The Soldier's Secret Child. Lee McClain Tobin

look any too disturbed by the ruckus Vito and Charlie were creating. Her eyes sparkled with more interest than she’d shown in the previous couple of weeks.

      “I’d better get busy with dinner.” Lacey opened the refrigerator door and studied the contents.

      “I used to be such a good cook,” Nonna commented. “Nowadays, I just don’t have the energy.”

      “You will again.” Lacey pulled mushrooms, sweet peppers and broccoli from the fridge. “You’d better. I don’t think I could face the future without your lasagna in it.”

      “I could teach you to make it.”

      Lacey chuckled. “I’m really not much of a cook. And besides, we need to work on healthy meals. Maybe we can figure out a way to make some heart-healthy lasagna one of these days.”

      As she measured out brown rice and started it cooking, she looked over to see Nonna’s frown. “What’s wrong?”

      “What are you making?”

      “Stir-fried veggies on brown rice. It’ll be good.” Truthfully, it was one of Lacey’s few staples, a quick, healthy meal she often whipped up for herself after work.

      “No meat?” Nonna sounded scandalized. “You can’t serve a meal to men without meat. At least a little, for flavor.”

      Lacey stopped in the middle of chopping the broccoli into small florets. “I’m cooking for men?”

      “Aren’t you fixing dinner for Vito and Charlie, too?” Nonna’s eyebrows lifted.

      “We didn’t talk about sharing meals.” Out the window, she saw Vito close the truck cab and wipe his forehead with the back of his hand before picking up one of the street side boxes to carry in. “They are working up a sweat out there, but where would I put them?” She nodded toward the small wooden table against the wall, where she and Nonna had been taking their meals. Once again, she sensed their quiet, relaxing summer dissolving away.

      At the same time, Nonna was an extrovert, so maybe having more people around would suit her. As for Lacey, she needed to get used to having people in the house, to ease into hosting a bed-and-breakfast gradually, rather than waiting until she had a houseful of paying guests to feed in her big dining room. And who better than good old Vito?

      “There’s always room for more around a happy home’s table,” Nonna said, rocking.

      “I guess we could move it out from the wall.”

      Vito walked by carrying a double stack of boxes, and Lacey hurried to the kitchen door. “Are you okay with that? Do you need help?” Though from the way his biceps stretched the sleeves of his white T-shirt, he was most definitely okay.

      “There’s nothing wrong with me below the neck.” He sounded uncharacteristically irritable. “I can carry a couple of boxes.”

      Where had that come from? She lifted her hands and took a step back. “Fine with me,” she said sharply.

      From above them on the stairs, Charlie crowed, “Ooo-eee, a fight!”

      Vito ignored him and stomped up the stairs, still carrying both boxes.

      “You come in here, son.” Nonna stood behind Lacey, beckoning to Charlie.

      Lacey bit her lip. She didn’t want Nonna to overexert herself. And being from an earlier generation, she might have unreasonable expectations of how a kid like Charlie would behave.

      But Nonna was whispering to Charlie, and they both laughed, and then he helped her back to her rocking chair. That was good.

      Lacey went back to her cutting board, looked at the stack of veggies and reluctantly acknowledged to herself that Nonna was probably right. If she could even get a red-blooded man and an eight-year-old boy to eat stir-fry, the least she could do was put some beef in it. She rummaged through her refrigerator and found a pack of round steak, already cut into strips. Lazy woman’s meat. She drizzled oil into the wok, let it heat a minute, and then dumped in the beef strips.

      “Hey, Lace.” It was Vito’s deep voice, coming from the kitchen doorway. “C’mere a minute.”

      She glanced around. The rice was cooking, Nonna and Charlie were still talking quietly and the beef was barely starting to brown. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “What’s up?” she asked as she crossed the kitchen toward him. “You’re not going to bite my head off again, are you?”

      “No.” He beckoned her toward the front room, where they could talk without the others hearing. “Look, I’m sorry I snapped. Charlie’s been a handful and...” He trailed off and rubbed the back of his neck.

      “And what?”

      “And...I hate being treated like there’s something wrong with me. I’m still plenty strong.”

      “I noticed.” But she remembered a similar feeling herself, after her miscarriage; people had tiptoed around her, offering to carry her groceries and help her to a seat in church. When really, she’d been just fine physically. “I’m sorry, too, then. I know how annoying it is to be treated like an invalid.”

      “So we’re good?” He put an arm around her.

      It was a gesture as natural as breathing to Vito as well as to the rest of his Italian family. She’d always liked that about them.

      But now, something felt different about Vito’s warm arm around her shoulders. Maybe it was that he was so much bigger and brawnier than he’d been as a younger man.

      Disconcerted, she hunched her shoulders and stepped away.

      Some emotion flickered in his eyes and was gone, so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d seen it.

      “Hi!” Charlie came out of the kitchen, smiling innocently. He sidestepped toward Nonna’s room.

      “Where you headed, buddy?” Vito asked.

      “Lacey, dear,” Nonna called from the kitchen. “I’d like to rest up a little before dinner.”

      “I’m glad she called me.” Lacey heard herself talking a little faster than usual, heard a breathless sound in her own voice. “I try to walk with her, because I have so many area rugs and the house can be a bit of an obstacle course. But of course, she likes to be independent.” Why was she blathering like she was nervous, around Vito?