Damn. Rhonda needed a focus, something to do with her days. She needed to be around people. She needed a reminder that there was life outside the loss of her husband and this farm.

“You want me to talk to her? See if she’ll take you back on? Maybe there’s frequent turnover at the coffee house. Could be, you could pick up more hours. Maybe go full-time. You’re great at baking, maybe you could help her in the kitchen too,” I suggested and Rhonda’s eyes got wide.

“I can’t do full-time,” she told me.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, ‘cause I got a house. I got things to do.”

“Rhonda, honey,” I moved to the bed and sat down beside her. “You clean the house once a week. Those boys, they eat, I’ll give you that but you do a weekly massive grocery shop. Women with full-time jobs see to their house and their kids all the time.” I grinned. “And, think you noticed, they’re good kids, responsible. They’re doing good. They’re keeping on. Not to mention, I’m here to help out.”

She stared at me and replied, “Darrin didn’t think I needed to do full-time. He liked me home.”

I reached out, grabbed her hand and held it firm when I reminded her softly and gently, “Darrin isn’t here anymore, honey.”

Her eyes drifted.

I gave her hand a squeeze but didn’t get her eyes back. Still, I kept at her.

“You need to do something that doesn’t include lying in this bed, Rhonda. You need something to fill your time, something to think about. You need that for your boys and you need that,” I squeezed her hand again, “for you.”

She sighed, her hand limp in mine.

“Rhonda, would you please look at me?” I asked, she kept her eyes across the room, I scooted closer and repeated, “Rhonda, honey, please. Look at me.”

She gave me her eyes. Hers were vacant. Switched off. Totally.

I kept at her. “Think about it. I’ll talk to Mimi. I’ll get a paper. We’ll find you something you like to do. I promise you won’t have to do anything you don’t like. But the time has come for you to stop spending all your time in this bed and start to check back in.” I gave her another squeeze and said, “Think about it. Promise me.”

She stared at me then, more to get me to move on then to give me an answer, she nodded.

“Thanks,” I whispered knowing I was no further in my endeavors to get my sister-in-law to snap out of it.

I let her go and moved out of the room, out of the house and back to my wheel to salvage the vase that would one day make me two hundred dollars richer which would go a long way to keeping my baby girls in oats.

As I sat, before I got my hands back in the clay, I tagged my cell phone, scrolled to Mike and hit go.

It rang twice before, “Hey, Angel. In a meeting.”

There it was. Never any time to communicate.

“Right, can I just tell you a couple of things quickly?” I asked.

“Yep,” Mike answered.

“Hang onto your hat,” I advised.

“Shit,” Mike muttered and I grinned.

“Good news, no Debbie.”

“Right,” he prompted, saying the word slowly when I said no more.

“And the great news for two people we care about but maybe not for you is that Fin asked Rees out. So she approached me to approach you about letting her go on a real date. I gave her the bad news that you were firm about sixteen. But I also kinda guided her to the realization that car dates were not the only option. She’s studying with Fin now and since she’s got a lot of work to do, we’ve asked her to stay for dinner.”

This got me silence.

I talked through it, “Oh, and I’m teaching her to ride horses on Saturday then we’re going to the mall.”

“It’s good you bought the chore of takin’ my girl to the mall after you guided her to the realization that car dates weren’t the only option.”

He sounded peeved.

I pressed my lips together but I did this to stop myself from smiling.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“It’s happening, you already knew it would, you gotta roll with it,” I advised.

“Right. No studying in his room,” Mike declared.

“Gotcha, already informed Fin it was the kitchen table.”

“And Saturday, she has the money she has from her birthday and trading the jeans. No more and, sweetheart, she’ll give you big eyes and sweet pouts but even if she sees stuff she’s real good at convincing you she has to have, she doesn’t. Presents are one thing. She’s still three weeks out on her allowance and I do not want what was becoming a habit of her begging and borrowing to buy shit she does not need actually to become that habit. You get me?”

I got him. I so got him.

But I needed detail.

“Can I buy her a coffee drink?”

“Yes.”

“If she wants another piece of jewelry from that place I got her present, can I buy her that so she’ll like me more, want me around and maybe she’ll be open to me someday soon spending more nights than four a month in her Dad’s bed, some of those nights she’s in hers?”

“Bribery?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I answered.

I heard him chuckle.

Then he stated in a quiet voice, “Make it clear it’s special, Dusty. Not a bribe. Not something that will happen every time you go out. You are not a new person for Reesee to hit up when she’s convinced she needs some shit to fill some hole that I gotta figure out what she really needs to fill it.”

Seriously, Mike and I had to talk. If he hadn’t figured it out then I was probably closer to knowing what it was then he was.

And Rees was closer to getting it.

My eyes went out the barn to see Fin holding the backdoor open for Rees to go through. Her book bag was over his shoulder. It didn’t look heavy but he still carried it for her.

Seriously, Fin had it going on.

I watched them go through. Then I watched the backdoor close.

Definitely closer to getting it.

“Angel?” Mike called.

“Special. Not a bribe,” I confirmed. “And…Mike?”

“Yeah.”

“Honey, we have to find time to connect and I don’t mean bodily.”

He sounded alert when he asked swiftly, “Everything okay?”

