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“Not now. There’s no urgency. Just something to get to later.”
He studied her, nodded and, after a decent interval, reached for a nail.
Wham. Wham.
She’d been forgotten.
Except Erin knew that wasn’t true. She suspected Cole was hyperaware, not only of where she was and what she was doing, but also his surroundings in general. She’d seen his head turn before she heard the sound of an approaching car. An elderly neighbor walked her slow-moving pug several times a day. Cole always turned to look. She wondered if his caution would slowly abate, or whether in ten years it had become part of his makeup. Cops were probably the same—although Cole might not like the comparison.
They didn’t exchange another word until their lunch break. After yesterday, she didn’t offer him anything, just went inside, aware that he was heading toward the garage. But as she peeled a carrot, she saw him coming down the stairs from the apartment with a can of pop and what looked like a sandwich. So she carried her plate outside, too.
Most of the porch boards were laid. Cole sat at the top of what would be the steps, his lower legs dangling. His sweat-dampened T-shirt clung to a broad back and shoulders. A screwdriver poked out of a pocket of his jeans, drawing her gaze to his muscular butt. Feeling a little shy, she joined him, seeing him glance at her lunch.
“You don’t eat much,” he said after a minute.
A carrot and a serving of cottage cheese were more than she’d had for a midday meal a month ago. Taking a page from his book, she merely shrugged.
After finishing the cottage cheese, she said, “This porch is going up fast.”
“Long way to go.” The supports were in place, but he hadn’t started on the roof.
It occurred to her that getting heavy sheets of plywood up there wouldn’t be easy. Could they do it, just the two of them?
Cole seemed to be assessing the work still to be done when he said, “Heard you leave last night.”
She’d hoped to be quiet enough that he’d sleep through her departure, but wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t. She chose not to answer.
Now he looked directly at her. “Thought someone might be stealing your car.”
Of course, that was exactly what would leap to mind, given his background. Had he stolen cars? That was a more bearable possibility than some she’d considered, although a ten-year sentence for car theft seemed extreme.
“Or you’d had an emergency,” he added.
Astonished, Erin studied him in profile. Had he been worried about her? How unexpected. Unless, she reminded herself, he’d been concerned about his employment and not her personally.
“I just went for a drive.” She would have been ticketed if the state patrolman had caught her. She’d managed to turn off the highway and quickly disappear down a driveway leading to a rural property, killing her engine and headlights before the patrol car went by. Stomach clenched, she’d driven home at a sedate pace. Her need to speed, to lure death, warred with the law-abiding good girl still in her. Unwilling to talk about what she barely understood, she scooted back from the edge of the porch, stood and went into the house, where she dropped her half-eaten carrot in the trash.
Her emotional health was nothing to brag about, but she was getting better. Wasn’t she?
* * *
BEING NOSY HAD gone over about as well as it would have in the pen. Cole couldn’t imagine what had gotten into him to ask that kind of question.
He finished his lunch and went back to work, half expecting Erin not to reappear until she came out to pay him. He heard her scraping the siding again, but around the corner where he couldn’t see her. It was all he could do not to go and see, to reassure himself that she was working from the ground, not teetering on top of the ladder.
None of my business. Why did he have to keep reminding himself?
Being unsure of the answer made him uncomfortable. Something was eating at the woman, and he didn’t like not knowing what. Self-preservation, he told himself. Hiring him had been odd behavior to start with. He’d give a lot to know why she had.
But he made himself keep working, just the way he did when she walked by and he couldn’t help noticing the sway of her hips or her breasts beneath a T-shirt that should be baggy but wasn’t.
When she paid him at the end of the day without comment, Cole nodded his thanks and stuffed the bills in his pocket, the way he always did. But in his head, he tallied the total, feeling a subtle relaxation that worried him. Yeah, he was making money, but she wouldn’t need him for more than a month or six weeks at most, unless the inside of the house was a disaster demanding another few weeks. Once she cut him loose, he’d face the same odds he had while job-hunting.
