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“It might be easier if I go first. You can reach farther than I can. Here,” she said, stepping close to hold out her baby. “When I get to the top, you can hand her up to me.”
Justin froze. Despite the twinge of pain in his shoulder, his hands shot out in pure reflex. He would have done the same thing if someone had thrown him a ball. Only he would have known what to do with a ball. He hadn’t a clue what to do with the little bundle of big blue eyes blinking up at him.
The impossibly light little body was barely longer than his forearm. The tiny fist waving around before finding its way to that wet little rosebud mouth was smaller than the top half of his thumb. He’d never seen fingers so small.
With her hands tucked beneath his, her mom suddenly looked as if she weren’t sure she should let go. “Do you have her?”
His nod was more tentative than he’d have liked. With one palm cupping the back of the baby’s head, he gripped what little there was of a backside with the other. “Yeah. Go on.”
Just don’t fall, he thought as Emily slowly withdrew her support and retrieved the carrier that had rolled under the stairs. The last thing he wanted was to have to figure out what to do with her child if the woman should need help. He’d gone toe-to-toe with three-hundred-pound linebackers playing college football. He’d bested the toughest negotiators in world-class business deals, but he freely admitted that this infant had him feeling completely helpless. Accustomed to being capable, he didn’t like the sensation at all.
“Okay,” he heard Emily call when the rustle of leaves quieted. “I’ll take her now.”
He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the perfect little face, either. Glancing up, he saw Emily framed against the lightening sky. She’d set the carrier on the ground above her and crouched two steps from the top, her arms stretched toward him.
Watching the baby as if he were afraid it might do something to upset his balance, he edged up the bottom steps and carefully lifted the blissfully oblivious bundle past the leaves quivering along the wind-splintered barrier. The sharp scent of fresh pitch swirled in the slight breeze, reminding him to watch for the jagged spikes of wood where the branch had snapped in the middle so they wouldn’t catch the tail of the blanket.
He actually felt sweat bead near his temples when the baby jerked her arm and popped herself in the eye. Her face screwed up at the self-inflicted assault, but she didn’t make a sound. He did, though. When Emily’s fingers slipped beneath his and he felt the baby’s weight shift to her hands, his sigh of relief was definitely audible.
Chapter Two
Justin’s first thought when he stepped onto the wet lawn was that the rain had apparently stopped as abruptly as it started.
His second thought was of his car.
With a sinking sensation, he moved beyond where Emily stood clutching her baby and glanced toward the road. Beneath the heavy clouds, he could barely see the tops of the trees near the little bridge and the curve of the road leading down to it. But the trees were still there, as thick and tall as when he’d parked his car beneath them. Closer in, under a sky that was opening with streaks of brilliant blue, the verdant land remained untouched.
The frustration he’d prepared himself to feel over hassles with transportation and insurance adjusters never materialized. His biggest problem—at the moment, anyway—was still his dead battery. Emily Miller, he was sure, hadn’t fared as well.
When he looked from the coop where the chickens were pecking the ground, he found her staring at the walnut tree. What was left of it, anyway. All that remained was a short, jagged spike that had been blasted clean of its bark. The bulk of the sizable trunk was nowhere to be seen—though Justin figured it a safe bet that the branch poking out of the cellar had once been attached to it. So had the even larger branch that had been stuffed through the back porch. That massive limb had taken out the porch’s center support, but the house itself was still standing. By some miracle, so was the greenhouse. Even the windmill, its blades now turning with laconic ease, appeared unscathed.
He’d expected to see nothing but rubble.
“Are you all right?” he asked, since she’d yet to move. He pulled a white sheet from where it had tangled around an upright water pipe. Tossing it over the T of the clothesline pole, he cautiously scanned her profile. “It’s too bad about your tree. And your porch,” he added, since that was actually the bigger problem. “But it doesn’t look like you lost anything else.”
“No. No,” Emily repeated, responding to the encouraging note in his deep voice. “I don’t think I did.” Her own voice lost the strength she’d just forced into it. “It could have been much worse.”
Brushing her lips over the top of Anna’s soft, sweet-smelling head, she stared at the mass of leaves and branches obliterating her back door. She’d immediately noticed that the greenhouse and chickens and the fields had survived, but she hadn’t let herself breathe until she’d turned to her house.
It really could have been worse. And losing a tree and a cellar door and having to patch her porch was nothing compared to what could have been. There was always some good and some bad. The sweet balanced the sour, her mother and her aunts had always said. That was life. It didn’t matter that her own life had swung wildly out of balance. She was to take with relief and thanks all that had been spared. And take in stride and with grace that which hadn’t.
