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Because, duh, it was her own heart.
She told herself it didn’t matter if she didn’t land this job with this homespun couple. It didn’t matter if her brothers didn’t welcome her with open arms. It didn’t matter if the lawyer had made a mistake.
She told herself that none of it mattered.
All her life Brooke had told herself that none of it mattered, but it always did.
Her hands grasped the counter, locking on the small tin can. “What do you say?”
Gladys patted her cheek for a second time. Soft, warm…sorrowful.
“I’m sorry, honey. We just can’t.”
As rejections went, it was very pleasant, but Brooke’s heart still crawled somewhere below the floor. They had been so friendly, the store was so cute with its handpainted Hinkle’s Grocery sign over the door. She’d been so sure. Realizing that there was nothing left for her in this place, Brooke walked out the door, opportunity slamming her in the butt.
Her first day in Tin Cup. No job, no lawyer, an uneasy brother who didn’t know she was here, and—she glanced down at the can of peas still stuck in her hand—she’d just shoplifted a can of peas. Brooke fished in her jeans pocket for some cash, brought out two crumbled dollars, an old Metro Card and a lint-covered peppermint—slightly used.
Two dollars. It was her last two dollars, until she found a job, of course. All she had to do was go back inside, slap the money on the counter and leave as if she didn’t care. As if they hadn’t shouted down her best “Pick me!” plea.
Brooke turned away from the store with its cute homespun sign and restashed her money. Better to be branded a thief than a reject. It wasn’t the most honorable decision, but Brooke had more pride than many would expect from a homeless woman that lived out of her car.
Once she was gainfully employed, she’d pay back Gladys and Henry. They’d understand.
And was that really, truly how she wanted to kick off her new life in her new home? As some light-fingered Lulu, which apparently all the Harts were supposed to be, anyway?
After taking another peek through the window, she sighed. No, she wasn’t going to be a light-fingered Lulu, no matter how tempting it might be. And especially not for a can of peas.
In the distance a freckle-faced little girl on a skateboard careened down the sidewalk. Eagerly, Brooke waved her down, hoping to recruit an unwitting accomplice so that Brooke Hart wouldn’t be another unflattering mug shot on the Post Office wall.
“Hello,” she said, when the little girl skidded to a stop and then Brooke held out her hand. “Can you give this to Gladys? Tell her it’s for the peas.”
The girl examined the proffered money, then Brooke, innocent eyes alight with purpose. “You going to tip me for the delivery?”
Yes, the entrepreneurial spirit was strong in this one. Who knew that honesty was such a huge pain in the butt? And expensive, too. After jamming her hand in her pocket, Brooke pulled out her last seventeen cents. Reluctantly, she handed it to the kid, who stood there, apparently expecting more.
“Please?” asked Brooke, still wearing her non-stranger-danger smile. At last, the little girl sighed.
“Whatever,” she said and kicked a foot at the end of the skateboard, flipping it up into her hand.
“That’s pretty cool,” Brooke told her, and the girl rolled her eyes, but her mouth curled up a bit and Brooke knew that she’d made her first friend in Tin Cup. Sure, she’d had to pay for the privilege, but still, a friend was a friend, no matter how pricey, no matter how small.
“Whatever,” the girl repeated, then pulled open the screen door.
Now that Brooke’s fledging reputation was somewhat restored, or about to be, her job here was done. She dashed across the street, leaping into her eyesore of a car before anyone could see. She had big plans before she showed up on Austen’s doorstep, and it wasn’t going to be without a job, without any money and in a car that should be condemned.
Once safely behind the wheel, she tossed the can of peas onto the backseat, the afternoon sun winking happily on the metal. It fit right in with the hodge-podge of things. A portable cooler, one beat-up gym bag, her collection of real estate magazines, the plastic water jug and now peas.
Peas.
What the heck was she supposed to do with peas?
2
THE LED WAS blinking a steady green over his front porch, the motion detector nearly hidden beneath the old wood doorframe. From inside, he could hear the sound of a dog barking.
All clear.
Not that anyone was going to break into his less than fancy house, but old habits were hard to break. There was no dog, only a pimped out robotic vacuum cleaner with two golden LEDs for eyes and a mechanical tail that wagged. Not the cutest puppy, but Jason Kincaid had invented the only canine in the world that cleaned up after itself.
