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“I was an airplane mechanic.” Keenan’s voice warmed, the way it always did when he thought about anything to do with flying. “I also had my pilot’s license and did some hauling for a charter service.”
Obviously perplexed, Bill tilted his head. “Why aren’t you doing that now?”
“Couldn’t find a job.” Keenan shrugged. “Right now, I’m saving up for a deposit on an apartment.”
“I thought you were living with your sister.”
“Not anymore.” Keenan looked down, wiped off some extra caulking with the side of a finger. “She and her husband haven’t been married that long. Now with a baby, well, they need their privacy. I got a room downtown.”
Betsy, he admitted, had wanted him to stay. She’d actually gotten tears in her eyes when he told her he’d found a room at a boardinghouse. Her husband, Ryan, a buddy from way back, had also tried to convince him to stay, but Keenan refused to be swayed by Betsy’s tears or Ryan’s logic.
They’d both done so much for him already. Though the room he’d rented was Spartan and the bathroom a shared one down the hall, it was still a step up from a cell.
“You probably need to get some flying time in if you want to get your license back.” Bill measured a piece of trim.
“Exactly right.” Keenan refused to be discouraged. It might take a few months but he’d fly again. “Time in the air costs money. Once I get an apartment and a few bucks together, that’ll be number one on my list.”
“My brother, Steve, owns Grand Teton Charter.” Bill’s gaze fixed on Keenan. “He’s been whining about one of his mechanics moving to Colorado. I could hook the two of you up. See if maybe you could do some repair stuff for him in exchange for air time.”
Keenan’s fingers tightened around the caulking gun. He’d turned down several friends who’d offered to give him money to help him get the air time. But this would be bartering services, not charity.
“Sounds like a good plan.” Keenan kept his tone casual, not wanting to get his hopes up. Bill’s brother might not favor the idea. “Yeah, check and see if he’s interested in some kind of arrangement. If not, that’s cool.”
The rest of the day passed quickly, after Bill promised to speak with Steve that night.
At four-thirty, Bill started gathering up his tools. “My daughter has to work at Hill of Beans this evening and the wife is tied up. I told her I’d get off a little early and take her.”
The older man’s gaze slid around the room. He grimaced. “I wanted to get the rest of these doors hung today so the painters could start staining tomorrow. Looks like I’m going to have to call and reschedule them.”
When the older man pulled out his phone, Keenan held up his hand. “There’s only a couple left. I’ll stay and finish. There’s nowhere I need to be.”
“We’re supposed to be out of here by five,” Bill reminded him.
“You said over lunch you stayed until six last night and Dr. Sanchez still wasn’t home,” Keenan reminded him.
“That’s true.” Bill rubbed his chin. “I know she’s eager to get this job done. Let’s do it this way. You work on it, but if you see her car pull up, you skedaddle out of here. I don’t want Joel on my ass.”
“Understood.” Keenan gave the man a not-so-gentle shove. “Now get out of here. You don’t want your daughter to be late.”
Keenan continued to work. His radio, set to a hard rock station, blared out favorite tunes from high school. He’d just finished hanging the last door when the radio cut off.
He looked up.
There she was, dressed in a floaty kind of dress the color of autumn leaves, her hair pulled back in some sort of low twist. Her necklace was copper wire infused with amber and red beads.
Mitzi didn’t look angry, he realized. She looked confused.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I live here.”
“That’s what I heard.” He gestured with his head toward the hall leading to the bedroom. “A shower, a bed and a huge mirror. What more does a woman need?”
She gave a throaty laugh. “My sentiments exactly.”
He hadn’t been sure how she’d respond to seeing him again. It wasn’t as if things had gone badly when they’d had dinner. She’d simply found a better-suited dinner companion. He hadn’t made a scene, which would have been ridiculous considering the fact they were mere acquaintances.
He glanced at the large sack in her hand, recognized the eatery. “Chinese?”