That was how she’d been raised. It was all she knew to do, though she was the first to admit that she’d never mastered the easy acceptance part. As she stood hugging her child, the thought of the extra work it would take to cut up the tree was enough to bring her to tears. There weren’t enough hours in the day as it was. But she didn’t dare let herself cry. She was afraid that if she did, she’d never stop. And she had to be strong for Anna.
At the moment, she also needed to check on her neighbors.
The rows of corn nearest her little plot of land swayed in the diminishing breeze. Where the land gently rose a couple of acres away, she saw nothing but churned-up earth and a chunk of red-and-white siding that looked suspiciously like part of a barn.
“I need to see if the Clancys are all right,” she said, uncomfortably aware of her rescuer’s eyes on her. “Mrs. Clancy just had a hip replaced and their son and his family are away for a few days. There’s no one there to know if they need help.”
Justin stood with his hands on his lean hips, his broad shoulders looking as wide as the horizon. He stared right at her, his wide brow furrowed. He was very direct with his stares, she’d noticed. Not at all subtle the way the few men she knew were when they looked at her. But then, he seemed very direct about his needs and opinions, too. “You wanted to use their phone. Come with me and I’ll show you the way.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll head on in to town. From the looks of things over there,” he said, nodding toward the cornfields, “the lines are probably down.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, the motion not nearly as casual as she wanted it to be. “I understand tornados are strange. The way they pick and choose what they destroy, I mean. I’ve heard of walls being ripped off, but nothing in the room being disturbed. I think that’s part of Mr. Clancy’s barn,” she said, pointing ahead of her, “but their phone could still be working.”
She was telling him he might be able to save himself some time by coming with her. Whether she knew it or not, she was also making it as clear as the raindrops clinging to the grass that he disturbed her. Her wary glance would barely meet his before shying away, as if she were embarrassed at having been up close and personal with a perfect stranger. He was pretty certain, too, from the strain that had settled into her delicate features that she was more upset than she was letting on about the damage. Yet, even as unsettled as she had to be, she sounded unbelievably calm.
As he watched her kneel to tug a piece of denim from beneath the baby carrier’s thickly padded mauve liner, he couldn’t believe her attitude, either.
He didn’t know a single soul who would walk away from their own crisis to help out someone else with theirs. The fact that she remembered he still had a problem caught him a little off guard, too. After the way he’d jumped on her about leaving her kid outside, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d left him to fend for himself.
She carefully tucked the baby’s little legs through two holes in what looked like a denim tube and slipped her own arms through its two long straps. As she did, his glance strayed down the thick braid lying against her back to the fabric covering the sweet curve of her slender hips.
“Even if the phone’s out,” he said, wondering how all that hair would look unbound and spilling over her body, “maybe he can give me a jump.”
Annoyed with the direction of his thoughts, he pointedly pulled his attention from her. “It looks like you’ve been through this before. The greenhouse,” he said, eyeing the skeletal structure to keep his glance from wandering over her again. “You only have a few windows back there. Did another storm take out the others?”
A long strand of loosened hair swayed over her shoulder. Snagging it back, she rose and tucked a soft-looking square of white fabric under the chin of the sleepy-eyed child in her tummy-carrier. “Those are the only windows that were put in. My husband built the greenhouse for me last year, but winter came before he could finish.
“I hired a man,” she continued, absently rubbing the baby’s back through the denim as she motioned for him to accompany her across the lawn. “He put in the windows Daniel framed and I gave him money to buy the rest, but he hasn’t come back yet. I’m sure I don’t have enough plastic to replace what was torn,” she added, more to herself than to him. “I hope he returns soon.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Two weeks and two days. He wanted to find the best price, so he said it might take him a while.”
They angled toward a dirt road lined with rows of corn. The wind had calmed to a warm breeze that rattled the leaves on the stalks and fanned the ankle-high grass growing on either side of the ruts. “Is this someone you know?” he asked, leaving her to walk on the near side of the road while he headed for the grass on the other side to avoid the mud in the middle.
“I didn’t before he came looking for work. He said he’d worked for a lot of people in the county, though.” A pensive frown touched her brow. “I wonder if he would repair my porch when he returns.”
