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“Maybe you should get married.”
Jodie had taken a sip of coffee and almost spewed it. “What?”
“Brittany needs a father figure.” Brynn said matter-of-factly. “And you could use a husband.”
“She has father figures. Her grandpa Nathan and her uncle Grant.”
“And you have?”
The perfect comeback. “I have my job. Just like you.”
“Touché.” Brynn chugged her coffee. “I’ll give you a hand Saturday, since I’ll be at the dorm raising anyway.”
“Want to ride with Brittany and me?”
“You’re taking Brit?”
“She’s been working Saturdays with Grant at the clinic. But he’s going to the dorm raising, too.” Jodie sighed. “I don’t dare leave her unsupervised for a full day. Who knows the trouble she’d get into.”
“I’d better take my own vehicle. And my radio. In case I get a call.”
“All work and no play—”
“Isn’t that the second verse of the song I just sang for you?”
Before Jodie could reply, Brynn downed the rest of her coffee.
“Gotta go,” she said. “See you around.”
Jodie followed and locked the door behind her. Her visit with Brynn had grounded her and brought her raging hormones under control. Her reaction to Jeff Davidson had been a fluke. Come Saturday, feeding a horde of hungry men and keeping an eye on Brittany, Jodie could play her ice maiden role again with no problem.
Piece of cake.
She climbed the stairs and ignored the niggling reminder that a piece of cake was the first step in falling off a years-long diet.
Chapter Two
On Saturday, Jodie crawled reluctantly out of her warm bed before dawn. She’d worked past midnight preparing subs, making potato salad, baking cookies and gathering paper goods. With Saturday’s forecast high in the upper fifties, she’d also started two Crock-Pots of chili. Groggy from too little sleep, she stowed the food and supplies in her minivan and awakened her daughter.
Brittany dressed, muttered complaints all the way to the car and instantly fell asleep in the front seat.
Jodie considered her dozing daughter with a tenderness that brought moisture to her eyes. It seemed only yesterday that Brittany, a tiny precious bundle with blond ringlets and a delightful baby gurgle, had required the child carrier in the back seat. Only weeks instead of years since Jodie had piled Brittany and her nine-year-old teammates into the van for soccer practices. What had turned her once loving and adorable daughter so rebellious, so bitter? Did adolescence with its hormonal fluctuations and resulting emotional roller coaster make all teens this difficult?
Or had Jodie, as Brittany so often implied, failed as a parent?
Failed? How could she not? She’d been a kid herself when Brittany was born.
Shoving that thought away before it ruined her whole day, she debated waking Brittany to share the breathtaking sunrise over the beautiful farming valley from which the town took its name.
Jodie drove the familiar route at a comfortable speed, and the van hugged the narrow highway that meandered alongside the Piedmont River, broad and tranquil in some spots, in others a torrent of white water over a boulder-strewn bed. Slanting, dawn sunlight glinted off the spring green of willows, oaks and maples, struggling toward full leaf in mid-May. On either side of the river, rolling pastures lush with high grass and freshly plowed acreage stretched toward the haze-draped mountains that surrounded the valley like the sides of a bowl.
Jodie rounded a curve and passed the veterinary clinic where Grant and his future father-in-law, Jim Stratton, worked as partners. Their trucks already stood in the parking lot, because the vets’ day began with the farmers’, long before dawn.
Brittany awakened, crossed her arms, and set her face in its customary scowl. “Why do I have to come? I had plans with my friends.”
Exactly why you’re with me, cupcake. Brittany’s current pals gave Jodie nightmares. “I need your help.”
“Who is this Jeff Davidson?”
“A friend of your uncle Grant.”
“Huh,” Brittany said with a snort of disdain. “I didn’t know Uncle Grant hung with lowlifes.”
Jodie cast her a sharp glance. “Who said Jeff’s a lowlife?”
“The whole town knows he was no good.”
“Jeff had a tough time growing up.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
Jodie silently counted to ten. Her daughter had become a travel agent for first-class guilt trips. “Jeff’s father, Hiram, was a lowlife, no doubt about it. Never held a job and stayed stinking drunk his entire adult life. He was locked up so often Chief Sawyer named a cell after him.”