“For me, surprisingly, yeah. For you, I’m sensing, no. You told me you were there to talk things through with. Goes both ways.”

This was met with more silence.

Then I heard, soft and sweet, “I got a meeting, sweetheart.”

“Right.”

“Do you get me?” he asked and I didn’t.

“Get you?”

“I’m at a meeting,” he stated, I stared at the ruined clay and then light dawned.

He had words he wanted to say and he couldn’t because there were people around.

“I get you,” I whispered.

“Right. We’ll connect. Promise.”

“Okay.”

“I want my daughter home by nine,” he decreed.

He was such a good Dad. That was study time, dinner time and TV time.

“Okay,” I repeated then added, “And just so you know, you being a good Dad and giving that to Rees and Fin, right now, I wanna kiss you all over.”

More silence then, “Jesus.”

I grinned.

Then I got a, “Later, darlin’.”

So I gave a, “Later, gorgeous.”

I hit the button on my phone, threw it to my side and dipped my hands in the water in order to drip it on the drying clay.

Then I turned on my wheel.

* * *

“In life, am I gonna use geometry?” Clarisse asked Fin, he looked from her paper to her and grinned.

“No clue,” he answered.

“So is there a point?” she asked.

His grin died and he held her eyes.

His were very blue.

“Do you know what you wanna do?” he asked.

“Do?” she asked back.

“After high school.”

On that, she had no clue so she shrugged.

“Right,” he replied. “You don’t know, until you do know you gotta lay the groundwork.”

“I’m pretty certain what I wanna do won’t have anything to do with geometry,” she shared and he grinned again.

Then he said soft, “Not what I mean, Reesee.”

God, she never thought she’d love it, anyone but her Dad and No calling her that.

But she loved it when Fin called her that.

“What do you mean?” she asked soft back.

“You might go to school, college. If you do, you gotta have the grades. You fuck this up, get a shit grade, fucks up your average. You don’t learn it, you can’t answer the questions on the SATs. So, until you get an idea of where you wanna go, you gotta do the work to cover your bases.”

Seriously, he was so smart. She didn’t know anybody like him. Not at school. He was like, practically an adult, he was that smart.

“Right,” she whispered.

They were at right angles at the kitchen table but after she said that word, he scooched his chair around so he was super close.

“Break it down for me, do the work out loud. We’ll try to figure out where you aren’t gettin’ it.”

Oh God! She couldn’t do that! He’d think she was stupid.

She stared at his profile as he stared at her paper, waiting for her to do the work. As she did, she wondered if she was weird thinking he had really beautiful lips. The bottom one was full and both of them had these ridges…

When she didn’t move or speak, his neck twisted and, head still bent, only his eyes came to her.

That close, he was even cuter.

Her belly fluttered.

“Rees?” he called.

Nervous, she blurted straight out, “I don’t want you to think I’m stupid.”

He blinked then he straightened, never taking his eyes from her.

“Why would I think you’re stupid?” he asked.

“I don’t…I mean,” she looked down at the paper then at him. “You’re good at that. You worked out three questions showin’ me how to do it in the time I did one and I got mine wrong when you checked it.”

“Babe, you don’t get geometry, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It just means you don’t get geometry. A lot of people don’t get geometry.”

That was a nice thing to say. But still.

Her eyes dropped down to the table. “I don’t get a lot of stuff,” she muttered at the paper.

“Reesee,” he called again and she looked at him.

That was when he did it. Leaned in and got super close. Super close. So close all she could see were his eyes!

“You get shit that matters,” he whispered.

“What?” she breathed.

“You said your Dad was happy. Aunt Dusty was tight with my Dad. They talked all the time. But she’s singin’ and dancin’ and laughin’ and bein’ crazy and it’s crazier than the usual way she does it. You gave her that.”

Clarisse blinked then she said quietly, “You helped.”

“It was your idea,” he reminded her then went on, “You read those diaries and you knew. So you did somethin’ about it. If you do that for your Dad because he’s a good guy and looks out for you, who cares if you don’t get geometry?”

She had to admit, he had a point.

So she smiled at him.

His eyes changed when she did. It seemed they were looking deeper into hers. Then his dropped to her mouth and her belly fluttered again.

Then he moved back a few inches and muttered, “But let’s get you to the point where you can get this enough that you pass this class.”

And she had to admit, if she passed this class, that would make her Dad happier.

“Okay,” she agreed.

“Now, work through it out loud,” he repeated.

Clarisse did what he said.

Fin caught where she was going wrong. He had to explain it three times through the next three problems but finally, she got it.

He moved to his English Comp homework but when he checked her work, she got only one wrong. And she’d worked through fourteen questions.

Clarisse thought everything about Fin Holliday was awesome.

Now she knew he was more awesome than awesome.

She didn’t know what that was. She just knew Fin was it.

* * *

Mike hit the button to disconnect his phone call from Dusty and looked across the desk at Tanner Layne but the question came from his side.

“Whipped?”

Mike turned and his eyes hit the huge, bald, muscled, tattooed, tank top in February wearing, scarily grinning Ryker seated at his side.

“Absolutely.”

The scary grin turned into an ugly smile.

Then Ryker announced with a jerk of his head toward Tanner, “His woman tells my woman she bakes great cakes.”

Mike did not want to do this with Cal.