A Very Special Delivery

table that day. And the next and the next until Molly found herself watching the doorway every day at noon. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t tell him to leave her alone. It was as though she had some perverse need to stay emotionally tied up in knots.
    On the days he didn’t come, she fought off disappointment with a stern reminder that they were not dating. They were only having lunch.
    Some days she almost believed it.

Chapter Nine
    “H ere, Molly. You finish painting the faces on the animals while I staple the greenery in place.”
    Aunt Patsy’s cheeks glowed rosy red beneath the bright kitchen light as she took up a stapler and set to work with her usual robust energy.
    Between the two of them, Molly and her aunt had turned the kitchen into a mini-craft factory in preparation for the church’s bazaar, still a couple of months away. For Molly the return to something she loved to do felt good and right.
    Dipping the artist’s brush into a pot, she painstakingly painted black eyelashes onto a white bunny. “Think we’ll have enough door wreaths to meet the demand?”
    “Never do. But with your help this year, we should have a hundred.” The stapler made clack-snap noises as Aunt Patsy arranged flowers along a preformed circle. “Ethan still coming by to have lunch at the center every day?”
    “Not every day.” Like today. She’d almost missed lunch waiting for him, which was ridiculous. She knew he often drove too far out of town to get back by noon.
    Patsy gestured in the direction of the back door. “That lock’s been sticking. Can’t always get my key to work. I told Ethan about it at church, and he promised to fix it.”
    Molly paused, holding the brush above the small plastic rabbit. “When?”
    “Tonight.”
    A little quiver of anticipation mixed with a healthy dose of anxiety raced around in her veins. Seeing Ethan at the center was one thing. Seeing him here was another altogether. “He’ll bring Laney.”
    Patsy pointed the stapler at her. “Now don’t get your tail in a twitch, young lady. That baby won’t hurt you and you won’t hurt her.”
    “But what if I—” She bit her lip. As much as she longed to see the baby, it was too dangerous.
    “Have one of them attacks?” Her aunt set the stapler down with a thump. “Nonsense. You didn’t have one all the time you were stuck out there on the farm together.”
    “But Ethan was there.”
    “Well, there you are. He’ll be here tonight, too.” Patsy glanced toward the digital clock on the cookstove. “Any time now.”
    “Oh, Aunt Patsy.” Just what she didn’t need, a matchmaking aunt.
    “Don’t ‘Aunt Patsy’ me. Ethan is my friend, too. And this is still my house.”
    Molly knew full well her great-aunt wasn’t trying to be cruel. She was trying, in her own no-nonsense manner, to help. What Patsy didn’t understand was how much more humiliating a panic attack would be now that she knew, and liked, Ethan so much better.
    “I’m being selfish. Forgive me.” Molly circled the table to kiss her aunt’s wrinkled cheek. “I’ll behave.”
    She hoped she could. Patsy was right. Ethan would be here. Her heart, traitor that it was, leapt at the prospect.
    Tenderness emanated from her aunt’s gray eyes. She patted Molly’s hair. “Everything will be fine. Now hurry up with those before he gets here.”
    Molly still had a dozen baby animal faces left to paint when Ethan arrived, ushering in the scent of outdoors and filling the house with his masculine presence.
    Across the joint living-dining room, his blue eyes found her. “Hi, Molly. What’s up?”
    “Go on in there and see for yourself,” Aunt Patsy said.
    From beneath a blanket, Laney kicked and protested, eager to be uncovered. Between the two of them, Ethan and Patsy lifted her free. Her aunt held the chubby baby while Ethan shrugged out of his jacket.
    Laney’s bright blue eyes, so like her father’s, gazed around the apartment. In the nearly three months since Molly had last seen her, she had gained complete control of her brown-capped head and had grown tremendously. When she spotted Molly, her tiny mouth opened in a smile to reveal a pair of bottom teeth.
    Molly’s arms ached to hold the beautiful little girl, but her chest constricted in a warning that said she had better not chance such a crazy action.
    She gripped the top of the kitchen chair. “She’s grown so much.”
    Ethan grinned, tossing his jacket and the baby blankets onto