An Unlikely Mommy

Ronnie blew out a puff of air. When was the last time she’d felt truly happy? She was content, but that wasn’t the same. Having lived her whole life in Joyous, she loved the town and the people in it—her friends, her family—but lately she’d had the growing, restless awareness of wanting more. Wanting…Almost involuntarily, her gaze strayed back to Jason McDeere. He looked up, and for just a heartbeat, their eyes met.

A potent zing went through her body. Then someone moved between them, and the moment was gone. Still, her reaction had been powerful enough to brook no doubt: she wanted Jason McDeere.

Ronnie squared her shoulders. “All right,” she told Treble. “Pretend I’m someone who called in to your show for advice. Do you have any magical secrets for making me more…” What kind of woman did a man like Jason even want?

Experimentally, Ronnie tried to imagine what his wife had been like, but no one in town knew anything about her—only that newly divorced Jason had moved here to live with his grandmother and pick up the pieces of his life for himself and his daughter. Unfortunately, Sophie McDeere, a woman liked by all who’d known her, had passed away this winter. A wave of sympathy washed over Ronnie, nearly as forceful as the attraction she’d felt.

“You want me to start with the bare basics?” Treble asked.

“Use small words. And, if you want me to be able to concentrate, you should probably stand in my line of vision.” She couldn’t help stealing another peek at Jason. Despite Treble’s can-do attitude, Ronnie suspected that any romantic involvement between her and Jason McDeere was nothing more than a pipe dream.

Yet, acknowledging that fact did remarkably little to slow her racing pulse.

“AHA!” COACH HANK HANOVER snapped his beefy fingers; he was the track coach for Joyous High, but his build was reminiscent of football. “I know the perfect woman.”

“But—”

“Becca Gibbons, two o’clock. She’s looked over at you a couple of times now.”

Jason McDeere wasn’t surprised the coach steamrolled over his objection. After all, Hank had once invited Jason and Emily for a barbecue that had turned out to be a blind-date ambush. Jason had overheard Caren Hanover just last month, insisting to her husband that they had to “find a good woman for that sweet man and his poor little girl.” With Gran gone, it was as if the townspeople of Joyous had adopted him and were determined to improve his life…whether he wanted their help or not.

“Becca’s the blonde in that group over there,” Coach was saying. “Real nice gal, damn shame about her husband taking up with that woman from Nashville. Becca’s a single mom, so y’all have plenty in common. Come on, you couldn’t ask for a prettier dance partner!”

“I thought we came to play darts,” Jason said. At least, that was the thin pretext used to get him here, though they hadn’t been closer than fifty feet to the dartboard since they arrived.

Earlier, there’d been a pizza dinner at the Hanover house for the boys’ and girls’ track teams. Jason was an unofficial chaperone who knew most of the kids because he sometimes ran with the teams for exercise. The teenage girls had fussed over how cute Emily was, and, as the party wound down, his daughter had fallen asleep in the study during a Shrek showing. Caren had thrown her husband meaningful glances and Jason had allowed himself to be talked into a quick drink and round of darts.

“She’ll be fine here for an hour,” Caren had said, tucking a quilt around his daughter’s shoulders. “Go out with Hank, take some ‘you’ time.”

It was true that he hadn’t indulged in much of a social life since Sophie’s passing: Yet now that he stood in noisy Guthrie Dance Hall, where it seemed everyone but him had known one another since kindergarten, he couldn’t believe he’d let himself get conned into another attempt to introduce him to eligible women.

“I’m sure Becca’s lovely,” Jason said, “but we’ve finished our drinks and should probably head back to your place.”

The coach looked crestfallen. “You haven’t danced with anybody yet.”

“Hank, I appreciate the thought, but there’s already a female in my life whom I love with my whole heart.” In the past year and a half, Emily had been abandoned by her mother and moved to a new town, where she’d lost yet another maternal figure when Gran died in her sleep. His daughter needed time for her life to stabilize—his starting to date probably wasn’t the best way to achieve that.