A recommendation from her might help. The idea of asking for one tasted bitter, but he had a suspicion he wouldn’t have to ask. He remembered that she’d offered a rental contract; he wouldn’t have thought of needing one, but it would open some doors.
Since it wasn’t raining, after dinner he walked the mile to the library, answered the library clerk’s questions and got a card that he placed carefully in his wallet. The one awkward moment had been when she asked for his phone number, and he had to say, “I don’t have a phone.”
After, as he browsed books, she seemed to be watching him. Did she think he was going to steal a book? Maybe he just made her nervous. A few patrons, from a stout older woman to a huddle of teenagers, kept watching him, too.
He gritted his teeth, pretended he didn’t notice and checked out several books. On his way out, a bulletin board in the foyer caught his eye. Cole studied the various postings, from scraps of paper to glossy notices about upcoming community events. Nobody seemed to be looking for help, but garage sales were being advertised. There was a bike for sale, too. He would’ve preferred a motorcycle, but as long as he stayed in West Fork, he could get around pretty well on a bike. He borrowed a pen from the nervous clerk and jotted down that phone number. Maybe it was time he got a phone, too. The ones he’d studied at Safeway didn’t cost much, and he couldn’t imagine he’d use a lot of minutes. Other than the obligatory calls to his parole officer, who would he want to talk to?
Not his father. Dad had abandoned him, and Dani’s claim that Dad had changed his tune didn’t ease his resentment.
Dani, sure. Cole could just hang up if his sister’s husband or one of the kids answered. She’d want to know he was doing okay. On the other hand, what was the hurry?
Now that it was dark, he was happier walking back to Erin’s house than he’d been going. He made people working out in their yards anxious when he went by. Even passing drivers stared. He regretted not growing his hair a little longer before he got out. Would that make a difference? Different clothes might help, too. Cargo pants, like he saw the men here wearing, instead of his tattered jeans? Maybe. Cole made a mental note to find out if there was a thrift store in town. He hated to part with a cent he didn’t have to. He looked back now with disgust at the time when he’d spent money as fast as he could earn it.
Erin’s Jeep was still parked in front of the garage, and lights were on inside the house. He wondered what she’d do if he rang her doorbell. Would she invite him in?
Good thing he wasn’t dumb enough to do anything like that.
Having missed the early news, Cole decided to read rather than turn on the TV. Most of what the other inmates watched had seemed stupid to him, so he’d ignored the TV except when news or sports came on. Baseball was his least favorite sport to watch, though, and the first exhibition football games weren’t until late summer.
Clasping his hands behind his head and staring into space, Cole decided that, come fall, he’d go to some of the high school football games wherever he was. He’d loved playing. He’d even been recruited by college scouts. Not by any of the big names—Alabama or USC or the University of Washington—but he could have accepted a scholarship to play for any other state school and gotten an education while he was at it.
Turning them all down—well, that was stupid. He’d paid and kept paying for that mistake.
Cole shook off the darker memories. Next time he went to the library, he’d use the computer. Nobody would notice if he struggled to figure out the internet. Patrons were limited to fifteen-minute segments if anyone was waiting, which was fair, since there were only eight computers, and half stayed available so people could use the library catalog. Still, if he could manage a search, even fifteen minutes would be long enough to look up his father’s construction company and get an idea of how it was doing, and how his dad was doing, too. Dani hadn’t said in her occasional letters or visits. Cole wasn’t 100 percent sure why he cared, considering that after his conviction, his father had said he no longer had a son and walked away. Cole wanted to think that all he felt was curiosity, nothing more, but he knew better.
Putting his father out of his mind, he decided he’d figure out how to set up an email address. Cole couldn’t help feeling renewed frustration. If he’d been allowed to learn this stuff as an inmate, transitioning to the outside would have been a lot smoother.
Since he had only Dani to exchange emails with, he felt no great urgency. But down the line, who knew?
If he could get to garage sales, he might look for a cheap stereo system, too. Right now, he didn’t feel the lack; one of the greatest gifts Erin had given him was this silence, the closest thing to peace he’d had in ten years.
