Read Words From The Heart (Spring-Summer Romance Book 2) for Free Online

August and bet he won’t say one word about Jeff or June. In fact, I guarantee it. This may be the perfect way to bridge the gap.”
    “If you’re sure,” he replied.
    “I’m sure. More than sure. You go to your meeting, and I’ll take the children to see my parents. We’llbe back after lunch. Mom will insist on feeding us. Why don’t you pick up something while you’re out? Better yet, visit with some of your old office friends.”
    He hesitated.
    “We’ll order pizza for supper, eat on the patio if you like.”
    He seemed to take that remark as she’d intended it, as a reminder they’d still be here. He gave a nod and checked his cell for the time. “I should say goodbye to Jeff.” He made a few steps toward the stairs.
    “Bennett,” she called.
    He paused and glanced her way.
    “This is good for Jeff, too. I know you two are close, but he’s hanging onto you so much because of missing his mom.”
    Nothing he didn’t already know. But hearing her say it brought on a nod. In the next breath, he was gone, sprinting up the stairs.
    She returned to folding, and at the sound of the front door opening and closing, called for the little boy. His small face, so much like Bennett’s, appeared at the top of the stairs. She held out one hand and wiggled her fingers. “Come here. I want to talk to you.”
    Reluctant, he descended. She took his hand in hers at the bottom. “I need your help today. You think you can be a big boy and keep up with August?”
    Jeff looked past her toward where her son lay on the blanket in the floor. “He doesn’t move,” he said.
    She smiled. “Not much, but it’s a lot to keep an eye on him and June together. Don’t you think?”
    He nodded.
    “Good. Now, here’s your first big task.” She tugged him further into the living room. “You keep an eye on both of them while I put up these clothes, then you can help me buckle them in the car.”
    Another thought stuck in her head. “Jeff?”
    He looked up at her.
    “Do you ever talk to your grandparents?”
    Bennett had said little to nothing about either his parents or Beth’s.
    “Daddy says they’re in heaven,” the little boy said.
    All of them? That was intensely sad. Children needed grandparents. Audrey brightened her voice. “Then, you’ll enjoy where we’re going today. I’ll bet my mom has cookies hidden somewhere. Would you like that?”
    He nodded, and Audrey smiled. Her mom would be easy to convince. Her dad would take a certain amount of tact. And a phone call. It’d be best to warn them they were coming.
     

CHAPTER 4
     
    Being alone in the car felt extremely odd, and the thought he was headed to the office, out-of-place. He’d used accumulated sick time before Beth’s passing and taken a leave of absence afterward. As a result, any knowledge of accounting practices had dimmed. He wasn’t even sure how much help he’d be today, but been unable to find a way out of, at least, showing up.
    He had Audrey to watch over the kids. They’d reached a financial agreement over how and what to pay her. He’d taken the time to draw up a contract, all of that, to make things legal and above board. In his mind though, she’d shown him how much she was worth, and in little ways that didn’t strictly involve Jeff and June.
    She gave him space to think again and provided an orderly way of doing things that made his life much more palatable. They’d had only one mishap, left unexplained, where she’d run off with August as if the little boy would dissolve. In thinking on it later, he’d decided that sight of her son standing, eager to use his pudgy legs, had made her fear the future. The fact she hadn’t encouraged him to crawl, much less walk, also pointed that way. Clearly, Audrey wasn’t as over her husband’s betrayal as she’d thought.
    He hadn’t brought the subject up again. There was no point. But he worried, watching her bury herself in motherly tasks, that she’d taken on too much. There was a