“A female?” Hank was a good man, but subtlety was lost on him. He squinted at Jason in confusion. “You don’t mean your ex? ‘Cause I thought that was done.”

“It is. Completely.” Jason had worked his way through the initial denial and shock of Isobel’s departure to subsequent fury and eventual, faintly pitying, acceptance. He had no desire to pick at that particular emotional scab. “But just because I’m over her doesn’t mean I’m eager to start the search for the future Mrs. McDeere.”

“Okay, okay.” The other man held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Had to try, though. I promised the wife. No hard feelings?”

“No, of c—” Jason stared past the coach’s shoulder, meeting a pair of wide jade eyes. Logically, he knew he couldn’t make out the woman’s eye color from several yards away, but he’d seen her around town plenty of times. His memory automatically filled in the visual details that were fuzzy from this distance, as well as her name: Veronica Carter. Perhaps she’d merely been looking around, just as he had, and their gazes colliding was coincidence. But there seemed to be something in her expression—

A laughing couple wandered into his line of sight, blocking Veronica, and he blinked, feeling foolish.

“McDeere?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I just remembered something I needed to take care of Monday.”

“Really? ’Cause it was more like you were staring at someone.” Hank glanced over his shoulder, trying to confirm his suspicion.

“So, are we ready to leave?” Jason asked.

“I guess.” But Hank wasn’t completely diverted. “You sure you weren’t looking at someone?”

Jason had never been good at lying outright. “Like who?”

His friend shrugged. “Dunno…but if there is someone who’s caught your interest, I’ll hear about it soon enough. One thing you’ll learn about Joyous if you haven’t already, it’s damn near impossible to keep a secret here.”

Chapter Two

“Mornin’, darlin’.”

Ronnie glanced up from the Monday paper she was scanning at the table and smiled as Wayne Carter came down the stairs into the kitchen. “Hey, Daddy.”

“What’s on the breakfast menu this morning?”

“Cereal.” She pointed to the bowl and spoon she’d pulled out for him. “It’s the one thing I’m guaranteed not to burn.”

He paused behind her, ruffling her hair. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’ve blossomed into a fair cook.”

Well, she hadn’t sent anyone to Doc Caldwell with food poisoning, so she guessed that was something.

She could hold her own with prepackaged meals and brownies made from a mix, but she couldn’t duplicate the efforts of Sue Carter, who used to can her own jellies, made noodles from scratch for her soup and never once served a store-bought dessert until after her cancer diagnosis. One day, a few weeks after her mother’s funeral, Ronnie had stood inside the walk-in pantry sobbing at the realization that they were about to open the last of mama’s blackberry preserves and that there would never be any more.

The sounds of her dad’s chair scraping on the tile and subsequent rustling of cereal into a ceramic bowl dragged Ronnie back to the present. She blinked against the phantom sting of long-ago tears.

Wayne nodded toward the paper. “You done with the sports page?”

“You can have the whole thing.”

The Journal-Report was folded in half, open to the classified section. Her dad glanced down, then back at her.

“I was, ah, looking for good deals on furniture I could restore.”

“For the new place.” To give him credit, he tried to sound happy for her. But there was no mistaking the shadow that passed over his expression. “It’ll sure be lonely with you gone.”

She rose, carrying her empty bowl to the sink. “You’ll still have Dev.”

Before Ronnie was born, Wayne and Sue had bought the converted farmhouse in which she’d lived her entire life. Though the surrounding acreage that comprised the original farm had been sold off in parcels to local families, the old bunkhouse sat at the back of Wayne’s property. Devin had fixed it up and moved in, paying a nominal rent each month. Half the time, he joined them for dinner.

Or breakfast, if he hadn’t entertained an overnight guest. At least he has the freedom to have overnight guests. Ronnie glared through the blue-checkered curtains in the direction of her brother’s unseen home.

She rinsed the dishes, wiped her damp palms on the front of her jeans and smiled at her father. “Besides, you’ll see me practically every day, boss.”

He laughed. “True. You probably think I’m being an old fool, don’t you? It’s just…you’re the last little bird to leave the nest.”