While Dog wheeled around the floor, Jason put down his keys, pulled on his faded Orioles cap and went outside to work. The missing can of peas didn’t concern him. Jason hated peas, but every Monday he went to the Hinkle’s store to shop. He hated shopping, too, but his father had told him he needed to get out more, so every Tuesday when his dad called, he could tell the old man—with complete honesty—that he’d been out shopping only yesterday.
Outside the house, the flat terrain was exactly the same. The front yard, the backyard, the four storage sheds and even the detached one car garage were filled with lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, small engines, large engines, lumber and scrap metal.
He’d never invited his family to visit because the house looked too much like a junkyard, like the long neglected habitat of a man who needed to live alone.
Which it was.
Jason pulled down the socket wrench from the upright mattress springs that had been recycled into his Wall O’ Tools and got to work.
The current project was a five horsepower lawnmower in desperate need of a new carburetor or a humane burial, but Jason wasn’t ready to give it up for dead. Not yet.
He’d just gotten air to blow clean through the tube when the red LED on the porch began to glow. Motion detectors had been strategically placed across the ten acres of his land, wired to let him know whenever anyone decided to intrude—like now. Jason glanced toward the road and noticed the cloud of dust.
A HAV, or, in layman’s terms, a car still unidentified.
Salesmen didn’t come out this far. He’d never met the neighbors, which were four acres away on either side, so when people showed up at his gate, they were usually lost.
After pulling his cap down a little lower, Jason made his way to the front gate, an eight foot, black, metal monster that he’d rescued from an old sanitarium. It looked exactly like it belonged at the front entrance of a sanitarium, which was why Jason had wanted it, and why the sanitarium didn’t.
From behind the iron bars, he watched the beaten-up Impala approach. The rear door was black, the driver’s side door was red, and the hood was sunshine-yellow. If Henry Ford and Picasso had gone out on a bender, that car was what the hangover would have looked like.
Jason stayed steady and impassive, not angry or unfriendly, but stood and watched as a woman exited the world’s worst excuse for a car.
Her.
She still had the same never-say-die smile, which, considering the state of her transport, was just flat-out stupid. Once she was at the gate, a mere two feet from him, she held up the can of peas.
“You left these.” Her voice was nice, not high and birdlike, but no cigarette smoke, either. Sonya had a low, husky voice. At one point, Jason had thought it was sexy.
“You didn’t have to bring them all the way out here.” He probably should thank her for it, but he was distracted by the beads of sweat on her neck, and the green sweater had to be hot. Judging from the way it was clinging to her curves, the Hell-Car didn’t have air-conditioning. He didn’t like that she was sweating for him. He didn’t like the way his one good eye kept locking on her chest, like some reconnaissance tracking system doped up on Viagra.
“I don’t mind,” she told him, then put the can to the bars, as if she expected the can to slip through. Nope. Jason could have told her that metal didn’t work that way. It took five hundred pounds of force to dislodge metal, or eight hundred degrees of heat. Sometimes both.
However, Jason stayed silent because he had learned that people never liked to work too hard at a conversation. Eventually, they always gave up.
“Are you going to open the gate, or should I toss this sucker over the top?”
His instinctive response was to instruct her to go ahead and throw, but two things kept him from going with the default. The knowledge that he would have crossed the crazy-lonely-man line in his head, and the beat-up sedan. Frankly, that car out-crazied his crazy-line anyway, so while she might not notice, he would.
Those were his reasons. That, and he liked her breasts.
He typed in the combination on the keypad and the gate creaked open. He’d gone through a lot of trouble to get the creak exactly right. A haunted house creak. At the sound, the woman’s eyes grew wide, but not in fear. No, she liked it.
“I bet the kids love this place at Halloween.”
“People don’t drive out this far for a stick of gum.” People didn’t drive out this far for peas, either, but he left that part out.
“If they don’t, they don’t know what they’re missing.” While she talked, her eyes surveyed the yard, the seventy-year-old house, the mountains of scrap, the piles of engines.
Before she could trespass farther, he took the can of peas. “Thank you.” Then he nodded once, held the gate open and politely waited for her to leave.
