“And guess what else? My bedroom is all finished. We finished painting it last night. One whole wall is a chalkboard. My dad used a special kind of paint. I have colored chalk to write on it and a big eraser. I can draw artwork or do math or whatever I want.”
“Awesome!” And the perfect touch for a boy who was scary-smart. Nice work, Sam, she wanted to say.
“Why don’t you come see it? You wouldn’t even have to bring brownies, really, if you didn’t want to.”
She glanced at Sam. Though she couldn’t read anything in his expression, she could almost feel the tension and yearning radiating off him like heat waves.
I care about you, Alexandra. I think I could fall for you very easily, with a little encouragement....
“I’d like that sometime.”
“How about tonight?”
She managed a smile, even as she was aware of Sam opening his mouth to say something. “I don’t think I can tonight. I’m supposed to go to the big benefit gala and auction at the ski resort.”
“What’s a gala?”
“It’s a big party where people dress up in fancy clothes and dance and sometimes have fancy food.”
“That sounds boring to me.”
She laughed. “You won’t get an argument out of me, kiddo. But when you’re a grown-up, you have to do boring stuff once in a while.”
“My dad’s going, too. He has a date. I have to have a babysitter. I think I’m too old for a babysitter, don’t you?”
She had a sudden image of Sam with another woman, laughing with her, sharing those delicious kisses and his wry sense of humor. Pain clutched her gut, so raw it made her eyes water.
Through the shock slicing through her, she shifted her gaze to Sam. He gave her a cool look in response but she couldn’t read his expression.
What else did she expect? She had shut him down in every conceivable way. She couldn’t expect him to just sit around waiting for something they both knew wasn’t going to happen.
She forced herself to smile, ignoring the pain that seemed like a living, breathing thing prowling through her. “Babysitters are a pain, yeah, but I’m afraid you’ve still probably got a few more years for them.”
“I guess. I’m very responsible for my age, though. I think that should be taken into consideration.”
Sam interjected before she could come up with a reply. “Come on, kid. We’d better get to work before Mrs. McKnight comes out here and cracks the whip.”
It took her a minute to realize he meant Claire, not her mother.
“Right. You don’t want to get on her bad side.”
Or she might decide to send over the one person in town you wanted to avoid to spend the entire day with you.
Sam reached into the back of his pickup and handed Ethan some long boards to carry up to the house, and Alex turned back to the garden, grateful she had some convenient noxious weeds to vent her tangled emotions against.
It was hard, sweaty, backbreaking work but she found an undeniable satisfaction in cleaning up the mess so the bright, cheery perennials could thrive.
While she weeded and thinned and cleared out old growth, she did her very best to ignore both Delgado males.
It wasn’t easy.
Every once in a while she would catch glimpses of Sam walking back out to his truck for something or measuring and cutting a board on the sawhorses he set up. Ethan’s cheerful chatter rang out in the morning air and now and then he would yell out at her to admire a board he had just nailed or a cut he had made.
As the sun hit its apex after noon and began its slide toward the mountains, the morning clear skies gave way to a few gray-edged clouds. The more she cleared away the mess and brought order to Caroline’s garden, the more tangled her own thoughts seemed to become.
How could she do this? How could she continue to live in Hope’s Crossing, just down the street from Sam and Ethan, while Sam moved on with his life, dating, possibly marrying again at some point?
Just thinking about it left her feeling queasy, though she tried to tell herself it was the sunshine and the fact that she’d only had a banana to eat that day.
The alarm beeped on her phone about an hour after Sam and his son arrived, reminding her Caroline had been outside for quite some time and probably needed a change in position, if nothing else.
She walked up onto the porch. “Ready for a rest?” she asked.
“I’m doing fine,” the other woman assured her with a smile that looked as if it took a great deal of energy. “But you could probably...use a break.”
She could have put in a few more hours before stopping but she didn’t want Caroline to push herself too hard.
“I had Helen make up some...lemonade when she was here yesterday. Maybe you could take some out to the nice man and his...little boy.”