“What about Abby?”
“You could marry her.”
Shock rendered him speechless. Then made him sputter. “I—Abby—we—” He stopped, pulled himself together, and tried again. “Abby is also very nice, but she's my employee, and—”
“You look at her differently than you look at Jess—Mrs. Perkins.”
“I—what?”
“You do. You watch her when she's not looking.”
Mitch frowned. “You make me sound like a stalker.”
“You know that's not what I mean. You watch her like you like her. A lot. And I think she likes you, too.”
“I hardly know her.”
“She lives with us. You sometimes make her tea at night. And she already knows what you take in your coffee and what kind of pizza you like.”
Mitch wondered how his daughter knew about the evening tea, but he decided to stick with one topic at a time. “Just because she's observant doesn't mean she likes me.”
“Not even if she's watching you when you're not looking?”
Mitch stared at his daughter. When had she developed that archness peculiar to women making a point? And when had she become so damned observant? And was Abby really watching him the way he—
Hell. He was watching her, wasn't he?
“You know what I think?” he asked, standing up. “I think Abby is here to do a job for us, and she and I both have enough on our hands without you imagining things between us that aren't there. And now it really is bedtime.” Mitch stooped to kiss the top of his daughter's head, her cloud of hair tickling his nose. “Straight to sleep, and a little less focus on my love life in future, okay? Please?”
“Maybe.” Rachel grinned as she flopped onto her back and pulled the covers up. Her muffled voice followed him to the door. “But no promises!”
***
“I hear you and my oldest daughter have been discussing marriage,” Mitch said, holding out a mug of tea to Abby.
Abby looked up in surprise, both at Mitch’s conversation opener and the tea. Did this mean the return of their evening ritual? She’d be lying to herself if she said the idea didn’t please her. She wrenched her mind back to the opener. “She told you?”
“She did. She was quite chatty, in fact. I gather I've been the topic of much speculation.”
“Much,” she agreed, accepting the mug and hiding a smile. “But for what it's worth, I think you and Perky would make a lovely couple.”
“Perky?”
Her blush extended from head to toes. “I, uh...” Dear Lord, she'd known it was just a matter of time before she slipped up with that.
“You mean Jessica,” Mitch said. Not a question. “Jessica Perkins.”
Abby's blush grew hotter.
“You call her Perky Perkins?”
“Not to her face,” Abby defended, but she should have saved her breath, because there was no way Mitch could hear her over the roar of laughter he let out. And continued letting out. She scowled at him. “It's not that funny.”
“Oh, but it is. I just wish I'd thought of it myself,” he said, still chuckling. “I had no idea you had that in you.”
“It should have stayed in me,” she mumbled.
“I disagree, because it's perfect. You have no idea how determinedly cheerful—and cheerfully determined—that woman has been.”
Oh, Abby was pretty sure she had an excellent idea after that Saturday driveway exchange. But she kept the observation to herself because she didn’t think it appropriate to tell her employer he’d been the subject of such a discussion. Instead, she focused on the realization he was still standing and carried no cup. “No tea tonight?”
“I'm heading out to finish some work at a job. But I picked this up for you today.” He dropped a rolled-up brochure onto her lap. “It's the course catalog for Carleton University. I thought you might like to take a look at their psychology program. Their winter term starts in January. You won't be quite done here, but I'll be taking over a lot by then, so you'll have the time for at least a class or two. Something to think about.” He headed for the hallway. “I'll see you in the morning. Sleep well.”
He was gone before she could blink—or muster the wits for a thank you. The garage door opened, the truck started, the door closed again. Then, and only then, did she put aside the memory of William taking from her the last catalog she'd held and dropping it into the recycling bin before storming out of their kitchen. Then, and only then, did she pick up the catalog Mitch had given her as if it were a rare and precious gift.
Because, in truth, that's what it was.
Chapter 26
“Abby? Abby, wake up. There's a dog at the door, and Kiana wants to let him in.”
