Sky's Pride And Joy

“Aunt Meredith, look!” Olivia held up a bedraggled stuffed goose. “Jaynie asked Kelsey’s mama to give Snuggles new eyes, and she did. Now Snuggles is as good as new.”

“Snuggles isn’t either as good as new,” Logan grumbled.

“Is so.”

“Is not.”

“Is so.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jayne tucked a strand of short, dark hair behind her ear and glanced from her husband to Meredith. With a wink, she said, “Unless you keep them busy, this could still be going on when I return. Burke and I used to be like that.”

“Kate and I did, too.”

“Then you’ll know exactly how to deal with them,” Jayne said.

“Forget child labor laws,” Wes Stryker said, a twinkle in his blue eyes. “Put them to work. There’s nothing like manual labor to work out a kid’s frustrations.” He turned to the children. “We’ll be back in an hour, so try to be good. And you,” he said, easing closer to his wife.

Meredith thought she heard Jayne whisper, “I’ll be good later.”

And she was pretty sure Wes said, “I’m counting on it,” the moment before his lips brushed his wife’s.

The underlying sensuality went right over the children’s heads. Tucking the stuffed goose under one arm, Olivia skipped into the store ahead of her brother. Knowing what could happen when those two were left unsupervised, Meredith hurried after them.

“Logan,” she said, handing the boy the keys while she flipped on lights. “Unlock the back door, would you? Maybe we can get a breeze blowing through here.”

Logan ran to the back of the store, keys jangling, shoes thudding, anything not anchored down rattling as if during an earthquake. Within seconds, the netting hanging from the rafters ruffled, a dozen sets of wind chimes purled, and Meredith sighed. Turning in a circle, she took it all in. She’d put everything she had into this store, all her energy and her life savings. She’d looked at several buildings, but had decided on the store that sat by itself between the Jasper Gulch Clothing Store and Bonnie’s Clip & Curl. It had been nothing but a deserted building then, so full of cobwebs that she’d had the place fumigated before she’d done anything else. Some of the other structures she’d looked at had more history, but none of them had as much personality or potential.

The front portion of the store had a tin ceiling. The rest had an open ceiling, high rafters, and wood floors. A long time ago, it had been a furniture store, which made it the perfect place to house the antiques and fine furnishings Meredith planned to sell here. The work was nearly completed. Track lighting had been installed below the rafters, the entire place scrubbed and painted. She’d made the curtains at the windows herself, and with the help of several local teenagers, the antiques were arranged at one end, the few pieces of new furniture she could afford to stock at the other. The paint she would sell was due to arrive later in the week. Every day she worked from dawn until late into the night down here before retiring to the tiny apartment upstairs. It was all coming together, the kids, her store, her life.

She spread her arms wide and tipped her head back. Whoa. Woozy, she closed her eyes.

“Aunt Meredith, ’Livia,” Logan called. “That alley cat’s gone and had kittens in an old barrel that tipped over back here.”

Olivia ran to see. Meredith blinked, focused, then followed. Logan was on his knees just inside the back door. Olivia was bent at the waist a foot away.

“She must’a just had ’em,” he said. “They’re still ugly and their eyes aren’t open yet.”

“They’re not either ugly,” Olivia exclaimed. “They’re beautiful.”

Meredith braced herself for the argument that was sure to break out, but Logan shrugged good-naturedly and simply said, “You know what I mean.”

“How many are there?” Olivia asked her big brother.

“Six.”

“Six?” Meredith exclaimed. What on earth was she going to do with an alley cat and six kittens?

“Wait. I was wrong.”

Oh, good.

“There are seven,” Logan amended.

“Seven?” Meredith asked. “Are you sure?” The scraggly orange-and-white mother cat stared up at her, blinking tiredly, as if sharing Meredith’s dismay.

“Yup. There are seven all right. Uncle Wes says seven’s lucky.”

“We’re lucky!” Olivia exclaimed. “Aren’t we Aunt Meredith?”

Meredith took a closer look at that cat and her seven kittens, and then at the brown-haired children whose blue eyes, so like their mother’s, were wide with wonder. A lump came and went in her throat, but she managed a small nod and a genuine smile.

“Seven kitties,” Olivia declared. “Plus the mama. We’re gonna need a lot of names.”

Since Meredith knew that a named cat was a claimed cat, she had to think fast. “Those kittens need to take a nap right now. If you two want to think of names, why don’t you help me decide what to call the store?”

“You want us to name a building?” Logan asked in that preadolescent, know-it-all attitude universal to males.

Meredith swiped a finger along his nose and said, “Not the building, silly. It’s going to be my business, a way of life, an entity with its own unique personality.”

The kids looked up at her blankly for a full five seconds before turning their gazes on each other. “I think we should name the white-and-yellow one Fluffy,” Olivia said.

“And the one with the two white paws is…”

“Paws?” Olivia asked.

“No, silly. Boots.”

Meredith knew when she’d been beaten. Retracing her footsteps to the front of the store, she began arranging throw pillows and lamps and candles on shelves lining one wall. The kids spent the next hour pondering names for kittens Meredith couldn’t possibly keep. Logan made a bed for them in an old drawer he found in the back alley, and he and Olivia coaxed the mother to let him help her move the kittens to what they considered a better lodging place. As far as Meredith was concerned, those two voices were more musical than the resonant purl of the wind chimes swaying overhead in the gentle breeze.

By the time Jayne was due back to pick up the children an hour later, all the kittens had been duly petted and examined for any unusual, interesting or identifying markings, three of them had names, and Logan and Olivia were arguing over a fourth. Mercy, those kids could argue over nothing.

“You can’t name the mother cat Haley!” Logan exclaimed.

“I can name her Haley if I want to!” Olivia declared with equal exuberance.

“Can not.”

“Can so.”

“You can’t either name her Haley. That’s a real person’s name. Tell her Aunt Meredith.”

Before Meredith could open her mouth, Olivia said, “We named the barn cats Carolyn, Sherilyn and Tom, and those are real people names. You just don’t wanna name this one Haley on accounta you kissed Haley Carson and she gave you a black eye.”

All at once, the store was absolutely quiet. Logan was the quietest of all. Wanting to help but not sure how, Meredith said, “Olivia, you don’t know that’s the reason Logan doesn’t want to name this cat Haley. I don’t really think she looks like a Haley, do you? Besides, kissing is private.”