Maybe this was his way of apologizing for snapping at her—not that an apology was necessary, since she was the one who’d tried to push him into talking about something that he’d already said made him uncomfortable. “There’s no need to go to any trouble on my behalf.”
He shrugged and kept walking. “I’m hungry. I’m going to eat, anyway—you might as well have something, too.”
It was hardly a gracious invitation, but considering she had arrived unannounced and uninvited on his doorstep, she considered herself fortunate that he was being even somewhat tolerant of her presence. She followed him into the kitchen. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
He opened the refrigerator door. “I can handle it.”
“I’m restless, Kyle. I’d like something useful to do to take my mind off the weather.”
He sighed gustily and tossed something onto the counter with a thump. “You can clean the lettuce and chop tomatoes and cucumbers for a salad. I’ve got a package of pasta and a jar of pesto sauce we can have with it.”
“That sounds good.”
With one of his characteristic shrugs, he said, “I eat a lot of prepackaged stuff. I’m not much of a cook.”
“Neither am I.” She stuck the lettuce under running water to wash it. “I’m sure you remember how Mom is about her kitchen. She loves to cook, and doesn’t like anyone underfoot when she’s busy. Since I was always happier outside with Dad and Shane anyway, I never did much cooking. A few years ago, Mom decided belatedly that I should learn how. Maybe she waited too late, but it was not a raving success. After eating a few of my meals, Dad and Shane begged me to go back out to the barns.”
She was babbling—but then Shane had always accused her of seeing silence as a vacuum begging to be filled.
Kyle didn’t chuckle in response to her story, nor did he pause in his dinner preparations. For a moment she wondered if he had been listening to her at all, but then he spoke. “Do you still live with your parents?”
Something about the way he asked annoyed her. She had told him she was almost twenty-four. Did he think she had accomplished nothing for herself since he’d left? Oh, right—he still thought of her as “little Molly.”
“I live on the ranch at the moment. I moved back full-time after I obtained my master’s degree in education last spring at Rice University in Houston. I’ve been tutoring the foster boys we’re housing now to bring them up to grade level while I wait for a full-time teaching position to open up in the local schools. I’ve been told a position should become available in January, and if it does, I’ll look for an apartment then.”
Again, she had given him way more information than he’d asked for. Maybe she was just the tiniest bit defensive about being unemployed and still living at home at almost twenty-four. She could easily have found a teaching job in the Dallas metroplex, probably, but the small school district closer to the ranch tended to have less turnover.
Her father had talked her into coming back to the ranch, rather than moving more than an hour away to live in Dallas. He had told her he needed her assistance now that he’d begun to take in more foster boys, turning the small ranching operation into a full-time group home for at-risk teenage boys. The truth was, Jared would be perfectly happy to have her live at home indefinitely.
“Shane still lives on the ranch, too,” she added when Kyle didn’t comment. “He added on to his house when he and Kelly had their two girls. Now he handles most of the livestock and general maintenance chores so Dad can concentrate on the day-to-day business aspects of running a group home.”
“How many boys are in residence there now?”
She was pleased that he had asked a question. Surely that meant she’d piqued his interest, right? “There are four now, but we’re approved to accept up to six. It isn’t officially a therapeutic foster home, since we don’t take boys with serious emotional or behavioral problems, just the ones who don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. I know when you were there we could only take one or two at a time, but we’ve made some changes. One of the barns has been converted into a dormitory, complete with a dining room and a study area with computers for homework. That’s where I spend most of my time with the boys.”
“Still no girls?”
“No. They’ve decided to focus solely on boys, since having girls there would open up a whole new set of challenges.”
He grunted, and she assumed that was an assent.
“So Shane has kids of his own now, huh?” he asked after working a few more minutes in silence.
“Two girls. Annie and Lucy. They’ve taken my place as the little girls all the boys become big brothers to.”
Fifteen years older than Molly, Shane had been a grown man when Kyle lived on the ranch. Shane had already built his house on the property and had been busy with his own life and friends—among them, Kelly Morrison, whom he had married not long after Kyle left.
“The girls have Shane—and Daddy—wrapped around their little fingers,” she added with a chuckle.
“That doesn’t surprise me. So did you.”
“I know.” She smiled unrepentantly. “I was shamelessly spoiled—and now Shane’s girls are being treated the same way. It’s a good thing Kelly is more like my mom when it comes to being the disciplinarian, or Annie and Lucy would be little brats.”
Kyle poured the strained, hot pasta into a bowl. “I saw your dad lay down the law to you a few times.”
“Let’s just say I knew exactly how much I could get away with before he drew the line. He got a bit more strict with me as I got older.”
“I’ll bet.”