Run to Me

“Okay. I’m sorry. It should be your decision. I just expected you to choose someone a little more…mature.”

“You don’t mean mature, you mean Mildred Manning.”

“She was a nurse for years. It would’ve made more sense.”

Amos stared as if Mac were completely out of his mind. “Don’t you know nothin’ about women?” He shook his head abruptly as though banishing a ridiculous notion, then answered his own question. “Never mind. ’Course you don’t. If you did, you’d have one of yer own. Sophie’d be mad as a wet hen if I hired Mildred to cook and clean for me. ’Specially when she offered to do it herself. And don’t tell me I ain’t right about that.”

Releasing a weary blast of air, Mac brought his hands to his hips. Amos’s wisecrack about his love life aside, the old guy had a point. Sophie Casselback was a good woman, but she would’ve made Amos’s life a living hell if he’d hired a woman their age. She and Amos had been “good friends” for two years—the primary reason, Mac suspected, that Amos had refused her help. No man—even a seventy-three-year-old man—wanted to look less than strong around the woman he was keeping company with. Or maybe he and Sophie were over now. Since his stroke and stint in rehab, Amos hadn’t returned many of her calls.

Amos continued to stare hard as Mac’s thoughts churned off in yet another direction. “Now what? There’s something else goin’ on under that hat. What is it?”

“The little girl,” Mac said. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with a child underfoot? You could trip, you might not get your right rest—”

“You just got done sayin’ it’s my decision to make. I made it.” Shuffling and cane tapping to the door, he threw it open, then shoved through the screen door, banging it against the white wood siding. Mac raised his eyes to heaven, but there was no help there. Obviously, the discussion was over.

Amos plopped himself down on the glider. “Now why don’t you help that gal take her stuff over to your place?”

“My place?”

“Little Christie needs some room, too. Can’t very well stuff ’em both in the guest room upstairs. Besides,” Amos groused pointedly as Mac’s exasperation grew, “you seem happy enough up there.”

“Granddad, I’m not set up for company.”

“They’ll only be here six ’r seven weeks.” Amos glared up at him. “Or do you have other ideas you ain’t told me about?”

“No, but my guest room’s full of boxes, and there’s no bed in there.” The other spare room had been turned into an office. That meant, if they moved in, Terri Fletcher and her daughter would be sleeping in his room.

In his bed.

Something tugged low in Mac’s gut at the thought of Christie’s slender mom beneath his sheets, startling him with its intensity and shocking the hell out of him by evoking a very physical, very unexpected response.

“All right,” he growled, needing to move, and accepting the arrangement because there’d be no changing Amos’s mind. “I’ll get it done.”

Erin followed Corbett’s brisk strides through his spacious, beautiful home, her stomach a ball of knots. She was astonished that the discussion had ended in her favor. Initially, he’d seemed to be the man in control, yet somehow Amos had won out. Relieved, Erin sent up a prayer of thanks that they had a roof over their heads again—and on the heels of that prayer, another went up that changing her name and relocating here would be enough to ensure their safety.

And incomprehensibly, amid so much turmoil, some part of her still found time to notice Mac Corbett as a man. Though she tried to ignore the pull, his rugged face and the smooth, loose way he walked made her feel things she hadn’t felt in a very long time. In fact, he was the most overtly male man she’d ever encountered, and incredibly, he didn’t seem aware of his appeal.

“Obviously, this is the bedroom,” he said, carrying their bags inside and tossing them on his king-size bed. A quilted navy, white and light-blue spread in a geometric print covered it. “You should be comfortable here.” He nodded at a closed door to the left of an oak chest of drawers. “Master bath’s in there.”

“It’s very nice,” she replied, placing the two duffels she’d carried beside her luggage. “Thank you. I…I’m sure we will be.” She’d always been good at small talk, but with this man—who didn’t seem inclined to make the effort—she was falling flat on her face.

