An Unexpected Match (10 page)

“I put aside my plans to earn my MFA—that's a master's in fine arts—when I became engaged. I'd always had this silly dream of being a writer.” She shrugged, staring at the table. “Anyway, I've been accepted to the program at Indiana University, but now I'm not sure I still want it.”

“Why not?”

Looking up at him, she smiled. “I'm feeling differently about it now that I've found work that I really enjoy. Elizabeth's just amazing.”

Matthew didn't know if she was trying to reassure him or warn him with her words. Hadn't she once had a dream of being an accountant or something, followed by a list of other dreams?

Maybe she was having fun playing dollhouse with his daughter right now, but in another week she would probably start waffling again and realize she needed a new adventure. He couldn't sit back and wait for that day. He hadn't seriously been looking for a permanent replacement lately, but he needed to step up the search as soon as he had a free minute. Whenever that would be.

He looked at the clock, tightening his jaw with the realization that, as usual, his life was controlled by it instead of the other way around. “I need to get back to work. I have to be in court at three, and it's probably going to be a long one.”

Haley stood, as well, taking his plate from him and carrying it to the dishwasher. She turned back just as he shrugged into his suit jacket.

“You never answered my earlier question. Not really. If you weren't checking up on us, then why are you home in the middle of the day?”

“I just had a little free time, and I—”

She shook her head, not buying it. “You pack a lunch every day, and you happened not to pack one today on the off chance you'd have some free time?”

He held up both hands, caught. “All right. Guilty.”

“Then why?”

“I didn't want to miss out on the fun.”

 

In the preschool class that next Sunday morning, children were waving palm branches much the way Matthew imagined the people of Jerusalem might have as Jesus made his triumphant entrance into the city. Okay, he doubted the multitudes mentioned in the Gospels were using the branches as samurai swords the way these kids were. Just another Palm Sunday tradition.

“Okay now. Let's put down the palms.”

As he stood in the classroom's open doorway, Matthew turned at the sound of a surprising but familiar voice. At the front of the class, Haley motioned to stop the frenzy around her. Matthew was shocked to see her there. She'd only been in Markston a few weeks and wouldn't be around long, and yet here she was volunteering to teach Sunday school.

When she caught sight of Matthew, she gave him a quick wave before turning back to the children.

“Does anybody remember what we were supposed to do with the palms?”

“Lay them down for the donkey and the baby donkey to walk on,” Elizabeth called out.

“That's right,” Haley said, nodding enthusiastically.
“The people of Jerusalem laid clothes on the road and then cut branches and spread them on the ground for Jesus to come into the city.”

As the samurai swords came up for battle again, she drew attention to the front of the room. “Who remembers what the people said to Jesus when he came into the city?”

“Hosanna!” several children called out at once.

Haley pointed to the white board behind her where she reviewed the words of Matthew 21:9b: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the Highest!”

Asking her students to lay their palm branches on the floor, Haley led a quick prayer and dismissed the children. She and the other teacher, who had been cleaning up spilled juice while Haley finished teaching, asked the children to line up by the classroom entrance and handed them off to their parents one by one. Each child gave her a big hug before heading out the door.

Elizabeth was last in line. “Hi, Daddy. Look at the picture I made.” She shoved a large piece of tracing paper into his hands. The shape on it was obviously a palm that she'd placed under her paper, but she'd created her version by coloring over that texture with orange and purple crayons.

“That's nice.” He turned to Haley, who handed Elizabeth's coat to him. “I didn't expect to see you here.”

“It's something new,” she said unnecessarily.

“You do know they can't read, right?” He indicated the Scripture she'd written on the white board.

“I know, but they like to pretend they can.” She glanced back at the words she'd written in block letters. “They really liked the word
hosanna
.”

He nodded. His curiosity piqued, he couldn't help asking, “How did you end up teaching in here?”

“I've been looking for a way to do my part in the church. I thought it would be fun to teach the little ones, so I volunteered to substitute.” She shrugged. “I guess they needed me right away.”

“So it's temporary, then.” That made sense to him. Just another short-term project in a life that had been filled with them.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Elizabeth putting down her drawing and moving over to the white board. A marker had been left out, so she grabbed it and started drawing on the board.

