A reason to stay, p.4
A Reason to Stay, page 4
“Before you start, you’ll need to put on safety glasses,” Sharpe said, handing Aidan what looked like something a chemist would wear while performing experiments.
He half expected Aidan to balk at the idea, especially because he didn’t have a pair for Emma, but the young man put them on and then made a face at his sister. “Look, Emma. I’m a geek, just like you when you wear your computer glasses.”
“Hey, now,” Sharpe said, but before he could continue with the reprimand, Emma laughed heartily until her eyes watered. Sharpe lifted an eyebrow in question.
“Considering Aidan and I have only recently met, my little brother nailed it,” she explained. “Happily, I don’t have to wear safety glasses to see my computer, though,” she said, wiping her eyes with her thumb. “But I did enjoy science in high school, geeky glasses and all.”
He didn’t know why that surprised him. Everything he knew about Emma spoke to her being a smart woman. But he wouldn’t have guessed she’d excelled in science. He was just now starting to realize how little he knew about the fascinating Emma Fitzpatrick.
Sharpe handed Aidan and Emma each a curved blade and led them farther into the field. “Since these are the ones folks are going to pick on their own, we’ll just leave each pumpkin where we cut them. It also helps if you cover them in the dry rye a bit, so they look more natural.”
Sharpe stared at Emma for a moment. She had the oddest expression on her face, although he had no idea what she was thinking. Abruptly, he turned his attention back to Aidan. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Aidan nodded and turned to his first large pumpkin, carefully chopping back the vines before cutting the stem with an expression of sheer delight on his face. Sharpe patted him on the back and gestured toward the next pumpkin, watching Aidan closely as he cut his way through the next few.
“Boys and their toys,” Emma muttered, clearly not completely comfortable with the situation. With a huff, she leaned down and started chopping the vines of the pumpkin nearest her.
“Don’t worry,” Sharpe assured her. “Aidan will enjoy the physical labor, not to mention learning a lesson for the future. Look at him. He’s a natural. It appears to me as if your brother may have an artistic streak running through him. Or maybe he was meant to be a pumpkin farmer.”
She scoffed. “Well, he certainly wasn’t born and bred to do that. And I wouldn’t have guessed him to be an artist, either, though admittedly I don’t know him that well yet. Mostly he just plays video games.” She glanced up at Sharpe, and their eyes met and held. “Then again, I also wouldn’t have put a dangerous knife into his hands.”
Sharpe laughed. “He’s nine. I was cutting down trees with a chain saw when I was his age and monkeying up other trees to trim the branches.”
She actually blanched at the thought. “Your upbringing was a great deal different than Aidan’s. I suppose a kid Aidan’s age might want to climb trees, but…” She gulped a breath of air. “You aren’t going to give him a chain saw, are you?”
His lips twitched, but he held back a smile. “Come on, Emma. You’ve got to give the kid some space to grow. Isn’t he mowing your grandmother’s lawn for you?”
She shook her head and grabbed for the vines of the next pumpkin.
It frankly would never have occurred to her to ask Aidan to mow the lawn, not that he wouldn’t be able to do it if she had. He was tall enough and strong enough, she supposed.
“There you go, then,” Sharpe said, sounding a little smug. “He should be. Get him outside and take advantage of all he can do to help. Boys are like puppies. You have to wear them out every day, use up all their energy so they don’t get into trouble.”
She narrowed her gaze on him, though at her height she had to look way, way up to do so. “Why are you being so nice to us?”
He clutched his chest over his heart dramatically. “You wound me.”
“That came out wrong,” she said, her cheeks turning the color of a ripe tomato.
He leaned down to swipe at another pumpkin, giving her a chance to regain her composure.
“It’s just that you have to admit it would have been so much easier for you to take my money and call it good. Instead, you offered to spend time with my brother, even after he heartlessly destroyed your poor pumpkins.”
“Honestly?” He shrugged. “I guess I see a lot of myself in Aidan. I got into a fair bit of trouble of my own when I was his age. I just thought I could help him, show him what it means to be responsible. Being a kid is tougher now than it was in my day, and I feel for his circumstances.”
