Finding Home (St. John Sibling Series Book 2)

by Barbara Raffin

  "If we were playing with a regular deck, I'd accuse you of trying to rub the spots off it," she said.

  "Spots. Yeah," he murmured, his thumb stilling against the face of the card he held close to his chest as his eyes scanned the game board on the floor in front of them.

  Then, an amazing transformation took place before her eyes. The lines crimping the outer corners of Sam's eyes smoothed and the groove in his brow disappeared. Even the tightness around his mouth mutated into a cockeyed grin as he announced, "Seems I've been sent to the Molasses Swamp. I'm stuck."

  Ben was the first to reach the Candy Castle and win the game. At which time, Sam fell onto his side, "Now I'll never get out of the Molasses Swamp."

  Ben giggled.

  "I'm stuck in the molasses," wailed Sam, rolling on his back and flailing his arms. "Help meeeee."

  Ben scrambled out of his mother's lap, grabbed Sam by the hand, and tugged. But Sam pulled Ben down with him, tickled him in the ribs, and cackled like a demented crone. "Now you're stuck with me, my little wizard."

  Ben giggled and Bear barked. Dixie watched them frolic as she gathered up the game pieces. When she picked up the stack of game cards, she turned them over. She'd kept track of how many cards had been played since Sam's hapless detour into the Molasses Swamp. She counted back from the bottom of the deck to the card that had been Sam's. It didn't match the stuck in Molasses Swamp square. Sam had let Ben win.

  Damn, but the man was lovable…in far too many ways.

  #

  Sam sat on the porch roof outside his borrowed bedroom, back against the house beside Dixie's balcony, an arm dangling over his bent leg. He wished Mickey really was one of the stars above in the night sky. Maybe he'd have an answer to how he could move part of his allowance monthly into Dixie's account without Stuart catching on. He had to make sure Ben stayed with Dixie whose mothering was the kind any boy would flourish under. She the kind of mother whose love a boy could be secure in.

  The door from Dixie's bedroom opened and she stepped out onto the balcony.

  "Evening," he said.

  Wordlessly, she hitched a hip onto the balcony railing nearest him, her slick robe settling against skin…like his hand longed to. "I know what you did."

  He went cold despite the warmth of the night. Had she finally figured out Stuart had sent him?

  She looked down at him, a smile curling across her lips. "You let Ben win the game."

  He shrugged to cover his shiver of relief. "Ah, yeah. Four is too young to deal with the losing-makes-you-tougher lesson."

  Her smile stretched at one corner. "And the creative way you handled the twin's discipline today… You're going to make a great dad someday."

  Was she beginning to see him in a different light than that of one of her rejected animals? Was she beginning to see him as he saw her? He wanted to go to her, pull her into his arms, and take that kiss he'd wanted from the beginning. He wanted to promise to stay forever and take care of her and Ben. He wanted to declare his love.

  Never going to happen.

  The voice in his head was right. His promises weren't worth the breath it took to voice them and he was too much a coward to declare anything. He was no good for them. And when Dixie found out Stuart had sent him here to spy on her, she'd know it, too. Now all he had to do was head off whatever feelings Dixie might have begun to entertain toward him. No sense letting the hurt become worse than it would already be for her.

  "Thanks," he said, "but I'm hardly a good example of parenthood."

  She started to protest but he cut her off.

  "Remember, Red, I'm the guy who didn't show up for his cousin's funeral, a cousin as close to me as a brother."

  "Sam…"

  He raised a hand, silencing her. "You must have wondered why I wasn't there. And your wedding…"

  "None of the Carrington side of the family showed for our wedding."

  He grunted. "Fit right in with the rest of the snobs, don't I?"

  "You're not a snob, Sam."

  Sam gazed up at the sky. "He wanted me to be his best man. I couldn't even manage that."

  "You were in Europe. It costs a lot to…"

  "Pocket change for a Carrington," he cut in, keeping his gaze trained upward so he wouldn't have to see the disappointment in her face—in her beautiful eyes.

  "Then what?" she pressed.

  He swallowed hard. "I was afraid."

