CHAPTER TWO
On the night before her wedding, when most brides would be celebrating with a rehearsal dinner or a shower, Katie gathered the residents of the Clover Street Boarding House in the living room. She’d learned that afternoon that they were all terrified about what her marriage would mean to the future of the boarding house. Seventeen-year-old Ginger, who’d chewed her nails down to the quick again for the first time in months, had revealed the concerns of the half-dozen boarders.
“Katie, you haven’t said. How soon will you be wanting us to leave?” Ginger had asked, her voice trembling with emotion. She’d been drying the same soup bowl for the past ten minutes, obviously trying to work up the courage to get into this with Katie.
Katie had stared at her blankly. “Leave? Who said anything about your leaving?” Understanding dawned. “Oh my heavens, is that why I’ve seen Mrs. Jeffers with the classifieds every evening this week? She’s been going through them for the rest of you?”
“She’s been looking for rooms to let, but there aren’t any,” Ginger had said, suddenly tearful. “We wondered how long you’d give us before we have to go?”
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Katie had replied grimly, taking both the soup bowl and dish towel from the teenager’s hands. “Have all of the others in the living room tonight at seven.”
Looking hopeful, Ginger had rushed from the room, yelling at the top of her lungs.
Now all of the residents were sitting quietly, watching Katie. She could see the anxiety etched on their faces.
There was Mrs. Jeffers, of course. She’d been the first to move in, a month after her husband had died. She had a starchy, prim demeanor that covered the fact that she feared no one would accept her now that she was no longer part of a couple. Once someone breached that reserve, though, the sixty-five-year-old widow had a wicked sense of humor and endless compassion and energy.
Ginger had followed. She’d been fifteen, a runaway who’d never said one single word about the past she’d left behind. For a while she had shared a room with Ron Mathews’s sister, Janie. The two of them had formed a bond that had been wonderful to witness. And both of them had come to adore Mrs. Jeffers, who’d quickly become a surrogate grandmother to both teens. Janie still stayed with them whenever she came home from college.
John O’Reilly, with his round, jovial face, rimless spectacles and fringe of white hair, reminded them all of Santa Claus. A retired fireman, he’d volunteered to do the grocery shopping for Katie. She suspected he’d done it so he could stock the kitchen with his favorite snacks. Hardly a night passed that he wasn’t in there at midnight with a bowl of ice cream, popcorn or, in the summertime, a peach cobbler he’d made himself and shared with the others at dinner.
When Sophie Reynolds and her daughter had moved out after Sophie’s wedding, her room had been quickly let to dark-haired, energetic Teresa Parks, a young woman in her early thirties who’d just taken a secretarial job at the bank. She’d come home to Clover after a bitter divorce she never discussed. She’d told Katie only that she needed time to get back on her feet before finding a house of her own.
The remaining tenant at the moment was a salesman, in town for just a few days. Katie noticed that Dennis Brown had gone straight to his room after dinner and hadn’t come back down for this meeting. It was hardly surprising since he’d be moving on first thing in the morning, right before the wedding that had thrown everyone into such a tizzy.
Just as Katie was about to start the meeting, the front door opened. Luke strolled in with Robby bounding ahead of him. An immediate silence greeted their arrival.
“Luke, what a surprise!” Katie said. She hadn’t realized, in fact, that he’d brought Robby over from Atlanta where he’d been finishing up kindergarten. She’d assumed he would remain there with Luke’s housekeeper until after the wedding. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you were having a meeting with the tenants tonight. Since I’ll be moving in any day now, I thought I should sit in, too. And I thought it was about time everyone got to meet my son.”
“Who told you about...?” Katie began, but stopped when she saw the guilty flush in Ginger’s cheeks. “Well, it doesn’t matter.”
She gave everyone a reassuring look as Luke found a vacant seat and pulled Robby onto his lap. “I called this meeting tonight because I wanted to reassure you that my marriage won’t change anything around here.”
Unfortunately her words appeared to have little effect. In fact, every blasted person at the room was staring not at her, but at Luke, whose expression suddenly seemed excessively dark and forbidding.
“Isn’t that right, Luke?” she prodded pointedly, praying that he wouldn’t launch into some list of changes he intended to make.
She knew he’d been making notes for the past month, hunching over her books, hovering over her as she worked, examining every nook and cranny of the place and jotting down needed repairs. So far he’d kept silent about his thoughts on the boarding house operation, but Katie knew it was only a matter of time before he would feel compelled to seize control of the place. To a man like Luke, taking charge was as natural as breathing.
“Luke, no one has a thing to worry about,” she stated emphatically. “Isn’t that right?”
“For now,” he said.
It was hardly the enthusiastic endorsement Katie had hoped for. For some reason, though, it seemed to do what her own promise had not. Everyone nodded happily.
“It’s going to be real nice to have a handsome young man in the house,” Mrs. Jeffers said. Katie
