An Unlikely Mommy

“Do you think…” She swallowed, thinking of their father’s increasingly forlorn moods. “Has he ever considered dating?”

Neither of her brothers replied, but they both looked pointedly at the single framed snapshot on Wayne’s desk.

Danny glanced back at Ronnie, his expression both poignant and proud. “You look so much like her.” As the oldest, he’d had the most years with Sue, the most stored memories.

Ronnie laughed self-consciously. “Oh, right. I can see her now, standing in the kitchen in shapeless coveralls with a grease smudge on her cheek.”

“Flour.” Devin interjected. “I’d come home from school to the smell of something amazing baking, and she’d have little smears of flour on her skin and apron. God, she made the house smell good.”

Better than I ever did, Ronnie thought with an apologetic pang.

Silence fell over the little room, and Ronnie didn’t know who was more discomfited by the thick undercurrent of sentiment—the guys, or her.

Danny cleared his throat. “Guess who brought her car in while you were at lunch? Beth Gold. Seems her vehicle is suffering from phantom engine noises again.”

Ronnie was grateful for the excuse to laugh. “You mean those noises no one else has ever heard but which always seem to mysteriously reappear if she notices Dev working the shop?”

“I don’t think it’s engine noises,” Danny said solemnly. “I think it’s lo-o-o-ve.”

At this, Devin harrumphed. “We went on two dates this summer. Two! She should let it go.”

“She can’t,” Danny said. “Because she’s in lo-o-o-ve.”

Devin tossed a wadded-up napkin at his older brother, doing his part to dispel the earlier emotional tension. “Does Kaitlyn know that when you’re away from her good influence, you revert to a ten-year-old?”

“At least I’ve learned how to be a grown-up part of the time. Just one of the benefits of life with a good woman,” Danny said. “Something you would discover if you settled down.”

“There’s the problem,” Devin said. “Why ‘settle’ when I can get to know so many different beautiful women, each with her own delightful and unique personality?”

“Yeah, ’cause it’s really their personalities you’re after, you hound.”

Devin jerked his head meaningfully toward Ronnie, apparently wanting to spare her delicate sensibilities. Then he smiled, taking the opportunity to redirect Danny’s brotherly concern. “If you want someone in the family to find domestic bliss, you should stop badgering me and help Ronnie here.”

Ronnie ground her teeth and grabbed some paperwork from the inbox on Danny’s desk. “I don’t need ‘help.’”

“Sure you do,” Devin said. “How long’s it been since you had a date?”

“My darling siblings run off my potential dates.”

“That’s not true!” Devin protested. “We just screen them carefully. To keep away those who aren’t good enough.”

Danny nodded. “The guys who wouldn’t be right for you in the long run, the guys who are too stupid to know how to change their own oil, the guys who only have One Thing in mind.”

“You mean like Dev?” she asked wryly.

“Exactly!” Devin flashed an unrepentant smile, then grimaced. “God forbid you go out with anyone like me. If you did, we’d have to kill him. You don’t want Kaitlyn and Ashley reduced to visiting Danny in prison, do you?”

It was time Ronnie got to work on a car. Interlocking automotive systems made far more sense than her knucklehead brothers. Besides, she felt like taking something apart with her hands. But Danny calling her name in a soft voice stopped her in the doorway.

She looked over her shoulder with mild curiosity. “Yes?”

“There isn’t someone…specific you’d like to date, is there?” he asked. “Someone like, well, Jason McDeere.”

“Jason McWho?” She felt herself go white. Literally felt all the blood drain from her face in an almost audible whoosh.

Danny held her gaze. “After we had dinner at Adam’s Ribs last week, Kaitlyn mentioned that you were watching Jason.”

Darn her sister-in-law’s keen powers of observation! “I was just admiring what a good father he is to that little girl,” Ronnie mumbled.

“See?” Devin’s posture relaxed. “She was melting over the kid, not the guy. Her biological clock’s probably in countdown mode.”

She was going to clock the next person who used that phrase! Still, hard to argue without invalidating her own alibi.

“But Kaitlyn said you were looking at McDeere the way I used to look at my old Thunderbird.”

Devin shook his head. “As much as I adore your wife, Danny-boy, I think she’s off base. McDeere’s a decent sort, but a high school English teacher? Not the most manly job, reading Lord Bryan and Edgar Allen Poe to kids all day.”

“It’s Lord Byron,” Ronnie snapped. “And how is shaping the minds of today’s youth and, by extension, the future of our country, somehow inferior to selling wiper fluid? Just because he doesn’t spend his time belching or scratching or chasing skirts at Guthrie Hall like you…Jason McDeere is an intelligent, charming, good-looking man, and any woman in town would be lucky to have him.

“Really good-looking,” she added in a breathless afterthought, temporarily recalling those eyes and that smile instead of her audience: two brothers who were now gaping.

“Well, I’ll be,” Devin said. “Kaitlyn was right.”

A slow smile spread across Danny’s face. “Ronnie’s in l-o-o-o-ve.”

“We may have to screen him,” Devin said thoughtfully.

“You stay away from Jason McDeere or I will bludgeon you unconscious with a crescent wrench!” On the heels of that threat, Ronnie spun around and headed for the repair bays.

Her interfering, overprotective brothers knew about her attraction to Jason. What were the odds that they wouldn’t mention it to her equally overprotective father? Ronnie groaned, inhaling the scent of gasoline and industrial cleaners. Was it too late to fake her own death, skip out of town and start a new life far from Joyous?

Preferably, a life without siblings.

Chapter Three

“Wiseshine, Daddy!”

Even from his nearly unconscious state, Jason was able to translate Emily’s message of rise and shine—a phrase he’d made the mistake of using sometime in the past. Because she liked the sound of it, his nearly three-year-old daughter used it frequently, whether it was technically appropriate or not. It would be more appropriate now, for instance, if the sun were actually up.

He cracked one eye open. “Morning, sweet pea.” The digital clock on the nightstand said that it was 6:26 a.m. His little girl hadn’t grasped the concept of sleeping in on the weekends and loved to bounce out of her toddler bed first thing Saturday.

At times like this, he really missed the retired crib, where she’d been confined to playing with her stuffed animals until at least seven. Was it wrong to keep your kid behind bars so you could get an extra half hour of sleep?

Emily was struggling to hoist herself onto the double bed that dominated what had once been Sophie McDeere’s guest room. The lavender wallpaper with its climbing vines of faded flowers had hung in here since his father was a boy.

Jason scooped his daughter up next to him and reached for the remote control nestled between the phone and the clock. While he hadn’t bothered to bring the queen bed he’d once shared with his ex-wife to Joyous, he’d brought all the electronics, like the first-class stereo system, the DVD player and the large television that sat on the rose faux-marble top of a white wooden dresser.

Stifling a yawn, he smiled at his daughter. “How about I find some cartoons?” Maybe she wouldn’t mind if he watched them from behind closed eyelids.