LITMIR.BIZ

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services. A few months ago, she’d filled in part-time for a few weeks at the local country club for a tennis instructor recuperating from emergency surgery. She’d gotten to know Payton and Kix in the kids’ class. She was hardly a tennis pro, but the club owner was a family friend who’d been in a bind and who knew Maggie had played competitively during high school and college. Somehow, Maggie had allowed herself to be persuaded to fill in.

      At about the same time Maggie had taught his daughters, Garrett had started joining his friend Jay for Sunday sunrise services, bringing Maggie and his girls together even more often. She was fond of both Payton and Kix, but they were a handful. She couldn’t imagine being responsible for their full-time care and well-being.

      Jay closed the meeting with a prayer and an open invitation to the little church in town where he would hold services later that morning. He made himself available to shake hands and speak with guests afterward while Garrett packed away his acoustic guitar. Payton and Kix started chattering the moment the service ended, telling her about their activities since they’d seen her last Sunday, talking over each other in attempts to claim her full attention.

      “… and I love your red leather sandals with the cork wedge heels so much, but Dad won’t let me even look at heels yet because he says they aren’t practical for someone my age …”

      “… and my friend Kim my got her own smartphone, but Daddy says no way can I have one …”

      “… and there was a really great party at Nikea’s house, but of course Dad wouldn’t let me go just because most of the kids were older than me …”

      “… and I wanted to play video games with my friend but Grammy made me clean my room, and it could have waited until later, but she …”

      Laughing, Maggie held up both hands. “Girls, girls! I can only listen to one of you at a time.”

      They started again without noticeable success in being patient, but Maggie managed to follow along for the most part. A litany of complaints about their father was not-so-well buried in their babbling. She had already observed that he ran a fairly strict household, though it was obvious—to her, at least—that he was crazy about his girls. She suspected he was simply overwhelmed at times. His only assistance in raising them came from his mother and grandmother, who shared a house on the same block as the one in which Garrett lived with his daughters. From what little she had seen of the family, it seemed as though Garrett was almost as responsible for the older women as he was for his daughters.

      This was a man encumbered by serious baggage.

      Guitar case in hand, he approached with a faint smile. Why did she find the slight curve of his firm lips so much more appealing than Jay’s bright, beaming grins? She liked Jay very much, but there was just something about Garrett….

      “Good morning, Maggie,” he said in his deep voice that never failed to elicit a shiver of reaction from her.

      She liked to believe she’d become an expert at hiding that response behind a breezy smile. “Good morning, Garrett. The music was especially nice today.”

      “I just play some chords,” he said with a little shrug. “Jay chooses the songs. But I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

      “I was just going to tell her about my birthday plans, Daddy,” Kix said, bouncing up and down on her white sandals. “I’m so excited!”

      Maggie smiled indulgently at the littlest McHale sister. As she almost always did, Kix wore her favorite pink, which clashed cheerfully with her flame-red hair but looked just right, somehow, on the adorable girl. “Sounds intriguing. What’s the plan, Kix?”

      “We’re coming here,” Kix almost shouted in reply. “For a whole week! Isn’t that sweet?”

      “Not quite a week,” her father corrected. “Monday afternoon through Sunday service.”

      Kix waved off those details as unimportant. “Daddy rented a cabin and we’re coming a week from tomorrow. My birthday is that Tuesday and we’re going to have a party in the cabin—and you can come! And Grammy and Meemaw are coming, too. And we’re going swimming and fishing and hiking and boating and Daddy’s going to take the whole week off work and we’ll make s’mores and—”

      “Kix,” her father interrupted firmly, “take a breath.”

      “I hadn’t heard you were coming,” Maggie said in the brief ensuing lull. She wondered why the information shook her a little. After all, she saw Garrett—er, the McHale family—every Sunday, so why did the thought of him—er, them—being here every day for almost a week throw off her usual equilibrium?

      “Kix just sprang this request on me last week,” Garrett admitted. “I was actually surprised a cabin was available on such short notice, especially considering it’s the Fourth of July week. I told Kix I couldn’t promise anything, but fortunately for us there was a late cancellation, so we were able to grab the reservation.”

      “I’m glad we could accommodate you,” Maggie said automatically, then glanced at Kix. “So you wanted to spend your birthday week here, so close to home?”

      “I wanted to go to the beach.” Payton looked and sounded utterly bored. “Like Padre Island or somewhere cool. But no, Kix had to come here where we come every single Sunday. Lame, huh?”

      “But, Payton—Ouch!”

      “Payton, did you just punch your sister?” Garrett demanded sternly.

      “No, Daddy,” Kix assured him, innocently wide-eyed as she not-so-surreptitiously rubbed her arm. “She just sort of bumped into me.”

      “There’s a bunch of geese swimming by the pier,” Payton said quickly. “Can I take Kix down to look at them?”

      He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Don’t get too close to the water. And we can’t stay long. I have things to do today.”

      “You can talk to Maggie while we look at the geese,” Payton told him before turning to dash toward the lake with her sister.

      Something in the teen’s voice made Maggie blink a couple of times. Surely Payton wasn’t trying her hand at matchmaking? But Garrett didn’t react, so she told herself she must have misunderstood. After all, why would Payton want yet another adult in her already oversuper-vised—according to her, at least—life?

      “How have you been, Maggie?” he asked politely when they were alone.

      “Fine, thank you,” she replied, equally cordial. “And you?”

      He shrugged. “Busy. But fine.”

      She knew that in addition to taking care of his daughters, his mother and his grandmother, Garrett taught flying lessons and piloted charter flights out of the small local airport. During the past few months, Payton and Kix had told her he’d left the military, in which he’d most recently served as a flight instructor at Laughlin Air Force Base, after the unexpected death a little more than a year ago of their mother, his ex-wife. He had moved back to this area to be closer to his mother and grandmother.

      Garrett and the girls’ mother had divorced when Kix was only a baby. They had shared custody afterward, though the girls had lived primarily with their mother. Their home with her had been in San Antonio, a three-hour drive from the base, so they’d seen their father on alternate weekends and holidays for the most part, which had meant a huge adjustment for all of them when he’d become solely responsible for them.

      In listening to the girls chatter about their lives, Maggie had gotten the impression that they had loved their mother but had spent as much time with nannies and babysitters as with her. “She was gone a lot,” Payton had said simply. “She was a lawyer, so she worked long hours and she had lots of professional clubs and parties and stuff she had to go to most evenings. She liked to hang out with her friends on weekends, because she said she worked so hard during the week that she needed down time.”

      Time away from her children,

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