and began gagging. Whether it was in reaction to the lilacs or the house she decided it would be wise not to ask. Following Evan’s lead, she ignored Mac who was now writhing dramatically, and went up the creaking steps.
The door swung open, and her first impression was one of gloom. Fighting not to show her disappointment, she followed Evan through the empty house. He was wearing a chambray shirt and faded jeans. This back view showed off the broadness of his shoulders to breathtaking advantage. The jeans were soft with wear and hugged the taut line of his backside and the firm muscle of his leg. He made all the rooms seem too small. He’d brought that smell right in with him—clean skin, faint aftershave, man-smell.
He opened the closets and looked through the cupboards. She didn’t follow him into the basement, but he came back up the stairs, and proclaimed her new home varmint free.
Mac, obviously disappointed that his lilac-induced collapse on the front lawn had failed to convince anyone of his distress, came through the door, a sour expression on his face.
“What a dump,” he proclaimed. “This whole town is like the dumpiest dump that I’ve ever seen and I hate it here.”
Evan ignored him. “Ma’am, do you need a hand with your things?”
This was offered only politely.
“No, thanks,” she said proudly.
She wanted the man out of her house. So she could concentrate. So that she could deal with Mac, figure out what had to be done to make the place livable, and then shut herself in the bathroom and cry.
Chapter Two
“Thank you for giving it a fair chance,” she said icily to Mac, after Evan had left. “I cannot believe you behaved like that. Broke Mr. Atkins’s antenna off his truck, wrote that word. What on earth has gotten into you?”
Mac looked at his toe, clad in expensive sneakers that he had to have, and that seemed to have brought him joy and contentment for exactly ten seconds, and then shoved his hands deep into his pockets before he shot her a look loaded with defiance. “I hate it here, that’s why. I want to go home.”
“This is going to be home,” Kathleen said with determination. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom in the room, and she noticed the floors were old gray linoleum, peeling back in places, the walls needed paint desperately, there were spiderwebs in the corners. She went over and tugged at a blind. It rolled up with a snap, and the sunlight poured into the empty room, but did nothing to improve it. This was going to be home? She thought of her and Mac’s cozy little apartment in Vancouver and felt heartsick.
“You won’t believe how rotten I can be,” Mac warned her.
She let none of her own doubts show. She said calmly, “Then you will just have to get very good at shoveling manure. I’ll bet there is no shortage of that around here.”
“Well, you got that right,” Mac said heatedly. “How could you do this to me? You’ve ruined my whole life. Me. Mac Miles in Poop Gulch, Saskatchewan.” Only he didn’t say poop.
“The first thing I’m going to do at work tomorrow is find out about that soap,” Kathleen said.
“And what am I supposed to do while you’re at work?”
“You already sorted that out, Mac. You’ll be shoveling manure.” Only she didn’t say manure, either.
He stared at her, obviously stunned that his aunt would use that word. He changed directions swiftly. “I suppose you thought that guy was good-looking.”
And for the briefest moment, she saw the little boy in him, and saw how scared he was. He was sad and scared and he was too anxious to be a man to say so.
“Oh, Mac, come here.”
He came, and even allowed her to put her arms around him and she found herself saying, “Everything will be fine.” With him snuggled against her, those words felt true, and it actually did feel as if it could be home here.
Mac tolerated her embrace for three seconds or so, then pulled away and walked down the narrow hall. “I guess I’ll have this room,” he said after a minute. “Auntie Kathy, you never answered me. Did you think that dust hopper was good-looking?”
“Dust hopper?”
“The goof with the truck.”
She didn’t answer, appalled by this creature who was her nephew.
“I thought he was real ugly,” Mac said. “Real. And way too young for you. Way.” He slammed his bedroom door.
She thought of him sitting in that empty room, nursing his own bad humor, and sighed. She looked around again at her homely house, and went into the bathroom. More aging linoleum. She thought of Evan Atkins being way too young for her, and him not even commenting, when he’d been given the opportunity, that the house was obviously years older than she was.
Howard’s new fiancée was young, blond, perky.
You broke up with him five years ago, Kathleen reminded herself savagely. You’re over it. She barely locked the door before the tears started to fall.
It had been a stupid thing to do, to take a job in a place she had never heard of. Stupid, stupid. Stupid. When she’d been hired sight unseen, when that letter had arrived, she’d actually thought, naively, whimsically, that it had been heaven sent. She had told herself this was her chance to start anew. To be somebody new. Somebody who worried less and laughed more. Who did daring and bold things—like moved to a town they had never heard of.
Kathleen allowed herself to snivel for ten minutes, and then came out, knocked firmly on Mac’s bedroom door and told him they had a great deal of work to do to make this house into their home.
Stupid or not, they were here, and she had to make the best of it.
She unlocked the U-haul and after some rummaging handed Mac a broom. When he rolled his eyes, she said, “Be thankful it’s not a shovel.”
“I don’t like this house,” Mac said.
“It didn’t live up to my expectations, either,” she admitted, “but I can make it clean, and in time it’ll be cute, too.”
“Oh, cute.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Did you think he was? Cute?”
“No,” she said, “not at all.”
Her response was completely honest. Evan Atkins cute? It would be like calling a grizzly bear adorable. Howard had been cute with his big brown eyes, his curly hair, his little potbelly.
Mac was clearly relieved with her answer.
She spent the rest of the day feverishly cleaning the little house from top to bottom, scrubbing walls and floors and appliances. Mac was surprisingly helpful, but only until his boom box came out of the trailer. By nightfall, Kathleen had only the energy left to move in two mattresses and a box of bedding.
“You don’t have to get up with me in the morning,” Mac told her. “You look really tired.” When she got up in the morning, he was gone, but he had found the coffeepot
