Читать книгу Falling for a Father of Four - Arlene James, Arlene James - Страница 6

“Get down, you big baby, and get outta my way!”

Jean Marie shoved at her younger sister, not hard enough to really send her over the edge of the counter and crashing to the floor, but hard enough to let her know that she meant business. Sitting at the kitchen table, Orren covered the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver and counted to ten, striving for patience as four-year-old Yancy Kay wailed and called for her “bubby,” Chaz. All of eight, Chaz was the family hero, and Orren knew that he depended on his son too much, but wasn’t he doing everything in his power to try to take some of the weight off of those slender shoulders? Not, however, at the moment. He nodded at Chaz, who disgustedly reached past Yancy’s tormentor, their six-year-old sister Jean Marie, and heaved Yancy off the counter, against which Jean Marie had pushed a chair in order to prepare her specialty of buttered crackers for an afternoon snack.

“You don’t have to be such a meanie,” Chaz scolded in a low mutter.

Deeply offended, Jean Marie threw the knife with which she was working into the sink, where it clattered noisily among the other dishes. Yancy yowled, and Orren’s caller hung up. He couldn’t blame her. No woman in her right mind would willingly walk into this lion’s den. Orren put his head in his hands and sighed. “Well, that’s another one we can forget about.”

Repentant, Yancy stuck her thumb in her mouth and laid her tousled golden-blond head on Chaz’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dad,” the boy said. Then he turned his attention to the four-year-old wrapped around him. “You shouldn’t have climbed up on the counter, Yancy. The apples are all gone, anyway.”

“I’ll get some more when I go to the store,” Orren promised tiredly, getting up to hang up the phone. Trying to sound reasonable, he turned a look at redheaded Jean Marie. “You shouldn’t talk so ugly to your baby sister, Red.”

“She ain’t the baby,” Jean Marie retorted unconcernedly, taking another clean knife from the drawer. “She just acts like it.”

She was right. Three-year-old Sweetums, otherwise known as Candy Sue, was still enjoying her afternoon nap, her curly, pale blond head lying on his pillow even as they spoke, but that wasn’t the point. “You still shouldn’t be so cross with her. She just wanted an apple.”

“We ain’t got any apples,” Jean Marie said, “and she was gonna fall on her durned fool head.”

“Watch your mouth!” Orren snapped, despair sitting on him like a big mother hen brooding a chick. He’d had two calls on the ad, and both had hung up after hearing how many kids they’d be expected to sit and the unmistakable sounds of the chaos that reigned over his household. Fourteen bucks wasted and a day of work lost for nothing. What was he going to do tomorrow when he had to show up for work? He was scared to death to leave them alone, but how could he work and care for them, too?

He looked at Chaz, sighing. “You may have to go back to the day care,” he said, and winced as both Jean Marie and Yancy screamed protests, Jean Marie with several words she shouldn’t even have known, Yancy with her usual howl. He pointed a stern finger at Jean Marie. “Go to your room, young lady. I won’t have you talking like that.”

“I hate that old day care!” she yelled. “That Porter woman’ll call welfare on us!”

“No, she won’t,” Chaz said resignedly. “She’s onto your tricks and lies now.”

Orren shook his head, recalling all the ways Jean Marie had sought to get herself and her siblings barred from the day care center: the strawberry jelly rashes, the hole-riddled underwear and socks, the tall tales about deadly diseases and strange curses. He wasn’t at all certain Mrs. Porter would take them full time. After-school care had been difficult enough. But what other choice did he have now that school was out? He started planning his plea and tried not to think about what it was going to cost, especially since the hours would mean cutting back on the side jobs he took to make a little extra.

“Get on to your room,” he said to Jean Marie as the phone rang again. She threw herself off the chair and pounded away, slamming doors in her wake. Orren sent a look to Chaz as he reached for the receiver of the wall-mounted phone near the door. “Check on the baby. If the phone doesn’t wake her, Jean Marie will.” He snatched up the receiver in the middle of a second ring. “Hello.”

A bright voice at the other end of the line said, “Hi, my name is Matilda Kincaid.”

