Her voice sounded totally confident, totally sure, and Troy wished for some of that certainty for himself.
She was such a good mother. She knew exactly how to reach her son, even when he was upset. She could listen, handle his bratty moments and get him to laugh. She was meant to mother this boy, and most of the resentment Troy felt about her pregnancy fell away. Whatever had happened, whatever mistakes she’d made, she’d paid for them. And as she said, God was always taking care of things. He’d given one sick young boy the perfect mother.
Who, when she met his eyes over the child’s head and gave him a little smile, looked like the perfect wife, as well.
* * *
A week later, Angelica was chopping vegetables for stew and marveling at how quickly they’d settled into a routine. Lou Ann took an online class every Tuesday and Thursday, so those days, Angelica started dinner for all of them while Xavier rested.
As she chopped the last carrot, though, Xavier burst into the kitchen. “Can I go outside and see Mr. Troy and the dogs?”
Thrilled to see this sign of improved energy, she nonetheless narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you doing off the couch? You’re supposed to rest from two to four every afternoon. Doctor’s orders.”
“I don’t want to rest anymore. Besides, it’s almost four.”
“Is it really?” She looked at the clock. “Three-thirty isn’t four, buster.” But it was close. Where had the time gone? Troy had been wonderful about letting her set up a flexible schedule around Xavier, but she needed to get back out to the kennels at four. She bit the inside of her cheek.
“I want to go outside.” Xavier’s lower lip pushed out.
“That’s not going to work, honey. After you rest, you need to stay in here with Miss Lou Ann so I can work.”
“But I wanna go outside!” Xavier yelled.
Angelica dried her hands on a dishcloth and shot up a prayer for patience. Then she knelt in front of Xavier. “Inside voice and respect, please.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound it, but she stood up anyway. With a sick kid, you had to choose your battles.
“I see someone’s feeling better.” Troy limped into the kitchen, wearing jeans and a collared shirt. His shoulder muscles flexed as he hopped nimbly over on his crutches.
He looks good! was her first thought, and it made her cheeks heat up. “I didn’t know you were here today. Thought you had vet patients in town.”
“I come home early on Thursdays. Snagged a ride with our receptionist.” He was looking at her steadily, eyebrows raised a little, as if he could read her mind. How embarrassing!
Xavier tugged at his leg. “Can I come outside with you, Mr. Troy? Please?”
“It’s okay with me, buddy.” Troy reached down to pat Xavier’s shoulder. “But what does your mom say? She’s the boss.”
“I can’t let him follow you around and bother you.”
“I think you and Xavier were at the doctor’s last week, so you wouldn’t know that Thursdays are special. I do some other stuff.”
“Stuff I can do with you?” Xavier was staring up at Troy, eyes wide and pleading.
Angelica bit back a smile. Her son, the master manipulator. “Honey, we have to respect—”
“Actually,” Troy interrupted, “this might be a really good activity for Xavier. If you’re willing.”
“What is it?” She covered the stew pot and lowered the gas heat.
“Dog training. Takes a lot of patience.” He winked at her. “Some kid training, too. Let him come with me, and then you come out, too, in a little while. I may need some help.”
“Please, Mom?”
She threw up her hands. “I give up. Go ahead.”
She watched out the window as Xavier and Troy walked off together. Troy was getting more and more agile with his crutches, and she suspected he’d be off them soon. His head was inclined to hear what Xavier was saying, and as for her son, he was chattering away so joyously that she was glad she’d let him go with Troy.
She wanted him to be happy, and right now, somehow, that happiness was all tied up in Troy. Troy and the dogs. Pray God it would last.
“They look more like father and son than most father and sons,” Lou Ann said, walking into the room with an armload of books and paperwork. “That’s good for Troy. He didn’t have a great relationship with his own dad. Still doesn’t, for that matter.”
