Mrs. Miracle Page 0,7
said quickly, fearing his new housekeeper would turn tail and run before he could convince her to stay. On second thought, canned tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches would reveal exactly how desperate he was for help.
"I realize it's inconvenient for me to arrive at the dinner hour...."
"Inconvenient? No way," he countered swiftly. By now she must have guessed the truth. "You're welcome any time." Judd stood beside him, but Jason had wrapped his arms around his leg and held on with the strength of a boa constrictor.
Walking was a shade difficult with Jason attached to his thigh, but Seth managed to pretend nothing was amiss. He wanted it to look as though he often loped across the house with a six-year-old connected to his leg.
"I hope you don't mind, but I decided to bring dinner along with me."
Seth's gaze dropped to the Red Riding Hood - style basket draped over her arm. A tantalizing scent of rosemary and sage wafted lazily toward him.
"It's a specialty of mine, chicken pot pie." She advanced into the kitchen and set the basket on the only clear spot available on eight feet of countertop.
If the living room was in mild disarray, the kitchen was in chaos. Spilled milk splashed across the tabletop looked like a work of modern art. What had managed to seep through pooled on the floor beneath.
Dirty dishes filled the sink, and the groceries he'd purchased two days earlier cluttered the countertops, along with discarded remnants from breakfast. No one had bothered to tell him milk-soaked cereal that dried onto the sides of a bowl required a blow torch to remove.
"I'll have this mess cleaned up before you know it," he promised.
Mrs. Merkle dismissed his offer with a brisk hand gesture and turned her head, but Seth thought he might have seen her roll her eyes. "You're Judd and this must be Jason," she said, grinning at the children. She removed the hatpin from her no-nonsense hat and set it aside.
The children were either mesmerized or terrified, Seth couldn't decide which. They stared up at her with their mouths hanging open.
"Children, you can help by setting the table," Mrs. Merkle instructed as she casually unfastened the large round buttons of her dark wool coat. She slipped it from her arms and carried it into the living room along with her hat and purse and laid them over the back of the sofa.
While she was out of the room, Seth dumped the tomato-paste-consistency soup down the sink, watching it gurgle like thick toxic waste as the pipe sucked it down. He whirled around guiltily when Mrs. Merkle returned, forgetting for the moment that Jason was clamped to his leg. His weight, although slight, nearly knocked him off-balance, and he caught himself by gripping hold of the edge of the counter.
Seeming not to notice either him or the twins, Mrs. Merkle went about readying dinner. She appeared to be grumbling under her breath. She placed the chicken pot pie in the oven to warm, wiped the table free of milk, and organized the kitchen with a skill and dexterity that left Seth astonished. He wanted to help, wanted to prove he wasn't entirely worthless, but he couldn't stop staring. The housekeeper moved with an effortless ease about the room while he stood with the children, watching her with his mouth gaping open in sheer wonder. After what seemed less than five minutes, she had dinner on a clean table, in a near spotless kitchen.
"Dinner's ready," she announced, turning to face him and the children.
"It's a miracle," Seth mused. It wasn't until he heard the sound of his own voice that he realized he'd spoken aloud.
"Are you a miracle?" Judd asked the housekeeper outright.
Mrs. Merkle chuckled softly. "Now that, my fine fellow, is a matter of opinion."
"Mrs. Miracle," Jason announced, offering the new housekeeper a shy smile.
As far as Seth was concerned, the woman's arrival couldn't have been anything but divine providence. Mrs. Hampston had left a week earlier. Seven days, and as far as Seth was concerned the Middle Ages had passed faster.
He'd tried to work a regular forty-hour week, but his involvement with the Firecracker Project required far more of his time and effort than that allowed in a routine schedule. He'd been bringing what he could home with him and working until all hours of the morning, overdosing on caffeine and managing on four or five hours' sleep a night. As a result he'd shortchanged his children and his employer,