Adding Up to Marriage

Silas looked at his older son. “What about you?”

“No, I’m good,” Ollie said, pawing through two dozen stuffed animals for his ratty, shredded baby blanket which at this rate would accompany the kid to college. His bankie found, the kid pushed out a satisfied sigh and wriggled into the middle of the critters, giggling when Silas momentarily buried him in the comforter. Then his head popped out, his straight hair all staticky and his expression suddenly serious.

“Is Gramma okay?”

Silas sat on the bed beside him, rearranging the covers. “She’ll be fine, but her ankle really is broken. Which means she’s not gonna be able to take care of you guys.”

Worry instantly flooded big, brown eyes. “So who’s gonna watch us?”

“I have no idea. That’s tomorrow’s project. In the meantime, you get to hang out with me. Guess I’ll have to work from home for a while.”

“We tried that before, remember? You nearly lost it.”

As tired as he was, Silas laughed. “That was a year ago. You’re older now. It’ll be fine.”

The toilet flushed; Tad zoomed back into the room and flew into his bed again. Unlike his brother, Tad didn’t need to sleep with a menagerie. But God help them all if Moothy—a smelly, one-eyed moose with sagging antlers—went AWOL.

“Okay, you two,” Silas said, bending over to kiss Tad. “Lights out—”

“Book?” Tad flopped around to grab a Dr. Seuss from the skyscraper-high pile on the floor beside the bed.

“Not tonight, buddy. I’d pass out if I tried to read right now.”

“Besides, doofus,” Ollie said, “Jewel read like ten books to us already, remember?”

Curling himself around Moothy, Tad sulked. “S’not the same if Daddy doesn’t do it.”

Just reach in there and squeeze my heart, why not? “I’m flattered, squirt, but reading is not happening tonight. So lights out. Now.”

Grumbling, Tad reached over to turn off his light. Much to Silas’s relief, the kid nearly passed out before Silas finished with the nightly hugs and kisses routine, but Ollie still had enough oomph to whisper, “You know what?”

“What?”

“I think Jewel should be our babysitter.”

“She’s already got a job,” Silas said as he smoothed back his son’s soft, straight hair. “She was just filling in because it was an emergency.” And I would hang myself if she was the only option. “But … I’m glad you had fun with her.”

“Are you kidding? She’s like the coolest girl ever!”

Yeah, let’s hear it for the cool girls, Silas thought, returning to the living room. Like a hummingbird, Jewel madly darted from spot to spot, folding, straightening, picking up. At Silas’s entrance, she glanced over only to disappear behind a tablecloth as she stretched her arms to fold it in half.

“Nothing’s broken,” she said from behind the cloth, then reappeared, the cloth neatly folded into eighths in three swift, graceful moves. “In case you were wondering.”

Glued to the spot, Silas watched her zip, zap, zing around the room as he got grumpier by the second. “But where do you get off going into my room and getting my comforter off of my bed?” Silas said. Okay, whined. “I sleep under that! Naked! And now it’s dirty!”

In the midst of hauling a cushion larger than she was back onto the sofa, Jewel shot him a look. “Geez, it might be a little dusty in places, but it’s not dirty. And the boys brought it out, I didn’t go into your room and disturb your things. Trust me, I’m not that desperate.”

For what? floated through Silas’s brain, only to get shoved aside by Jewel’s “You sleep naked?” as she scooted across the room to smack at several large smudges on the comforter.

It took a second. “I sleep what?”

That got another look. A puzzled one, this time. “Naked. You know, without any clothes?”

“I know what it means! But isn’t that kind of a personal question?”

She frowned at him. “Um … okay … it wasn’t me who introduced the word into the conversation. You did.” “I did not!”

“Yes, you did,” she said patiently. “Because my imagination’s not that vivid. Not that it matters to me one way or the other.” Huffing a little, she dragged the king-size comforter off the dining table, only to have it swallow her whole as she tried to fold it, like she was wrestling a monster marshmallow. Finally she gave up and dumped it on the sofa. “But you don’t strike me as the sleeping-naked type.”

“Could we please move on?”

“You’re really cute when you blush. And it’s okay, really. Since I do, too.” “Do what?”

“Sleep naked. You hungry?”

Lord above, being in the same room with her was like riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair. Over the dizziness, Silas watched her zip to the kitchen, ignoring—more or less—the way her butt twitched as she walked. Then he opened his mouth to say “no,” that all he wanted was for this night to be over, but then he realized, one, that his stomach felt like it was going to eat itself and, two, that the house smelled like an Italian restaurant.

Against his better judgment, he let his gaze sweep what he could see of his kitchen from where he stood. As he feared, it made Armageddon look like a minor dustup. The sooner he got this chick out of his house, the better. Except—

“Damn. I should’ve run you home before I put the boys to bed.”

“Oh! That’s okay, I figured you’d get back late. So I called Patrice, asked her to come get me in a little while. We’ve got a couple clients to see early tomorrow out at Jemez, so I’ll probably crash at her house, since it’s halfway to the pueblo already.”

The idea of this woman being responsible for bringing someone’s baby into the world made him shudder. But then, childbirth was a messy business, too, so he supposed she felt right at home. He looked at his kitchen again.

“There’s actual food in there somewhere?”

“Just something I tossed together out of whatever you had on hand,” she said, shoving aside … stuff to plunk a casserole dish onto the counter. “Go on, you sit—” she pointed at the formal dining table behind him “—I’ll warm some of this up and bring it right over. I see you’ve got beer—you want one?”

He sat, becoming one with the chair. “Please.”

A minute later she set a heaping dish of her concoction in front of him—pasta and tomato sauce and sausage and peppers and cheese and heaven knew what else. And you’ll eat it and love it, he thought, almost too hungry to care.

“Huh,” he said, taking a second bite over the clatter of pans, water rushing into the sink. “This is really good.”

“Thanks. Tell me if you want more, there’s plenty. You eat while I clean.”

But once he’d taken the edge off his hunger, he felt weird sitting here while she was in there cleaning. So he got up and moved his plate and beer to the breakfast bar, climbing up on the stool.

“Aw … didja get lonely?” she said with a little smile as she wiped down the island. A throwaway question, hardly meant to cause the pang it did. When he didn’t answer she tossed him another glance, then sashayed to the sink to rinse out the sponge. “So how’s your mom?”

“Looks like she’ll be out of commission for a while,” Silas said around another mouthful of food. “She’s in a splint until the swelling goes down enough to put on a cast. It’ll definitely put a cramp in her style, that’s for sure. And mine. I’ll have to make other day-care arrangements.”

“Well …” Jewel’s entire face scrunched in thought. “I’ve heard lots of good things about the Baptist preschool. And there’s that place out on the highway, in the old convenience store Thea Griego used to live in?”

“With the big jungle mural across the front?”

“Yep. I know the gal who runs it, she’s the real deal. Although they might be full up at the moment—”