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Doyle bit back a word he shouldn’t say as he accidentally grabbed the pan without an oven mitt.

It was too late to salvage the food anyway. The fish he had been cooking in the oven had been burnt to a crisp.

He’d have to redouble his efforts to find a housekeeper/cook. Someone who was willing to do it all. In this huge house, set a half a mile back off the road in Raspberry Ridge, he could even offer them a room, as long as they were okay staying with a complete stranger.

But if he didn’t do something soon, he was going to starve to death. This was the fourth time this week he’d had to either skip supper or go somewhere to find some.

Deciding that he’d try the little store on Main Street, to see if she had gotten in anything other than the chips and soda he’d had for supper yesterday, he shut the oven off, ran some cold water over his hand until it quit burning, and grabbed his keys.

This house he was renting was a beautiful house, although it needed some updates. That’s what his sister would have said, but Doyle didn’t really care. He did like things to be tidy, and knickknacks and clutter bothered him, but outdated appliances? Not so much. Maybe the floor could use a good cleaning, or they could pull the carpet up and put some tile or hardwood or something down, but he didn’t want it bad enough that he was actually going to try to figure out what needed to be done, and then figure out how to hire someone, and whether or not they were trustworthy, and go through all of that rigmarole.

He had a business to run, and ironically it was managing rental properties. But mostly he just managed people, the people who managed the rental properties. They were the ones who found the folks who did the updates or even the folks who told them what the updates needed to be. He didn’t have to worry himself with any of that, thankfully.

All of that was just a jumble in his head, trying to keep him from thinking about the things that he most wanted to think about.

Olive.

He wanted to be able to get her out of his head, to shove her aside and not wonder if she was still in town, wonder if she had maybe come back for him. He hadn’t seen a husband. Maybe... No, the baby was too young.

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t interested anyway.

Deciding that he was too hungry to walk, he got in his car and drove to Fran’s. What this town needed was a good restaurant. Except, they needed a little bit more tourist traffic before a restaurant could stay in business. He was enough of a business owner to know that much. He didn’t know anything about restaurants though.

Parking along the street, he was out of his car before he realized that the figure walking down from the church was familiar. Not just familiar; it was Olive.

Did he wait and try to talk to her? Or did he run into the store and pretend he didn’t see her?

Wasn’t it sad that he was even thinking about which of the two choices he should make?

“Doyle! I’ve been thinking about you.” Pastor Garnet, smiling from ear to ear with his arm wrapped around the woman who had stood beside him in church earlier that morning, called his name from across the road. They looked both ways, although why they did, he wasn’t sure, since there was never any traffic in Raspberry Ridge, and hurried across.

“Hey, Pastor Garnet, Miss Mertie,” he said. His stomach growled, reminding him of his errand, but it would be rude to not stand and chat for at least a couple of minutes. “What were you thinking about?” He highly doubted that the pastor had any properties that needed to be managed, and the only other thing might be that he wanted Doyle to do some kind of job in the church.

Doyle was perfectly willing. He wanted to do what he could to serve the Lord, around the job he had. He figured it probably should be the other way around, his job came second to whatever he was doing for God, but in a town like Raspberry Ridge, and a church as small as what they had, there wasn’t exactly a whole pile of demands on his time.

Still, he didn’t want to be standing there when Olive hit the sidewalk, which was just a matter of seconds.

“Well, I actually had someone that might make a good housekeeper for you, but I haven’t had a chance to say something to her.” He paused. “But God’s timing is better than mine, and when I saw Olive coming down the hill and you parking in front of the store, I figured that I’d just go with the flow and go with God’s timing.”

A very bad feeling started to gather in his stomach, but his brain was moving so slowly he couldn’t quite figure out exactly what it was.

“Okay?” he said instead, slowly, like he was talking from a distance and the words in his brain couldn’t reach his mouth without hopping over air.

“So there’s Olive right now, and we can see what she says. I might have solved your problem, or maybe I should put it more like God might have solved your problem, and He just used me as the facilitator.”

If he wasn’t the pastor, Doyle might have said he didn’t have any problems that were that big that he needed Olive in order to solve them, but he didn’t want to be rude to the new pastor. Not only did he want to start out on the right foot and stay on the pastor’s good side, but he also wanted to be a good Christian, and it probably started with being kind to the pastor.

But he didn’t really have time to think of a way out or to even turn and run. Because Olive was there. She didn’t look any more thrilled to see him than he was to see her, but Pastor Garnet didn’t seem to notice.

