Free Stand-In Father (Intimate Moments) by Pat Warren Page B

out to people just because they may walk out of his life. Ryan’s dying for male attention. Has been all his life. You don’t give him enough credit. He knows the people who stay here come and go. He’ll handle it. Let him enjoy a little male bonding while he can.” She stepped closer, watching out the window as Alex leaned down explaining something. Ryan nodded solemnly, his face a study in concentration. “If you ask me, he’s doing something for that boy you and I can’t do.”
    Hating to admit defeat, Megan sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” The truth was, Alex Shephard was doing something for her that no one else had done in a very long time, either.
     
    At the barbecue dinner table, Alex was seated between Ryan, who’d insisted he sit beside him, and Mrs. Julia Kettering, a widow in her eighties who’d taken a shine to him. A small, thin woman wearing a floral print dress and tennis shoes, her snow-white hair in a long braid down her back, Mrs. K, as she liked to be called, wore granny glasses and smelled of talcum. She could also talk the wings off a butterfly.
    “My poor departed husband, Horace, used to make ribs now and again,” Mrs. K went on. “You didn’t need teeth to eat them, they were so tender.” She leaned closer to Alex. “These run a close second.”
    Alex set down a clean rib bone and picked up his napkin. “They’re mighty good.” He reached for a piece of chicken. “So, are you staying here for long?”
    “You could say that. It’s been over a year now.” The old woman dug into her corn with false teeth clicking.
    “A year? You mean you live here?” A permanent resident? Alex hadn’t been aware that a bed-and-breakfast could be someone’s home. “Are you a relative of the Delaneys?”
    Swallowing, Mrs. K shook her head. “Might as well be, as good as Megan treats me.” She dabbed at her thin lips with her napkin. “I used to live across the street from Megan and her mama, used to baby-sit her and her sisters a lot. My husband was sick for years and our insurance money ran out. I had to borrow, then sell my little house to pay our creditors when he died. By then, Megan already had this place, and when she heard, she came to get me, moved me in that day. I got no other family.” She gazed at Megan through her thick glasses. “Hardly lets me pay for a thing from my small pension. That girl’s a saint, is what she is.”
    Small wonder she had to sell baked goods to make ends meet, Alex thought, if she takes in a poor little widow and puts on free barbecues. There wasn’t that much profit in small businesses. His gaze drifted to the lady in question, his eyes narrowing as he studied the dent in her small, stubborn chin.
    But what had happened to the insurance money?
    “You like crossword puzzles, young man?” Mrs. K asked.
    “Yes, I do,” Alex answered.
    “Me, too. The one in this morning’s paper stumped me. What’s a Buddhist movement in ten letters?”
    “Hmm. I’ll have to think about that.” Then a noise at his elbow had Alex glancing at Ryan, who was fiddling with his silverware. “How come you’re eating everything but your potato salad?”
    “I don’t like potato salad.”
    “Really? Too bad. You ever hear of Tony Gwynn, right fielder for the Padres?”
    “Sure. Everybody’s heard of him.”
    “I hear he eats potato salad three times a day sometimes.”
    Ryan’ s expression was skeptical. “You kidding me?”
    “Would I lie about potato salad?” Alex took a heaping forkful, chewed away. “Man, this is good. Builds muscles, too.”
    From across the table, Megan watched her son gamely take a small bite, then another. She saw Ryan look up at Alex and tell him it wasn’t so bad, he guessed. Mrs. K on the other side of Alex clawed at his arm with her long, thin fingers, wanting his attention again. His fair head bent to the old woman as he listened closely.
    All right, so the man was a charmer. Billy the Kid probably had been, too. And Neal.