The Family Man - By Trish Millburn Page 0,4

her little yellow bungalow, she crossed the street to the home of Ruby Phelps, the girls’ babysitter. As soon as she stepped inside the door, three-year-old Lilly squealed, “Mommy!” and ran over to give Sara a hug and a big, sloppy kiss. Sara never got tired of hearing her adopted girls say that.

“How’s my little peanut?” Sara asked as she hugged her daughter back.

“Nummy.”

“She just had an oatmeal raisin cookie. Come in and have one.” Ruby stood wiping her hands on a towel in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Sounds good. I’m running on fumes.” Sara was suddenly glad it was Friday afternoon and she was looking at two days off to spend with the girls.

Ruby motioned her into the kitchen. “I made plenty, so help yourself.”

Sara followed the older woman into the cheery kitchen and snagged a fresh cookie from the plate in the middle of the table. Tana sat at one end of the table with a cookie in one hand and a pen put to notebook in the other. Sara looked at her thirteen-year-old with affection. Tana’s adoption paperwork had yet to be finalized, but Sara already thought of the three of them as a family.

“Hey, how was school?”

“Good. I have a project to do for science this weekend, but I need to go to the pier to do it.”

Sara cringed inside. The memory of nearly losing that little boy today caused her to abandon the cookie.

“Can’t you go somewhere else?”

“Nope.”

Sara sighed. The last place she wanted to go on her day off was the pier where Adam Canfield ran the concession, taking the money of locals and tourists who wanted to fish or walk on the pier that jutted into the Gulf of Mexico. The pier that happened to be next to the Beach Bum, his home away from home. The pier where she’d had wildly inappropriate thoughts about him. If she hadn’t believed in fate having a wicked sense of humor before, she did now.

“What kind of project?”

Tana looked up, her dark eyes serious. “I have to spend an hour at the pier and list all the types of fish reeled in by the fishermen. Then I have to research the details about their populations and migration patterns.”

“Seventh grade sure has changed a lot since I was there,” Sara said.

“Well, yeah. That was ages ago.”

Sara tossed a cookie crumb at Tana. “It wasn’t that long ago, smarty-pants.”

Tana just smiled and took another large bite of her cookie.

“We’ll go in the morning, before it gets too hot.” Might as well get it over with. Maybe Adam would be too sleepy or hungover to even know she was there.

After a couple minutes of chitchat with Ruby, Sara ushered the girls across the street to their own house. She wanted nothing more than to shuck her slacks, dress flats and button-up shirt and sink into a warm bath. Well, perhaps there was something she wanted more than that, but realistic expectations topped out with a foamy, hot, scented bath. First she had to make dinner and spend some quality time with the girls.

A knock on the door turned out to be Ruby. She held out Lilly’s favorite Winnie-the-Pooh blanket as she stepped inside the front door. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to get her to sleep tonight without it.”

“Thanks.”

Ruby tilted her head slightly. “You okay? You seem like you have something on your mind.”

“Just a long day.”

Ruby made sure the girls weren’t close by. “I heard about what happened at the pier. That little boy okay?”

“Yeah.” Thanks to Adam. He might not be the guy for her, but he’d saved a child’s life today. “But I spent most of the day looking for a fourteen-year-old runaway who seems to have disappeared into thin air. I looked for that boy everywhere, and no one’s seen him.”

“People who don’t want to be found have a way of staying hidden. Wonder what he’s running from.”

Sara examined the other woman’s lightly lined face as Ruby pushed her chin-length silver hair behind her ear. “You’re the second person to say something like that today.”

“Who was the other?”

Sara waved off the question. “Nobody important. Main thing is that I couldn’t find the kid, and at best he’s spending tonight out there alone somewhere.”

“Sweetie, you can only do so much.”

Sara heaved a sigh. “I know.”

Ruby patted her arm. “You need to plan a day off just for yourself, maybe do something crazy like go on an actual date.”

“I go on dates.”

Ruby crossed her arms and