Page 46 of A Whim and a Prayer

He gently brushed a curl from her face, his smile sad. “Too late, Winnie. I’m in love with you, kiddo—always have been, I guess, from little on, and I honestly don’t know how to change that.”

She fisted his shirt and gave him a hard shake. “You have to, Beck, because I don’t want to lose our friendship, so promise me you’ll try.”

He expelled a long, arduous breath as he pulled her close, burrowing his lips in her hair. “I promise—for now. But I can’t promise forever.”

“Now is good,” she said with a fresh bounce in her mood, “because I’d be lost without you, Beckett Campbell, and that’s an absolute fact.”

“Yeah, yeah, so you say.” He opened his door and tugged her out, walking her around the car before planting a kiss to her forehead at the curb. He nudged her towards her front door. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Winifred Marie,” he said as he strolled back to his side of the car, opening the door with a wicked smile. “Promise or not, kiddo, I’m going to enjoy every one of those kisses as much as I can.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Beck shook his head as he turned the ignition key and set the hand throttle on the dash of his beloved 1936 Chevrolet 6, slamming his foot to the starter pedal a tad too hard. The Chevy coughed twice, then caught, growling to life with a noisy rumble of irritation.

Not unlike Beck.

He shoved the car into gear and squealed away from Winnie’s curb, venting his frustration with a burn of rubber, something he seldom did.

Unless Winnie got him hot under the collar.

He grunted. Or elsewhere.

He slowed as he approached his own house down the street because no sense in disturbing his parents. After all, he wasn’t mad at them. He pulled in his driveway next to his father’s well-worn Ford Super Deluxe, not as old as Beck’s jalopy, but no luxury car either, by a long shot. Not since his elderly parents lost most of their fortune in 1937, “The Depression within the Depression.”

Sure, they lived on the same street as many wealthy socialite families like the Dennehys, but only because they’d lived there for decades and owned the house outright. But you could see the wear-and-tear on the large brick and ivy house no matter how many times Beck manicured the lawn or repainted the wraparound porch.

Exhaling loudly, Beck got out of the car and closed the door quietly, pretty sure his parents would be asleep. In their seventies now, they went to bed at nine o’clock most nights, and it was well past ten now. At age twenty-four, he’d wanted to get his own flat, but his parents needed him. Not only for the rent he insisted on paying, but to maintain that wonderful sense of family they’d given to him over the years, two lonely people who could never have children of their own. Now, he gave it back by maintaining the house and cars, running errands, and spending time with them whenever he could.

His parents had been in their late forties when they’d taken him in as an eleven-year-old foster child, a plot master-minded by none other than Winnie’s own mother—Mrs. Charity Dennehy. And for that reason among so many others, Beck would love and respect Winnie’s mom till the day that he died.

Because of her love for Winnie, she had single-handedly masterminded first the foster placement of Beck with his parents and then the speedy adoption that immediately followed. It had been a win-win all around because Beck fell in love with his foster parents just like they fell in love with him, making it possible for Beck and Winnie to be best friends forever.

It was a secret Mrs. Dennehy had asked his parents to keep from Winnie because she wanted her newly adopted daughter to believe that God loved her so much, He’d brought Beck back into her life. Which is why it grieved Beck that Winnie didn’t get along with her mom, trying to convince her that what Winnie saw as “controlling,” Beck saw as “love.”

Suddenly emotionally spent, Beck plodded to the front door, then let himself in before locking it again. Turning around, he hesitated when he saw a stream of light bleeding from beneath the swinging kitchen door in the dining room.

Brows crinkling, he pushed it open. “Mom? What are you still doing up? Is everything okay?”

Dolly Beckett glanced up from one of Beck’s shirts she was mending and smiled, and he swore that every time she did, the sun came out. Appropriately named to Beck’s way of thinking, his adopted mother was small, soft and round, like a teddy bear you wanted to hug.

But it was her soft, unblemished skin and large eyes rounded like Betty Boop’s that reminded him of a porcelain doll. Her silvery white hair—usually in a crooked topknot on her head—now flowed free over her shoulders beneath a pink, lavender, and green floral sleep kerchief that matched her floral robe to a leaf. Her rosebud mouth usually wore an impish smile, even when sick, and it never failed to make him smile himself.

“Yes, Beckett, everything’s fine and your father is snoring up a storm, so I couldn’t sleep.” Her silver brows did a little dance. “Plus I wanted to wait up for you, of course, sweet boy.” Those cornflower-blue eyes twinkled as she patted the chair next to her. “I want to hear all about it, especially the love scene.”

“What?” His jaw dropped as a blast of heat surged through him, setting his neck and face on fire. “What love scene?”

She skittered in her chair to face him head-on, eyes aglow. “Why the love scene you shared with Winifred tonight, sweetheart. How was it?”

“How on earth did you find out about that?” he asked in a near croak, groaning inwardly as he trudged to the chair, aware his mother was a rabid romantic who detected a love story in everything she saw. Be it the squirrel family in the backyard or a gaggle of geese who floated on the pond in the park. “Geese mate for life, you know,” she’d always say when he took her and Pop there for a picnic, but ducks?” She’d wrinkle her nose in disapproval before delivering a sly look. “They’re only in it for the”—she winked—“well, you know.”

Yes, he knew because he’d heard it a thousand times before, his mother’s matchmaking skills second to none … except maybe Winnie’s mother.

“Why, from Winifred’s mother, of course, Beckett,” she continued. “You see I called to borrow a cup of sugar since I ran out”—she dipped her head with a teasing roll of eyes—“your father’s been pestering me for cobbler, you know, and that’s when she told me that Winifred had called her because she’d forgotten a piece of her costume. Apparently she wasn’t aware her mother had washed it—”

“Mother, please,” Beck snapped in a tight tone he seldom used with his parents, “just give me the facts.”

“Oh … well, that’s when I learned you were picked for the lead—”

“Railroaded is more like it,” he said with a grind of his jaw.