Joe led Davy across the black-topped road a few blocks down the street from the stone-fronted Dix’s Woodland Warehouse. They located the dirt trail shortcut through towering ponderosa pines and headed on the three-quarter-mile hike homeward, home temporarily being Joe’s father’s place at the Lazy D Campground and RV Park.
The boy tugged on his dad’s hand and, as always, the tiny one engulfed in his own swelled Joe’s heart with an overwhelming love and sense of responsibility. How could he have stayed away from his son so long?
“Dad?”
Joe felt little fingers dancing in his palm as he glanced down at the hope-filled face staring up at him. Davy looked like his mother when his eyes got big and solemn like that.
“Can we have Miss Meg over for pirate food tonight?”
He hadn’t seen that one coming. “I…don’t think so, bud.”
“How come?”
“Because…” Because he didn’t need any distractions right now. Especially not a pretty, petite distraction. One with gentle, laughing eyes and a smattering of freckles over her pert nose. A winsome smile that made you want to hang out and talk a while longer. No. No distractions of that variety. Never again. Or at least not for a good long while.
Shaking away a mental image of the perky brunette shopkeeper, Joe banished a lingering smile. His boy came first now.
Davy slowed, scuffing his feet through the dry, brown pine needles. “Because why?”
“Because I don’t think we have enough pirate food for all of us.”
There, that was easy enough.
Davy perked up. “I’ll eat only one fish stick.”
“You like her that much?” Joe playfully jiggled his son’s hand, remembering the delight reflected in the pretty woman’s eyes when Davy stepped from behind the postcard rack. And the teasing smile she’d leveled in his own direction when she discovered a pirate crouched on the floor of the shop. “I think she likes you, too.”
The boy ducked his head.
“Is that a blush?” Joe tugged Davy close and ruffled his hair. He needed a haircut, but Davy’s grandma said all the boys were wearing it that long now. That was one battle he’d put on hold.
The little body squirmed free. “Please, Dad?”
“Not tonight. We need to spend some time with Grandpa. That’s one of the reasons we came here, remember?”
And he’d let himself be flayed alive if Davy ever found out the other reason.
“I bet I can spend time with Miss Meg and Grandpa at the same time.” Davy folded his arms in an uncompromising manner Joe recognized as his own.
“Let’s visit with Grandpa tonight, okay? Then we’ll see about Miss Meg another time.”
Or not.
With a triumphant wheeee, Davy spread his arms winglike and dashed ahead. Joe watched in fascination, as he’d done countless times in recent days, at the ephemeral transformation of childish spirits. Dead sober one moment and carefree the next. Trusting that everything would work out. No worries.
If only life were so simple. Joe pulled the bandana from his head and roughed up his hair with his fingers. Then holding out his left hand, he stared for a long moment at the gold band gleaming among the faux pirate gems. It wasn’t going to be easy but, God willing, he’d do whatever it took. Separating from the Navy and coming back to Canyon Springs was the right decision. The teaching job, too. It was all about Davy now.
He watched his son race down the winding dirt path, arms outstretched as he wove from side to side like a fighter jet honing in on an aircraft carrier.
The kid never asked for much. It probably wouldn’t hurt to have Miss Meg over for pirate food. Sometime.
Maybe.
Not tonight.
“Not tonight!” Meg wailed. “Not again!”
It was at her third rapid step into the RV park’s darkened laundry room that the splash registered in her ears and water seeped into her low-cut flats.
She whirled with the overflowing hamper in her arms and slopped back out onto the covered porch. Setting down her laundry, she peered into the dimly lit room once more. Yep. Two inches of water. Again.
And wouldn’t you know it. She hadn’t had any time to do laundry that week, so it was getting to the do-it-now-or-wear-dirty-clothes stage. She was almost out of towels, too.
Zipping her sweatshirt against the encroaching chill, Meg gazed across the heavily treed campground, trying to decide what to do next. “A thinning number of oversized “land whales,” pop-up tents, trailers and campers dotted the landscape, their windows aglow as twilight slipped into darkness. Seasonal guests at this more-than-a-mile-high elevation had diminished considerably after Labor Day and more departed with each passing week as nighttime temperatures dipped into the low forties.
She sighed. Would she be wintering here herself or soon be heading back home to Phoenix? Until a few hours ago when Joe Diaz announced his intention to apply for the teaching job, she’d been certain of God’s leading. But now?
The Log-O-Laundry was not far down the road, but first she needed to make management aware of the water problem. Lugging the hamper along, she made her way to the log-sided office building. The door was locked, and only dim light emitted from the vending machines at the rear of the main room. She knocked, hoping someone might be in a back office or the rec room, but it was apparent Vannie Quintero, the White Mountain Apache teen who worked weekends, had closed for the evening.
While she hated to bother the campground’s owner, someone needed to know about the laundry room crisis. Again hoisting the hamper, she stepped off the porch and headed around the side of the building to a neat, but aging, modular home where Bill Diaz resided. The wooden deck creaked as she ascended the stairs and approached the metal-rimmed screen door. Red-and-black buffalo plaid curtains at the front windows looped aside to reveal a cozy, golden-hued interior. Meg glimpsed the owner reclining in an easy chair, the lantern-based lamp next to him illuminating an open newspaper gripped in his hands.
She knocked, and momentarily the door swung open.
“Grandpa, it’s Miss Meg!” Davy, incongruously dressed in cowboy-themed flannel pajamas and the brigand’s hat from earlier in the afternoon, hopped from one bare foot to the other as he opened the screen door. “She’s come to have pirate food with us.”
The scent of fresh coffee mingling with an acrid odor of burned food caught her attention. “Thank you, Davy, but I’m not here to eat. I need to see your grandpa a minute.”
Meg glimpsed the boy’s father in the adjoining kitchen, his unexpected frown directed right at her. She hadn’t thought to ask Sharon where the two younger Diaz males were staying, but she should have known they’d be at Bill’s. She lifted a hand in greeting, and he nodded a wary response. Great. He probably thought she was stalking him or something.
A newspaper crackled, and in a moment the stocky, mustached Bill Diaz appeared behind his grandson. Placing one hand on the boy’s shoulder, he held open the screen door with the other. Soft light glinted off salt-and-pepper hair, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on a hawklike nose. She could now see a resemblance to Joe through the eyes, but suspected his son might take more after his mother.
“Hey, Meg. What can I do for you?”
“Hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the laundry room’s flooded again.”
Bill scrubbed at his face with his hand and reached for a ball cap lying on a table near the door. “I thought that was taken care of. Let me take a look at it.”
“Dad.” Joe’s disapproving voice cut in from the adjoining room. “It’s time to eat. Can’t that wait?”