LITMIR.BIZ

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glancing around as he took Willy from the car seat.

      Not that there was a lot to see—some farm equipment, a garage about the same size as the barn, with four doors and what looked to be an apartment on top. The winter’s remaining bales of hay were stacked in a lean-to. Several towering apple trees provided shade for the rear of the house and the mud porch that jutted out from it. A brick-paved patio held a picnic table, benches and stacked lawn chairs awaiting summer.

      “There you go, little man,” Clair heard Jace say as he set Willy on his feet.

      No sooner did he let go of the small boy than Willy took off like a shot for the barn, disappearing through the big open doors without a word to Jace.

      “Where’s he going?” Clair asked.

      “To say good morning to Tom. He’s our barn cat. Willy never gets near the barn without going in after him.”

      “Would you mind if I went, too?”

      “No, go ahead. I need to get the wood out of the truck and start work. I’ll be right over there.” He nodded toward the white rail fence that surrounded an area of dirt beside the barn. The paddock, Clair assumed, although it didn’t really matter to her what it was called.

      Willy was all that was on her mind as she took off in the same direction he had, entertaining visions of the two of them bonding over the pet.

      She expected to find boy and cat the moment she stepped through the barn’s main door but all she saw was a long center aisle with empty stall after empty stall lining both sides.

      “Willy?” she called.

      The child didn’t answer her, but from outside Jace’s booming baritone said, “He’ll be in the tack room.”

      Clair wasn’t sure what a tack room was, but since there was a door at the end of the center aisle, she headed for that. Along the way she looked into each stall just in case, but to no avail. Neither Willy nor the cat were in any of them.

      “Willy?” she called again tentatively as she approached the door.

      She could see one end of a tall workbench. Harnesses, reins and various paraphernalia hung from hooks on the walls. But she still didn’t see her nephew or the cat.

      Until she actually reached the door.

      But she’d only taken two steps in the direction of the workbench when the cat let out an angry meow, and Willy wailed, “Ouch!”

      Then Willy scrambled out from under the workbench and charged passed her, crying loudly, “Unca Ace! Unca Ace!”

      Terrified of what might be wrong, Clair ran after him, arriving at Jace’s side just as he scooped Willy into his arms.

      “What’d you do, Willy?” he asked patiently, scanning a scratch on the boy’s hand.

      “I talked back of cat, cat talked back of me,” Willy lamented.

      “Mmm-hmm,” Jace said as if he understood exactly what the little boy had said. “You were pulling Tom’s tail again, weren’t you? And he hissed at you, you told him to be quiet, and went right on pulling it until he scratched you. Right?”

      “Yep,” Willy said pitifully.

      “You can’t be mean to Tom. What did I tell you about that?”

      “He’s mean on me.”

      “He’s only mean to you when you’re mean to him first. You can’t pull his tail.”

      “I wanna.”

      “Well, you can’t. And if you do it again, I won’t let you go in and see him anymore.”

      Out jutted Willy’s bottom lip and down went his brows into a dark frown. But then he said, “I wanna hep you,” in a conciliatory whine.

      “You can help me as soon as we wash out that scratch.”

      And with that they took a quick, first-aid break in the mudroom.

      Clair only watched from the sidelines because every time she got too near Willy insisted she, “Dit away!” as if she’d been the cause of his misery.

      Then, once Jace was certain Willy was well taken care of, they all went back outside.

      Jace had unloaded the new rails from the truck bed and stacked them on the ground behind it. He pointed at them as they passed them on their way back.

      “You guys can bring those over to the fence,” he suggested. “Willy can take one end and Clair can take the other.”

      It was clearly a chore he’d left purposely for them, because he could have hauled the whole lot of it in one trip himself. Clair appreciated that he was encouraging the togetherness so she could interact with her nephew. But Willy wanted no part of it, and the minute Clair put a hand on one of the rails, he dropped his end, picked up another board and dragged it himself.

      “He’s an independent little guy,” Jace said apologetically when, after the third try, she’d given up and left the chore to Willy, settling near where Jace worked just to watch the boy.

      “I suppose that’s a good thing,” Clair said. But she knew she didn’t sound convincing.

      Jace used the claw end of a hammer as leverage to pull off the damaged rails he intended to replace. He had a rhythm going, and it caught Clair’s eye even as she meant to be only watching Willy.

      But Jace was something to see as he braced a booted foot against the lowest rail, jammed the claw behind the board and nail and then put muscle into yanking them free.

      Clair told herself not to pay attention to it. That “Unca Ace” was not why she was there. But with the March sun streaking his hair with gold and illuminating his handsome face as perfectly as a photographer’s lamp at a photo shoot, he was a hard sight to tear her gaze from.

      When he’d pulled off a number of rails and Willy had all the new ones haphazardly deposited nearby, he said, “Okay, pal, if you’re careful to grab the old boards in the middle where there aren’t any nails you can take them to the trash for me. Maybe we can get Clair to stand over there and throw them in for us.” Then, under his breath, he said to Clair, “He has to have help with that.”

      Willy might have needed her assistance, but that didn’t mean he was interested in socializing during the process.

      Clair followed him to a large metal trash receptacle where he gave each board to her as solemnly as if it were the Olympic torch. But she got no response to anything she said to him to try to draw him out, except when she asked about the picture on the front of his T-shirt. Then he said, “I watch Dooby-Doo on TV,” and went back to ignoring her.

      That was how the bulk of the day went, and by the end of it, Clair was both weary and dejected.

      But she didn’t want Jace to know it, and so, as they drove back into town, she decided to do some subtle pleading of her own case.

      “It doesn’t seem very practical to contend with a two-and-a-half-year-old while you work every day,” she said, slightly out of the blue and confident that Willy wouldn’t be aware of the conversation because he’d fallen instantly asleep in his car seat.

      He gave her the sideways glance he’d given her on their way out to the ranch, taking his eyes off the road for only a split second and not turning his head. “Oh, I don’t know. I think we make a pretty good team.”

      “You must not get as much done, though. Stopping to deal with a child every few minutes is distracting, and the time it takes away from your work adds up.”

      Jace smiled mysteriously, and she had the impression that he was seeing through her again. “What are you, an efficiency expert?”

      “I’m just saying that—”

      “It isn’t as if I’m in an office with a quota to fill. I don’t see anything wrong with what

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