“NOT A WORD ABOUT LISA,” Kevin warned his sister after the woman in question had bolted.

      Courtney had on her best innocent face, one that he’d stopped buying back when she was sixteen and had “borrowed” his car to take a pack of her girlfriends to a concert in Chicago. Of course, he should have known better than to provide her with a set of keys for emergencies, but that was part of the duties he felt were his as the eldest Decker offspring.

      “Why should I say anything?” she asked. “Just because you like her?”

      This wasn’t a conversation he ever planned to have with Courtney. “Sure, I like Lisa. Who in this town doesn’t?”

      “No, I mean like…like. As in ‘Kevin and Lisa sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.’”

      He laughed in spite of himself. “You’ve been hanging around the preschool set too much.”

      His baby sister stuck her tongue out at him. “Says who?”

      “Funny, but here’s what I’m saying…Don’t push things, okay? I’m capable of taking care of my own life.”

      “You should be,” she said. “Except you’re too busy acting like you need to take care of me and Scott and even Mike, who’s what…all of two years younger than you? If you were taking care of your own life, you’d have at least asked Lisa out for dinner by now, after all the time you’ve spent worshipping at her coffee counter.”

      “Worshipping? It’s breakfast.”

      Courtney took a peek into the doorway to the playroom, probably doing a head count of her charges already there for the day.

      “Sure, breakfast at the exact same place every day you’re in town,” she said as she returned to her spot at the front door.

      “She’s a friend. That’s it. And when it comes to women, I haven’t exactly been suffering,” he pointed out.

      And that was the truth. He dated whenever he wanted to. So what if he’d called a first-date moratorium a few months back? Or was it more like six months ago? Not that it mattered, and not that it was any of his little sister’s business.

      “You’d be better off looking after your own social life, don’t you think, kid?” he suggested.

      As soon as he’d said the words, he wished he could yank them back. It had only been six months since she’d broken it off with her fiancé for cheating on her, and rejected the Decker brothers’ collective offer to ship him in a storage container to the desolate wasteland of her choice.

      Courtney didn’t say anything, but he could see the shadows of hurt in her eyes.

      “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, before wrapping her in a hug. “I spoke before thinking.”

      Courtney sighed. “The Decker Curse. That, and wanting the unattainable.”

      He stepped back and settled his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t know about the second part. From what I’ve seen, we Deckers are pretty good at getting what we want, once we put our minds to it. Don’t you think, Miss Courtney?” he asked, stressing the Miss, since his little sister had fought like a tiger when their parents had balked at the idea of Great-gram’s house being turned into Miss Courtney’s Day Care, and their only daughter taking on others’ children to watch when they wanted grandchildren of their own.

      The sadness faded from her eyes. “Yeah, we can be just as tough as we need to be.”

      The front door opened, and another of Courtney’s charges came in.

      “You’ve got me beat, taking on this wild crew,” he said to his sister, softening the words with a wink.

      She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “Go on out back and wrestle with your boxes. And, Kevin…thanks.”

      He knew that she meant for far more than the boxes. Her appreciation of his one or two good traits took some of the edge off not knowing how to deal with Lisa Kincaid’s lack of the same.

      “Any time, kid,” he said, then went to finish his day’s work for his sister.

      Kevin retrieved his tool pouch and cell phone from his truck’s cab. He buckled the well-used pouch around his hips and stuck the phone in its holster. He knew he’d be lucky to go five minutes without a call, and he really could have used some kickoff caffeine.

      By now, he’d usually be at Shortbread Cottage having one coffee, black, the scone of the day, and sharing some laughter with Lisa. Courtney was dead-on with that observation; this had been his morning ritual for years, now. But after Lisa’s most recent hurried escape, he would skip the scone. He didn’t have the stomach for it.

      As he walked to the backyard, he checked his phone for missed calls. Four of the six listed were from Scott, his youngest brother and partner. Scott was spending the day at a job site up the river, in Clinton, that was giving them fits. They seemed to be running through a streak of bad luck with subcontractors who couldn’t keep on schedule, so Scott was babysitting the drywallers today.

      That was the big debate in the construction business—how much work to have performed by direct employees and how much to contract out. After three years with a pared-down crew, Kevin was nearly ready to bulk up on direct employees and deal less with subcontractors, but with the slower winter months coming that would be a bad financial move. Better to wait for the spring. And for a few dark memories to fade a little more.

      Kevin opened the safety latch to the backyard’s gate, then closed it behind himself. The yard, with its professionally designed playscape, was empty, since the kids didn’t come out until just before lunch. At first he’d thought Courtney was officially losing her mind when she’d asked him to stockpile boxes, since the kids already had that marvel of modern architecture to climb through. Then he’d recalled how the empty boxes from his dad’s construction jobs had always been the Decker kids’ favorite toys. Even though his only steady exposure to kids was a few minutes of Jamie Kincaid’s company each weekday morning, he was sure that this part of childhood hadn’t changed.

      Kevin dragged the appliance boxes, one by one, over to the edge of the playscape area, where the ground was thickly padded with shredded, recycled tires. He pulled the utility knife from his tool pouch, locked the blade into place, and began creating doorways and windows in the corrugated cardboard. He half wished that his life were once again so simple that a pile of boxes could become a castle. But in his world, boxes were boxes and castles were castles. He wasn’t sure when the magic had faded. Probably about the time Pop had broken both legs in a fall on a job site. Kevin had been eight and he’d wanted to drop out of school to cover for his dad. Needless to say, Pop had told him to hang on a while longer. He’d ended up waiting until the day after high school graduation.

      Sometimes he couldn’t believe that sixteen years had passed so quickly. His dad had cut back to part-time hours in the office about eight years ago, then retired altogether three years subsequent to that. Scott had joined the company after college. It wasn’t arrogance to say that they were kicking butt.

      But everything in life was about balance, Kevin guessed. On the other side of the scale from that business success remained the truth that his social life wasn’t so great, and that he had to bear the burden of the mistakes—financial and otherwise—he’d made since taking over Pop’s company. Some mistakes were easier to get past than others.

      Kevin paused to survey the boxes he’d altered.

      “Almost good enough,” he said to himself.

      While he was making sure that all rough edges and loose staples had been removed, he glanced toward the playroom. Jamie Kincaid was gazing wistfully out the window. He gave the kid a wave and smiled at the subtle “so teacher can’t see me” wave he got in return. He