The Road to Reunion. GINA WILKINS

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СКАЧАТЬ my mind off the weather.”

      He sighed gustily and tossed something onto the counter with a thump. “You can clean the lettuce and chop tomatoes and cucumbers for a salad. I’ve got a package of pasta and a jar of pesto sauce we can have with it.”

      “That sounds good.”

      With one of his characteristic shrugs, he said, “I eat a lot of prepackaged stuff. I’m not much of a cook.”

      “Neither am I.” She stuck the lettuce under running water to wash it. “I’m sure you remember how Mom is about her kitchen. She loves to cook, and doesn’t like anyone underfoot when she’s busy. Since I was always happier outside with Dad and Shane anyway, I never did much cooking. A few years ago, Mom decided belatedly that I should learn how. Maybe she waited too late, but it was not a raving success. After eating a few of my meals, Dad and Shane begged me to go back out to the barns.”

      She was babbling—but then Shane had always accused her of seeing silence as a vacuum begging to be filled.

      Kyle didn’t chuckle in response to her story, nor did he pause in his dinner preparations. For a moment she wondered if he had been listening to her at all, but then he spoke. “Do you still live with your parents?”

      Something about the way he asked annoyed her. She had told him she was almost twenty-four. Did he think she had accomplished nothing for herself since he’d left? Oh, right—he still thought of her as “little Molly.”

      “I live on the ranch at the moment. I moved back full-time after I obtained my master’s degree in education last spring at Rice University in Houston. I’ve been tutoring the foster boys we’re housing now to bring them up to grade level while I wait for a full-time teaching position to open up in the local schools. I’ve been told a position should become available in January, and if it does, I’ll look for an apartment then.”

      Again, she had given him way more information than he’d asked for. Maybe she was just the tiniest bit defensive about being unemployed and still living at home at almost twenty-four. She could easily have found a teaching job in the Dallas metroplex, probably, but the small school district closer to the ranch tended to have less turnover.

      Her father had talked her into coming back to the ranch, rather than moving more than an hour away to live in Dallas. He had told her he needed her assistance now that he’d begun to take in more foster boys, turning the small ranching operation into a full-time group home for at-risk teenage boys. The truth was, Jared would be perfectly happy to have her live at home indefinitely.

      “Shane still lives on the ranch, too,” she added when Kyle didn’t comment. “He added on to his house when he and Kelly had their two girls. Now he handles most of the livestock and general maintenance chores so Dad can concentrate on the day-to-day business aspects of running a group home.”

      “How many boys are in residence there now?”

      She was pleased that he had asked a question. Surely that meant she’d piqued his interest, right? “There are four now, but we’re approved to accept up to six. It isn’t officially a therapeutic foster home, since we don’t take boys with serious emotional or behavioral problems, just the ones who don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. I know when you were there we could only take one or two at a time, but we’ve made some changes. One of the barns has been converted into a dormitory, complete with a dining room and a study area with computers for homework. That’s where I spend most of my time with the boys.”

      “Still no girls?”

      “No. They’ve decided to focus solely on boys, since having girls there would open up a whole new set of challenges.”

      He grunted, and she assumed that was an assent.

      “So Shane has kids of his own now, huh?” he asked after working a few more minutes in silence.

      “Two girls. Annie and Lucy. They’ve taken my place as the little girls all the boys become big brothers to.”

      Fifteen years older than Molly, Shane had been a grown man when Kyle lived on the ranch. Shane had already built his house on the property and had been busy with his own life and friends—among them, Kelly Morrison, whom he had married not long after Kyle left.

      “The girls have Shane—and Daddy—wrapped around their little fingers,” she added with a chuckle.

      “That doesn’t surprise me. So did you.”

      “I know.” She smiled unrepentantly. “I was shamelessly spoiled—and now Shane’s girls are being treated the same way. It’s a good thing Kelly is more like my mom when it comes to being the disciplinarian, or Annie and Lucy would be little brats.”

      Kyle poured the strained, hot pasta into a bowl. “I saw your dad lay down the law to you a few times.”

      “Let’s just say I knew exactly how much I could get away with before he drew the line. He got a bit more strict with me as I got older.”

      “I’ll bet.”

      Had that been a note of amusement in his voice? Encouraged, she carried the salad to the round oak table that sat at one end of the narrow kitchen. “It’s funny, but when it comes to the foster boys, Dad’s the disciplinarian and Mom’s the one who spoils them.”

      “I remember that, too.”

      “He knows so well what it was like to be an angry teenager, separated from his family and shuffled from one foster home to another. He knows what it takes to get through that anger and give the boys hope for their futures. His record of success has been amazing.”

      Kyle had the table set now with plain, mismatched dishes and sturdy flatware. Without asking, he filled two glass tumblers with ice and water, setting them on the table along with the bowl of pasta and a plate of bread.

      The rain was still falling heavily outside, and for some reason the sound of it hitting the windows made their simple dinner seem more intimate. Falling back on her usual habit, Molly started talking again to ward off any awkward silence.

      “I’ve never been to this part of the country before. It’s really beautiful. How did you happen to end up here?”

      Concentrating on his dinner, he shrugged. “I visited the area with a buddy and I liked it. When I had to choose a place to live after I got out of the Marines, I decided to come here.”

      “I like your house.”

      “It’s small,” he said. “Needs some repairs. A little isolated for some people’s tastes. But it was affordable and it suited me.”

      “I think it’s great,” she assured him, entirely sincere. “The view alone is priceless. As for the location, it’s not so very far from Gatlinburg.”

      He glanced at the window and the storm that raged outside. “Sometimes it seems farther than at other times.”

      Like now, for example, his tone implied. With the storms making the roads so hazardous, the closest town might as well be hours away.

      After they’d cleared away the dishes, Kyle looked at the window again. “It looks to me as though you have two choices. I can try to drive you back down the mountain, or you can spend the night here and leave СКАЧАТЬ