A Very Special Delivery (10 page)

“What can I do to help?”

“I don’t know.”

Neither did he, but he wasn’t about to let this go without some serious thought and prayer. She might not have an answer, but Somebody did.

He touched her cheek. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Sure.” She straightened her shoulders and sat back in the seat, giving a mirthless, self-conscious laugh. “Sorry. I don’t usually cry all over someone nice enough to buy me lunch. You must think I’m an idiot.”

That wasn’t what he thought at all.

After scrubbing at her face one more time with the tissue, she fastened her seatbelt. “I’d better get back to work.”

One hand on the gearshift, Ethan studied her. She looked exhausted. “Wouldn’t you rather I take you to Miss Patsy’s?”

With a shake of her head, she drew in a deep, quivering breath. “Not necessary. I’m okay. But thanks.”

He put the truck in gear, waited while a passing car arched a spray of dirty water against the back window, and then backed out of the parking place. His thoughts swirled with Molly’s predicament.

He considered himself a man of action, a fixer. If a faucet leaked, he repaired it. If a patient needed gamma, he delivered it. When Twila had rejected Laney, he’d taken over.

He’d find a way to help Molly, too.

As the truck splashed through melted puddles along the street’s edge, more water sprayed onto the windshield. Ethan turned on the wipers, listened to the rhythmic
whoomp-whoomp
for the last few blocks of the trip back to the center as he considered all he’d learned today.

He parked at the curb in front of the long brick building. Leaving the motor running, he turned to Molly.

“Thank you for telling me.”

She tried to smile. “Thank you for listening. And for not running away.”

“Why would I do that?”

She shrugged and Ethan saw the hurt hanging on her like an oversized shirt. Her family had rejected her. She expected the same from everyone else.

Unbuckling her seatbelt, she reached for the door handle.

“Molly.” He was reluctant to let her go. She needed more than a listening ear.

She paused and swiveled her head toward him, amber eyes questioning.

He cleared his throat. “I still owe you that home-cooked steak dinner.”

Her face lit up for the briefest of moments, and he thought she would agree. Then as if by some pre-programmed signal all the life went out of her. “I can’t, Ethan. Please understand.”

Understand what?

“Why not?”

“I don’t date.”

His gut tightened. “Anybody? Or just me?”

She reached across the seat and touched his sleeve. “Don’t think that. You’re the…nicest guy I’ve met in a long time.”

His hopes rose. Now he was getting somewhere.

“Then why not come over tomorrow night and let me amaze you with my culinary skills?”

“I like you, Ethan. And if that was all that was involved—” She stopped herself, shook her head and started again. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

Realization hit him like a fist in the gut.

The wipers thumped the edge of the windshield and vibrated, scraping at the glass gone dry. Ethan let them scrape.

“I get it now,” he said, jaw tight enough to break a molar. “You don’t date guys like me. A single man with a baby.”

A man with baggage. A man with an unsavory past. A man whose illicit affair had produced a child.

“I don’t date, Ethan. Not you. Not anybody. Not ever.”

Nobody? A girl as pretty and sweet as Molly didn’t date? Ever?

She whirled away and yanked at the door with both hands. Ethan resisted the urge to pull her back and make her explain. Something more than estrangement from her sister troubled Molly. Something that made her reluctant to be with people, and yet she cared deeply for others. Somehow he knew she wasn’t telling him everything.

He reached across the seat and pushed the door open, holding it for her.

Without turning to look at him, Molly hopped out and hurried up the water-darkened sidewalk.

Ethan narrowed his eyes and studied the departing figure. The way her shoulders huddled into the neck of her coat. The way her fingers returned time and again to rub at her throat. Yes, something was very much still amiss. He was certain of that. He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much to him, but it did.

And he was also certain that he would not back off until he knew what else troubled pretty Miss Molly McCreight.

* * *

Molly spent the weekend fretting over the calamitous lunch with Ethan. Come Monday, the incident still played in her head like a bad movie.