Mattie hung up the phone and smiled in satisfaction. Mr. Orren Ellis sounded frankly desperate. She was welcome to come out and interview even if she wasn’t the grandmotherly type specified in his ad, and the sooner the better. Right away, in fact. They could talk about the kids and the other duties once she got there. All she had to do was hit Bois d’arc off the 81 Bypass and follow it past the old cemetery. It was the beige and white house on the right, with the For Sale sign standing up close to the road. Come to the carport door. The For Sale sign was for the acreage and not the house.

Mattie rolled off her bed onto the floor, stabbed her feet into sandals and snatched up the hairbrush on the dressing table beneath the window. Yanking several strokes through her long dark hair, she dropped the brush into the small denim backpack that had replaced her purse during her first year of college at Oklahoma State in Stillwater. Free for the summer, she was ready for a job and the slow pace of the hot summertime in Duncan. She’d be happier still if she never had to set eyes again on the hallowed old halls of higher education, but after only two years at the university, it was doubtful her father would hear of her leaving college.

As if conjured by her thoughts, she jerked open her bedroom door to find Evans Kincaid standing with fist raised to knock, his tan uniform as crisp as his badge was shiny, despite a full day put in as one of Duncan’s finest. Tall and fit in his mid-forties, his inky hair trimmed close to his head, he was the quintessential police officer.

“Hello, sweetheart! How was your day?” He bent and kissed her on the cheek.

“Oh, fine. Amy’s out back lighting the grill.”

“Ah. Well, I’ll run out and tell her I’m home. You, however, have company.”

He grinned, his leaf green eyes twinkling with delight. Mattie almost groaned aloud. That look could mean anything from a new puppy to a “playmate,” all designed to delight the little girl she no longer was. Poor Dad! He just couldn’t accept that she was no longer a child. At nineteen-going-on-twenty, Mattie was far more mature than most of her contemporaries. Truth be told, she felt decades older than the young people with whom she shared classes at OSU. She supposed it had something to do with losing her mother at so young an age and stepping into the role of housekeeper during the years before her father found Amy, his sweet second wife, who used to be their next-door neighbor. She counted Amy more good friend than stepmother and loved her—if for no other reason—for making her father happy and for occasionally running interference when Evans Kincaid became too obsessively “parental.”

Evans pointed her in the direction of the living room and went on out through the kitchen to kiss his wife. Mattie sighed and took herself off to greet her unknown guest. She stifled a second groan and rolled her eyes upon discovering Brick Carter studying the display of her father’s medals and awards won in the line of duty. Brick swung around, freckled face splitting in a wide grin.

“Hey, Mat!” Brick had an annoying habit of shortening everyone’s name to a single syllable like his own. His carrot red hair had been shorn so close that the pink of his scalp shone through, and the prominence of his front teeth gave him a rabbity look. “How long you been home?”

“Just since Wednesday,” Mattie answered, as if that explained why she hadn’t seen him, when in truth she’d avoided him like the plague, even sneaking out of church early to avoid an accidental meeting. “Congratulations on your graduation.”

Brick stuck out his thin chest, his hands jingling the change in his chino pockets. “Thanks. It sure feels good to have that sheepskin!”

“What are you going to do now that you’ve finished university?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Take some time off, I guess. I’m kind of young to get tied down to a job already, and Mom wants me to think about grad school. I’ll probably do that. Right now, though, I just want to have some fun! Hey, how about taking in an early movie and—”

“Sorry,” Mattie interrupted. “I was just on my way out. I have a job interview.”

“A job interview?” This came from behind her, her father’s voice.

She turned, masking her irritation with a smile. “That’s right, and I really have to go. Mr. Ellis is expecting me.”

“Ellis?” Evans turned the name over in his mind. “Can’t say I know any Ellis.”

Mattie shot a pleading look over his shoulder at her stepmother. “Must be law-abiding,” Amy quipped with a wink at Mattie.

“What kind of job is it?” Evans wanted to know.

“Baby-sitting,” Mattie said easily, not yet ready to reveal that it was full time.

“Oh, well, then, that’s all right. But, honey, you really don’t have to work. You have your allowance and—”

“Dad!” Mattie closed her eyes in humiliation. “I’m not a child. I don’t need or want an allowance. I’m perfectly capable of earning my own way. If you hadn’t insisted I come home, I could have moved into a secretarial job in Stillwater.”