Brittany studied her black-painted fingernails without comment.
Jodie couldn’t tell if the girl’s boredom was real or feigned. “Jeff’s mother died when he was a baby.”
“Who took care of him?”
Ah, a note of interest from the blasé Miss Brittany? Would wonders never cease?
“His drunken father,” Jodie said. “It’s a miracle Jeff survived. When he was old enough, his father forced him to make moonshine deliveries.”
“Moonshine? Yuck.” Brittany made a face.
Jodie hoped her daughter’s response wasn’t based on personal experience. “Hiram ran a still somewhere on the mountain behind their house.”
Like a camera flash, a memory flared of Jeff, long dark hair blowing in the wind, black leather jacket zipped to his chin, roaring through town on his Harley, its saddlebags filled with Mason jars of white lightning cushioned with moss. The boy had been arrogant. Solitary. Lonely. With a don’t-come-close-or-I’ll-break-you-in-two expression.
Brittany squirmed in her seat. “Will his father be at the farm today?”
“Hiram died a year ago.”
Brittany was silent for a moment. “Anybody my age coming?”
“Not today.”
Lordy, Jodie hoped not. She had enough trouble with Brittany’s current friends. She definitely didn’t want her daughter fraternizing with Jeff’s clients, kids within a hair’s breadth of going to jail for a long, long time.
Reality check.
When Grant had first told her of Jeff’s project, a camp to rehabilitate potentially prison-bound teens, she’d been caught up in her brother’s enthusiasm.
“If Jeff hadn’t joined the Marines right out of high school,” Grant had explained, “he might have ended up in jail himself. So he understands where these kids are coming from. And where they might be headed.”
Good for Jeff Davidson, Jodie had thought. But now, considering her impressionable teenage daughter, the last thing Jodie wanted for her was more bad influences. And Jeff’s rehabilitation project would bring trouble to Pleasant Valley literally by the busload.
Jodie gripped the wheel to keep from smacking herself upside the head. Here she was, aiding and abetting, providing food and comfort to the enemy. What the heck had she been thinking?
Damn Jeff Davidson and his Marine-recruiting-poster charm. Thanks to her scrambled senses when he’d caught her by surprise, she hadn’t been thinking at all.
But Jeff wouldn’t have clients yet, she assured herself. The dorm wasn’t built, so the teens didn’t have a place to stay. And, thank God, the Davidson place was at the opposite end of the valley from town. When Jeff’s delinquents did arrive, they’d be too far away to interact with Brittany.
Jodie forced herself to relax. She and Brittany would feed Jeff’s building crew and take off. Her daughter would have no further contact with Jeff or his camp. For Brittany’s sake, Jodie didn’t want the rehabilitation facility in Pleasant Valley, but she remained open-minded enough to avoid the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. Jeff’s teens needed help. A nasty job, but somebody had to do it.
So long as the program didn’t affect her already problematic daughter, Jodie would file no objections.
She reached the end of the valley and headed the van up the winding road, a series of switchbacks that worked their way up the steep mountainside. Halfway up, she turned onto a gravel road, almost hidden by arching branches of rhododendron ready to burst into bloom. Heavy dew clung to white clusters of mountain laurel and bowed the heavily leafed branches of the hardwood forest. Jodie observed the unfamiliar route with interest. She’d never visited the Davidson farm and knew the way only from Grant’s directions.
Brittany peered through the shadows cast by the trees. “Are you sure this is the right road? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Jodie was also wondering if she was lost when a clearing opened ahead. She stopped the van at its edge and surveyed the Davidson property. Unlike the fertile farmland of the valley, this terrain was rugged and rocky. The only structures were a run-down farmhouse, a ramshackle barn, its unpainted boards weathered gray, and a few outbuildings. To one side of the barn, a terrace had been carved out of the hillside long ago, a space barely big enough for a vegetable garden, a pond and a tiny pasture.
On the opposite side of the farmhouse, a larger terrace had been graded recently, judging by the bare red clay. Stacks of lumber lay beside a huge concrete-block foundation, and beyond, a driver on a track-hoe worked the land, enlarging the level surface one bucketful of hard clay and rocks at a time.
