brought over from Scotland.”
“Oh. I’ll bet they’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve yet to find them.”
“Didn’t she have a jewelry box?”
“Yes, and last night I sent my mom pictures of everything in it and none of the pieces are the Scotland things.”
“So you’re here until you find them?”
“I’m here till I find them. Or four weeks. I can get away when I want, but I can’t stay away indefinitely.”
“Maybe one of these nights I could grill chicken or something for supper and you could come over and we could catch up.”
He remembered the afternoons sitting on the bench seat of her grandmother’s picnic table, trying to get her to understand equations. He remembered spring breezes and autumn winds, but most of all he remembered how nice it was just to be with her. For a man working to get beyond a protracted divorce, it might not be a bad idea to spend some time with a woman who reminded him of good things. Happy times.
He smiled. “That would be nice.”
He made his way back to his house and headed to his grandmother’s bedroom again. Because she’d lived eight months of the year in Florida and four months in Maryland, her house was still furnished as it always had been. An outdated floral bedspread matched floral drapes. Lacy lamps sat on tables by the bed. And the whole place smelled of potpourri.
With a grimace, he walked to the mirrored dresser. He’d looked in the jewelry box the night before. He could check the drawers today, but he had a feeling these lockets and necklaces were something his grandmother had squirreled away. He toed the oval braided rug beneath her bed.
Could she have had a secret compartment under there? Floorboards that he could lift, and find a metal box?
Looking for that was better than flipping through his grandmother’s underwear drawer.
He pushed the bed to the side, off the rug, then knelt and began rolling the carpet, hoping to find a sign of a loose floorboard. With the rug out of the way, he felt along the hardwood, looking for a catch or a spring or something that would indicate a secret compartment. He smoothed his hand along a scarred board, watching the movement of his fingers as he sought a catch, and suddenly his hand hit something solid and stopped.
His gaze shot over and there knelt Owen.
“Hey.”
He rocked back on his heels. “Hey. Does your mom know you’re here?”
The little boy shook his head.
Wyatt sighed. “Okay. Look. I like you. And from what I saw of your house this morning, I get it. You’re a bored guy in a houseful of women.”
Owen’s big brown eyes blinked.
“But you can’t come over here.”
“Yes I can. I can get through the bushes.”
Wyatt stifled a laugh. Leave it to a kid to be literal. “Yes, you can walk over here. It is possible. But it isn’t right for you to leave without telling your mom.”
Owen held out a cell phone. “We can call her.”
Wyatt groaned. “Owen, buddy, I hate to tell you this, but if you took your mom’s phone, you might be in a world of trouble.”
He shoved up off the floor and held out his hand to the little boy. “Sorry, kid. But I’ve got to take you and the phone home.”
Wyatt pulled the hedge back and walked up the steps to Missy’s kitchen, holding Owen’s hand. Knocking on the screen door, he called, “Missy?”
Drying her hands on a dish towel, she appeared at the door, opened it and immediately saw Owen. “Oh, no. I’m sorry! I thought he was in the playroom with the girls.”
She stooped down. “O-ee, honey. You have to stay here with Mommy.”
Owen slid his little arm around Wyatt’s knee and hugged.
And fifty percent of Wyatt’s childhood came tumbling back. he hadn’t been included in the neighbor kids’ games, because he was a nerd. And Owen wasn’t included in his sisters’ games, because he wasn’t a girl. But the feeling of being excluded was the same.
Wyatt’s heart squeezed. “You know what? I didn’t actually bring him home to stay home.” He knew a cry for help when he heard it, and he couldn’t ignore it. He held out her cell phone and she gasped. “I just want you to know where he is, and I wanted to give back your phone.”
She looked up at him. “Are you saying you’ll keep him at your house for a while?”
“Sure. I think we could have fun.”
Owen’s grip on his knee loosened.
She caught her son’s gaze again. “If I let you go to Mr. McKenzie’s house for a few hours, will you promise to stay here this afternoon?”
Owen nodded eagerly.
Her gaze climbed up to meet Wyatt’s. “What are you going to do with a kid for a couple of hours?”
“My grandmother kept everything. She should still have the video games I played as a boy. And if she doesn’t, I saw a sandbox out there in your yard. Maybe we could play in that.”
Owen tugged on his jeans. “I have twucks.”
Missy gave Wyatt a hopeful look. “He loves to play in the sand with his trucks.”
He shrugged. “So sand it is. I haven’t showered yet this morning. I can crawl around in the dirt for a few hours.”
Missy rose. “I really appreciate this.”
“It’s no problem.”
Twenty minutes later, Missy stood by her huge mixer waiting for her gelatin mix to cool, watching Owen and Wyatt out her kitchen window. Her eyes filled with tears. Her little boy needed a man around, but his dad had run and wanted nothing to do with his triplets. Her dad was a drunk. Her pool of potential men for Owen’s life was very small.
Owen pushed a yellow toy truck through the sand as Wyatt operated a pint-size front-end loader. He filled the back of the truck with sand and Owen “drove” it to the other side of the sandbox, where he dumped it in a growing pile.
Missy put her elbow on the windowsill and her chin on her open palm. She might not want to get involved with Wyatt, but it really would help Owen to have him around for the next month.
Still, he was a rich, good-looking guy, who, if he wanted to play with kids, would have had some by now. It was wrong to even consider asking him to spend time with Owen. Especially since the time he spent with Owen had to be on her schedule, not his.
She took a pitcher of tropical punch and some cookies outside. “I hate to say this,” she said, handing Owen the first glass of punch,
