Mr. Harris was so shy, though, she could easily see him mumbling something after supper and disappearing into his room, not to be seen again until the morning. But what if he didn’t? What if the boys wanted to be with him instead of her? She felt small and petty for worrying about such a thing, but—what if they did? She was the center of their young lives, and she didn’t know if she could give that up yet. Eventually she would have to, but they were just four, and all she had left of Derek.
“Well?” Sherry prompted, her brows raised as she waited for news, good or bad.
“He’s coming right over.”
“Caught him before he got started on another job, then,” said Sherry, looking as relieved as Cate felt.
Cate looked at the boys, who were both sitting watching her, their spoons held suspended. “You two need to finish your cereal, or you won’t be able to watch Mr. Harris,” she said sternly. That wasn’t exactly the truth, since Mr. Harris would be right there in the kitchen with them, but they were four; what did they know?
“We’ll huwwy,” Tucker said, and both resumed eating with more energy than precision.
“Hu
rr
y,” Cate said, emphasizing the
r
sound.
“Hu
rr
y,” Tucker obediently repeated. He could say the sound when he wanted to, but when he was distracted—which was often—he fell back into babyish speech patterns. He talked so much; it was as if he didn’t take the time to properly say the words. “Mistuh Hawwis is coming,” he told Tanner, as if his brother didn’t know. “I’m gonna play with the dwill.”
“Drill,” Cate corrected. “And you will not. You may watch him, but
leave the tools alone.
”
His big blue eyes filled with tears, and his lower lip trembled. “Mistuh Hawwis lets us play with them.”
“That’s when he has time. He’ll be in a hurry today, because he has another job to do when he leaves here.”
When she first opened the B and B, Cate had tried to keep them from bothering the handyman while he was working, and since they’d been just one at the time, the job should have been easier, but they had shown remarkable skill in slipping away. As soon as she turned her back, both boys zoomed back to him like magnets to steel. They had been like little monkeys, poking into his toolbox, running off with anything they could pick up, so she knew they had been as severe a trial to his patience as they had been to hers, but he’d never said a word of complaint, and for that she blessed him. Not that his silence on the matter was surprising; he seldom said anything, period.
The boys were older now, but their fascination with tools hadn’t waned. The only difference was that now they insisted on “helping.”
“They don’t bother me,” Mr. Harris would mumble whenever she caught them, ducking his head as his cheeks colored. He was painfully shy, rarely looking her in the eye and actually speaking only when he had to. Well, he did talk to the boys. Maybe he felt at ease with them because they were so young, but she had heard his voice mixed with the boys’ higher-pitched, excited tones as they seemed to carry on real conversations.
She glanced out the kitchen door and saw three customers lined up to pay their bills. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and went out to take their money. She hadn’t wanted to put a cash register in the dining room, but her breakfast business had made it necessary, so she had installed a small one by the outside door. Two of the customers were Joshua Creed and his client, which meant the dining room would soon be emptying out, now that Mr. Creed was leaving.
“Cate,” Mr. Creed said, inclining his head toward her. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his dark hair silvering at the temples, and his face weathered from the elements. His hazel eyes were narrow, his gaze piercing; he looked as if he could chew nails and spit out bullets, but he was always respectful and kind when he spoke to her. “Those scones of yours just keep getting better and better. I’d weigh four hundred pounds if I ate here every day.”
“I doubt that, but thanks.”
He turned and introduced his client. “Cate, this is Randall Wellingham. Randall, this lovely lady is Cate Nightingale, the owner of Nightingale’s Bed and Breakfast, and incidentally the best cook around.”
The first compliment was debatable, and the second one a downright lie, because Walter Earl’s wife, Milly, was one of those natural cooks who seldom measured anything but could cook like an angel. Still, it couldn’t hurt business to have Mr. Creed saying things like that.
“I can’t argue with any of that,” Mr. Wellingham said in his too-hearty tone, holding out his hand while his gaze swiftly raked down her before returning to her face, his expression saying that he was unimpressed with either her or her cooking. Cate forced herself to shake hands. His grip was too firm, his skin too smooth. This wasn’t a man who did a lot of physical work, which would have been okay in itself if he hadn’t plainly looked down on all the other people there because they
did.
