Huntington Family Series Read online

  “I left it home this morning. Had my hands full, and I didn’t want to bother with it. Didn’t know it was going to snow.” Blake went inside without waiting for an invitation.

  “Hey, you got a kid under there!” Garth eyed the blanket with mistrust. “And here I thought you were bringing me a welcome home gift.”

  “You’re the one with the fabulous job that takes you to Hawaii—in the winter, no less. And you don’t even need the tan, thanks to those Italian genes. What’d you bring me?”

  “Shells?”

  Blake groaned.

  “No, really. It’s this cool little get-up that looks like a lady in a swimsuit.” His brow creased. “Well, I think it’s supposed to be a lady. Has seaweed for hair. Hmm. Actually, it looks more like a skinny sea creature they’ve dried and pasted shells onto. Maybe I should show you. You don’t think—”

  “No.” Blake said.

  “Cool. I wanna see it,” Kevin said from behind Blake.

  Garth’s eyes widened further. “Another one? Oh, yes. Wait a minute, is this Kevin? Wow, you’ve really grown in the past few months, haven’t you?” Garth never forgot a name or a face. “Where you been, buddy?”

  “At my grandma’s. Mostly. But I like it better here.”

  “Look, Garth, can you watch them for a minute?” Blake asked. “I’m right in the middle of fixing some lady’s oven, and I can’t be hauling them with me. Won’t be longer than a half hour. Promise.”

  “He left Mara in the car,” Kevin said helpfully. “Her cried. The lady got mad.”

  “That’s enough, Kevin.” Blake tousled the boy’s hair to eliminate any sting from the words. “Well, Garth, will you watch them?”

  His friend lifted his hands. “I don’t know anything about kids. You’ve at least had practice.”

  “Practice? They’ve only been here three days.”

  “This time. What’s your cousin gone and done now?”

  “Shhh.” Blake looked pointedly at Kevin. “We’ll talk later. Will you do it?”

  “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.” He went to the couch and gently laid Mara down. “You’ll have to watch her closely,” he said, pulling a few pillows from the love seat to put on the floor next to the couch. “She rolled off my couch the first day before I realized she could roll at all. Seems babies do things a lot earlier than I remember with Kevin.”

  Garth nervously rubbed his hands together. “Get going already. She could wake any minute.”

  Blake wondered if he had looked that worried when he had first brought Mara home on Monday. “Okay.” He hurried to the door. “Oh, Kevin’s hungry. I’m going to order a pizza and have them bring it here. I’ll pay you when I get back.”

  “Watch her and pay?” Garth sighed. “Next, you’ll be wanting free rent.”

  Blake shut the door behind him. Garth wasn’t experienced with children, but he was a good man. They’d be safe. Still, he’d better hurry and get back before Mara woke and decided that her diaper was too clean.

  He pulled out his cell phone and brought up the number for pizza delivery.

  It was only six minutes to the teacher’s house. Blake timed it. He bet he could install the part in ten minutes, including replacing the inner cover, and use only another five to screw on the back that he hadn’t needed to take off in the first place. Then six more minutes to get home. Total of twenty-seven minutes. Giving her three minutes to write a check would make it thirty. He decided to waste thirty seconds in the pickup preparing her bill so that maybe she’d have the check waiting for him when he was finished.

  He half expected her to have the police waiting to take Kevin and Mara away when he arrived, but there was no sign of visitors. She opened the door, looking better than any woman had a right to look in tattered jeans.

  “Oh, you’re back.” She sounded relieved.

  “I took the kids home.”

  “That’s good.”

  Blake was standing inside her door, staring at her. Her green eyes seemed to root him to the spot. He noticed how her blonde hair, cut to one length in back and feathered gently up the sides, curled at the ends as it rested on her shoulders. Her skin was very white and soft-looking. Earlier, he’d noticed an adorable dimple in her right cheek, but she wasn’t smiling now. Her bottom lip was caught beneath her top teeth and from the slightly swollen look of it, this wasn’t the first time. He forced himself to look away.

