tales continued and eventually, as Bonnie relaxed and laughed along with her daughter when Keith tried to play the wolf huffing and puffing at the straw house, Katie slid down from her father’s back and crawled onto her mother’s lap.
As she hugged her little girl close to her heart, savoring Katie’s warmth, and shifted just enough to let her toes rest against Keith’s thigh, Bonnie swallowed hard.
GRANDMA NIELSON called just as they were finishing the pizza Bonnie had made for dinner. Katie had sauce smeared on her nose, rimming her pert baby mouth, over her chin and on her chest. Bonnie couldn’t see Katie’s booster chair under the table, but there was probably sauce mixed in with a pile of crumbs on her lap, as well.
“She just got back from Phoenix,” Keith said, hanging up the phone.
“At eight o’clock? She drove home in the dark?”
Her husband frowned. And nodded. While he accepted his grandmother’s right to live her life the way she wanted to—encouraged it even—her health and well-being had become a constant worry to him.
“How’s Dorothy?” Bonnie asked, getting a damp cloth to wipe Katie’s cheeks.
“She doesn’t need a hip replacement.” Keith didn’t look too happy.
“That’s good news.”
It was testimony to the changes in their little family when, without a fuss, Katie lifted her face and only blinked when Bonnie wiped her clean.
“She’ll be home next week.”
Bonnie set Katie on the floor before tending to the mess on the booster chair and table. “Wow,” she said to her husband, never missing a beat in their conversation. “That’s a fast recovery, isn’t it? She’ll be able to get around that soon?”
“No.”
Cloth in hand, Bonnie stopped. “No?”
“The doctor suggested long-term care. Grandma’s determined to bring her home.”
“Who’s going to…” Bonnie didn’t need to finish the question. She knew the answer. Lonna Nielson was.
“She says she’s sure she can get people to come in shifts—at least for meals.”
And who would do the rest? Bonnie’s heart lurched when she thought of her adored grandmother-in-law doing any lifting or carrying while her old friend recovered. Hips could take months to heal.
“Is she coming over?” she asked Keith, satisfied that Katie was safely ensconced in front of her favorite animated video before she started the dishes.
Grandma usually joined them for a game of canasta on Friday nights. Maybe she could talk to her.
“She says she has paperwork to do.”
“You going to get her?”
“Of course.”
Bonnie grinned, her troubled heart filled with warmth as she heard her husband’s exasperated tone. It was always the same.
When Keith started college, his parents left Shelter Valley on a church service mission in Cairo. His father was Grandma’s only child. Consumed by their jobs as house parents at an orphanage there, they’d returned to Shelter Valley just once in fifteen years. Their deaths in a bus accident shortly after Katie was born had left Grandma and Keith as the only surviving members of their family. But no matter how lonely Grandma might feel, or how much she might want to be with the kids, she always made excuses. When Bonnie and Keith got married more than six years before, Grandma had determined that she would not interfere with their lives. Which was why her car was never seen in her grandson’s driveway. Whether for Sunday dinner, Friday-night canasta, holidays or anything in between, Keith more often than not had to go and get her or she wouldn’t come.
Wet hands in the sink, Bonnie looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting his.
“You’re a good man, Keith Nielson.” The whispered words came from her very depths.
Almost as if they drew him, Keith moved toward her, then bent to press his lips to hers. The wealth of love she’d been feeling since she’d walked in the door that evening just continued, fueling the kiss. God, she loved this man. Wanted him.
There was never any doubt about that.
“Gotta go,” Keith muttered, obviously reluctant.
He kissed her again, raising a longing in Bonnie that could easily have consumed her. A longing for life to be only this. A sure knowledge of what was.
He pulled back slowly, his eyes searching hers.
“I’ll, uh, make brownies for when you get back.” She stumbled over the words.
They were the right ones. Keith’s face softened, the question in his eyes fading as he nodded, grabbed his keys and strode out the door.
Making brownies. Kind of a code.
It had all started that first time she’d made brownies after they were married. They’d been in the kitchen of the little house they’d rented on the back of the Weber property. The Webers were the owners of Shelter Valley’s only department store, and their son, Jim, had graduated from high school a couple of years behind Bonnie.
It hadn’t been after dinner then, but fairly late on a Sunday morning. She and Keith had missed church because they’d been unable to keep their hands off each other long enough to get out of bed. But they couldn’t miss the lunch Grandma had invited them to share with her, and Bonnie had promised to bring brownies.
She’d started the project fully dressed in a completely respectable, unsexy pair of sweats and a T-shirt. She’d even had a bra and panties on underneath.
And then Keith had announced that for every ingredient she added to the brownies, she had to take something off.
She’d been using a mix and had ended up naked when all the ingredients were in the bowl.
The batter had been delicious.
They’d had to stop and buy brownies at the grocery store on their way to Grandma’s.
Pretty much ever since, whenever she made brownies, they also made love.
Bonnie finished the dishes, a smile on her face.
CHAPTER FOUR
GRANDMA DISCARDED the two of diamonds. And she had no meld. When she’d picked up a couple of fours and then discarded a four, Bonnie had wondered—in canasta you could never have too many of whatever you were saving. But to discard a wild card without a meld…
“You want to skip the rest of the game and go straight to the brownies?” Keith asked her.
“I can finish.”
“But do you want to?” Bonnie pushed. Though she’d obviously freshened her makeup, Grandma still looked exhausted. Her slacks and blouse were wrinkled, her shoulders