Lying on the lumpy couch, he opened the first of his books, a mystery called Bitter River. He felt an odd tingle, as if something inside him had opened along with the book cover. He’d read the first chapter before he identified that feeling. Anticipation.
* * *
ERIN DIPPED HER brush into the peach-colored paint she’d selected for some of the trim on the house. It would be accented by a much deeper coordinating color. She smiled, remembering Cole’s reaction.
“That’s pink.” He’d looked stupefied.
Naturally, she’d argued. “It’s not. Anyway, it’ll be perfect.” She thought. Since she’d never owned a house, only a condo, she’d never had one painted, either. But he was currently spray-painting the clapboards a warm, midbrown, and she could already see that the trim colors worked.
He’d finished building the front porch and the smaller back stoop. Yes, getting those heavy pieces of plywood high enough off the ground had been a job and a half. She didn’t tell him how much her arms, neck and back had ached the next day. They should’ve found someone with more muscle to help him, but Erin didn’t know anyone in town except for elderly neighbors, and Cole didn’t know anybody but her.
Well, they’d managed, and she loved her new front porch. She’d resolved to buy a couple of Adirondack chairs and a porch swing, too. Cole was confident the beam would support one.
At the sound of a soft footstep behind her, Erin realized she hadn’t heard the sprayer for several minutes. She finished the swipe of the brush she’d begun, then set it on the paint can and turned to look down from the ladder.
Open amusement and even a glint of white teeth as Cole grinned made her heart seize up. In the ten days he’d worked for her, she had yet to see more than a faint twitch at the corners of his very sexy mouth.
His grin faded at whatever he saw on her face.
No, no.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, pretending deep suspicion.
Another curve of his mouth betrayed him. “You look like you have chicken pox.”
“I can hardly wait to see myself in the mirror.”
He laughed, a low, rusty sound that seemed to startle him as much as it did her.
To keep him from retreating, she said hastily, “You’ve sprayed yourself, too, you know. Except around your eyes. You have the raccoon thing going.”
He shrugged. “It’s latex paint. It ought to wash off.”
“But not from our clothes.” Dismayed, she said, “I should’ve bought you coveralls.” He couldn’t possibly have had more than one change in that duffel bag.
Seeming unconcerned, Cole glanced down at himself. “I’ll keep these for messy jobs. The jeans have about had it, anyway, and T-shirts are easy to replace. I picked up some more clothes the other day.”
She nodded. “What do you think? Is this color not perfect?”
“I don’t know. I would have liked a nice cream...” He smiled again at her expression. “Yeah, it looks better than I thought it would. Kind of different, in a gingerbread-house way.”
She sniffed. “And I’m the wicked witch.”
“Well, you said it, not me.”
Erin grabbed her paintbrush and brandished it. “I’ll polka-dot you.”
Another rusty chuckle, and he backed away.
“I put a roast in the Crock-Pot.” Now or never. “Will you have dinner with me?” He’d taken care of his own meals since those first few days.
He went still, in that way he could, his blue eyes unreadable. The moment stretched. Erin suddenly realized that the brush was dripping down her front and she hastily moved it over the can.
Pride had her shrugging and turning back to the window. “Or not.”
“No.” Cole cleared his throat. “I mean, yeah, that’d be great. I’m...not much of a cook.”
Having seen the frozen meals he bought each time they’d gone to the grocery store together, she wasn’t surprised.
Without looking at him, she said, “Give me half an hour or so after we knock off for the day. I want to shower and put some biscuits in the oven.”
“Thanks.” He sounded hoarse.
Erin didn’t look back, even though she knew he was walking away. Usually, she couldn’t resist any chance to watch him when he wouldn’t notice. He was just so damn beautiful, whether in motion or at rest.
By the time she tapped the lid back on the can a couple of hours later, she expected to be exhausted. To her astonishment, there was still some spring to her step. Maybe she was regaining her strength.