  "Of what?" she asked, her voice quiet.

  He stared at one particularly bright star. Did he tell her the truth; that he was afraid to be around that much happiness knowing none of it would ever be his?

  He lowered his head and gazed into the darkness of the yard below. "I knew what Stuart thought of yours and Mickey's union. I was afraid of disappointing Stuart yet again."

  "And Michael's funeral," she said, an odd edge creeping into her voice, "were you afraid coming for the funeral would also disappoint Stuart?"

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Now you're getting the true picture of me, Red. I'm nobody's role model, nobody's hero. I'm a coward."

  A soft hand came down on his shoulder and he opened his eyes. Quietly, she said, "If you're going to lie, Sam, keep it consistent."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "If you were trying not to disappoint Stuart, you'd have been at the funeral. Stuart was there. Besides, given all Michael told me about you, you were never much into to pleasing Stuart."

  He turned his face away from her, his voice barely a whisper. "Like I said, I'm a coward."

  Her fingers flexed against his shoulder. "I don't buy it."

  He grimaced. "I failed Mickey in so many ways, most of all by staying away for so long. And then… Then, he was dead. After all the ways I'd disappointed him, I couldn't face his funeral—couldn't make myself look at him in a casket. I failed him even in his death."

  Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. "Ah, Sam. I'd have given anything to be anywhere else that day, too."

  CHAPTER TEN

  She was supposed to be repulsed by his weakness—his cowardice. Instead, she'd empathized. That was enough to leave Sam sleepless through most of the night. The gray of false dawn had lit the sky by the time he'd finally fallen asleep. Then the cell phone in the pocket of his jeans he still wore vibrated.

  Sam groaned. He could ignore it. But Stuart would just keep calling back, making it impossible for him to sleep. Besides, a glance at the alarm clock told him he was due in the kitchen shortly.

  "Yeah," he grumbled as he answered the phone.

  "I haven't heard from you all week," Stuart said without preamble. "Haven't you dug up something on that woman yet?"

  "There's nothing to dig up," Sam said through a yawn.

  "What about the chat room stuff?"

  Sam swung his feet to the floor and sat up, suddenly awake. "What chat room stuff?"

  "The sex chat room where she was talking to the sausage guy."

  "That was her addled grandmother. And how do you know about it anyway? You got someone hacking into her computer?"

  "I don't care who it was doing the chatting, it was done from her computer. There's no way she can prove it wasn't her in that chat room."

  He knew better than to tell the old man he'd been there, that he could testify Dixie wasn't the person chatting it up in a sex chat room. He sighed. "One conversation in a sex chat room won't make her an unfit parent in any court of law."

  "There might be more," Stuart said. "Keep an eye on that woman, boy!"

  "I'm definitely doing that."

  "And didn't you just call her grandmother addled?"

  Sam winced at the thought of having given his uncle any ammunition. "Maybe."

  "Well, is she or isn't she?"

  "What?"

  "Addled!"

  "Look, she's old. Her husband died a year ago. She's a little confused at times. The normal stuff."

  "Is the child ever left alone with the grandmother?"

  "He
's with babysitters when Dixie works." For the most part.

  "But there are times she leaves him alone with the grandmother, right?"

  Sam opened his mouth, ready to out-right lie to Stuart. But something in the way his uncle phrased his question warned Sam a lie at this point would only damage his credibility with Stuart and he'd lose what little leverage he had to help Dixie.

  "Yeah," he said, thinking of the few minutes he stayed with her each day before the twins arrived, of how it was normal for the twins to leave Ben in Nana's care on her good days, of how often Nana and Ben napped together.

  "Document every time she leaves the boy with the grandmother, if the grandmother falls asleep while watching him or wanders off and leaves him. Whatever could be construed as neglect or child endangerment."

  "Will do," Sam said, scrubbing a hand down his face as if he could wipe away the lies—the deception—the dilemma he faced. If only he could tell Dixie what Stuart was doing. But to warn her would require he reveal how he knew what Stuart was up to. And that meant revealing why he'd come here.

