Mom Over Miami (4 page)

“Y
ou 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 laugh.

“So, you want to take the big gamble and let me watch the kids for the afternoon?”

“Actually, no.”

He opened his mouth, but she pressed two fingers to his lips to stop him from arguing or teasing her or whatever he had planned in his warped little mind.

“Tessa is asleep in the baby room, and Sam is doing something for me in there, too. So…”

“So you’ve got everything under control.”

His words, not hers.

She smiled. “No need for you to stick around. In fact, if you really want to be a big help to me, why don’t you
go on home and start lunch? We’ll be along in a half hour or so.”

“Lunch. Got it.” He kissed her cheek, turned to go, then faced her again, his brow creased. “What should I make?”

She ran her fingers back through her hair to try to work out a little of the tension in her scalp. “You worked as a short-order cook for a little while—surprise me.”

His mouth tilted up on one side. “Surprising people was why I only worked as a cook for a little while.”

“Don’t start with that old story about growing up a poor little rich boy who never did anything right.”

“You left out ‘according to your dad.’”

“Oh, right—who, according to your dad, never did anything right. And so you never had the drive and desire to stick with anything.”

“Not the military school, not the Coast Guard, not publishing, not college.”

“Well, maybe not the first time you went, but—”

“But by the time I finally got it together, dear old Dad had had enough.” He smiled, sort of. “Can’t say I blame him.”

Hannah blamed him. Oh, not for finally refusing to fund what, at the time, must have seemed Payton’s never-ending quest for fulfillment, but for washing his hands entirely of his son. It cut Payt to his very core. It had to. And yet he never mentioned it as anything but a joke.

But Hannah knew. She knew those secret aches that never wholly healed, and she saw how having disappointed his father still gnawed at Payt. She saw it in the flicker in his eyes whenever he talked about the family
who’d disowned him despite all he had become. She saw it in the way her husband strove to impress the older male authority figures in his life, often at great cost to himself and those he loved.

That was why Payt had gone in to work this Saturday morning, to catch up on signing forms and returning calls and going over the details of the everyday running of the office that his boss chose to ignore. Payt wanted to show the man that he had the makings of a great doctor. And Payt’s boss probably would never even notice. The work got done. He didn’t care how or by whom.

Hannah had wanted to point that very thing out to Payt. The ultimate example of the pot calling the kettle black, she decided, so she kept her mouth shut.

“That’s how the story goes, isn’t it?” She placed her hand just below her throat and raised her chin to supply the proper theatrics. “The Payton-Bartlett story of youthful debauchery and eventual self-discovery? You couldn’t fully commit yourself to anything until you found the Lord and your calling as a doctor.”

“I never could commit to anything until I found the Lord and
you
, Hannah.”

Her heart swelled with love for this man. Her man. She bit her lip to keep from standing there surrounded by two-foot-high furniture and grinning like a fool. She had loved this man from the day she met him and saw in him things no one else could ever appreciate.

Of course, with that love came awesome responsibilities. One of which was to keep the man honest and on his toes.

“Oh, please.” She shook her head, smiling slyly. “You had decided to become a doctor before we ever met, Bartlett.”

He grinned to hear her address him the way she had when they first met, when she thought of him as some spoiled rich kid who could do with being taken down a peg or two.

“In fact—” she put her finger to her chin to feign dredging up the memories from some dusty corner of her mind “—I believe you were on a mission trip trying to impress another girl when you realized you had a calling to enter med school.”

“Okay, I had decided to study medicine before we met, but, baby, I wouldn’t be where I am today without you.”

“Don’t I know it.” She added an impromptu head swagger. “
Baby
.”

“Wow! That’s the first time I ever remember you accepting that compliment.”

“What compliment?” She batted her eyes and went to him, placing both her palms flat on his chest. “I’m saying that without me, you’d never be standing in a poorly lit, dreary-walled, carpeted-with-stuff-I-wouldn’t-put-in-a-dog’s-house, makeshift church nursery. You can thank me later.”

“I can thank you now.” He kissed her, briefly but hard. “
And
I can thank you later.”

She returned his kiss with one of her own, lighter and tinged with an unexpected giggle. “Why don’t you start by thanking me with lunch?”

“I don’t know what to make.”

“Then stop and pick up some chicken or burgers.”

“Chicken or burgers? Too much pressure. Why don’t I wait until you’re done and we’ll all go out together?”

Payt spoke no lie when he said he’d never have become a doctor without her. She loved the man, but that didn’t blind her to the fact that he lacked direction. And motivation. And sometimes needed a swift kick in the seat of the pants.

“Payton. You are my inspiration. The light of my life. You are the only man I could ever imagine trusting my heart, my home, my children to. I am so privileged to have you to spend the rest of my life with….” She smiled and knew that no way could that smile contain all the love and admiration she felt for her sweet hubby. “But if you’re not out of here in ten seconds, I am going to put you to work hauling paint cans and carpet samples.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m gone.”

He kissed her again, just a glancing peck, and headed out the door.

“Lunch!” she called after him.

He muttered a reply, but before she could chase him down to see if that mutter mattered, Sam waddled through the door connecting the old baby nursery and the new toddler room.

The boy had his tongue stuck between his teeth and his hands wrapped around the wire handle of a bucket filled with murky water.

“Oh, Sam! Don’t bring that in here!” Hannah rushed to the child’s aid. Or, as it turned out, to his downfall.

No, to the bucket’s downfall.

Literally.

Down.

Down.

Down.

And
splat!

Sam squeaked.

The empty blue plastic bucket bounced once, sloshing out the last bits of gray-brown liquid. Then it rolled quietly into the open doorway and stopped.

Sam didn’t make another sound. No scream. No angry outcry. Just a timid little squeak. Then he stood there. Frozen. His shoulders hunched. His eyes huge.

He’s terrified, Hannah thought. Terrified of what will happen to him because he made a mistake.

Without hesitation Hannah stepped across the ever-widening puddle of wash water soaking into the dingy orange carpet.

“My fault. I startled you.” She gave him a quick hug, nothing too sloppy or sentimental, then flung into full-fledged distraction mode. “Did you get all the pudding out of the horsey’s ears?”

There was a sentence that, before she became a mom, she had never dreamed she’d have any use for.