Only Mr. Creed was spared, but then only someone blind and stupid would treat him with disdain.
“Are you staying long?” she asked, just to be polite.
“Just a week. That’s all the time I can manage away from the office. Every time I leave, the place goes to hell,” he said, chuckling.
She didn’t comment. She imagined he owned his own business, considering the wealth he flashed, but she didn’t care enough to ask. Mr. Creed nodded, placed his black hat on his head, and the two men exited to let the next customer step up to pay. Two more people joined the queue.
By the time she had taken their money and refilled the coffee cups around the room, Conrad and Gordon Moon had finished, and she returned to the cash register, where she fended off Conrad’s heavy compliments and Gordon’s amusement. He seemed to think it funny that his father had developed a
tendre
for her.
Cate didn’t think it funny at all when Conrad paused after his son had stepped out on the porch. He paused and swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Miss Cate, I’d like to ask—that is…are you receiving visitors tonight?”
The old-fashioned approach both charmed and alarmed; she liked the way he’d done it, but was horrified that he’d asked at all. Cate did her own swallowing, then stepped up to the plate, on the theory that sidestepping the issue would only bring on more approaches. “No, I’m not. I spend the evenings with my boys. I’m so busy during the day that night is the only time I have with them, and I don’t think it would be right to take that away.”
Still, he tried again. “You can’t mean to give up the best years of your life—”
“I’m not giving them up,” she said firmly. “I’m living them the way I think best for me and my children.”
“But I might be
dead
by the time they’re grown!”
Now, there was a point of view that was sure to attract. She shot him an incredulous look, then nodded in agreement. “Yes, you might. I still have to give the opportunity a pass. I’m sure you understand.”
“Not really,” he muttered, “but I guess I can take rejection as well as any other man.”
Sherry poked her head out the kitchen door. “
Conrad’s gaze moved to her, and zeroed in. “Miss Sherry,” he said. “Are you by any chance receiving visitors—”
Leaving Sherry to handle the geriatric lothario as best she could, Cate dodged past her into the kitchen.
Mr. Harris was already on his knees with his head poked into the cabinet under the sink, and both boys were out of their chairs busily emptying his heavy toolbox.
“Tucker! Tanner!” She put her hands on her hips and gave them her best Mother glare. “Put those tools back into the toolbox. What did I tell you about bothering Mr. Harris this time? I told you that you could watch, but to leave his tools alone. Both of you, go to your room, right now.”
“But, Mommy—” Tucker began, always ready to mount a spirited argument to defend whatever it was he’d been caught doing. Tanner merely stepped back, still holding a wrench, and waited for Tucker to either fail or prevail. She could feel the situation beginning to spiral out of control, her maternal instinct telling her they were on the verge of outright rebellion. This happened every so often, pushing at the boundaries to see how far she would let them go.
Never show weakness.
That was her mother’s sole advice for facing bullies, wild animals, or disobedient four-year-olds.
“No,” Cate said firmly, and pointed at the toolbox. “Tools in the box.
Now.
”
Pouting, Tucker threw a screwdriver into the box. Cate felt her back teeth grind together; he knew better than to throw his own things, much less someone else’s. Swiftly she stepped over the toolbox, took his arm, and swatted his rear end. “Young man, you know better than to throw Mr. Harris’s tools. First you’re going to tell him you’re sorry; then you’re going to your room to sit in the naughty chair for fifteen minutes.” Tucker immediately began to wail, tears streaking down his face, but Cate merely raised her voice as she pointed at Tanner. “You. Wrench in the box.”
He scowled, looking mutinous, but he heaved a sigh and carefully placed the wrench in the toolbox. “Oooookay,” he said in a tone of doom that made her bite her lip to keep from laughing. She had learned the hard way she couldn’t give these two an inch, or they’d run roughshod over her.
“You have to sit in the naughty chair for ten minutes, after Tucker gets up. You disobeyed, too. Now, both of you finish picking up those tools and put them back in the box.
Gently.