Brittany sat up straighter and peered out the windshield with interest. “Where’s the still?”
Jodie eased the van beside Brynn’s car in front of the farmhouse and shut off the engine. “Destroyed. After his father died, Jeff told the authorities where to find it.”
“Where does Jeff—”
“Mr. Davidson, to you, kiddo.”
Brittany heaved a sigh. “Where does he get the money for all this?”
Out of the mouths of babes, Jodie thought. Hiram Davidson never had two nickels to rub together, and Marine pay hadn’t made Jeff rich. How was Jeff paying for his project?
She started to comment, but Jeff bounded out the door of the farmhouse and sprinted down the steps toward them. Every bit of breath left her body in a whoosh.
With his killer smile flashing, he was dressed in khaki cargo shorts that revealed muscular, tanned legs, lace-up workboots with wool socks, a cable-knit sweater in olive drab and a soft cap with USMC emblazoned across the front in proud gold letters. At ease, but with an underlying alertness that could snap to attention in a millisecond, he looked handsome enough for a starring role on one of Jodie’s favorite television programs.
Move over, JAG Commander Harmon Rabb, and be still my heart.
Jodie took a deep breath to clear her head. She was thirty years old, a mother and a businesswoman. She had to stop reacting to the man as if she were some teenage Marine Corps groupie.
Four similarly attired men came out of the house behind Jeff and waited on the porch.
“Holy beefcake,” Brittany murmured.
“And all old enough to be your father,” Jodie said sharply. Instantly she wanted to snatch the words back. Of all the sore spots between them, the subject of Brittany’s father was the touchiest.
Jodie unfastened her seat belt and climbed out of the car. She had to have air. An unaccustomed heat flooded her. Hormones. Had to be. Did having a baby at fifteen precipitate early menopause? What else would throw her body into hot flashes?
Brittany left the car and joined her as Jeff reached them.
“You’re right on time.” His gaze, deep-gray eyes that seemed almost black, locked with hers.
For an instant time stood still and she forgot to breathe.
He turned to her daughter and broke the spell. “You must be Brittany. I’m Jeff.”
“Mr. Davidson, Brittany.” Jodie reminded her daughter. She’d raised her to treat grown-ups with respect. She wouldn’t let anyone undermine her efforts. Not even the world’s most attractive former Marine.
“Hi...sir.” Brittany looked ready to dig a hole and climb in.
Jodie groaned inwardly. Everything she did further alienated the girl.
“Your mom would make a good Marine.” Jeff turned his charm on Brittany, and she actually smiled.
“Only if she’s an officer,” Brittany said with the air of a conspirator. “She’s good at giving orders.”
“That means she loves you,” Jeff said. “Take it from someone who knows. My old man never gave a...hoot what I did.”
Jodie blinked in surprise. Jeff had taken her side, and not only hadn’t Brittany bristled, she was still smiling.
Jeff’s friends joined them, and he offered introductions. “Jodie and Brittany Nathan, meet my team.”
A tall and solidly built man with pale-blue eyes, ruddy cheeks and hair like corn silk offered Jodie his hand. “I’m Gofer, ma’am.”
After squeezing Jodie’s fingers in a crushing grip, he took Brittany’s hand.
“Hi, Mr. Gofer,” Brittany said. Jodie’s lesson on manners had apparently taken hold.
Gofer laughed. “My real name’s Jack Hager. My team calls me Gofer.”
Brittany cast Jodie a what-do-I-do-now look.
Before Jodie could respond, Jeff said, “We call him Gofer because ‘go-fer-broke’ is his favorite expression.”
A rugged man with deep black skin, broad shoulders, and a close-shaved head shook Jodie’s hand next. “Kermit. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
“That’s your real name?” Jodie asked.
Kermit laughed with a rumbling sound deep in his broad chest and showed fine white teeth. “No, ma’am. It’s a nickname, too.”
Brittany, who’d been a huge Sesame Street fan as a toddler, asked, “Like Kermit the Frog?”
Kermit’s smile widened. “That’s the one.”
