Mummy in the Making. Victoria Pade

Then to his son, he said, “No cookies, Ash.”

      Hutch stopped fiddling with the lock and straightened up to face Issa. “I’m gonna have to cry uncle with this lock anyway—it can’t be fixed. I’ll have to get a new one and come back. Is that okay?”

      Somehow the thought that she was going to see him again was energizing. And Issa had no idea why that was the case. Why adrenaline instantly flooded her to chase away her pregnancy-induced weariness.

      What she did know was that excitement over a second visit was not a response she should be having….

      “Would you mind if it was this evening, though?” he was saying into her confused thoughts. “I’ll hit the hardware store, but there are some things I needed to check on at my new store and it’s just a few doors down, so I’d like to kill two birds with one stone. Then Ash will need some dinner. Can we make it after that?”

      “Sure,” Issa said, wondering if her voice had sounded as bright and full of anticipation to him as it had to her. She hoped not. Then, working for a more neutral tone, she added, “I’ll be here.”

      Had she sounded unduly eager and available? Or worse yet, a little desperate?

      She wasn’t. She wasn’t at all desperate. Not for company. Not for a man. Not for anything. Except for that composure she’d been hoping to find when she’d come out of the bathroom.

      But then she started to think of Hutch Kincaid being in town in the early June heat, meeting people on the street, in the hardware store. Talking to them. She thought of the chance that he might tell her secret. And composure slipped further out of her reach.

      “You won’t forget not to say anything to anyone, though, right?”

      Having given up trying to fix the door handle, he’d removed it along with the built-in lock and was gathering up the pieces when she said that. He cast her a confused look that told her he didn’t know what she was referring to.

      “About… You know… Earlier… The pamphlets…” She just couldn’t bring herself to say it outright again.

      “Oh, yeah,” he said when what she was talking about finally seemed to dawn on him. Then he smiled slightly and added, “See, forgotten already. No, I won’t say a thing to anyone. It’s your business.”

      “And maybe I’ll have cookies when you get back,” she said too jovially, overcompensating and once more proving how clumsy she could be.

      “I yice cookies,” Ash Kincaid contributed.

      “Don’t go out of your way—you don’t have to do that,” her landlord assured her.

      “Well, we’ll see,” Issa said.

      Hutch Kincaid glanced down at his son then. “Come on, buddy, time to go. Give me the pliers and screwdriver.”

      The little boy stood from his squat on the floor. Rather than handing his father the tools, he pulled up his striped T-shirt—exposing his entire tummy—twisted as far around as he could and put them into the back pockets of his own jeans, obviously mimicking his father.

      But Hutch Kincaid reached down and took them out again. “We don’t need you falling back on those,” he explained as he did.

      Then he tugged the toddler’s shirt down, and held out one long index finger. Without prompting, the toddler took it in one chubby fist.

      “Say goodbye to Issa,” Hutch instructed.

      “‘Bye, Itta.”

      “‘Bye, Ash,” Issa answered.

      “We’ll be back around seven,” Hutch Kincaid said.

      “Okay.”

      “And your secret is safe with me, so don’t worry about it,” he said in a softer voice.

      Issa looked squarely at him, searching for signs of disapproval or judgment. But there seemed to be only kindness and understanding in his remarkable blue eyes.

      “Thanks,” she said, not only sounding relieved but actually feeling it.

      He nodded at the hole in the door where the handle and lock had been. “You can still close the door. It won’t be any worse than it was with the bad hardware. I’ll lock the main door downstairs and we’ll be gone, so you’ll have the place to yourself until I come back with the new stuff—no more surprise visitors.”

      “Sure. Okay,” Issa muttered as he took his son and left her to do as he’d suggested, shutting her door as securely as she could.

      And then she found herself doing the oddest thing.

      She bent over and peeked through the hole where the handle had been to watch her landlord go down the stairs that led to his own half of the house.

      At least until she realized what she was doing and how silly it was.

      Then she shot upright and reminded herself that no matter how big and strapping and hubba-hubba-handsome someone was, so much as noticing a man at this point was beyond absurd. She was pregnant. With another man’s baby. And that was more than enough of a catastrophe. She didn’t need to add insult to injury.

      But Hutch Kincaid was big, strapping and hubba-hubba-handsome.

      And nice, too, it seemed.

      It just didn’t change anything.

       Chapter Two

      “One more bite, Ash, then we’ll go upstairs and fix Issa’s door.”

      “Itta,” Ash parroted his father before dragging a French fry through a puddle of ketchup and putting it haphazardly into his mouth. Then, mid-chew, the two-and-a-half-year-old announced for the third time, “Done.”

      The toddler had eaten about half of his dinner and Hutch had been urging him to eat more for at least fifteen minutes. One bite at a time. He decided to finally accept the done decree. What he wasn’t sure of was whether Ash was too young yet for etiquette lessons, but he decided to err on the side of caution and said, “Don’t talk with your mouth full, big guy.”

      “‘Kay,” Ash agreed, giving Hutch his second view of the partially chewed fry.

      So much for that.

      Hutch got up from the table, slid Ash’s sippy cup to the little boy and said, “Finish your milk,” as he gathered the remnants of their burgers and fries to put into the trash.

      Teaching table manners—Iris would approve of that even if he had failed at it.

      Burgers and fries for Sunday dinner—his late wife would have frowned on that.

      Still, it was a meal, they’d sat at the kitchen table together to eat it and Hutch had attempted to give the etiquette lesson—that was all something. Something better than the way things had been right after Iris had died. Because while he might not be a candidate for Father of the Year, he was giving Ash his all now.

      And in that vein, he made a mental note to look in the child-development books for information on when and how to begin teaching table manners, and when to reasonably expect a kid to understand and be able to incorporate them into his routine.

      As for the fast food that he tried to keep to a minimum, they had just arrived home from a seven-day trip to Denver where Hutch had closed on the sale of his and Iris’s house. Plus he’d come home to details that needed to be attended to with the new store, and an upstairs tenant who had arrived during his absence and needed him to take care of the broken lock on the apartment door—sometimes fast food was just a necessity.

      As it was, he was still five minutes late for getting upstairs to the apartment.

      He glanced over his shoulder as he did the dishes. Ash’s sippy cup was right where he’d left it.

      “Finish