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“Every time we pulled on our BDUs—” Gofer began.
“Battle dress uniforms,” Jeff explained.
“And smeared on camou-paint,” Gofer continued, “he sang, ‘It Isn’t Easy Being Green.’ So we call him Kermit.”
“And this is Ricochet.” Jeff pointed to a lanky fellow with soft brown eyes and curly brown hair who was nearly as tall as Jeff himself.
“Ma’am,” he responded with a respectful nod. “Brittany.”
“We call him Ricochet,” Gofer, apparently the most talkative of the group, explained, “because he can’t keep still.”
Had Ricochet actually blushed, Jodie wondered, or was his color a trick of the rising sun?
“Unless we’re on a mission,” Jeff added. “Then he’s as focused as a hound on a ham bone.”
“And I’m Trace, Ms. Nathan.” The fourth member of the team was tall and muscular with long, slender hands and the face of a poet. “Short for Tracey, my last name.”
“What do they call you, Mr. Davidson?” Brittany asked.
As one body, the four men snapped to attention and shouted in one voice, “Lieutenant Davidson, sir!”
“At ease,” Jeff ordered with a laugh. “And help these ladies unload their car.”
Jodie swallowed her astonishment. Outcast Jeff Davidson, whom everyone had believed would join Hell’s Angels and die in a bar fight, was an officer and a gentleman? Who would have thought?
Jeff motioned toward the building site. “We set up tables under a canopy and ran a power source. Having the food nearby will speed up our work.”
Jodie opened the van’s hatch. Kermit and Gofer each grabbed a Crock-Pot, Trace manhandled the massive coffeemaker she’d borrowed from the church, and Ricochet tucked a huge cooler under each arm and headed for the tables. Jeff began stacking boxes of baked goods.
“Where’s Brynn?” Jodie asked. “I see her car.”
“Inside.” Jeff used his chin to steady the pile of boxes in his arms. “With Daniel.”
“Another member of your team?”
“Nope,” Jeff called over his shoulder as he followed the other men. “My first client. He’s living with me until the dorm’s finished.”
“Cool,” Brittany said. “Can I meet him?”
“Not now. I need your help.” Jodie winced at the edge to her voice.
She definitely had her work cut out for her. Between feeding ravenous Marines and keeping her daughter away from Jeff’s first resident delinquent, it was going to be a long day.
* * *
FIVE HOURS LATER Jeff sat beneath a sugar maple and devoured a bowl of chili and an Italian sub. The morning had gone well. The timber framing crew from Asheville had arrived immediately after Jodie. Grant and Merrilee had made a brief appearance but had to leave when the vet received an emergency call.
With Jeff and his buddies, assisted by Brynn and Daniel providing additional grunt work, the massive dormitory with kitchen/dining/living room was taking shape. By dark, the framing would be complete, and Jeff and his Marines could add the roof, walls and finishing work over the next few weeks.
An unaccustomed lump blocked his throat. He’d never had friends while growing up in Pleasant Valley, mostly due to his father’s infamous reputation. Jeff hadn’t been like the other kids with their extended families, tidy homes with white picket fences and fathers who didn’t stay raging drunk and beat the crap out of them. And no one had understood better than Jeff that he didn’t belong. He’d built a wall around himself merely to survive.
But the corps had been different. Backgrounds and social status were irrelevant. All that mattered was that a man carried his load, became part of the team and watched his buddies’ backs. Determined to make the grade, Jeff had thrown himself first into training and later into missions with every fiber of his being. As gung-ho, kick-ass, hang-tough as the best of them, he’d not only developed self-esteem, he’d won the unqualified respect and undying loyalty of his men. And he loved them more than he’d loved his own blood kin.
“Dessert?” A soft, musical voice interrupted his thoughts.
Jeff glanced up at Jodie, standing in front of him with a plate of chocolate cake in each hand. He set aside his empty chili bowl and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “If you’ll join me.”
Her creamy complexion blushed like a Georgia peach. “I have to—”
“You’ve served everyone else. They’re fine.”
Jodie glanced across the clearing as if hoping to prove him wrong, but the framing crew, gathered at the back of their pickups, held full plates. Brynn, flanked by Brittany and Daniel, sat under the canopy at a makeshift table of planks and sawhorses. Gofer and Kermit had set up a chessboard on a nearby stump and were engrossed in a game. Picking up trash and stray tools and, as usual, unable to stay in one place, Ricochet wandered the work site. Trace reclined on the porch steps with his nose in a novel, Cold Mountain, whose namesake stood just over the North Carolina line near the Blue Ridge Parkway, fifty miles north.
Jeff patted the ground beside him. “Sit with me.”
With the tension of a wild animal trapped with no place to run, Jodie handed him a plate and sank beside him.
“I won’t bite,” he said.
“Hmmmph.” She avoided his eyes. “Thought you Marines ate civilians for lunch.”
He lifted the plate with its thick wedge of cake. “Only when there aren’t such delicious alternatives.”
Not that Jodie wasn’t delicious in her own way. The delicate fragrance of her magnolia-scented shampoo teased his nostrils and fanned a hunger unrelated to food. He stowed his desire and put a lock on it. He had promises to keep, and no woman, not even one as pretty as Jodie, could distract him.
“You have a name for this place?” she asked.
Jeff shrugged. “I’ve always called it home, such as it is.”
“I mean your project, your camp. It has to have a name.”
He’d named it, all right. Maybe if Jodie knew the story behind that name, she’d be more amenable to helping later. “I’m calling it Archer Farm.”
“Archer? As in bows and arrows?” She seemed confused.
“Archer, as in Captain Colin Archer,” Jeff said quietly, steeled against the pain the name evoked.
“One of your team?” She indicated the Marines scattered across the building site.
