Blessings of the Heart and Samantha's Gift (12 page)

To Bree’s surprise, Ryan didn’t argue. He looked at his father and didn’t say a word.

“You can go,” Mitch told him. “It’s almost your bedtime, anyway. Carry Barney out the back door and let him go potty, then put him in the bathroom. When you’ve done that, maybe you and Bud can have one cookie and a little glass of milk.”

“Yes, sir.”

Impressed, Brianne stood with Mitch and watched the eight-year-old walk slowly down the hall, his bare feet padding on the dark tile. “I think you’re making progress,” she said softly.

“It does seem like it.” In a show of frustration, Mitch raked his fingers through his hair. “Trouble is, I won’t know for sure if I’ve done things right until he’s grown up, and then it’ll be too late.”

“He’ll be fine. They both will be.”

“I’m not as worried about Bud,” Mitch said. “He’s a different kind of kid.”

“He’s also younger, more impressionable,” she reminded him. “Surely that makes a difference, too.”

“I suppose so. What they both need is a decent mother—someone like you.”

Bree held up both hands as if fending off a literal advance. “Whoa. Stop right there. You said it all when you said a decent mother. Their first one wasn’t exactly mother of the year. Don’t make the same mistake again.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, I decided a long time ago that I was never going to subject any child to the kind of upbringing I had. Period. Relationships are too tenuous, too apt to fall apart. Putting kids into the mix only makes things worse.”

“Or better,” Mitch countered.

“Don’t count on it. People tend to repeat the same mistakes they were raised with, whether they mean to or not. That’s a statistical fact. I don’t intend to saddle myself with such a serious responsibility.”

“You don’t believe in the healing power of love? How can you write the kind of books you do if you don’t buy into the illusion?”

“Illusion is the right word,” Bree said. “Just because I can create a believable fantasy on paper doesn’t mean I think I can do it in real life.”

Mitch took a step closer, then stopped when he saw her tense up. “I think you could,” he said quietly, “if you weren’t afraid to try.”

B
ree would have left him standing there and retreated into her office behind closed doors if she hadn’t been afraid that doing so would affirm his erroneous opinion. Instead, she put on a pleasant expression and led the way to the kitchen.

Bustling around, she set the cookie jar on the table and reached for the can of coffee. “Shall I make us a cup?”

“Only if you have decaf,” Mitch said wearily. “I haven’t been sleeping well. More caffeine won’t help.”

“Okay. Decaf it is.” She went to work measuring as she continued their conversation. “You’ll sleep better when you get your own roof over your head again. I wish I’d been able to find you a permanent place before your stupid dog ate my phone.”

He sank into a chair at the table, his shoulders slumping, his elbows propped in front of him, fingers laced together. “If you’d bothered to ask me in the first place, I’d have told you I had a place in town. As a matter of fact, I remember trying to tell you at least once.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Roughly?”

“I think it may have been about the time you’d run down the battery in your cell phone. You were so overwrought you wouldn’t listen to a thing I said.”

“Well, you could have kept trying,” Bree said, annoyed. “I’ve been worrying myself sick about where you were going to live. Why the sob story about the cabin if you weren’t homeless? Were you getting even with me?”

“Of course not.” Mitch heaved a noisy sigh. “Do you always think the worst about everybody or do you save that attitude exclusively for me?”

“I’m an equal-opportunity cynic,” she said. “Even Ryan had me fooled.”

“About what?”

“The big house. He said you sold it to get the money to look for him and Bud, and that was why you all had to go live in the old cabin.”

“That’s more of his scrambled logic,” Mitch countered. “I did have an expensive house. And I did sell it. True, most of the money went into the long-term search for Liz and the kids, but I’m not destitute. I never said I was. Matter of fact, I distinctly remember telling you that I built houses for a living.”

Brianne racked her brain. Had he? Probably. Whenever Mitch was speaking she’d constantly had to fight to keep her mind from wandering the way it did when she was formulating a plot for one of her stories.

“Okay,” she admitted, “maybe you did say something about having a job. But that doesn’t mean I understood what you meant.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I do,” Mitch told her. “You were judging me by what you could see. You’d decided from the get-go that I was a poor hillbilly without a dime so you didn’t pay attention to anything I said that might have changed your mind.”

“I did nothing of the kind!”

“Oh, no? I lived in a cabin with no running water or indoor plumbing. As far as you knew, I was raising my sons there. When we got flooded out, I showed up with a handful of possessions and nothing else.” He huffed in disgust. “I’m surprised you even let us in.”