  “I’ll get right to it,” he muttered. “Oh, wait. Here’re your books.” He shoved them at her.

  “Thanks.”

  He set the repair bill—for only one part and one home visit—noticeably on the counter and went to work. Now that he wasn’t worried about leaving Mara in the truck and hurrying too fast, the job was quickly finished. He glanced at his watch. He’d been away twenty minutes.

  “Here.” She handed him a check.

  “Thank you.” He clipped the check to the work order, threw his tools in his box, and started for the door. She trailed after him.

  “It’s not going to, uh, explode or anything, is it?” she asked, her voice joking but hesitant enough that he could tell she was actually worried.

  For a moment he forgot all that had gone before and grinned. “No, I didn’t rig it to blow, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Did you tell your wife what happened?” Her face wasn’t soft now, and there was steel behind the question.

  She thinks I’m married, Blake realized. But of course! He’d showed up with two children. What else could she think?

  “Their mother wasn’t home,” he said.

  Her eyes opened wide. “You didn’t leave them alone!”

  “No!” He shook his head. “Look, I told you it was a mistake. Kind of like starting a fire in an oven. It won’t happen again. But this really isn’t your concern.”

  Amanda nodded and looked away. He saw in her expression that it had been hard for her to ask, but that her concern for the children was paramount. His irritation vanished. He wished he could soothe her worry and tell her the children were safe, that they weren’t even his. That he was just learning to care for a baby again. But what was the point? There was a time before Kevin went to his grandmother’s that he was with Blake more than with his mother. Who knew what might happen this time? The children were with him for the time being and that meant he was responsible. He should have known better.

  I should at least tell her I’m not married. He pushed the thought away even as it came. That was also irrelevant. It wasn’t as though they would start dating if she knew. He’d learned that where women of her caliber were concerned, a man’s job made a big difference in their dating preferences. He was a degree short of her—for the time being.

  The green eyes rested upon him again, and he realized that he had stopped walking halfway to the front door. He wouldn’t tell her about the children or his marital status, but he would do something else. “I—” he began. “Look, I am grateful you found Mara. I didn’t realize what might happen when I left her there with the heat on. I’m really new at this.”

  “They are young,” she commented, but her expression was reserved.

  Yeah, he thought, but Mara’s turning eight months old this week. If I were really her father, I should know not to leave her by now. He gave a silent, bitter chuckle. Yes, even if he had a degree, he doubted this woman could ever be interested in him now. First impressions were hard to erase.

  She opened the door, and he stepped onto the small cement porch. Cold rushed over him, but his body felt too warm from the heat inside the house. “I left the oven on to make sure it would heat up,” he said. “Seems to be working, but let me know if it doesn’t.”

  “How long should I leave it on?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just make sure it’s getting hot.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  He nodded and strode across her lawn, feeling her eyes trailing him, but when he glanced up at the house after climbing into his truck, h
e saw the door was shut. Unexplainably disappointed, he looked at his watch. Twenty-six minutes. He would be two minutes later than the half hour he’d promised Garth.

  Blake arrived just as the pizza delivery man was leaving, so his timing hadn’t been bad at all. At least his dinner wouldn’t be cold. He wondered briefly what the teacher was having for dinner. He bet she knew how to cook. He himself had become a fairly good chef over the past years, at first out of necessity and later on from pure enjoyment, but his class schedule was fairly heavy this semester. He didn’t have much time for cooking. With Kevin and Mara around, he’d have to change that—somehow. He wouldn’t have taken so many classes if he’d known they were coming to stay.

  Garth didn’t hide his happiness when Blake entered the house. “She’s awake,” he announced as though having just won a Nobel Prize. The baby sat on the floor near the couch, with pillows stacked around her.

  “She doesn’t need pillows when she’s on the floor,” Blake said. “She sits up just fine.”

  “Really?” Garth took a pillow from behind her back and whistled when she didn’t fall.

