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Annie was right. Over a hundred buildings in Redemption were on the National Register of Historic Places and only an expert with Jace’s eye and skill could work on them. Kitty’s motel, a throwback to the fifties, was not on that list.
“Jace is the original Mr. Nice Guy,” she said.
“True. But have you ever considered that he might be the least bit interested in you?”
Kitty’s heart bumped. “No.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Oh, girl. What am I going to do with you? You’re what? Thirty?”
“Thirty-one.”
“There you go.” She slapped a plate of sandwiches on the table. “Open those gorgeous baby blues and take a close look at Jace Carter. He’s a doll and he has a thing for you.”
“Annie, stop. You know I’m not in the market. Never will be.” The very idea gave her a stomachache.
Annie quieted. A nurse with a heart as big and warm as the sun, she knew Kitty’s history. “Dave was a great guy, Kitty. We all liked him, but he’s gone. Has been for a long time.”
Kitty bit her bottom lip. Seven years was a long time but memories never died the way Dave had. “I’m not interested in finding anyone else.”
“Really?” Annie’s compassionate green eyes bore into her. “Think about that, Kitty. Love is a beautiful thing. Too beautiful to live without.”
Didn’t she know it? Hadn’t she had the best in Dave Wainright? Insides squeezing, she tried to laugh off the conversation. “Oh, you newlyweds. All you think about is love.”
Annie arched one blond eyebrow but didn’t say anymore because at that moment the men trooped into the country kitchen. Fatigue pulled at their faces.
Kitty’s stomach quivered oddly when she looked at Jace Carter. She wished Annie hadn’t said such a silly thing. She’d never allowed herself to consider Jace as…well, as a man, but now she couldn’t help noticing. Average height, he bested her by several inches. The word neat always came to mind when she thought of him. But tonight his usual tucked in, tidied up appearance was disheveled and dirty. His brown hair was rumpled and tagged with dirt as though he’d run a muddy hand through it.
He had the softest, quietest eyes. Hazel she thought, though she’d never noticed before. And he had strong, carpenter hands, a little rough and work-scarred, but capable. She had noticed them before, the way he held a piece of lumber almost tenderly as though he could envision the beauty hidden inside. He was an artist with wood.
“You guys okay?” she asked to stop the flow of her thoughts. Annie and her suggestions.
“Rough night.” Sloan did the talking.
Sloan Hawkins, dark and dangerous-looking with blue eyes that could melt a rock, crossed the room to kiss Annie’s cheek. “Smells good.” He smiled a tired smile. “So does the food.”
Annie blushed prettily and swatted at her husband. The newlyweds’ sweetness put a catch in Kitty’s chest. She and Dave had loved like that. She glanced at Jace, saw him avert his gaze. He removed his ball cap, crushing it in those capable, tattered hands.
“I should go. I’m too dirty to be here.” The voice was as quiet as his eyes, warm, too, and manly.
“Don’t be silly,” Annie said. “Kitty, get him a towel, will you, while I put this food on the table?”
“Got it.” She hurried out of the kitchen, glad for the momentary reprieve from her own crazy thoughts. She was tired. That’s all.
Jace settled into the chair Sloan shoved at him, glad to be off his feet. He was cold to the core. Should have gone home, but when Sloan said Kitty was here, he’d been too tired to resist. Just looking at her helped soothe the ache of these last few hours.
Tonight her hair was swept up in a knot atop her head and held by a black doodad, but he’d seen it down before, long and pale. She was like a fairy tale, a blonde Rapunzel with a hint of Tinkerbell in her heart-shaped face and blue-bonnet eyes. Jace laughed at his fantastical thoughts but thought them again when he saw her coming toward him with a big blue towel.
“I warmed this in the dryer.” She draped the heated terry cloth around his shoulders. “You look cold.”
He was cold, inside and out. Tonight’s failed rescue chilled his soul.
“Thanks. Feels good.” The towel smelled good, too, clean, fragrant and warm. Or was that Kitty?
“You really should get out of that wet shirt. Sloan could probably loan you one of his.”
The rain had started, a soft drizzle right before they’d given up the search.
“I’m okay.” She couldn’t know that he would never remove his shirt in front of anyone. Ever. He was modest, yes, but more than that, he was ashamed.
Kitty hovered, and he searched for something, anything to say, but his useless tongue stuck to his mouth. He’d had no one to fuss over him since he was small, and having her bring him a towel or a glass of tea or a cheery smile felt good. Too good to ruin with words.
Ah, who he was kidding? If not for her motel and the work he did there, Kitty Wainright wouldn’t give him the time of day. The motel office was a shrine to her hero husband and according to the local gossip he’d picked up over breakfast at the Sugar Shack each morning, Kitty had openly declared herself a widow forever. As was her way, Kitty was kindhearted and good to everyone. Even a stray dog like him.