“It's not necessarily only temporary.” Haley's gaze followed his daughter, as well, but then she looked back to Matthew. “One of the teachers is pregnant with her first child, and she would like to take some time off, so they've been looking for a replacement.”

“Oh.” He noticed she hadn't said “permanent,” but then
permanent
probably didn't mean the same to Haley that it did to others.

“This was the perfect time to start though.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Are you kidding?” She looked at him as if he'd just grown a third ear or something. “It's the Easter season. What a wonderful time of year for Christians.”

He had to chuckle at her enthusiasm. “For those of us in the church business, Easter is another working weekend. We work overtime. Somebody has to put together all those wonderful services that everyone loves to attend. Good Friday, the Easter sunrise service, the main Easter service. Somebody has to plan all the vocal and instrumental selections.”

As he was speaking, Haley had lifted her hand to her chin, and now she was holding it between her thumb and
forefinger. Her gaze flicked to his daughter and back to him. “Are you always this cynical?”

“I'm not,” he began, but he stopped himself because there was no way to answer that. He was, in fact, always this cynical. He'd just never had anyone call him on the fact before.

He'd also never seen Haley angry before. Hurt, yes, but never angry. Still, he could tell by the flex of her jaw that she was. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.”

She just stared at him, not believing him. Her disbelief made him question himself. Was he really so jaded that he'd lost the true meaning in Christ's death and resurrection? No, that couldn't be true.

Haley glanced over at Elizabeth again, perhaps to make sure she wasn't listening.

“I know you probably didn't mean that the way you said it,” she said. “I just hope you find time in all your ‘overtime' to remember to thank God that the tomb was empty.”

H
aley bustled around the living room in Matthew's house nearly a week later, making sure everything was perfect. All the other rooms had been tidied, the table had been set and dinner such as it was, would be going in the water once it boiled.

A smile settled on her lips as she pictured herself wearing high heels and a frilly apron over her dress as she handed Matthew his slippers and newspaper when he came though the door. She could do the June Cleaver thing, right? But the fantasy crumbled as soon as Haley touched the rocker/recliner that moved to reveal a bunch of rubbery legs from dolls peeking out from under it.

She crouched and started pulling dolls, clothed in party dresses, from beneath the recliner-turned-dollhouse.

“Elizabeth,” she called out to the child she'd just heard on the stairs. “Someone forgot her dolls in here. Do you know who that someone might be?”

“Me.”

Haley was reaching to see if there were any stragglers still beneath the chair when the splashing sound of water
boiling over filtered in from the kitchen. Standing, Haley brushed her hands off on her un-June Cleaver-esque jeans. She jogged into the kitchen. She pulled the pan off the stove just as Elizabeth sprinted into the room.

“Miss Haley, the water's boiling over.”

“I can see that.”

The water would need to be cleaned up from the range's drip pan later but for now she still needed to cook dinner, so she placed the saucepan under the faucet to refill it.

Haley sighed as she returned to the living room. She wasn't anywhere near the 1950s TV character that had set an unattainable image for housewives. Haley's hair wasn't properly coiffed, her fuzzy slippers didn't give even an extra quarter-inch of height and her cooking wasn't close to gourmet. She did, however, have something in common with Barbara Billingsley, the actress who portrayed old June: they were both playacting.

Haley shook her head. No one actually still wanted a life like that, anyway, did they? “When did I become so un-PC?”

“What's PC?” Elizabeth asked from the other room.

“It stands for ‘politically correct,'” she answered.

“Oh.” Elizabeth didn't sound all that interested in the subject.

Haley hoped the child wouldn't press for a more detailed explanation, not when Haley was so busy getting her head on straight over other matters. She had no business daydreaming about Matthew Warren and his daughter as if they could become some quaint little family or something. Her relationship with Matthew was employee to employer. If she was blessed to become Matthew's friend, as well, that would be great, but it wasn't the most important thing. Caring for Elizabeth was.

Even that was only temporary.

Haley's heart squeezed over the thought as she glanced at the child sitting on the floor. Elizabeth was already playing again with the dolls she was supposed to be putting away. How could Haley bear to ever leave that sweet little girl or the child's father, who needed Haley more than he realized?

