issue later. There wasn’t any sense in forbidding doughnuts that had already been eaten.
Alex shrugged, sipping coffee out of a mug. “Just breakfast. Conor was up early and he informed me that you were out of coffee, so we made a quick run down the street to solve that problem. The closest place we could find to get breakfast stuff was the bakery. And I’m a sucker for doughnuts with sprinkles, too.” His smile was disarming.
Holly sat down, unsure where to begin the questions she had. “How did you get there? Conor and Aidan both have booster seats for the car. I’ll bet you let him ride up front without a seat, didn’t you?” She was amazed at how angry the thought made her.
“Not a chance. I may not have kids, but I know that much about safety. He rode in the back, in his own booster seat. You left your car unlocked last night when we got here, apparently.” His warning look told Holly that he wanted to discuss that subject later.
His accusation made her defensive. “Have you really looked at that car? Who would steal a twelve-year-old sedan with that kind of rust damage?”
“Nobody, especially in a little town like this. But that wasn’t what I was talking about, and you know it.” Alex didn’t say any more, just lifted his coffee to his lips. “I got you a coffee, too, by the way. And Aidan’s right—I only got one container of chocolate milk. The gallon I bought was regular one percent. I figured I had to do something to earn points with you.”
“Thank you.” Holly got up and went toward the kitchen countertop. She wasn’t sure what she was thanking Alex for the most—getting breakfast for everyone when she didn’t have the energy, giving the boys a much-needed treat that she could not have provided or not mentioning her safety in front of her children.
“You’re welcome.” His quiet answer made Holly shiver. It was as if he’d understood all three of her reasons for thanking him. She wasn’t used to having another adult to talk to most of the time. Especially not a man, and definitely not one who understood her. She had figured she’d lost that luxury for good when Kevin died.
She hid her confusion by grabbing her cardboard cup of coffee. Opening the cabinet, she got a mug out and poured the coffee in. She took a moment to bring it up to full steam in the microwave and sat down at the table with the mug, hoping she could mask the whirl of feelings that threatened to swamp her.
“We saved you one, Mom.” Aidan pushed the box closer to her, coming perilously close to knocking over her coffee. A veteran of such encounters, Holly moved her mug in time.
“Good for you. And it’s even the cinnamon kind. Who told Mr. Wilkins that I liked those?”
It was Conor’s turn to grin this time. “I did. And he said to call him Alex, Mom, not Mr. Wilkins. Is that okay?”
“If that’s what he said, Conor.” She looked around the table at the crumbs and mostly empty milk glasses. “Now, if you guys are done with breakfast, how about going in and washing your hands and faces again and getting dressed for school?”
Aidan took one last swig of chocolate milk and the two of them were off. “I didn’t think about that much sugar in them on a school morning,” Alex said. “Hope their teacher doesn’t threaten to strangle me.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll burn it off before they get there. Fortunately sugar isn’t a problem for either of them.” Holly looked at her overnight guest. He didn’t really look as if he’d slept a lot better than she had. His hair was still a bit rumpled, and the flannel shirt he was wearing had the earmarks of having been slept in. “So, what did they ask you? And what did you tell them?”
Alex sighed and ran a hand through his sandy hair. “Conor’s sharp for five. I’ll bet you have a challenge keeping up with him.”
“I do. He’s always the one with the questions I can’t answer. Aidan is satisfied with a lot less in the way of explanations.”
“Yeah, knowing that I was an old work buddy of Kevin’s was enough for him. That and doughnuts.” Alex grinned out of one side of his mouth.
“The chocolate milk didn’t hurt, either. Smart move, Wilkins.”
The grin made it all the way to his tired eyes this time. “Guys and food bribery. It does solve a lot of problems.”
“True. But it won’t solve all the problems this time. We’re going to need to figure out something to tell them without going into the details about Rico. They know very little about Kevin’s death, and I intend to keep it that way until they’re a lot older.”
“And they’re much too young to have to deal with this situation,” Alex agreed. “Conor did mention that maybe you could use a little help around here. Maybe we could just leave things at that. Tell them that I’ve come to help out for a while.”
“We