“The best of our team, but he’s not here today. Except in spirit.”
Jodie took a bite of chocolate cake and waited for him to continue.
“Arch saved my life in Afghanistan.”
Remembering, Jeff could almost feel the biting cold of that winter night, see the star-strewn heavens above the dark mountain peaks, taste the grit of the desert and hear the keening wind.
“We were on a re-con mission to identify the exact location of a terrorist group hiding in a complex of connected caves. Our job was to secure coordinates, convey them to headquarters and get out. Smart bombs would do the rest.
“Harris and I took point, and, in spite of all precautions, Harris somehow tripped a land mine.”
Jodie set her cake aside, as if her appetite had fled.
“Harris died instantly,” Jeff said, “and I was injured. Couldn’t move. Men with guns poured out of those caves like a scene from a Schwarzenegger movie. Only all too real.”
Jodie shuddered, drew her knees to her chest and hugged them.
“The team tossed smoke grenades and laid down covering fire. Arch fought his way through and carried me out.”
“Must have been scary,” Jodie said.
“Scary is too mild a term. I was terrified out of my mind.”
“Captain Archer must have been, too.”
Jeff nodded. “People have the wrong idea about courage. Bravery doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. It means doing what you have to, in spite of your fears.”
“So you’re naming your project after the man who saved your life?”
“He did more than that. Arch went back after Harris.”
“But Harris was dead.”
“Marines don’t leave their men behind. Ever.”
“So Archer was a hero twice over that night.”
“He was more than a hero. He was my best friend, the closest thing to a brother I ever had.” Jeff took a bite of cake and forced himself to swallow past the tightness in his throat. The creamy chocolate tasted like dust and ashes.
“Was?”
“He was killed a year later by a suicide bomber in Baghdad. I’d have been with him if I hadn’t been in sick bay with food poisoning.”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
Bitterness consumed him. “Hell of a way for Arch to die. The bravest man I know killed by a fanatical coward.” Jeff shook his head in disgust, using anger to hold back tears. “He should be here today. This project was our dream.”
“You’ve been planning this a long time?”
“Ever since Arch and I met in boot camp. He came from a tough Chicago neighborhood, an orphan raised by his elderly grandmother. The Marine Corps was his ticket out, same as mine.”
“But you came back here.”
Jeff nodded. “Arch and I agreed that once we left the service, we’d build this place together. We wanted to help other troubled kids before they were swallowed up by the legal system and sent to prison.”
“Kids like Daniel?” Jodie’s voice sounded strange, as if under tight control.
Jeff nodded. “I took Daniel, even though the dorm’s not ready. He’ll live with me until it is.”
“Why the hurry?”
Jeff wished he could read her better. Her expression gave nothing away, and he couldn’t tell if she was sympathetic or merely polite.
“Because Daniel was only days from being sentenced to an adult correctional facility. One he’d never survive.”
“What did he do?” Jodie’s question held an agitated note.
“He’s a smart kid who made stupid mistakes.”
“They don’t lock you up for being stupid,” she said with a tinge of sarcasm. “What was he charged with?”
Jeff sighed. From the harshness in her voice, he’d apparently lost the battle for Jodie’s support, but a Marine didn’t quit. He wouldn’t concede the war. Not yet.
“Shoplifting,” he admitted with reluctance. “Grand theft auto, resisting arrest and assault on a police officer.”
Jodie gasped. “Does Brynn know?”
Jeff looked across the yard where Brynn laughed with Brittany and Daniel over their desserts. “She’s Archer Farm’s law enforcement liaison. She’ll have files on all our clients.”
Jodie stood abruptly. “Excuse me. I have to speak with my daughter.”
Disappointed, Jeff watched her hurry away. Jodie Nathan with her Mountain Crafts and Café had exactly the resources Archer Farm needed to succeed. He could probably locate other help, but he doubted he’d find anyone he wanted to work with as much as Jodie.
Chapter Three
Jodie forced herself not to run. More than anything, she wanted to snatch Brittany from Daniel’s presence, shove her in the car and take off, as fast and far from Archer Farm as Jodie could drive.
But she knew better. She was no expert in teen psychology, but she’d learned enough. If Brittany even suspected her mother didn’t want her at Archer Farm, Jeff’s project would become her daughter’s most desirable destination.
Jodie wanted to stop, scream and shake her fists at the heavens. Why, every time her sex drive kicked in, did her brain check out? What kind of spell had Jeff Davidson cast that she’d allowed herself to become involved with his plans? Between Brittany and the business, Jodie already had her hands full. She didn’t need more temptations dangled in front of her very impressionable child, and she particularly didn’t need the distraction of a man as good-looking and compassionate as Jeff.
Anger and frustration threatened to strangle her. Being a single mom was hard enough. Why did Jeff have to add to her problems by bringing his jail-bound teens to Pleasant Valley? Why not Chicago where his pal Archer had come from?
Hard to farm in Chicago, logic reminded her.
Jodie wasn’t operating on logic, however, but pure, unadulterated maternal instinct. Jeff’s clients posed a potential threat to her child, and Jodie pledged every effort to keep Brittany away.
But Jeff also threatened Jodie’s well-ordered single life in a way no other man had. She liked him, he was interesting, he made her pulse race and she wanted to spend more time with him. Which was exactly why she vowed to keep herself away from Jeff and Archer Farm, as well.
Slowing her steps to a casual saunter, she approached the table where Brynn sat with Brittany and Jeff’s first client.
“How many lawyers,” Brynn was saying, “does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“How many?” Brittany said.
“Three. One to climb the ladder, one to shake the ladder, and one to sue the ladder company.”
Brittany and Daniel laughed, until they took a look at Jodie’s face. Brittany’s laughter died in her throat, and Daniel shoved to his feet.
