Sugar Pine Trail

If Pop could see him up here minding his own business, he would definitely have a thing or twenty to say about it. Dermot Caine had taught all his sons not to stand by when a woman might be in distress.

“Nooo,” he heard a high-pitched voice cry out. That decided him. She might not welcome his help, but a real man offered it anyway.

The commotion grew louder as he headed down the stairs. In the vestibule outside her door, he could pick out three distinct voices, though he still couldn’t hear the words they were saying.

He raised his hand to knock, but before he could, the door jerked open. A young boy of about seven or eight stood there. His cheeks were red and tear-stained, and his eyes glittered with temper.

He didn’t appear to notice Jamie standing there.

“We can just walk to our house,” he said defiantly. “I know the way and you can’t stop us.”

From inside, Jamie heard his landlady. “Clinton Slater. For the last time, you can’t go anywhere. I know you don’t want to be here, but right now, none of us has a choice.”

“Do so,” the young boy retorted. “Come on, Davy.”

Before Jamie could move, the kid rushed through—right into Jamie—followed by another one who looked like a carbon copy but a few years younger.

“Clint, Davy. Get back in here,” Julia snapped as the older boy looked up at Jamie, those intense blue eyes wide with shock.

“There’s a guy out here,” Davy called. “Is he your boyfriend?”

An instant later, Julia’s surprised face popped around the door. Her color was high, too, and her hair was again falling out of the little updo thingy she wore. When she spotted him, he thought that color rose another inch or two.

“Oh. This is Mr. Caine. He’s lives upstairs. He probably came down because you both were making so much noise, with your tantrums.”

“It’s true,” Jamie said helpfully. “I thought the cats were fighting down here. Or maybe having kittens. What’s going on?”

“We don’t want to stay here, but she won’t let us leave,” the older of the two boys said, crossing his arms across his narrow chest.

Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Kidnapping, Ms. Winston?” he teased. “That’s a felony.”

“Yeah,” the younger boy said, crossing his arms just like his brother. “A fella-me.”

“You’re not helping,” she snapped, her chest rising sharply.

“Why don’t we all go back inside?” he suggested. “We can all sit down, and you can tell me what’s going on.”

The boys eyed the doorway, but must have sensed they couldn’t juke past him. He hadn’t been a linebacker on the Hope’s Crossing High School championship football team for nothing.

They reluctantly turned around and went into her living room.

“I’m Jamie.”

“My name is Clinton Scott Slater, and this is my brother David Joshua Slater.”

“Clint and Davy are going to be living with me for a while,” Julia said.

“Only until we run away and go home and find our mom,” Clinton responded.

“You know your mother is not at home,” Julia said through her teeth. Something told him they had covered this ground a few times already that evening. “You can’t go back to an empty house.”

“Why should we believe you? We thought you were our friend, but you were just spying so you could call the welfare people on us.”

“I’m hungry,” the younger boy whined.

Julia sighed and ruffled his hair. Despite his alleged unhappiness, Davy leaned into her hand a little.

“I know you are, buddy. I’m working on dinner. I’ll remind you both that I would have been done twenty minutes ago, if I didn’t have to keep coming out to make sure you weren’t trying to sneak out the door when my back was turned.”

She tried to tighten her mouth into a stern expression, but something about the quiver in her lower lip stirred all the chivalrous instincts ingrained in him since birth. She appeared very much like a woman completely out of her comfort zone.

“Tell you what,” Jamie said, “we can help you finish that delicious-smelling dinner. With all of us working together, the work will go faster—then you can invite me over to eat with you, since I’m starving, too. See, it’s a win all the way around.”

He winked at the boys, earning a giggle from the younger one. While the older boy didn’t look as convinced, he appeared a little less belligerent.

“We can’t ruin your whole evening,” Julia protested.

“What are we cooking?” he asked, ignoring her to lead the way into the kitchen. “Smells like spaghetti.”

Julia and the boys both followed him. It was obvious she didn’t want to accept his help—just as it was obvious to both of them that she needed it.

“Lasagna, actually. It should be done in about fifteen minutes.”

“What can we do in the meantime? Besides wash our hands, of course.”

“I only need to make a salad and set the table.”

“You sit down. You’ve done all the hard work on the lasagna. Clint, Davy and I can handle the salad.”

“Can you?”

He had plenty of nieces and nephews and was quite an accomplished child-wrangler, if he did say so himself, but he decided to let his skills do the talking.

“No problem,” he said. “Just watch us.”

“I’ll set the table,” she said, looking disarmed and more than a little overwhelmed.

“Excellent division of labor.”

He steered the boys over to the sink, where he supervised while they washed their hands, then washed his own.

“All right, guys. What do we need for salad?”

“Lettuce,” Davy said promptly.

“And tomatoes. Except Davy doesn’t like tomatoes.”

“We’ll put those on the side, then.”