Читать книгу A Wedding for Christmas - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

RICKY SCRAMBLED UP onto one of the stools that stood against the long stainless-steel service table where Cris did most of her food preparations. Rather than sit, he knelt on the stool so that he appeared bigger to his new friend, who took the stool next to his.

“You know what I like, Mama,” Ricky piped up in response to her question.

Like everyone else in the family, she indulged her son, but not when it came to his nutrition. “Yes, I do, and you know what I say to that.”

“What?” Shane asked, the exchange arousing his curiosity. He glanced from Cris to her son. “What is it you like, Rick?”

“Hot dogs!” the boy declared, his high-pitched voice all but vibrating with enthusiasm. Cris had a strong feeling that if she allowed it, the boy would eat hot dogs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. “I love ’em best of all!”

“I like them myself,” Shane told Ricky, getting a big grin from the boy and a reproving glare from his somewhat frustrated mother. “But you know,” he continued without missing a beat, taking his cue from the expression on Cris’s face, “they’re really not very good for your insides. That’s why they should only be eaten on very, very special occasions. Right, Rick?”

The boy appeared torn between siding with his newfound friend, whom he wanted to impress, and campaigning for his beloved meal of choice. When Shane continued eyeing him as if waiting for backup from an equal, Ricky finally capitulated, shrugging his small, thin shoulders as he did so.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You know what else I like, Ricky?” Shane asked the boy.

There was a wary look in the child’s eyes as he inquired, “What?”

Shane leaned in closer and ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately. “Vegetables.”

Ricky appeared horrified at the mere thought. “Oh, yuck.” The response rose to his lips automatically.

Shane pretended to consider what he’d said. “Well, maybe they don’t taste quite as good as hot dogs,” he allowed, “but they do taste pretty good. I like them mashed in with potatoes, or fried with a little oil and bread crumbs. And not only do they taste good,” he continued, focusing exclusively on Ricky rather than on his mother, “but they help make your insides healthy and they make you strong. Pretty cool, huh?”

Ricky regarded him with eyes beyond huge. “They really make you strong?”

“They really make you strong,” Shane echoed. He gazed at Ricky solemnly and drew his thumb across his chest in the form of an X. “Cross my heart,” he told the boy.

Ricky shifted on the stool, planting his seat on the plastic cushion, and looked up at his mother. “Can we have that, Mama? Can we have vegeta-bib-bles with mashed potatoes and bread crumbs?”

“No,” Shane said, laughing and jumping in to correct him, “it’s either with mashed potatoes or fried with bread crumbs.” It occurred to him that maybe he had overstepped his boundaries. Turning to Cris, Shane tendered a veiled apology. “I didn’t mean to put you out.”

“You didn’t,” she assured him quickly. “Trust me, any suggestion that’ll get this one—” she nodded at Ricky “—to eat his vegetables is greatly appreciated. Any particular vegetable I should be using?”

Shane thought only a moment, remembering the combination his mother used to make to get his elder brother and him to eat their vegetables. “Well, how about spinach? That goes pretty well with mashed potatoes.”

“Spinach?” Ricky cried, clutching his throat and pretending to fall over, poisoned, while emitting a rasping noise that, Shane assumed, was supposed to be a death rattle.

Shane laughed at the impromptu performance. “Oh, most definitely spinach,” he told Ricky with certainty. “That makes you really strong. You ever hear of Popeye the Sailor?”

“Uh-uh,” Ricky said, shaking his head so hard that if he’d been a cartoon character, his head would have gone spinning off.

The boy’s answer didn’t surprise Shane. He was convinced that kids today were missing out on a very special collection of imaginative cartoons from a classic era.

“No?” he said, pretending to question. “Well, have I got a treat for you. Why don’t I tell you all about him while your mom makes us lunch?”

She had to hand it to Shane. He was handling her son like a pro. She caught herself wondering if Shane had gotten married. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but then a lot of men didn’t. And he seemed like such a natural with kids it was difficult for her to imagine that he’d gotten that way without having one of his own to practice on.

The thought of Shane having a family made her happy for him, but at the same time, it came with an accompanying sense of...well, sadness, for lack of a better word.

“Anything else you two men would like to go with those vegetables?” Cris asked, doing her very best not to laugh.

Shane shrugged casually. “Anything you’ve got will be fine.”

“Yeah, fine, Mama,” Ricky said, emulating Shane.

“How about fried chicken?” she suggested.

Rather than agree, Shane first looked at the boy to have him weigh in. “What do you say—you up for that, Rick?”

