let you stay here for free.” Dorothy had told him about how kind his grandfather had been to her when she’d first come to the inn. The next moment, Ricky’s face lit up as he got an idea. “You can stay in my room with me. I’ll let you have my bed and I’ve got a sleeping bag I can put on the floor for me.”
Impressed with the impromptu generosity the boy displayed without any prodding from his mother, Shane smiled at him warmly.
“That’s really very generous of you, Ricky, but I’m not staying at the homeless shelter. I just go there to help out.”
Wheat-colored eyebrows knit as the boy tried to absorb every word he’d been told.
“Help out what?” Ricky asked.
“Ricky—” Cris said, her tone warning the boy not to continue on this path. Not everyone liked being interrogated by a five-year-old.
But clearly Shane didn’t belong to that group. “I don’t mind him asking questions,” he told her, then faced Ricky. “That’s how he learns. Right, Ricky?”
Ricky seemed thrilled to be championed in this manner. “Right!”
“To answer your question, Ricky, I go there to help out any way I can. The people staying at the shelter aren’t as lucky as you and I and your mom are.”
Ricky appeared to take every word to heart. “We can give them our Christmas tree,” he told Shane.
Shane laughed softly at the offer, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I believe this comes under the heading of giving them the shirt off your back,” he quipped, directing his comment to Cris.
The expression on Shane’s face made her feel, just for an isolated second, as though they were actually sharing a moment. The very thought stirred a warmth within her as unexpected as it was comforting.
Meanwhile, Cris noticed that her son was glancing from her to Shane, as if doing his very best to understand what had just been said.
“I gotta give them my shirt?”
Even as he asked, Ricky tugged the bottom of his pullover out of the waistband of his pants. In another minute, he would have the shirt up, over his head and off his small body, fully intending to surrender it to Shane so he could do what he needed to with it. All Ricky knew was that he wanted to help Shane.
Laughing, Shane quickly stilled the little boy’s fast-moving hands.
“No, stop,” he said to Ricky. “I didn’t mean you had to take off your shirt. It’s just another way of saying you were being very giving.”
“Oh,” Ricky said, struggling to look as though he understood what was being said. Cris had a feeling that the boy didn’t but was unwilling to let on in case his new hero would find him lacking in some way. “But you don’t really want me to give my shirt to you?”
“Not today,” Shane assured him with affection as he patted the boy’s shoulder. And then he looked at Cris. “I’d better be going,” Shane said again, attempting to come to terms with the sudden reluctance he was experiencing.
Was he just reluctant to leave, or was he reluctant to leave her?
He really wasn’t sure.
Maybe it would be better if he didn’t explore what might lie beneath that question, at least not yet. Right now, his life was relatively uncomplicated. Lonely, but uncomplicated. And he wanted to take some time deciding exactly what complications he would welcome into it and be equipped to handle. Not to mention what complications might just trip him up and take him in a direction he wasn’t, as yet, prepared to go.
Even so, as he rose, Shane couldn’t help thinking that staying here, talking to Cris and enjoying the unfiltered responses of her son, was really not a bad way to spend the rest of his evening.
You’ve got people waiting for you and responsibilities to meet, remember? Shane reminded himself.
He really had to get going. Shane nodded at his cleared plate. “Thanks for the meal. I intend to pay you back in trade since you won’t let me pay you for the food.”
“You already have paid me back,” Cris insisted, adding, “just by putting up with certain people.” She deliberately kept her statement vague since Ricky was right there, absorbing every word between Shane and her.
“No ‘putting up’ involved,” Shane assured her, indicating her son with his eyes. “I enjoyed every second of it.”
He sounded sincere, but that could just be because she was hearing something that appealed to her. There was reality and then there was the reality she wished she had. This might well be the latter.
“I find that difficult to believe,” she told Shane.
Cris recalled the one person she had dated in the past five years. The man had made it clear after a couple of dates that he didn’t regard her as a package deal, meaning that he didn’t want to interact with her son if there was any way he could avoid it.
She had sent him packing that same day.
Shane’s dark blue eyes met hers and she saw that he was completely serious as he told her, “Don’t.” She assumed he was telling her that she shouldn’t be having any difficulty in believing he liked dealing with Ricky and putting up with the boy’s somewhat demanding personality.
Shane McCallister won a place in her heart that very moment.
It took her a second to realize that Ricky was trying to get her attention. After a beat, she looked at him and he asked, “Can I go with him, Mama?”
Getting the boy to speak properly felt like a never-ending battle. “May I go with him,” Cris corrected him patiently.
The lesson was lost on Ricky. He took her words at face value.
“You wanna go, too? Then we can both go, right?” Ricky asked eagerly, swinging his little feet beneath the table. Any faster and Cris was certain he’d take off like a miniature helicopter.
“No, Ricky, I was just trying to correct your grammar. And no, you can’t go with Shane. You have homework to do and I’ve got more dinners to serve, so we’re both grounded.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shane pause at the dining area’s threshold, turn around and wave to her and Ricky. She waved back, as did her son.
Cris stood there, firmly telling herself that her stomach hadn’t just leaped up in response, that if anything, it was only reacting to something she’d eaten earlier in the day.
But she knew she was making excuses. Poor ones, at that. They certainly weren’t convincing her of anything other than the fact that Shane’s proximity created mini tidal waves in her stomach.
Cris forced herself to focus on the immediate situation: she needed Ricky escorted back to his grandfather.
Glancing at the boy, she had a feeling that if she sent him off on his own the way she normally did, he would probably race after Shane and attempt to talk his way into going to the shelter with him. Most likely he’d tell Shane he had her blessings.