“Well, that’s very nice of you. Thank you. I just pray your kindness won’t backfire on you. Aidan may remind you of yourself at that age, but I honestly have no idea how difficult my brother might be if he gets it into his head to cause more trouble.”
“He’s doing okay right now,” Sharpe observed, gesturing toward Aidan, who was carefully carving a stem from a pumpkin and then couching it in the dead rye, Baloo barking at his side.
“That’s because you gave him something to do that is holding his interest—at least for the moment. What boy wouldn’t like playing with a knife? But what if you’d asked him to clean the barn?”
Sharpe stared at her but didn’t speak.
“I believe you can handle Aidan if anyone can,” Emma said when Sharpe remained silent. She propped her hands on her hips and captured his gaze with hers. “He already appears to respect you, and it was you who broke up that fight between the boys last week. It’s just that—I’m not making excuses for him, or for me, for that matter—Aidan didn’t grow up in the best of circumstances.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said in a low monotone. He wished his voice sounded more empathetic, because he really was feeling that way toward Emma and her brother. He just didn’t know how to show it. And he knew it didn’t sound in his voice, either. “As I mentioned earlier, my own father passed away when I was a teenager, so I know how hard it can be on a boy not to have a strong male role model in his life.”
He caught a flash of anger in Emma’s eyes before she covered it and bent down to swing her curved knife across a chunk of vines. “My parents weren’t any kind of role models. Ever. I may be the worst guardian ever, but I will do my very best for Aidan, and that’s more than my parents ever did.”
He noted the ice in her tone and the way she suddenly clammed up, her teeth clenched so tight he could see the pounding of her pulse in the corner of her jaw. He didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to her, not with the glowering expression on her face. He had the feeling that whatever words he used would be the wrong ones.
Suddenly, though, her face softened.
“I don’t know if you’re aware, but I didn’t even know Aidan existed until two weeks ago, as hard as that is to believe. I was completely estranged from my parents. I never called them or reached out to them in any way, and they, in turn, kept Aidan a secret from me. He didn’t know he had a big sister, either. They never talked to him about me.”
“I can’t even imagine what that was like.”
“As difficult as it may be, I’m his guardian now. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to do right by him. I took family leave and have a bunch of personal time saved up, and I can do some of my work remotely, so we’re going to stay at Nan’s until the beginning of December while I figure out what we’re going to do.”
“I admire your strength.” He, more than most, knew what it felt like to have to step up to the plate in an emergency. To be handed his life choices—or lack of them—on a platter and be told to dig in.
Her gaze widened on him, and she nodded before she blew out a breath. “I just wish I knew how to reach him. I don’t know anything about nine-year-old boys. I understand he’s going through a tough time. But when he starts getting into fights to blow off steam, I don’t know what to do.”
Sharpe shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and pushed the toe of his boot into the grass, pressing his lips together. He wished he had something useful to say, but he didn’t, so he remained silent.
She huffed out a sigh. “Speaking of which, I’d best go check up on Aidan. I don’t want him accidentally carving into the pumpkins instead of trimming stems and vines.”
Sharpe had kept half an eye on the boy as he’d worked, but Aidan had moved to the middle of the field, and he couldn’t tell exactly what the boy was doing to each pumpkin.
He really felt for Emma. As difficult as his situation had been when his parents had died, at least he’d known his siblings and what they needed to survive. It took courage to suddenly step in as a guardian when she hadn’t even known she had a brother.
And for some reason, upon which he still couldn’t put his finger, he wanted to help Emma.
Maybe it was a God thing.
Or maybe he was just losing his good sense.
Chapter Three
Emma made her way over to where Aidan was in the pumpkin patch and was happy to see there were a number of well-trimmed pumpkins around him. He’d followed Sharpe’s directions exactly—well, almost exactly. Her breath left her lungs when she saw what her brother had done to the pumpkin he was currently carving.
