Hometown Honey

He’d needed to take care of some sheriffing business, but he returned to the marina later that afternoon with a horse trailer. He and Cindy loaded up her meager belongings in about five minutes.

“Adam will need a crib,” she said, breaking a long silence. “Do you think that awful Ed LaRue will let me get the old one from my—from his house?”

“He put all your furniture out in the street,” Luke said. “I drove by your place earlier, just to check on things.”

“I guess I don’t blame him. He was probably madder than a cornered javelina hog to find all that junk I left behind.” She actually grinned at the thought. “I probably should have put it in storage or something,” she admitted. “It was just garage-sale stuff, nothing good, but I might need it.”

“Let’s go see what’s there.” Luke was encouraged to hear Cindy actually thinking ahead more than ten minutes. She’d always been a girl with plans—big plans. To see her in survival mode, refusing to think about tomorrow, much less next month or next year, was painful.

Luke was relieved to see Cindy’s furniture still lined up at the edge of her yard—Ed’s yard—with a big sign stuck to her dining room table that said Free Stuff.

“I don’t see the crib,” Cindy said. “Probably somebody took it already. And my bed isn’t here, either. Damn, what was I thinking?”

“Nobody really expected you to be thinking clearly after what happened to you. It’s okay. I bet Polly has an extra crib. Which of this stuff do you want?”

“All of it,” she said decisively, rolling up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Whatever I can’t use, I’ll sell.”

“That’s the spirit.” It was wonderful to hear that determination in her voice and see a sparkle in her eye. They loaded up a table and chairs, some bookshelves, a sofa, nightstands, a couple of lamps and pictures and a TV cabinet.

“I guess the TV and VCR are gone,” she said wistfully as they pushed and shoved the furniture so it would all fit. “What was I thinking?”

“Stop questioning yourself so much, honey.” The endearment slipped out, and Luke resisted slapping his hand over his mouth. Her eyes flashed at him, but that was all. “Cut yourself some slack, okay? Focus on the future.”

“Yeah, the future,” she murmured.

She was going to have to make some major readjustments in her thinking. Nowhere in her wildest imaginings had she pictured herself broke and without a source of income. She’d always worked—always. And though she’d never been exactly wealthy, she’d never wanted for anything basic, even those years she’d lived in a truck. Of course, she hadn’t had a baby in tow.

“So, do you have any plans?” Luke asked, forcing the question to sound casual.

“I haven’t thought much about it,” she admitted as he closed the tailgate on the trailer. They got back into his Blazer. Adam was snoozing in his car seat in back, and not even the slam of the tailgate had awakened him.

He would be such a great traveling companion, she thought for the umpteenth time. And dammit, she wasn’t giving up on the idea of traveling with him. She just had to figure out how. “I guess I’ll have to get a job.”

“In a restaurant?”

“Maybe, though I can’t think of any place around here that’s looking for help.”

“What else are you qualified to do?”

“Drive. But I can’t see me driving without Jim. And without my own rig…” She stopped there, thinking about Jim’s truck, how he’d fixed it up so fine and painted his own logo on the sides. He’d had dreams of owning his own fleet of trucks. It would have happened, too. He’d have made it happen.

She swallowed back tears. Oh, God, she couldn’t start crying again. When she started, she had a hard time stopping. And she didn’t want Luke to see her weeping. He must already think she was a candidate for a straitjacket.

“Trucking isn’t a safe job for a woman alone, much less with a child,” Luke commented as he pulled his Blazer into the street, the trailer rattling behind them.

“No,” she agreed, grateful he’d eased over the awkward moment. If he’d offered sympathy, she’d have lost it.

“So the restaurant industry is your best bet. But you should be more ambitious. You’ve got management experience now—managing a staff, keeping the books…”

“Who in their right mind would trust me with money?” She sighed. “Anyway, that sort of job would require me to put together a résumé and go through interviews. I’d rather just walk in someplace, put on an apron and wait tables.” She knew she sounded pathetically unambitious.