Evans waved that away with a deprecating chuckle. “You don’t want to be a secretary.”

Mattie had to bite her tongue to keep from asking how he knew what she wanted to be when she didn’t know herself—except that the idea of working with children did hold a good deal more appeal than remaining with the real estate firm for which she’d worked part time last semester. In fact, she hoped the Ellis household contained a number of children, two or three, at least. With another pleading look at Amy, she said, “I really have to go now,” and whirled away, flipping a wave in farewell. “So long, Brick. Say hello to your sister for me. Bye, Dad.”

“Hey, what about dinner?” Evans called after her, moving into the doorway.

“Oh, don’t worry about me!” she called back, hurrying down the walk toward her car. “I’ll get something later. Maybe Brick will want to stay.”

Evans frowned as she all but skipped down the walkway. He almost called her back, but his wife’s hand on his forearm stayed him. A glance in her direction told him that he was in danger of becoming the heavy-handed father again. With a sigh, he closed the door and turned back into the living room. “Well, Brick, how about it? Want to stay for dinner?”

Brick shrugged. “Sure!” Brick’s personal theory, well known to all acquainted with him, was that he ought never to turn down a free meal. Evans smiled lamely and went to change his clothes.

“She’s here!” Chaz announced, moving away from the kitchen sink where he’d kept watch through the window. Orren glanced up in time to see the late-model red two-door turn into the drive. It was a make with a good reputation for safety and dependability, yet had a racy look about it. A good choice for a second car, a single person more intent on value than prestige, or a teenager with particularly careful parents. He prayed it wasn’t a teenager—these kids of his would eat the average teenager alive—but he didn’t have time to watch from a distance as she got out of the car and moved toward the door. Instead, he ran across the hallway into his bedroom, where he dumped another armload of junk, kicking it out of the way as he wrestled the door closed and ran back to the living area. She knocked just as he moved on into the kitchen.

Motioning for Chaz to get out of the way, Orren crossed to the door, where he paused and pulled a deep, calming breath, drying his sweating palms on his jeaned thighs. He opened the door to a petite cutie with enormous green eyes and dark hair falling down her back in a sleek sheet. She wore a gauzy yellow blouse over a white tank top and a faded denim miniskirt, yellow sandals on her small, bare feet. She had that firm, fit look of the well-endowed teenager, but something about her face hinted that she might be older. Perhaps it was the carefully applied lipstick in a sensible shade of peach or the hint of blush across her high cheekbones. Whatever it was, it gave him a glimmer of hope.

“Mr. Ellis?” she asked. “I’m Matilda Kincaid.”

Nodding, he backed out of the doorway. “Miss Kincaid. Won’t you come in?”

She stepped up into the house and shrugged off the backpack she carried slung over one shoulder. Looking around in blatant curiosity, she spied Chaz and moved in his direction, hand extended. “Hello. I’m Mattie.”

“This is my son, Chaz,” Orren said, proudly dropping his hands onto Chaz’s stout shoulders as Chaz stiffly placed his hand in Mattie’s.

“Pleased to meet you, Chaz.” She smiled and lifted her gaze to Orren’s, the shock of those emerald eyes rocking him back a little. “Are there others? Children, I mean.”

She sounded almost eager, but Orren wasn’t taking any chances. She was young, but she handled herself with a certain maturity. He wouldn’t count her out until they’d talked—and he wasn’t about to scare her off, either. He nodded smoothly and smiled down at Chaz. “Son, why don’t you go and get Sweetums?”

Chaz’s pale blue eyes signaled his approval of this particular maneuver. Few females could resist the curly-headed little moppet with eyes the color of a summer sky. They’d spring Yancy and Jean Marie on her later, if things got that far. As Chaz went off to fetch his baby sister, Orren pulled out a chair from the kitchen table.

“Won’t you sit down, Miss Kincaid?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She hung her backpack on the back of the chair and gracefully lowered herself onto the seat, tucking her little skirt around her legs. Nice legs, Orren noticed, for a girl her age, that was. And perhaps finding out her exact age ought to be the first order of business. Counselling himself to patience, Orren doggedly observed the niceties.

“Can I get you anything? A cup of tea, maybe?”

