Molly O'Keefe - A Man Worth Keeping

He looked up and found the little girl, Josie, staring at him as if he were a wild animal coming in for dinner.

He almost growled just to see what she would do.

“Hi,” she said after a moment.

Max looked around for the mother bear but didn’t see her. Should she see him talking to her daughter, chances were not good she’d welcome that.

He didn’t blame her. Since the shooting, mothers seemed to have a sense about him.

But this little girl looked so forlorn and small sitting at the big table that he decided to risk the wrath of Mama Bear.

“Hi, again.” He stepped over to her table and pulled off his gloves, taking a look at the book she had open in front of her. “Sudoku, huh?”

“Yeah.” Her lip lifted in a half smile and her hair—hidden earlier under her pink hat—fell over her shoulder. Red. Like her mother’s, only a bit more blond.

Max was at loose ends. It was snowing too hard to work. There were no repairs that needed to be done. No point in shoveling snow while it was still falling. Dad had left yesterday for downstate to talk to his lawyer about something. Alice was lying around with her feet up. And his brother must be checking in Josie’s mother, so he wasn’t around to annoy.

“I’m bored,” he said, the words popping out before he’d finished thinking them.

“Me, too.” Josie’s sigh was long-suffering and pained.

“Yeah?” He pushed out a chair with his foot and sat. He liked kids and he especially liked kids with attitude, which Josie had in spades. “Want to hand me one of those puzzle books?”

“There’s only one,” she said, and tossed him a different book from the stack. “You can have this.”

“A Barbie coloring book?” He opened it and grabbed a crayon from the box between them. “My favorite.”

Josie smiled and bent over her book of math puzzles, but watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye.

He worked diligently on Prince Charming’s military jacket.

“So?” he said, coloring over the medals pinned to the cartoon’s chest, saving him the pain of the memories required to have earned those medals. “Where you from?”

Josie stopped looking at him, focused on the puzzle, running her pencil over the six she’d written until it was black. “We move around a lot.”

Warning sirens wailed in Max’s head.

“You sound like you’re from the South.”

“Texas,” she said.

“Have you ever seen this much snow?”

She shook her head.

“What do you think of it?”

She wrinkled her nose and he grinned then, changing tactics, he held out his hand. “I’m Max Mitchell. I live here.”

“I’m Josie G…Johnson.” The sirens wailed louder. Something wasn’t right. “And I think I live here, too.”

He blinked. “You and your mo—”

“Josie?” Mama Bear was back and she was not happy. Max put down his crayon and turned to look at Delia standing, all her feathers ruffled, beside Gabe.

“Hi, Mama,” Josie said, looking like a kid caught stealing.

“Max.” Gabe stepped neatly into the fray. “I want to introduce you to Delia Johnson. She’ll be our new massage therapist and spa manager.”

Uh-oh.

“You’re not a guest?” Max nearly cringed at his own question. He sounded angry that she wasn’t a guest and maybe, somewhere, deep down in places he couldn’t feel anymore, he was. He certainly didn’t need feisty Josie and angry, sexy Delia around for more than a weekend.

“No,” Delia said, stepping to stand next to her daughter. She placed a hand on the little girl’s shoulder as if to remind everyone what the teams were. “We’ll be here awhile.”

Back off, her blue eyes said, and Max stood, ready to comply.

“Welcome,” he said. “Both of you.” He turned to leave just as the kitchen door swung open and Alice, his very pregnant sister-in-law, waddled in.

Hot on her heels was Cameron, one of Max’s at-risk kids who now worked here. Formerly Alice’s assistant, these days he was more like Alice’s babysitter.

“I tried to keep her in the office, like you said. But she wouldn’t stay,” Cameron said, looking both panicked and pissed off. Which, frankly, was a pretty standard reaction to pregnant Alice. She was prickly when she was in a good mood—pregnant she was live ammunition.

“You’re supposed to be lying down,” Gabe said, his eyes shooting sparks at his wife.

“I’ve been lying down,” Alice griped. “I’ve been lying down so much my butt is flat. The doctor said small amounts of activity were fine as long as I took it easy.”

“Are you taking it easy?”

“No,” Cameron answered for her.

“Yes!” Alice amended, shooting Cameron a shut-up-ordie glare. As she turned, she caught sight of the audience and her fair cheeks blazed red. “Oops.”

“Delia,” Gabe said, his jaw clenched, “this is my wife. Six months’ pregnant and on bed-rest orders from her doctor.”

“ Modified bed rest,” Alice said with a thin-lipped smile. She held out her hand to shake Delia’s and her smile became more sincere. “And we’re being so careful it’s ridiculous. Nice to meet you. Welcome to the inn.”

“Thank you,” Delia said. “I’m really looking forward to working with y’all.”

Max noticed that Delia turned on the charm for Alice and Gabe, which made her reaction to him all the more pronounced. He used to have a way with people, pretty redheads included. Now, he felt tongue-tied. Lost. As though he was hidden somewhere and by the time he found the right words to say the moment was gone.

Everyone had moved on.

“This is my daughter, Josie.” Delia stepped back and Josie stood to shake Alice’s hand, the total picture of good manners, with no eight-year-old smirk.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Josie said in her soft drawl.

She glanced at him and he rolled his eyes just to let her know he was on to her.

“I’m Cameron.” Cameron stepped forward, holding out his hand like a grown-up and Max couldn’t help but feel some pride. When Cameron had first arrived at the inn, he’d been sullen, angry and disrespectful. Looking at the sixteen-year-old now, he’d never guess.

“I’m going to show my wife back to her bed,” Gabe said, mostly to Alice, who rolled her eyes. “Max? Can you show them to the West Suite and give them the ten-cent tour?”

Max had been about to make his silent getaway, but now all eyes were on him. Including Delia’s wide blue ones.

“Sure,” he finally agreed, careful not to look at Delia or Josie.

He’d spent ten years as a detective and it wasn’t hard to figure out that things were not what they seemed with these two females. And Max hated that. It made his gut act up. He’d left the detective life behind and come here so that his gut could grab a rest.

He rubbed at his stomach and hoped that the beautiful Southern woman would get tired of the cold and isolation and leave. Soon.

GABE AND ALICE LEFT the room, arguing about the definition of modified and Delia and Josie were left alone with Max. Delia wanted to call the couple back, keep them close, because with their absence, Max Mitchell’s presence became all the more disconcerting.

He waited silently, a specter at a respectful distance. Still, for every moment that passed, she grew more and more uncomfortable. She wanted to holler, stop staring. But he wasn’t staring. He wasn’t even glancing their way.

I’m losing my ever-loving mind, she thought. Maybe this time her instincts were right. Maybe he was a good guy. A nice man. Someone she could trust.

Dear God, wouldn’t that be something, she thought.

Weirder things had happened.