In retrospect, so was she. Normally she’d have been so apprehensive of a knock on her door in the middle of a storm she’d have hesitated to answer it at all. Yet she had. And had immediately taken in the waifs on her doorstep as if she were running some kind of halfway house for soggy ragamuffins.

The analogy brought her up short. That
was
how she’d viewed Mitch and his family, wasn’t it? Well, it wasn’t her fault. He’d certainly looked the part both times she’d seen him.

“I suppose I should apologize,” Bree finally said. “I’m still getting used to living out here in the country. Nothing is like where I came from. It’s a whole new world for me.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“You don’t have to sound so smug.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too.” He picked up a cookie and studied it to give himself something to do besides look at Bree. He finally took a bite and chewed slowly. “Now that I think about it, I was doing the same kind of thing with regard to you until recently.”

Bree was puzzled. “You were?”

“Yes. I’d made up my mind that you and I could never get along together because of this fancy-schmancy house of yours and the way you live.”

“You were right.”

“Nope,” he drawled. “I was wrong. If you were really as prissy as I’d thought, you’d have thrown us out on our ears long ago.” He chuckled. “Especially Barney.”

Mitch’s good humor was affecting Bree’s mood. “That had occurred to me. Often. I’d have done it, too, except I didn’t want the kids to pitch a fit.”

“I don’t buy that. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to try to convince me you don’t like the boys. If that were truly the case, you wouldn’t care how upset they got.”

“Sure I would. I’m not mean.”

An enigmatic smile lit his countenance. “My point, exactly.”

By the time Bree and Mitch left the kitchen it was after ten. Yawning behind his hand, he bid her a polite good-night and said, “Guess the kids forgot their cookies and went straight up to bed. I’ll go tuck them in. See you in the morning.” He started up the stairs.

“Good night.”

Trapped amid whirling emotions and confused thoughts, Brianne headed toward her office. There was no way she could recapture the mood to work on her book. Not tonight. Not after the disturbing conversation she and Mitch had just had. It didn’t matter that he’d been dead wrong about her. Once real life intruded and she lost the feeling that she was a part of her ongoing story, her creativity vanished.

She knew she could either be sensible and quit for the night, or sit at her computer and stare blankly at the blinking cursor while her mind wandered. In other words, the lights were on but there was definitely nobody home.

The door to her office stood ajar. Pushing it all the way open, Brianne froze, puzzled. Something looked wrong. Her desk chair had been rolled up to face the computer, and although she couldn’t see anyone sitting in it because its back was toward the door, she could look past it and see colorful figures dancing across the edges of her monitor screen.

She stared, openmouthed and unbelieving. Then, she launched herself across the room with a yowl that could have been heard all the way to Little Rock—and probably was.

“No! Not my computer!”

She grabbed the back of the swivel chair and spun it around. There sat Ryan, hands in the air as if he were an arch criminal who had just been caught red-handed by the police. Bud, who was squeezed into the chair beside him, puckered up to cry.

Apparently Ryan had been balancing the keyboard in his lap, because when Bree moved the chair, the short cable beneath the keyboard held it back and sent it crashing to the floor.

“I don’t believe you did this!” she screeched. “How could you? How dare you? You’re supposed to be in bed!”

“It’s just a game,” the older boy said. “We didn’t hurt your stupid computer.”

“Stupid computer?” Bree howled. “It’s my whole life! My business. I can’t work without it.”

“So?”

“So? So?”

She was so angry at the inconsiderate child she didn’t know what to do or say next. Mitch appeared in the doorway just in time. Bud bailed out of the chair and ran to him. Ryan went, too, though he took his time.

Scowling, Mitch looked to Bree for answers. “I heard you screaming all the way upstairs. What happened?”

“I caught them playing with my computer!”

“Did they hurt it?”

What a stupid question. “I don’t know. What difference does it make.
Nobody
touches my computer. Nobody!”

“Don’t you think you should check it before you come unglued? Kids are pretty savvy about electronic gadgets these days. Chances are, it’s fine.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s exactly the point,” Mitch argued, keeping his voice even, his attitude calm. “I’m going to take the boys upstairs and put them to bed now. Then I’ll come back down here. While I’m gone, I want you to carefully check your files.”

