Home At Last. Deborah Raney

to do the same? Her stupid mistake might cost them.

      “Quit looking like that.” Link touched her wrist briefly. “I’m just giving you a hard time. I’m fine. Wouldn’t be much of a man if I couldn’t take your wimpy punches.”

      “Hey!” She laughed nervously, but she’d never been so relieved to be teased. And so happy to see his smile reappear. “Don’t make me show you how hard I can hit if I really need to.”

      He put up both hands in surrender but laughed as he did. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of getting you riled up again.”

      “Smart move, Whitman.” Seeing him like this, she remembered how he’d made her feel when he flirted with her the other times he’d come in.

      His smile faded. “Seriously, though. Don’t think anything of it. Like I said, I know my sisters would have reacted the same if one of their kids—or a niece or nephew,” he added quickly, “was in danger. All’s forgiven. You forgive me?”

      She gave him a knowing smile. “For saving Portia’s life, you mean?”

      “Well, I didn’t want to say anything, but now that you mention it . . .”

      “You don’t have to look so smug.”

      He cocked his head, studying her. “Would you want to go out with me?”

      Wow. That was fast. “Out?”

      “As in, on a date? Out on a date?”

      “You don’t waste any time, do you?”

      “It just seemed like the thing to do.”

      She gave him a skeptical look. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not a charity case.”

      “What? Who said anything about charity?”

      “You’re not just asking me because you think you owe it to me because you almost killed Portia.”

      “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Two minutes ago I saved her life. How’d we get back to ‘almost killed her’?”

      She was pretty certain he was still flirting, but she wasn’t sure where this was going. Or if he was serious about asking her out. Only one way to find out. “Are you seriously asking me out on a date?”

      “Dead serious.”

      “Why?”

      “Do I have to have a motive?”

      “Men usually do.”

      “Um, would it be the wrong answer if I said I thought you were really pretty, and I like talking to you?”

      She couldn’t hide the smile that came. Or the surprise. “That would be a good answer, I guess.”

      “That would be the truth.”

      “Well, alrighty then. When were you thinking this date would happen?”

      “Can you do Sunday? I’m working some overtime until after Christmas, so Sunday night’s about the only time I’m free the rest of the year. Unless you want to do an early breakfast.”

      “You mean like three a.m.? Because I have to be down here to work at four.”

      “Oh.” Link’s eyes got big. “Then Sunday’s it, I guess. That work?”

      She frowned. Daddy wasn’t going to like this. At all. “I’ll have to see about a babysitter.”

      “You babysit on Sundays too?”

      She forgot she hadn’t explained the situation. “Portia lives with us. My brother’s . . . not exactly in the picture right now.”

      “Oh. What about Portia’s mother?”

      “Not in the picture either.”

      “Oh. Wow . . . I’m sorry.”

      She shrugged. And considered just telling him everything right off the bat. Let him reject her before he wasted any time or money on a date. But there was something different about him. She wasn’t sure what, but she wasn’t willing to let him go so easily. “It is what it is,” she said finally.

      “We could take her with us—Portia. If that’s okay with you. And if it’s okay with your dad . . . or whoever you have to check with.”

      For some crazy reason, that made her smile. “I have to check with me, myself, and I. I’m pretty much it where Portia’s concerned.” She tilted her head, studying him. “You sure you want to take a five-year-old with us on a date?”

      “Sure. Why not?”

      “I’m not sure you’re counting the cost here. She can be a little feisty.”

      “You haven’t been to a Whitman family dinner yet. Eight little rug rats running around screaming their heads off, coloring on the walls, climbing the curtains, wiping their sticky fingers—and runny noses—on everything”—he made a face—“every Tuesday. I sometimes sit right there at the kids’ table. And live to tell the tale.”

      She laughed. “Okay, okay. You convinced me.” But he’d said yet. You haven’t been to a Whitman family dinner yet. Somehow she couldn’t picture herself and Portia at a table with the Whitman family. Just like she’d never been able to picture herself at a table with her mother’s family. Or wanted to. And for good reason.

      She’d been out to the inn before, delivering baked goods. It was a fancy house. And Mrs. Whitman—Link’s mother—was a fancy lady. The kind that wore makeup and earrings around the house.

      Shayla shook off the comparison. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it. If she ever did. She frowned. “You don’t really sit at the kids’ table?”

      He shrugged a shoulder. “Guess you’ll just have to find out for yourself someday.”

      Chapter 4

      4

      Link walked backwards to the curb, watching Shayla Michaels move around inside the bakery. When he finally turned and approached his pickup, he caught his reflection in the window in the last inkling of daylight—and realized he was smiling.

      A rare occurrence recently, according to his biggest sister. His smile widened, imagining how Corinne would chide him if he referred to her as “biggest” to her face. “Oldest sister, buddy. Use your words,” she’d say. And then, of course, he’d have to give her a hard time about how ancient she really was at the ripe old age of thirty-three.

      He loved all his sisters, and most of the time he didn’t mind the way they mother-henned him to death. Even Landyn, who was his little sis, somehow managed to boss him around.

      Mom always said—only half joking—that Link’s poor wife would pay for all the damage his sisters had done to him with their coddling. But he wasn’t too concerned.

      What he was concerned about was the fact that he’d somehow ended up asking a girl for a date! A girl with a kid . . . even if it wasn’t her own. And a girl who was about as far as she could possibly be from the list he’d written out when he was sixteen or seventeen: “The Woman I Want to Marry.” The list had been some youth group exercise, if he remembered right. He wasn’t even sure why he’d participated. He couldn’t have cared less about being married back then. All through college even.

      It wasn’t until his two older sisters started settling down with their husbands, and then Tim married Bree, and Link started thinking marriage looked like a pretty good deal. He’d just never met the right woman.

      His sisters accused him of being too picky. He hadn’t gotten any less picky as the years went by, but even so, Shayla wasn’t anything like the elusive—imaginary—woman on his list. Not only because she wasn’t blonde and blue-eyed, but because Shayla had no doubt been raised very differently than he had. A whole ’nother culture.

      He checked