Holiday Homecoming Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the garage. No need to have it in the house until the church women came to decorate.
    His cell phone pinged. It was a text from Josh: Got done early. You still up for some demolition?
    Definitely , he texted back. Ripping out wallboard with his bare hands sounded like just what he needed to work the memories Natalie had dredged up this morning out of his system. He grabbed his toolbox and headed over to Josh’s place.
    A while later, his little sister, Hope, skipped into the room of the cottage he and Josh were gutting. “Hey, Connor, I’m going to hang out with you tonight.”
    â€œHope, hon.” He stopped her halfway across the debris-covered floor. “It would be better if you stayed back in the other room. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
    Jared appeared in the doorway. “Hope,” he said in a much sterner voice than Connor had used. “I told you to wait for Brendon and me.”
    She blew her bangs off her face. “But I didn’t want Connor to make other plans before I told him I was having a sleepover at his house tonight. If he has his cell phone, someone could have called him while I was waiting.”
    Connor couldn’t argue with her seven-year-old logic.
    â€œHope,” Jared repeated.
    Connor brushed the plaster dust off his jeans. It bothered him that Jared often ended up playing the bad guy to their sister because she lived with him and Becca, while he and Josh got to be the fun brothers. Although Jared was Hope’s legal guardian in their missing father’s absence, they’d agreed to share responsibility of the motherless girl when her guardian grandmother had died last year.
    Hope retraced her steps back to the doorway where Jared stood. “So is it okay, Connor?” she asked. “You’re not doing something else?”
    â€œNot a thing. What do you say we pick up subs on our way home for supper?”
    â€œCan I pick out my own kind? At home, Ari and I have to take turns choosing since we always have to split one.”
    â€œLife is tough at the Donnelly household,” Jared commented.
    Not anywhere near as tough as it had been at theirs growing up.
    â€œAs long as it’s not the veggie one, since I’m the one who’ll have to finish the other half if you can’t.”
    Hope wrinkled her nose. “Never. And I brought some games and stuff to do.”
    â€œGreat.”
    Her expression turned serious. “Josh, don’t feel left out. I can come to your house next Saturday.”
    Connor had to work at not bursting out laughing as he watched Josh struggle to keep a grin off his face.
    â€œIt’s a date,” Josh said. “We can go to the Strand and catch a movie.”
    â€œBro,” Jared said, “you’ve been spending a lot of time at the movies. Or is that a lot of time with the theater owner?”
    Josh shrugged him off. “What can I say? She lets me watch the movies from the projection room.”
    â€œCool! Can we do that next week?” Hope asked.
    â€œI’ll check with Tessa,” Josh said, “but I don’t see why not.”
    â€œHey, guys. I thought we were here to work, not discuss Josh’s love life,” Connor said in an effort to deflect Josh before he decided to move on to him and Natalie. Connor had ignored, not missed, the gleam in Josh’s eye when he’d filled in Jared on his and Natalie’s former relationship the other night.
    â€œYeah,” Josh said. “I want to get this room walled in today. It’s Saturday, and some of us who aren’t old and married have plans for the night.”
    Connor guessed Josh’s plans were more adult than his. His insides hollowed. Maybe he should start taking up some of his parishioners on their matchmaking, if for no other reason than to get some woman other than Natalie in his thoughts.
    â€œBrendon, set Hope up with her art stuff in the other room,” Jared said,