hand. “Lucy, this is my grandson, Ethan. The one I told you about.”
Out of the corner of her lashes, Lucy looked at him. “Hey, mister.”
Sunshine. Warmth. And a sense of well-being flooded over him.
“It—it’s Ethan.” He cleared his throat, glancing from his grandmother to this slender princess of a child. “Telling tales about me, Grandma?”
“Only the truth.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“The good things. The stuff you don’t like to think people know.”
He tried to wrap his mind around a grown-up Amber with children of her own. “Matt never told me you have daughters.”
“Like on the ark, they came in twos. This is Stella.” Amber stepped aside, giving him a clearer look at the child hunkered next to her mother. “Stella, this is Ethan, Uncle Matt’s best friend.”
Pert nose. Dimpled chin. Identical to her sister. Yet somehow not. A person entirely in her own right.
The notion of Amber being married left him with an unsettled feeling in his gut.
“You just missed Callie, Amber.” Grandma smiled. “I didn’t want her to miss the golden photography hour for her client’s engagement pictures so I sent her off. I knew you’d be here soon.”
“I was so relieved Callie was available to pick up the girls from school this afternoon. She texted me she’d dropped the girls off here. I came over as soon as I finished my shift at the diner. She said the twins were worried.” Amber sighed. “I know they feel so bad about what happened this morning.”
Ethan frowned. “The girls were there when Grandma fell?”
Grandma rested her palm on Lucy’s silken head. “Lucy and Stella were wonderful. They called 911, like their mommy taught them to do in an emergency.”
Ethan stared at his grandmother. “You’ve been babysitting Amber’s children?” His voice rose.
“We’re not babies.” The silent twin let go of her mother and folded her little arms across her chest. “We’re four years old.”
“Of course you’re not babies, Stella darling. You are my two most favorite big girls.” Grandma Hicks threw him a warning look. “They also managed to call their honorary aunt Callie. I’m so thankful she was able to get to my house, even before the ambulance arrived. You remember Callie, don’t you, Ethan?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. Callie’s family owned the Apple Valley orchard. Callie and Matt had dated in high school.
“She’s Maisie’s mommy,” Lucy said.
Callie Jackson had a kid, too? She’d been Amber’s best friend since they were children. A couple of years older, Ethan and Matt had spent a great deal of their growing-up years at either the orchard or the Fleming family white-water rafting business.
“The Jacksons still own the orchard, but she’s Callie McAbee now.” A smile tugged the corners of his grandmother’s lips. “And did the Double Name Club ever have a time getting her and Jake together. But all’s well that ends well.”
His thoughts on the Double Name Club—more notoriously known as the Truelove Matchmakers—were best left unvoiced. GeorgeAnne Allen. IdaLee Moore. ErmaJean Hicks.
The sixtysomething ladies were infamous for poking their powdered noses where they didn’t belong. They took the town motto—Truelove, Where True Love Awaits—a little too seriously.
Apparently, gentle, auburn-haired Callie Jackson had been their latest victim. He felt a surge of empathy for the unknown Jake McAbee. Fortunately for Ethan, he’d always been too much of a black sheep for the ladies to ever target him.
Then as if on cue, the uncontested leader of the matchmaker pack, Miss GeorgeAnne, poked her nose into the hospital room. “Reporting for duty.”
Amber bristled. Angular and bony, GeorgeAnne had that effect on people. “I think it best if I take the girls home myself, Miss GeorgeAnne.”
Married, divorced or spinster, the “Miss” was an honorary title of respect bestowed on any Southern lady who was your elder. No matter if the “Miss” was elderly or not.
“Nonsense. You needn’t miss your class.” The old woman’s glacier-blue eyes sparked over the twins. “I figure if nothing else, the girls and I can sort a bucket of bolts at the hardware store.”
Lucy’s eyes rounded.
Stella’s rosebud lips flattened. “No bolts, Miss G’Anne.”
Good for her. He felt a ridiculous, misplaced pride. Another Truelove rebel in the making. GeorgeAnne wasn’t exactly his definition of maternal. He felt bad for the girls.
Amber’s face tightened. “I should’ve never allowed you to talk me into this, Miss ErmaJean. The girls are my responsibility. Why did I ever think I could—”
“It’s been a trying day, but I won’t let you throw in the stethoscope over this little bump in the road.” Grandma waved her hand. “If you hurry, you can still get to class on time.”
Ethan rocked on his heels. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’d say your leg in a cast is more than a bump in the road, Grandma.”
His grandmother lifted her chin. “What’s going on here is that Amber’s come too far in her nursing studies to quit now.”
“Miss ErmaJean—”
“It’s settled.” Grandma Hicks shrugged. “At least for tonight. We’ll work out something. Don’t you worry, sweetheart.”
He grimaced. “Why can’t your husband take care of the girls, Amber?”
Lucy tugged at his jacket. “We don’t have a daddy, Efan.”
And the bottom fell out of his stomach.
GeorgeAnne pursed her thin lips. Grandma looked like she wanted to strangle him. Without meaning to, he’d put his foot in it.
The shock at seeing Ethan again was not dissimilar to the stinging jolt Amber had felt when once she overturned one of her father’s rafts into the freezing cold water of the river.
But the sensation was the same. Fighting her way to the surface, gasping for air. Her heart in overdrive. This couldn’t be real. He couldn’t be real.
Amber shook herself slightly, trying to clear her muddled thoughts. Ethan Green wasn’t an illusion. Standing beside Miss ErmaJean’s hospital bed, he was as real and solid as the granite rocks of the North Carolina mountains.
She tried not to gape at him. The broad shoulders, the well-muscled chest beneath the jacket, the six-pack waist that tapered to his jeans. This man she didn’t know—the man who’d