“I was in the mood.” She opened the sack and the delicious aroma of fried rice filled the air. “Golden Palace is the best.”
“Got that right,” Keenan concurred. He pulled to his feet, dusted his jeans off. “I realize you like us gone by five but if we got all the doors hung today, the painters can come tomorrow and stain.”
“Staying late is fine.” Mitzi waved a hand and he noticed her nails were the color of pumpkin. “I told Joel I didn’t want the workers to feel they had to stay late to try to get the house done sooner, simply because I’d moved in.”
“Well, this ‘worker’ appreciates your consideration.”
Mitzi paused for a second then held out the sack, letting it swing as it dangled between her fingers. “If the worker is hungry,” she said, “I have enough for two.”
“Kind of you to offer.” Keenan finished putting away his tools. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Look, I’m rarely kind. Or thoughtful. And I never let anyone impose. But I always order at least enough for two so I have leftovers.”
“Nothing like Chinese food for breakfast,” he quipped.
“Or cold pizza,” she added with an impish smile, and then sighed. “It’s been a long day and I’m ready to unwind. I’ve got a six-pack of imported Chinese beer to go with the food, but there are also bottles of water in the fridge. I’m not in the mood to eat alone, and you’re here. The way I see it, unless you have other plans, we might as well eat together.”
When she paused to take a breath, Keenan grinned. “Since you put it that way, toss me one of those egg rolls.”
* * *
After Mitzi changed into jeans and a psychedelic top that Keenan joked made his eyes hurt, they ate sitting crossed-legged on the kitchen floor, the food spread out between them.
He insisted the fried rice and sesame chicken were as good as he remembered, while Mitzi focused on the Mongolian beef and steamed rice. She sipped the cold beer and felt the stress of the day slide away.
She hadn’t realized until just this moment that Keenan was really easy to be with, no stress, no pressure. He entertained her with his travels and the life of an extreme-sports junkie. She refrained from bringing up his prison experience.
“I heard you had a place in Teton Village.” Keenan dipped his egg roll into some sweet-and-sour sauce. “Minutes from the slopes.”
“I take it you like to ski.” She took another sip of beer and wondered if there was a single person in Jackson Hole who wasn’t crazy about the sport.
He grinned. “I worked on the ski patrol when I was first out of high school.”
“What about college?” The question slipped past her lips before she could pull it back.
“No money,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “No inclination.”
He stabbed a bite of sesame chicken with his fork, held it up without eating. “Even if I’d wanted to go, Betsy was still in middle school. And Gloria—our mother—” he clarified at Mitzi’s confused look “—you couldn’t trust the woman to take care of a dog, much less a child.”
Admiration rippled through Mitzi as she put two and two together. Keenan had put his life on hold to watch over his sister.
“Anyway, Bets was the smart one in the family,” he continued. “She got a couple of scholarships and some grants and went to the University of Kansas.”
“Leaving you finally free to pursue your dreams.” Mitzi kept her tone light.
Keenan took the piece of sesame chicken into his mouth, chewed, then swallowed. “My only dreams back then were to have a good time and see how far I could push myself.”
She’d known men—boys—like him back in her old neighborhood. They’d lived for today without a thought for their future. She’d avoided them like the plague.
“When did that change?” she asked.
He shot her a lazy glance over the rim of his water bottle. “What makes you think it did?”
“You became an airplane mechanic,” she said evenly. “You got your pilot’s license.”
He leaned back against the wall, his eyes taking on a distant look. “I got tired of all the travel, the different beds, the partying. I didn’t want to end up...”
His voice trailed off but Mitzi had no difficulty seeing where he’d been headed. She realized with a start, they weren’t so different after all.
“Like your mother,” she finished the sentence for him.
He merely shrugged, drank long.
“Things were coming together for me. I even started to think I might one day have enough money together to start my own charter service.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “Then it all fell apart.”