Taking the boys by the hand and turning to go, he paused. “If you expect my children to be drawn and quartered for touching your computer, you’re going to have to prove to me that they’ve actually destroyed it.”

Brianne was playing computer solitaire when Mitch returned.

She glanced at him with a disgusted expression. “Everything’s fine.”

“I thought it would be.”

“No, you
hoped
it would be. There’s a big difference.”

“I’ll give you that one,” he said, sauntering across the room and perching on the edge of her desk. “If it’s any consolation, Ryan says he’s sorry.”

“So what else is new?”

“Well, at least he’s going to get used to apologizing. I’m sure it’s a skill he’ll need plenty in the years to come.”

“Undoubtedly.” Abandoning her half-finished game, Bree scooted her chair back. “I hope I scared him good.”

“You must have,” Mitch said. “You terrified me. I thought for sure there’d been a murder down here or something.”

Bree smiled. “There almost was.”

“That’s what Bud figured. He was a lot more scared than Ryan. It took me a long time to get him calmed down.”

“Oh, dear.” The smile faded. “I didn’t mean to frighten him like that. I just saw what was going on and reacted instinctively. If anything happens to my computer I’m out of business. Did you explain that to the boys?”

Mitch chuckled under his breath. “Sort of. I think I said something about you being crazy and unstable.”

“Oh, that’s close. Poor little Bud.” Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, she stood and headed for the door. “I’m going up there right now and explain it to him.”

“Okay,” Mitch said, following, “but if he’s already asleep I’d appreciate it if you didn’t wake him. He’s had a pretty rough time the last couple of days.”

“He’s had it rough? What about me?”

“Okay. None of us have had an easy time of it,” he agreed with a weary sigh. “But it’ll all be over soon. After we’re gone, I hope you’ll remember us fondly.”

Remember them? She’d couldn’t have forgotten the Fowlers if she’d tried. Nevertheless, Bree wasn’t about to let herself be drawn into another serious discussion about her personal feelings. No, sir. Especially not when a still, small voice kept insisting that she didn’t really want the road to be repaired. Not soon. Maybe not ever.

Logic told her they couldn’t continue the way they had been for much longer, though. To begin with, she’d soon run out of food. It was amazing how much the four of them had already consumed, even if you didn’t count the meals she’d partially ruined or the leftovers she’d given the dog.

Other staples were in short supply, too. Right after Barney had dined on her cell phone, he’d decided to shred several extra rolls of toilet paper for dessert. Add laundry soap and paper towels to that list, and they’d soon be in dire need.

Climbing the stairs a few steps behind her, Mitch spoke softly, sincerely. “I want you to know, as soon as I get back to town, I’m going to make every effort to let folks know there was nothing funny going on up here.”

“Funny? Like what?”

“You know. Hanky-panky.”

She giggled. “Do people still use that expression?”

“They do around here. And their moral code dates back to the old days, too. Charlie’s bound to mention having seen us together. I don’t want anybody saying or thinking anything bad about you on my account.”

“That’s sweet. But you don’t need to worry about my reputation. I’ve already told you I don’t get out much. By the time I’ve lived here awhile they’ll all be sure I’m some kind of nutty recluse, anyway. Which I am.”

“That could change.” Mitch had closed the distance between them, and his breath ruffled her hair as he spoke.

Barely ahead, Brianne sensed his nearness. Her steps slowed at the top landing.

After what seemed like eons, Mitch finally came closer and wrapped his arms around her. She laid her arms over his and leaned against his strong chest with a sigh.

The quiet hallway wrapped them in the cocoon of its dimness and made Bree feel as if they were the only two people in the world. If only that were so. If only her waking dreams could come true. There was a rightness, a flawlessness in Mitch’s touch, in his nearness. It was the rest of their world that was all wrong.

Tears blurred her already cloudy vision. Closing her eyes, she wished she were the kind of person who could pray, believing her plea would be heard, because this was the perfect time to ask God for a miracle.

Mitch bent to place a kiss on her hair, then whispered, “I’m going to miss you, honey.”

She couldn’t speak, couldn’t make herself respond in kind. No matter what she said it would only make matters worse. A solitary tear slid down her cheek and dropped onto his arm before she could catch it.

Once again, he leaned and nuzzled her hair, kissing her ear, her temple, the corner of her eye and finally her cheek. She was crying. For that he blamed himself. He’d pushed her too hard. Too fast. Because he’d managed to fall in love in the space of a few days, he’d made the mistake of believing it could be mutual.