“I remember, but I never knew why.” Angelica reached down to scratch Bull’s head. “Go back to your bed, buddy. I’m done cooking, and Daddy says no table scraps for you.”
“That doesn’t keep him from begging, though.” Lou Ann put her laptop and books on the built-in desk in the corner of the kitchen. “Clyde Hinton is a hard man, especially with his boys. His older son fought back, and that’s why the two of them can work together now. Troy, though, wasn’t having any of it. He shut the door on his dad a long time ago. They hardly ever see each other.”
“Interesting.” During their engagement, she and Troy hadn’t visited much with his father, and the little time they’d spent at Troy’s family home was stiff and uncomfortable.
Settling into a chair at the kitchen table, Lou Ann put her feet up on one of the other chairs and stretched. “Where’s Xavier going, anyway? I’m ready to play some Extreme Flight Simulator with him. Clear my brain from all that psychology.”
“Troy’s taking him out to the kennels.” Angelica turned to the woman who was rapidly becoming a good friend. “I’m so impressed you’re working on your degree online.”
“Never had the chance before,” Lou Ann said, “and it’s a kick. I always did like school, just never had time to really pursue it. And Troy insists on paying for it. Says it’s the least he can do since I agreed to come back to work for him.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about that man,” Lou Ann said. “He’s not one to toot his own horn.”
Angelica tucked that away for consideration. “He’s sure being good to Xavier. Though he doesn’t know what he’s getting into, taking him out to the kennels. He’ll have to watch him like a hawk, and he won’t get any of his own work done.”
“It’s Thursday, isn’t it?” Lou Ann glanced up at the calendar on the wall. “Thursdays, he has the rascals over. Maybe he’s going to get Xavier involved with them.”
“The rascals, huh?” Just what Xavier needed. “Who are they?”
One side of Lou Ann’s mouth quirked up. “They’re some kids I wouldn’t work with to save my life, but somehow Troy has them helping at the kennel, training dogs and cleaning cages. He’s a rescuer, always has been.”
“Dangerous kids?” Angelica paused in the act of handing Lou Ann a cup of coffee.
“No, not dangerous. Just full of beans. Relax!” Lou Ann reached for the coffee, took a sip and put it down on the table. “Thanks, hon. There are some real poor folks in this county. Kids who live on hardscrabble farms, hill people just up from down South, migrants who’ve set up their trailers at the edge of some field.”
“Sounds like the way I grew up,” Angelica said wryly.
“That’s right.” Lou Ann looked thoughtful for a minute. “Anyway, when Troy was...well, when he went through a rough spot a while back, Pastor Ricky approached him about setting up a program for those kids. Troy went along, because a lot of them hadn’t a notion of the right way to take care of a dog. It’s grown, and now he’s got ten or twelve coming every week to help out.”
“That’s amazing, with everything else he does.”
“He’d help anyone in the world. What doesn’t come so easy to him is taking help himself.”
“I’m going to go out.” Angelica rinsed the cutting board and stood it in the drainer. “Just as soon as I get those bathrooms clean.”
>
“You go ahead now,” Lou Ann said. “I can tell you’re a little worried about your boy. I think you’ll like what you see.”
“Thanks.” Impulsively, she gave the older woman a hug.
Five minutes later, Angelica was leaning on the fence outside the kennel, watching Xavier run and play with dogs and boys of all sizes, shapes and colors. He looked so happy that it took Angelica’s breath away. She didn’t know she was crying until Troy came up beside her and ran a light finger under each eye.
She jerked back, not comfortable with the soft, tender touch.
“You okay?”
She drew in a breath and let it out in a happy sigh. “I’m fine. And I’m so grateful to you for letting Xavier have some normal kid moments.”
Troy frowned. “He doesn’t get to do stuff like this often?”
She shook her head. “He’s been in treatment so much that he hasn’t had the chance to play with other boys. Let alone a bunch of dogs.”