“What happened?” Even as she asked, Mitzi knew it was none of her business. Realized the topic was probably a difficult one for him to discuss even among friends. While they’d shared a couple of meals, she and Keenan weren’t friends, not really.
But he could be. Mitzi had the feeling Keenan would make a really good friend.
The day outside was overcast and the room held a soft glow, encouraging confidences. For reasons she chose not to examine too closely, Mitzi wanted to understand the man with the broad shoulders and suddenly tired eyes sitting across from her on the floor.
“I was working late at a private airport outside of Cheyenne.” Keenan stared down at the fork in his hand as if he’d never seen the utensil before. “I heard sounds of a scuffle outside the hangar then someone screaming. I ran outside to help.”
He hesitated.
Instead of pushing for more, Mitzi took a long, slow sip of her beer and waited.
“Two big guys were pummeling this man who was already down. There was blood. Lots of blood.” His eyes grew dark with the memories. “I shouted for them to stop. They stopped all right...and turned on me.”
Mitzi’s heart caught in her throat. She lowered the glass. “What happened?”
“I got in a couple good jabs.” He lifted one shoulder. “Everything after that is a blank. When I woke up I was in an infirmary...attached to the jail.”
“You hadn’t done anything but try to help.”
“I learned I’d been charged with murder. But I wasn’t worried,” he said. “I’d gotten a good look at the two guys and could give their description. Then I discovered the gun that was used to kill the man had been found in my hand.”
Mitzi didn’t bother to hide her shock. “You were framed.”
He nodded. “They did a bang-up job of it. Still, I was prepared to prove my innocence...until I got word if I fought the charges, they’d kill my sister.”
Keenan’s gaze locked with Mitzi. “I had no doubt they could do it. They knew where Betsy worked, where she lived. I’d have done anything to protect her.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “You went to prison for a crime you didn’t commit.”
“They’d have killed her,” he said simply.
“How did you get out?”
“New evidence came to light. Not from me, but from one of the two men there that day. He turned on his friend. Bad guys do things like that. Lucky for me or I’d still be stuck in that hellhole.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “Still, it took considerable time, money and effort to secure my release. My sister and my friends here went above and beyond in that area. There’s no way I can ever repay them.”
Mitzi leaned over, placed her hand over his. “I bet they’d say having you out of prison is all the payment they want.”
“Perhaps,” he said, not sounding convinced. “Regardless, I’m going to repay every penny they put out. That may take a while. But their kindness, their support, well, that’s something I can never repay.”
His voice, thick with emotion, cracked, surprising them both.
Keenan attempted to cover the sound with a cough. “Anyway, that’s the story. I’m back where I started, and it’s okay.”
“You plan on sticking?”
He nodded. “I want to see my nephew grow up, hang out with friends...although it’s different now, most of them being married with kids.”
“Tell me about it.” Mitzi rolled her eyes. “It’s not easy being single and surrounded by happily marrieds.”
Keenan’s eyes grew sharp, assessing. “I’m surprised someone hasn’t snagged you before now.”
“Shagged?” She couldn’t help but smile. “That’s happened a time or two. Or three,” she added.
“Snagged.” He emphasized the word and laughed. “As in put a ring on that pretty finger.”
There were a dozen phrases she’d used over the years to explain her single status, but for some reason Mitzi decided to take the honest route this time.
“For as many years as I can remember, I’ve had to keep men at arm’s length. I had my dreams and nothing—and no one—could be allowed to derail those plans.”
“Now you’ve reached your goal.”
“I have,” she admitted. “But keeping that distance became a habit. Trust has never come easily for me.”
Over fortune cookies, she found herself telling Keenan about Kelvin, her last boyfriend. Although she’d known from the start that the odds of her and the NFL star having a future were a long shot, she’d still been shocked when she learned he’d been cheating on her.
“I let myself trust him,” she admitted. “That’s where I went totally wrong.”
“Did you love him?”
“I was heading in that direction,” Mitzi said, embarrassed she could have been so gullible. “I was stupid.”
