Fortune Found by Victoria Pade Page A

and tell Gramma I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Jessie urged.
    â€œWe still gets to see Fwint tonight,” she heard Adam mutter to Braden and Bethany as they got off her bed.
    â€œToo bad!” Ella couldn’t seem to resist putting in just before the four of them left Jessie’s bedroom.
    Jessie just hoped that she’d gotten through to them about Flint—and that her words might entice Ella to be nice.
    But she had to admit that if truth be told, she wasn’t sure on which side of the Flint-leaving issue she would cast her own vote.
    Because while she knew he would be leaving soon and that it was for the best, because she couldn’t seem to contain her attraction to him, there was also a part of her that was clinging to every single minute she got to spend with him. A part of her that couldn’t help feeling a little like Adam, Bethany and Braden did about how terrific he was.
    A part of her that wanted him to stay around, too, probably more than her hero-worshipping kids did.
    But for such different reasons.
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    â€œHang on just a minute.”
    Game night had been enough of a success that Jessie thought she’d even seen Ella fight a smile or two during the course of it. But Kelsey and Coop had taken Anthony home an hour earlier, the last of the popcorn and cookies had been eaten, and her parents had offered to put the kids to bed while Jessie cleaned up downstairs. That was when Flint halted the process of urging Adam, Braden, Bethany and Ella to their rooms.
    â€œI didn’t want to distract them from their fun before, but I brought them each something,” Flint said to Jessie when she tossed him a quizzical glance.
    â€œPresents?” Adam said excitedly.
    â€œJust a little something,” Flint said.
    Jessie had seen her sister slip him a brown paper sack from Anthony’s diaper bag just before they’d left, but she’d had no idea what was in it. Flint had discreetly set it alongside the easy chair he’d been sitting in to play Candy Land. Now Flint had the sack in hand as three of her kids charged him and Ella looked on with barely veiled curiosity from a distance.
    Flint opened the bag and took a small replica of a totem pole from it.
    â€œAdam, this is for you—it’s a totem pole to watch over you.”
    â€œIt gots a face like a man with a bird thingy for a nose,” the three-year-old marveled. “The thingy is a beak,” Jessie said from where she looked on as curiously as Ella did.
    â€œCan I play wis it, too?”
    â€œYou can. You can ward off all sorts of aliens and attackers with that,” Flint assured before he took a beaded bracelet out for Bethany.
    â€œThis will bring you good luck, Bethany, and I thought the beads were the color of your pretty eyes,” he said to the four-year-old.
    â€œLook, Mama, are they the color my eyes are?”
    â€œThey are,” Jessie assured, watching her daughter beam.
    â€œThis is for Braden,” Flint said then, taking out a small, leather-wrapped hoop with webbing laced on the inside like an ornate spiderweb. “This is a dream catcher,” he explained. “If you put it near your bed it should help to catch some of the bad dreams before they can come to you in your sleep, so you won’t have so many of them.”
    â€œIs that true, Mama?” Braden asked hopefully.
    â€œI think we should give it a try,” Jessie said somberly, hoping anything would work.
    â€œAnd last but not least,” Flint said as he handed the dream catcher to Braden and took a very small hand-painted oval box from the lunch sack, “this is for Ella.”
    The seven-year-old still might not have liked him, but she couldn’t resist a gift. Showing some reluctance, she stepped up and accepted it.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œOpen the box,” Flint advised.
    When she did, she removed tiny stick dolls wrapped in brightly colored