Small-Town Mom Read Online Free PDF

better team win. And we all know which one that is.” He escorted the older woman to the door.
    Eli stepped to the right of Jamie and his mother to get to the checkout.
    “You’ll never guess what Jamie came to buy,” his mother said before he got there.
    From the look on his face, Jamie could tell that what she came to buy didn’t even come close to making his list of things he wanted to know.
    “Didn’t you want to get to the grocery store, Mom?” He checked his watch again, reminding Jamie of his clockwatching at their meeting last week. Either Eli really wanted to see his football game or he had a compulsion about time.
    “She needs one of those valve things you came for. Why don’t you show her where they are?”
    Eli lifted his gaze to the overhead fluorescent lights, and Jamie took pity on him. “No need. I see the plumbing sign over aisle eight. I’ll go look. I brought the old one.” She lifted up the valve in her hand. “If I can’t find one that matches, I’ll ask. That’s what the associates are here for.”
    “No, my grocery shopping can wait a few minutes. JR doesn’t mind, do you?”
    Obviously, Leah had missed Eli’s mumbled, “But the kickoff won’t wait.” Or she’d ignored it.
    “Not at all.” A muscle worked in his jaw.
    Jamie followed him to aisle eight. “You can ditch me here. I’ll ask for help if I need it.” She perused the display. “But I don’t. This looks like the right one.” She tapped the package with her fingernail.
    He reached over and lifted it from the hook. “Let me see your old one.”
    Jamie handed it over, although she was sure it was the right one.
    “It is. See the model number matches.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    He tilted his head and looked at her for a moment. Did he really think matching model numbers would be an all-new concept to her? She’d figured that out years ago when John was on his first deployment and the water hose on her washing machine had sprung a leak.
    She took the valve back. “Let’s check out. Maybe you can still catch most of your game.”
    He cracked a smile and her knees went weak. When he wasn’t being austere and all business, Eli was attractive in that man’s man way that many women found appealing. Okay. She was one of those many women.
    “Only if we don’t run into too many people she knows at the grocery store that she has to ‘just’ say hi to.”
    “She does like to visit.”
    “With everyone.”
    Jamie laughed. “True. Tell you what.” She succumbed to the lighter, more jovial side of Eli she was seeing for the first time. “Why don’t I take her over to the supercenter? I have a few things I could pick up, and we haven’t seen each other in a while. It’s no problem. Her house is on the way home.”
    “What about your kids?” His expression hardened.
    “What about them?” She didn’t need another lecture from Eli Payton, Super Guidance Counselor, about spending time or not spending time with her kids. She’d much preferred the Eli-Payton-shopping-with-his-mother version of the man.
    “If you have to know, which you don’t, the girls are selling Girl Scout cookies with their Brownie and Girl Scout troops at the Grand Union, and I dropped Myles off to snowblow the driveway for one of the midwives I work with here in Ticonderoga. No chance of him escaping before I pick him up.”
    Eli glared at her. She probably should have skipped the sarcasm, but he’d provoked her. Where did he get off thinking he was in charge of her and her family in any way, shape or manner?
    He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was criticizing you.”
    “But you did. It’s one of my hot spots. People comment about single parents. Ask your friend Neal. It’s not like I chose to be a single mother.”
    Uncertainty flickered in his steel-gray eyes, tempering her irritation. He looked genuinely contrite.
    “We should check out.” He started up the aisle.
    Jamie caught up with him.