Adding Up to Marriage Read Online Free Page B

acasserole dish onto the counter. “Go on, you sit—” she pointed at the formal dining table behind him “—I’ll warm some of this up and bring it right over. I see you’ve got beer—you want one?”
    He sat, becoming one with the chair. “Please.”
    A minute later she set a heaping dish of her concoction in front of him—pasta and tomato sauce and sausage and peppers and cheese and heaven knew what else. And you’ll eat it and love it, he thought, almost too hungry to care.
    â€œHuh,” he said, taking a second bite over the clatter of pans, water rushing into the sink. “This is really good.”
    â€œThanks. Tell me if you want more, there’s plenty. You eat while I clean.”
    But once he’d taken the edge off his hunger, he felt weird sitting here while she was in there cleaning. So he got up and moved his plate and beer to the breakfast bar, climbing up on the stool.
    â€œAw…didja get lonely?” she said with a little smile as she wiped down the island. A throwaway question, hardly meant to cause the pang it did. When he didn’t answer she tossed him another glance, then sashayed to the sink to rinse out the sponge. “So how’s your mom?”
    â€œLooks like she’ll be out of commission for a while,” Silas said around another mouthful of food. “She’s in a splint until the swelling goes down enough to put on a cast. It’ll definitely put a cramp in her style, that’s for sure. And mine. I’ll have to make other day-care arrangements.”
    â€œWell…” Jewel’s entire face scrunched in thought. “I’ve heard lots of good things about the Baptist preschool. And there’s that place out on the highway, in the old convenience store Thea Griego used to live in?”
    â€œWith the big jungle mural across the front?”
    â€œYep. I know the gal who runs it, she’s the real deal. Although they might be full up at the moment—”
    â€œIt’s okay,” Silas said, almost irritably. “I’ll check around in the morning. So…what all went on in here while I was gone?”
    Jewel laughed. “What didn’t go on, is more like it. And I apologize for keeping them up so late, but they were having so much fun—well, me, too, but that’s something else again—I didn’t have the heart to play mean old babysitter and make them go to bed. Especially since I doubted they would’ve gone to sleep on time, anyway. They missed you,” she said with a little smile. “And they were so worried about their grandma. And no way was I gonna let them sit in front of the TV all night, no, sir.”
    Dinner dishes scraped and rinsed, she pushed down the dishwasher door and pulled out the bottom rack. “So we made cookies—they’re on that dish over there if you want some—” she nodded toward a foil-covered plate at the end of the bar “—and read a bunch of books—I made Ollie read a couple to me, he sounds like he could use the practice—and then we played about a million games of Snakes and Ladders, and then we played Secret City.”
    â€œWhich called for wholesale destruction of my living room.”
    She straightened, shoving a piece of hair off her forehead with her wrist. Even with her glasses, he could see the knot between her brows. “Kids learn by playing, Silas. By using their imaginations. Okay, so maybe we sorta went overboard—I’m sorry about your living room. But I put it all back together, didn’t I? And the boys had fun. Isn’t that kinda the whole point of being a kid?”
    Life’s not all about having fun, he wanted to say, except even he knew how stuffy and ridiculous it would have sounded. And of course he wanted the kids to have fun, but…
    But, what? Yeah, that’s right—no answer, huh?
    His dinner finished, Silas reached for the