Mending Her Heart. Judy Baer
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as she could but came down hard on a miniature cannon, twisting her ankle. To catch herself, Catherine reached for the nearest thing available, a free-standing coatrack where one of Gram’s straw hats hung. It and Catherine both teetered for a moment before falling into an ungainly pile right on top of the entire defending militia.
Miniature sabers and rifles poked into Catherine like needles, and as she rolled away to escape them, she managed only to embed herself on the rebel camp. Some of these soldiers were metal instead of plastic, and she felt as if she were rolling around on a bed of prickly jacks, the kind she’d played with as a child. “Ouch!”
“Kaboom!” Charley roared happily. “And a meteorite from Planet Zeus landed on them all, crushing the rebellion and killing a whole bunch of dinosaurs besides. Double kaboom!”
Then a small face with brown eyes, rosy cheeks and a fringe of dark hair appeared over her. “Are you okay, lady? You made a great meteorite.” The cherubic-looking little boy frowned. “But I think you broke the rifles off a bunch of my men.”
Then he brightened. “They need to go to the…the….” He looked quizzically at Catherine.
“The infirmary?” she suggested, struggling to keep a straight face. This was one cute, huggable kid.
“Yeah, that’s it. The in-fur-mary.” He scooped up a handful of the injured and swept them into a basket. Making a passable sound as an ambulance siren, he raced out of the room.
Catherine turned to the sound of pounding footsteps on the stairs and soon it was Will’s concerned face that peered down at her. “Are you hurt?”
“Not so much that I have to go to the in-fur-mary,” she said, struggling to her feet.
Will reached out a hand to help her but turned his head toward the back of the house. “Charley, you get in here and apologize to Ms. Stanhope right now!”
Silence.
“If you don’t, these toy soldiers are going MIA, now,” Will ordered in a passable chief commander’s voice.
A squeak in the floor was the only sound of movement. Catherine got to her feet, wiped off a couple plastic soldiers that had imbedded themselves in the folds of her shirt, and waited.
Charley’s tousled head peeked around the corner of the dining-room door. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes danced despite the inevitable scolding that was about to come.
Catherine fought her urge to smile.
Will seemed to have no such trouble. He was fuming. “Please come over here and apologize. I told you not to set up camp where you’d be in the way.”
“I didn’t think anyone would mind now that Gram isn’t here,” the child said, looking repentant.
Gram? There he was again, referring to Abigail as his grandmother.
Charley scuffed the soles of his battered tennis shoes on the highly polished floor. “I’m sorry, lady. I didn’t mean to trip you. I’ll pick ’em up and take them outside.”
Will put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Charley, did you know that Ms. Stanhope owns this house now?”
The child’s eyes grew wide. “Gram gave it to you? You’re lucky…”
Catherine expected him to add “so now you much be rich” or some other childish leap of logic.
Instead he added, “…because you’re Gram’s real granddaughter. You’re not like me. I’m just her pretend grandson.” Longing filled his eyes.
Her heart melted in her chest at the child’s earnest statement. “Thank’s for reminding me of that. I had Abigail as my gram for a long time.” She reached out to touch the boy’s silken hair. “You’re a very sweet boy, Charley. Thank you.”
Will cleared his throat. “Charley, get this mess out of sight, will you? You can set up in the kitchen.” As Charley busied himself on the floor, Will took Catherine’s arm and led her into the sunroom off the main living room.
“Are you okay? Any puncture wounds from your battle with the soldiers?”
When she shook her head, he continued. “You’ll have to excuse Charley. He and Abigail really clicked when he came to live with me. He asked her if he could call her ‘Grandma,’ but she told him her favorite grandchild in the whole world called her ‘Gram’ and that he should, too. He has the same first name as her husband and she liked that. I hope you don’t mind.”
Mind? How could she mind an orphaned child, a child like she had been, seeking love?
“Charley came to me so eager for affection and Abigail liked having a child in the house. Frankly, Charley was fascinated with Abigail, and I took advantage of the fact. With his mother gone, Charley hasn’t had many women in his life and he adored her.”
“That’s fine, Will. He’s adorable. In fact he…” She’d almost said “looks a lot like you,” but stopped herself.
She didn’t even want to hint at the fact that Charley’s uncle was pretty adorable himself.
Chapter Five
The next morning the phone rang before Will had had his first cup of coffee. That alone was ominous.
“Hello?” he growled into the phone, hoping to frighten off whoever was calling.
No such luck. His sister-in-law Sheila’s voice came across the line. “How’s Charley?”
“Fine. Just like he was yesterday—and the day be fore.”
Will had to keep reminding himself that Sheila cared about Charley, too, even though she was making life miserable for everyone else. Maybe if she’d had a few kids of her own, she wouldn’t be so dead set on having Charley. But Charley wasn’t a toy for Sheila to play mother over…. Will reeled at that uncharitable thought. Maybe the reason he couldn’t understand Sheila was that she was a woman with a biological clock that seemed to have sputtered to a stop. Patiently he began to explain Charley’s day to Sheila, as she demanded to hear.
Later, Will glanced out the window of the mansion’s upstairs bathroom where he’d spent the past hour tearing out rotted flooring and his jaw dropped. Coming up the sidewalk was Catherine Stanhope. She was dressed in hiking shorts, a white T-shirt and tennis shoes. Catherine carried a lunch bucket and looked like one of the employees he managed on his construction crew—only prettier. Her expression was uneasy but determined, as if she were a round peg planning to insert herself into a square hole.
He suppressed a smile. That look of determination was one he’d seen on Abigail’s face quite regularly in the past weeks, ever since she’d made her final decisions as to what she would do with the house. Nothing and no one could get in her way when she wore that expression, and Will had a hunch that Abigail’s granddaughter was cut out of the same cloth. He hoped that he and Catherine would agree on the plans for the house. He didn’t care to butt heads with another force of nature like Abigail.
He was weary of women who didn’t understand his perspective—like his sister-in-law. Before Sheila had hung up this morning she had again harangued him about the fact that Charley was living with him instead of her and his brother, Matt, just as she had ever since Annie’s death.
To hear Sheila tell it, Will was utterly inept and ill suited to raise Charley. Sheila demanded custody of the boy, saying it was a travesty that the child didn’t have two proper parents—like her and her husband. Will didn’t consider Sheila a suitable parent. She was more like an absentee landlord.
They called him restless and a wanderer, which might have been true a few years ago, but now he was willing to be as rooted as a giant oak to keep his nephew with him.
Catherine, a big-time attorney, had practically landed on their doorstep, he thought. Maybe she could help him keep Charley. It had, at least, given him a sliver of hope.
Dream