CHAPTER SEVEN
Water wasn’t Henry’s normal nightcap, but it was better than juice. Or milk. With a glass in hand, he went into the living room.
Saturday night on the farm was quiet, peaceful, and boring. One night of this would be fine. But thirty? Forget it. Somehow, he would have to liven things up.
Not only for him but also for Elisabeth.
She’d been cleaning ever since the kids went to bed. First the dishes—by hand because they had no dishwasher—then the kitchen, and now the living room.
He wasn’t sure how he could help her—his housekeeper cleaned for him—but Elisabeth paid him to work, not sit around. “Do you want some help?”
“I’m almost done, but thanks.” She folded a pastel rainbow-colored afghan and laid it over the back of the couch. “You should relax. Get used to being here. After tonight, you’ll have a lot of work to do.”
He didn’t consider driving a tractor work, but he appreciated the hospitality. She had gone out of her way to make him feel welcome, even though he was bunking in an eleven-year-old’s personal landfill.
Henry sat on the old recliner. It was comfortable despite the rips and tears and scribbles with colored markers on the tan-colored upholstery.
He took a sip of water and set his glass on the maple end table next to the milk-jug lamp Caitlin had shown him how to turn on with a clap of his hands.
This place was going to take some getting used to.
Henry leaned back and studied the photos on the fireplace mantel. One picture caught his eye. A baby wrapped in a blue blanket was being held by a couple. Sam, Henry guessed. And his parents.
It was none of his business, but Henry wanted to know more about the Wheelers. Especially Elisabeth. Something about her intrigued him, something beyond the way she looked, and he wanted to figure out what. “You said your parents were gone. Where did they go?”
She picked up a baby doll from the floor. “Heaven.”
He should have guessed. No one would leave these children on their own with a farm. Henry struggled for the correct words to say. He had a reputation for being smooth, but smooth wasn’t happening. He’d try sincere. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” She placed the doll in a plastic laundry basket containing toys. He thought back to the playroom he’d had built for Noelle when she visited. She wasn’t even two yet but had more toys than all three Wheeler children.
“What happened to your parents?” Henry was prying, but he didn’t care.
Elisabeth brushed broken pieces of crayons off the coffee table and into a shoebox. “My father and stepmother were killed in a car accident on Highway 18.”
“My parents were killed, too,” he admitted, remembering the pain, the frustration, and the confusion that had followed. “In a plane crash.”
She glanced up at him with compassion in her eyes. “Death is always difficult. My mom died of cancer when I was little, so my stepmother raised me, but it just seems harder when it’s…sudden. Unexpected.”
Even though he hadn’t been close to his parents, it had been a difficult time for Henry.
If not for Brett and Laurel and Cynthia and his other friends…
Henry owed them so much. Sending them on adventures had been an easy way to pay them back.
And he was an excellent matchmaker. “You must have been so young when this happened.”
“I turned twenty-one two weeks before the accident.”
Words failed Henry at the responsibility facing her. Then and now. His life paled in comparison. So did he. He avoided responsibility as much as possible, while she grabbed it with both hands. “You were so young. You’re still so young.”
“I feel much older than twenty-four. The kids are growing up so fast.” Elisabeth kneeled and picked up multicolored LEGO bricks from the braided rug covering the hardwood floor. “One of these days, I’m going to look up, and they’ll be heading off to college.”
“Did you go to college?”
“Yes, but I didn’t finish.” She sounded so nonchalant, but the longing in her eyes told Henry she was far from indifferent. He couldn’t imagine giving up everything for someone else, even if they were relatives.
“Why don’t you go back?” he asked.
“The kids, the farm, my job. Maybe once Caitlin starts school, I’ll think about it.” Elisabeth should be complaining, but she wasn’t.
“Do.”
“You’re sweet to think of me.”
She was the only one he wanted to think of. That realization should worry him more than it did. But whatever he was feeling wouldn’t last. It never did.
“What about you?” she asked. “You’ve lost your parents and…everything else. Do you have plans for the future?”
Concern filled her voice, and Henry felt like a jerk. His plans involved birthday parties and adventures. A trip to New York for Thanksgiving, a vacation in Maui and Lanai for two weeks in January, and skiing in Telluride in February. “A few.”
She didn’t appear convinced. “Once Manny gets back, I won’t need your help.”
“I know.”
“I have a computer. It’s old, but you could put together a résumé.”
“Thanks.”
Henry was ten years older than she was, but he’d never had to face what she faced daily.
He tried to imagine what her life had been like.
One minute, a college student, the next, a parent for three orphans and an orphan herself.
Quitting school to take care of her siblings.
Running a farm. Working at a restaurant.
“Why do you waitress if you have the farm?”
“Farming isn’t the easiest way to make a living.
You never know how the crops will do or how much they will be worth.
That’s why we plant row crops in addition to the cane berries.
Don’t want to have all my eggs in one basket.
” She reached under the table for a red LEGO piece. “And Kathy provides benefits.”
“Benefits?”
“Medical and dental insurance,” Elisabeth explained. “It’s hard to find jobs with benefits in a town this size.”
So practical, so sensible, so mature. At only twenty-four. Hard to believe. He had insurance but didn’t know what it covered. Brett had set him up with everything, so he knew whatever policy he had was more than sufficient.
She put a lid on the plastic container holding the LEGO bricks. “Your job doesn’t come with any benefits.”
“I assumed since it paid minimum wage, benefits weren’t part of the package.”