She’d had a good time until Chloe arrived, and then she’d come apart right before Ethan’s eyes.

What must he think of her?

A better question might be: Why did she care? He knew the truth about her now. At least part of it. He wouldn’t be back and that was the way it had to be.

She couldn’t be interested in him, a man with a baby. The risk was too great for all of them.

With a weary sigh, she pulled a file from the metal cabinet. One of the center’s regulars who had slipped on the ice and broken an arm was due home from the hospital. Molly wanted to be certain the appropriate services were in place to take care of him during his recuperation.

After a couple of phone calls, she replaced the file and sat staring at her computer screen. A goldfish swam across the blue screensaver and turned her thoughts right back to Ethan.

He probably thought she was a neurotic ninny. Maybe she was. And that was just as well. She’d come close to suffering a panic attack in the diner and closer still when they had discussed baby Zack. She couldn’t bear the thought of giving in to the humiliating weakness in front of anyone, especially Ethan.

The all-too-public scene with Chloe must have embarrassed him. So why had he invited her to dinner?

She worried her lip. Probably out of pity.

Not that it mattered. After her breakdown in his truck, she didn’t expect ever to hear from him again. And that was as it should be. As it had to be.

At noon, the tantalizing scent of homemade chicken and dumplings drew Molly into the center’s dining room. With the ice finally gone, people had returned in droves, eager for the hearty meals and fellowship the center provided. Voices rose and fell around her as she took a tray and found a place in the buffet line.

The long queue of familiar faces stretched almost to the doors, but Molly didn’t mind the wait. It was good to see everyone out and about again.

“Hi,” a rumbling masculine voice said in her ear.

Whipping around, she gasped. “Ethan, what are you doing here?”

And how can you look so wonderful in an ordinary delivery uniform?

“Came by to have lunch with you.”

She hefted the red food tray in front of her like a shield. “I told you I don’t date.”

He pretended shock, but mischief crinkled the corners of his blue eyes. “Did I say anything about a date? I don’t want a date. I want lunch.”

Her pulse leaped and pounded like bongo drums gone mad. “Then go to the diner.”

She didn’t want to be rude, but his presence did strange things to her resolve.

“Can’t. I already paid my money.” He jerked a thumb toward the cashier. Seniors ate for free or for a nominal amount, but others paid full price.

She gave in, unable to be unkind to someone she liked so much. She put her tray back on the stack. “I have some things to do in the office. I’ll eat later.”

Ethan reclaimed the tray, handed it to her. He looked down at her, more serious now. “Come on, Molly, it’s only lunch.”

The heat of a blush traveled up her neck. How idiotic to assume Ethan still wanted to date someone like her. She took the tray from his strong fingers. He was right. It was only lunch. Everybody had to eat.

So they shared a table that day. And the next and the next until Molly found herself watching the doorway every day at noon. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t tell him to leave her alone. It was as though she had some perverse need to stay emotionally tied up in knots.

On the days he didn’t come, she fought off disappointment with a stern reminder that they were not dating. They were only having lunch.

Some days she almost believed it.

Chapter Nine

“H
ere, Molly. You finish painting the faces on the animals while I staple the greenery in place.”

Aunt Patsy’s cheeks glowed rosy red beneath the bright kitchen light as she took up a stapler and set to work with her usual robust energy.

Between the two of them, Molly and her aunt had turned the kitchen into a mini-craft factory in preparation for the church’s bazaar, still a couple of months away. For Molly the return to something she loved to do felt good and right.

Dipping the artist’s brush into a pot, she painstakingly painted black eyelashes onto a white bunny. “Think we’ll have enough door wreaths to meet the demand?”

“Never do. But with your help this year, we should have a hundred.” The stapler made clack-snap noises as Aunt Patsy arranged flowers along a preformed circle. “Ethan still coming by to have lunch at the center every day?”