  Kevin giggled and went to stand beside Blake. “I’m hungry. Can I have some pizza?”

  “Sure. Get up to the table.” Blake went to the cupboard where Garth kept the plates. “You want some, Garth?”

  “Yeah.” He was still in the adjoining living room with the baby.

  “Better get in here, then. But move those figurines from the coffee table, if they’re breakable. Believe me, she can crawl over there and pull herself up far enough to get them. She’s already broken everything I didn’t move in my apartment.”

  Garth came to the table, his arms filled with ebony figurines that Blake knew he’d picked up on a business trip to Florida. “Uh, you’d better go check on the baby,” he said uncertainly. “There’s something on her back.”

  Blake had an idea what that “something” was. Sure enough, her dress and undershirt were soaked through. “Looks like it’s time for a bath and some pajamas,” he said. Mara grinned at him, and he found he didn’t mind the effort—or the complaining of his famished stomach.

  As he bathed and changed Mara in his basement apartment, Blake pondered his life. Had he gone directly to college and not wasted two years working at his brother’s shop after his mission, he might have been married by now. Yes, married to Laurie, the only girl he’d ever seriously dated. She’d wanted him to go to college, but he hadn’t seen a need. Then. Too late he realized she was right, that he could never make the living he wanted working for Doug. And by the time he enrolled in college, the girls he met in school were too young, too immature—or so he’d felt.

  Of course, it hadn’t helped his social life that for the past four years he’d been a part-time daddy to Kevin. Paula would leave him for weeks and months at a time—especially after Mara was born. Blake knew his cousin had always wanted a daughter, and when Mara came he’d hoped she would settle down and become a proper mother for both children. Yet after only two months, Paula had begun leaving Mara with her mother in Cedar City, and Kevin remained with Blake in Pleasant Grove.

  That arrangement changed six months ago when Paula had come to pick Kevin up one night, so drunk she could barely remember Blake’s name. He hadn’t let her take the boy from his bed and had threatened to call the authorities. The next day she had come back sober, grabbed Kevin, and whisked him off to her mother’s. She hadn’t brought him by since. Blake missed Kevin and had been down to Cedar City nearly every weekend to have day-outings with the boy when his mother wasn’t around. Mara never went with them on their outings, but Blake had become enchanted with her and had taken to giving her toys. Seeing her face light up was one of the highlights of his visits.

  He had still worried about their care, though, because his aunt was old and really too frail to be dealing with the offspring of her youngest child. And Paula . . . well, she was never around much. Then last month when he called his aunt to set up a time to see Kevin, she told him Paula had taken the children away. She didn’t know where. Days of worry stretched into weeks until Paula had called three days ago from jail and asked him to pick up the children in Salt Lake City. He had left work immediately to get them.

  For his part, Blake had loved having Kevin with him over the years, but the care of a small child had required him to cut back on classes and forgo many opportunities to meet dates. So here he was at twenty-eight, a senior nearly halfway through his last year of college with no wife or even a girlfriend. He was still working at his brother’s shop. And now he had two children to care for.

  Mara’s eyes were drooping again, so he held her close as he fed her another bottle. She was out before it was half-finished. He laid her gently in the crib he had bought years ago for Kevin and, leaving the basement door open, went upstairs to Garth’s, reminding himself to call his aunt tomorrow and talk to her about the children. Not that he wanted to turn them over to her, but she’d want him to bring them by for a visit. He was surprised she hadn’t already called to arrange a time to see them. Surely Paula had phoned her mother from jail. She would have needed money for bail and had learned long ago that while Blake would bend over backwards for Kevin, he was through giving her cash. His aunt, however, was more easily convinced to part with her retirement funds.

  The pizza was cold, but Blake devoured it without heating it up in the microwave. He hated pizza heated in the microwave, and the oven would take too long.

