Karli Redding is a traveling nurse. She has a month off between jobs, so when Mill Pond's mailman, Keagan Monroe, calls to say that her grandfather can't care for himself anymore, Karli volunteers to go to Mill Pond and help set up suitable health care for him. Axel's always been a pain in the rear, and age hasn't improved him. The two bump heads, and Karli ends up cooking and cleaning for the old man while she tries to decide what to do with him. She also finds herself getting more and more attracted to Mill Pond's mailman. But Keagan's been through one bad romance and he wants something permanent this time, nothing temporary. Can Karli give up her footloose lifestyle? Can she find happiness in a small town?
Excerpt
She crossed the threshold and stopped. Good grief. The inside of the house was worse than the outside. The rooms she could see looked as though no one had set foot in them for years. No one had dusted in a decade and cobwebs hung from corners. It smelled musty, and a faint scent of urine drifted from a back room.
Keagan pressed his lips in a grimace. “It’s not pretty. A woman comes in to clean his room every other week, but he won’t let her touch anything else. I fetch groceries for him when he needs them, but I think he stopped cooking a while ago. The only empty containers I’ve seen in the trash lately held applesauce, cottage cheese, and Ensure.”
Karli turned a serious gaze on him. “You’re awfully nice to a mean, old man.”
The voice called again. “Mean, huh? Which one of Donna’s miserable kids did she send? She was too much of a chicken to come herself.”
Karli was glad she could spare her mom this. She could have dealt with it, but thankfully, Mom had put her growing up pains behind her. Why stir them up again?
“I don’t see any other kids lining up to rescue you!” Karli followed the voice toward the back room—a depressing journey. The kitchen had worn linoleum flooring and a grease covered, four-burner stove. Flies buzzed an open can of peaches. She shook her head. “Can he get around?”
Keagan nodded. “Everything’s set up for his wheelchair, but he’s moving less and less these days.”
Keagan kept walking until they stepped into a three-season room. Axel sat nearly upright in a hospital bed, cranked so that he could see out the windows. He had on stained pajamas, and his steel-gray hair hadn’t been washed. A black garbage can sat close by, and the corner of an adult diaper drooped over its edge.
“For heaven’s sake, shut the darn thing!” Keagan cracked the lid and let the diaper slide inside, then quickly shut it.
Axel looked a lot like she remembered him—average height, lots of long, messy, gray hair, and a stubbly chin. But his shoulders were stooped, his frame withered, and his legs thin and frail. Age was taking its toll.
I taught elementary education for six years before I had my two daughters. I have a fondness for kids, so lots of them have been in and out of our house. I have a fondness for cooking, too, which means I fed a lot of them. As much as I love hamburgers and hot dogs, the kids had eclectic tastes, so I collected more and more recipes and cookbooks. Today, food sneaks into my stories, and if I'm lucky, so do children...and strays. I invite most of them in and now have a stray cat who walked through our doors to rule our house, a stray chihuahua who barks at everything, and an adopted parakeet and rat terrier. I also have a very patient husband, or he'd have probably left before now.
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