“Not every day.” Like today. She’d almost missed lunch waiting for him, which was ridiculous. She knew he often drove too far out of town to get back by noon.

Patsy gestured in the direction of the back door. “That lock’s been sticking. Can’t always get my key to work. I told Ethan about it at church, and he promised to fix it.”

Molly paused, holding the brush above the small plastic rabbit. “When?”

“Tonight.”

A little quiver of anticipation mixed with a healthy dose of anxiety raced around in her veins. Seeing Ethan at the center was one thing. Seeing him here was another altogether. “He’ll bring Laney.”

Patsy pointed the stapler at her. “Now don’t get your tail in a twitch, young lady. That baby won’t hurt you and you won’t hurt her.”

“But what if I—” She bit her lip. As much as she longed to see the baby, it was too dangerous.

“Have one of them attacks?” Her aunt set the stapler down with a thump. “Nonsense. You didn’t have one all the time you were stuck out there on the farm together.”

“But Ethan was there.”

“Well, there you are. He’ll be here tonight, too.” Patsy glanced toward the digital clock on the cookstove. “Any time now.”

“Oh, Aunt Patsy.” Just what she didn’t need, a matchmaking aunt.

“Don’t ‘Aunt Patsy’ me. Ethan is my friend, too. And this is still my house.”

Molly knew full well her great-aunt wasn’t trying to be cruel. She was trying, in her own no-nonsense manner, to help. What Patsy didn’t understand was how much more humiliating a panic attack would be now that she knew, and liked, Ethan so much better.

“I’m being selfish. Forgive me.” Molly circled the table to kiss her aunt’s wrinkled cheek. “I’ll behave.”

She hoped she could. Patsy was right. Ethan would be here. Her heart, traitor that it was, leapt at the prospect.

Tenderness emanated from her aunt’s gray eyes. She patted Molly’s hair. “Everything will be fine. Now hurry up with those before he gets here.”

Molly still had a dozen baby animal faces left to paint when Ethan arrived, ushering in the scent of outdoors and filling the house with his masculine presence.

Across the joint living-dining room, his blue eyes found her. “Hi, Molly. What’s up?”

“Go on in there and see for yourself,” Aunt Patsy said.

From beneath a blanket, Laney kicked and protested, eager to be uncovered. Between the two of them, Ethan and Patsy lifted her free. Her aunt held the chubby baby while Ethan shrugged out of his jacket.

Laney’s bright blue eyes, so like her father’s, gazed around the apartment. In the nearly three months since Molly had last seen her, she had gained complete control of her brown-capped head and had grown tremendously. When she spotted Molly, her tiny mouth opened in a smile to reveal a pair of bottom teeth.

Molly’s arms ached to hold the beautiful little girl, but her chest constricted in a warning that said she had better not chance such a crazy action.

She gripped the top of the kitchen chair. “She’s grown so much.”

Ethan grinned, tossing his jacket and the baby blankets onto the couch as he came across the living room and into the dining space. He carried Laney under one arm.

“Babies do that, I guess. I can’t believe she’s six months old already.”

Six months. Molly pushed away the reminder of Zack’s age and practiced breath control.

God has not given me the spirit of fear.

When she opened her eyes Ethan stood next to her, admiring the craft items spread out on the tabletop.

“Hey, you’re good at this.”

His praise was wonderful balm. She tried to concentrate on the bunnies instead of the baby. “It’s a fun hobby.”

“No. I mean, you’re
really
good. Not just hobby-good.” He shifted Laney’s weight so that she perched on his narrow hipbone. “You could open a store.”

“Chloe and I actually considered it before—” She stopped, heart pinching. Setting up a shop with her sister had been a dream they’d both shared.

Sympathetic blue eyes studied her. “Just the same,” he said gently. “You ought to give the idea some further thought. People love this kind of stuff.”