Which made them friends and neighbors and nothing else. Ever. He had long ago declared himself a lifetime bachelor, though his reasons were far less heroic than hers. He rubbed at his shoulder and remembered a time too ugly to forget.
“Let’s eat.” Annie waved her hand over the steaming bowls of chili she’d set at each place. “There’s plenty. Hope it doesn’t keep you up all night.”
They chuckled at the joke, knowing it wasn’t indigestion from the spicy chili that would keep them awake tonight.
They ate in silence until Justin broached the topic of to night’s tragedy. “Do you think they’ll find him?”
Sloan laid aside his sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. “Drowning victims are usually found.”
“But not always?”
“No. Not always.”
Annie shuddered. “Gruesome.”
“I wonder if he has a wife and family,” Kitty mused and Jace turned to look at her. “I remember when Dave was killed. The army sent an officer. Who tells a civilian’s wife?”
“The police.”
Annie said, “I wonder if it’s on the news.”
“Should be. There were reporters everywhere.” Sloan trekked over to the counter where a small TV hung from the cabinet. He positioned the screen toward the table.
In the months since Sloan Hawkins, purportedly the bad boy of Redemption, had returned to his hometown and married his high school sweetheart, Jace had come to like and respect the man. There was darkness in him, a darkness Jace recognized because of his own shadows, but Annie Markham Hawkins and a relationship with God had smoothed some of Sloan’s rough edges.
Jace knew about that, too—the lightening of dark places with faith. He’d be a dead man without Jesus.
A half-dozen fast-paced, loud commercials flickered across the screen while Sloan surfed through the channels in search of late-night news.
“Here we go,” he said, tossing the remote to the table as he returned to his food. “Chili’s good, Annie girl. Just what I needed.” He winked and squeezed her hand on the tabletop.
Jace suffered the familiar pinch of envy. No man was an island, or some such proverb.
“Hey, Dad. There you are!” Justin leaped up from the table to point. Sure enough, the camera scanned the scene at the river, then focused on Sloan’s face. Relieved that he didn’t appear in the shot, Jace listened as a digital Sloan repeated his comments to the reporter. He’d no more than thought the thought when there he was. The shot was only a flash as the camera panned but enough for him to recognize himself. Not once, but twice as the cameraman surveyed the rescue attempt.
“You look handsome, handsome,” Annie said, smiling at Sloan.
Sloan thumped a fist against his chest. “Hollywood will be calling. What do you think, Jace? Me and you. Made for TV?”
Jace forced a laugh as the rest of them chuckled at Sloan’s attempt to lighten the situation.
But chili curdled in the pit of his stomach. TV was the last place he wanted to be.
Chapter Two
Four days later Redemption still buzzed with the tragedy. The rescue had been scaled back, renamed a recovery effort, and moved downstream.
“Horrible,” thought Kitty as she whipped sheets from the bed in Unit 7 and tossed them in with a pile of towels for the laundry. The unit had been occupied by a reporter who’d decided the story was over and rushed off to film tornado devastation up in Cleveland County.
Linens in arms, Kitty left the scrubbing for later and stepped out into the spring sunshine. The morning was golden, though the weatherman said more rain was coming. Her fingers practically itched to be digging in the planter boxes and tiny gardens around each unit, but the ground was too wet. She sniffed the scents of grass and damp earth.
Up on the highway a trucker geared down with a low whine, a sure sign he was entering Redemption, not leaving. Maybe he’d stop in for a room. She could use the income.
From the roof of Unit 2, the whoosh-bang of a nail gun told her Jace Carter was on the job.
Kitty turned toward the sound, dropping the linens in the laundry room on her journey.
Balanced on his knees atop the roof of Unit 2, the quiet carpenter placed a nail gun against a shingle and fired. Her motel was old and the roof of this room hadn’t withstood the test of last week’s downpours. The inside was a mess, too.
“Good morning.” She shaded her eyes against a stunning glare and looked up.
She could barely see him. Just the curve of his back and the rubber-gripped bottoms of his work boots.
With a skitter and crunch of feet and knees against old-fashioned asphalt shingles, Jace came into view. Moving with studied care and smooth athleticism toward the edge of the roof and the extension ladder, he lifted a gloved hand.
Backlit in sunshine, tool belt low on one hip, brown hair neatly spiked and gleaming clean, Jace wore old jeans and a white and gray striped shirt. She’d never seen him in anything but neatly pressed long sleeved shirts. He was, she realized, a good-looking man.
Kitty ground her back teeth, annoyed at herself and at Annie for putting the notion into her head.
“Morning,” he said, voice low and soft. “I hope the noise didn’t wake you.”