Aidan had carved around the top and taken one glove off so he could scoop out the inside goo with his hand. He’d then carved something into the pumpkin, although as Sharpe and Emma had approached him, he’d turned the pumpkin around so they couldn’t see what he’d done.
Whatever he’d done, he was grinning about it. He stood and dropped the knife, pulling his safety glasses down around his neck and under his chin. “Do you want to see what I’ve done?”
She could see what he’d done—exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do. But he was so excited about it, especially when he turned the pumpkin around and displayed a bright, grinning face with rainbow-shaped eyes and a huge grin with missing teeth.
“What do you think?” he asked excitedly, a bounce in his step.
What did she think? At this rate, Aidan was going to be here all summer trying to make up for his mistakes and to pay Sharpe back for all the money he was losing every time Aidan trashed some of his property.
Sharpe tipped off his hat and gave a low murmur.
“Well, now,” he started, and Emma cringed as she waited for his reaction. He took a good look at Aidan’s handiwork, pausing a moment before continuing. “I gotta say…that’s absolutely amazing work. The best jack-o’-lantern I’ve seen in a while.”
Her eyes widened on the cowboy, who, despite his kind words, was frowning.
What had he just said?
Wasn’t he angry with Aidan for carving up one of his pumpkins? At least it was only one pumpkin this time, but that wasn’t really the point, was it?
“You’ve got an artistic eye there, buddy,” Sharpe said, tipping up the pumpkin with the toe of his boot so he could better observe it. He scratched his scruffy chin. “I like how he’s grinning right up at you as if he has a secret. Not many people could do what you’ve done here, especially with only the one knife. I think some of my customers would really be interested in purchasing an already-carved jack-o’-lantern like this.”
“Really?” Aidan was obviously pleased with Sharpe’s praise, despite the fact that the man hadn’t stopped frowning as he’d said it.
Sharpe didn’t appear to be the kind of man to say something he didn’t mean just to make someone feel better, even a kid. Emma took another look at Aidan’s creation, this time appraising it more closely.
It did look like something professionally carved rather than the random cutting of a nine-year-old. Guilt plunged through her as she realized she wouldn’t have given her brother the same opportunity to explain himself as Sharpe had just done, much less tried to understand what he was doing.
Still. These pumpkins belonged to Sharpe, and the cowboy had made it clear exactly how he’d wanted them trimmed. Aidan hadn’t followed directions on this last pumpkin, and it hadn’t been his decision to make.
“I made it special,” Aidan bragged, his chest puffing out as he pushed his red curls off his forehead. “For Nan. She loves to decorate for autumn.”
Emma’s eyes filled with proud tears. She’d been silently struggling with what appeared to be Aidan’s constant selfish behavior, so for him to think of Nan was really something. And Emma had had no idea Aidan was so artistic.
That said, the pumpkin in question didn’t belong to him. It wasn’t his place to go carving it out to his heart’s content, however sweet the thought behind it. And it was Emma’s job to make sure he understood his error. But how could she do that without hurting his feelings?
This being-a-guardian thing was hard.
While she was still struggling for the words, Aidan was digging into the front pocket of his jeans. Then he withdrew a crumpled wad of cash.
Pride swelled in Emma’s chest as she realized he intended to pay for the pumpkin out of his own allowance. She definitely hadn’t given him enough credit. Emma held her breath as Aidan straightened out the bills one by one. She suspected it was important that Aidan pay for what he’d created, and she hoped Sharpe realized it, too. It would take the wind out of the boy’s sails if Sharpe just tried to give it to him.
“How much does one of these pumpkins cost?” Aidan asked Sharpe, holding the bills tight in his fist.
Sharpe’s eyebrows rose, and he took a moment before answering, his gaze on the money in the young man’s hand. Emma suspected he was trying to make an educated guess as to how much Aidan was clutching.
“These heavy ones here are called fatsos, and they’re usually twelve dollars apiece, but I’ll tell you what. Since you did such excellent work today, I’ll give it to you for ten.”