He should let it go, he told himself. He should concentrate on how quiet it was compared to the cacophony of only minutes ago. It was so peaceful here. Almost…serene. There was no traffic. No horns, sirens, squealing brakes. He should just think about the stillness. He should not question her about something that undoubtedly had as reasonable an explanation as she’d provided for why she’d had her kid out in a tornado.
“He’d said he’d worked for people around here?” he asked, too curious to know what that explanation was to let the matter drop. “You didn’t check out his references yourself?”
“Even if I’d heard of the names he mentioned, I had no way to speak with them. Besides, there was no need. If he couldn’t do the work, it would be obvious, wouldn’t it?”
There was a certain literal quality to her logic, a simplicity Justin would have found quite eloquent had she not entirely missed his point. He’d bet his corner office that the guy was an itinerant.
“I don’t suppose this man is from around here, is he?”
“He didn’t say.”
Fighting incredulity, he cast her a sideways glance.
“Do you know his name?” he asked, all but biting his tongue to keep his tone even.
The look she gave him was amazingly patient. “Of course I do. It’s Johnny Smith.”
John Smith. How original.
“So you gave this man you really don’t know money to buy something for you and you haven’t seen or heard from him in two weeks.”
“He said he wanted to shop for the best price for me,” she reminded him, looking at him a little uncertainly. “And he did put the other windows in. He did a good job, too.”
“Do you mind if I ask how much you paid him?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“What did you give him for the windows?”
“I only had a hundred.”
There was such innocence in her lovely eyes. And caution. And concern. The myriad impressions registered with Justin moments before she glanced away to watch where she was stepping.
Johnny Smith had done a good job, all right, he thought. A snow job. “You might want to report Johnny to the authorities, Mrs. Miller. He stole your money.”
“I don’t believe that,” Emily said, incredulous. “Not for a moment.” She blinked hard at the distance, her hand still protectively on the little bump resting against her stomach. “He was far too nice to want to do any harm.”
The air of innocence he’d noticed about her before now struck him simply as naiveté. She obviously wanted to believe the best about the man. About people in general, he suspected, though he found the aspiration more dangerous than admirable.
“There are a lot of ‘nice’ crooks out there,” he countered, wondering if the woman had ever set foot off the farm. “I take it you’ve never been conned before?”
“Conned?”
“Swindled, cheated, deceived? No one’s ever taken advantage of you or your husband?”
Her glance darted from his, something like guilt shadowing the delicate lines of her face. “He took nothing that I didn’t give him from my own hand.”
The flatness of her quiet voice could have been recrimination for her own actions. It could just as easily have been defense for those of the man who’d quite probably absconded with her funds. Justin was far more interested in the part of his question she’d chosen to ignore. The part about her husband.
She tended to speak in the singular. And she’d made no reference at all to her husband having anything to do with the handyman. But what struck him as truly odd, now that he thought about it, was that she’d exhibited no concern at all for a husband during or after the storm. The only person she’d expressed concern about needing shelter was him.
All things considered, he strongly suspected that Mr. Miller wasn’t even around anymore.
That she felt it necessary to keep up the pretense tugged hard at his conscience.
“Look,” he murmured, disturbed to know he made her that uncomfortable. He was accustomed to people with better defenses. Harder edges. Even when she was trying to protect herself, she was totally without artifice. “We all make bad judgments sometimes. Don’t let that stop you from turning the guy in. He’s just going to rip off someone else.”
“Even if what you say were true…which I don’t believe it is,” she hurriedly clarified, “I wouldn’t know what to do. I know nothing about your…about the law.”
“I do. I’m a lawyer. This isn’t my area of expertise,” he admitted, more concerned with her tolerance than her correction. “Criminal law, I mean. I handle corporate matters. But I’d be glad to tell the local sheriff what you’ve told me and ask him to come talk to you.”
She gave him a smile as soft as the sunshine breaking through the clouds. “I thank you for your offer. It’s very kind. But it’s possible that he could come back. If he does—when he does,” she corrected, turning her glance back to the horizon, “then I would have unjustly accused him. He will come back.” Her quiet voice grew quieter still. “I need to believe that.”
For a moment Justin said nothing. There was an odd anxiety in the way she spoke, a quiet sort of desperation. It was almost as if she didn’t want him to challenge her nebulous hope because hope was about all she had.
He had no idea why the thought struck him as it did. But he rarely questioned his instincts, and now those instincts were telling him he was right on the mark about this woman’s circumstances. He couldn’t fault her argument, though. He didn’t even want to. He could explain how brilliantly her handyman had duped her. He could point out how the guy had set her up to believe that if he was gone awhile it was because he was trying to help her save money—which would give him plenty of time to disappear. But the chances of recovering her cash at this point were somewhere between zip and nil—and there wasn’t any point in badgering her about something it was too late to do anything about.
