Brambleberry House: His Second-Chance Family. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ or Simon’s bubbly chatter. With nothing to distract her, she found her gaze slipping with increasing frequency out the window.

      She couldn’t see much from this angle but every once in a while Will and Simon would pass into the edge of her view as they moved from Will’s power saw to the porch.

      She had nearly finished peeling the apples when she suddenly heard a light scratch on the door of her apartment over the steady hammering and the occasional whine of power tools.

      Somehow she wasn’t surprised to find Conan standing on the other side, his tail wagging and his eyes expectant.

      “Let me guess,” she murmured. “All that hammering is interfering with your sleep.”

      She could swear the dog dipped his head up and down as if nodding. He padded through the doorway and into the living room, where he made three circles of his body before easing down to his stomach on the floor beside Maddie’s couch.

      “Watch over her for me, won’t you?”

      The dog rested his head on his front paws, his attention trained on Maddie as if the couch where she slept was covered in peanut butter.

      “Good boy,” Julia murmured, and returned to the kitchen.

      She finished her work quickly, slicing enough apples for a half-dozen pies.

      She assembled the pies quickly—cheating a little and using store-bought pie shells. She had a good pie crust recipe but she didn’t have the time for it today since Eben and Chloe would be returning soon.

      Only two pies could cook at a time in her oven and they took nearly forty minutes. After she slid the first pair in, she untied her apron and hung it back on the hook in the kitchen.

      Without giving herself time to consider, she grabbed the egg timer off the stovetop, set it for the time the pies needed and stuck it in her pocket, then headed down the stairs to check on Simon.

      It was nearly five-thirty but she couldn’t see any sign of Anna or Sage yet. Sage, she knew, would be meeting Eben and Chloe at the small airstrip in Seaside, north of Cannon Beach. As for Anna, she sometimes worked late at her store in town or the new one in Lincoln City she had opened earlier in the summer.

      She followed the sound of male voices—Will’s lower-pitched voice a counterpoint to Simon’s mile-a-minute higher tones.

      She stepped closer, still out of sight around the corner of the house, until she could hear their words.

      “My mom says next year I can play Little League baseball,” Simon was saying.

      “Hold the board still or we’ll have wobbly steps, which won’t do anyone any good.”

      “Sorry.”

      “Baseball, huh?” Will said a moment later.

      “Yep. I couldn’t play this year because of Maddie’s bone transplant and because we were moving here. But next year, for sure. I can’t wait. I played last year, even though I had to miss a lot of games and stuff when Mad was in the hospital.”

      She closed her eyes, grieving for her son who had suffered right along with his sister. Sometimes it was so easy to focus on Maddie’s more immediate needs that she forgot Simon walked each step of the journey right along with her.

      “Yeah, I hit six home runs last year. I bet I could do a lot more this year. Did you ever play baseball?”

      “Sure did,” Will answered. “All through high school and college. Until a few years ago, I was even on a team around here that played in the summertime.”

      “Probably old guys, huh?”

      Julia cringed but Will didn’t seem offended, judging by his quick snort of laughter—the most lighthearted sound she had heard from him since she’d been back.

      “Yeah. We have a tough time running the bases for all the canes and walkers in the way.”

      Julia couldn’t help herself, she laughed out loud, drawing the attention of both Will and Simon.

      “Hi, Mom,” Simon chirped, looking pleased to see her. “Guess what? Mr. Garrett played baseball, too.”

      “I remember,” she said. “Your Uncle Charlie dragged me to one of his summer league games the last time I was here and I got to watch him play. He hit a three-run homer.”

      “Trying to impress you,” Will said in a laconic tone.

      She laughed again. “It worked very well, as I recall.”

      That baseball game had been when she first starting thinking of Will as more than just her brother’s summer-vacation friend. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him.

      What, exactly, had changed since she came back? she wondered. She still couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him.

      “My mom likes baseball, too,” Simon said. “She said maybe next month sometime we can go to a Mariners game, if they’re in the playoffs. It’s not very far to Seattle.”

      His eyes lit up with sudden excitement. “Hey, Mr. Garrett, you could come with us! That would be cool.”

      Will’s gaze met hers and for an instant she imagined sharing hot dogs and listening to the cheers and sitting beside him for three hours, his heat and strength just inches away from her.

      “I do enjoy watching the Mariners,” Will said, an unreadable look in his eyes. “I’m pretty busy next month but if you let me know when you’re going, I can see how it fits my schedule.”

      “We haven’t made any definite plans,” Julia said, hoping none of the longing showed in her expression.

      She hadn’t realized until this moment that Simon wasn’t the only one in their family who hungered for a man in their lives.

      And not just any man, either. Only a strong, quiet carpenter with callused hands and a rare, beautiful smile.

      She decided to quickly change the subject. “The stairs look wonderful. Are you nearly finished?”

      Before he could answer, they heard sudden excited barking from the front of the house.

      Julia laughed. “I guess Conan needed to go out. It’s a good thing he has his own doggy door.”

      “Hang on a minute,” Will said. “That’s his somebody’s home bark.”

      A moment later they heard a vehicle pull into the driveway.

      “Conan!” a high, excited voice shrieked and the dog woofed a greeting.

      “That would be Chloe,” Will said.

      By tacit agreement, the three of them walked together toward the front of the house. When they rounded the corner, Julia saw a dark-haired girl around the twins’ age with her arms around the dog’s neck.

      Beside her, Sage—glowing with joy—stood beside a man with commanding features and brilliant green СКАЧАТЬ