The Family He Didn't Expect. Shirley Jump

I can read interest in your eyes. I’m tellin’ you right now, Abby isn’t...”

      “Isn’t the kind of woman who would date a guy like me?”

      Ty turned to his nephew and the lines around his eyes softened. “I wasn’t going to say that. You’re a good man, Dylan—”

      Dylan scoffed.

      “A good man,” Ty repeated with emphasis, “or I wouldn’t have you here. As for Abby, she’s...complicated. One of those women juggling a whole lot of balls and not interested in having a man help catch a single one of them. Her ex was a real jerk, who let her and her boys down in a big way.”

      “I’m not here to date anyone,” Dylan said and turned away from the office to prove his point. “Don’t you worry about that.”

      But as he walked away and crossed toward the teenagers waiting on the sofas, Dylan wondered if he’d still be singing that tune if Abby Cooper had looked at him with even an ounce of interest. Either way, the last thing he needed was a small-town single mom with workaholic tendencies. If anything screamed complete opposite from you, that fit the bill.

      He dropped into the lone armchair sitting in front of the sofas and propped his elbows on his knees. “Hey, guys, I’m Dylan. How about we talk about breaking the rules?”

      * * *

      Abby stared at the report in front of her. She’d spent the better part of the day putting it together, but it still didn’t feel right. Had she missed some data points? Forgotten to add the case study? She scrolled through the document, checked it against her list, then read the pages over again.

      Ever since she’d taken the promotion to director of brand development at Davis Marketing, she’d worried that she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Worried that they were going to see her as a fraud, as a woman who was only pretending to be up to the job.

      Because she was.

      Hell, her whole life seemed to be about pretending she could handle everything, whether she actually could or not. Get up in the morning, drag Cody out of bed, feed Jake, shoo Cody out the door and pray he made it to high school this time instead of heading for the park or the mall or somewhere with his friends. Then drop Jake off at preschool, making sure he’d taken his snack and a change of clothes for just in case at daycare later and that he didn’t have anything after school that she was supposed to go to. After all that, finally head off to work. Eight or more hours later, head home and repeat the process in reverse. Sometime in that window, she was supposed to cook healthy dinners, make the house spotless, draw baths and read bedtime stories. Oh and have “me” time, with rose-petal filled bubble baths and meaty novels.

      Because that was what the magazines said “women who had it all” managed to do. She’d yet to find a way to even come close to that, but it didn’t stop her from trying.

      Tears sprang to her eyes and a burst of panic made her heart race. Abby drew in a deep breath, counted to ten, then whisked the tears away. There was no time to get distracted or lose her focus.

      She read the pages once again, hit Send on the report, then closed the laptop. There was more on her To Do list, but it could wait until after Jake went to bed. That would mean another late night again, but her Mommy Guilt was kicking into overdrive, especially after Jake had asked in the car if she was going to work “again,” with that pouty sound in his voice and disappointment swimming in his big brown eyes.

      She emerged from Ty’s office and crossed to the little kids’ table. Two more kids had arrived and now seven of them sat in pint-size chairs on either side of Mavis. She loved those kids and welcomed them like they were all her own little ducklings.

      “How are you, Mavis?” Abby said. She placed a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. Mavis covered it with her own and gave Abby’s hand a friendly pat.

      “Just fine, just fine.” She turned to the kids and grinned at them. “I have the best table of kittens—”

      “We’re not kittens, Miss Mavis,” Jake said with a laugh in his voice. He was the happy one of her two boys, always ready with a smile or a laugh. Abby loved that about him and reached over to ruffle his hair.

      “Well, I don’t know about that, Jakester,” Abby teased. “You drink milk, right?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “And you like to sleep a lot.”

      Jacob laughed and cocked his head to the side, causing one lock of hair to do a little flip-flop. “That’s cuz I’m tired.”

      “And you have a big old mop of fur—” She nuzzled his dark hair.

      “Mommy, that’s hair! I’m a boy!”

      She leaned back and pretended to study him, tapping a finger against her lip. “Well, now, I think you might be right about that. Now that I look a little closer, I see you are indeed a boy. A cute one at that.” She gave Mavis a smile, then placed a kiss on her son’s forehead. “Keep on working on your picture, Jake. I’ll be back in a minute.”

      She crossed the room, pausing by the watercooler, filling a paper cup and pretending to get a drink, but really trying to see how Cody was doing. Of the two boys, Cody had taken their father’s sudden departure the hardest. It had been easier when Keith had left the first time, because Cody was only two, but ten years later, when Keith had returned to try again, Cody had started to put trust in his father. The problem was Keith had never fully committed to his family and had never really intended to stay forever.

      The second time, Cody had turned twelve the day before and gone to sleep believing the world was perfect because he had a new bike and another game for his Xbox. When he got up the next morning, there’d been an empty spot at the kitchen table and a dark oil stain on the driveway where Keith’s Malibu used to be.

      Keith had walked out the door, leaving her with a newborn baby, forty dollars in the bank, a sheaf of bills as high as her elbow and the Herculean task of explaining why to two boys who didn’t understand.

      There were days when she wanted to throttle her ex-husband for what he had done to their family, for how he had hurt his children. She had known he’d wanted out for a long time, but had never thought he’d up and move, to live with the twenty-year-old college student who was the “love of his life.”

      Keith Cooper had been irresponsible and selfish, two traits that Abby had been blind to for far too long. She’d kept thinking he would change, that he would settle down, find a career, not just a job, and become the family man she’d foolishly hoped he’d be.

      She’d been wrong.

      Abby leaned against the wall beside the watercooler, a paper cone of cool water in her hand, and watched Cody. He was hunched into the corner of one of the sofas, looking angry and sullen. Par for the course with a sixteen-year-old who thought his life sucked.

      To his left sat Dylan Millwright, Ty’s nephew. He was a good-looking guy—tall and lean, with dark hair and green-brown eyes. She hadn’t really noticed him before, but she did now.

      He had a roguish look to him, with the scuffed black boots, the battered jeans, the faded T-shirt. Like one of those guys in a modern-day fairy tale who roared up on a motorcycle and whisked the bored debutante away for a life of adventure.

      Except Abby knew full well those kinds of guys didn’t make good boyfriend or husband material. They were as temporal as spring weather, gone with the next gust of wind.

      “Hey, Cody, want to join us?” Dylan asked.

      Cody shrugged and hunkered down more, as if his hoodie could hide him from the world.

      “We’re just talking,” Dylan said.

      One of the other kids, a fair-haired tattooed kid wearing a T-shirt with Kurt Cobain’s picture, leaned forward. “Yeah, like about girls and crap.”

      Another boy, with long dark hair and a dirty white