  Kevin lay on the couch in front of Garth’s huge TV screen, his eyes closed in sleep. Blake checked the clock and saw that it was already eight-thirty. He shook his head, remembering that he still had to study for a test tomorrow night.

  Garth came to sit with him at the table. “So, what happened?”

  “I left Mara in the car with the heater on while I went to fix a lady’s oven,” Blake began. “She was so tired, and I was just going to be fifteen minutes. I thought it’d be okay, but she got too hot, I guess, and woke up crying.” He shook his head, feeling a renewed surge of anger at his actions. “When the lady told me, I was stunned. Couldn’t even move. I kept looking at this part I’d dropped on the floor, thinking I’d broken it and what was I going to do? It was crazy. I’ve never felt so brainless in my entire life. I shouldn’t have left Mara, Garth. I was wrong. I knew it. For a minute, I thought the lady was going to call the police, or something.”

  “Someone should—and not on you.”

  Blake sighed. “Paula does need to get her head on straight.”

  “You’re enabling her. She’s using you.”

  Blake gave a bitter chuckle. “Bringing our job home with us, are we?” Garth worked for a motivational speaker, arranging scheduling, which was why he got to travel to exotic places while Blake stayed home to study and change diapers.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “I know, but what . . . well, you don’t know Paula like I do.” Blake leaned forward, hands held out over the table, palms upward. “We grew up together. She was a sweet kid. My favorite cousin. I don’t know what went wrong.”

  Garth rubbed his forefinger down the slant of his nose, pausing as he always did at the bump the break had left. “I do. It’s called substance abuse.”

  “Yeah.” Blake felt bile rise in his throat. He sat back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. “She called me from the jail and begged me to get the kids from a friend’s house. When I got there”—he shook his head—“it made me sick. This was not a place for children—for anyone. Beer cans lying around, a sickly sweet smell—probably pot—and the guy was this skinny, bearded loser who looked like he was whacked-out on cocaine. I was so mad at her for leaving them there. I almost called the police myself.”

  “You should have.”

  Blake let his head drop into his hands for a minute. “I know that. I do. But I love her, you know? She’s my favorite cousin. We were so close growing up. The two youngest among all the relatives. Doug was in high school when I was born. Same for Paula
and her brother and sister.” He lifted his head. “I know it sounds crazy, but the Paula I grew up with wouldn’t have left her children with a man like that.”

  “I bet she wouldn’t have done drugs, either.” Garth’s dark eyes were sympathetic. “You’re going to have to do something.”

  “I know.” Blake stood. “But not today. I’ll have a talk with her when she comes to pick up the kids. With any luck, it won’t be until after Christmas. That’s almost two months away.” He walked over to where Kevin slept on the couch, scooping him up in his arms.

  “Hey,” Garth said. “Don’t you have class tomorrow night?”

  “Yeah. A test.”

  “Well, I’m not really into kids, but if you need someone . . .”

  Warm gratitude shot through Blake’s heart. “Thanks, Garth. I asked that little girl next door. She said she’d come every Tuesday and Thursday. And Rhonda said she’d take Friday mornings until I find a sitter for days—which I’m going to have to do since Mara’s here, too. I can’t have her at the shop all day. But basically my school times are covered.” He paused and added, his voice thick, “Thank you, though. Means a lot to me—your offer.”

  Garth grinned. “Yeah, man. Just remember I’m off again this weekend, so I won’t be here if you need something. We’re headed to California.”

  “Lucky you. No snow.” Blake said goodnight, silently thanking the Lord for Garth’s two-car garage. At least there would be no window to scrape before work.

  Kevin didn’t wake as Blake tucked him into bed, deciding that the four-year-old could sleep in his clothes instead of his new pajamas. He likely wouldn’t notice. Paula had never brought pajamas when she dropped him off—or a toothbrush for that matter. Kevin’s arrival had always meant a shopping trip. He kissed the little boy, checked on Mara, and then hit the books. Tired to his very bones, he sat at the small round kitchen table so he wouldn’t fall asleep.