Abby struggled up from the cottony softness of her duvet and sleep. She blinked at Brittany's face, illuminated by the glow of the digital clock on the bedside table. Then she blinked at the fact it was still dark enough for the clock to illuminate anything. Then at the clock itself.
“It's three in the morning,” she mumbled. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“There's a dog,” Brittany repeated patiently. “At the door. Kiana heard it crying, and she woke me, and now she's sitting on the porch with it because I told her it couldn't come into the house.”
“She's on the porch in her pajamas?” Abby gaped at the girl, then fought to untangle herself from the covers. “It's freezing out there!”
“I know. That's why I woke you. She says she won't come in without the dog, but it's really big and dirty, and I told her it had to stay outside.”
A big, dirty, unknown dog alone on the porch with a five-year-old while the rest of the world slept. Abby almost fell over in her haste to get to the door because, yeah, there was no way this scenario could go wrong. She raced down the stairs, flicked on the porch light, and tore open the door. “Kiana? Kiana, sweetie, you need to come into the—” She stopped and swallowed. Hard. Brittany hadn't been kidding about big.
A massive black head lifted from Kiana's lap and turned to regard Abby. Snow coated the animal's back, and he—she?—shivered sporadically. As did Kiana, whose teeth clacked together. Abby moved toward the girl but stopped again when a low growl rumbled across the porch. Her throat squeezed tight. Please, please, please don't hurt her, she silently urged the watchful animal. Please.
She made herself take a calming breath. “Kiana? I need you to come over here with me, sweetheart. Slowly, so you don't startle him, okay? We don't want him to get scared and bite you.”
“Don't w-w-worry,” the little girl said, patting the dog's head as she shivered. “He won't hurt me. He's m-m-my friend.”
“We don't know that for sure.” Abby tried hard to keep the panic from her voice, hyper aware of the dog's suspicious brown gaze fixed on her. “He could be sick or hurt, and he might bite you by accident.”
A hairy black lip lifted away from strong white teeth, as if to underscore the imminent threat, and Abby's knees sagged a little. She clutched the doorframe. Not taking her eyes from the duo on the porch, she said over her shoulder, “Britt, go wake your dad and tell him we need him, okay? Tell him it's import—”
“Daddy's not home. That's why I woke you. Should I call the police?”
Shit. Abby bit her lip, swallowing the curse just in time. Thoughts jumbled through her brain. The police might be a good idea. Who else was she going to call at three in the morning to remove a potentially rabid animal from the front porch? Three in the morning. Where in God's name was Mitch at three in the morning? He couldn't possibly still be working at this hour, could he? Which begged the question of what else he could be doing, and none of those questions helped—at all—with the current problem of a potentially rabid animal on the front porch.
Abby pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. One more attempt to talk Kiana inside, she told herself. If that didn't work, she'd have no choice but to call for help. She schooled herself to calmness again.
“Kiana—”
She
broke off as Kiana's arms stole around the big dog's neck, wrapping it in a hug and earning herself a small, wet kiss on the cheek in return. Two sets of brown eyes turned to Abby, managing to look sad and hopeful all at the same time.
“P-please can he c-c-come in?” Kiana asked. “He'll die outside by himself.”
For the first time, Abby wavered. Her priority was getting Kiana into the house and warm again, and to her, the animal looked strong enough to withstand the cold for a few more hours, but what if she was wrong? What if he'd already been out in the cold for days, and their porch was his last resort? What if, heaven forbid, Kiana was right, and they woke in the morning to an enormous black carcass in front of the door?
“P-please?” Kiana asked.
She and the dog shivered again, and a low, pleading whine reached across the porch. Abby caved.
“Fine,” she said, “but only for tonight, and he stays in the laundry room.”
“Yay!” Kiana got stiffly to her feet and tugged on the dog's matted fur. “Come on, dog. I'm freezing.”