Before they’d begun unloading the van, she’d given Christie her coloring book, crayons and a cookie, then settled her in the great room at Mac’s distressed-pine coffee table. Occasionally, as they’d carted things past the wide archway, Christie had looked up from her tuneless humming and scribbling to peek through her fringe of black bangs and smile a little—beginning to adjust again. And though that was something to be thankful for, it still made Erin ache to see her take each new town and change of address in stride.

Suppressing a sigh, she shifted her attention back to Mac and tried again for conversation. “Christie’s careful with her crayons, but I put a plastic play mat over your coffee table in case she gets reckless.”

“It wasn’t expensive,” he said flatly. “She can’t hurt it.”

“Still, I want you to know that we’ll leave your home in the same condition that we found it.”

His polite smile thanked her, then he nodded at the bare windows. “I never got around to putting up curtains. There didn’t seem to be a big need for them, living out this far. But I guess you’ll want some privacy. I’ll see what I can scare up for you.” He nodded at the bed. “The sheets are fresh, but you’re welcome to change them. Linen closet’s in the hall next to the family bath.”

“I’m sure the sheets on the bed will be fine.”

“All right, then I’ll make room for your things so you can start putting them away. I’ll finish unpacking your van in a minute.” Crossing to his closet, he pulled a duffel bag from a shelf, then started filling it from the oak chest of drawers.

“Mr. Corbett?”

“Mac,” he said, not looking up.

“Mac. First of all, you don’t have to unpack my van. I can do that.” Heaven knew she’d managed to do it enough times in the past year. “Secondly,” she said, unable to keep the uneasiness from her voice, “I know you weren’t expecting us to commandeer your home. So before we go much further—”

“You want to know if I have reservations.”

“Yes.”

His candid gaze met hers. “I do. Yes. But not about the two of you staying here.” He resumed packing. “It’s probably better that I sleep at Amos’s anyway. Most of my clothes are there. I moved in right after he was released from rehab—” his mouth twisted in annoyance “—came back here after the first housekeeper was hired, then hauled butt back to Amos’s when she left.”

Mac emptied the next drawer, stuffing T-shirts into his bag. “Besides, sometimes he needs help getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night.” He turned sharply to reassure her. “Once he’s up and moving in the morning, he’s fine, though, so your duties won’t be more than we advertised in the paper.”

“I don’t have a problem helping your grandfather to the bathroom.”

His expression softened slightly, then he looked away again and zipped his bag, his tone brisk again. “Thank you, but I was thinking of Amos. He has a lot of pride.”

“I noticed. And I’d never do anything to hurt it.”

“Good, because he’s all I have, and that makes him my number-one priority. I don’t like thinking he might be at risk—in any way.” He met her eyes again. “You do understand, don’t you?”

Erin nodded. He didn’t have to gush or expand on his statement. It was abundantly clear that he loved his granddad, and if Amos wasn’t treated with care and respect, that Housekeeper Wanted sign would go right back up again.

Mac slung the duffel’s long straps over his shoulder. “I didn’t see a crib or anything like it in your van. Christie sleeps with you?”

“Not always. Sometimes we find a furnished apartment with a twin bed. I have a portable safety railing that slides between the mattress and box spring. That works pretty well.”

“Sometimes you find a furnished apartment?” he repeated in a tone that was cuttingly judgmental. “Do you move around a lot?”

She knew she shouldn’t feel defensive—he had a perfect right to question her—but she did. She also knew that antagonizing him could prompt another discussion between Mac and his grandfather, and this time the younger man might win.

“Is that a problem for you? This job is temporary, isn’t it? Your grandfather said two months at the most, probably less.”

The thoughts moving through his dark eyes weren’t complimentary, and his face was carved granite. “Yes, it’s temporary. I still find myself wondering why you’re so mobile.” His gaze delved more deeply into hers. “Maybe if I ask a few questions—get a few answers—I won’t wonder so much.”

He barely paused a moment before he said coolly, “Ms. Fletcher, are you running away from something?”

Chapter 2

She didn’t know how she managed, but Erin spoke in a calm voice. “No. Are you afraid I’ll take off in the middle of the night with the good silver?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you.”