“It’s good for the kids. They need to get their energy out in an accepting environment. And I need someone to play with the dogs. Easy there, Enrique!” he called to a boy who was roughhousing with a small white mutt a little too vigorously.
“Sorry, Señor Troy.” The boy in question backed off immediately, then knelt and petted the dog.
“Hey, that’s the little dog from the clinic! The owner thought he was going to die!”
Troy nodded, looking satisfied. “He’s responding to the medication. He should be able to go back home within a week. I know Darlene will be glad. She calls every couple of days.”
She studied Troy’s profile. He helped dogs who needed it, owners who couldn’t pay, kids who’d grown up without advantages. And of course, he was helping her and Xavier.
“Anyway, thanks for giving my son this opportunity.”
When he looked down at her, arms propped on the fence beside hers, she realized how close together they were.
The thought she’d been squelching for the past week, the topic she’d been dodging the couple of times Troy had brought it up, burst into the front of her mind: he’d asked her to marry him just a week ago. He was a man of his word. She could have this. She could have a home, a farm, a man who liked to help others. Most of all, a father for Xavier.
But she’d struggled so long alone that being here, in this perfect life, felt scary, almost wrong. She didn’t deserve it.
The other thing she’d been trying not to think about made its way to the surface. She was tainted, dirty. In his heart, Troy would want someone pure. He’d said it enough times when they were engaged—how important it was to him that she’d never been with anyone, that she’d saved herself for marriage. “I’m a jealous guy,” he’d said. “I want you all for my own.”
She tore her eyes away from him, cleared her throat and focused on Xavier, who was rolling on the grass while a couple of the pit bull puppies, already bigger and steadier than they’d been a week ago, licked his face.
She had to live in the moment and focus on all the benefits this lifestyle was bringing her son. And stay as far as possible away from this man who’d proposed marriage.
Troy was a good person, even a great one, but she wasn’t a rescue dog. She needed to be with a man who loved her and could accept her mistakes and her past.
“Mom!” Xavier came over, panting, two high red spots on his cheeks. “This is so much fun. Did you see how I was throwing the Frisbee with the guys?”
When he said “the guys,” his tone rang with amazed, self-conscious pride. He’d never been one of the guys, but it was high time he started. And Troy was helping make that happen. “I missed your Frisbee throwing, buddy,” she said, “but I’ll watch it the next time, okay?”
When she glanced up at Troy to thank him again, she found him staring down at her with a look in his dark eyes that was impossible to read. Impossible to look away from, too. She caught her breath, licked her lips.
As if from a great distance, she heard Xavier calling her name, felt him tugging at her hand. “Hey, Mom, I had a great idea,” he was saying.
She shook her head a little, blinked and turned to look at her son. “What’s the idea, honey?”
“Do you think Mr. Troy could be my dad?”
Chapter Five
Xavier’s words were still echoing in Troy’s mind the next day. He was riding shotgun—man, he hated that, but the doctor hadn’t yet cleared him to drive—while his friend Dion Grant drove his van. They were taking a group from their church, including Angelica and Xavier, to weed the garden at the Senior Towers.
“Do you think Mr. Troy could be my dad?”
He listened to the group’s chatter as they climbed out of the van and pulled garden tools from the back. Could he become Xavier’s dad? Angelica’s husband?
It seemed as if those questions hovered in the air every time he was around Angelica. She’d never responded to his proposal, and yesterday she’d brushed aside Xavier’s words and scolded the child.
But was the thought so repugnant to her? Once, she’d wanted to marry him.
Sure, she’d left him, apparently for someone else, since she immediately became pregnant. Knowing her now, he didn’t think she’d cheated on him while they were together; she wouldn’t have had that in her.
But if she’d fallen in love with someone else and been too embarrassed to admit it...maybe when she’d gone to visit her aunt that summer...
The moment he emerged from the driver’s seat, a small hand tugged at his. “Dad! Dad!”
