Page 26 of Megan's Mate
It took Kevin about six boards to start asking questions.
“How come you want a deck out here?”
“So I can sit on it.” Nathaniel set another board in place.
“But you’ve already got one in the back.”
“I’ll still have it.” Three strikes of the hammer and the nail was through board and joist. Nathaniel sat back on his haunches. He wore nothing but a bandanna twisted around his head and a pair of ragged cutoff jeans. His skin was bronzed by the sun and coated lightly with sweat. “See how the frame goes?”
Kevin followed the direction of the deck frame as it skirted around the side of the house. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, we’ll keep going till we meet the other deck.”
Kevin’s eyes brightened. “So it’ll go all around, like a circle.”
“You got it.” Nathaniel hammered the next nail, and the next, then shifted positions. “How do you like the island?”
He asked the question in such a natural, adult fashion that Kevin first glanced around to see if Nathaniel was speaking to him. “I like it. I like it a lot. We get to live in the castle, and I can play with Alex and Jenny anytime.”
“You had friends back in Oklahoma, too, right?”
“Sure. My best friend is John Curtis Silverhorn. He’s part Comanche. My mom said he could come visit anytime, and that we can write letters all we want. I already wrote him about the whale.” Kevin smiled shyly. “I liked that the best.”
“We’ll have to go out again.”
“Really? When?”
Nathaniel stopped hammering and looked at the boy. He realized he should have remembered from his exposure to Alex and Jenny that when children were raised with love and trust, they believed just about everything you told them.
“You can come out with me whenever you want. ’Long as your mother gives the go-ahead.”
His reward for the careless offer was a brilliant smile. “Maybe I can steer the boat again?”
“Yeah.” Nathaniel grinned and turned Kevin’s baseball cap backward. “You could do that. Want to nail some boards?”
Kevin’s eyes widened and glowed. “Okay!”
“Here.” Nathaniel scooted back so that Kevin could kneel in front of him. “Hold the nail like this.” He wrapped his hands over Kevin’s, showing him how to hold both the hammer and the nail to guide the stroke.
“Hey!” Alex rose from the dead on Planet Zero and raced over. “Can I do it?”
“Me too.” Jenny leaped on Nathaniel’s back, knowing she was always welcome.
“I guess I got me a crew.” Nathaniel figured that with all the extra help it would only take about twice as long to finish.
An hour later, Megan pulled up beside the long, classic lines of the T-Bird and stared. The house itself surprised her. The charming two-story cottage, with its neatly painted blue shutters and its window boxes bright with pansies, wasn’t exactly the image she had of Nathaniel Fury. Nor was the tidy green lawn, the trimmed hedge, the fat barking puppy.
But it was Nathaniel who surprised her most. She was a bit taken aback by all that exposed golden skin, the lithe, muscled body. She was human, after all. But it was what he was doing that really captured her attention.
He was crouched over her son on the partially finished deck, their heads close, his big hand over Kevin’s small one. Jenny was sitting adoringly beside him, and Alex was playing highwire on a joist.
“Hi, Megan! Look, I’m the death-defying Alex.” In his excitement, Alex nearly lost his balance and almost plunged a harrowing eight inches to the ground. He pinwheeled his arms and avoided disaster.
“Close call,” she said, and grinned at him.
“I’m in the center ring, without a net.”
“Mom, we’re building a deck.” Kevin caught his bottom lip between his teeth and pounded a nail. “See?”