Aunt Patsy, who had disappeared into the tiny kitchen, returned with a plate of peanut brittle. “We’ve got at least fifty more of them to make. You any good with a stapler?”

He grinned and snitched a piece of peanut brittle. “I thought I was here to fix a door.”

Patsy gently tapped the back of his hand. “Work first. Eat later.”

“Slave driver,” he said around a bite of the crunchy candy.

“You had supper yet?”

“Nope. Lunch was a drive-by burger over in Mena. I was hoping you would feed me a good supper.”

“Spoiled rotten. That’s what you are.” The twinkle in her eyes conveyed great affection for their guest. From Ethan’s reaction, the feeling was mutual.

“It’s all your fault. You keep luring me over here with promises of a work-for-food arrangement. Must have been that cardboard sign that did the trick.”

Molly laughed along with her aunt. The idea of Ethan and a cardboard sign was too funny.

“I made a casserole,” Patsy said. “Lasagna. Molly and I already ate but there’s plenty left for you.”

Molly snickered. “Imagine that. She made enough for an army.”

“And I’m a grateful man.” Grinning, he placed Laney in her aunt’s outstretched arms. “Show me that door. I’m starving.”

In minutes, he was on his knees at the back door, pounding away. Acutely aware that they were separated by only a few feet, Molly dabbed her brush in bright blue paint and created eyes for her bunnies—eyes that looked like Ethan’s. She wanted to go in the kitchen, sit on the floor and talk to him in the way they did most days at lunch. They always had so much to discuss. But she didn’t want Aunt Patsy getting any more of her ideas.

Spending time with Ethan at lunch in the company of several dozen senior citizens was far different than seeing him elsewhere. Especially when Laney was along.

But tonight, for some reason, seeing the baby didn’t stress her as much as she’d feared. There was no tightness in her chest. Her throat was open and she breathed normally.

But that was to be expected, wasn’t it? Ethan was here. Aunt Patsy was here. Nothing could happen to Laney with them present.

Aunt Patsy sat at the table bouncing the pink-clad infant on her knee and talking nonsense that had the baby babbling in return.

Molly glanced up and smiled at the charming scene.

“She’s a dandy, isn’t she?” Patsy asked, shaking a set of measuring spoons.

“Beautiful.”

“And healthy as a horse. I never saw a child so perfect. I bet she’s never sick, is she, Ethan?”

Screwdriver in hand, Ethan pivoted toward them. “Hardly ever. I’ve been really lucky in that respect.”

“Some babies are sick a lot the first year. But not Laney. Happy and healthy, she is.”

Focused on painting the finishing touches on a bow mouth, Molly recognized her aunt’s endearing attempts to assuage her fears.

“Ethan’s a great dad,” she murmured, glancing up at the handsome man tinkering with the back-door lock.

“I heard that.” He gave one more twist of the screwdriver, grasped the doorknob and gave it a shake. “There. Done. Safe and secure again.”

Aunt Patsy rose, Laney in her arms. “Then you’ve earned your supper.” She started around the table and then paused. Behind the wire-framed glasses she peered at her niece. “Want to hold this perfect little doll while I microwave that lasagna?”

The gentle, loving face of her aunt pleaded with her to try.

Molly longed to please the dear, wonderful woman who had been her mainstay. More than that, she yearned to cradle a baby in her arms again without fear.

The room seemed to hold its breath. She was aware that Ethan hovered in the kitchen doorway, watching. Laying aside her paintbrush, she said, “Let me wash my hands.”

Moments later, heart thundering in her ears, she stretched out her arms. Aunt Patsy smiled and handed over the squirming child.

Relishing the feel of the soft, plump little body, Molly carried Laney to the couch and sat down. Her throat was dry and her insides trembled the slightest bit, but she wasn’t short of breath. She could do this.

“Hey, princess,” she said. “You sure are beautiful.”

Laney’s chubby arms and legs paddled in response. Expression animated, she stuck her tiny pink tongue between her lips and blew a wet raspberry.