  #

  It didn't feel cold enough. That's what Dixie was thinking as she stood in the walk-in cooler. One look at the salad greens and she didn't even have to step back out and check the temperature gauge to know the cooler had stopped working.

  "No," she groaned out. "No," she said, her hands balling into fists. "Noooo," she wailed, raising her fists in the air.

  The door whipped open behind her and Sam was halfway into the cooler before he stopped. "What's wrong?"

  She dropped her fists in defeat. "Cooler went out." She shook her head. "The cooling system is the one place I didn't skimp. It's all new components. How could this happen?"

  Sam stepped past her, opened the freezer door, and checked several packages. "It should be colder in there, too. But nothing's thawed."

  "Yet," she said, slumping down on a stack of crates.

  "Hey," he said, closing the freezer door and facing Dixie. "Where's that eternal optimist I've come to know?"

  She smiled weakly up at him. "Sometimes she gets tired of keeping it all together."

  Sam pushed the cooler door open, giving her shoulder a squeeze as he passed. "Maybe it's just a blown circuit."

  "We can hope." A blown circuit breaker didn't fix ruined food, but his touch nudged her normally optimistic self, reminding her how nice it was to have someone else to face a disaster with her.

  That he was back in the cooler before the door fully shut told her he didn't have to go to the circuit box to find their problem. "The controls were turned off. I turned them back on."

  She jerked upright. "That can't be."

  But as she said the words, she heard the cooler system kick in.

  She looked at Sam. "Were the twins in this part of the kitchen yesterday?"

  "I never noticed them skulking around the cooler area."

  "Ben's too short to reach the controls," she said.

  "And he wasn't in here."

  She sighed. "Maybe Nana…"

  "Figuring out who and why we can deal with later," Sam said, pulling a small notebook and pencil from his t-shirt pocket. "Right now we've got to figure out what we need to replace for breakfast."

  "Yeah," she said, circling the small space scanning the racks of ruined perishables. "Eggs and milk for sure. All dairy and greens. The prepped fruits need to be tossed."

  "The un-cut fruits are fine," Sam said. "Same for the whole vegetables."

  "It's too early to call a supplier. I'll have to hit the all night grocery. Maybe Harry will sell me some supplies wholesale."

  Sam raised an eyebrow at her. "Harry?"

  "The manager. My older brothers hung out with him when we visited Nana and Pupa."

  "Red," he said, giving her a side-long look. "Given your charm, I have no doubt Harry will give you wholesale price on whatever you buy from him and not because he hung out with your brothers."

  She waved him off. "I believe you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Besides, we both know one man who doesn't buy into my charm."

  "Stuart," Sam said.

  "Let's get the spoiled stuff out of this cooler." She started to reach for a tray of eggs.

  "No." He handed her the list he'd made. "You shop. I'll clean out the cooler. I'll also call Annie and see if she can come in early to help prep."

  Another couple pounds of stress fell from Dixie's shoulders. It really was nice to have a partner.

  As if she didn't have enough proof of that fact, when she returned with eggs, milk, cheeses, greens, and whatever else they'd determined unsafe for restaurant consumption, she found a kitchen buzzing with activity.

  "Eggs," Annie all but squealed, running to her and snatching a tray off the stack Dixie carried. "Girls," she said to the twins, "help Dixie bring in the groceries."

  The girls promptly put down their pairing knives amidst the unruined fruit they'd been cubing, rinsed their hands, and joined her in restocking her perishables. She gave them a "well done" and several "thank yous", biting her tongue when she really wanted to ask the usually devilish now turned angelically helpful girls if their change in persona had anything to do with turning off her cooler.

  "Is that cinnamon I smell?" Dixie asked as she paused on one pass to the cooler.

  "Cinnamon rolls are proofing," Annie said.

  "How'd you manage to make rolls without milk, eggs, and butter?" Dixie asked.

  Annie's eyes slanted in Sam's direction. Without breaking his rhythm of breaking eggs into a big bowl, Sam glanced up at her. "I used canned milk, thawed some of the frozen butter, and, as luck would have it, Annie had just bought an eighteen count carton of eggs. It was enough to set one batch to rising."

