The Christmas Child by Linda Goodnight Read Free Book Online Page B

thought.
    Sophie took her coffee cup to the sink and turned on the warm water. Above the whoosh, she asked, “How’s the stable coming along?”
    â€œLeave that cup in the sink. Kade’s gotta be useful for something around here.” Ida June shouldered Kade to the side and yanked a casserole from the refrigerator. She banged the sturdy glass dish on the counter and dug in the cabinets for foil and a spatula. The woman slammed and banged in the kitchen the same way she did on a job. With purpose and sass.
    â€œYou’ll take your dad some lasagna.” From Sophie’s quiet acceptance, Kade figured she knew not to argue with Ida June. “Stable’s nearly done. Would have been if Kade had been there. Makes me so aggravated not to be able to carry a four-by-eight sheet of plywood by myself.” She flexed an arm muscle and gave it a whap. “Puny thing.”
    â€œNobody would accuse you of being puny, Ida June.” Kade moved to Sophie’s side and reached for the coffee mug.
    She scooted but didn’t turn loose of the cup. She did, however, flash him that sunny smile, only this one carried a hint of his aunt’s sass. “I can do it.”
    â€œYeah?” he arched a brow.
    She arched one, too. “Yeah.”
    Was the cookie lady flirting with him?
    They jockeyed for position for a few seconds while Kade examined the interesting simmer of energy buzzing around the pair of them like honeybees in a glass jar, both dangerous and sweet. Danger he understood, but sweet Sophie didn’t know what she was bumping up against.
    Ten minutes later, he walked her out the front door, leaving Ida June to heat a spicy casserole that would torture him again tonight.
    He opened the car door for Sophie, stood with one hand on the handle as she slid gracefully onto the seat. At some point in the day she’d changed her clothes from a long blue sweater to a dark skirt and white blouse. She lookedthe part of a teacher. Weird that he’d notice. “Don’t worry about the kid.”
    Keys rattled as she dug in the pocket of a black jacket. “I won’t. But I will pray for him.”
    His teeth tightened. “You pray. I’ll find answers.”
    A cloud passing overhead shadowed her usual cheer. “We can do both.”
    â€œRight.” God listened to people like Sophie. Kade still believed that much.
    She started the engine and yet he remained in the open car door, wanting to say something reassuring and not knowing how. Life, he knew, did not always turn out the way it should.
    â€œKade?” she said.
    â€œYeah?”
    She reached out and placed her hand on his sleeve. Her warmth, or maybe the thought of it, seeped through the thick cotton.
    â€œEverything will be all right.” Her gray eyes smiled, serious but teasing, too. “I promise.”
    The tables had turned. She was the one doing the reassuring. For two beats he even believed her.
    Then he said, “Don’t make promises,” and shut the door.
    Â 
    â€œDad, have you ever met Kade McKendrick?”
    Sophie stood on a stepladder propped against her father’s brick house, feeding tiny blue lightbulbs into equally tiny sockets. Next to her, on another stepladder, her dad attached strands of Christmas lights to the gabled eaves.
    â€œIda June’s nephew? Yes, I’ve run into him a time or two. Why?”
    â€œWhat was your impression?”
    â€œPolite. Watchful. A man with something on his mind.”
    â€œHmm.” Yes, she saw those things. He was wounded,too, and maybe a little sour on the world. Beneath that unhealthy dose of cynicism, she also saw a man who didn’t back down, who did what he promised. Although he had this thing about not making any promises at all. “Hmm.”
    Her father paused, one hand braced against brick to turn his head toward her. “What does that hmm of yours mean?”
    â€œI don’t know, Dad. Nothing