A Proposal For The Officer. Christy Jeffries
my nephew about inventing one. He lives for dorky tech stuff like that.” Molly saw Kaleb’s hand clench tighter around his phone and she wondered what she could’ve said to annoy him. If she wasn’t so exhausted, she might’ve asked him. She pointed to the next stop sign. “Make a left up here.”
“Speaking of your nephew, won’t he think there’s something wrong if you show up with a stranger?”
“I’ll tell him I had too much to drink.” She felt the deceleration of the car before she realized he’d completely taken his foot off the gas pedal. She let her head roll to the side, which was a mistake since it only afforded her a full view of his handsome—and doubt-filled—face.
“You’d rather people think you were drunk than diabetic?” His incredulous tone hit her in the belly with a force. Or maybe she was still sore from where she’d given herself that shot. “Are you seriously that desperate to keep this from your family?”
“Desperate is a strong word,” she said cautiously. In fact, it sounded a lot like weak. And she was neither. “I’m simply protecting them from worrying about me. And I didn’t mean alcohol. His mom warned him not to have too much soda this weekend because it would give him a bellyache. So I was going to go that route.”
He made a weird mumbling sound as he pulled into the parking lot. All the other kids must’ve already been picked up because poor Hunter was the only boy waiting by the bleachers. She curled her fingers into her palm, unable to release the guilt building inside her. Molly came from a big, busy family with at least one parent usually off on deployment. Getting forgotten at school or left behind at soccer practice was an all too familiar feeling and she hated that her condition was now affecting others.
She leaped out of the passenger door before Kaleb had even put the car in Park. Well, she didn’t leap so much as stumble on shaky legs, feeling as if she’d just stepped onto solid ground after a ten-hour flight in a cramped cockpit.
“Sorry I’m so late, buddy,” she said, wrapping her twelve-year-old nephew into a bear hug, made all the more awkward by the fact that he’d shot up a couple inches taller than her this past winter and was carrying a duffel bag in one hand and a batting helmet in the other. As well as by the fact that she’d just seen him less than two hours ago. “Have you been waiting all by yourself?”
“No problem, Aunt Molly. Practice has only been done a few minutes and Coach Russell is still here chalking the base lines for tomorrow’s game.” Hunter untangled himself from her overzealous greeting and opened the rear door to toss his gear into the back seat. “Hey! You didn’t tell me Kaleb was coming with you!”
“Hunter, my man,” Kaleb said casually as he pivoted in the driver’s seat and did a complicated fist bump with her nephew.
“What?” Molly fumbled with the door handle. “You guys know each other?”
“Pfshhh,” Hunter responded. “Anyone living in the twenty-first century knows Kaleb Chatterson.”
“Oh, hell.” She inspected her grocery store hero through squinted eyes. “You’re a Chatterson?”
“That’s another dollar for my swear jar, Aunt Molly.”
“According to my birth certificate.” Kaleb shrugged, then put the car into gear. “The DNA tests are still in question.”
A throb started in her temples and Molly had to wonder if her visit to Sugar Falls could get any worse. She pulled her wallet out and tossed a ten dollar bill onto Hunter’s lap. “Consider me paid up until Sunday.”
* * *
“But you said you were from Seattle,” Molly accused through gritted teeth as she latched her seat belt.
“I am.” Kaleb was doing her a favor. Why was he the one being put on the defensive? “And would you mind telling me where I’m supposed to take you?”
“I’m staying at my sister’s apartment. But I guess you knew that all along.”
Whoa. This lady was coming at him with guns blazing. If that wasn’t discomforting enough, a twelve-year-old kid had his seat belt stretched to the limits as he practically leaned between their two seats, not wanting to miss a minute of the action. “How in the world would I have known that? I didn’t have a clue who you were until fifteen minutes ago.”
In fact, it wasn’t until Kaleb heard Hunter call her “Aunt Molly” that the puzzle began clicking together. The woman beside him must somehow be related to Maxine, who was best friends with his sister, Kylie. But he was still missing the pieces that explained why she was suddenly so annoyed with him.
“But you know me, right, Kaleb?” Hunter’s voice cracked and it didn’t take a rearview mirror for Kaleb to know the kid’s eager freckled face was only inches behind his own. “Remember when we were at your sister’s wedding last year and you promised me an internship at your company when I turned eighteen?”
Kaleb squeezed his eyes shut briefly. How could he forget? Of course, he would’ve called it a surrender more than a promise since, at the time, Hunter was the only person who’d been able to smuggle in a tablet—despite Kylie’s ban of all electronic devices at the reception—and Kaleb’s Tokyo office was in the middle of negotiations to buy out a company that built virtual-reality headsets.
Yet, before anyone could comment on the circumstances surrounding the supposed internship, the kid’s aunt interrupted. “If you’re from Seattle, then what are you doing in Sugar Falls?”
As he turned onto Snowflake Boulevard, which could’ve just as easily been named Main Street, USA, he took in the grassy park in the center of downtown to assure himself that they were still in a free country. “The same thing you are. Visiting family.”
She mumbled an expletive under her breath and he was pretty sure that, at this rate, Hunter was going to have enough money in his swear jar to get him through the first two years of college.
“Speaking of family.” Kaleb emphasized the last word to remind her that children were present. “Does your sister still live above her shop?”
“Not anymore,” Hunter answered for his aunt, who was silently fuming in the front seat. “We moved out to a bigger house when she and Cooper got married. But Aunt Molly is staying there while she’s in town. She says it’s because she doesn’t want to be in our way, but Mom says it’s because she doesn’t want us knowing her business.”
Molly gasped before turning in her seat to look at her nephew. “Your mom told you that?”
Hunter had his palms up. “Not in a bad way or nothin’... She said all the Markhams are like that.”
“So where are we going?” Kaleb interrupted. If he wanted a front-row seat to watch family members bickering, he’d head back to his sister’s house and watch his own brothers argue over who got to man the backyard grill.
“To the apartment over the bakery.” Molly sighed. Even an outsider like Kaleb knew that when someone said bakery in this town, they actually meant the Sugar Falls Cookie Company. “It shouldn’t be that far of a walk for you to get back to your car at Duncan’s Market.”
Not that far? It was at least a mile through town and both his phone and his watch—he never should’ve synced the two—currently sounded like winning slot machines with unanswered texts from his dad and his sister, probably wanting to know where the heck he was with their ice and limes.
“Why’s your car at Duncan’s?” Hunter asked. So far they’d avoided having to explain why he was driving them home, but if the kid was as observant as Kaleb had been at that age, it didn’t take a computer genius to figure out Molly was hiding something.
“Because your aunt had a—”
“Wait.” Molly pointed a finger his way. “Which Chatterson brother are you?”
“I’m Kaleb,” he said slowly, second-guessing his earlier decision