“They aren’t.” She rose and placed the container in the toy basket. “If workers come back year after year, I try to pay them more, but it’s never enough for their hard work. They deserve so much more than I can afford.”
Elisabeth deserved more than working her life away in order to take care of her family and farm.
This amazing young woman was so much more than he could have ever imagined when he first saw her this morning.
Forget about putting her in a French maid outfit.
Nothing less than a halo and wings would do.
“What about you?” he asked.
She picked up something brown and stuffed—a raggedy teddy bear with a missing ear and ink-drawn eyes. “Me?”
“What do you deserve?”
She clutched the bear to her chest. “I’ve gotten exactly what I deserve.”
Henry didn’t like the flatness of her tone or the way her eyes darkened. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s been a long day.” She set the bear on top of the other toys in the basket. “There. A little less lived-in.”
“A lot less lived-in.” He appreciated her effort.
Elisabeth’s grin lit up her face. He already thought she was gorgeous, but at that moment, she was breathtaking. He’d never seen anything more lovely in all his life. His heart skipped a beat. Three, actually. But who was counting?
“Ready for bed?” she asked.
The air whooshed from Henry’s lungs. He didn’t move.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
It was a moment like no other, and he wanted to hang on to it for as long as possible.
He wasn’t sure what was happening. Something told him he didn’t want to know.
He’d been propositioned before, but this was totally unexpected. Yet welcome. Very, very welcome.
He raised a brow. “Isn’t it a little early for…bed?”
“Morning will be here before you know it. And there’s so much I want to do with you…”
Henry grinned in anticipation.
“Tomorrow.”
Disappointment shot through him. Elisabeth wasn’t propositioning him. She was talking about sleeping.
She glanced back from the staircase. “Are you coming?”
Was he?
Henry had to decide what he wanted here. Yes, he wanted to prove a point to Cynthia, but winning or losing his adventure wasn’t the only thing at stake. Somebody could get hurt. Not him. Surely, he was impervious to big blue eyes and soft kissable lips and a slow sweet smile that…
Yeah, he was impervious to all that. But he could hurt her. Elisabeth.
Or—the idea seized him—he could help her.
Maybe he was meant to help her.
Elisabeth needed so much more than a date or boyfriend or even a husband. And it wasn’t only her. Her brother and sisters were in need, too. The Wheeler family didn’t need a farmhand; they needed a fairy godfather.
And Henry knew the perfect man for the job.
* * *
“He’s gotta be dead.”
No, Henry wasn’t dead. But death didn’t sound so bad to him. He’d only closed his eyes a few minutes ago, and now they wanted him to get out of bed. Not even fairy godfathers got up this early.
“If he isn’t dead,” the high voice he guessed belonged to Caitlin said, “why isn’t he moving?”
Because I’m trying to sleep.
Henry didn’t want to move; he didn’t want to open his eyes. He wanted only for them to go away. Far, far away.
“No one can stay still that long.”
Curiosity got the better of him. He pried open his heavy eyelids and was assaulted by bright white light.
He squinted, but that did no good. A jagged pain shot through his head, ricocheting off every nerve ending, brain cell, and whatever else was inside there.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Not even his worst hangover had felt this bad.
That was what he got for sleeping without a feather pillow.
And these sheets were not Egyptian cotton. A poly-cotton blend, no doubt.
“You’re finally awake.” The soothing tone of a feminine voice seeped into his foggy brain and made him feel better. He’d fallen asleep, thinking about her voice. Her.
Elisabeth.
He forced his eyes open. Four pairs of much too clear, much too bright blue eyes stared at him. Henry glanced around for a clock but saw only a candy bar wrapper, a pile of comic books, and stacks of cards—baseball and monster creatures. “What time is it?”
“Seven,” Elisabeth said.
In the morning? Henry couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up before nine o’clock.
He slept late unless he had a plane to catch or an event to attend.
And he always tried to schedule those at decent hours.
He cleared his dry, scratchy throat and wished he could do the same with his tired, muddled brain.
“Is this what time you normally get up?”
“Usually, it’s earlier,” Abby said.
Any earlier and they might as well not go to bed. Henry never fell asleep until after one o’clock in the morning. “Even on weekends?”
“On Saturdays, we sometimes sleep in until seven thirty or eight,” Elisabeth said. “It depends on what we need to get done.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “She means chores.”
Okay, Henry just realized a big downside to farming. He would have to adjust his hours.
“Would you like to go to church with us?” Elisabeth asked.
Henry thought for a moment. “Is someone getting married?”
“No,” she said.
He sat up and hit his head on the upper bunk. Rubbing his throbbing forehead, he lay down. “Did someone die?”
“No,” Abby said.
“Baptism?”
Another no, this time from Sam.
“Then why are you going to church?” he asked.
“It’s Sunday,” Caitlin answered.
Sunday meant sleeping even later than he normally did. It meant eating brunch and sipping mimosas. What he wouldn’t give for a cappuccino right now. Forget that, he wanted more sleep.
“There’s breakfast afterward,” Abby said. “Mayor Logan makes her famous buttermilk pancakes.”
Henry adjusted the covers. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“No problem,” Elisabeth said. “I’ll leave a list of things for you to do while we’re gone.”
“Fine.” Top of his to-do list was going back to sleep.
“See you later,” she said.
“Later.” He buried his head against the pillow, closed his eyes, and half waved. Much later.