Adding Up To Family

If he were being honest, Rebecca was not the only one who was on trial here. He felt as if he and Stevi were on trial, as well. Quite frankly, both sides were scrutinizing and sizing each other up, seeing if they met the other party’s standards and vice versa.

As he drove home, he really hoped that Stevi was on her best behavior. He loved his daughter to pieces, and at bottom she was a really good kid, but she could be trying at times, and not everyone—obviously—was up to dealing with a half child, half fledgling woman. He had been through three other housekeepers to prove that, and even the last one, who supposedly left because her daughter was having her first child, had never seemed completely comfortable around Stevi and her endless barrage of questions.

And Stevi, he knew, had never really taken to the woman, either.

Finally pulling up into the driveway, Steve released the breath he hadn’t even been conscious of holding until this moment. When he’d turned the corner toward his house, he’d seen Rebecca’s car parked at the curb. That meant that unless the woman had been so terrorized by Stevi that she’d fled on foot, unable to stand being in the same house with her a second longer, Rebecca Reynolds was still in his house.

There was hope.

The second he opened the front door, even before he walked in, Steve was aware of an exceptionally tempting aroma swirling around him. He felt his taste buds salivating.

“Ste—phanie?” he called out, remembering at the last moment to use his daughter’s name of preference. He looked around the empty living room. “Ms. Reynolds?”

Following his nose, he made his way into the kitchen. And that was where he found both his daughter and his new housekeeper.

Becky reacted as if she was expecting him. She looked up in his direction. “Dinner will be on the table in a minute,” she promised.

“You made dinner?” he asked. He hadn’t expected that. Not yet, anyway.

She noted his surprise. “Isn’t that what a housekeeper is supposed to do?”

“Then you’re taking the position?” Steve made no attempt to hide how relieved that made him feel.

Becky looked at him, a little bemused at his question. “I thought we already settled that.”

He cleared his throat, taking in all the activity in the kitchen. She’d obviously made dinner, but there were no telltale signs of chaos. Every time he cooked, it seemed to generate five or six pots and pans, no matter how small the meal turned out to be.

“Well, we did, but I wanted to leave you the option of changing your mind,” he told her. “I mean, in case you felt, after spending some time here, that this wasn’t going to work out,” he added tactfully, slanting a glance in his daughter’s direction. “What are you doing?” he asked, when he realized that Stevi’s arms were filled with a couple of dinner plates.

Although he thought of Stevi as precocious and definitely on the brilliant side, she didn’t have a domestic bone in her body. He was to blame for that, because he’d never attempted to give her any chores that were remotely domestic in nature. The closest he had ever come to making her do chores was to get her to make her bed, which she reluctantly did. The rest of her room looked as if it was home base for a twister that kept passing through on a regular basis.

“I’m setting the table,” Stevi informed him, in a voice that indicated he should have figured that out on his own.

After arranging the plates in the small dining room, Stevi doubled back for the silverware. As he watched her, fascinated, she folded napkins, then placed a knife on each one, on the right side of the plates. She put the forks on the other side.

Becky nodded her approval at Stevi’s progress. “Don’t forget the glasses,” she reminded her.

“I’ll do those,” Steve instantly volunteered, envisioning a sudden shower of falling shards of glass if his daughter tripped while carrying the glassware.

Becky took everything in but said nothing. Turning off the burners, she drained and then transferred the linguine from a pot to a large serving bowl. She did the same for the beef Stroganoff she’d made, then picked up the first bowl and carried it to the table.

“You made Stroganoff,” Steve suddenly realized. He smiled broadly at the dish on the counter.

“Stephanie told me that was your favorite,” Becky explained. “I thought it might make a good first meal to serve you.”

He had a soft spot in his heart for Stroganoff. It was the first dish that his late wife had made for him after they married, although he had to admit that the scent he’d detected back then was of something burning. It had taken Cindy a while before she got the hang of cooking.

Such was not the problem here.

And then, as he looked again at the table, Steve saw that there were only two places set, not three. He thought it was an oversight on his daughter’s part.

“There’s one place setting missing, Stephanie,” he prompted quietly, not wanting to embarrass her.

“Becky told me to only set two places,” she answered defensively.

He turned to look at Becky as she set the second serving bowl in the center of the table. “You’re not eating with us?”

“I can’t,” she told him. “I have to go home and do some packing. When Mrs. Parnell told me about this job, I didn’t realize that if I accepted it, I’d be living here,” she confessed.

“But you will be back in the morning, right?” he asked uneasily. Now that he’d found someone who was acceptable not only to him, but to Stevi, he didn’t want to take a chance on having her change her mind.

Becky smiled. “Right.”

Because he had wound up skipping lunch and had basically subsisted on a candy bar he’d gotten out of the vending machine when his stomach’s growling became too loud to ignore, he was extremely susceptible to the aroma wafting up at him. In short order, he ladled both linguine and a large serving of beef Stroganoff onto his plate as he talked.

He sat down with his dish. Unable to resist, he took a forkful of linguine and Stroganoff and slid them into his mouth. Whatever he was about to say to Becky instantly slipped his mind as the flavor seized his attention and took him prisoner.

Wow!

This woman really was perfect, he couldn’t help thinking.

“We haven’t talked salary yet,” Steve said, after chewing and swallowing. He didn’t want to lose her on that technicality, and all but sighed as the next forkful disappeared between his lips. “Name your price.”

Becky laughed, pleased at the compliment he was paying her. “That’s actually something for you and Mrs. Parnell to discuss and decide,” she told him. “And just so you know,” she added, “I had help with the meal.”

A touch of disappointment nudged him. “You ordered out?” he asked. Takeout had been the meal of choice for his last housekeeper, and the go-to move for the other two more often than not. He’d begun to think that cooking was a lost art—until now. “This has to be from someplace new,” he guessed, because he couldn’t remember having his taste buds tantalized this way before.

“No,” Becky corrected. “Stephanie and I went grocery shopping together—you hardly have anything in your refrigerator beyond breakfast food,” she explained. “And then we cooked together.”

“You and Stephanie?” he repeated incredulously. Was she serious?

“Yes.”

Only his presence of mind kept his mouth from dropping open. He looked at his daughter in complete astonishment. Stevi had never expressed the slightest interest in cooking before.

“You helped with this?” he asked in amazement.

“She most certainly did,” Becky told him. There was a note of pride in her voice that took him by surprise. “If you ask me, I think she’s a natural,” she concluded, winking at his daughter.

Stevi seemed to beam. For his part, Steve was at a complete loss for words.

He was still speechless minutes later, as Becky left the house.

* * *

“So, how did it go?” Celia asked, doing her best to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

Becky had hardly had time to walk into her apartment and lock the door behind her before her cell phone began ringing. Dropping her purse on the floor, she glanced at the caller ID on the phone’s screen before she answered. All she had time to say was “Hello” before Celia asked her the all-important question.