Free Her Last Best Fling by Candace Havens

her own home. She’s insisted that she’ll heal better with her things around her and being close to her gardens. Even with the full-time nurse, Eloise thinks it’s still too much for her at the moment. So I need to go down to San Antonio and look after her for a bit. See what’s up.”
    “Do you need me to drive you? I can be ready in ten minutes.”
    She put her palm on his cheek. “You are such a good boy. I hate leaving you so soon after you’ve just got here, but it can’t be helped, I’m afraid. I was hoping you could keep an eye on the store. Ray and Tanya pretty much run the place already, I do the books and talk to folks. You wouldn’t have to do much. Make the bank deposits. Give Ray a hand with the inventory. You’ve done it all before when you were a kid. Nothing has changed, except it’s all on computers now.”
    Well, he’d said he needed purpose and routine. Crazy how the universe worked sometimes. “When I saw Momma D on my way up, she seemed fine.”
    His mother waved dismissively at him. “She’s old and a cold can turn into pneumonia in a heartbeat. But don’t you worry about her. She’s a tough old broad.”
    He frowned. “Seems like I’d be better off helping you guys down there than I would be here. Like you said, Ray has a handle on things.”
    “Oh, no, honey. I’ll feel better if you’re here. I’m going to sit around and gossip with her. And I’ll make sure her gardens are ready for the winter. You know how much I love doing that stuff. She has only the one television, so I imagine we’ll sit around watching her programs with the sound blaring.”
    There was that. When he’d stopped by on his way up to Tranquil Waters, he spent the day with this grandmother. She was his mom’s stepmother. Her mom had died when she was only three, and Momma D had become the only mother she really knew.
    She was nearly deaf, but she didn’t miss much. When he visited her, she was in her parlor, which was what she called the living room, watching her afternoon soaps at an earsplitting octave.
    But she’d taken one look at him and shaken her head. “Boy, you need a hug.” Then she’d held out her arms. Damn if she wasn’t right. He’d ended up spending the night there because he loved being in her presence. She was a positive light, and he needed that in his life.
    “Your brother will be by in an hour. I asked him to bring you some dinner because I didn’t have time to cook.”
    “Mom, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I’ve been doing it a really long time.”
    “Don’t take a tone with me, son. Besides, I want you to grill your brother. Mona who works as a teller at the bank says she could have sworn she saw your brother in the parking lot, in his truck, with a woman in there. She had red hair. I never thought your brother would go for a redhead.”
    He snorted. In another five minutes, she’d have J.T. married off with five carrot-orange-haired kids.
    “I’ll take your bag to the car. Is there anything else you need?”
    She scrunched up her face, and glanced around the kitchen. “No— Oh, if you don’t mind, maybe you could take the sack of seeds on the workbench and put it in the car. And there are two rosebushes by the garage I’m going to take to Momma. They are heirloom, and you know how much she loves them.”
    It was a bit late in the fall to be planting, but it was San Antonio so the weather stayed pretty warm throughout the year.
    Fifteen minutes after she left, his brother rolled up in the driveway in his truck. He didn’t bother knocking, just walked through the back door like everyone else in town did. His mom’s house was known as a gathering place.
    “Stupid jarhead can’t even fix a meal on his own.” J.T. put a sack from the diner on the kitchen counter. Except for the paint color on the walls, which was a warm yellow, not much had changed in the light-filled kitchen since he was a kid. There were good memories in that kitchen of