This time, Ricky bobbed his head with the same enthusiasm he’d displayed when asking for hot dogs.

“Fried chicken it is,” Shane told Cris, placing their “order.”

“One last question,” Cris promised. “Light meat or dark?” The question was for Shane, since she already knew which her son preferred.

“I’m a leg man myself,” Shane said with a hint of a smile that made Cris think perhaps the information applied to more than chickens.

“Me, too, Mama,” Ricky piped up right after Shane. “I’m a leg man, too.”

Cris banked the urge to hug Ricky to her and laugh. She knew that would only embarrass him before his new hero. But resisting the desire wasn’t easy.

“Two orders of fried chicken drumsticks coming up,” Cris told Shane and her son.

Ricky turned his attention back to Shane. “Who’s this sailor guy you said eats spinach?” he prodded. His expression clearly indicated he thought that anyone willing to eat the weed was less than a hero type, as well as somewhat weird.

With a smile, Shane proceeded to tell the little boy a story the way he recalled it from watching Saturday-television when he was about Ricky’s age.

As she listened to Shane, Cris concluded that the man was as wrapped up in the story as the boy was.

* * *

HE HAD A gift, Cris thought.

She’d gone to work the moment Shane had pulled his stool closer to Ricky’s and started telling the boy an elaborate story complete with a villain, a fair damsel in distress and the green seaweedlike vegetable that turned a somewhat aging sailor into almost a superhero with inflated forearms. Spinach gave the sailor, Popeye, the ability to pummel his enemy into the ground while rescuing a damsel only the one-eyed hero could love.

Cris caught herself listening to the details on more than one occasion as she prepared their lunches. It got to the point that she had to order herself to concentrate so as to block out Shane’s storytelling.

She noticed that Shane timed his story to finish almost at the exact same moment that she announced, “Lunch is ready.”

She placed both plates on the shiny stainless-steel counter, then slid one in front of Shane and the other in front of her son.

Ricky gazed at the vegetable combination a little uneasily, then raised his eyes to see what his newly discovered idol would do.

When Shane dug in, Ricky obviously felt compelled to follow suit, which he did, albeit reluctantly and in what seemed like slow motion. The first bite he took of the mashed potatoes and spinach combination produced a surprised expression on his small, angular face. His eyes looked ready to pop out. “Hey, this is good,” he told Shane.

Which was exactly the way Shane had reacted the first time he’d taken a bite. Ricky, Shane decided, reminded him somewhat of himself.

“Told you,” Shane said to the boy with a wide, satisfied smile.

Through hooded eyes, Cris watched in amazement as her son ate the spinach and potatoes she’d made for him. She expected him to leave at least half on his plate, but he ate until it was all gone. Not a moment’s hesitation, not a myriad of sour faces above his plate and certainly no begging or bargaining the way there usually was when Ricky faced something he would as soon walk away from than eat.

Ricky cleared his plate just as his hero did, then, still emulating Shane, pushed the plate back and patted his stomach.

“That was very good,” Shane told Cris.

“Yeah, very good,” Ricky echoed gleefully, emitting a huge, satisfied sigh the way Shane had half a minute ago.

“Well, I’ve got to be getting back to the job before your sister starts thinking she’s hired a freeloader.”

“What’s a freeloader?” Ricky wanted to know, looking from Shane to his mother for an answer.

“Something Mr. McCallister is definitely not,” Cris assured her son with certainty. The man more than earned his pay—in all departments. Her eyes met Shane’s and she murmured, “Thank you.”

The corners of his mouth curved ever so slightly as Shane said, “There’s no need to thank me.”

And with that, he left the kitchen.

Two sets of eyes watched him until he’d completely disappeared from view.

* * *

“THAT WAS NOTHING short of a miracle. I just wanted you to know that,” Cris said later on that day. Taking a break from her kitchen duties, she’d sought Shane out and found him exactly where he was supposed to be—hip deep in renovations. He was standing with his back toward her, intent on what he was doing on the workbench.

Coming up behind Shane, she was careful not to startle him. She didn’t want to be responsible for him making any unintentional cuts in either his project or himself.

Shane was running a power sander over the plank he intended to use for a new floorboard to match the ones throughout the inn, and he had on a mask to cut down on inhaling the dust.

Cris patiently waited until he’d stopped running the sander before she spoke again, knowing she’d either have to shout to be heard or get in his way so he could see her. Just waiting him out was simpler.

Turning the moment he heard her voice, Shane put the sander back down on the workbench he’d set up and lowered the mask from his nose and mouth.