Aidan’s grin widened as he peeled off two five-dollar bills and pressed them against his thigh with the palm of his free hand to flatten them out before handing them to Sharpe.
“You can take it back with you today,” Sharpe said with a brisk nod, folding the bills and shoving them in his pocket. “Once we get back to the barn, I’ll run out with my truck and pick it up. Trying to ride a horse with a big ol’ pumpkin would be a bit of a challenge.”
“We don’t want to be a bother,” Emma insisted. “We can come back another time to pick it up.”
Sharpe shook his head. “No problem.” His tone brooked no argument.
He was the strangest combination of tough and tender Emma had ever seen, and she honestly didn’t know what to make of the man.
“Thank you,” she said, instinctively knowing arguing with him would get her nowhere. Besides, the truth was, in a way, he intimidated her. “So what time should we come over next weekend?”
His gaze caught and held hers, and again she was struck by how deeply blue his eyes were in contrast to his dark hair.
“For?”
“Surely Aidan didn’t do enough work today to cover all the losses from the day of the Harvest Festival.”
Aidan’s face went red, and he toed the grass with his boot. Emma hadn’t meant to embarrass him, but he had caused a good deal of trouble, and it was important that he pay Sharpe back for all the damages he’d done.
“I think he’s already done plenty,” Sharpe said, pressing a hand to Aidan’s shoulder. “He worked hard today—definitely hard enough to cover the number of pumpkins he trampled the other day. However, I do have a question for you, Aidan.”
Sharpe waited until Aidan looked up and met his eyes before continuing.
“I was very impressed by your work today. I was watching you carefully. You didn’t even take a break, did you?”
“No, sir. I—It was fun,” Aidan stammered.
“Well, as you can see, I have a whole other pumpkin patch to farm, and I’d appreciate it if you could come over next Saturday and trim pumpkins. These are the ones we’ll be hauling back to the gift shop. I know it’s all work and not exactly fun, but I’ll pay you for your time and effort. That is, if your sister agrees it would be something worthwhile for you. I may even have regular work for you to do throughout the rest of the season, at least while you’re in Whispering Pines, yeah?”
Aidan’s blue eyes lit up, sparkling like the sunshine as he nodded voraciously. His Saturdays had suddenly become a lot more interesting.
Emma wondered if her little brother had even caught the part where Sharpe had reminded him how hard he’d have to work and that the jobs he would be given might not always be fun. But giving him something productive to do while they were still in town was going to be a lifesaver for Emma.
She’d been wondering how exactly she was going to follow Sharpe’s advice and get Aidan outdoors and away from constant screen time, like perhaps mowing Nan’s small lawn and doing some landscaping at her house. It wasn’t so much that Emma minded Aidan playing video games if it got him out of his own head—because she knew better than anyone the trauma he’d been through—but fresh air and sunshine had to be good for him. And if he got to work with Sharpe, the man could be a good mentor to him. Who knew what kinds of skills Aidan would learn working with Sharpe? Not only that, but Emma had a ton of paperwork to go through in order to fulfill her parents’ very confusing estate and Aidan’s guardianship with the court.
“Please, Emma,” Aidan begged, clasping his hands together under his chin. She’d rarely seen him so enthusiastic and wondered if Sharpe knew what he was getting himself into.
Well, Sharpe had been the one who’d said he understood how a preteen boy’s mind worked.
“Please say yes.” Aidan was so excited by the prospect his cheeks turned the color of his hair.
Emma met Sharpe’s gaze. If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of a smile hovering on the man’s lips. Maybe he really did know how important this was to the boy. “If it’s okay with Sharpe, it’s okay with me. But there are going to be rules, all right?”
“Oh, Emma,” Aidan huffed, scowling as his face reddened even more. She’d thought he’d throw his arms around her in delight, and instead he was being surly with her.
“Exactly. You just proved my point,” she said, her arms akimbo and her chin tilted down at her little brother. “There will be no attitude. You will respect Sharpe and do whatever he tells you, without giving him guff. Understand?”
