it in one chubby fist.
“Say goodbye to Issa,” Hutch instructed.
“‘Bye, Itta.”
“‘Bye, Ash,” Issa answered.
“We’ll be back around seven,” Hutch Kincaid said.
“Okay.”
“And your secret is safe with me, so don’t worry about it,” he said in a softer voice.
Issa looked squarely at him, searching for signs of disapproval or judgment. But there seemed to be only kindness and understanding in his remarkable blue eyes.
“Thanks,” she said, not only sounding relieved but actually feeling it.
He nodded at the hole in the door where the handle and lock had been. “You can still close the door. It won’t be any worse than it was with the bad hardware. I’ll lock the main door downstairs and we’ll be gone, so you’ll have the place to yourself until I come back with the new stuff—no more surprise visitors.”
“Sure. Okay,” Issa muttered as he took his son and left her to do as he’d suggested, shutting her door as securely as she could.
And then she found herself doing the oddest thing.
She bent over and peeked through the hole where the handle had been to watch her landlord go down the stairs that led to his own half of the house.
At least until she realized what she was doing and how silly it was.
Then she shot upright and reminded herself that no matter how big and strapping and hubba-hubba-handsome someone was, so much as noticing a man at this point was beyond absurd. She was pregnant. With another man’s baby. And that was more than enough of a catastrophe. She didn’t need to add insult to injury.
But Hutch Kincaid was big, strapping and hubba-hubba-handsome.
And nice, too, it seemed.
It just didn’t change anything.
Chapter Two
“One more bite, Ash, then we’ll go upstairs and fix Issa’s door.”
“Itta,” Ash parroted his father before dragging a French fry through a puddle of ketchup and putting it haphazardly into his mouth. Then, mid-chew, the two-and-a-half-year-old announced for the third time, “Done.”
The toddler had eaten about half of his dinner and Hutch had been urging him to eat more for at least fifteen minutes. One bite at a time. He decided to finally accept the done decree. What he wasn’t sure of was whether Ash was too young yet for etiquette lessons, but he decided to err on the side of caution and said, “Don’t talk with your mouth full, big guy.”
“‘Kay,” Ash agreed, giving Hutch his second view of the partially chewed fry.
So much for that.
Hutch got up from the table, slid Ash’s sippy cup to the little boy and said, “Finish your milk,” as he gathered the remnants of their burgers and fries to put into the trash.
Teaching table manners—Iris would approve of that even if he had failed at it.
Burgers and fries for Sunday dinner—his late wife would have frowned on that.
Still, it was a meal, they’d sat at the kitchen table together to eat it and Hutch had attempted to give the etiquette lesson—that was all something. Something better than the way things had been right after Iris had died. Because while he might not be a candidate for Father of the Year, he was giving Ash his all now.
And in that vein, he made a mental note to look in the child-development books for information on when and how to begin teaching table manners, and when to reasonably expect a kid to understand and be able to incorporate them into his routine.
As for the fast food that he tried to keep to a minimum, they had just arrived home from a seven-day trip to Denver where Hutch had closed on the sale of his and Iris’s house. Plus he’d come home to details that needed to be attended to with the new store, and an upstairs tenant who had arrived during his absence and needed him to take care of the broken lock on the apartment door—sometimes fast food was just a necessity.
As it was, he was still five minutes late for getting upstairs to the apartment.
He glanced over his shoulder as he did the dishes. Ash’s sippy cup was right where he’d left it.
“Finish your milk, Ash,” he repeated. “It’ll make you big and strong.”
“Lise you,” Ash said.
“Yep, like me,” Hutch confirmed, feeling that twinge of delight that his son’s current hero worship gave him. The books said things like that came and went with the different stages kids passed through, but Hutch was enjoying it while it lasted. “Let’s see your muscles.”
Ash raised his arms in flexing He-Man fashion, fists pointed toward his tiny shoulders.
“They’re lookin’ good, but I think they need some more milk. Drink up.”
The tiny tot took the sippy cup and finally drank from it.
Hutch wasn’t sure whether encouragement along those lines translated into the kind of pressure his own father had put on him and Ian to be athletes—actually, to be football stars to equal Morgan Kincaid’s own accomplishments as a former NFL player. Hutch hoped not. Pressuring Ash was definitely not something he wanted to do. The be-like-Dad, muscle-building angle just seemed to be one that worked, so Hutch was using it. He’d stop if it ever started to become anything more than a ploy.
He just wanted to be a good dad. He wanted to incorporate the parts of his own father that he’d liked and appreciated, and leave out the parts that hadn’t been great. And he wanted to do the kind of job his late wife would have expected of him, the kind of job Iris would be counting on him to do.
“Yook now,” Ash demanded.
Hutch glanced over his shoulder once more. The sippy cup was drained and Ash was again flexing.
“Yep, I can see those muscles growing already. Good job!”
Dishes finally in the dishwasher, Hutch rinsed the sink, then dampened a paper towel and returned to the kitchen table where Ash sat in a booster seat propped on one of the chairs.
“Cleanup,” he announced.
“No!” Ash protested the way he always did when it came to washing his face.
“Come on, Issa is expecting us and we can’t visit a lady with ketchup all over your face and hands.”
“Itta’s pit-tee,” Ash said, seeming more inclined toward cooperation with the mention of Issa.
“Yes, she is,” Hutch confirmed as he applied the damp cloth to the toddler.
Thoughts of Issa, images of her, hadn’t been far