“No. Of course not. I’m an early riser.” She figured he knew that already as much as he’d worked here. When he made a reach for the ladder, she stopped him. “Oh, don’t let me bother you. I only wanted to say hi and ask if you’d like coffee or something.”
“Got my thermos, thanks.” He smiled, a slow, almost cautious response that crinkled the weathered edges of gentle hazel eyes.
“How’s it coming?”
Jace was an excellent builder, a restorer of antique homes and furniture. He had far better jobs than repairing her cranky old lady of a motel. Yet he never turned her down. She’d never wondered about that before, but after Annie’s comments, she did.
“The roof’s pretty old.”
Kitty gnawed a bottom lip. “You saying I need a new one?”
“I can make it work.”
She knew he could. Jace was a wonder with the historic buildings in Redemption. Though Redemption Motel was certainly not a turn-of-the-century Victorian bed-and-breakfast. It was an old relic of the fifties, cranky, bothersome and a ton of never ending work. And she loved it. More because of who it represented than what.
“I’ve been thinking of renovating.”
Jace shifted. The tool belt dangling on one hip clinked, metal against metal. “Yeah?”
“Thinking.” She laughed. “No money for serious renovations.”
Motel rooms in a town the size of Redemption didn’t bring in big money. If not for the long-term renters who put regular cash in the coffers, she couldn’t keep the doors open. Those and the huge Christmas celebrations, Victorian style, and the Land Run reenactment in April kept the motel afloat. She made enough to get by, but there was seldom any money in the bank for extras. Some extra cash would be a blessing.
“We could work something out. Take care of the major issues. Let’s talk about it.”
“Okay. I wouldn’t want anyone but you tearing into my baby.”
Jace was scrupulously honest, always did more than she paid him for, and his work was perfection. Her cranky old lady of a motel looked much better since he’d begun doing the upkeep.
“I’d be disappointed if you did.” He hoisted a nail gun toward the graveled lot behind her. “You have company.”
Kitty spun toward the sound of tires crunching on the gravel, a sound she acquainted with paying customers. “Come to the office when you finish. I’ll fix you a sandwich and pick your brain.”
“Can’t guarantee you’ll find anything.”
With a laugh and a wave, Kitty hurried toward the office and the slender man exiting a shiny navy blue sedan.
Jace squinted against the morning sun and watched a moment longer as Kitty’s energetic stride ate up the ground. She was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, inside and out. Delicate, feminine, but strong as a willow, she took his breath. Stole his brain cells.
A car door slammed and he heard Kitty’s lyrical voice speak to the newcomer though he couldn’t make out the words. A man of average height, on the skinny side and dressed in a business suit fell into step beside the cheery blonde proprietress of Redemption Motel. When they reached the office the man opened the old-fashioned screen door and waited while Kitty stepped inside. He followed and the door snicked quietly closed behind him.
A cloud passed overhead, blocking out the sunlight that was Kitty Wainright and setting the parking lot and the motel units in shadow. Jace frowned, gut tightening in the weirdest way. He squinted toward the closed door.
Something bugged him. A fierce, nagging protectiveness welled in his chest. Miserable, hot.
He waited ten seconds. The cloud moved on and he huffed derisively. He’d lived so long on the dark side he was suspicious of everything and everyone.
He bounced the nail gun against his thigh before turning back to the damaged roof.
The suspicions were in his soul, not inside the office of Kitty’s motel.
“Ahoy, Jace Carter.”
Jace glanced down at the ragged figure of GI Jack and lifted a hand in greeting. The old man dressed in ill-fitting castoffs and an army cap that had seen better days was one of Redemption’s eccentricities. Many took him and his partner, Popbottle Jones, for bums. Considering their propensity for Dumpster diving, maybe they were, but Jace found them to be the most interesting bums he’d ever encountered.
GI Jack was an artist, a junk artist who could turn pop cans and wire or cast-off buckets and hubcaps into something beautiful. Jace got that. In a way, finding the worth in the worthless was what he did, too.
Next to the grizzled old man stood a candidate for world’s homeliest dog. Most everyone in town knew about GI Jack’s pets—mostly strays he’d gathered together over the years. This one was Biscuit, a dog of unknown origins. The only thing Jace knew for certain was that Biscuit was a brown canine with lopsided ears, oversize feet, and as shaggy as his owner. He looked as if his ears had been sewn on out of leftover parts by a blind seamstress. One flopped low on the side of his head and the other stuck straight up on top. But the dog’s tail swished the air with such joyous abandon anyone with a heart would forget his looks and be charmed.
Jace thought of the new puppy at home, a bundle of wiggling joy himself. He didn’t know why he’d let the local vet, Trace Bowman, talk him into taking in an abandoned pup. Jace was gone all day, but the pup was sweet company in the evenings. When Milo was older, Jace planned to take him along for the ride.
“Funny that drowning victim has never been found,” GI said without preamble.
