Mom Over Miami Part 5

"Well, you see, when I got here this morning, I found this room being used for storage, but I knew we were going to need it if we wanted to expand our infant and toddler programs. So, with that in mind, I started clearing the way, grabbing some paint cans and carpet samples and-"

"No!" Jacqui flashed her sister a stunned look, then turned to Hannah again, blinking slowly as she asked, "Really?"

"I...uh..." Hannah glanced at Sam, who looked a lot like he did the day he came in to find the dog had rubbed skunk spray all over their living room.

"Can you believe it?" Cydney shot upright so fast that her tot-size chair tipped over backward. She raised the rolled-up edition of the Wileyville Guardian News Wileyville Guardian News, like Lady Liberty lifting high her torch, and marveled, "I never dreamed I'd see the day."

"The day when someone would ask you..." Hannah motioned toward the pile of junk waiting for relocation.

"Ask us." Cydney pressed the paper to her chest. "Us, sister."

"I heard it." Jacqui held up her hand, always the one to remain calm and take charge. "But let's not go all flighty and ridiculous about it." She fixed her megawatt smile on Hannah. "We should have seen it coming, really. How could this lovely lady not not have come to us to meet this exciting challenge?" have come to us to meet this exciting challenge?"

Hannah jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the cans. "I wouldn't exactly call it a challenge."

"Well, what else could you call it-redecorating the baby and toddler rooms?"

"Re...re..." Hannah swallowed and forced herself to say it aloud. "Redecorating? You two? My nursery rooms?"

"Don't think of them as your nursery rooms anymore, Hannah."

"No?"

"Think of them as our canvas." Jacqui flung her arms out.

Out.

What a lovely, compelling, unattainable word. It was all Hannah wanted right now-to get out out of here so she could try to figure out what she'd just gotten herself of here so she could try to figure out what she'd just gotten herself in into.

Think, Hannah, think.

"I, uh, I can't talk about this just now. Payt's at home fixing lunch for Sam and Tessa and me. Well...not for Tessa, but...we really can't stay."

Hannah swept through the room and into the nursery like a miniature tornado. Snagging Sam and directing him with a well-placed hand on his back, she gathered the diaper bag and her drowsy daughter up in one swoop, then turned to make her goodbyes.

She'd started the day with a single goal. To do the job she'd volunteered to do and to do it perfectly. And she had.

Except for the spill.

And the paint cans left in the hallway.

And the fact that she had just unleashed the DIY sisters on what she had thought would be her own quietly controlled territory.

Other than that, however, the day couldn't possible have been more perfect.

"Hannah Bartlett, why didn't you tell us?"

She jerked her head up to see Jacqui and Cydney poring over an open page of her hometown newspaper.

Oh, dear. What had Daddy gotten up to now? Somehow she'd thought that by living in another state she might escape the embarra.s.sment of her father's lively antics. Somehow she'd thought that by living in another state she might escape the embarra.s.sment of her father's lively antics.

Tessa squirmed against her shoulder.

Hannah adjusted the baby for comfort, and though she didn't want to, asked, "Tell you what?"

"About your writing."

"My...?" She edged forward.

"It's adorable and and clever," Jacqui p.r.o.nounced, like the arbiter of all things both precious and precocious. "Why didn't you tell anyone?" clever," Jacqui p.r.o.nounced, like the arbiter of all things both precious and precocious. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"About what?"

"This!" Cydney shoved the open paper in her direction and smacked it with the back of her hand. "Your newspaper column about modern motherhood. Where did you ever come up with that t.i.tle?"

"I..." She forced her eyes to focus on a strip of newsprint wedged between an update on who would be sending prized produce and livestock to the state fair next week and the list of new bus routes for the coming school year.

There it was. One of the worst photos ever taken of her in all its grainy newsprint glory just above the opening line Greetings From Nacho Mama's House.

Hannah didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So she just gave Sam a little nudge, snapped up the paper and her mail and headed for the door. "Excuse me, ladies, but we have to go home now."

"Are we going home to get lunch?" Sam asked.

"Yes, dear. We're going home to have a calm, pleasant, life-affirming lunch with Daddy. And as soon as we finish with that, I am going to kill your aunt Sadie."

CHAPTER 5

Subject: What have YOU done?

To: ItsmeSadie

Journalism 101-always get the who, what, where, when and why. Since I am now-through no fault or initiative of my own-a newspaper journalist of sorts, let me ask you: WHO do you think you are, publis.h.i.+ng my private thoughts and stories about my life, written for personal amus.e.m.e.nt only, in the Wileyville Guardian News Wileyville Guardian News?

