Coming Home to Paradise (Sisters in Paradise #3)

Chapter 10

After the light had been turned on, and Rae had driven away with the girls, Maverick laid a hand on Bo’s shoulder. “I’ve already said this a couple of times, but this has been a great day. And”—he removed his hand and headed toward his truck—“I’m looking forward to next week. Do you have any food that you hate? I wouldn’t want to take you to an Italian place only to find that you don’t like it.”

“Nope.” Bo could still feel the warmth of his hand. “I lived on a shoestring so long in Nashville that I can even appreciate bologna sandwiches—as long as I have mustard.”

Maverick opened the driver’s door and slid in under the steering wheel. “I think I can do a little better than that. I make a mean ham-and-cheese sandwich.” He turned his focus toward Bo. “This sight is absolutely breathtaking, and I’m not just talking about the decorations.”

“Is that your best pickup line?” she teased.

“I’m not shooting you a line,” Maverick protested. “I’m telling the truth. See you next weekend if not before.”

Before she could answer, he closed the truck door. Before the vehicle disappeared completely, he stuck his hand out the window and waved. Bo threw up a hand and watched the taillights of his truck blend in with the thousands of lights strung from the house to the road. He had proven there was chemistry by that last comment, and his touch when he kept her from falling left no doubt that she felt it too.

“Can’t do it!” She sighed as she turned around and headed for the house. “Aunt Bernie warned me, but it’s more than that. I came home to put down roots, not go off chasing butterflies with a sexy bartender.”

Flirting is fun and doesn’t mean shopping for a white dress or wedding cake. The voice in her head sounded a lot like Rae’s.

Bo was jerked right back into reality when Endora touched her on the back.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” Endora apologized and held up her car keys. “Parker and I are leaving for church. Would you drive my…?”

“I’ll be along in a little while in my own vehicle. You can ride home with me,” Bo said.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Endora said. “The cookbook committee is meeting at ten o’clock tomorrow morning instead of tonight. I appreciate the ride home.”

Bo sucked in a lungful of air and let it out in a loud whoosh.

“I heard that.” Endora laughed and walked away. “Going to church twice in one day won’t hurt you. You can ask God to take away that attraction you have for Maverick.”

“What are you talking about?” Bo asked.

Endora stopped and turned around. “The sparks dancing around the house today almost burned me.”

“You are confused. What you saw was sparks between Gunner and Rae, not me and Maverick,” Bo declared, but she crossed her fingers behind her back.

“You can fool yourself if you want. See you in church. I’ll save you a seat on the front pew. Don’t be late,” Endora told her.

***

The chatter of little girls in the back seat of Rae’s truck brought back memories of when Joe Clay would load the family up in the van. Whether they were going to a softball game to watch Tertia play or just driving to Nocona for burgers and ice cream at the Dairy Queen, there were always several conversations going on in the back seats.

“If you turn right there, it will take you to our school,” Daisy said and pointed to the right. “We had the same teacher for kindergarten, but we didn’t the first two days of first grade,” Daisy said. “They put us in two different rooms.”

“I cried so hard that I threw up all my lunch,” Heather said, “and it smelled so bad that a bunch of other kids puked too. The floor was a mess, and they had to call Daddy to come get me and…”

“So…” Daisy butted in for her turn. “Daddy told the school to put us in the same room. Aunt Rosie lives down that road.” She pointed to the left. “She smells funny.”

“Like old people, and her toenails are ugly,” Daisy said.

Rae bit back a giggle. “What do old people smell like?”

“That stuff they rub on when their Uncle ’Ritis comes to visit them. He might like them better if they would use some perfume like your mama does.”

“Turn right here before you get to the Dairy Queen and go down this road.”

Rae made a left turn and drove a few blocks before Heather said, “That white one with a red mailbox is where we live.”

Rae turned into the next driveway. “What makes her toenails ugly?”

Daisy sighed in an exasperated way that only a child her age could produce. “Chipped polish. She says that she can’t wear anything but sandals because she’s got ’ohpathanee in her feet.”