For a giant hairy monster, Kiana's new friend proved remarkably cooperative about being confined in the laundry/mud room. After turning around a half dozen times on the blanket Abby put down for him, he collapsed with a long half sigh, half moan, and curled into a tight ball. Abby was pretty sure he was asleep before she closed the door, much the way she herself wished she could be, but first she had to see to the half-frozen and wide-awake Kiana. It took two blankets, a mug of hot cocoa, and twenty minutes of lap time before the five-year-old stopped shivering and starting yawning, and another twenty minutes to get her and her sister back into their beds.
By the time Abby dragged herself back to her own room, it was past 4:00 a.m. and there was still no sign of Mitch. So, of course, that meant another hour or so of lying in bed waiting for the sound of the garage door and wondering if she should call him to make sure he was all right.
Except if he'd been out all night, then he was very likely with someone. And a phone call from the nanny checking up on him would be uncomfortable all round. Not to mention that it was none of her business, because whatever that shared moment had been the night before, she had no right to wonder about his private life—and no right to be sharing moments, either. Or any interest in doing so, she reminded herself.
A last glance at the clock marked the time at 5:10 when she finally turned over and drifted off to sleep, only to be jolted awake again by an unholy commotion. For the second time, she bolted from her bed and ran down the stairs, her feet landing on the main floor before she was even awake enough to identify the racket as a dog snarling—and a man bellowing. Wincing, she hurried to the laundry room and opened the door to find Mitch clinging to one end of a baseball bat and their overnight guest to the other, locked in a tug of war and hurling insults at one another through the partially open door to the garage.
Mitch spotted her through the crack. “There's a dog!” he yelled. “In my house!”
“I know. I should have texted to warn you!” She, too, had to shout over the dog's growls. Dear Lord, but that thing had a big voice. She eyed the sharp teeth clamped onto the baseball bat and decided it would be foolish to become involved in the fray. She motioned to Mitch and shouted some more. “Let him have it and come in through the front door!”
Mitch tugged a couple more times on the bat, then relinquished it to the dog and slammed the door shut. Hastily, Abby did likewise, leaving the giant, hairy beast snarling in the laundry room as she scurried to open the front door. A scowling Mitch was already on the porch, hands on hips.
“What. The. Hell?” he asked.
Shivering, Abby folded her arms across her chest, altogether too aware of the thin fabric of her pajama t-shirt—especially when Mitch's gaze followed the movement and his expression darkened further.
“He turned up on the porch in the middle of the night, and Kiana heard him,” she said. “She went out to sit with him, and—”
“By herself? Where were you?”
“I didn't hear her get up. Brittany—”
“My five-year-old daughter went outside by herself in the middle of the night,” he repeated, “and you didn't hear her?”
“Your five-year-old daughter went outside by herself in the middle of the night,” she snapped back, “and you weren't even home.”
Mitch glowered at her so fiercely, he looked like he might burst a blood vessel. Abigail glared back, shivering again and wishing he'd just come inside already so she could close the door, but he showed no sign of moving. Then he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, held it, and then blew it out again in a gust.
“You're right,” he said. “That wasn't reasonable of me. But a dog?”
“She wouldn't come inside without him.”
“The thing is huge. How did you get him into the laundry room without him killing one of you?”
“Can we please continue this with the door closed?”
Mitch's gaze dropped to her chest again, and her cheeks heated. Why couldn't she have grabbed a sweater before coming downstairs? She stood aside, giving him plenty of room to pass, and he stepped into the house and closed the door. The entryway promptly shrank three sizes, and Abby sidled away another few steps while he stripped off his coat and boots. His clothes underneath were caked with white. His hair was, too, now that she saw him in the light.
“I was finishing up some drywall work on a house,” he said, his hand following her gaze upward to touch his hair. “My drywall guy is out sick, and we have the painters coming in today. I was too tired to trust my driving when I finished, so I slept on the floor.” He grimaced. “It was supposed to be just a nap. Were the girls worried?”
