The Prodigal Valentine. Karen Templeton
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his brother and sister-in-law, along with their two kids, straggled into the kitchen.
“Look, Tony!” Luis swung one arm around Ben’s shoulders, crushing him to his side. “Your brother’s finally come home! Isn’t that great?”
His brother’s answering glare immediately confirmed that nothing had changed on that front, either.
Chapter Two
“So…” Tony banged his crutches up against one wall and collapsed into the nearest kitchen chair, stretching out his casted foot in front of him and glowering. Shorter and stockier than Ben, Tony resembled their father more than ever these days. A neat beard outlined his full jaw, obliterating the baby face Tony had detested all through high school. “You made it.”
His mother was too busy fussing over the kids to notice the vinegar in her oldest son’s voice, but Ben definitely caught his sister-in-law’s irritated frown.
“Don’t start, Tony,” she said softly, and his brother turned his glower on her.
“Yeah, I made it,” Ben said, taking the coward’s way out by turning his attention to his niece and nephew. A sliver of regret pierced his gut: Although his mother had e-mailed photos of the kids to him, he’d never seen them in person before this. His chest tightened at the energy pulsing from lanky, ten-year-old Jacob, at little Matilda’s shy, holey half-smile from behind her mother’s broad hips.
“Come here, you,” Anita said, shucking her Broncos jacket and holding out her arms, her fitted, scoop-necked sweater brazenly accentuating her curves. Ben couldn’t remember Mercy’s next youngest sister as ever having a hard angle anywhere on her body, even when they’d been kids. A biological hand Anita had not only accepted with grace, but played to full advantage. Her embrace was brief and hard and obviously sincere. “Welcome home,” she whispered before letting him go.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Ben said, grinning. “Still as much of a knockout as ever.”
Her laugh did little to mask either her flush of pleasure or the slight narrowing of her thick-lashed, coffee brown eyes as she gave him the once-over. Masses of warm brown curls trembled on either side of her full cheeks. “And you’re still full of it! Anyway…little Miss Peek-a-Boo behind me is Matilda, we call her Mattie. And this is Jacob. Jake. Kids, meet your Uncle Ben.”
Since Mattie was still hanging back, Ben extended his hand to Jake, gratified to see the wariness begin to retreat in his nephew’s dark eyes. “I hear you play baseball.”
A look of surprise preceded a huge grin. “Since third grade, yeah. Short stop. Do you?”
“After a fashion. Enough to play catch, if you want.”
“Sweet! Dad’s like, always too tired and stuff.”
“That’s crap, Jake,” Tony said, and Anita shot him a look that would have felled a lesser man.
“And when’s the last time you played with him, huh?”
“For God’s sake, ’Nita, my leg’s broken!”
“I meant, before that—”
“Are you the same Uncle Ben that makes the rice?”
In response to his niece’s perfectly timed distraction, Ben turned to smile into a pair of wide, chocolate M&M eyes. Twin ponytails framed a heart-shaped face, the ends feathered over a fancy purple sweater with a big collar, as the little girl’s delicate arms squashed a much-loved, stuffed something to her chest. Ben was instantly smitten. “No, honey, I’m afraid not.”
“Oh.” Mattie hugged the whatever-it-was more tightly. The ponytails swished when she tilted her head, her soft little brows drawn together. Curiosity—and a deep, unquestioning trust that makes a man take stock of his soul—flared in her eyes. “Papi talks about you all the time,” she said with a quick grin for her grandfather. “He says you usta play with Aunt Rosie and Livvy a lot when you were little.”
“I sure did.” Ben nodded toward the thing in her arms. “Who’s your friend?”
“Sammy. He’s a cat. I want a real kitty, but Mama says I can’t have one until I’m six. Which is only a few weeks away, you know,” she said to Anita, who rolled her eyes.
“You must take after your mom,” he said, with a wink at Anita, “’cause you’re very pretty.”
“Yeah, that’s what everybody says,” Mattie said with a very serious nod as her mother snorted in the background. “I’m in kindergarten, but I can already read, so that’s how come I know about the rice.” She leaned sideways against the table, one sneakered foot resting atop its mate, then closed the space between them until their foreheads were only inches apart. “My daddy broke his leg,” she whispered, like Tony wasn’t sitting right there.
“I know,” Ben whispered back. “That’s why I’m here, to help your grandpa until your dad can go back to work.”
“Never mind that it’s totally unnecessary,” Tony said to his father, not even trying to mask his irritation. “For a few weeks, one of the guys could drive me around. Or you could,” he directed at Anita, who crossed her arms underneath her impressive bust, glaring.
“And I already told you, I don’t have any vacation time coming up—”
“And maybe,” Ben’s mother said, clearly trying to keep her kitchen from becoming a war zone, “you should be grateful your brother is back home, yes?”
“Yeah, about that,” Mattie said, startling Ben and eliciting a muttered, “God help us when she hits puberty,” from Anita. “If you’re my uncle, how come I’ve never seen you before? And are you gonna stay or what?”
Ignoring the first question—because how on earth was he supposed to explain something to a five-year-old he didn’t fully comprehend himself?—Ben gently tugged one of those irresistible ponytails and said, “I don’t know, bumblebee,” which was the best he could do, at the moment.
An answer which elicited a soft, hopeful “Oh!” from his mother, even as his brother grabbed his crutches, standing so quickly he knocked over his chair.
“We need to get goin’,” he said. “’Nita, kids, come on.”
“But you just got here!” Ben’s mother said as his father laid a hand on his arm.
“Antonio. Don’t be like this.”
“Like what, Pop?” Tony said, halting his awkward progress toward the door. “Like myself? But then, I guess it doesn’t matter anyway now. Because it’s all good, isn’t it, now that Ben’s back. Kids…now.”
Both Jake and Mattie gave Ben a quick, confused backwards glance—Mattie adding a small wave—before Anita, apology brimming in her eyes, ushered them all out. In the dulled silence that followed, Ben’s mother scooped up one of the whimpering little mutts, stroking it between its big batlike ears. “It’s Tony’s leg, he’s not himself, you know how he hates feeling helpless.”
Ben stood as well, swinging his leather jacket off the back of his chair. At the moment, it took everything he had not to walk out the door, get in his truck and head right back to Dallas. Why on earth had he thought that time in and of itself would have been sufficient to heal this mess, that everyone would have readjusted if he took himself out of the equation…?
“Where are you going?” his father demanded.
“Just out for a walk. Get reacquainted with the neighborhood.”
“Oh.” His father’s heavy brows pushed together. “I thought maybe we could watch a game or something together later.”
“I know. But…” Ben avoided his father’s troubled gaze, tamping down the familiar annoyance before his mouth got away from his brain. Knowing something needed to be fixed didn’t mean he had a clue