Rae parked behind a small compact car, got out of her truck, and walked the girls up onto the porch. The cold north wind rattled the bare tree limbs and scooted dead leaves from one side of the yard to the other. Rae flipped the hood up on her coat, but the little girls didn’t seem to mind the cold at all.

Daisy slung the door open and called out, “Aunt Rosie, we are home.”

“And we brought brownies!” Heather ran into the living room right behind her sister.

Rosie groaned when she got up out of the recliner. “Thank you for keeping them this evening. Gunner said they were having a wonderful time.”

The pungent aroma of Bengay, or some other such arthritis medication, filled the room as Rosie shuffled across the floor. “I swear, a ninety-year-old woman can’t keep up with two rowdy girls, but I guess I can be thankful that they weren’t triplets. You girls go get your baths, and then you can have a brownie.”

“Can Miz Rae come see our room before we do that?” Heather begged.

Rosie eased down onto the sofa. “Yes, she can. I forget that it gets dark too early for their bedtime. I’ll be glad when Gunner finds someone to take over for me. I told him after Christmas he’s on his own, even if he has to take them to work with him. My arthritis gets worse every month and the neuropathy in my feet is terrible. I’m in no shape to keep these girls. If you know someone who wants a babysitting job, tell them there’s one available right here.”

“I’ll put the word out,” Rae said as she took in the small living area in one sweep. She could write her name in the dust, but everything else was in order. Children’s books in a basket by Rosie’s chair proved that she read to them before bedtime. Through an archway, the kitchen countertops were clean, and there were no dirty dishes in sight.

“Come on!” Daisy tugged at her hand.

“We’re supposed to read tonight?” Heather led the way down the hall. “Will you listen to us? Aunt Rosie falls asleep sometimes when we read to her.”

Daisy threw open the door. “Not until after we show her our room.”

Twin beds were covered with matching pink-and-white-striped comforters. Stuffed animals covered a bookcase on one side of the room. Puzzles and toys filled a second one on the other side.

Heather pointed to one of the beds. “You can sit right here on my bed.”

Rae opened her mouth to say that she really had to go, but Daisy’s expression made her clamp it shut and sit down on the edge of the bed. “I can’t stay long, but I could listen to you girls read.”

“And you’ll sign the paper that says we did?” Heather asked.

“Yes, I will.” Rae made a mental note to ask her mother and Aunt Bernie if they knew someone who would babysit the girls. What they really needed was a mother, but in a pinch a babysitter younger than Rosie would do.

“If we hurry with our bath, will you brush our hair?” Daisy asked.

Heather cupped her hand over Rae’s ear and whispered, “Aunt Rosie don’t like it if we cry when she gets the tangles out.”

Daisy nodded in agreement. “Daddy says we have to be nice and not yell when she does that because”—she glanced at the door—“she’s so good to help us.”

“If you hurry, I guess that would work,” Rae agreed, and wondered if it would be interfering too much if she found a babysitter for the girls.

That is none of your business. Bo’s voice popped into her head.

Rae ignored her sister’s voice.

“Let’s do this,” she said. “Heather, you go take your bath now. I will listen to Daisy read while you do that. Then I will listen to you read and comb out your hair when you get done. Daisy will be finished, and I’ll comb her hair, and we can all have a brownie before I go home.”

“Yes!” Heather removed her jacket and hung it on a hook on the back of the door. Her footsteps made a rat-a-tat noise on the hardwood floor as she ran down the hallway and into the bathroom.

Daisy climbed into Rae’s lap with a book. “Me and Heather could read before we started to school, so this is kind of like a baby book, but the teacher says we got to read three pages for tomorrow.” She opened to where a bookmark was located.

Rae didn’t have to help her sound out a single word and was amazed at how well the child read—even putting inflections and voices to the characters in the story that was about a mouse and a lion. When she finished the three pages, she wrapped her arms around Rae’s neck and hugged her.

“Sometimes, I’m the lion and Heather is the mouse,” she said.

