Ms. Miller and the Midas Man by Mary Kay McComas Page A

sudden brainstorm, not knowing why she felt so sorry for him, only that she did and wanted to help him, to protect him from any further prying.
    “No,” he said, looking confused.
    “Oh now, you shouldn’t sound so sure when you say that, Scotty,” Howard warned him, picking up on one of his favorite subjects. “Children can develop allergies overnight. To drugs. To food. They build up an intolerance over a period of time and—zap—it’s trips to the allergist twice a month. Or in milder cases many pediatricians recommend treating the symptoms with over-the-counter drugs...
    Several more minutes went by before Scotty’s eyes slowly trailed back to her face, the twinkle in them the only outward sign of his knowledge and gratitude of the good deed she’d done. She smiled at him briefly, then lowered her gaze away when she realized they were once again connecting, on a nonverbal level.
    Connecting with someone like Scotty Hammond would be a big mistake, she knew. Having had some time to think about it, about his attitudes toward fathering and his sisters and the town of Tylerville, maybe there was more to him than a great smile and a cocky attitude. What a shame. It was so much easier to think of him as a lazy, insincere cad than a responsible man with feelings and principles and ideals.
    The picnic table was heavy, and she had to move one end at a time, sort of walk it back to its place beside the garage.
    “Wait a second.” She heard his voice and jumped a little. “I’ll help you.”
    Why she was surprised to hear his voice and the latch lifting on the gate she didn’t know. So many times that evening, in the quiet of her little house, she’d heard his laughter, his voice commenting on a sister or describing his daughter or enthusiastically explaining his plans for the upcoming school year. Several times she’d turned around to see if he was standing behind her. This time he was.
    He took several jogging steps across her yard and took up the opposite end of the picnic table. They swung it into place together.
    “Thanks,” she said, smiling and looking away as he grinned at her, self-satisfied. He was so tickled to have achieved the center of her consideration again, to know he was paramount in her mind for the moment, and to see she wasn’t oblivious to him.
    Oblivious, indeed. Her pulse was racing and her mouth had gone dry. She might have met a stranger in a dark alley with less anxiety.
    “My pleasure. My house may need paint, and my dog and I invite ourselves to dinner, but we can also be very handy to have around.”
    “So I see,” she said, trying to smile again, her face feeling stiff. “Is it also true that you can leap tall buildings in a single bound and that everything you touch turns to gold?”
    “Yes,” he said, and he didn’t hesitate to add, “I also hang the moon and the stars...at least that’s what I tell Chloe.”
    She gave an amused but nervous laugh. Howard was right, it was very hard not to like him, despite the way he made her feel inside. “I bet she believes you too.”
    “Of course. When you want to badly enough, you can believe most anything.” She was back at the bench, and he casually took up the opposite end to help move it. “Aren’t there things that you believe in, no matter how unlikely or impossible they might seem?”
    “No. Not anymore.”
    “The totally disillusioned Ms. Miller, huh?” He was studying her when she straightened up to face him. She couldn’t tell if he was feeling pity or disdain when he said, “That’s a shame.”
    Either way she didn’t like it.
    “Why? Why is that a shame? People don’t have to believe in fairy tales and superheroes. They don’t have to pretend life is better than it really is. That there’s some sort of magic involved. What’s wrong with being realistic? Life is unfair and people are human. That’s all there is to it.”
    He felt neither sympathy nor scorn, but he was curious. This wasn’t a pathetic