to pack, Hank realized he’d have to rectify his wrongs. He knelt down on one knee. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Hank said, trying to soften the gruff note in his voice. His attempt to hide his irritation failed miserably.
Suddenly the little boy was crying, and his mother stopped packing to console him.
“What’s wrong? What did I say wrong?”
Hank wanted to withdraw, to let them leave, but his father had asked that they stay. What could he do? “Look, can you at least stay another week, see if we can all get along? Dad needs what you’ve been giving him. He needs Timmy. I think Timmy is helping Dad get well.”
The little boy raised his head from his mother’s shoulder and sniffed. “He has lots of boo-boos.”
“Yes, he does. But he’ll get better with your help, Timmy. Will you and your Mommy stay a little while?”
“I like it here…but you scare me.”
Hank ground his teeth. “I promise I won’t scare you any more.” He felt he’d reached his limit with the four-year-old. His gaze met Maggie’s, then looked away from the disapproval he saw in her blue eyes.
“What?” he asked, not specifying his question.
“We’ll try it for a week. But you’re on probation. I will not let my son live in constant terror!”
“I won’t be around that much. This is a working ranch.”
“I’ve only met Larry. You manage a ranch with one employee?”
“No, there are more hands, but right now my men are working on a neighbor’s round-up. They’ll be home tonight or tomorrow.”
“Oh, I see. Do I cook for them, too?”
“No, they already have a cook.”
“Uh, I think something is burning in here?” Larry called out.
Without a word, Maggie scooped up Tim and hurried to the kitchen, leaving Hank standing in her bedroom.
He followed her into the kitchen.
“It’s all right, Carl,” she said to his father. “It’s just the marshmallow topping. I can redo it and have the sweet potatoes ready in no time.”
“You actually made sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping?” Hank asked.
“Yes,” she said without looking up. “Your father requested it.”
“No wonder he doesn’t want you to go.”
“And what does that mean?”
“If you cater to his every whim, there’s no telling what he’ll ask for next.”
She glared at him. “Why don’t you join your father on the porch. I don’t appreciate someone watching over my shoulder when I’m trying to prepare a meal.”
“So you’re throwing me out of my own kitchen?”
“Silly me. I thought it was your father’s kitchen.” She challenged him to say she was wrong.
With a scowl, he went out on the porch. He hadn’t even realized Tim had already come out and was standing beside his father.
“What’s Tim doing out here?”
The little boy tried to back away toward the kitchen door, but Carl had an arm around him. “He keeps me company. Sometimes we read books or play with a couple of Timmy’s little cars. Other times, I tell him about you as a boy.”
“Me?”
“You remember that time you got stuck in the hay barn?” Carl asked, a grin on his face.
“And a snake almost bit you!” Tim added, obviously too excited by the story to remember his fear of Hank.
“That’s why Tim, here, shouldn’t go climb the hay in the barn,” Carl said. “Right, Timmy?”
“Right.” The boy nodded his head several times.
“I see.” When he’d left his dad last week, he would’ve sworn that his father couldn’t have remembered his name, much less anecdotes about his son’s childhood. Having the woman and the boy around had worked wonders for his father. “I’m glad you’re feeling so much better, Dad,” he said with a gusty sigh.
Carl narrowed his eyes. “You wonderin’ why I didn’t respond to all your attempts to make me change my ways?”
“I’m not the cook or housekeeper Maggie is, though I tried.”
“It’s not your fault son,” the older man said. “You were out working all day. You needed your meals prepared for you, not having to prepare them yourself. I didn’t blame you. Well, maybe occasionally when you burned everything to a crisp.” He smiled.
Hank stared at his father. He was actually smiling. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know that. No one would want that awful mess to eat.”
Larry decided to pitch in. “Remember when he tried to make a cake, only he didn’t follow the instructions? It was half-cooked and runny in the middle?”
Both Carl and Larry laughed at that story.
Tim tugged on Carl’s sleeve. “What’s runny?”
“Well, it means it wasn’t cooked.” When the little boy just stared at him, Carl tried again. “It was like water instead of cake.”
Maggie opened the door and Tim ran to her. “Mommy, Hank made a water cake. It ran away!”
“I see…. Well, dinner is ready, if anyone’s hungry.”
All three men stood. Hank said, “I have to go clean up first.”
“Don’t be slow, boy, or I’ll eat your share.”
“There’s plenty of food, Mr. Brownlee. Your father was just teasing.” She moved back into the kitchen as they all followed her in.
“Do you call my father Mr. Brownlee?”
“No. He’s asked me to call him Carl.”
“Then you’d better call me Hank.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He went quickly to wash his hands so that he wouldn’t miss the meal.
When Hank returned to the table, he was determined, despite the aroma he could smell all the way down the hall, to find fault with Maggie and her cooking.
Impossible.
He blamed that impossibility on the fact that he’d been eating round-up grub for too long. He’d been starving when he’d arrived home and been confronted with the widow mix-up, meaning Maggie. To make up for all the trouble she’d put him through he had helped himself to
