Home to Stay. Annie Jones
Emma.” For an instant the years fell away. She was fresh out of nursing college and he still brand-spanking-new to his veterinary practice and anything seemed possible.
The little girl loped the last few steps up the walk and up to the huge double doors on the first floor. As her small fist pounded away, she called out, “Hello. Come out, Great-aunt Sammie. It’s your pretty-great Ruth. I came to visit you.”
“Visit?” That yanked Hank back to the present. He looked from the child to Emma. “Then…you don’t know?”
“Know what?” Emma lifted her hair off the graceful curve of her collarbone and met his gaze unflinchingly.
“Your aunt Sammie isn’t going to come out, Emma. She had a heart scare last night.”
“A heart scare?” Her hand dropped from her neck to form a fist against her wrinkled black dress. She took a step in his direction, but her legs seemed unsteady. Her face went pale. Her voice barely rose above a whisper. “You mean a heart attack?”
“Not a heart attack.” He took another step toward her. “I was here when it happened, she just—”
“No one called me.” She seemed to teeter a bit, swaying but not actually moving her feet. “Is she…is she going to be all right?”
Another step and he was close enough to see the crinkles of concern between her eyebrows.
“Just a scare,” he assured her. She looked in no condition to hear the details of the story from him right now. “Doctor wanted her to stay in town for a day or two as a precaution. That’s all. That’s straight from your sister Claire’s mouth and you know she’s not one to sugarcoat anything.”
“I had my phone off while I was driving. Drove all night, after… I just had to get away and…” Emma put her hand to her temple. “I’m so tired and hungry. This is so… I came here because I couldn’t…” She glanced down at her daughter and shook her head. “I thought Sammie would be here to… I thought Sammie Jo would always be here, and now you’re telling me…”
He thought she was going to sit down, bury her head in her hands and sob uncontrollably.
Injured animals he could deal with. But crying women were way outside his comfort zone. And Emma, the woman he had thought of all these years as made of stone, dissolving into tears? “Why don’t I let you into the house. You can lie down a minute and—I’ll fix you something to eat then—”
“Lying down. Eating. They both sound so good.” She put her hand to her head and yawned again. “I can’t think straight but I need to talk to my aunt, or my sister or…” She took a step toward the house, pressed one hand to her head and another to her stomach. Her knees crumpled beneath her.
“Are you kidding me?” In less than a heartbeat he dropped his reservations about getting involved, his reservations about all things Emma, and did what needed to be done. “What’s with you Newberry women and fainting?”
She didn’t say a word as he fit his arm under the crook of her knees and wrapped his other arm firmly around her shoulders.
Her eyelids fluttered slightly.
“At least I know you’re alive,” he murmured as he jostled her around until he felt sure he had her securely in his grasp.
“Hey!” She roused slightly and tried to kick. The feeble attempt only emphasized how weak she was from her long drive. “Put me down. I can do this myself. I do everything myself.”
“Nope. Sorry, not this time.” He clutched her high against his chest and gazed at her sweet, sleepy face. “I have a key to this place and have already cleared my schedule for the morning. I’m going to watch your daughter and you’re going to take a nap…”
“I’m fine.” Her kick turned into more of a halfhearted swing of one leg. She yawned. “I need to go see Sammie Jo.”
“Sammie Jo is fine.” It was nothing for him to carry her, even over the largely unkempt ground of the old bird-sanctuary lawn. He had made his living mostly wrangling farm animals, wrestling with everything from birthing cattle to giving a ferret nose drops. He could handle one wily but weary Newberry woman without any complications. “You just need to—”
“Be careful. That’s my mommy,” the girl said, her chin thrust out and her soft blond hair wafting in the breeze.
“I know. She’s…” Hank looked down at Emma Newberry, who had laid her head against his shoulder when he’d begun walking. She was now blissfully dozing on his blue work shirt.
“Your mom is going to take a nap. But that’s okay. You have Earnest T and Otis and me to look after you until she wakes up.”
No complications? Her daughter couldn’t be left to her own devices, her aunt was ill and her sister was preoccupied, to say the least. He hadn’t wanted to get involved but he didn’t have any choice. Emma Newberry didn’t have anyone but him.
Trouble? Hank had a feeling that was an understatement for what had just come home to roost.
Chapter Two
“It’s pretend cake, Ruth. This isn’t my house. You aren’t my kid. I can’t feed you real cake. That’s just the way it is.”
At the sound of a man’s voice holding a potentially temper-tantrum-inducing conversation with her daughter, Emma sat bolt up and almost tumbled off the edge of the couch.
Her mind raced back frantically over the events of the past twenty-four hours. She tugged at the neckline of her only really nice dress then ran her fingers over her diamond bracelet. She never should have accepted it as a birthday gift from her boss, Dr. Ben Weaver. She had told him it was too expensive, not to mention impractical for her as a nurse and single mom. But he’d made her feel like an ingrate for refusing the gesture. He liked to see her happy, to give her nice things, he’d said. That decision lead to another date and then another. And then last night, an out-of-the-blue proposal.
Emma shut her eyes. Why hadn’t she just said no? Running away wasn’t an answer. She of all people should know that.
“I think you’ll find, Miss Ruth Newberry, that there is a lot to be said for having pretend cake. Starting with not having to do dishes after eating it.”
Emma swept her gaze over the cluttered but homey living room of the old Newberry home and thoughts of Ben and the choice she had avoided making fell away. How did she get to this couch? How long had she been sleeping? And why was Hank—Mr. “kids are great—for other people”—Corsaut talking to her daughter about pretend cake?
“Ruth?” Emma pushed up to her feet and for a second the momentum made her head go woozy.
“But if you throw a fit—” Hank kept his tone matter-of-fact sounding, smooth and soothing “—you will upset Otis and Earnest T and the three of us will have to go have our tea somewhere else.”
Emma pressed her fingertips to her temples and clenched her back teeth to force herself to focus. The room stopped swimming. She turned to find Ruth, still in her ballerina tutu and tie-dyed top, standing barefoot on a wooden kitchen chair painted banana-yellow, glaring across the 1950s’ style dinette table at Hank.
Hank Corsaut! Her pulse kicked up. She couldn’t catch her breath. She’d been too exhausted and too upset for it to really sink in earlier.
From the moment she’d run blindly out of one of the best restaurants in Atlanta, rushed to pick up Ruth and driven from Georgia to Louisiana without even stopping to change her clothes, Emma had prayed. She had prayed for guidance. She had prayed for insight. She had prayed for courage.
Maybe she should have prayed not to run into the last person she wanted to see at the old house on the same day she had come running home with her tail between her legs and her future up in the air.
“Cake,” Ruth demanded with the quiet