Page 31 of A Dream for Daphne

She wondered how long he’d lived here.

She grabbed the bowl and then made her way up his front porch. Before she could ring the bell, he was opening the door.

“Come in,” he said.

“You look relieved to see me,” she said. “I already feel bad about that night, but do I have to worry that you think I’m going to keep disappearing or you can’t trust what I say?”

“Wow,” he said, pulling the bowl out of her hand. “You don’t pull any punches. I love it.”

“Really?” she asked. “I’m not normally this vocal, but I’m a bit on edge.”

“Hey,” he said softly. “No reason to be. We are just having dinner and conversation. Maybe I’m on edge I’m going to burn the burgers. My mother taught Easton and me to cook, but I have to admit my cousin is much better than me. I might be a tad bit distracted by you and the flames could shoot up.”

“I’m sure you’ll have it under control,” she said.

“I hope. Come in,” he said.

“Do you want my shoes off?” she asked. He had some nice old hardwood floors. There was a big living room off the front, but it didn’t look as if it was used often. Even had some older-looking furniture in it.

“No,” he said. “I’m not fussy about those things.”

“This is a nice house. Big for one person.”

“My childhood home,” he said. “I grew up here. My father passed away several years ago and I took over the family business. My mother struggled to stay here and moved to Florida. I’m happy for her. I bought the house. We wanted to keep it in the family and I wasn’t letting her give it to me. She needed to be able to buy something there.”

She found that so sweet.

First that his mother was willing to just hand it over. A far cry from her parents.

“I’m sorry about your father. So it was his business that you inherited?”

“Yes,” he said. “My mother still owns some shares of it, but she’s almost hands-off. She did the books for years and still looks after a small part of that. Even after she moved she was trying to do it all, but it was too hard. I finally hired someone to run my office and pay the bills, write up the contracts and stuff. My Mom goes in and closes things for the month or anything else I need her to do.”

“It seems like your business is big,” she said.

“It is,” he said. “But the bulk of the staff are guys doing the work. It’s been growing and this year I’m going to have to think about a few more things.”

“Like what?” she asked, following him through the back of the house. The kitchen was updated and modern. They’d passed an office that she’d noticed and there was a family room off one side of the kitchen, a dining room off the other.

“Expanding staffing inside and out. I’ve got more work than I can handle and I don’t want to turn it away, but don’t want to burn myself out. I’m trying to hire some more guys this summer to knock out projects that I’ve told people might not get done until next year. The phone is ringing faster than I can answer.”

“Sounds like all good things to me,” she said. “If you can keep it organized.”

“I’m trying damn hard,” he said. “And you didn’t come here to talk about my business. You were going to let me know how you knew Easton and Laurel. Then maybe we can get into things like why you moved from Texas to here and ended up as Poppy’s nanny?”

“We can do that,” she said.

“How about a drink?” he asked. “I grabbed some lime seltzer that I noticed you had in your cart. I didn’t think you’d mind since you knew I didn’t have ground beef in mine.”

It was his wink that had her smiling. “That’s fine. I drink that or water.”

He put her bowl in the fridge. “That looks good.”

“I didn’t ask if there were vegetables you don’t eat,” she said. “I cut everything big enough for you to pick out if you want.”

“I’ll eat most things other than broccoli and that leafy colorful lettuce that looks like weeds in a garden.”

“Spring mix?” she asked.

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