Page 76 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
Helen scowled, but another smile quickly overtook it. She grabbed hold of Cal’s cheeks and pinched them. “Oh, you’re my favorite boy, you know that. Come on in.”
She stepped out of the way, opening the door wider. Cal put a hand on Fern’s back and urged her forward. Helen’s brows raised as she met Fern’s eyes and then assessed her scars.Rambunctious male voices floated out from the room behind Helen; men sat crowded around a full dinner table, eating supper.
This was a boardinghousefor men? Her throat went dry.
“Helen, this is Fern. Fern, this is my aunt, Helen.”
His aunt? She saw the resemblance now, at least in Helen’s deep brown irises.
“Pleased to meet you,” Fern said.
Helen crossed her arms over her chest, pulling taut the flowered fabric of her housedress. “You don’t look like you’ve been kidnapped to me.”
Fern parted her lips, but Helen shook her head. “I’ve got the radio on all afternoon and evening for those boys as soon as they get back from work, and you can bet that my old ears tune right in whenever I hear mention of my scallywag nephews.”
She winked at Cal. He closed the front door and locked it.
“He didn’t kidnap me,” Fern assured her. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”
“I didn’t believe it anyhow,” Helen replied with a wave of her hand, then started down the hallway again. “My Calvin, laughing like a maniac?” She waved her arms through the air again, and Fern stole a look up at Cal, biting back a grin. He was trying to do the same. They followed his aunt into the back of the house. The melded aroma of garlic, onion, and roast chicken hung heavy in the air inside the stiflingly hot kitchen.
“I take it you’re not just here for a well-overdue visit?” she said from the stove where she was stirring a pot of soup.
“Got a favor to ask you,” Cal said.
She made ammm-hmmmsound and kept stirring without looking up.
“Can Fern stay here for a few days? A week, tops.”
Fern squirmed. It was too much of an imposition, and something about it being his aunt made it worse.
Helen set the spoon on the counter and turned to them. Her dyed-black hair, parted in the middle and pulled back into a tight bun, had a white strip at the roots, and there was a coarseness of her hands and face that spoke of hard manual work. Fern didn’t think she should be asking this woman for any favors.
“I rent rooms tomen,” she said, holding Cal’s gaze.
He set Fern’s suitcase on the laminate floor. “I know. But I need her safe, and I trust you.”
I need her safe.Warmth pooled inside her chest, and her next breaths were shallow. That one statement from Cal somehow made her feel more valued than she ever had in her whole life.
Helen’s shrewd gaze settled on Fern, as if she were trying to figure out who this young woman was to her nephew. It was a good question, one Fern certainly wanted to hear the answer to.
A swinging door led into the dining room, where the radio was turned up, and the men she rented rooms to fought to be heard over the ragtime playing.
“I can’t have a young woman upstairs with that rowdy bunch,” she said, hitching her chin toward the noise.
Fern felt sick with guilt. “I’m sorry for the intrusion. I canfind somewhere else.”
Cal wrapped his fingers around her wrist, as if to anchor her to the spot. “Helen, I don’t ask you for a lot of favors,” he reminded her quietly.
She sighed. “If it means that much to you, Calvin, I can set up a cot in the storeroom back here.” She gestured to the other side of the kitchen. A quick glance showed a small room of shelving, not much larger than Fern’s closet back home.
Cal let go of her wrist. “That would be just fine, thanks.”
“Yes, thank you,” Fern said, finding her voice. “But if it’s too much of an imposition…”
She couldn’t finish; she had nowhere else to go.
Helen’s irritated expression softened. “A friend of my Calvin is a friend of mine. Don’t give it another thought. Now, the two of you look like you could eat.”
