was the truth. She twisted her wedding band round and round her finger. ‘So, I’m making doubly sure this Christmas isn’t.’
Gratitude surged through her when with one curt nod he let the subject drop. She cleared her throat.
‘What are your plans? Are you staying for Christmas?’
‘Yep.’
Delight tiptoed through her. ‘But that’s fabulous.’ Christmas was only nine days away. She risked a glance at his face but she couldn’t read it. It brought her up short for a moment, then she shrugged. Ten years was a long time. ‘What will you do on Christmas Day?’
He raised an eyebrow, took one look at her face, then grimaced. ‘Sorry to burst your bubble and all, but Christmas is just like any other day as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Is that so?’ She folded her arms.
He shifted in his seat. ‘Look, I—’
‘It used to mean a lot when we were kids and we didn’t get a Christmas.’
‘Is that why you have to have a Christmas now?’ he shot at her.
‘Is that why you don’t?’ she shot back, just as quickly.
They stared at each other for a moment, then laughed. But she settled on one thing then and there. Sol was having a Christmas this year whether he said he wanted it or not. Everyone needed a Christmas.
And Sol hadn’t had one since he was twelve.
She glanced across at him. Man, oh, man, it was good to have him home. She drank in the sight of him while he stared out at the yard with that shuttered half-gaze she remembered so well. Sol had always been a good-looking boy. But that was what he’d been when he’d left. He had certainly changed since then. He had grown up now.
He was a man. And what a man.
A pulse started to throb at the base of her throat. He was every kind of hunk she could think of and then some. He was going to set the female population of Schofield on its collective head.
His eyes hadn’t changed, though. Still black, still piercing, still kind. And given half a chance they could probably still see right through her. She lifted the kitten clambering up her leg into her lap. She couldn’t give Sol that chance—not even a quarter of that chance. The kitten settled into her lap, purring.
She glanced around the Adams’ back veranda. It and the attached laundry ran the length of the house. She sprang to her feet and walked its length, glancing right and left then swung back, clutching the kitten to her chest. ‘Sol, I need a favour.’
‘Anything.’
A shockwave rippled through her at the promptness of his reply, at its certainty. ‘Is that wise?’ she demanded. He chuckled, and the sound of it washed over the surface of her skin with the velvet warmth of hot chocolate. She wanted to stretch and purr beneath it.
‘I may not have clapped eyes on you for ten years, Cassie Campbell…Parker, but I still know you.’
‘I might have changed.’
He paused. His eyes raked over her and darkened. ‘You have at that.’
Cassie fell back into her chair. She crossed her right leg over her left. Her foot bounced and wouldn’t stop. She set it on the floor, but that set her knees jiggling. She crossed her legs again and let the foot bounce.
‘Lookin’ good, Cassie.’
Her foot stopped mid-bounce. His eyes roved over her face, and her skin flushed everywhere his gaze touched.
‘Real good.’
‘Thank you,’ she croaked. She seized her glass. ‘You’re not looking too bad yourself.’ But she didn’t look at him as she said it. She took swallow after swallow of cold water, but it didn’t cool the heat rising through her.
‘What’s this favour?’
The favour. Right. She set her glass down. ‘Would you babysit my kittens?’
‘Babysit?’
‘Until Christmas?’
‘Christmas!’
‘I can’t take them home because Rufus will eat them. I’ve kept them locked up in the laundry of the old place—’ she nodded across the yard ‘—while it’s between tenants, but it’s so tiny, and it’s mean keeping them there for such long periods. They won’t be any trouble, I swear.’
He looked sceptical, and she didn’t blame him. ‘You don’t need to do anything. I’ll come over every evening to feed them.’
‘You will?’
‘Then I’ll lock them up in your laundry for the night.’
‘You’ll come over every evening?’
‘Every evening,’ she assured him. ‘So all you need to do is let them out of the laundry each morning. That’s it.’
‘That’s it, huh?’
‘That’s it.’ She shrugged, then slanted him a grin. ‘Though even if you say no I’ll still be here each evening. I’m Alec’s home-care help.’
‘Home-care help?’
‘It’s a community-based programme designed to help people stay in their own homes longer by helping them out with housework, meals and stuff.’
‘You do that?’
She shrugged, abashed by the warmth in his voice. ‘I love it.’
‘How long have you been doing it?’
Her eyes slid from his. ‘Ten years.’
There was a long silence. Finally Sol asked, ‘How long have you been helping Alec?’
‘Two years.’
‘Two years?’ He jerked around to face her fully. ‘He’s been sick for two years and he never told me?’
‘He’s being looked after.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘But what? You’d have come home, seen he was getting the right kind of care, then left again.’
He raked a hand through his hair. ‘How long has he got?’
‘You’re a better man than I if you can get a straight answer to that one,’ she sighed.
He stared back out at the yard and Cassie’s chest ached. Why did it have to be such hell sometimes? Who had decided Sol should draw the short straw where family was concerned—the shortest of short straws—when Brian had had so much?
She froze that thought. Brian was dead. He didn’t have
