His Two Little Blessings. Mia Ross

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СКАЧАТЬ The opening sounded awkward, and he felt more like a teenager approaching his crush to ask for a date than a twenty-eight-year-old man about to impose some logic on what must seem odd.

      “There’s no need to explain yourself to me, Mr. Marshall,” she assured him in a formal tone very unlike the one she’d been using with him up until now. “What you wear or don’t wear is your own business. I’m just sorry that I misunderstood your situation. Being a single father is hard enough, but your circumstances are heartbreaking. I feel awful for upsetting you and the girls this way.”

      Amazing, he thought with true admiration. Any other woman would have been curious about why he still wore his wedding ring when he was no longer married. Enough had done it recently that he’d come to expect the question. Despite the strain he was feeling, Emma’s respect for his wishes brushed some of his discomfort away.

      “Sarah and I got married right after we finished college and had Caitlin a year later,” he explained quietly, hoping to avoid sharing his painful personal history with the people browsing at the next table. “When Aubrey was born four years ago, Sarah didn’t bounce back the way she did after Caitlin. For a few months she chalked the fatigue up to being a full-time mother of two.”

      He heard the catch in his voice and paused to steady it. To his surprise, Emma laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “You don’t need to keep going if you’d rather not. I can fill in the blanks on my own.”

      “Really?”

      She nodded. “When Caitlin first started at school, my hair was still coming back in and I wore a lot of hats. She mentioned that her mother had done the same thing, so I assumed she’d been through something similar. I just didn’t realize that she passed away, and I’m truly sorry for all you and the girls have lost. They’re both wonderful, and Sarah must have been a remarkable woman to give them so much before she died.”

      “She was,” he confirmed, relieved to feel his emotional balance returning. Emma’s soft voice, coupled with the compassionate words that she’d offered to him, eased the tension he’d been fighting, and he dredged up a smile for the kind woman. “Thank you for understanding.”

      “Of course.”

      The girls returned with their snack—most of it, anyway—and Rick turned his attention to a less morbid topic. “I’m seeing partial cookies and half-filled cups. Did you run into the Cookie Monster between here and there?”

      “No, Daddy,” Aubrey replied, laughing at his reference to one of her favorite characters. “We were hungry.”

      “But we saved one for you,” Caitlin added, pulling it from the pocket of her sundress to hand it to him. And then, reaching back in, she pulled another to offer her teacher. “And this is for you. Your grandma said it’s your favorite.”

      “It’s a raccoon,” Aubrey chirped helpfully.

      “Macaroon,” Rick corrected her with a chuckle. “And it looks delicious. Did you thank Mrs. Calhoun when you paid her?”

      Caitlin’s eyes widened guiltily, and she took the money he’d given her from her other pocket. Giving it back to him, she confessed, “We were talking about what I’m doing at school, and I forgot. I’ll go back and give it to her.”

      “Don’t worry about it,” Emma told her with a laugh. “Gran doesn’t charge anyone under the age of ten, even at the bakery. She loves kids, and she likes nothing better than spoiling them. My brothers and I are living proof of that.”

      “How many brothers do you have?” Aubrey asked, apparently over her initial shyness.

      Hunkering down to her level, Emma said, “I have two, Sam and Brian, both older than me. Sometimes being the youngest is fun, and sometimes they bug me.”

      The childish phrasing puzzled Rick for a moment, until he saw his younger daughter nod in agreement. “Me, too.”

      “I don’t bug you,” Caitlin corrected her with a frown.

      “Yes, you do, but it’s okay. I still love you.”

      “Aww...” The older girl beamed at her little shadow and pulled her close for a sideways hug. “That’s so sweet. I love you, too, Froggy.”

      Rick laughed out loud, and Emma looked up at him. “Froggy?”

      “When we were waiting for Aubrey to join us, we let Caitlin name the baby. There was a character in a kids’ movie at the time named Froggy, and she picked that. We thought it was cute, so we went along. After that, it became one of our inside family jokes.”

      “I’m very familiar with those,” Emma commented, smiling as she stood.

      “I’ve met your brothers, so I don’t doubt that for a second.”

      While they finished off their snack, they chatted lightly about the weather and the upcoming spring concert and art show to be held at the school. While his daughters occupied themselves by rearranging Emma’s dwindling stock by color, Rick noticed a stack of flyers sitting on her table. Recognizing her sister-in-law Lindsay’s handiwork on the promotional material, he picked one up to see what it was about.

      One-of-a-kind jewelry designed and handmade by Emma Calhoun. All proceeds to benefit the Liberty Creek After School Arts Program.

      Amazed that she was giving up an entire Saturday and not keeping any of the money she made, he turned the sheet toward her. “I didn’t realize you were doing this for nothing.”

      “Not for nothing,” she corrected him sweetly. “For a bunch of awesome kids who enjoy art as much as I do.”

      “Is the program really in danger of being cut?”

      “Always. It’s open to students of every age, and they bus kids who want to participate down from the middle and high schools. It’s a great alternative to them going home to an empty house, but every year the school budget gets tighter, and there’s only so much money to go around. Last year we barely squeaked by.”

      “How many students use it?”

      “That’s not the point,” she reminded him curtly, a flash of temper pinking her cheeks. “Children deserve to have a creative outlet, and some of the older ones need a place to hang out after school. This program does both.”

      The scolding was delivered in the same soft voice she’d used before, but it seethed with a frustration that told him she’d delivered this speech many times before. Hoping to soothe her ruffled feelings, he smiled. “It sounds like a valuable thing to offer, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I was just curious about the numbers, because sometimes using them to illustrate your point carries more weight with bureaucrats than pure sentiment does.”

      “Well, that’s different,” she announced, shaking off the fit of temper with a breezy laugh. “I guess I’m so used to defending the arts, I get my back up too easily. Thirty-four kids come in on a regular basis, but around holidays like Christmas and Easter we get more because they like making gifts for people.”

      No mention of Mother’s Day, he noticed, although he was fairly certain that was also on the list. He appreciated her avoiding the difficult subject, and while he didn’t normally interfere in people’s endeavors, her sensitivity made him more inclined to volunteer СКАЧАТЬ