“How long has your husband been gone?” he finally asked, gingerly rotating his aching arm.
Emily glanced at the man openly watching her, then promptly looked at the ground. “I didn’t say that he was.”
She didn’t like the suspicions Justin raised, even though she, too, had been wondering what was taking the handyman so long. She didn’t like the feeling either, that he sensed how ignorant she was of the ways she was trying to assimilate. There was so much she didn’t know. So much she didn’t understand. And she had no idea at all how he’d known Daniel was no longer there.
“No, you didn’t,” he agreed, his tone surprisingly mild. “And I can understand why you wouldn’t want a stranger to know you’re out here alone. But with this storm, if you had a husband around, you’d be wondering if he was all right. The only people you’ve mentioned are your neighbors.”
He’d moved closer when the road had become cluttered with the torn vegetation. She just hadn’t realized how close until she caught his clean, faintly spicy scent. The instant she breathed it in, she was hit with the memory of standing in his arms with her head buried against his rock-hard chest.
He wasn’t anything like the handyman who’d shown up looking for work a couple of weeks ago. The man who’d called himself Johnny Smith had seemed too shy to even make eye contact, much less make personal observations. And there was no way on God’s green earth he would have caused the odd heat that had just pooled in her stomach.
She ducked her head, disconcerted by that heat, determined to ignore it. “Are you always so good at drawing conclusions?”
“My record’s pretty decent.”
His lack of modesty came as no surprise.
“I suppose all lawyers must be good at such things. I’ve never met one before, but I’ve seen one. On Mrs. Clancy’s soap opera,” she explained, thinking of the commanding, demanding and powerful man who, according to Mrs. Clancy, had stolen the heart of every female character in the cast. “You have much of the same manner about you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s neither. It just is. But you’re right about Daniel,” she continued, assuming he was frowning because she’d yet to answer his question. “He is no longer here.”
His expression relaxed as it shifted from her to her child. “Has he been gone long?”
“Since last spring. He worked for Mr. Clancy,” she told him, her voice growing hushed. “Daniel was raised on a farm, but he didn’t know anything about the big machinery they use here. He was killed trying to repair a piece of equipment while Mr. Clancy wasn’t around.”
The movement of her hand over Anna’s little back was automatic, a soothing motion that gave her as much comfort as it did the baby snuggled against her. “I didn’t understand the talk of gears and tilling blades. But he had forgotten to set some sort of brake.”
There were times when it felt as if it had been only yesterday that she’d received that awful, numbing news. There were other times when she could hardly picture her husband’s boyish face. When she thought of Daniel, she tried to recall how happy they’d once been. But that had been almost too long ago to remember.
“I’m sorry,” she heard Justin say, his voice subdued.
“Me, too. Daniel was a good man.”
“How old is your baby?”
A small smile relieved the strain around her mouth. “Eight weeks yesterday.”
It was now mid-July, Justin thought. That meant she’d been alone when the baby had been born.
He didn’t like the way that bothered him. He didn’t much care for the way she confused him, either. He’d still been trying to figure out the soap-opera reference when she’d hit him with the reason her husband wasn’t around.
He’d figured the guy had simply taken a hike. He hadn’t expected her to be widowed. But that little jolt had just been replaced with a decidedly skeptical curiosity over how someone who’d farmed all of his life would know so little about farm equipment.
It wasn’t like him not to seek an answer when one was readily available. But he had no desire to chip any deeper at the brave front she wore. With her slender frame, her translucent skin, and that pale-as-cornsilk hair, she looked as delicate as spun glass. When he thought about how desperately she’d been trying to save her plants, and the work she had waiting for her when she returned to her house, he was quietly amazed that the front hadn’t already shattered.
Ignoring his curiosity had another advantage. He hated tears. Granted, the only women he’d ever seen cry had used them either to get something from him, or out of fury when they didn’t. And he suspected Emily to be far stronger than she looked. But he didn’t want to push any buttons that would crack her composure. He’d never been around a woman who honestly needed comfort before. He wasn’t sure he’d even know what to do.
“You can see the Clancy place up there,” she said, relieving him enormously when she shielded her eyes against the sun and looked up the road. “Oh, good.” She sighed, smiling at him. “It didn’t hit their house.”