Luke didn’t say anything else about her future. He was probably frustrated with her attitude, and she couldn’t blame him. She just wasn’t herself.

He pulled in the driveway of his house—a big, old, prairie-style frame home with a front porch that spanned its entire width.

“This house is bigger than I remembered,” she said idly. “I thought you’d have filled it full of kids by now.”

“What woman would have me?” he quipped, but his smile seemed slightly forced. He pulled all the way around to the back, where there was a detached garage—three narrow stalls with a second story above them. “I haven’t been inside the carriage house in a long time. Last time I checked, it was okay, though.”

And what if it isn’t now? Cindy wondered.

They parked and climbed out. Adam was awake now, looking around curiously. Odd that he’d slept through the slamming trailer door, but pulling quietly into a driveway had awakened him. Cindy had long suspected he was extremely sensitive to her moods. Now he sensed her anxiety about her new temporary home.

The baby held his arms toward Cindy. “Ma-ma-ma-ma.”

She grinned. “Luke, did you hear that? He said mama.”

“Is that the first time?” Luke seemed to share her wonder. He came around to her side of the car and peered in at Adam when she opened the back door.

“He’s been vocalizing for a while now, and sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s actually saying something or just babbling.” She unbuckled the various straps on the car seat and extracted Adam. “But that was pretty clear. He was looking at me and reaching for me and saying mama.” She hugged her son. “You’re such a smart boy, aren’t you, Adam.” Those pesky tears returned to her eyes, but these weren’t tears of despair. She was suddenly awash in sentimentality. And there was Luke, standing too close, almost touching, and she felt as if she ought to be resentful toward him due to the simple fact that he wasn’t Jim, he wasn’t Adam’s father, and a boy’s father should be there when he speaks his first words.

But resentment was only a tiny part of what she felt. It was such a bittersweet moment, and mostly she was just glad that she’d been able to share it with someone. She’d borne so much all alone since Jim’s death. Adam had only been two months old. Jim had missed his first steps, his first tooth, the ear infection that had sent her flying to a Tyler hospital in a dead panic. Then her mother’s unexpected death.

No wonder she’d turned to Dex so easily. Finally there had been someone to lean on, someone to confide in and share the burden as well as the joys. She must have been an incredibly easy target.

All at once, she couldn’t keep the tears at bay and she sobbed.

“Cindy?”

She couldn’t bear the concern in Luke’s voice. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to put her arms around him and never let go. But then she’d be doing it again, falling all over the first man to show an interest in her, the first man to act as if he cared.

With Dex, all he’d really cared about was getting into her bed and her bank accounts. She knew Luke didn’t want to steal her money. But what did he want, really? And was she in any position to figure it out?

“I’m s-sorry.” She wiped her eyes, getting the tears under control before they could turn into a full-fledged crying jag. “Sometimes it just h-hits me.”

Thankfully Luke didn’t make a big deal of it. He grabbed a couple of tissues from a travel box he kept in his glove compartment and handed them to her. Then he busied himself with finding the key to the carriage house while she wiped her eyes and blew her nose while juggling Adam from hip to hip.

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s see this apartment.”

She walked up the stairs ahead of him, then stood aside on the landing so she could unlock the door, which led directly into the tiny kitchenette. They both entered, then recoiled from a nasty smell.

“Did something die in here?” Cindy asked, only half kidding.

“It’s been closed up for a long time,” Luke said. “Probably just needs a good cleaning and airing out.”

Cindy didn’t particularly look forward to that. She’d spent the last two days scrubbing down the boat to make it habitable. And it hadn’t smelled nearly this bad.

She moved on into the living room holding Adam tightly. She didn’t dare set him down in this nasty place. Luke, directly behind her, flipped on a light. Three huge, gray creatures jumped and hissed, then scuttled for cover beneath a reprobate sofa.