“Oh, no, thank you. And please call me Mattie.” Her smile was slightly mocking as she added, “Miss Kincaid is my father’s maiden aunt.”

He felt himself smiling in response. “Well, you’re obviously no old maid, so Mattie it is. My name’s Orren, by the way. We can save Mr. Ellis for the fellows down at the shop. The mister is a way of reminding them who’s boss.”

“You’re young to be anyone’s boss, aren’t you?” she said smoothly.

He was shocked, and not just because he felt a hundred most days, but because she had so neatly turned the tables on him. He knew what it was like to be young and struggling. The world was full of folks who thought you had to be skimming forty to do anything worthwhile, and woe to the man who set out to prove himself capable before then. He just hadn’t expected the question from this little slip of a female. He pulled out a chair and dropped into it, saying defensively, “I’m twenty-eight.”

Her dark, slender brows rose in tandem. “My goodness, you were awful young when Chaz was born, then, weren’t you? What is he, nine or ten?”

“Eight.” Orren retorted. “Chaz is eight. He won’t be nine until November.”

“Ah. Then you were an expectant father at my age,” she announced, beaming at him.

Orren blinked, wondering how he’d lost control of this interview. The same way he’d lost control of his life, apparently—without even realizing it. A hushed squabble in the hallway alerted him to more trouble in the making. “Excuse me,” he said, rising and edging that way. Before he could get there, though, Jean Marie slithered through the open doorway, evading Chaz’s grasp. She glared at him mulishly, pushing her blazing red hair out of her face. He’d told her pointedly to brush it, but she seemed to think that taming her hair was the height of indignity. She targeted Mattie Kincaid with a frown that abruptly upended itself. This was no old meanie. This was a pliable, hoodwinkable youngster! Jean Marie beamed and headed for her. Orren caught her about the shoulders and redirected her toward the tattered brown tweed couch, saying, “This is Jean Marie. We call her Red, for obvious reasons.”

Mattie smiled at the girl. “Hello, Jean Marie. What beautiful hair you have.”

Jean Marie gaped and shoved at the unruly mess. “I don’t, neither.”

“Yes, you do. I think it’s very pretty.”

Jean Marie pulled a face at her father, all but sticking out her tongue, as if to say, “So there!”

Chaz edged into the room with the baby on his hip, an apologetic look on his face. Candy Sue rubbed her eyes sleepily, and Orren hurried to introduce her. “This here is Sweetums, uh, Candy Sue. She’s three, and Jean Marie here is six.”

“What a doll!” Mattie exclaimed, holding out her arms. Chaz gratefully delivered Candy Sue, who went to Mattie without the slightest hesitation. Why should she balk when she’d been passed from stranger to stranger her whole little life, Orren mused, fighting back the anger such thoughts always brought with them. Just then Yancy bolted into the room, bounced off the edge of the armchair and threw her arms around Chaz’s hips to stop and steady herself. Her thumb went immediately into her mouth. Her golden-blond hair had been pulled ruthlessly back from her face with a green plastic barrette, Jean Marie’s handiwork, no doubt. Chaz scolded her softly.

“You were s’posed to wait!”

“Ah wai’ed,” she said around her thumb.

“You were s’posed to wait till I come and got you!” he hissed desperately.

Orren cast an anxious glance at the prospective baby-sitter. Mattie, however, laughed and rocked forward onto the edge of her chair, Candy Sue cuddled in her lap. “And what’s your name, sweetheart?”

Yancy pulled her thumb from her mouth and answered importantly, “I’s Yancy Kay.”

“And how old are you, Yancy Kay?”

Yancy held up four fingers, carefully folding back her wet thumb.

Mattie spread a smile over them, saying, “Is this everyone?”

Orren nodded morosely. “This is the lot.”

Mattie squirmed in her chair as if just barely able to contain her glee. “Let me see if I’ve got everyone down.” Her gaze lit on Chaz. “Chaz is the oldest at eight, and a very good big brother, too, I’m guessing.”

Yancy threw both arms around him again, exclaiming worshipfully, “Bubby!”

Mattie laughed. Orren joined her belatedly, wondering what she found so delightful. Chaz just looked confused. Mattie turned her smile on the sulky one.