WHAT kind of thoughtless, pushy person does that to her own sister?

WHERE did you get the idea that I wouldn't mind seeing myself turned into a cartoonish buffoon in front of everyone in my own hometown?

WHEN did you plan to tell me that you'd done this?

WHY did you let them run a picture of me, eight months pregnant with my face puffed up like a water balloon, stuck right beside the headline County's Biggest Sow State Fair Bound?

I am never speaking to you again.

Call me.

"I'm a joke." Hannah slid against the wall to sit on the floor of her vacant front room.

"No." Payt settled down beside her.

"A laughingstock," she muttered.

"No. No." Payt wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. "People aren't laughing at at you-they're laughing you-they're laughing with with you." you."

Hannah shot her well-meaning hubby a look that would boil stone. "Do you think saying that has ever made anyone feel better?"

"No, but it sure eases the guilt for the people doing the laughing." A smile lit his eyes.

She stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankles. "Including you?"

"Yes."

She folded her arms and refused to look at him.

He jiggled her shoulders and rested his head to hers. "When it comes to this stuff you've written about your everyday adventures, yes, including me. I can't help it, Hannah, its funny. You're funny."

"Case closed. I am am a joke." a joke."

"Okay let me rephrase that-your writing is funny. It's...it's..."

"Clever?" She borrowed Jacqui's description, because of all the things she could think to call her work, she could accept "clever." Not too pretentious. Not too humble.

"Yeah, clever." He kissed her temple. "You've got a lot of potential, kid."

Potential? The intended praise didn't help to unknot a single muscle. "Potential to make a great big whopping fool of myself." The intended praise didn't help to unknot a single muscle. "Potential to make a great big whopping fool of myself."

He pressed his lips to her ear, pulled her closer still and murmured, "Or to succeed at the thing you've wanted to do since before I even met you, Hannah. This may finally give you the chance to be a writer."

A writer writer. Her breath caught high in her chest, straining her voice to the bare essence of a whisper. "I have always wanted to be a writer."

"I know." He pulled away just enough to turn her face to his.

When he gazed into her eyes, she saw love and sincerity mingled with something she rarely allowed herself to acknowledge-pride. Her husband practically glowed with pride over her abilities.

She looked away, unable to accept his endearing admiration. "I don't deserve to call myself a writer for this. What did I do do, after all? Just typed out a few flippant notes to my family."

"What you did was what you always dreamed of doing, Hannah. You wrote something-and someone liked it."

"Wish you'd stop that."

"What?"

"Making me feel good about all this. Sadie tricked me. I don't want to feel good about any part of this."

"But you do."

She wriggled her back to the wall and scrunched her shoulders up like a child preparing for a tickle attack. And like that child, she couldn't hold back the slow grin that worked its way from deep inside her being to her tightly closed lips.

"I knew it." Payt laughed and hugged her again. "And I can't tell you how relieved I am."

"Relieved? Why?"

"Why? You'd ask that of the guy who has carried years' and years' worth of guilt over you quitting college and putting your personal goals aside just to help me pay for my education?"

"Just to help you become the man I knew you could be. The man you felt G.o.d had called you to be." She laid her hand alongside his cheek.

"Yeah, but you were the one who sacrificed for my goals."

"I didn't mind."

He kissed the inside of her palm.

A delicious s.h.i.+ver shot through her whole body. She relaxed, just a little, then held her hands up and out to indicate their surroundings and said, "Besides, look what all I've gotten in return."

"Yeah, a great, big, smelly, empty house." He grinned.

"Hey, this house may be smelly, but it's anything but empty." She swung her legs over his and laid her head on his shoulder.

"No, it's not empty. Far from it." He rubbed her back in a few brisk strokes, then tangled his fingers in her hair. He kissed her cheek once and then again and then, before he kissed her one last time and murmured, "Nevertheless, I think there's still some room around here for your your dreams, Hannah." dreams, Hannah."

"Dreams? I have everything I ever dreamed of."

"Except-"

"No exceptions."

"What about writing?"

"I wouldn't know where to begin to pursue it, Payt."

"You've already begun. Contact the Guardian News Guardian News and offer to write a column for them." and offer to write a column for them."

"A column? About what?"

"About the things you write to your sisters. About you, your life. About the kids. Maybe even now and then about your strong, intelligent, romance-novel hero of a husband."

"About me? me? About my About my life? life?" Didn't he understand? Exposing herself as the total, unmanageable mess of a person she was hardly made up the stuff of her dreams. In fact, it was her worst nightmare. "No. I don't think so."

"But you've got so much talent."