Nick buy? That had made the process quick and easy. Everyone he’d talked to had wanted to know who he was and why he was in Somerset, and he’d given them all the same explanation he’d given Reva Macklin.
He was Somerset, Tennessee’s newest handyman, and he’d never in his life so much as driven a nail.
One of the bags he carried contained supper for Alan. He had stopped at the Somerset Bakery and Deli, which was situated just past the beauty parlor and was really not much of a deli at all. They offered lots of baked goods and a few sandwiches. The small place closed at three o’clock, so he’d barely gotten there in time. The somewhat plump woman behind the counter, who had introduced herself as Louella Vine, had been delighted to see him. Maybe business wasn’t so good and every customer was a pleasant surprise. Then again, maybe she was just one of those exceptionally outgoing women who never met a stranger.
The sound of pounding feet alerted Dean to the fact that he was about to be run down. He glanced over his shoulder to see two little boys, one white and blond, the other black and half a foot taller, gaining on him fast. Dean stepped to the side of the walkway, giving them room to pass.
They didn’t.
“Hi!” The little blond boy practically skidded to a stop at Dean’s feet. “Who are you?”
The taller child stayed behind his friend, quiet and watchful.
Dean glared at them both. “Don’t you know better than to talk to strangers?”
“Are you strange?” the blond kid asked, wide-eyed and not at all perturbed by Dean’s tough manner.
“No.”
The little boy grinned, shooting Dean a decidedly disarming smile. “My name’s Cooper. I know everyone who lives on this street, but I don’t know you. This is Terrance,” he said, jerking a thumb back at his friend. “He’s my best friend. We’re in the first grade.” Each sentence ran directly into the next in childlike, breathless fashion. “Last year we were in kindergarten, that’s when we got to be very best friends, but I’ve known him all my life. Almost all my life. As long as I can remember, anyway. But we just got to be best friends last year. Last year we were just little kids, but now that we’re older we’re still best friends.”
The kid talked a mile a minute. When he stopped to take a breath, Dean asked, “Do you live on this street?”
“Yeah!” Cooper answered.
Great. “Well, Cooper, my name is Mr. Sinclair. I’m new. Now run along and don’t talk to strangers.” Dean resumed his walk toward home. Cooper and Terrance did not “run along” as instructed.
“Do you have any kids?” Cooper asked.
“No,” Dean answered curtly.
“That’s too bad. We need some more kids in Somerset. We have a T-ball team, but it’s not very good. We could really use a good first baseman. Why don’t you have kids? Don’t you like kids?”
Dean bit back a brutally honest, Not really. “Kids are fine, I guess.” As long as they’re not mine. “I have a niece and three nephews.”
“Will they come visit you sometime?” Cooper asked.
“Probably not. Besides, they’re too young to play T-ball.”
“Oh,” Cooper said, sounding dejected at the news.
Dean thought about his growing family for a moment. Shea’s Justin was two and a holy terror. All two-year-olds were holy terrors, right? Boone’s little girl, Miranda, was not yet a year old, and she was spoiled rotten. Absolutely rotten! She had Boone wrapped around her little finger and had since the moment she’d come into this world.
Clint’s twin boys were still at that wriggly, wrinkled, useless age. Infants. Why on earth did people insist that they were so cute when, in fact, they resembled big, pale, squalling bugs?
Dean had taken one look at the tiny babies, who had arrived almost a month early, and had told Clint to give him a call when the kids turned into humans. So he wasn’t a warm and fuzzy uncle. The world had plenty of warm and fuzzy without him. Especially now that his siblings were all married and making families.
Somehow the kids had bracketed him, Terrance on one side, Cooper on the other. Terrance was trying, very diligently and not quite secretively, to see what was in Dean’s bags.
Fortunately he was almost home. “What about you?” he asked Terrance.
The kid jumped back from the bags as if he’d been caught snooping. In fact, he had been. “What?”
“Are you anxious for more kids to come to town?”
The boy gave the question a moment of serious thought. “Not really. I have my best friend Cooper and my second-best friend Johnny, and two brothers and my mama and my daddy. That’s enough,” he said, sounding satisfied with his young life.
“Smart boy,” Dean said in a lowered voice.
“But we could use a first baseman,” Terrance added thoughtfully.
Dean came to a halt. “This is where I live,” he said, wisely withholding the Shoo that wanted to leap from his mouth.
“This is Miss Evelyn’s place.” Cooper looked at the old house and nodded his head. “Don’t eat the sugar cookies,” he said in a quiet voice tinged with horror as he delivered the dire warning.
Dean was about to ask why not? when he was distracted.
Reva Macklin had stepped outside. She walked in the shade of the trees that lined the sidewalk. So why did she look as if she carried the light with her? She was sunshine and cinnamon, strawberries and…heaven help him, this was the kind of woman who could work her way under a man’s skin and make him crazy. She walked toward him, and for a moment, just a moment, Dean didn’t see anything else. Dangerous. Very, very dangerous. She didn’t dress provocatively. In fact, she was clothed to suit this town. Quaint. Old-fashioned.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she crossed the street. She walked straight toward him, hair released from the thick ponytail she had worn earlier to fall past her shoulders. It wasn’t curly, but it wasn’t completely straight. It waved. It caught the little slivers of sunlight that found their way through the thick foliage of the trees.
A lesser man would have dropped the bags and drooled, but not Dean.
She gave him a brief, sweet smile, and he wondered what would happen next. Why was she here? Maybe something in her house needed his immediate attention. Faulty plumbing. A rotting board or two. Maybe a loose stair. So he wasn’t any good at repairing anything—he was willing to try.
It crossed his mind briefly that maybe Reva was approaching him for a much more personal reason. He barely knew her; there was nothing personal between them. And yet—
“Cooper Macklin,” she said sharply, turning her attention to the child. “You’re late.”
“I had to stay after school.”
Reva reached their side of the street and crossed her arms as she stared down at Cooper. “What was it this