Matthew had asked her to commit for only thirty days, and they were already into the third week of their agreement. Time was ticking away too quickly. He'd already told her he would be seeking a permanent replacement. She should be looking for another job for that eventuality, but she couldn't bring herself to search the want ads. She wanted
this
job, wanted to work with
this
child, and she wanted to do it for as many years as they needed her.

For the first time in her life, she was doing something important. It didn't even matter that she was using little of the formal learning she'd gained in her long and varied higher-education process. She'd never felt more valuable in any of her other jobs, the ones that were supposed to offer growth potential. Elizabeth Warren had all kinds of
growth potential,
and Haley wanted to be there to share in all of it.

Maybe Matthew would even let her have that opportunity. He'd already said he trusted her to care for Elizabeth, and she suspected it was hard for him to trust anyone. She wanted to honor that trust by giving Elizabeth the best care she knew how.

Haley was invested in this family. Sometimes when she was playing with Elizabeth, she forgot, at least for a few seconds, why she'd returned to Markston and her homelessness and lack of employment that had forced her to stay. Now she
wanted
to stay.

If only she could convince Matthew to keep her on as Elizabeth's permanent caregiver, the situation would be great for all involved. Earlier today, she had an idea how to make her case: she would make herself indispensable to him by doing some household duties in addition to providing child care. When Matthew had called earlier to say he was stuck in court for the evening, she'd decided to put her plan into action.

Only now she was having second thoughts, particularly since her June Cleaver daydream had fallen flat. Just because she and Elizabeth had fallen into a natural relationship didn't mean she had the skills to be a domestic engineer.

The cooking was great in theory. Too bad she'd had so little practice at it. She regretted having always taken a restroom pass every time her mother tried to conduct a home-cooking class. Haley was a master of ordering takeout, but somehow she doubted that would impress Matthew.

No more time for second thoughts, she decided, as she heard Matthew's car in the drive. Even if keeping this job mattered more than she'd ever thought any job should, all she could do was present her case. The rest would be up to him.

 

Matthew scraped the remaining cheesy pasta noodles off the bottom of the saucepan where they'd burned to a nasty brown. Though he wondered if it was going to take a belt sander to clean the bottom of the pan, he was determined not to laugh. He'd managed to choke down two whole servings of her dinner of boxed macaroni combined with canned tuna and frozen peas, even though it tasted like a barbecue gone wrong.

All through dinner, he'd been praying that God would keep Elizabeth quiet so she wouldn't announce that dinner was terrible and refuse to eat it. The child had only said that it tasted funny and then had eaten all of her small serving, so Matthew considered it an answer to prayer.

Haley might not be the best cook in the world, but she'd earned an E for “effort” tonight. He appreciated that effort, too. For one day, he hadn't been responsible for everything. He'd been able to pull up a chair and dig into a meal he didn't have to cook. Okay, the food had been barely edible, but it was the thought that counted, and it counted for a lot.

“Daddy, I'm all clean,” Elizabeth said as she rode into the room on Haley's back. The child was dressed warmly in her lavender footed pajamas, and her damp hair was combed back from her face.

It hardly surprised Matthew that the two of them charged into the room as a horse and jockey. This was the Haley he'd come to know over the past few weeks. If Haley and his daughter had
not
been playing a game of pretend when they returned from Elizabeth's bath, that would have surprised him more.

“I sank boats in the bathtub,” his daughter announced as Haley lowered her to the ground.

“That sounds like fun.” He couldn't help smiling as he watched them together, the horse and rider both caught in a fit of giggles.

Haley looked just the same as she did most days, wearing one of her many college sweatshirts—this time it read “Indiana State”—but somehow she seemed different to him tonight. Was she truly different, or had he changed in how he viewed her?

Strangely though, what he first had described as flighti
ness seemed more like spontaneity now, and the immaturity he'd pointed out before, he would now be tempted to call a fun-loving spirit. Had he softened? He wasn't sure, but he did realize he'd been too quick to judge her.