“Jean Marie of the beautiful hair is six,” she recited, “and I’m guessing she has a temper to go along with that blaze of red.”

Jean Marie stuck out her bottom lip and folded her arms emphatically, proclaiming Mattie correct, but her vivid blue eyes gleamed with secret delight. Orren shook his head. Mattie went on to the thumb sucker.

“Miss Yancy Kay is four and loves being babied by her big brother.”

Yancy responded by trying to squeeze Chaz in two.

Mattie wrapped her arms around placid Candy Sue and tickled her lightly, saying, “And Candy Sue is everybody’s three-year-old Sweetums.” Candy Sue giggled that delightful baby laugh that could still lift Orren’s beleaguered spirits. Mattie laughed with her, then hugged her hard.

Jean Marie got up and walked over to Mattie’s chair, leaning against it in disarming familiarity. “If you come work for us, will you try to make me brush my hair?” she asked challengingly.

Mattie smiled. “Nope.” Jean Marie gaped for a second time. Mattie added, “But you won’t get my special snacks if you don’t.”

Jean Marie clamped her mouth shut in a frown. “What special snacks?”

Mattie shrugged. “Brush your hair, and you’ll see.”

Jean Marie scowled. Maybe this one wasn’t quite so easily managed, after all.

Orren had to hide a smile. He waded through the children toward the table, saying to Chaz, “Son, take the girls out back to play while I talk to Miss, um, Mattie.”

“Is that your name?” Jean Marie demanded, eyes narrowed. “Mattie?”

“Yes, it is,” came the smooth answer. “Miss Mattie to you. It’s short for Matilda.”

Put firmly in her place, Jean Marie brought her hands to her hips and announced baldly, “I don’t like her.”

Orren glared and opened his mouth to lay down a scathing scold, but Mattie Kincaid, in her cool, unflappable style, beat him to it. “Now, Jean Marie,” she said calmly, “you might as well know right now that those bullying tactics won’t work with me. My father’s a policeman, you see, and he taught me that bullies are usually more scared than anyone else and they act all tough to hide it. So what are you scared of, Jean Marie, a little old hairbrush? Or maybe you’d rather have some warty old witch who’d spank you and put you to bed without your dinner instead of making you delicious snacks and keeping things neat around here, hmm?”

Jean Marie’s mouth was hanging open again. Clearly at a loss, she spun and ran out of the room. Chaz’s eyes were big as saucers, but no bigger than his father’s. Orren had seldom seen his prickly daughter routed so easily, and he frankly didn’t know whether to be optimistic or worried about it! He turned away, trying to make up his mind about the confounding Matilda Kincaid, his hand lighting on the back of his neck.

Mattie, meanwhile, smoothly took control. Calling Chaz forward with a crooking finger, she put Candy Sue on her feet and motioned for him to take the two younger girls out as his father had instructed. Casting curious glances in his father’s direction, Chaz silently complied, herding the girls ahead of him. When Orren turned back around, Mattie was sitting alone at the table, her hands folded in her lap. He shot a surprised look around the room, frowned, and leaned forward to place both hands flat on the table.

“How old are you?” he asked bluntly, determined to maintain control this time.

Mattie smiled serenely. “Nineteen, the same age you were when you made Chaz.”

Orren’s frown deepened. “Nineteen’s young to watch over four kids—and to be so damned direct!”

Her smile never faltered. “I’ll be twenty soon, if it really makes any difference. And it’s true, isn’t it? You were just nineteen when Chaz’s mother was expecting him.”

He couldn’t deny it, so instead he got defensive about it. “Girl, you’ve got some brass!” She ignored him, craning her neck to get a good look around, though what there was to look at, he couldn’t guess.

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

Her gaze was completely undisturbed. “Your wife.”

He felt like he’d been coldcocked. “I don’t have one!”

She looked askance at that. “Those children didn’t spring out of the ground.”

Orren threw up his arms. “She ran away with a rodeo bum! Anything else you want to know?”

She shook her head, but whether in answer to his sarcastic question or in response to his ill-natured revelation, he didn’t know. She looked him squarely in the eye and said, “I can start right away.”

Defeated, he plopped down in the chair he’d vacated earlier and sighed. “I bet you lead your daddy a merry chase.”

