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Noah glanced over his shoulder. All three women were standing in the hallway watching the little tableau in Emma’s room. Genevieve must have found the nursery because her arms were empty, her hands clasped over her heart.
Willow looked at him all sort of mushy. “This was for Emma all along?”
Noah shrugged and climbed to his feet. “I guess you found AJ’s nursery, Genevieve?”
“I did. Everything is so nice, Noah. This is so generous of you to do.”
“Drew can’t wait for the sun to go down,” Helen added. “You might not get him down for supper, Willow.”
“Speaking of supper…” Genevieve linked her arm with her sister’s. “Helen and I are going to skip out on that tonight if you don’t mind, Willow.”
“We are?” Helen looked at her sister in surprise.
“We have some campaign planning to do.”
“Oh. Yes. That’s right. We do.”
“Emma, come give Nana a kiss good-bye,” Genevieve said.
The little girl scampered to do so, and in another ten minutes, all the good-byes had been said, and Willow’s mother and aunt departed. “They didn’t really want supper,” Willow explained as she waved them off. “They just wanted to see your house.”
“No problem. So, will you spring the four-legged surprise on them tonight?”
“You know, I think I’ll save that for tomorrow. We’ve had plenty of excitement today already.”
After dinner, Noah said his good nights and retreated to his workshop. He played with Marigold and the puppies, grateful that Drew’s window faced opposite his puppy play yard. He went to bed that night and went to sleep more at peace with himself than he’d been since his brother died.
He didn’t see the Eldridges the following morning, as they went their separate ways early. He spent the better part of the day with Gage fishing his favorite stretches of water on the Triple T. Late that afternoon, he sat at his workbench building a couple of dollhouses for a fire station in western Wyoming when he heard Willow’s car drive up.
The knock on his door came less than five minutes later.
“Mr. Noah. Mr. Noah. Are you home? I love my new bedroom. I looked at the moon through the telescope, and it was huge. Mama says you have a surprise for Emma and me. Something we are really going to love! Mr. Noah!”
As expected, the puppies were a hit, although AJ was a bit timid around them. The debate over what to name the dogs dragged on for the better part of a week. Drew finally decided on Thor while Emma went with Anna fromThe AvengersandFrozen, respectively.
By the end of April, Noah thought he might need to rename his cabin from the Hideaway to the Come-on-Inn. It seemed as if people were coming and going all the time. Willow’s sister visited for a few nights as she returned from a European trip and prepared to leave again to visit Peru. Willow’s newlywed brother and his wife visited, and then the single brother did, too. Noah didn’t know whether they’d come to give him the evil eye or check up on Willow now that she had AJ around or, more likely, both, but it kept things lively. Genevieve stopped by frequently as the opening of The Emily theater approached. Helen dropped by almost as often for a campaign coffee klatch.
And they always brought their new pups to visit. Drew had somehow managed to talk his grandmother and great-aunt into each adopting a puppy. Upon learning that Noah was down to one, Gage had decided his Sadie needed a companion, so he took the remaining pup to the Triple T Ranch.
Most evenings, Willow joined Noah for a nightcap on the porch swing, and they shared the events of their days. They hadn’t slept together since that first night. Still, the twenty minutes or so of porch time together each evening was almost as intimate. Some days Willow’s attitude remainedpositive. Others, acting as a single mother of three wore her down.
AJ had been with the Eldridges just shy of six weeks the night Willow joined him on the porch carrying not her usual glass of wine but a pitcher of martinis. “That bad?” Noah asked.
“Tom had another stroke. They don’t think he’s going to make it.”
“Well, crap.” The kids’ grandfather had been doing better. The grandmother had been making noise about bringing AJ back to Texas. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Noah. It’s hard taking care of three children all by myself. Yes, I have Little Ducklings, and Mom helps despite her big talk about not babysitting, but it’s still all on me. Plus, the kids will bond with him if he stays here much longer. Drew already thinks that sharing a name gives them a special link.”
“And you? Have you fallen for him?”
She sighed and sipped her drink. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? He’s a sweet little guy. He truly is. It’s not his fault that his daddy was a jerk. Like the saying goes, it’s complicated.”
He put his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close, and pressed a kiss against her hair. “Anything I can do to help?”
“You’re doing it. You’ve done so much for us, Noah. Every day. I wish there was something we could do to help you in return.”
“You have. You do. You brought sunshine back into my life.”