He looked a little like a surgeon operating in the middle of a sandstorm, Cris thought with an unbidden wave of something that felt very close to affection.

“Excuse me?” he said, fairly certain he’d heard her wrong.

“A miracle,” she reiterated. “You performed a miracle,” she added in a clear, unshakable voice. “We could call it the miracle of the spinach and mashed potatoes, or just call it Shane’s Miracle for short,” she said, really grinning at him this time.

For a second, Shane watched in pure fascination as Cris’s smile coaxed the dimples in her cheeks to emerge, making her look even more appealing—something he hadn’t thought possible until he witnessed it himself.

He cocked his head a bit uncertainly. “Are you talking about lunch?”

“I’m talking about my son, the vegetable hater, eagerly eating spinach. To get him to eat any kind of a vegetable, I’ve tried to bribe him, coax him, do everything short of threatening to leave him wandering in SeaWorld on his own for a week, and you get him to do it in under ten minutes.

Cris shook her head in admiration. “You really must have been some teacher,” she told him with genuine awe.

His answering smile carried a bit of irony. “Never really had the chance to flex my muscles, so to speak,” he said. “I got my degree and suddenly found that I could only get substitute teaching jobs where all they wanted was for me to be a glorified babysitter.” The trace of bitterness she also heard in his voice surprised her. Shane seemed like such a laid-back character, someone who let stress roll off him. “When I started teaching the kids, I wound up ruffling a few feathers, and the jobs, never really plentiful to begin with, started not coming at all,” he finished with an air of disbelief even now.

“Well, the world lost a fantastic teacher the day you were forced to walk away,” she assured him. “If I was in charge of a school, I’d want all my teachers to be like you. You really connected with Ricky, right from the start,” she marveled. “I mean, he’s a friendly little guy, but it does take a bit for him to warm up to a person. With you he showed all the signs of love at first sight.”

Shane self-consciously shrugged off the compliment, not willing to accept what he felt wasn’t rightfully his. “Maybe he just wants a male to connect with and I happened to be handy.”

“You might have been handy, but Ricky’s already ‘connected’ to my dad and he gets along well with Wyatt, Alex’s fiancé. He really wasn’t looking for a male role model or someone to act as a father figure. Nope, Ricky just took to you exceptionally quickly,” Cris told him.

Again he shrugged. He didn’t care to have a spotlight shone on him no matter what his accomplishment.

“Must be my winning personality,” he quipped.

She laughed, not because his personality wasn’t engaging, but because his humor was so droll.

“Must be,” she agreed. “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you. You’ve officially cracked the impenetrable vegetable ceiling,” she told him, amusement curving her mouth. “I was expecting him to turn green or look around for somewhere to ‘deposit’ his mouthful of spinach. Instead, he not only swallowed what was in his mouth, but polished off what was on his plate.”

“I know, I was there,” Shane said with a wink.

Not for the first time, Cris felt something quicken inside her in response and silently argued it was because she’d forgotten to eat again, the way she did all too often when she got involved with what she was doing.

She began to back away. “Well, thank you for being there.”

“Hey, anytime. Let me know if you have more trouble getting Ricky to eat his vegetables. Or doing his homework, for that matter,” Shane added, warming up to the subject. “I’m still awed that kids in kindergarten actually get homework. If he has any trouble at all—not that I think he will,” Shane quickly interjected in case Cris thought he was impugning Ricky’s mental capabilities. “But if he hits a snag while I’m here, let me know. As much as I enjoy working with my hands, I miss the challenge of finding new ways to get kids interested in what I have to teach.”

“Ah, a builder and a scholar,” she said. “I guess that qualifies you as a Renaissance man.”

“Either that or just a guy eager to earn a living and stay ahead of the bill collectors,” he joked.

Still grateful beyond words for the break-through, Cris wanted to show him how thankful she was.

The only thing she had to give was food—so she did.

“Listen, when you’re ready to turn in your tool belt and call it a day,” she said, waving at the work he was doing, “instead of just leaving, why don’t you come by the dining area for dinner. On the house,” she added. “The very least I can do is keep you fed.”

There was no need for that, he thought. He didn’t want her feeling she owed him, especially for doing something he enjoyed: telling stories and getting kids to come around. Ricky seemed like an exceptionally intelligent boy and was incredibly easy to talk to. Getting through to him hadn’t been a real challenge, just a pleasant diversion.

“I like paying my own way,” he told her.

Cris looked at him pointedly. “I guess we’re alike, because so do I.”