She’d brought some plastic bags out to the garage, and now used one of them to wrap the brush. This seemed to work, saving her from having to clean it every evening. She’d seen Cole using the hose to do something to the spraying assembly, which they’d rented. She’d learned some creative new profanities from him every time the nozzle plugged up. Thank goodness he growled them almost under his breath, or he might have shocked a few neighbors.
Erin could tell that a young family lived three doors down, judging by the small bike with pink streamers on the handles and the big plastic tricycle often left lying on the lawn. Kids seemed to live in the house on the corner, too. Presumably, there were other neighbors younger than eighty, but she hadn’t seen them. She’d bet the folks within a four-block radius could fill a good-sized retirement home, if they were all willing to give up mowing their lawns and walking arthritic pets. Nanna had been happy here partly because she had lifelong friends. Even the neighbors she disliked were part of the landscape of her life. She could tell stories about every one of them. Erin knew all the older folks, but hadn’t yet tried to make herself part of the neighborhood.
Yesterday afternoon, she’d heard a mower fire up and looked over to see Mr. Zatloka across the street wrap his knobby hands around the handle of his mower and totter forward. She’d heard him mow before but hadn’t seen him. Would he let her do it for him? She knew the answer. A young lady—no, that would offend his masculine pride.
Even as she was hesitating about trying, anyway, Cole trotted across the street, spoke briefly to Mr. Zatloka and took over. In twenty minutes, he mowed the Zatlokas’ entire lawn. He dumped the clippings in Erin’s yard waste bin—she’d seen Mr. Zatloka put theirs in the garbage can—and wheeled the mower into the garage. He and the elderly man laughed about something, and then Cole returned to work on her house.
His kindness was the reason she’d decided to ask him to dinner again. Maybe she was being foolish, but she wanted to know him better. Be friends. Not anything more.
One dangerous habit was enough.
* * *
ERIN HAD LONG since disappeared into the house by the time Cole showered, changed clothes and made his way from the apartment to her front door.
They’d worked longer than they should have. He’d suddenly become aware that the quality of the light had changed and he was having trouble seeing. Now, full night had descended.
Seeing the porch light left on for him stirred uncomfortable feelings. He should’ve politely thanked her and headed out for fast food and a visit to the library.
Erin had hired him for a dirty job, but it seemed she wanted something else. Cole didn’t get it, didn’t trust the lures she kept throwing out.
Did she just want him in her bed? If it was completely uncomplicated, there was nothing he’d like better. He wasn’t having a dry spell; he’d had a dry decade. But he had trouble believing Erin was a woman who’d have sex with an ex-con only to scratch an itch. However, raising the subject would make her wary of him.
He bounded up the new porch steps, liking their solidity beneath his weight and the nonslip treads they’d applied. They’d keep her from taking a tumble some icy day in winter, when he was long gone.
Uncurling his fingers to ring her doorbell, Cole discovered his palms were sweaty.
Should have said no.
From within, she called, “Door’s unlocked.”
It was. Once he’d opened it, he hesitated before crossing the threshold. The act felt momentous, even dangerous. He hadn’t been inside a house, any house, since the police cuffed him. Wasn’t welcome at his father’s home—he couldn’t think of it as his—or his sister’s.
“I’m in the kitchen,” Erin added.
He followed the sound of her voice and the fabulous smell of meat cooking, glancing into a living room lit by a single lamp and then a dark dining room. She was right. The place was seriously dated. Was the wiring safe?
The kitchen looked 1940s. Truly ancient linoleum, metal-edged counters, not enough cabinets, a small wooden table with two chairs in the middle of the extensive space.
“The stove isn’t bad, but the refrigerator—” He stopped himself.
Looking over her shoulder as she pulled a cookie sheet covered with golden-brown biscuits from the oven, Erin wrinkled her nose. “Is an antique. I know. I’ve been here something like two months, and I’ve had to defrost the freezer twice. And chip out ice creeping down into the refrigerator compartment.”
“Why haven’t you replaced it?”