“And other times?” Rae inhaled the scent of wind in the child’s hair mixed with the barbecue sandwich she’d had for supper. She wondered if her mother had gotten whiffs of whatever her girls had eaten for supper when they were little, and that’s how she knew if they had really brushed their teeth?

Daisy sighed. “We look alike, and our beds are alike, and”—another sigh—“Daddy buys us matching clothes, but I wish we could be different. I want my own room, and I want a red comforter, and I don’t want to dress just like Heather every day.”

“Is there another bedroom in the house?” Rae asked.

Daisy nodded and pointed across the hall. “That’s where our mama was before she died and went to heaven. We don’t go in there because it makes Daddy sad.”

“How old were you when your mama went away?” Rae asked.

Daisy shrugged. “Me and Heather don’t remember her, but we have a picture.” She slid off Rae’s lap and picked up a photograph in a frame of a lovely dark-haired woman with deep brown eyes holding two toddlers.

“She was pretty like you,” Daisy said. “Aunt Rosie says that we look like her except for our eyes. We got them from Daddy.”

Rae had to fight a sudden overwhelming desire to run out of the house and never look back. These kids were not her responsibility when they left her Sunday school classroom. She didn’t need to fix their problems, or even talk to Gunner about a sitter. That was way out of the purview of what a Sunday school teacher should do.

“My turn!” Heather appeared at the door wrapped up in a thick terry-cloth robe. “When you get my hair done, I’ll put on my jammies. What color are we wearing tonight, Daisy?”

“Red!”

“I hate red,” Heather declared.

“It’s my night to choose,” Daisy reminded her. “You picked purple last night.”

“Then tomorrow night, we will wear pink,” Heather threatened.

“I might puke!” Daisy grumbled as she left the room.

Rae appreciated that her mother had made it possible for all seven of the girls to have their own bedrooms more right then than she ever had before.

***

Bo wrapped a quilt around herself, sat down in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch, and set it in motion with her foot. This was Pepper’s time for a bit of fresh air, according to Aunt Bernie. One of the gazillion sticky notes Aunt Bernie had plastered to her refrigerator for Bo said that it didn’t matter if it was freezing cold with a hint of rain in the air, or if it was scorching hot, the dog was to have his half hour on the front porch every night.

“And I thought being free from her sass was going to be wonderful,” Bo grumbled. Then she saw the headlights of a vehicle coming down the lane. “Please, Lord, don’t let that be Maverick. I need some time to talk myself out of this chemistry I feel when he’s around.”

Rae parked beside half a dozen other vehicles and made her way to the porch. “What are you…? Oh, it’s Pepper time. Aunt Bernie’s entire schedule is governed by that dog.” She sat down in the rocking chair beside her sister and drew her coat tighter over her chest.

“So much for not having Aunt Bernie around,” Bo said. “I bet Pepper figures out a way to tattle on all of us when she gets home. You were gone for a long time. What happened?”

Rae gave her a quick rundown of her time with the girls. “I feel so sorry for them. Rosie isn’t really able to watch them at all. She told me that she’s ninety and that Gunner’s got to find another sitter by Christmas. You know how you always told me that I could not fix everything even though I tried to? I need to hear it again.”

“You can not fix everything,” Bo said, putting emphasis and even air quotes on the not , “but I wish you could.”

Rae pulled her chair closer to Bo’s and tugged part of the quilt over her legs. “Did I hear a bit of wistfulness in your voice? Do you have a problem that you need help with?”

“Yep, and his name is Maverick,” Bo answered.

“Have you had a single date since you left Nashville?”

Bo shook her head. “And not for over a year before I left. Times were tough out there these past couple of years. I wasn’t getting any gigs, and I was working double shifts just to pay rent and eat off-brand ramen noodles. I didn’t have time for romance.”

“Then you come home and dive into helping Aunt Bernie with her advice blog and working on romantic events. What you need is a hot fling, not a relationship,” Rae said.

“And you?” Bo asked.

“We’re talking about you, not me. I am not going to let those little girls steal my heart.”

“Looks like that ship already sailed tonight.” Bo giggled.