Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,10
drawing of myself as a big chicken—they also serve who sit and cluck!
Your fine-feathered sister
“You are so cute.” Payton strolled into the almost-bare nursery with a stack of mail under his arm.
“No. You are,” Hannah insisted, looking up at her darling hubby with his close-cropped sandy hair, white shirt and black tie, slightly askew. Yum. Even after all these years of marriage, he still sent a thrill through her. She wriggled in the tiny red plastic chair pushed against the low, round table she’d dragged from the basement to the shabby room she planned to use for the toddlers. “What’cha got there?”
“Oh, just some mail forwarded to my office.”
“Didn’t you fill out those postal forms to give them our new home address yet?”
“I’m right on top of it.” He plopped down some envelopes and last week’s copy of the Wileyville Guardian News then gave her a wink.
She sighed and shook her head. “Do you want me to—”
“That’d be great.” He hitched up his pants and made a point of giving their surroundings the once-over. “Look at this place. You’ve only been here a couple hours, and you’ve got it all whipped into shape.”
“I’ve been here four hours, and feel like I’ve been whipped.”
When she’d arrived this morning, she found the room connected to the baby nursery stuffed to overflowing with moldering file boxes, half-empty paint cans and a tower of carpet samples from the seventies. After a morning of lifting and lugging and heaving and hauling, it finally bore some resemblance to a workable playroom for the post-potty-training set. Most women would celebrate that small accomplishment with pride and be done with it.
“I’m starting to make some headway,” she conceded. “But it’s going to take at least another weekend’s work before I can put kids in here in good conscience.”
“Looks fine to me.”
“Yes, but you’re hardly an expert, are you?”
“Yeah, all those years in the study of pediatrics, what could I possibly have picked up?” He laughed.
“I just want everything to be…”
“Perfect.”
She pursed her lips.
“Perfection is God’s department, honey. No matter how hard you try or how badly you want it, you are not going to muscle in on His territory. We grubby little humans just do the best we can. And you have. You have worked a minor miracle here today.”
“Miracle? That’s a bit strong. But thank you.” She let her palm glide over the cool, slick surface of the table that brushed against her knee.
“You really are something,” he murmured.
“No, you are.” And she meant that.
Payt Bartlett was average looking, not a classically handsome man, though by all rights he should have been. In fact, if pressed for a word to describe his particular kind of attractiveness, handsome was the word most people used, but always with a decided hesitation.
He was born into small-town Southern aristocracy, the youngest son of a monied family. Deal makers every last son and daughter—except Payt. People expected him to be handsome—and charming—and successful in all he put his hand to. That was the expectation. The reality?
He scratched under his chin, then rubbed one knuckle over the dark circle under his eye. “I would never have stuck with this project long enough to get this much done.”
The reality—Payt spoke the absolute truth. Finishing what he started? Not the man’s strong suit. To begin with, Payt had the organizational skills of a mud wasp. Provided, of course, that mud wasps’ organizational skills rate a zero.
He stifled a yawn and slid his hands into the deep pockets of his gray trousers. “Do you still need me to pick up the kids and take them home, or are you all done here?”
“You aren’t trying to wriggle out of taking the kids for a while, are you?”
“Nope.” He moved toward her and lifted her chin up with one crooked finger. “I have no problem taking care of the kids for an afternoon, for a whole day—hey, a whole week—if you’d ever allow that to happen.”
A week? Just hearing it made her stomach clench. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we could get along just fine without you.”
Hannah’s cheeks burned. Her eyes grew moist. She hardly had breath enough to force out a meek little “Oh.”
“Not that we’d ever want to.” Her husband took both her hands and pulled her to her feet. “But if push came to shove, I could keep the kids alive until you could come and set the whole world right again.”
She put her forehead to his and let her anxiety ease away with a