A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8) by Victoria Pade Read Free Book Online Page B

herself if she’d refused the child.
    When the deed was done and Clara left them to return to the kitchen, Lindie again watched Sawyer shake his head at her. But what he said was “I have another game waiting for me. Try not to get yourself into more trouble, huh?”
    He left her standing there, still with no idea if he was trying to avoid her deliberately.
    And with nothing else to do but go on with her kitchen duties, Lindie went back to clean up and finish the afternoon.
    * * *
    At six o’clock the community center was turned over to adult education, art and fitness classes.
    Rather than shoving kids out the door at the stroke of six, one person from the daytime schedule remained with them in the lobby to keep an eye on the children waiting to be picked up.
    That night Sawyer was the person.
    While Lindie still wasn’t sure if he was open to it, his staying back finally gave her the chance to talk to him so she joined him.
    “Get into any more mischief?” he asked as she sat with him on a bench.
    “I don’t think so. I did talk to Clara about not even telling her sisters what I’d done, about just giving the loot over to her grandmother on the sly and letting her grandmother take it from there.”
    “I hope that happens and Clara doesn’t just down five candy bars herself—
on the sly
.”
    “I have faith in her,” Lindie said, knowing that too many times in the past she’d said that same thing only to discover that her faith in someone had been unfounded.
    But hopefully that wouldn’t be the case here.
    Sawyer nodded with a slow, we’ll-see kind of air to it as he kept those keen blue eyes on her for a lengthy moment.
    “Stuff will get to you here, Lindie. You have to be careful. There are a lot of hardships, a lot of need, a lot of sad things going on. But you can’t just step in with a quick fix or a pocketful of candy bars every time. That can end up a disaster.”
    “So you just ignore it?”
    “No. You ask questions. You try to find out if there might be a bigger problem that could have a better all-around solution or help that doesn’t depend on you hitting the vending machine.”
    Lindie shot him a mock frown. “I thought I was to blame for everything and was
supposed
to make things right.”
    “Not like today,” he said.
    “Instead I should have turned it over to the Candy Bar Outreach program?”
    “Instead you ask if there were other things Gramma couldn’t afford at the grocery store—like milk or eggs or cereal or meat. You try to find out if there’s enough to eat in general—healthy stuff. You might have found out that it wasn’t only candy bars that Gramma couldn’t swing. And if that’s the case—or even if you just find out that things are a little too tight—you hand over the information to Marie who will talk to our social worker. Then the social worker will look into it to see if maybe food stamps would help ease some of the burden. What you heard today could have been a clue to a much bigger problem than Gramma not getting her sugar fix.”
    “Oh,” Lindie said, knowing that once again she should have proceeded with some caution.
    “It’s better if you don’t just rush in,” he said as if he’d heard her thoughts. “The social worker here is great. She’s amazingly diplomatic and she knows how to approach these things so nobody ends up feeling like their toes have been stepped on, or like their kids have aired dirty laundry. They can get the help they need and keep their pride intact.”
    Lindie flinched. “You think I offended Gramma?”
    “Again, I know these girls and I’ve met Gramma and she’s a really nice, down-to-earth, levelheaded lady, so I know this isn’t going to cause problems at home and she’ll probably just eat the candy. And I already talked to Marie, told her it might be good to have the social worker do an interview to see if Gramma needs some help with the expenses of four kids added to her budget. But from here on—”
    “I’ll