Page 17 of A Convenient Heart
Merritt caught sight of Daniel and Paul racing off down the side street.
The boys were classroom rivals, but they’d put aside their differences to build one of the pageant backdrops.
All of the children, not just Paul and Daniel, would be devastated if the pageant didn’t happen. It was a Christmas tradition. And for those two boys, it would be their last Christmas in her classroom.
Jack had stooped to talk to Harriet. Oh, and there was Samuel too. The five-year-old boy was sobbing inconsolably, while Harriet looked teary.
Merritt started toward them but stopped when she saw Jack speaking seriously to the boy. He slipped the blanket off his own shoulders and wrapped it around Samuel. It swamped his small body.
The boy sniffled and wiped one cheek with a corner of the blanket that covered his hand. He blinked, now calmer.
Jack had done that.
“I like your Jack,” Mrs. Quinn said.
He wasn’t hers yet.
Seeing him comfort Samuel made Merritt’s breath catch. She’d dreamed of a family of her own for such a long time. She’d put aside those girlish dreams after her parents had moved back east. It had seemed more prudent to focus on her studies, but there had been times when she’d stared at the ceiling during lonely nights in a girls’ dormitory at the normal college, and they’d slipped in when she couldn’t bear the loneliness.
Her dreams had never abandoned her. They’d come back full force months ago, and Merritt had known she couldn’t keep waiting for the right man to come along. She had to take action.
And here was Jack, settling his hat on top of Samuel’s head.
Now Samuel was looking at her fiancé, blinking as he talked. Harriet looked happier too. Samuel even cracked a small smile.
Whatever Jack had said, he had calmed the boy down. He was good with kids.
It felt like a confirmation that Merritt had made the right choice.
“What does he do for work?” Mrs. Stoll asked absently.
Merritt knew she would be fielding questions until everyone in town knew the answers. “He’s a businessman.”
The older woman’s brow wrinkled. “He is?” The skeptical tone to her voice made Merritt blink. “He doesn’t seem like a businessman.”
Before she could answer, the two women excused themselves.
“Miss Harding?” Henry, one of Merritt’s former students, the young man who’d waited on them last night at the hotel, came alongside her. “Your beau forgot this last night.”
He handed her Jack’s leather satchel and was gone before she could say thank you.
She hadn’t even realized Jack had forgotten it in their haste to fight the fire.
Jack’s gaze narrowed on her, and he started making his way toward her.
Behind him, she saw that Samuel still wore his hat.
“Let me take that.” His words were a command that brooked no argument, and the way he was frowning made her hand it over quickly. He slipped it over his shoulders.
It shouldn’t have bothered her that he’d wanted to take the satchel back, but something about the exchange niggled at her.
She tried to ignore it. Nodded to where he had just come from. “You left your hat.”
He glanced quickly over his shoulder and back. Gone was the charming Jack from supper last night. “I never liked that hat. He can keep it.”
She still felt the tension of walls up between them. Was Jack that discomforted that she’d wept in his arms? Other people still milled about, and suddenly, she was too tired to wonder or worry any more.
“I can walk you over to the boardinghouse,” she said.