Mertie might have been another story, but Doyle wasn’t really looking at her, because his eyes were caught by Olive. She carried the carseat, which seemed like it was too heavy for her, and she looked sallow and sickly. Her clothes hung on her body, and she was walking slowly. Like she’d been sick.

Had she been sick?

Pastor Garnet spoke to her. “This is Doyle McKenny. I don’t know if you remember him, but he’s looking for a housekeeper. And your sister told me that you might be looking for a job. I was kind of excited to see the two of you together. And felt like that just might be the Lord working there.”

Olive’s mouth opened and closed several times, and if Doyle hadn’t been pretty sure that his mouth was doing the same thing, he might have laughed at her. She looked ridiculous, but he probably did too.

“I...” she began, but Mertie cut in.

“I know you were just saying today how much you wanted to have a job. You might only need it for two months, so you have to be upfront about that, of course, but it would at least give Doyle time to find someone who’s willing to move the whole way up here, into a small town, where they’ll have to drive to get anywhere.”

“I mean, that is okay with you, Doyle, right? You asked me if I knew anyone, and I’m telling you I do. Maybe I should have checked with you first?” Pastor Garnet’s voice started to slow down and soften, like he realized that maybe he had stepped into a situation that he hadn’t anticipated and didn’t know exactly what was going on.

Doyle shook his head. “No. I did ask you. I’m actually here in town tonight because I ruined supper. Again.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought that maybe Olive snorted.

When he turned his head to look at her though, she was looking at the ground. As though thinking.

“Well then, there you go, Olive. Doyle needs a housekeeper and a cook, and you can do both. Even with the baby,” Mertie said.

It made Doyle flinch. So there really was a baby. It was there in the car seat. He hadn’t imagined that, and it was hers.

His face tightened.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Pastor Garnet asked.

He paused. It was going to be a problem. But only if he let it. He could handle this. He could do this without it causing a major upheaval in his life. He’d just avoid her. She could cook, she could clean, she could go home.

“I was under the impression that you might have a place for her to live too. Not that she can’t live at the mansion. She wants to, but we’re trying to get it cleaned out so we can get it on the market. And then she would be out of the home. So if you have a room, and I understand you do, that would be perfect.”

“Two rooms, if she wants a separate room for the baby. I...” What was he saying? Why had he agreed to that? He didn’t want her there.

“We could stay in the same room. And yes. I’ll take the job if Doyle will hire me.”

Doyle stared. His last hope was that she would turn him down, decide that it wasn’t what she wanted, and that she didn’t want to be with him, that she was just as loath to live under the same roof as him as he was to live under the same roof as her.

“I’m willing.” He wasn’t going to let it be said that he was the one who wouldn’t take the help that was offered.

They paused in their conversation as a car drove slowly down, then took the turn to go back toward his house. His was the only house back there, although the lane went farther back to an overlook that was three quarters of a mile or so from his house. But no one ever went there anymore. It was on the same property, and there were signs out past the house warning people that it was private.

Most of the people who didn’t live in Raspberry Ridge had totally forgotten about it. But that must be where the car was going.

Regardless, he looked back at the group of people gathered around him, realizing that everything that he had been thinking today, how he was going to stay away from Olive, how if she stayed in Raspberry Ridge, he would have to go, how it was hard to avoid people in a small town, but he could manage it since he worked from home and spent most of his daylight time in his office, dealing with things. How he would just avoid her and hope that she was leaving soon. All of that had been wasted time.

Since now here he stood, just agreeing to hire her. And not just hire her but house her under the same roof as him. Not only her, but her and her baby .

Yeah. Fat lot of good all the stuff that he had thought about all day had done him. He might as well have been thinking about something constructive.

“All right then, If you’d like her to start, she’s available whenever.”

“She also has her own mouth and can finish the negotiations from here.” Olive spoke up, not sounding terribly upset, maybe even having a bit of humor in her voice. He wanted her to be angry, he wanted her to say no way, that she wasn’t going to do it, but he was the one who had been hurt and betrayed by her, both when she left and when she came back. He was the one who should have opened his mouth and said it wasn’t something he was going to do. But he hadn’t.

“All right then, you two take over and let us know if there’s anything more we can do to help.” Garnet grinned and squeezed the woman beside him. She looked up at him with an adoring look before they walked on down the road and went into Fran’s store, the bells tinkling overhead.

Well, the thing he did not want most had happened. He supposed all that was left was to deal with it.