The Trick To Getting A Mom

“Alex! What are you doing?” A woman’s voice rang out with crisp authority.

Alex froze.

A look of horror on his face, Sean released Kit, and struggled to get up.

“Who’s she?” Kit asked as he helped her up. The woman wore a neat business suit and was standing beside a sedan, her arms crossed. She did not appear amused by what she saw.

“Candace Simmons,” Sean replied. He had the look of a schoolboy caught smoking behind the gym. “Alex’s principal. And my sister-in-law’s best friend.”

When the woman recognized Sean, her face registered disappointment. Slowly, with a long glance at Kit, she got in her car and drove away. And Kit saw her chances of getting out of town without starting any new rumors evaporate like fog before the morning sun.

“HOW COULD YOU?” Nine months pregnant and angrier than a hornet in a car wash, Emily McCabe leaned against her front door, her hands supporting her back. She stared at the two mud monsters. “How could you?”

Sean had stopped to tell his sister-in-law he’d found Alex and was going to take her to the lobster pound with him. Unfortunately, Candace had come and gone before them with the news of the spectacle in Babe’s front yard.

“Alexandra, do you have any idea how worried I was when I couldn’t find you?” Emily pushed a strand of lank hair out of her face. “Do you know how difficult it is for me to get around to look for you?”

“Yes’m.” Alex scuffed one toe of her boot against the other. She didn’t look at all sorry, Sean thought.

With difficulty, Emily knelt before Alex. “Honey, you scared me. If anything had happened to you…”

Sean felt guilty. He shouldn’t have bothered his sister-in-law in the first place, but he’d nowhere else to turn for child care. His sister, Mariah, was working overtime at the local landscape nursery to pay for night school. Pop and Jonas were working above and beyond their regular carpentry jobs to get the lobster pound open before the tourist season peaked. His oldest brother, Nick, and his family were in the process of moving back to Pritchard’s Neck, but they wouldn’t be settled in until the end of next month. Brad’s wife, Emily, had seemed Sean’s only choice.

Emily and Brad’s twins, Nina and Noah, were eight, and Olivia was six, which meant that they were away at school all day. So Sean had promised Emily that Alex would entertain herself, would be no trouble at all. He’d gotten the first part right.

“Do you understand why I was so upset?” Emily’s voice had lost its edge.

“Sorry.” Hugging her aunt, Alex finally seemed genuinely repentant.

“Then right around to the back, young lady, and hose off at the outside tap while I talk to your father.” Emily looked as if she wasn’t going to let Sean get away as easily.

Alex trotted around the corner of the house, a tiny smile turning up the corner of her lips, obviously already imagining she was on her way to water some trusty safari animal.

“She didn’t mean any harm,” Sean offered.

“She never means any harm.” Sighing, Emily smoothed the tent-like dress over her swollen form. “She’s in her own little world without consequences. A world you give far too much encouragement.”

“She saw the yard-sale sign down the street.” Sean stopped himself. Emily looked as if her physical strength and emotional patience had run out with her pregnancy. She didn’t need one more person challenging her. Not now, anyway. “She wanted to see if there were any books.”

“Books.” Emily rolled her eyes. “If it’s not books, it’s lobstering. If it’s not lobstering, it’s those wild travel fantasies you cultivate. Candace says Alex needs to focus more on—”

“I’m sorry she caused you grief.” He didn’t want to pick a fight with the woman who’d tried to do him a favor, but he didn’t need yet another lecture on child rearing. He was doing the best he could.

“You need to nudge her in the right directions,” Emily said gently. “Help her make more grounded choices.”

“Are you saying I’m not a good role model?”

“Mud wrestling with Kit Darling in public…?”

“I wasn’t mud wrestling.”

“If you say so, but…Candace was devastated.” Emily’s shoulders sagged. “And I can understand why. She has Alexandra’s best interests at heart. Yours, as well. And she has some expectations for her own.”

“Don’t go there, Emily. It was one dinner. A fix-up.”

“You didn’t give her a chance. She’s still hoping—”

“Candace isn’t my type.”

“Oh, but Kit is?”

“Look. I found Alex with Kit. When the rain started, Alex and I helped bring the yard sale stuff under cover. It was slippery. We fell. My eight-year-old happened to think it was funny.”

“Funny! Two adults down on the ground, groping each other in the mud. One of them a single father and the other…the other trashy Babe Darling’s daughter, no less.”

“Would it have made any difference if I’d been mud wrestling with, say, Libby Fisk? Or Heather Abernathy? Or Candace Simmons?”

“Oh, Sean.” Emily gave him a pitying look as if he were a lost boy. “All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I’m happy enough.”

“You know what I mean. I want you to have what Brad and I have. I want Alex to know a mother’s love.”

So did he, but finding the right woman for Alex—and for him—wasn’t just an easy search on eBay. “I don’t need a matchmaker, Em,” he said as gently as he could.

“If this afternoon’s any indication, I think you do.”

“So we’re back to Kit.”

“I don’t think she’s…your type.”

“I don’t know what kind of woman Kit is,” he admitted, keeping his tone even. “She hasn’t been back to town in nine years. She claims to be a travel writer.”

“Then she won’t be staying. You need a woman who’ll—” With one hand Emily grabbed Sean’s arm. With the other she clutched her belly.

“What?” He knew without asking.

“It’s time!” Emily gasped. “This is labor.”

“Are you sure?” Had he and Alex precipitated this?

“Of course I’m sure!” Emily said through clenched teeth. “I’ve had three children. Oh—” Reaching into her dress pocket, she withdrew a cell phone and thrust it at Sean. “Call Emergency Response.”

“I’ll call Brad.”

“There’s no time!”

He punched in 9-1-1 and requested the Emergency Response Unit, then turned his attention to his sister-in-law.