Protecting What's Mine(82)

The dog would help, Linc predicted.

“I don’t think so,” he said, ruffling his nephew’s thick, dark hair. “I think she’s just running an errand.”

“If she does abandon us, will you come live with us and Dad?” Brandon asked earnestly.

“Absolutely,” Linc promised. “Five bachelor guys in a house living it up?”

“Is bachelor when all the ladies show up to live with you and you have to pick the prettiest one or the one that yells and cries all the time?” Mikey wanted to know.

Another unsupervised victim of television. He couldn’t wait to tell Jillian.

“That’s a different kind,” Linc assured him.

His nephews lined up in front of him and waited expectantly. “So?” Brandon asked.

“So, what?”

“Are you going to feed us or something?”

“Better. I’m putting you to work first. You have to earn those grilled cheeses.” He pointed out the open bay door where the ladder truck sat outside on the asphalt.

“What kind of work?” Mikey asked suspiciously.

Linc picked up the buckets and sponges he’d stashed on a workbench. “You’re washing my ladder truck.”

Someday, Linc thought as he watched the boys battle over the hand line, his nephews wouldn’t be ecstatic about washing the bottom two feet of the fire department’s apparatus. Someday, they wouldn’t be excited about visiting him. They’d be too busy with school and sports and girls—or boys. So he’d hang on to these moments now while he had them before they were gone.

He’d hang on, and he’d wish, he’d hope, that Mackenzie O’Neil would take a chance on him and give them both a shot at this.





38





She’d gone and done it now. She’d officially lost her damn mind, Mack decided, as she hauled the final load from the grocery store into the kitchen. There were bags everywhere. Food everywhere. And because the food couldn’t be served out of shopping totes or store packaging, she’d had to buy serving dishes, bowls, paper plates, utensils.

Then there’d been the issue of where to sit. She couldn’t very well have a dozen people over and cram them around her four-person dining room table. Though really, who could have known they’d all say yes on such short notice?

So she’d bought a picnic table and a couple of folding lawn chairs from Bob’s Fine Furnishings. The table was due for delivery in ten minutes.

“What if they all have to go to the bathroom at the same time?” Mack groaned to herself as she unloaded ten tons of produce for the fruit and vegetable trays she thought would be nice to snack on.

She froze. What if no one shows up?

Leaving everything where it was—would the kids even like those little cups of ice cream anyway?—she hurried out the back door and across the yard to the gate.

She knocked on Linc’s back door.

It was open. He never locked it, and sometimes she let herself in. But in her self-induced panic, she was rooted to the spot. She stopped knocking when Sunshine bounded up to the glass, followed quickly by a bewildered-looking Linc.

He opened the door with a grin.

“I made a terrible mistake. I had a good day. The weather was nice. Then some evil force took over my body and started inviting people over for a cookout. Tonight. At my place. You’re invited, of course. I should have led with that. Anyway, I don’t know what to do. I have a kitchen full of food, and what if no one shows up or they all have to go to the bathroom at the same time and there’s a line? Do I have enough beer? What about wine? Do kids like ice cream cups?”

He stopped her by gripping her shoulders and laying a hard kiss on her mouth.

When he pulled back, Mack’s brain was quiet again.

“Dreamy?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you need?”

“Help?”





He was a natural. Within five minutes, he’d unpacked all of the groceries and triaged them into prep order. While she oversaw the table delivery, Linc appeared with a large plastic tote marked “PAR-TAY” and began unloading supplies.

She sliced fruit and vegetables, and he threw chicken breasts into bags of marinade.

“We’ll keep the food inside, that way everyone can sit on the deck or at the picnic table since it’s a nice night,” he told her as he manhandled two large coolers onto her deck. “Beer in this one. Water and soda and kids’ drinks in this one.”

“I don’t have any kids’ drinks,” she groaned.

“Dreamy, I’ve got 37,000 nieces and nephews. I’ve got kids’ drinks,” he promised.

“I’ll pay you back,” she said.

He climbed the steps and put his hands on her hips. “You’re breathtaking when you’re Dr. O’Neil on the scene. You’re beautiful when you’re trying to line dance. But this frazzled, wide-eyed woman who just wants her friends to have a good time is downright adorable.”

“Shut up.” She let out a long breath and gave in, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her face into his chest for just a minute. He was so steady. So good.

Sunshine trotted inside with a face full of dirt and what looked like the better portion of a tree stump in her mouth.