”
Tanner’s lower lip came out as he imitated a miniature thundercloud, and Tucker was still crying, but to her relief they began doing as they were told. Cate looked around to find that Mr. Harris had pulled his head from the depths of the cabinets and was opening his mouth, no doubt to defend the little culprits. She raised her finger at him. “Not one word,” she said sternly.
He blushed scarlet, mumbled, “No, ma’am,” and stuck his head back under the sink.
When the tools had been restored to the box, though probably not in their proper places, Cate prompted Tucker, “What are you supposed to tell Mr. Harris?”
“I’m sowwy,” he said, hiccuping in the middle of the word. His nose was running.
Mr. Harris wisely kept his head inside the cabinet. “It’s o—” he started to say, then stopped. He seemed to freeze for a moment; then he finally mumbled, “You boys should mind your mother.”
Cate seized a paper towel and wiped Tucker’s nose. “Blow,” she instructed, holding the towel in place, and he did with the excess energy he put into everything. “Now, both of you go up to your room. Tucker, sit in the naughty chair. Tanner, you may play quietly while Tucker’s in the chair, but don’t talk to him. I’ll come upstairs and tell you when to swap places.”
Heads down, the two little boys dragged themselves up the stairs as if they were facing a fate of unimaginable horror. Cate checked the clock to see what time Tucker would be released from punishment.
Sherry had come back into the kitchen and was watching Cate with a mixture of sympathy and amusement. “Will Tucker actually sit in the chair until you go upstairs?”
“He will now. In the past his time in the naughty chair has been extended several times before so now he gets the idea. Tanner has been even more stubborn.” And that was the understatement of the year, she thought, remembering the struggle it had been to make him obey. Tanner didn’t talk much, but he
personified
“stubborn.” Both boys were active, strong-willed, and absolutely brilliant when it came to finding new and different ways to get in trouble—and worse, danger. Once she had been horrified at the idea of even swatting their bottoms, much less spanking them, but before they turned two she had revised a lot of her former opinions on child-raising. They still had never had a spanking, but she no longer had confidence that they would get through their childhood without one. The thought made her stomach clench, but she had to raise them alone, discipline them alone, and keep them safe while somehow molding them into responsible human beings. If she let herself think too much about it, the long years stretching before her, she would almost drown in panic. Derek wasn’t here. She had to do it by herself.
Mr. Harris cautiously backed out of the cabinet and looked up at her as if gauging whether or not it was safe to speak now. Evidently deciding it was, he cleared his throat. “Ah…the leak is no problem; it’s just a loose fitting.” Blood was climbing in his face as he spoke, and he quickly looked down at the pipe wrench in his hand.
She blew out a relieved breath and went toward the door. “Thank God. Let me get my purse and pay you.”
“No charge,” he mumbled. “All I did was tighten it.”
Surprised, she stopped in her tracks. “But your time is worth something—”
“It didn’t take a minute.”
“A lawyer would charge an hour for that minute,” Sherry observed, looking oddly amused.
Mr. Harris muttered something under his breath that Cate didn’t catch, but Sherry evidently did because she grinned. Cate wondered what was so funny but didn’t have time to pursue the matter. “At least let me get you a cup of coffee, on the house.”
He said something that sounded like “thank you,” though it could have been “don’t bother.” Assuming it was the former, she went into the dining room and poured coffee into a large take-out cup, then snapped a plastic lid in place. Two more men came up to pay their bills; one she knew, one she didn’t, but that wasn’t unusual during hunting season. She took their money, surveyed the remaining customers, who all seemed to be doing okay, and carried the coffee back into the kitchen.
Mr. Harris was squatting down, restoring order to his toolbox. Cate flushed with guilt. “I’m so sorry. I told them to leave your tools alone, but—” She gave a one-shouldered shrug of frustration, then extended the coffee to him.
“No harm,” he said as he took the cup, his rough, grease-stained fingers wrapping around the polystyrene. He ducked his head. “I like their company.”
“And they love yours,” she said drily. “I’ll go up now and check on them. Thank you again, Mr. Harris.”
“It hasn’t been fifteen minutes yet,” Sherry said, checking the clock.