“Xavier!” Angelica hurried up behind Xavier and put her hands on his shoulders. “Honey, you can’t call Mr. Troy ‘Dad.’” Her face was bright red, and she wouldn’t meet Troy’s eyes.
“It’s okay.” Troy patted her shoulder.
“No, it’s really not.” Angelica kept her voice low and nodded sideways toward the row of ladies sitting on the porch of the Senior Towers. “Let’s just hope nobody heard. Come on, Zavey Davey,” she said, “you have a playdate with your new friend Becka from church.”
“A girl?” Xavier groaned.
“Yes, and she’s a lot of fun. Her mom said you two were going to hunt for bugs in the park. She has a magnifying glass.”
Xavier screwed up his face and looked thoughtful.
“And she’s into soccer, so maybe you two can kick around a soccer ball.”
“Okay. That’s cool.”
Troy watched as Angelica led her son toward a one-story house set between the Senior Towers and the town park. Her long hair was caught up in a high ponytail, and she wore old jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with a Run for Shelter/Stop Domestic Violence logo. When had she gotten time to do a charity run, with all she had on her plate? And how did she manage to put zero time into her appearance and still look absolutely gorgeous?
“Breathe, buddy.” His friend Dion gave him a light punch in the arm. “Didn’t know she was your baby mama, but half the town will pretty soon.”
“What? She’s not my baby mama,” Troy said automatically, and then met his friend’s eyes. “Uh-oh. Who all heard what Xavier just said?”
“Miss Minnie Falcon, for one.” Dion nodded toward the front porch of the Senior Towers.
Troy shrugged and lifted his hands, palms up. “Xavier’s not my kid, but he wants me to be his dad. Guess he’s decided to pretend it’s so.”
“You could do a lot worse than those two.”
“Yeah. Except she dumped me once before, and she doesn’t want anything but a professional relationship with me.”
“You sure about that, my friend?”
He wasn’t sure of anything and he felt too confused to discuss the subject. “Come on, we’d better start weeding or the ladies are going to outshine us.”
He’d brought a low lawn chair so he c
ould weed without bending his injured leg. Working the earth, just slightly damp from a recent rain, felt soothing to Troy, and he realized he’d been spending too much time indoors, doing paperwork and staying late at his office in town. The dirt was warm and pungent with an oniony scent. Nearby, he could hear the shouts of kids at the park and the occasional car or truck driving by.
Even after Angelica returned and started weeding across the gardens from him, he didn’t sweat it. The jokes and chatter of the group, most of whom knew each other well from years of adult Sunday school class together, made for an easy feeling. He was glad they’d come.
“Hey, beautiful, when did you get back to town?”
The voice, from a passerby, sounded pleasant enough, but he turned to see who was calling a member of the group “beautiful” with the tiniest bit of snarkiness in his tone. It took a minute, but he recognized the guy from a few classes behind him in high school, dressed in a scrub shirt and jeans. Logan Filmore. Brother of a friend of his. Guy must be in some kind of medical field now.
And of course, he was speaking to Angelica.
Troy’s eyes flashed to her and read her concern, even distaste.
He pushed to his feet, grabbed a crutch and limped across the garden to stand beside her. “How’s it going?”
“Okay.” She looked uneasily at Logan, who’d stopped in front of them.
The guy looked at Troy and seemed to read something in his eyes, because he took a step back. He gave Angelica a head-to-toes once-over, then waved and walked on, calling, “Nice to see you” over his shoulder.
Angelica squatted back down and Troy eased himself down beside her.
“Someone you know?”
She yanked a thistle out of the ground. “Sort of.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Another weed hit the heap in the center of the garden. “Stop talking about it?”
He lifted his hands, palms up. “Okay. Just trying to help.”
For several minutes they pulled weeds in silence. Troy was totally aware of her, though: the glow of her skin, the fine sheen of sweat on her face, the vigorous, almost angry way she tugged weeds.
Engaged to the Single Mom Page 6
