A Secret Christmas Family by Jenna Mindel

Author:Jenna Mindel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-09-03T02:55:18+00:00

* * *

“Ready?” Bo finally started his truck. He’d waited while Ruth gathered her boys along with sippy cups and fruit snacks and gadgets to keep them busy on the nearly two-and-a-half-hour drive to his mother’s.

“Ready.” Ruth glanced at her two boys in the back seat.

“Let’s go,” Owen said with a giggle.

Bo looked in the rearview mirror. Ethan was buckled into a backless booster he didn’t need. The lanky kid was too big for it, in Bo’s opinion. Owen, of course, had the more traditional child seat, complete with crumbs.

He’d vacuum his truck the next time he filled up with gas rather than have Ruth catch him. Bo couldn’t take the apologies he’d hear. Kids made messes. He was learning that fact pretty well.

Ruth had apologized profusely when Ethan had accidentally spray-painted part of the tailgate of his truck earlier in the week. It had been a mild day, so Bo knocked off a little early from work to rent a paint sprayer to finish the picket fence. He let Ethan handle the last coat on the portion that ran between the house and garage. The next thing he knew, his black paint job had a white streak. The look on Ethan’s face proved he hadn’t done it on purpose, so Bo couldn’t scold him.

Ruth had, though.

Ethan had been embarrassed, but he hadn’t crumbled. Even after Bo had told them the paint would wash off, Ruth made Ethan help scrub. And that hadn’t earned Bo any points with the eight-year-old.

Bo pulled out of the drive and gave Nora a wave.

“What’s Grandma going to do?” Owen asked.

Ruth grinned. “Anything she wants.”

Bo chuckled. It’d be late when they returned.

Silence soon settled over the inside of the cab, and it remained quiet even as they exited the outskirts of Pine. Tempted to turn on the radio to pass the time, Bo noticed that both the boys and Ruth stared out their respective windows.

There wasn’t much to see since the leaves had all dropped, leaving stark-naked tree branches stretched against a clear blue sky. It was chilly but otherwise a fine day.

“Ooh, look! A deer.” Ruth pointed.

The doe dashed back through the thick cover of bare trees.

They needed something to make the outing go faster than this. “How about we play a game?”

“What kind of game?” Ethan sounded cautious.

Bo scratched his head. He could think of only Slug Bug, and there wasn’t much traffic, let alone a bunch of Volkswagen Beetles in this neck of the state.

He glanced at Ruth. “What game?”

She laughed. “How about I Spy?”

“Yeah!” Owen literally yelled.

“Ethan, you start us out.” Ruth gave Bo a hopeful look.

Silence. The oldest boy wasn’t as eager to take this trip as the younger one.

“I spy something that begins with the letter A,” Ethan finally said with a sigh.

Bo scanned the horizon. Something beginning with A.

“ATV,” Ruth blurted.

Sure enough, an all-terrain vehicle zoomed down a trail along the side of the road to turn back into the woods.

“Your turn, Mom.” Owen kicked his legs against the seat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.