walked the three blocks to work, noting they comprised most of the town. She spent the day at the Outpost, learning the inventory, which was extensive, and prices, and how to use the archaic cash register.
She was amazed by the number of people who came through the store, until Ma told her they were coming from miles around to check her out. She was asked on six dates before noon! It did wonders for her flagging spirits, even if she did say no to all of them.
At four she headed home, exhausted, knowing she had that U-haul to unload. Still, she had all the ingredients for Mac’s favorite spaghetti supper, and couldn’t wait to fill up that little house with the good smells of garlic and tomatoes and pasta.
But by five o’clock Mac still wasn’t home.
She scanned the road yet again. She thought she had heard a truck, but it proved to be a large farm vehicle.
Mac had left at five this morning. Twelve hours? Didn’t that seem a little long to work a twelve-year-old?
It occurred to her he might have been in an accident.
She laughed nervously at that. It would be the worst of ironies if she moved from busy Vancouver to sleepy Saskatchewan, mostly for Mac’s sake, only to have him maimed or killed in an accident.
Of course, she had never actually seen Evan pick him up. What if he had gone to the highway and hitchhiked away? What if even now—
Stop, she ordered herself. This was what her book on positive thinking said she must not do, think in negatives, create whole scenes and scenarios. The book, she recalled, instructed her to try to turn her negative thoughts around, to think now, of something positive.
She tried to picture Mac having a wonderful day. She pictured him on a farm. She pictured him chasing through tall grass after a butterfly, having just the kind of day she had pictured when she’d applied for this job.
She went back and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Why had she made so much?
Kathleen Miles, you are not inviting that man in for dinner.
Just then she heard a truck pull up. She set down the spoon in such a hurry it splattered sauce on her white blouse. She ran to the front window.
The right truck. She went out of the house and onto the porch.
Mac got out of it and slammed the door. He marched up the walk, his back straight, his clothes absolutely filthy, a pungent aroma following him.
She glanced anxiously at his running shoes.
Clean.
“How was it?” she asked him.
“How do you think?” he snapped.
“Oh.”
“Hey, none-of-your-business.” Evan Atkins had gotten out of his truck and was coming down the walk toward them.
Mac turned and glared at him.
“Same time, same place,” Evan said.
Mac gave him a dirty look and when it didn’t phase Evan, he gave it to her instead. Then he muttered a word she couldn’t quite make out and the porch door slammed shut behind him.
Evan Atkins continued down the walk toward her.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and suddenly felt very aware of the little splotch of spaghetti sauce on the front of her. She wasn’t going to let him see that she felt vulnerable!
He walked with the easy assurance of a man completely comfortable within his own body, a man sure of himself. His self-certainty annoyed her even more in the face of her own lack of it.
“I wish you wouldn’t call him none-of-your-business,” she said, far more sharply than she intended, sounding exactly like the aging spinster she was. “His name is Mac.”
“Actually, I know that. I’m just waiting for the invitation to come from him.”
His voice was low and calm, a faint thread of amusement running through it, though he wasn’t smiling. Did he find her amusing? Probably that spaghetti splotch. He stopped, rested one foot on her bottom step and looked up at her.
“Where on earth have you been?” Her voice was still sharper than she intended, but definitely the tone of a woman who planned to be taken seriously.
His eyes widened. “Ma’am?”
His eyes were dark ocean-blue, with flecks of the most intriguing gray.
“He left at five-thirty this morning!”
“My place is a good half hour drive from here, ma’am. That’s an hour round trip. I had a lot of work to do today. I couldn’t just stop everything to drive him back into town when he thought he’d had enough. Which was about five minutes after he started.”
“Twelve hours is a long time for a little boy to work.”
“He’s not that little. Besides, we stopped for lunch.”
“I don’t even think it’s legal to work a man that long!”
“Well, ma’am,” he said, a bit of a fire lighting in those cool ocean eyes, “if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t even make a dent in that anger he’s carrying around.”
“Mac is not angry!” She had no idea why she said that, when it was so pathetically obvious he was.
“Scratching that particular word in the side of a person’s truck can’t exactly be interpreted as ‘I come in peace.’”
“I don’t think he better work for you tomorrow.”
“Now, ma’am, it’s really none of my business, but I think that would be a mistake.”
“Really?” she said haughtily.
“I don’t think you want to be teaching that boy that he can behave any old way he likes, and that there won’t be any consequences for it. Mama Bear will bail him out.”
He was right, and they both knew it.
Still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying, “And you’re an expert on raising children, are you?”
She was sorry the minute she said it, knowing she was taking out all her anxiety about her move and Mac on him, and that he didn’t deserve it. Besides, as soon as she said it, in his eyes she caught a glimpse of a pain that was as raw as an open wound.
But his voice was steady, and completely unflappable. He answered slowly, measuring his words. “No, I’m sure not that. It just seems to me if you bail him out now, you’ll be bailing him out in quite a different way in the future.”
She took a deep breath, realized she was being both cranky and unfair and that he was right and she was wrong. She was completely unable to admit that. “I was worried about him. I was worried when he was gone so long.”
It