“I think they were too distracted by the dog. Who, by the way, is like a lamb with Kiana. She's the one who put him into the laundry room for me.”
“But she knows we're not keeping him.” The scowl returned to Mitch's face.
“She wants him to go back to his family. I'll take him to a vet today to see if he has a microchip.”
“And the shelter after that if he doesn't?”
“That would be your decision, not mine.”
“I'll talk to Kiana before I leave again. I'm just home to shower and change, and then I need to go let the painters in.” Mitch headed for the stairs.
“You haven't forgotten your meeting with Madame Sylvie before school starts, have you?”
Mitch stopped with one foot on the bottom step, and from the back, Abby saw his head and shoulders droop. His hand tightened on the railing. He turned, heaved a sigh, and said quietly, “Pardon my language, but shit.”
Having muttered that very sentiment under her breath several times as she'd dealt with kids and a hairy black monster a few hours before, Abby could sympathize with Mitch's word choice—and with the haggard weariness that settled over his expression. The poor man looked ready to drop. She bit her lip.
“Can I let them in for you?”
“What?”
“The painters. Can I let them in for you? I can't take over the meeting with Madame Sylvie, but I can—”
“You'd do that for me?”
“Of course. I'd be happy to.”
He regarded her in silence, then said gruffly, “If it wasn't so highly inappropriate, Abigail Jamieson, I swear I would hug you right now.”
Abby's toes curled into the floor at both the statement and her reaction to it—a twisty warmth that wriggled through her and whispered, “Yes, please!” In a rather desperate attempt at levity, she forced a smile and replied, “And then we'd both need a shower.”
The wrongness of the words hit her the second they left her mouth.
Mitch stared at her.
She stared back.
To her everlasting despair, however, the floor beneath her remained uncooperatively solid and refused to swallow her.
“I'll, um, make coffee,” she whispered at last.
And then she fled.
Chapter 27
The morning plan, already a work in progress, went to hell in the proverbial handbasket when the girls rolled out of bed and came downstairs for breakfast. Before Abby could call out a warning to Kiana to leave the laundry room door closed, the little girl had opened it and released the monster within. Chaos ensued.
Their overnight guest barreled into the kitchen, around the table, and back down the hall to the living room, accompanied by shrieks of alarm from all three girls.
“What is it?” Rachel squealed, ducking behind Abby. “It looks like a mammoth!”
“Dog!” Kiana yelled. “Watch out for the lamp!”
Crash, tinkle, tinkle.
“Abby!” Britt yelled louder. “He ate the blanket you gave him!”
“Dog! Get off the couch!”
Momentary paralysis held Abby prisoner. It was too early for her brain to deal with this.
Thud, skitter, skitter.
Way too early.
“No, Dog! Not Daddy's office!”
“ABBY!”
Abby jolted out of her stupor. She jammed the coffee pot back into the machine and bolted for the kitchen doorway, tripping over Brittany, who was headed in the opposite direction.
“Blueprints!” the girl gasped, her brown eyes wide with horror. “He has Daddy's blueprints!”
Abby set her aside and ran to the office door. Inside, the stacks of books on the floor had been scattered far and wide, and Kiana and the dog were engaged in a tug of war with a roll of—yes, Abby saw with a horror that mirrored Britt's—blueprints.
“Bad dog,” Kiana scolded, and the dog grumbled back.
But it wasn't an angry grumble. In fact, Abby could have sworn the thing was laughing and having the time of his life. She put a hand on Kiana's shoulder. “Let go, sweetie. He thinks you're playing.”
Kiana did as she asked, and the dog immediately dropped his end of the roll, too. Then he sat in the middle of the overturned stack of books and other papers, brown eyes bright behind a fringe of matted hair and pink tongue lolling, as if to say, “That was fun. Let's do it again!”
Abruptly, the tongue disappeared, replaced by large, white teeth as the dog snarled a warning. Abby felt a presence at her shoulder and raised her gaze to Mitch's thunderous expression.
Abigail Always Page 14
