him to the door that led upstairs. “Is it liveable up there?”
“I guess that depends on how picky you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t get all riled up, bug,” he said, making a calming gesture with his hands. “It’s just that I remember you being pretty fussy about things like that. Now that you’re a mom, I figure you must be even more worried about it.”
“Do not call me that,” she spat, just about tearing the old door off its hinges. “We’re not kids anymore.”
Tell me about it, Cam mused as he followed her up the creaky wooden steps. Two years younger than he was, the very headstrong Erin Kinley had always been a handful. Now she was even more so, and he pitied the guy who was unfortunate enough to lose his head over her.
She’d probably hand it back to him on a platter.
* * *
In truth, Erin didn’t need a tour of the building to know she wanted it.
What she did need, however, was a few minutes to get over her shock at finding out that Cam Stewart was the owner. It made sense, she supposed, since the closed shop was right next to the diner and attached Laundromat he’d been running since coming home a few months ago. The reason for that was well-known around town, and she felt guilty for not asking about it sooner. “So, how’s your mom doing?”
“Depends on the day,” he replied with a frown. “Recovering from a stroke can be like that, from what the visiting nurse says. Sometimes Mom seems like she’s getting back to her old self, and other times I can tell she doesn’t quite recognize me when I get there.”
Erin couldn’t imagine how that would feel, and despite the fact that they’d never gotten along, her heart went out to him. “That’s awful, Cam. I’m so sorry.”
“It is what it is.”
He shrugged, but the careless gesture wasn’t nearly enough to mask the pain that made his brown eyes look almost black. The shadows under them told her that he’d been working way too hard and worrying more than anyone should have to. He still kept his dark, wavy hair a bit too long for her taste, but she couldn’t deny that the years he’d spent up north had been good to him. More weathered than handsome, his features were an interesting combination of angles and creases that hinted at a lot of laughter.
Not recently, though, she realized sadly. Her own life had gotten pretty complicated since her father’s sudden death a few years ago, so she could relate. Thankfully, a much brighter topic popped into her head. “I just remembered you’re a new uncle. How did Sophie like her first Christmas?”
“About like you’d expect,” he responded with a chuckle. “I hunted all over for the baby doll Natalie said she’d like best, and what does my scamp of a niece do? She rips off the paper, chucks the toy away and plays with the box.”
He fished out his cell phone and opened his pictures to show Erin a photo of a laughing little girl wearing a red velvet dress, one black patent shoe and reindeer antlers.
“Oh, she’s adorable. How old is she now?”
“Ten months,” he responded, glancing at the photo before sliding his phone back into his pocket. “The way she’s moving around, she’ll be walking any day. Then her parents will really have their hands full.”
“If Sophie’s anywhere near as popular as her mother was in high school, Alex will be busy intimidating all her possible boyfriends.” Pausing, Erin gave Cam a stern look. “Maybe you can give him some lessons on that.”
“I never wasted time intimidating anyone. I flat-out told ’em that if they got outta line with my little sister, I’d make ’em sorrier than they’d ever been in their miserable lives.”
“My mistake. You threatened them.”
“Got that right.” He punctuated his response with a growl that would have been more convincing if his eyes hadn’t been twinkling in fun. “Don’t give me that look. All three of your brothers did the same thing for you.”
Shaking her head in exasperation, Erin shared her opinion on that. “You were a bunch of morons, all four of you.”
“Maybe, but we got our point across.” When she didn’t say anything, he flashed her a shameless grin. “You’re welcome.”
She couldn’t come up with a witty comeback for that one, so she let the subject drop and strolled around the apartment, assessing what kind of home it would make for Parker and her.
While it wasn’t large, it had a nice-sized living room with a bay window that overlooked Main Street. Both bedrooms were down a short hallway, on either side of a bathroom that would benefit from a good scrubbing but was otherwise acceptable. She wasn’t much of a cook, but the galley kitchen and its appliances were in decent condition, and the breakfast bar separating it from the living area would do double duty for eating and homework.
“So,” he began in a conversational tone, “I can’t help wondering why a lifelong country girl like you is suddenly interested in moving to town.”
“I’ve been renting the bottom half of the old Johnson place for the past couple of years, but they’ve been hinting at selling it so they can move to Ohio to be closer to their grandkids. When Judge Markham decided to retire in December, he gave me a nice severance and a glowing reference about the administrative work I did for him. It was a decent job, but not really my thing. I mostly stayed because he and Granddad were friends for so long, and I could work flexible hours when I needed to.”
“Because you’re a mom now,” Cam filled in with an incredulous look. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.”
So was she, Erin had to admit. But only to herself. She feared that if she ever voiced the tiniest smidgen of self-doubt, it would somehow get back to Parker’s social worker and she’d lose him to the system she was so determined to rescue him from.
Eight years old, he was on the verge of being considered unadoptable, which meant a forever home was almost out of reach for the shy boy. Over the past few months, she’d made slow but steady progress with him, until he now looked her in the eye without flinching. She hated to consider what might happen to him if he was torn from the life she and her large, loving family had worked so hard to give him.
So, in typical Kinley fashion, she’d simply decided that she wasn’t going to let that happen. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about starting my own business, and with the apartment up here, this place would be perfect.”
“For what?”
He seemed genuinely interested, and her heart leaped with the excitement she always felt when she talked about the dream that had edged closer to reality over the past year. “A pet store. Not your average one, though.”
“Of course not,” he said with a chuckle. “You never do anything like anyone else.”
There was a tinge of admiration in his tone, and she couldn’t keep back a smile. “You make that sound like a good thing.”
“It is. There’s plenty of boring, predictable folks on the planet. We certainly don’t need any more.” Leaning
