Free Mistletoe Bay by Marcia Evanick Page B

to have Italian blood in you somewhere.”
    â€œNot a drop.” Dorothy flushed with pleasure.
    â€œWhere’s the blood?” Tucker looked at his grandmother. “I don’t see any blood.”
    Corey looked under the table. “What blood? Where? Who’s bleeding?”
    Felicity rolled her eyes. “Jenni, tell them to stop talking about blood at the dinner table. It’s gross, and I’m trying to eat.”
    â€œBoys, there is no blood. It’s just a saying.” Jenni frowned at Chase’s nearly full plate. “Aren’t you hungry, hon?”
    â€œYeah,” Chase wound some spaghetti around his fork, but anyone could see his heart wasn’t in it.
    Coop didn’t see what Felicity was complaining about. The girl had barely touched her dinner. The teenager was too busy making eyes at her boyfriend, Sam. Ah, young love.
    He turned his attention to Chase. The six-year-old wasn’t quite acting like himself. Maybe the kid was coming down with something. “Hey, buddy, you feeling okay?” Chase was definitely the quiet one, but he usually managed to ask about a thousand questions.
    â€œYeah.” Chase gave a half-hearted smile and shoved half a meatball into his mouth.
    Coop refused to look at the boy’s mother. Jennifer Wright was trouble with a capital T . So why hadn’t he realized that particular fact before joining her in the basement and almost kissing her? As it was, he had nearly beaten Dorothy to the top of the steps as he raced to get out of there.
    He didn’t kiss single mothers, especially if they had three boys. No way. No how.
    The look of pure dismay that had been on Jenni’s face earlier as she had raced down the steps only to find a soaking-wet Dorothy sitting on top of the washer, and him surveying the damage, was enough to tug at his conscience for the rest of his afternoon run. Since the only thing he had waiting for him back at his apartment was a mediocre book and leftovers his mother had given him from Sunday dinner, he had decided to stop at the hardware store in Sullivan on his way home. The new hose had set him back a whole nine dollars.
    It had been worth every penny just to see the look on Jenni’s face when he had first shown up carrying that piece of hose. The one thing his apartment didn’t have was a washer and dryer. He hated going to Sullivan’s one and only laundromat. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like sitting there doing laundry for six people, instead of just himself. He would rather take ballet lessons.
    Usually he would show up a couple hours early for his mother’s Sunday dinner, and while his clothes turned and spinned, he would do a couple chores around the place that his father no longer could do. It seemed like a reasonable trade-off, one his father didn’t fight too hard against.
    His father, Fred Armstrong, at one time had been the most stubborn man alive. Now it seemed his mother held that honor. Fred had suffered a heart attack eight months ago, and it had given everyone, especially his mother, a real scare. Lucille Armstrong had immediately put her husband on a low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie, low-everything diet. As his father so eloquently put it, if it smelled like a horse’s behind, tasted like crabgrass, and had the consistency of a shoebox, he was now allowed to eat it.
    Sunday-night dinners at his parents tasted nothing like they used to.
    Dorothy’s dinner invitation was a godsend. If he hadn’t been fighting his sudden attraction to a certain dark-haired, mop-wielding witchy woman, he might have thought twice about accepting the invite. He didn’t want to give Jenni or any other member of the Wright family the wrong impression.
    He had already made the decision that he was not interested in Jenni.
    The blasted woman was making his decision hard to keep. How she looked cute and adorable while cleaning up the basement in her ridiculous boots