  "A carton of never-been-opened eggs out of my fridge isn't going to get us in trouble with the health inspector, is it?" Annie asked, her usual bluster absent.

  "All the inspector looks for is graded eggs and, if they came from a store, they were graded. Better yet, I have a chef, a cousin, and a pair of second cousins who jumped in when I needed help to insure my customers are served the same quality food I always serve them. Thank you, all of you."

  But the eyes she looked into were those of the one who'd taken charge when she'd been on the brink of a minor melt-down—the one who'd prompted her into action and organized her ever ready supporters for further help. Sam.

  #

  Sam stepped from the shower, grinning. He'd been a grinning fool all day and all because, when Dixie had thanked everyone, she'd looked at him like he was her hero.

  Sure, she'd looked at him like that before, had even called him her hero. But he was actually beginning to believe he could be her hero. Hadn't he taken over the disaster of the turned-off cooler, sending her for supplies while he cleaned up and summoned the troops? And he had stepped in between Weston and Ben without a second thought the day the woman had grabbed Ben for touching her monkey. He'd even volunteered to be Dixie's chef until she found a replacement. Best of all, he hadn't run when the going got tough. And it'd gotten tough a couple of times.

  Whistling, he toweled himself dry. The restaurant had run like a finely oiled machine the rest of the day.

  He squeezed the excess water from his hair, swiped the towel across the steamed up mirror, and looked himself in the eye, something he hadn't done in some time.

  "Yesiree, Sam my man. You are finally doing someone some good."

  He shaved, slipped on his jeans, balled up the rest of his clothes in his fist, and stepped into the hall. Dixie's door was open. He'd have to pass it on the way to his. He smiled.

  But the sight of Dixie slumped forward in her desk chair, chin propped in an upraised palm as she stared at the computer screen chased away his good spirit.

  "Pretty late for you to be working on the books," he said from the doorway.

  She glanced up and the worry lines eased some from her forehead. "Couldn't sleep anyway," she said.

  Here he'd been feeling good all day for being he
r hero while Dixie still had to deal with the loss of spoiled food. He wanted to do something to lift her spirits, but he had nothing.

  He glanced at her empty bed. "Where's the Wizard?"

  "Bunking with Nana for the night."

  "Aaah." His gaze ricocheted from her empty bed to Ben's bedroom door and back to her. "Guess I'll get to bed then."

  He took a step away from her door only to stop in mid-stride. There was something that might help. He turned back to her. "I was thinking… Not that I want to overstep… Not that this is the right time to even bring it up."

  She swiveled her chair toward him and gave him a patient smile. "Just spit it out, Sam."

  "You've got your menu pretty well streamlined, but I've got some ideas on how you can make some of the dishes more cost effective."

  "I'm always open to suggestions, especially from someone who's worked a professional kitchen. What do you have in mind?"

  "For example, your tuna, crushed pineapple, and chopped pecan salad could be served as a scoop on the side instead of already loaded into the croissant. It'll elevate the look of the plate as well as shave off a bit of prep time for your chef."

  "Great idea," she said. "Let's sit down tomorrow and go over all your ideas."

  She swiveled back to her computer screen, the message clear. Thanks for the help but I have more immediate concerns to deal with.

  "Goodnight then," he said.

  "Night," she said, giving him a finger wave.

  He should move on—go to bed. But… She looked so worried—so alone in front of that computer screen.

  "Is there something I could help you with now?" he asked.

  "Not unless you can squeeze more from a nickel than I've been able to," she said.

  "Mind if I take a look?"

  She glanced up just as he motioned into her bedroom. "Fresh eyes are welcome, Sam. Come on in."

  He stepped to the side of her chair and scanned the screen in front of her. He already knew what he'd find in her bank accounts. The benefits of his earlier snooping.

  "I need money to pay for this morning's ruined supplies," she said. "And, as you can see, my available cash isn't much."

  "Insurance?" he queried, reaching over her and scrolling through her accounts just in case there was something he'd missed earlier.