Mattie nodded unrepentantly. “He thinks I’m still twelve, which is how old I was when my mother died.”

Orren put his head in his hands. “I don’t know whether to slit my throat now or hold out a few years in hopes my own girls will run off with circus performers.”

“You don’t mean that,” Mattie told him, as if he didn’t already know it.

He dropped his hands and gave her a hard look. “Does your father know you’re here?”

“Of course.”

“How do you suppose he’ll feel about you working for a single man my age?”

She shrugged. “Hard to tell. He might assume you’re too old to be attractive to me.”

He couldn’t believe he’d heard that right. “What?”

She ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken and went on. “Or he might assume you’re too old to be attracted to me. Either way, I’ll be too young in his mind. But, it’s a baby-sitting job, and he’ll think that’s appropriate, so it shouldn’t be any problem, really. If he hedges, I’ll enlist my stepmother’s aid. She’s never had children so she doesn’t have these parental hang-ups. And if he outright forbids it, we’ll have a screaming fight. Then I’ll take the job anyway, because it’s what I want, and I am, after all, over eighteen. I have two years of college, by the way.”

Orren just stared at her for a second. “I think I will cut my throat.”

She got up from the table and said, “Can I look around?”

“No!”

She threw out a slender hip and propped her hand on it. Yes, indeed, she was over eighteen. But she was still a baby. Especially compared to Gracie. He frowned. Now why had he done that, compared her to Grace? She folded her arms and asked baldly, “So how long has she been gone?”

He nearly hit his chin on the table. Little shocker. Well, if she wanted the dirty details, he’d give them to her. He got up and put his hands flat on the table, drilling her with his baby blues. “Two years and seven months.” He waited a beat and added, “A week and three days.”

She batted her lashes at him. “Candy Sue was just a baby.”

“An infant,” he admitted. “I had to put her on a bottle.” Let her digest that.

She was outraged. A nursing mother had abandoned her baby, not to mention three other children and a husband! Then she started looking for acceptable reasons. “She must’ve been young when you married.”

“Older than me,” he said flatly, “but that didn’t keep me from getting her pregnant. Four times.”

Miss Matilda Kincaid lifted her chin a notch. “You’re trying to embarrass me.”

“And succeeding,” he admitted, looking at the splotches of color spreading across her cheeks. “Maybe that’ll teach you not to go around asking nosy questions.”

“Is there a better way to find out what I want to know?” she retorted saucily.

He grinned. Damned if she didn’t have him there. “You ever hear that curiosity killed the cat?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s pretty obvious I’m not a cat, and it wouldn’t be very responsible of me to walk into a situation blind, would it?”

He scratched his chin at that. “Guess not. You’ve just got an awful frank way about you.”

“Yes, I do. Now, is the job mine or not?”

He shook his head, chuckling, and said the one thing guaranteed to get her dander up. “Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to your dad first, clear it with him.”

The color in her face blossomed to full red as she struggled to tamp down her temper. It took several seconds, actually, of breathing through her mouth and working her jaw, but she finally got it in hand. That hip flew out again, and she was clearly fuming, but she managed a nearly polite, “Fine.”

He went to the phone, figuring it would be dangerous for him to laugh outright. “What’s his name?”

“Evans Kincaid.”

“I want you to know I’m doing this because you said earlier that he’s a police officer, which seems a good recommendation. Are you really nineteen?”

“Yes!”

“What’s the telephone number?”

She ground it out through bared teeth, and he punched it into the telephone. The conversation was fairly short. Kincaid was obviously pleased that he’d been consulted. It marked Orren, he said, as a conscientious father himself. Orren politely but honestly explained that he was divorced and fairly desperate as he hadn’t generated much interest in the position, the hours being tricky and some housekeeping being required. Actually he was hoping for more than some housekeeping, but he wouldn’t mention that. He couldn’t exactly demand it, considering the wages he was able to pay, and he knew he had no right to expect it. Since his days off as manager of the car repair shop were Sunday and Monday, he pointed out that he would expect Mattie to work Saturday. He didn’t say that he could easily keep her busy seven days a week by taking small jobs on the side, but he was hoping Mattie would welcome the extra money as much as he did. At any rate, Kincaid made it plain that he would not approve of Mattie working Sundays, and Orren made special note of it, figuring that Kincaid was a religious man who wouldn’t take kindly to having his little girl’s ears scorched more than they already had been.

