LITMIR.BIZ

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word for nothing left to lose, and looking at Tucker, Garnet knew perfectly well that she had a ton to lose by spending any time with him. Her dignity … although she’d already lost most of that, by bleeding all over the school hall. Her pride … though, she still had her pride. Something she’d guarded tighter than gold for the last few years.

      “I just want to talk about the boys,” he said. “A half hour? Your place?”

      The boys. Truth was, she wouldn’t mind talking about Petie. If there was an alpha male in a three-state radius, it was Tucker. After Mrs. Riddle’s comments, Garnet really wouldn’t mind hearing his opinion.

      “A half hour,” she conceded uneasily.

      He smiled. A smile that knocked her common sense to its knees.

      And then the boys descended on them, carrying a pan of water, most of which sloshed onto the floor, an ice pack, a brown bottle of betaine and a giant first-aid box. The principal and school secretary trailed right behind the boys.

      Garnet closed her eyes and wished she could click her heels together three times and land in Kansas. How much worse could a bad day get?

      Chapter Two

      Apparently the day could get much, much worse—but Garnet couldn’t guess that. Initially the drive home from school lifted her spirits.

      On the third turn, she saw the sign for Plain Vanilla. A quarter mile later, blacktop turned to gravel, and the hot, brilliant sun disappeared, turned into the fragrant shade of pine forest. One more turn in the road, and her pride and joy came into view.

      Petie scrabbled from the old van in a flash. Once he’d seen his report card—all As except for a C in gym—he never asked another thing about her meeting with Mrs. Riddle. School, schedules and the Mrs. Riddles in his life were now completely forgotten. All those academic As had earned him the right to download the latest game he wanted.

      Garnet climbed from the van more slowly. Her right foot was still smarting, her head doing an annoying little throb—but she didn’t really care. She took a long, lazy moment to cherish the view.

      Her five acres had been scrap-scrub when she bought them six years before. No one thought she could make anything of it—especially not her parents, and heaven knew, she had a long, long history of disappointing her family.

      Plain Vanilla had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

      It had almost broken hers.

      Four customers were parked below the shop—not bad, for midday on a Thursday. Nothing about Plain Vanilla was fancy. The building had shake-shingle siding, with a long overhang for a traditional country-style porch. Unless a serious storm threatened, the double screen doors were kept open and welcoming. Pots of herbs and flowers added color.

      The parking lot was known to get a little weedy, but she could already inhale the scents emanating from the shop. Basil and chives. Lavender and vanilla. Scents hung low in this tuck of valley. So, of course, did the heat.

      Her bungalow was invisible from here, behind the shop, but to the right stretched open ground—the hodgepodge of raised beds and climate-controlled greenhouses where she grew her own herbs and spices. Two years ago, she—and the bank—had added horizontal blinds that could be opened or closed, to protect the plants from too much sun.

      Except for the fancy blinds, she’d made everything herself. There’d never been money for professionals … but she’d had two staff from the start, primarily because she couldn’t work 24-hour days and handle Petie, especially when he’d been little.

      And from inside the shop, she suddenly heard two women’s voices … and suspected her son had tattled about her being hurt, because two bodies hightailed down the porch steps faster than she could run for cover.

      Mary Lou was somewhere between fifty-five and ninety-five, tougher than beef jerky, and looked it. Her health was precarious, not that she’d admit it. Garnet had “discovered her” five years ago, when Mary Lou had shown up at the back door, fixed her with a scissor-sharp scowl, said her husband was dead, she was bored out of her skull, and she needed to work, no wages needed, just a job.

      Garnet had hired her and never looked back. If a thief ever came around, Mary Lou would probably scare him to death, and heaven knew she was a worker.

      “Garnet! Peter said you were hurt! Who did what to you, you tell me right now!”

      “It was just a couple of bumps, absolutely nothing.”

      Mary Lou frowned, but then immediately went off on her own bumps that day. “Well, this morning was a blinger. First off, the postman forgot to leave me stamps and I was going to pay bills. Then Georgia Cunningham, she came in, bought fifty dollars’ worth of all kinds of things, put two twenties on the counter and left. Just like that. I was going to call the police, but then I thought I’d wait until you got home. But I think she should spend the night in jail, myself. Ten dollars! She cheated us of ten dollars! I never …”

      Then it was Sally, striding right behind her. “Peter said there was a man who knocked you down—”

      “It was a complete accident. No biggie. What’s wrong?”

      Sally had dark caramel skin, hair done in dreads and a perpetual frown that did a great job of concealing a gorgeous face. She had two kids and a no-good husband. She worked like a fiend, loved the plants as much as Garnet did and could stand up for herself anywhere she needed to—except at home.

      Garnet could tell when her jerk-water husband had done something because Sally’s hands would start jittering; she couldn’t stand still.

      “I got a rash on the lavender.”

      “Which one?”

      “The French blue. They’re just speckles on the leaves, but they weren’t there yesterday. I’ve been trying to look it up. We don’t want it spreading. But you know me and reading those stupid manuals—”

      “I know. It’s okay. We’ll go check it out.”

      And that was how it went, one crisis after another all afternoon. Early on, she hustled home to talk to Pete—and to make sure he’d had lunch. But of course, being Petie, he’d made himself a sandwich, cleaned up and naturally parked in front of his computer … a water-cooled system that he’d put together himself last Christmas.

      She ruffled his mop of brown hair—hair so luxuriously thick she was jealous of it. He was scrunched up in his computer chair, imitating a human pretzel. “Hey. I didn’t get a chance to tell you what Mrs. Riddle had to say.”

      “Not now, Mom. I’m at level four.”

      “Okay. We can talk about it later, I guess.” She hesitated. “Mr. MacKinnon’s coming over for a little while after dinner.”

      “You mean Will’s dad? That Mr. MacKinnon?”

      “Yes.”

      “Is Will coming over, too?”

      “I don’t know. He might.”

      Okay. Whatever.”

      No “why” or “what for?” He didn’t care. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose, then bent his head to the game again. She couldn’t resist giving him a fast smooch on his forehead. Now that he was ten, she had to steal kisses, kidnap hugs.

      “Mom. I’m creating an alternate universe right now. It’s really hard.”

      “Okay, okay.” She smiled … but the smile faded in seconds. This was exactly what Mrs. Riddle had implied. Petie was all too happy alone. Everything he loved had always been inside. He’d just never been the kind of kid to play outside, getting into scrapes and mud with playmates.

      So, she told herself there was no reason to get nervous about Tucker stopping by. It was a good idea. Single parents had problems that two-parent families just didn’t have.

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