First Time, Forever

Stop, she ordered herself. This was what her book on positive thinking said she must not do, think in negatives, create whole scenes and scenarios. The book, she recalled, instructed her to try to turn her negative thoughts around, to think now, of something positive.

She tried to picture Mac having a wonderful day. She pictured him on a farm. She pictured him chasing through tall grass after a butterfly, having just the kind of day she had pictured when she’d applied for this job.

She went back and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Why had she made so much?

Kathleen Miles, you are not inviting that man in for dinner.

Just then she heard a truck pull up. She set down the spoon in such a hurry it splattered sauce on her white blouse. She ran to the front window.

The right truck. She went out of the house and onto the porch.

Mac got out of it and slammed the door. He marched up the walk, his back straight, his clothes absolutely filthy, a pungent aroma following him.

She glanced anxiously at his running shoes.

Clean.

“How was it?” she asked him.

“How do you think?” he snapped.

“Oh.”

“Hey, none-of-your-business.” Evan Atkins had gotten out of his truck and was coming down the walk toward them.

Mac turned and glared at him.

“Same time, same place,” Evan said.

Mac gave him a dirty look and when it didn’t phase Evan, he gave it to her instead. Then he muttered a word she couldn’t quite make out and the porch door slammed shut behind him.

Evan Atkins continued down the walk toward her.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and suddenly felt very aware of the little splotch of spaghetti sauce on the front of her. She wasn’t going to let him see that she felt vulnerable!

He walked with the easy assurance of a man completely comfortable within his own body, a man sure of himself. His self-certainty annoyed her even more in the face of her own lack of it.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him none-of-your-business,” she said, far more sharply than she intended, sounding exactly like the aging spinster she was. “His name is Mac.”

“Actually, I know that. I’m just waiting for the invitation to come from him.”

His voice was low and calm, a faint thread of amusement running through it, though he wasn’t smiling. Did he find her amusing? Probably that spaghetti splotch. He stopped, rested one foot on her bottom step and looked up at her.

“Where on earth have you been?” Her voice was still sharper than she intended, but definitely the tone of a woman who planned to be taken seriously.

His eyes widened. “Ma’am?”

His eyes were dark ocean-blue, with flecks of the most intriguing gray.

“He left at five-thirty this morning!”

“My place is a good half hour drive from here, ma’am. That’s an hour round trip. I had a lot of work to do today. I couldn’t just stop everything to drive him back into town when he thought he’d had enough. Which was about five minutes after he started.”

“Twelve hours is a long time for a little boy to work.”

“He’s not that little. Besides, we stopped for lunch.”

“I don’t even think it’s legal to work a man that long!”

“Well, ma’am,” he said, a bit of a fire lighting in those cool ocean eyes, “if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t even make a dent in that anger he’s carrying around.”

“Mac is not angry!” She had no idea why she said that, when it was so pathetically obvious he was.

“Scratching that particular word in the side of a person’s truck can’t exactly be interpreted as ‘I come in peace.’”

“I don’t think he better work for you tomorrow.”

“Now, ma’am, it’s really none of my business, but I think that would be a mistake.”

“Really?” she said haughtily.

“I don’t think you want to be teaching that boy that he can behave any old way he likes, and that there won’t be any consequences for it. Mama Bear will bail him out.”

He was right, and they both knew it.

Still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying, “And you’re an expert on raising children, are you?”

She was sorry the minute she said it, knowing she was taking out all her anxiety about her move and Mac on him, and that he didn’t deserve it. Besides, as soon as she said it, in his eyes she caught a glimpse of a pain that was as raw as an open wound.

But his voice was steady, and completely unflappable. He answered slowly, measuring his words. “No, I’m sure not that. It just seems to me if you bail him out now, you’ll be bailing him out in quite a different way in the future.”

She took a deep breath, realized she was being both cranky and unfair and that he was right and she was wrong. She was completely unable to admit that. “I was worried about him. I was worried when he was gone so long.”

It was Evan’s look of genuine distress that soothed some of the irritation she had been feeling.

“I didn’t mean to cause you worry. I guess I should have called.” He smiled, shook his head and said, “I feel like I’ve said those words a few times before in my life.”

She just bet he had. Those charming dimples had probably won the hearts of hundreds of women who had waited by their phones with bated breath for his call. That never came. She planned never to be one of them. Never. That was one very good reason she couldn’t invite him to share spaghetti with them.

“I guess I thought I’d keep him out of your hair while you were at work,” he said.

He’d been doing her a favor, or thought he was, and she was giving him a hard time about it?

“He’s not such a bad kid,” she said defensively, and then realized, suddenly, how ridiculous she must seem—a mother bear protecting her cub, just as he had said.

“Ma’am, I can see that.”

“You can?”