Mattie, her father promised, was great with kids and a hard worker. She knew her way around a house, too, having pretty much taken over the domestic duties after her mother died. “She’s a great little organizer,” he said proudly, “and neat as a pin.”

Orren looked around at his hastily cleared combination kitchen and living room and wondered if Mattie would last a week here in this madhouse with her penchant for order and neatness. He could only hope.

“Between you and me,” Kincaid went on, “I think, she’s felt a little displaced since I remarried. She and Amy are fast friends, but I’ve noticed that Mattie is a little restless and uncertain when she’s home from school. This might be good for her.”

“I hope so,” Orren said warmly, but privately he had his doubts. He loved his kids, but sometimes he thought he’d go stark raving mad. It was always one crisis after another around this place, and there was never enough money, what with the cost of child care and all. Sometimes he wanted to just walk out, not forever, but maybe long enough to get blind drunk on occasion. Still, he couldn’t afford that much beer, and he sure couldn’t afford the hard liquor for it, not with someone constantly outgrowing shoes or coming up with ear infections and such. He hung up the phone and turned to take the new sitter’s measure one more time.

“You heard?”

She nodded. “When do I start?”

He was surprised, really, that she still wanted to. Maybe she didn’t understand everything involved. “I work ten to seven, five and sometimes six days a week. I’ll try to get breakfast for the kids before I go, but lunch and dinner are part of your job.”

“All right.”

“I can fend for myself,” he went on, “but the kids have got to eat regular meals.”

“I understand. I don’t see any reason for you to do without, though, considering I’m going to be cooking anyway.”

That was good news. “Well, dinner, maybe,” he conceded gratefully. “I usually skip lunch, though sometimes someone will take me out.”

She shrugged. “What about the grocery shopping?”

He hedged that. “I try to do it on Mondays, but sometimes it’s Tuesday evening before I can get to it.” Or Wednesday, he thought. Or Thursday. If at all.

“I’d rather do it myself, if you’ll give me a budget,” she said. “I prefer to make out weekly menus and shop with a list. It cuts down on impulse buying and makes use of things that might otherwise go to waste. I do the shopping on Mondays, floors on Tuesday, bathrooms on Wednesday, dusting on Thursday, and laundry on Friday, though I suppose my Monday will be Tuesday, so we can push everything back a day, if you want.”

He couldn’t believe it, not coming from this small, delicate girl. He put his hands together and said in a dramatic voice, “Oh, Lord, if this is Your idea of a practical joke, I’m going to become an atheist, I swear.”

Mattie frowned. “That’s not very funny. I’m trying to tell you what you can expect from me, and if that’s not what you have in mind, well, then, the whole thing’s off.”

Orren shook his head and clapped a hand over his heart. “Miss Mattie, my love, you’ve already exceeded my expectations by far. I’d be happy as a hog in slop if you just fed my kids and kept Red from stringing up her sisters. But since you have a system you want to use, you just go right ahead. I’m tickled pink. And if it doesn’t work out quite like you have planned, well, then, we’ll just make do. That’s mostly what we do anyway. Now, I hope you’ll go before those four hellions troop back in here and scare the daylights out of you. They can, and they probably will, but I’m hoping you’ll at least get the grocery shopping done before you quit. See you in the morning at nine-thirty.” He grabbed her backpack from the back of the chair and shoved it and her toward the door.

Mattie dragged her feet, but he got her through the door before she could tell him to take his job and shove it. He didn’t get it closed, though, because she beat him to the doorknob. She glared up at him from the doorstep and said, “You are insane, you know.”

He smiled benignly. “And you’re going to join me a lot sooner than you realize.”

She rolled her eyes at that and pulled the door shut in his face. He couldn’t hold back the relief that flooded him, though he knew it was much too early to celebrate. Chances were the poor thing wouldn’t last a week, but then again, she just might. She had fortitude, that girl, and she was young enough to take the punishment. Maybe Miss Matilda Kincaid was the answer to his prayers. He hoped so. He very fiercely hoped so.