Her Unexpected Family. Ruth Herne Logan

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СКАЧАТЬ they lost her. His father had walked out on them over thirty years before, and Grant used to pray his heart out as a little kid, begging God to bring his dad back. It never happened. His prayers went unanswered, and that was a good lesson learned at a young age. God didn’t exist, because if he did, he didn’t take his job all that seriously. Grant took everything seriously as a result. “I’ll keep you updated on things either through email or phone, okay?”

      “Yes, thank you! And if you can copy Spencer, that would be great.”

      “Will do. And don’t you worry about anything,” he instructed. “Your job is to stay safe, finish this deployment and get married. Everything here will be fine, I promise.”

      “Thank you! I love you, Grant.”

      Her words made him smile. “I love you, too. We’re all we’ve got now, so we’ve got to stick together.”

      Silence greeted his words again. When she finally answered him, he realized it must be a delayed connection. “We’ll stick together, all right. Hey, gotta go. I’ll call again soon, okay?”

      “Yes. Goodbye, Chris—”

      The phone hummed in his ear. She’d hung up.

      He set his phone down and turned off the game. Life was somewhat crazy right now, and he didn’t see that getting better anytime soon. He had the kids in the only day care center comfortable with Dolly’s behavior issues, his eccentric aunt thought he was spreading himself too thin and needed a wife, and the twins were generally either catching something or getting over something.

      This was his normal.

      He pulled into his aunt and uncle’s yard on Monday morning, ready to start a new week. Aunt Tillie bustled out the side door to greet him while Uncle Percy followed at a less frenetic pace.

      “How are the wedding plans coming?” Aunt Tillie demanded in a too-loud voice. “You makin’ progress?”

      He fibbed slightly. He assumed they were, but he had thought he’d hear from Emily Gallagher and he hadn’t. “Yes. If I need to go check out some wedding stuff tonight, can you sit with the kids?”

      “What those little ones need is a mother,” Tillie declared for about the hundredth time. “I can’t say it’s right.” She shook her head firmly, and her frown matched the motion. “Them bein’ in day care all day, then with a sitter at night, but if you need me, I’ll be here. Hi, darlins!” She smiled and waved into the backseat, blowing kisses a mile a minute.

      The twins laughed and waved back as he and Uncle Percy pulled out of the driveway. He dropped the kids at Mary Flanagan’s day care center, got to work and as soon as his office door slapped shut behind him, he called Kate & Company. When Allison put the call through to Emily, he pretended the sound of her voice didn’t make him want to suck his stomach in. He was in good shape and he didn’t care what Emily Gallagher thought about anything other than weddings. “Miss Gallagher, I thought I’d hear from you by now. I was wondering if you were able to set up times for me to see those wedding venues.”

      “Of course.” She sounded surprised, and her next words explained why. “I sent you an email Saturday afternoon confirming two stops tonight, one at five thirty and one at seven, and then tomorrow night at six for the third venue. I’m sorry you didn’t get it.”

      “Nope, not here,” he replied, but then he noticed his spam folder wasn’t empty. There it was, an email from Kate & Company. “Wait, I lied. Your email got spammed.”

      She laughed, and he realized it was a nice laugh, soft and kind. The kind of laugh that made you feel better about things and made small children giggle out loud. Like Dolly did last week. “So are we okay for tonight?” she asked. “Do you have someone who can watch Timmy and Dolly?”

      She remembered their names.

      Why did that mean something?

      He didn’t know why, but it did because almost everyone referred to them as a set. How are the twins? Can you bring the twins? Hey, Grant, I saw the twins yesterday...

      Hearing her call them by name sloughed off some of his gruffness. “Aunt Tillie and Uncle Percy are coming over. They’ll stay as late as they need to.”

      “Perfect. I’ll meet you at the Edgewater Inn for the first appointment at five thirty. We can go on from there.”

      “I’ll see you then.”

      He went through the day going over a winter preparedness checklist with the town staff. Being ready for winter storms meant planning in advance, and as they rechecked everything from salt to backup plow blades and which roads had botched pothole patches rising above road level, his eyes strayed to the big round clock on the wall several times.

      “Boss, you got an appointment?” Jeannie Delgado asked around four thirty. “Because you’ve had your eye on that clock the past hour.”

      “I do, so let’s call an end to this meeting.” He stood, gathered his things and pulled his jacket on. “I’ve got to get the kids home to Tillie. I’m meeting with the wedding planner the next two nights so we can pick things for Christa’s wedding.”

      “Marvelous!” Jeannie’s inflection offered full approval. “You’re a good brother, Grant. So many folks don’t bother with family these days. Having family around is a wonderful thing. Enjoy your evening and if they give out samples of cake, bring a few back here tomorrow.”

      “Cake is on Friday’s schedule, on my lunch hour,” he told her. “And I haven’t even begun to figure out how Christa’s going to search for a wedding gown. How do you find a wedding gown from overseas? Buy it there and ship it back?”

      “I have no idea.” Jeannie frowned. “Maybe she’ll buy it online, have it delivered here then have it altered at the last minute?”

      He’d been feeling pretty good about checking out reception spots. Food he understood, and as the man in charge of a multimillion-dollar town highway budget, he had a great head for numbers. But ribbons and lace? Flowers?

      No, no, and no.

      Circumstances left him little choice, so he drove to day care, picked up two busy children, dealt with Dolly’s backseat anger issues for over five miles and got them home to Aunt Tillie. Then he showered and changed, got back in the car and drove to the Edgewater Inn. He arrived five minutes early, something that didn’t happen often now that he was a single dad. When Emily Gallagher pulled into the lot driving a cherry-red SUV, he realized anew that this woman had spent her life being noticed and didn’t mind it in the least. Just knowing that made him want—no...make that need—to keep a distance. He’d lived that scenario once. He had no intention of living it again.

      “You made it.” She smiled a welcome as he walked toward her.

      “I did.”

      “Excellent. Now, when we get inside the new chef’s name is Henry, but he likes to be called Henri, so when I do that to appease his somewhat crazy artistic nature, don’t laugh. Okay?”

      “Well, now I’ll have to laugh because you mentioned it,” he admitted. “If you’d said nothing, I’d have simply assumed that Henri was his name.”

      “So СКАЧАТЬ