Her Single Dad Hero. Arlene James

door, and he happily set off, the dog falling in at his side.

      “Mmm, Mizz Callie mawkz ze bezz cookeez,” he said around the mass in his mouth as Ann escorted him through the house.

      “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?” she scolded, stopping to put the bat back in the closet.

      Nodding, he looked up at her with those big blue eyes, gulped and said, “You sure are pretty. And you got red hair like me.” He grinned suddenly, displaying an empty space in the front of his mouth where a tooth should be. “Come and meet my dad, why doncha?” With that, he turned, opened the front door and ran outside, the dog scampering after him.

      Her mouth agape, Ann snatched a faded ball cap from its wall peg, a shield against the relentless summer sun and the possibility of freckles, crammed it onto her head and went after the miniature thief.

      * * *

      From the corner of his eye, Dean Paul Pryor caught sight of his son in the field just south of the big red barn. As previously instructed, Donovan stopped at a safe distance to watch as Dean used the small, rented crane to drag a cone-shaped steel bin on stilts from a flatbed trailer and carefully, painstakingly stand it upright. Dean let out a sigh of relief as four workers in white hard hats guided the stilt legs of the bin to the concrete base. Donovan, meanwhile, munched his cookies and watched, rapt, as the workers settled the five-ton bin, one of several, and began bolting it down.

      Smiling, Dean shook his head. He should’ve known that nothing, not even chocolate chip cookies, could keep the boy away from the construction zone. What red-blooded boy could resist the lure of heavy machinery and risky maneuvers? At least Donovan had sense enough to keep his distance.

      Just then one of the workers dropped a fist-size nut meant for an enormous bolt. The nut bumped across the uneven ground.

      The boy darted forward, yelling, “I’ll get it!”

      Dean’s heart leaped into his throat. Abruptly letting out the clutch, he killed the engine on the old crane and bailed out of the cab, waving his arms and shouting over the sound of screeching metal as the full weight of the bin suddenly came to rest.

      “Donovan! No! Get back! Get back!”

      The boy froze in his tracks then began creeping backward. The worker who had dropped the nut quickly retrieved it and began threading it onto the bolt sticking up from the concrete base. Pocketing his mirrored sunglasses, Pryor strode toward the boy. To Dean’s surprise, Ann Jollett Billings got to Donovan before he did, pulling the boy backward several steps. Dean temporarily ignored her.

      “Son, I meant it when I told you that you couldn’t help with the feed bins,” he said firmly. “It’s too dangerous. That’s why I sent you to the house.”

      “You sent him to the house?” Ann demanded.

      Dean swept off his hard hat. He never could ignore her for long, and as always she was a sight for sore eyes, especially with that familiar old baseball cap on her head.

      “Hello, Jolly,” he said around a grin.

      She gasped. “Jolly!”

      The nickname, a reference to her middle name, Jollett, had once been used by those closest to her, but Dean had momentarily forgotten that particular circle had never included him. The look she gave him said so in no uncertain terms, the message coming across loud and clear. He sucked in a quiet breath.

      “You really don’t remember me at all, do you?” he asked on a wry chuckle, scratching his nose to hide a hurt that he had no real right to feel.

      She tossed her long, wavy hair off her shoulder with a flick of her hand. “Should I?”

      “We went to school together.”

      “We did not.”

      “Oh, we did,” Dean insisted lightly. “I was ball boy for the softball team all four years you played.”

      Ann stiffened. “That was you?” Obviously she didn’t like being reminded of those she had once considered beneath her. “Ah. Well, you’re younger than me, then.”

      “Not that much younger. Three years.”

      “A lifetime in high school,” Ann retorted dismissively.

      “High school,” Dean said drily, “doesn’t last forever. Three years makes a difference at thirteen and sixteen. Not so much at twenty-five and twenty-eight.”

      She lifted her pert little nose. “Matter of opinion.”

      Stung, as he had so often been in the past by her, he switched his attention to the boy. “Get your cookies?”

      “You sent him to the house to steal cookies?” Ann yelped.

      “How is it stealing,” Dean asked, frowning as he plunked his hard hat onto his head again and pulled his son to stand against his legs, “when Callie left the cookies for him and told us where to find them?”

      He saw the shock of that roll over her, deflating her anger, but then she lifted that stubborn chin again.

      “He should at least knock.”

      Dean looked down at the boy. “Donovan, did you knock?”

      “Yessir.”

      “I was sitting at the desk in the study, right next to the front door,” Ann argued.

      “I sent him to the back door,” Dean Paul pointed out, “because his shoes were dusty.” He looked down at Donovan again. “What did Miss Callie say you were to do if no one answered?”

      “Go in and he’p myself.”

      Dean looked to Ann, who colored brightly even as she sniffed, “Well, no one told me.”

      He lifted his eyebrows to tell her that wasn’t his problem. Then he looked down at his son and said, “Why don’t you and Digger go explore the corrals while I take care of the big feed bin.” He speared Ann with a direct, challenging look then. “If that’s all right with you.”

      “Yes, of course,” she muttered.

      “Just don’t go into the stables,” Dean warned his son.

      “Mr. Wes said it was okay.”

      “Yes, he did, but you’re not to go in there alone. I’ll take you inside to look at the horses later. Understood?”

      “Yessir.” The boy reached into his pocket and produced a cookie for his father. Despite the boy’s grimy hands and the melting chocolate, Dean took it and bit off a huge chunk.

      “Yum.”

      “Don’t tell Grandma,” Donovan said in a husky whisper, “but Mizz Callie makes the best cookies.”

      Dean held a finger to his lips, but the boy was already running toward the big red barn and the maze of corrals beyond it. Smiling, Dean polished off the remainder of the cookie in a single large bite.

      “He may be right,” Dean mused after swallowing. “All I know is that they’re really good. Don’t you agree?”

      Ann jerked slightly. Then she nodded, shook her head, nodded again. “I’m sure they are.”

      He swept his gaze over her. “You haven’t even tried them.”

      Was she that vain now, this polished, sophisticated version of the fun, competitive girl he used to know—and admire? Did that svelte figure and the fit of those pricey clothes matter more to her now than a little sugar, a moment’s enjoyment? Oddly, it hurt him to think it, but it was none of his business. Nothing about her had ever been any of his business, much as he might have wished it otherwise.

      “He’s awfully young to be out here with you, isn’t he?” she asked pointedly.

      “Donovan’s been coming into the field with me since he was toilet trained,” Dean