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But when she did, Robin got her first look at her daughter’s superhero backpack and noticed that her lunch box wasn’t clipped there like it always was.
“Hold up, little miss,” she said, catching up to Abby just before she entered the inn. “Where’s your lunch box?”
Abby’s eyes grew wide, then she slipped one shoulder strap off so she could swing the bag under her arm to see for herself. “Oh no! I swear it was there when I was leaving school!”
“It’s okay, I’m sure you accidentally left it in your cubby or something.”
“No, I swear. It was clipped on.”
“Okay, well, maybe it fell off while you were still on campus, and someone will bring it to the lost and found.”
“But what if it fell off on our way home from school, and now it’s lost forever? Or what if it fell off and landed in the street and someone runs it over?”
Panic rose in Abby’s voice with each word, and Robin sighed deeply. “Okay, you go inside and start your homework, and I’ll retrace our steps. Tell Aunt Holly for me?”
“’Kay, thanks, Mama!”
“You’re welcome,” Robin replied, waiting until her daughter had slipped into the inn before she headed back down the porch steps.
She wasn’t convinced Abby hadn’t simply left it in her cubby and thought she’d clipped it onto her backpack. But since the backpack and lunch box were a matching set and featured her favorite superheroes, she knew it wouldn’t be very easy to convince her to get a generic lunchbox to replace it. Could she even find one that clipped on the same way? Abby loved that feature.
As she walked back toward the school and scanned the sidewalk for any sign of the red-and-blue rectangle, Robin let her mind wander back to the café on Main Street. To Jack. To the way she hadn’t been able to get her heart rate to slow while under his perceptive gaze, and how he somehow got more handsome every time she saw him.
Honestly, how did the man manage to do that? It was like every time he left this town, he took lessons in swoony stares, that swagger that never failed to make her mouth water, and don’t even get her started on that smile of his. It was at once affectionate and rueful, and when it was pointed at her, it was impossible not to return.
Robin wrapped her arms around herself to fight off the chilly breeze as she continued her search. No luck so far, and she was already back at the school. Hoping she’d find it lurking behind a bush, invisible while walking in this direction, she turned back with a sigh.
Shoot. Jack was staying at the inn until he found a place to live. Would he be there when she returned? That wouldn’t be good for the girl talk she was hoping for with Holly, nor would it help her push him out of her mind like she knew she needed to.
The day Jack Rhodes first ambled down Main Street with his movie star sister, and her heart and soul reached out to him with a surprising force, all she felt was pain. A tingle of awareness spread through her body, but shame immediately chased it. He hadn’t been a cop yet, but her husband had only been gone for a year at the time, and her instant attraction to Jack had felt like a betrayal.
She’d stared at her ceiling for what felt like hours that night, wondering if that feeling would ever go away. She’d accepted that Matthew was never coming home, but she hadn’t been ready to think about moving on, so she did what any woman in her position would do. She resisted those dumb smiles of his. When she’d discovered he was becoming a cop in Philly… well, it was almost a relief. A reason to push him away that was bigger than not being ready to love again.
* * *
Thirty minutesafter she’d left her daughter at the inn, Robin walked through the door empty-handed, more ready than ever to chat with Holly about her annoyingly irresistible brother. “No luck, sweets,” she said to Abby as she hung her coat in the foyer.
Abby sat in the dining room with her schoolbooks open in front of her, and when she heard Robin’s report, she lowered her head to the table and sighed dramatically. “Great.”
“It’ll turn up! This is a small town. Someone probably found it, and it still has your name inside of it, right?”
Abby didn’t lift her forehead from the table as she nodded, so Robin went into the dining room and kissed the back of her head. “I’m gonna go hang with Aunt Holly. Doing okay on your homework?”
“Yes,” came her muffled reply.
“Good. But you’ll need to lift your head so you can see what you’re doing in order to finish it. The sooner you get it done the sooner you can go play with Noelle. Is she in the kitchen with Aunt Holly?”
She lifted her head and smiled brightly. “Yeah. She wanted to color at the table with me while I did my homework, but Aunt Holly thought she’d be too distracting.”
Since the toddler had a tendency to be distracting no matter where she was or what she did, Robin was grateful Holly had made that call. “I see. Finish up, and then you can color with her, okay?”
Abby nodded and got back to work, so Robin went through the swinging door to the kitchen and waved when she saw Noelle coloring at the counter while Holly worked at her computer next to her. “Hey, you two.”
“Hello! Come on in,” Holly said as she closed the lid of her laptop and rose from her seat. “I was just working on some recipes for an upcoming show. Any luck with the lunch box?”
Robin shook her head as she went to the fridge and helped herself to a soda. “Nope. But it’ll turn up. And if not, we’ll figure it out.”
Ever the hostess, Holly joined her at the fridge and pulled out a block of cheese. She then grabbed a cutting board and some crackers from the pantry and got to work on a snack for them to enjoy while they chatted.
