One of the boys started to bluster a denial, but a look from Andrew had him falling sullenly silent.
“Empty your pockets,” Andrew suggested while Hannah’s mother joined them, hands on her hips in a sternly maternal posture.
Red-faced, the boys turned over the candy they’d tried to smuggle out. Hannah knew they’d never have gotten even that far had her eagle-eyed mother not been distracted; fortunately, Andrew had been alert. No surprise.
“Dustin, your parents have been camping here since before you were born,” Linda scolded as she set the candy on the counter. “Having a friend with you this weekend does not give you permission to break the rules of the resort.”
Teary-eyed, young Dustin gave his scowling friend—the one who’d been most resistant—a look that made Hannah suspect who’d been the instigator of the would-be crime. “You aren’t going to tell my parents, are you, Mrs. Bell? I won’t do it again, I promise.”
“I should tell them,” Linda answered sternly. “I’ve know them long enough to be certain that they would want to know about this. This isn’t the way you’ve been raised, young man.”
A tear trickled down one freckled, sun-burned cheek. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Andrew narrowed his eyes at the other boy, who still looked a bit too defiant. “I haven’t heard an apology from you.”
The boy lifted his chin, mouth stubbornly closed.
Dustin elbowed his companion sharply. “Tell them you’re sorry, Quentin. Geez, you don’t want them to tell my dad.”
“Sorry,” Quentin mumbled, his voice barely audible, his eyes half-hidden beneath his mop of sandy hair.
“Run along now,” Linda told them. “I’ll have to think about this. I expect you to behave during the remainder of your visit with us.”
The boys surged toward the door. Andrew took his time moving out of their way.
“You’re really going to let them get away with that without telling their parents?” Hannah asked her mom, a bit surprised.
“Never said I wouldn’t tell them,” Mimi piped up from behind the register, frowning with disapproval.
Hannah’s mom shook her head. “I’ll handle it. I’ll make sure Kelly knows that they need to keep an eye on their son’s new friend.”
She looked then at the other customers, several of whom had been watching with various degrees of subtlety. A small group of teenagers in the back of the store were nervously eyeing Andrew, keeping the sodas they’d taken out of the cooler in clear view to make sure he knew they weren’t planning to steal them. “Can I help anyone?” Linda offered cheerily, causing the teens to rush toward the front with their drinks.
Waving goodbye to her mother and grandmother, Hannah rushed Andrew out of the store. They still had plenty of time to get to the doctor’s office, but she preferred being early to taking the risk of running late.
“Those kids were kind of young to be running around the resort unsupervised, weren’t they?” Andrew commented once they were on the road, Hannah giving directions from the passenger seat of his car.
“Dustin’s ten or eleven, I think, and I assume his friend is the same age. We do prefer preteens to be supervised on the resort, but I guess his parents thought it was safe to let them come to the store for candy—though I’m sure they were expected to pay for their treats.”
“For security and safety purposes, maybe you should make an official rule about unsupervised kids in the park.”
She smiled. “Always on the job, aren’t you, Andrew? Through the years, we’ve had problems with especially wild or unsupervised kids, but it usually only takes a few words with the parents from Dad or Uncle C.J. to settle the issue. On the rare occasions when situations got out of hand and the parents caused as much trouble as the kids, they were asked to leave—occasionally with an official escort from local authorities. We hate to resort to that—no pun intended—but when it’s necessary, we do.”
“My parents would have wanted to know if Aaron or I were ever caught trying to steal something from a store,” Andrew commented. “We might have broken a few rules in our time, but neither of us ever tested that particular one. Mom would have dragged us by the ears to apologize to the owners, and Dad would have made very sure we never even thought of pulling that stunt again. He never laid a hand on us in anger, but he had his ways of getting his point across—mostly involving chores, bedtimes and video game privileges.”
Hannah thought of her grandmother’s comment that she could tell the twins had been raised right. “Whatever they did, it worked out well.”
He shot her a smile. “Why, thank you. I believe that was a compliment.”
She laughed softly. “It was.”
His smile faded. “I’ve always hoped if the time came, I’d be as great a dad as my own. That my kid would feel about me the way I do about him.”
She bit her lower lip. He’d probably also hoped he’d be able to raise his child full-time, rather than on custody visits she assumed would be their eventual arrangement. As much as she hated the thought of all those future goodbyes, she wanted her child to know a father’s love and guidance, just as she had been fortunate enough to have all her life. She had no doubt that Andrew would be a wonderful father. He seemed to excel in everything he did, which she had to admit was more than a little daunting to someone who’d made so many mistakes in her own life.
She looked out the passenger side window as Andrew stopped at a red light. She groaned when she saw the man in the pickup beside them glaring back at her.
“Problem?” Andrew asked.