LITMIR.BIZ

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incorporate them into his routine.

      As for the fast food that he tried to keep to a minimum, they had just arrived home from a seven-day trip to Denver where Hutch had closed on the sale of his and Iris’s house. Plus he’d come home to details that needed to be attended to with the new store, and an upstairs tenant who had arrived during his absence and needed him to take care of the broken lock on the apartment door—sometimes fast food was just a necessity.

      As it was, he was still five minutes late for getting upstairs to the apartment.

      He glanced over his shoulder as he did the dishes. Ash’s sippy cup was right where he’d left it.

      “Finish your milk, Ash,” he repeated. “It’ll make you big and strong.”

      “Lise you,” Ash said.

      “Yep, like me,” Hutch confirmed, feeling that twinge of delight that his son’s current hero worship gave him. The books said things like that came and went with the different stages kids passed through, but Hutch was enjoying it while it lasted. “Let’s see your muscles.”

      Ash raised his arms in flexing He-Man fashion, fists pointed toward his tiny shoulders.

      “They’re lookin’ good, but I think they need some more milk. Drink up.”

      The tiny tot took the sippy cup and finally drank from it.

      Hutch wasn’t sure whether encouragement along those lines translated into the kind of pressure his own father had put on him and Ian to be athletes—actually, to be football stars to equal Morgan Kincaid’s own accomplishments as a former NFL player. Hutch hoped not. Pressuring Ash was definitely not something he wanted to do. The be-like-Dad, muscle-building angle just seemed to be one that worked, so Hutch was using it. He’d stop if it ever started to become anything more than a ploy.

      He just wanted to be a good dad. He wanted to incorporate the parts of his own father that he’d liked and appreciated, and leave out the parts that hadn’t been great. And he wanted to do the kind of job his late wife would have expected of him, the kind of job Iris would be counting on him to do.

      “Yook now,” Ash demanded.

      Hutch glanced over his shoulder once more. The sippy cup was drained and Ash was again flexing.

      “Yep, I can see those muscles growing already. Good job!”

      Dishes finally in the dishwasher, Hutch rinsed the sink, then dampened a paper towel and returned to the kitchen table where Ash sat in a booster seat propped on one of the chairs.

      “Cleanup,” he announced.

      “No!” Ash protested the way he always did when it came to washing his face.

      “Come on, Issa is expecting us and we can’t visit a lady with ketchup all over your face and hands.”

      “Itta’s pit-tee,” Ash said, seeming more inclined toward cooperation with the mention of Issa.

      “Yes, she is,” Hutch confirmed as he applied the damp cloth to the toddler.

      Thoughts of Issa, images of her, hadn’t been far from Hutch’s mind since he’d first set eyes on her this afternoon. Mentioning her name to his son, Ash’s comment about her, were all it took to bring her to the forefront yet again.

      Sleeping Beauty, that had been Hutch’s first impression.

      The incredible beauty sleeping on the couch in the apartment upstairs.

      When her brother Dag had rented the apartment for her, he’d told Hutch that his sister was quiet and the shiest of all the McKendricks. That she was meticulous and tidy so she would be a good tenant. Dag hadn’t said anything about the fact that Issa was a head turner.

      Not that that was at all relevant to renting her a temporary place to live.

      It was just that, to Hutch, Issa McKendrick was something to behold and he sort of wished he’d known that in advance so he hadn’t been so dumbstruck at first.

      She was a vision that made him not quite believe his own eyes.

      Flaxen hair and skin like porcelain—those had been the first two things to strike him.

      And she had the most delicate features—a straight, unmarred forehead; a gently sloping nose; a slightly rounded chin; full, petal pink lips; rosy, high cheekbones; and when she’d smiled slightly in her sleep, there had been dimples. Deep, deep dimples in both cheeks.

      And then she’d opened her eyes. And even from across the room he’d been able to see how blue they were. Dark, sapphire blue—they stood out strikingly amidst that light skin and hair. Sparkling dark sapphires…

      She was breathtakingly beautiful but still with a wholesomeness to her.

      But stunning or not, it didn’t make any difference.

      Hutch was not in the market for a woman. Sure, a year and a half of widowerhood might mean that he could be. But he wasn’t. He had Ash to think of. To focus on. He had to concentrate on being a single father. A father to his own kid. This was no time to get into anything with any woman, let alone with someone who had issues of her own to deal with—issues like a baby on the way without a dad.

      But Issa McKendrick wasn’t going to be hard to look at while they both lived here, he thought as he lifted his son down from the booster seat.

      He just wasn’t interested in anything more than looking. The way he might look at a painting or a sculpture or a photograph—purely as an appreciation for a thing of beauty. A woman of beauty.

      But there was no doubt about it, Issa McKendrick was definitely that.

      “Itta hep. I’ma eat cookies.”

      “I think I’ve been had,” Issa observed.

      Hutch Kincaid laughed. “I think you have.”

      In anticipation of Hutch and his son coming to install her new door handle and lock, Issa had run to the store and bought cookies for the little boy. She’d set some of them out on a plate on the coffee table.

      Hutch had made a great show of Ash being his assistant, enlisting his son to hand him the screwdriver when he asked for it.

      “Then when you’re finished,” Issa had said, “there are cookies…”

      That had drawn Ash’s attention to the dish on the coffee table. But a mere glance in that direction was the tot’s only immediate response.

      What he had done was lure Issa into helping Hutch, too, handing the screwdriver to her so that she could hand it to Hutch.

      Issa had thought it was cute that the toddler wanted to include her. And in an attempt to be more outgoing and friendly, she’d complied.

      But once Ash had her at the door with Hutch, holding the screwdriver, the little boy made the announcement that she could play assistant while he went to have a cookie.

      “How can a two-and-a-half-year-old be that tricky?” she asked.

      “Hey, when cookies are involved, it’s every man for himself,” Hutch said with a laugh before he called after his son, “One, Ash. You can have one cookie.”

      Then turning back to Issa, Hutch whispered, “Now watch, he’s going to take a bite out of one, say he doesn’t like it, choose another, take a bite, and do the same thing until he’s had a taste of every kind you have out there.”

      “I shouldn’t have bought the assortment?”

      “You can’t put that much temptation in front of him.”

      “I don’t know anything about raising kids,” Issa confessed.

      But apparently Hutch Kincaid did because Ash had done exactly what his father had predicted and was on to his second cookie.

      “One, Ash,” Hutch warned.

      “I

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