Kellen slowed backed toward the door.

Too late. Max had pinned her under his gaze. “A carburetor kit? Rae found a carburetor kit conveniently placed on the workbench?”

Well, hell. It seemed Kellen had arrived at exactly the wrong time. “Rae’s a smart kid. Rebuilding the carburetor might get the truck running.” She honestly thought Max was going to have steam coming out his ears. “Look. All I did was find the carburetor kit in one of the drawers. Anyway, carburetor kit or not, it’s not easy to rebuild a carburetor. If you’re lucky, there’ll be instructions.”

He still looked irked.

Which made Kellen lose what was left of her patience. “And if you’d looked in the drawers—”

Max swung away, took a breath, smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “All right. You’re right. I could have looked.” He swung back toward Kellen. “Anything else I should know about in those drawers?”

Kellen lifted one shoulder. “Maybe. Why don’t you look?”

Rae had dug herself out of the depths of the F-100 and stood, head cocked, listening to them. “You two don’t fight very often.”

“No, but honey, it doesn’t mean we don’t love each other,” Max said.

“It’s okay,” Rae said. “It makes you seem almost normal.”

Almost normal? Max mouthed to Kellen.

Kellen smiled, but a little tightly. Rae was right, she and Max didn’t often fight; maybe the tension on the island was getting to them, too.

On the other hand, maybe she was angry because he had been a jerk.

Rae skipped back to the box that held the kit. “Can I open it? Can I?”

That got Max’s attention. “Wait! Rae! That’s got a lot of little parts and we need them all.”

“I’m not going to spill it.” Rae sounded irritable, too.

Kellen walked over to the wall where the mattress stood, looked at it, garish with roses, stained and dirty—and kicked the hell out of it. Front kick, side kick, left foot, right foot, turning kick, backward kick.

Dust flew.

She couldn’t keep it up; her legs trembled from the effort of running and kicking.

So she started punching, palms out, clenched fists, boom, boom, boom, knocking the stuffing out of the old mattress, and loving it.

“What’s Mommy doing?” Rae asked.

“Getting out her aggressions,” Max said.

“Practicing my fighting skills,” Kellen corrected him without a trace of a smile.

A female figure, silhouetted by the sun, stepped into the wide open doorway. “What are you people doing in here? In this garage? Why aren’t you at the house?”

Kellen recognized her by her figure, tall and curvaceous, and her attitude, hostile and all-knowing.

Rae looked up from the spark plug Max had placed in her hand. “Hi, Mrs. Conkle.” She didn’t use her usual cheerful Rae voice; in one visit, Jamie Conkle had convinced Rae to step carefully around her.