Molly giggled, a sense of freedom and hope swelling inside her like a cleansing wave.

For the first time in two years, she entertained the hope that the panic attacks were behind her, and that she was no longer a danger to children.

* * *

“It’s getting late,” Ethan said, but he made no move to get up. Laney slept face down across his knees. The peanut brittle plate on the coffee table held only crumbs. And Aunt Patsy had long since retired.

He and Molly both had to work tomorrow but Ethan was reluctant to leave. Tonight had been fun. It had also been progress for Molly.

At the sight of her chattering baby talk to his daughter, something had turned over in Ethan’s chest. Some nameless emotion that felt so right and good that he wanted to laugh out loud. She hadn’t held Laney long, but the fact that she’d held her at all was important, both to her and to him. She needed to know that he trusted her with his child. And he needed to know she cared.

The admission hit him square in the chest.

“I’m glad you came over.”

Molly sat with her feet curled beneath her as he’d seen her do so many times at the farm.

“Me, too.” The TV flickered, moving from one commercial to another. He had no idea what programs had come and gone in the past two hours. And he didn’t care. Talking to Molly, listening to her laugh, sharing his day with her, was far more pleasurable than any television show.

He wasn’t lonely. Didn’t have time to be, but whenever Molly wasn’t around, something seemed to be missing.

Uncomfortable with the notion, he gently lifted his sleeping child from his lap and placed her in the carrier. She stirred, making sucking motions with her mouth. Ethan smiled.

Molly came to stand beside him, smiling, too. “It’s cute the way babies do that.”

“She must dream about that bottle.”

As if she’d heard and understood, Laney’s bow mouth curved into a smile.

They stood there for a heartbeat, gazing down at the sleeping infant. “Aunt Patsy says when babies smile in their sleep, they’re playing with angels.”

Ethan turned his attention to Molly. The top of her head barely reached his shoulders. “Think that’s true?”

The corners of her mouth tipped in a smile. “I don’t know, but I like the sound of it.”

“Me, too.” He also liked the curve of her lips and the faint flush of color over her cheekbones. “What do you dream of, Molly?”

He didn’t know where the question had come from, but there it was.

She looked surprised, then thoughtful for a millisecond. With a small laugh, she shook her head. “I don’t know. Silliness mostly. Things that make no sense. What do you dream about?”

“You.” There. He’d said it. And if she wanted to throw it back in his face, fine. He’d been rejected before and lived.

“Oh, Ethan.” She laid a small hand on his shirtfront. “What a sweet thing to say, but—”

He stopped the inevitable with fingertips pressed to her soft mouth. “No buts, Molly. No buts.” And then before he could think better of the action, he leaned down, replaced his hand with his mouth and kissed her.

In the next instant she was in his arms, and Ethan’s world centered for the first time in a long time. When Molly’s arms circled his neck and pulled him closer, something exploded in his chest. This was the moment they had been working toward since that first stormy night when he’d seen the terror and the goodness in her eyes.

After the bad time with Twila he’d set his mind not to take any more chances with women, to concentrate on being a good father and raising his child to the best of his ability.

And yet, here he was, falling for Molly. Falling hard. He didn’t know if it was right. Didn’t know if he should, considering his tainted history, but it was happening. He wondered if God would approve of a relationship between a decent girl like Molly and a messed-up man like him.

The question had him slowly pulling away from her sweet kiss.

She rested her cheek against his chest and Ethan was sure she could feel the pounding of his heart. He smoothed the flyaway hair and held her close for the longest time, wondering, worrying.

He didn’t want to cause her more trouble than she had already suffered. A good Christian would be unselfish and walk away rather than risk hurting her. A good Christian would concentrate on being a single dad.

Cupping Molly’s face, he stared down into a pair of clear, honest, hopeful brown eyes and faced the truth about himself.

He wasn’t such a good Christian after all.