and dredged up a smile, meeting her daughter’s sparkling blue eyes. “No, sweetheart, we say, ‘thank you,’ when someone gives us a treat. Remember? Can you say it for me now?”
“Fank you,” she repeated happily, innocently unaware of what she’d done to her mother.
“Good girl,” Erin murmured and hugged her close, juice box and all.
Her sober gaze found Amos Perkins’s home again, and she wondered what was being said in there. She didn’t blame Mac Corbett for being cautious.
If he knew their past, he’d send them packing in a heartbeat.
Inside Amos’s living room with its mismatched furniture and dated wallpaper, Mac faced his grandfather. He was still startled by the nerves twitching beneath his skin. Terri Fletcher was a dyed-in-the-wool knockout, and that was an understatement—even with her pretty black hair pulled back from her face in that tight ponytail. Even devoid of makeup. The shapeless, beige cotton shirt and slacks she wore only made him wonder what was beneath them—and why a woman that beautiful didn’t want anyone to notice her.
Fat chance of that happening.
“Before you say one word,” Amos began, stabbing a finger into Mac’s chest, “I like her and she’s stayin’. She’s a nice woman, and she looks like she could use the money.”
“I’m not disputing that, Granddad, I just would’ve liked to talk to her before we made a decision. What’s her story? Has she done this kind of work before? What did her references say? Or didn’t she offer any?”
Amos pulled a folded sheet of tablet paper from the breast pocket of his red-plaid flannel shirt. “Got ’em right here,” he said defensively. “She checked out perfect.”
“Did you even call them?” Mac reached for it. “How many references did she—”
Amos snatched the sheet away and stuffed it back in his pocket, his hazel eyes insulted and his lined face stubbornly set. “Since I got sick, you been callin’ the shots—makin’ my decisions for me—and it’s time it stopped. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with my mind or my intuition, and I say she’s fine.”
Silent seconds ticked by while Mac pondered his grandfather’s words. Then he nodded. Amos was right. He had been making all the decisions since the stroke. But everything he’d done, he’d done because he loved the old man. The last thing he’d wanted to do was hurt Amos’s pride, but apparently, that’s what he’d done.
“Okay. I’m sorry. It should be your decision. I just expected you to choose someone a little more…mature.”
“You don’t mean mature, you mean Mildred Manning.”
“She was a nurse for years. It would’ve made more sense.”
Amos stared as if Mac were completely out of his mind. “Don’t you know nothin’ about women?” He shook his head abruptly as though banishing a ridiculous notion, then answered his own question. “Never mind. ’Course you don’t. If you did, you’d have one of yer own. Sophie’d be mad as a wet hen if I hired Mildred to cook and clean for me. ’Specially when she offered to do it herself. And don’t tell me I ain’t right about that.”
Releasing a weary blast of air, Mac brought his hands to his hips. Amos’s wisecrack about his love life aside, the old guy had a point. Sophie Casselback was a good woman, but she would’ve made Amos’s life a living hell if he’d hired a woman their age. She and Amos had been “good friends” for two years—the primary reason, Mac suspected, that Amos had refused her help. No man—even a seventy-three-year-old man—wanted to look less than strong around the woman he was keeping company with. Or maybe he and Sophie were over now. Since his stroke and stint in rehab, Amos hadn’t returned many of her calls.
Amos continued to stare hard as Mac’s thoughts churned off in yet another direction. “Now what? There’s something else goin’ on under that hat. What is it?”
“The little girl,” Mac said. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with a child underfoot? You could trip, you might not get your right rest—”
“You just got done sayin’ it’s my decision to make. I made it.” Shuffling and cane tapping to the door, he threw it open, then shoved through the screen door, banging it against the white wood siding. Mac raised his eyes to heaven, but there was no help there. Obviously, the discussion was over.
Amos plopped himself down on the glider. “Now why don’t you help that gal take her stuff over to your place?”
“My place?”
“Little Christie needs some room, too. Can’t very well stuff ’em both in the guest room upstairs. Besides,” Amos groused pointedly as Mac’s exasperation grew, “you seem happy enough up there.”
“Granddad, I’m not set up for company.”
“They’ll only be here six ’r seven weeks.” Amos glared up at him. “Or do you have other ideas you ain’t told me about?”
“No, but my guest room’s full of boxes, and there’s no bed in there.” The other spare room had been turned into an office. That meant, if they moved in, Terri Fletcher and her daughter would be sleeping in his room.
In his bed.
Something tugged low in Mac’s gut at the thought of Christie’s slender mom beneath his sheets, startling him with its intensity and shocking the hell out of him by evoking a very physical, very unexpected response.
“All right,” he growled, needing to move, and accepting the arrangement because there’d be no changing Amos’s mind. “I’ll get it done.”
Erin followed Corbett’s brisk strides through his spacious, beautiful home, her stomach a ball of knots. She was astonished that the discussion had ended in her favor. Initially, he’d seemed to be the man in control, yet somehow Amos had won out. Relieved, Erin sent up a prayer of thanks that they had a roof over their heads again—and on the heels of that prayer, another went up that changing her name and relocating here would be enough to ensure their safety.
And incomprehensibly, amid so much turmoil, some part of her still found time to notice Mac Corbett as a man. Though she tried to ignore the pull, his rugged face and the smooth, loose way he walked made her feel things she hadn’t felt in a very long time. In fact, he was the most overtly male man she’d ever encountered, and incredibly, he didn’t seem aware of his appeal.
“Obviously, this is the bedroom,” he said, carrying their bags inside and tossing them on his king-size bed. A quilted navy, white and light-blue spread in a geometric print covered it. “You should be comfortable here.” He nodded at a closed door to the left of an oak chest of drawers. “Master bath’s in there.”
“It’s very nice,” she replied, placing the two duffels she’d carried beside her luggage. “Thank you. I…I’m sure we will be.” She’d always been good at small talk, but with this man—who didn’t seem inclined to make the effort—she was falling flat on her face.
Before they’d begun unloading the van, she’d given Christie her coloring book, crayons and a cookie, then settled her in the great room at Mac’s distressed-pine coffee table. Occasionally, as they’d carted things past the wide archway, Christie