The thought that he might be attracted to Haley teased him, but he squashed it. Even if he was in the market for a relationship and even if their families weren't too close for him to risk the awkwardness of a potential breakup, he still wouldn't choose someone like Haley. Someone too similar to his ex-wife for him to ever trust her to stick around. Even if she didn't decide to go back to college as she was considering, she would find some other adventure to take her away from Markston.

If either of those things weren't enough to push his risky thoughts right out of his mind, then he had only to think of Elizabeth. Her needs had to come first. No matter what feelings he might be tempted to have for Haley, he couldn't risk allowing Elizabeth to be hurt when Haley left. And she would leave.

“Here, let me help you with that.” Haley started pushing up her sleeves as she came behind him.

He had been scraping the pan into the garbage, but he shoved the can back below the sink and closed the cabinet door. Pouring some liquid soap into the pan, he filled it with suds.

“No, you cooked. Anyway, I'm about finished. This just needs to soak.”

“Are we going to make Easter eggs tonight, Daddy?”

Elizabeth already had the refrigerator door open and was pulling out a carton of eggs.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Matthew called out, but Haley beat him to his daughter, deftly removing the carton from the child's hands.

“Whoa. We want to be careful, or we'll drop those,” she said.

“Sorry, sweetie.” He shook his head, wiping his hands on a towel. “Not tonight. It's already too late, and you have to get to bed.”

“But you promised,” Elizabeth wailed.

Matthew steadied himself, determined to keep the upper hand in the situation. “Yes, I promised that we'll paint Easter eggs sometime before Easter Sunday. I didn't promise to do it tonight.”

He waited for Haley to argue with him, to suggest that he give in to his daughter's demands, but she only put the eggs back in the refrigerator and closed the door.

“I guess you have some decisions to make in the next few days so you'll be ready to color eggs,” Haley told her. “Like whether you want to have solid-colored eggs or striped eggs. And whether you'd like to draw designs on the eggs before you dye them. Maybe if you'll want to use stickers or stamps.”

“Wow, I didn't realize there were so many choices,” he said. No matter what thoughts he'd been having about Haley, he couldn't help being impressed by how easily she had distracted his daughter from her frustration by offering her limited choices. Some of the techniques for dealing with children that he'd learned by trial and error came so easily to Haley.

“I want stripes,” Elizabeth said finally, her lip still quivering.

“You take your time,” Matthew said, playing along with Haley. “But while you're thinking, you should also decide whether you want to color eggs here or at Grammy's.”

Elizabeth didn't skip a beat. “Can Miss Haley color eggs with us?”

Matthew swallowed. No, this wasn't the way this conversation was supposed to go.

“Please, Daddy. It will be fun.”

What was he supposed to say now? He was willing to risk the tantrum Elizabeth might throw if he shot down her idea, but if he did say no, it might suggest that he was uncomfortable being around Haley himself. He wasn't ready to admit that. He tried another tack instead.

“I'm sure she'll be too busy for that…with the wedding gifts she still needs to return and all.” It didn't seem nice reminding Haley of her wedding, but a man had to do what a man had to do. “We can ask her though.”

“Do you want to, Miss Haley?”

“I'd love to.” Haley grinned at the child before turning to Matthew. “Oh, didn't I tell you that we finished shipping all the gifts by the time my sisters went home? Our mother didn't want to offend Miss Manners with any delay.”

“Oh. Well, good, then.” He wondered if Miss Manners would appreciate his invoking thoughts of Haley's broken engagement in order to avoid a social situation. He didn't feel all that great about it.

He reached down to brush Elizabeth's damp hair. “It's time for you to go to bed, little missy.”

The whine he was conditioned to expect came right away, but Matthew scooped his daughter up and headed toward the stairs. Stopping as he crossed from the kitchen to the hall that led to the stairs, he turned back to Haley.

“Hey, if you want to wait a few minutes, we can have coffee or something.”

At Haley's surprised expression, he added, “I just thought it would be nice to have some adult conversation.”

She appeared skeptical, but she nodded anyway.
Perhaps guilt was a part of his invitation, but he found he didn't regret it. Haley had been nice to make dinner for his family, and he wanted to make it up to her. Of course he couldn't allow himself to be attracted to her, but it was about time that he was more of a friend to her.