Molly O'Keefe - Unexpected Family

“I’ll just take you home.” He was way gruffer than he intended and he saw Casey look over at him full of anxiety.

God, I just cannot get this shit right.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucy said, picking up toys and stacking them on the coffee table.

“You don’t have to clean this up.” He stepped forward, taking the toys from her, trying to get her to stand. Trying actually to get her out of here, but she was stubbornly reluctant.

“It’s almost done, isn’t it, Casey?” She winked at Casey, who’d thrown all the kitchen towels over the lake of water next to the couch. Great, just great. Now, I’ll have to dry all of them. But Casey beamed at her and it was the last damn straw.

“I said stop!”

Everyone halted and turned to stare at him. Casey’s lower lip started to tremble. The front door slammed shut and he figured that was Ben running out to the barn, which is what he did every time Jeremiah yelled.

“Okay.” Lucy stood and dropped the car keys on the coffee table. “Don’t worry about the ride, I’ll just call Mia and wait for her outside.” She gave Casey a big grin and the little boy stared after her with his broken heart in his eyes.

“See you,” Lucy said without making any eye contact, and Jeremiah knew, he totally understood, that he was the biggest asshole in the world. Yelling at kids and a woman who were just trying to help.

The front door shut and in the silence Casey’s big five-year-old eyes damned him.

“Hey.” Aaron came back in the room reeking of that deodorant all the preteen boys wear, convinced the smell made them irresistible to girls. “Where’s Lucy?”

“Jeremiah scared her away,” Casey said.

“Uncle J.” Aaron sighed and then walked into the kitchen for something to eat.

“I was a jerk, wasn’t I?” he asked Casey, who nodded.

“I should apologize, shouldn’t I?” Casey nodded again.

Swearing under his breath, he grabbed Reese’s keys from the coffee table and headed outside to apologize to Lucy.

* * *

MIA WASN’T PICKING UP her phone. Probably because she and Jack were having wild monkey sex while Lucy stood here getting barked at by a man she’d almost had sex with just a few short hours ago.

She snapped shut her cell phone and looked up at the sky wishing there was some kind of prayer for teleportation. Mom hadn’t shared that one with her.

“Lucy?”

She spun at the sound of Jeremiah’s voice. He stepped down the steps to the asphalt and she opened her phone and quickly pressed Redial.

“Look, Jeremiah, I get it, things are tough for you, but frankly, my life is no picnic right now. So, why don’t you just go deal with your mess and I’ll deal with mine?”

He ignored her, stopping a foot from her. “I’m sorry, Lucy.”

Mia’s voice mail came on and she snapped the phone shut.

“Your sister’s not around?”

“No.”

His smile was a variation on his million-dollar grin, more devastating because it was tarnished at the corners. “I can take you home.”

Past caring about his feelings, she looked him right in the eye and didn’t bother mincing words. “I think you have bigger problems to deal with.”

She watched him bristle, his blue eyes dark.

“Where’s Ben?” she asked.

“Probably in the barn.”

“He do that a lot? Run away?”

“Enough that I know he’s in the barn.”

“Are you—?”

“I’m giving him and me a chance to cool down,” he interrupted. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve been doing this for a year, Lucy. You met these boys five minutes ago.” He held up Reese’s keys. “Take Reese’s car. He’ll come and get it when he gets off the couch.”

There was more she wanted to say. Plenty more. But what was the point, really? She grabbed the keys. “Thanks.”

“See you.”

“Yeah,” she snapped, remembering the way the touch of his hands turned her inside out, the way he kissed her like she was the best thing he’d tasted in years. She felt duped by that man in the moonlight last night. “See you.”

She got back in Reese’s car and peeled out of the driveway, leaving Jeremiah Stone in her dust.

Good riddance, she thought.

CHAPTER FOUR

JEREMIAH WAITED UNTIL he could no longer see the dust plume behind Lucy’s car.

Not your finest showing, Stone. Not at all.

If his sister were alive she’d take him by his ear and give him a good shaking. But the truth was, he’d suffered through months of women with the best intentions coming through this house with their casseroles and sympathy and he’d watched the boys run roughshod all over them. Using that well-meaning sympathy to their advantage.

Eating pie for dinner, sleeping all together in Aaron’s room, playing video games for hours at a time, not doing their homework. The last babysitter he’d hired had let Casey walk around with Annie’s favorite green towel, like it was a baby blanket. And Ben… Christ, that kid’s temper had grown out of control the past few months. He was like a lit bomb and Jeremiah never knew when he was going to go off.

It’s not that he didn’t think the boys needed sympathy, but they also needed rules. He needed rules. He needed some boundaries and Ben needed to know that he couldn’t just run off to the barn every time he felt like Jeremiah was being unfair.

Jeremiah mentally braced himself and headed into the barn. Usually Ben sat in the empty stall at the back, burying himself in the clean hay. But he wasn’t there.

“Ben?” he yelled, and then listened for a rustle or a creaking board. Nothing. He climbed up into the hayloft and only found the cats snoozing in the sunlight.

The nine-year-old wasn’t in the arena, or feeding any of the horses in the paddocks.

He tried; he really did, not to jump to the worst possible conclusion. But the worst possible conclusion was the kind of thing that happened to this family time and time again. And he couldn’t stop himself from imagining him running off along the fence line toward the creek and the high pastures and all kinds of trouble. His heart, feeding on worry and anger, pounded in his neck as he stomped toward the house.

He threw open the front door and stepped into the living room where Reese was finally sitting up, his head in his hands. Aaron and Casey were eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and watching ESPN.

“We got a problem,” he said.

“Could you not yell?” Reese groaned.

“Ben’s run off.”

“What else is new?” Aaron asked, not taking his eyes off the TV and the baseball highlights.

“He’s not in the barn.”

Aaron glanced over. Annie’s eyes were in Aaron’s man-boy face, and it brought Jeremiah up short every damn time he looked at the kid. Aaron put down the sandwich and stood. “Casey and I will take the ATV,” he said.

“I’ll saddle Rider and check out the creek.”

“What can I do?” Reese asked.

“Stay here in case he comes back.”

“Oh, thank God,” he muttered, and flopped backward on the couch.

“It will be okay, Uncle J.,” Aaron said as he and Casey put on their boots. “He always comes back.”

Grateful for the help and the optimism, Jeremiah clapped his hand on the eleven-year-old’s shoulder, wishing things weren’t they way they were. Wishing these boys could just be boys, and he could just be an uncle and that every situation didn’t have the capacity for disaster.

* * *

LUCY DROVE UP to the small house she grew up in. She was happy to see the red climbing roses her mother had cultivated through the years still creating a green canopy over the south end of the house. It wasn’t warm enough for blooms yet, but every summer the scent of those flowers filled the air that came in through the window of her old bedroom.