following procedure. Thank you.”
He turned off the phone with relief. He’d left a lucrative CEO position in the computer industry when his eightysomething grandfather finally decided to retire, but he never expected it to be so tough. George Cooper had been an old-school manager, with every decision, large and small, going across his desk. Basically, the place was still being run like a small mom-and-pop shop, rather than a major business producing dozens of different convenience-food items. Responsibility needed to be spread among divisions, with midlevel managers taking the lead on day-to-day operations—except the company couldn’t afford that type of reorganization for a while.
Aaron dropped his keys in his pocket and walked into the house. His grandparents had halfheartedly offered to let him move in with them, but it wouldn’t have been good for Melanie. His sister wasn’t related to the Coopers except through their ex-son-in-law, and they weren’t the warmest people in the first place. He knew; he’d grown up with them. And no matter what Skylar thought about him, he refused to inflict their idea of hospitality on his sister. Even if he didn’t know what was best for a teenage girl, he wanted Melanie to be happy.
“Melanie?” he called. “What do you want for dinner?”
After a long minute she appeared at the top of the stairs and stared at him coolly. “You mean you’re asking?”
Oh, God.
Pain throbbed in his temples. She was usually very sweet and accommodating—almost too accommodating—but apparently he couldn’t say anything right at the moment. Not that Melanie didn’t have cause to be touchy—he’d royally stuck his foot in his mouth—but if this was what it meant to be a parent, you could keep it.
“Yes, I’m asking,” he said as calmly as possible.
“Whatever I want?”
Yeah, she could have whatever she wanted...as long as it came from a restaurant that delivered or had a take-out menu. He didn’t cook. Toast, oatmeal and coffee in the morning were the extent of his culinary skills.
“Within reason.”
Melanie lifted her chin. “I’ll take a chicken sandwich and sweet-potato fries from the Nibble Nook.”
“That isn’t within reason. You know the Nibble Nook is closed for the day.”
“Then I don’t care. I have geometry problems and an English assignment to finish.” She turned and disappeared.
The afternoon just kept getting better and better. Aaron arched his back, trying to release the tension. He really had to deal with the yard. The neighborhood association had written, complaining about the length of the grass. Why anybody minded, he didn’t know. This wasn’t the garden district of New Orleans, it was a little town that rolled up its sidewalks at night and on Sundays.
Despite his grandfather’s expectations that he would eventually take over one day, Aaron had never wanted to live in Cooperton again...and yet here he was. Of course, coming back would have been easier if George Cooper had retired before the business had fallen apart. Once Aaron got it viable again he’d have to evaluate whether he was going to stay, or consider other options.
Putting on jeans and a work shirt, Aaron went out to the garage. The rented house hadn’t come furnished, but he’d seen a lawn mower and had a couple of hours of daylight left to work.
Forty minutes later he was hot, sweaty, and his shoulders ached. He gazed perplexed at the mower that refused to start; he was a novice at cutting grass, but it shouldn’t be tough to figure out. The mower had gas, and he didn’t think it was terribly old. Yet the damn thing wouldn’t go. Maybe the gardening service used to bring their own equipment because this one was broken.
Frustrated, Aaron shoved the mower back into the garage and headed into the house. The service had told him they were overextended with customers and regretted terminating him as a client, but their regrets didn’t help him get the lawn mowed.
In the kitchen he leafed through a stack of menus. They hadn’t ordered pizza in over a week, and Mama Gianni’s also had a decent chicken Greek salad. Pizza from Vittorino’s Italiano was better, but they didn’t deliver except on weekends. He dialed Mama Gianni’s and ordered the Meat Lover’s special and a family-size salad. Yet as he hung up the phone, he heard Skylar’s voice in his head.
Do you even know what pizza she likes?
Shut up, Skylar, he ordered silently.
She hadn’t changed much since high school—she still had that gorgeous auburn hair and green eyes...and a mouth that wouldn’t quit. She’d sassed the teachers, cussed out the principal, gotten suspended more than once for breaking every rule in the book, and finally dropped out before graduation. It was ironic that a girl who’d skated through classes by the skin of her teeth was now diligently overseeing her kid’s homework. And she wondered why he questioned if she might be a bad influence.
Yet a part of him didn’t blame Skylar for being antagonistic. She’d represented a challenge when they were kids—his pals had dared him to nail her and he wasn’t proud of his teenage self for taking that dare, or for dropping her once he’d done it. No woman, young or old, appreciated being treated that way. It was also hypocritical to think her sexual activity in high school was any more questionable than his own.
When the food came, Aaron ran upstairs to tell Melanie. She was in front of the television, watching a baseball game. She didn’t look up, just nodded and said she’d come down after a while.
“Don’t you want to eat together?” The question had nothing to do with Skylar; he’d already thought they should share more meals. At the same time, he didn’t want to force anything on Melanie—until recently they’d been little more than casual acquaintances.
“I don’t care.”
I don’t care... How many times a day did he hear that from her? Good Lord, teenagers were impossible, and Aaron felt a fleeting sympathy for his grandparents. He wasn’t close to them, though his grandfather had supposedly “groomed” him to take over the company...mostly with lectures about the value of hard work. Nonetheless, it couldn’t have been easy to take on a resentful kid, tired of being shuffled between his divorced parents and other relatives. That was one of the reasons he’d agreed to have Melanie live with him for the year. He could have refused, but he knew what it was like to be a Ping-Pong ball in someone else’s battle of wills.
CHAPTER TWO
SKYLAR PULLED A casserole from the freezer and put it in the oven to heat. She liked cooking; she just didn’t enjoy it after spending hours over the Nibble Nook’s fryers—the volume of French fries and onion rings they went through never failed to astonish her. As the owner, she filled in wherever necessary, and today the fry cook had phoned in with a child-care problem.
Tiredly she pressed a hand to the aching small of her back. The long, hard days used to be more fun. Jimmie had made everything fun, no matter what they were doing.
The cat walked into the kitchen and stared at his empty bowl in dismay. He meowed plaintively.
“Karin?” she called. “Bennie has to be fed and his litter box scooped.”
“The first play-off game is on.”
“Then you’d