Leaving didn’t seem to be part of her strategy. She ducked under his arm and wandered inside, looking at one pile, then the next. “What do you do with this stuff?”
Jason shrugged, not about to explain his hobbies to her, and not sure he could. Not that anyone would understand, anyway. Hell, he didn’t even know why.
His gaze followed her as she walked around, moving from one mound to the next, drawing precariously close to the house.
His pulse rate kicked up. Anxiety or lust? She was cute, short, stacked and curious. The clothes were out of place in the September heat, but he was grateful she was covered up, cause he didn’t think his pulse rate could handle any more. He liked her hair though. It was long, dark silk that hung down her back.
“What is that?” she asked, pointing to a modified bicycle. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me.”
Not that he would have told her anyway, so he stayed quiet while her fingers traced over the twisted metal hump with the leather seat mounted on top. Crouching down, she inspected the spring-loaded frame with the four iron-spoke wheels. It’d taken him three months to find the wheels, and eventually he’d bought them on eBay. They were perfect.
“It’s an animal?”
Still he waited.
She rose, studied the thing. “First, there are four legs, or wheels. Second, the elongated back is almost like a hill…a hump…” Her finger crept to her mouth, chewing absently. She had a nice mouth. Red lips that spent most of their time open. His mind, always running in a tangential yet somewhat practical direction, began to think of all the uses for an open mouth: eating, breathing, kissing, sucking.
Her mouth opened wider. “A camel!”
And now that twenty questions were over, Jason needed to send her on her way. As he headed to the metal gate, he thanked her for coming. There was very little sincerity in the words, but he didn’t think she would notice.
Her dark eyes flickered once. Okay, she noticed. He kicked a particularly heavy cast-iron drum. The pain was solid, well deserved. His foot would recover.
“That’s some car.”
Back and forth she shifted, like she was embarrassed about her mode of transport, but after seeing his mode of habitat, he couldn’t understand why she would care.
“I bought it in Tennessee.”
“Long drive for a car,” he noted, realizing he was making conversation, lingering in her company.
It was her breasts. Had to be.
Evil breasts.
His body hardened at the thought of touching her evil breasts.
“Tennessee was on the way,” she responded, hopefully not tuned in to his thoughts.
“Surprised the car made it,” he told her, channeling his thoughts into another more socially-acceptable direction.
Seeing her wince, he made a mental note to stop commenting on the dicey condition of her vehicle, but it was a little hard to ignore. The inside of the car appeared to be in as bad shape as the outside, with a blanket thrown over the backseat like a tarp. The tarp was most likely designed to keep out prying eyes—like his own. A gallon jug of water was sitting in the front seat, some food wrappers, a pillow, a half-open gym bag and a small sack for trash. Her home.
As he continued to stare at her mode of habitat, a flush crept up her face, and he knew her habitat was a taboo conversation topic, too. That worked out well for him since he wanted her off his place.
All of her, including her breasts.
“You’re staying with your brother?” he asked pleasantly. As parting remarks went, it wasn’t the best.
“Oh, yeah,” she answered quickly, moving to stand in front of her car, blocking his view.
“Good,” he said, not that he believed her. Considering the state of her car, her finances, he didn’t think she was related to anybody in town. If she had family, she would have gone there first.
Probably the brother thing was a lie, as well. In which case, she’d be jobless, living out of her car…
Not that he cared.
She reached for the door handle and yanked it open, the damn thing sticking so hard that her shoulder was now probably dislocated.
Jobless, dislocated shoulder, living out of her car…
Not that he cared.
“You need a job?” he asked, sounding exactly like he was offering her a job. The woman turned, her eyes swimming with hope—until it was gone.
“You know someone who’s hiring?” she asked, her eyes not so hopeful, unless a man was looking.
“I need some help here,” he offered, thinking quickly. “Organizing.”
Not that he wanted organization, not that he wanted human companionship, especially of the female variety, especially of the homeless, jobless female variety.
Most likely, she was needy.
His old army buddies would be laughing their asses off.
Of course, if any of them saw her breasts, they would understand.
“I’m a great organizer,” she said, hands clasped tight in front of her, prayer-like, and he realized how much she wanted this.
A job.
Not him.
Not that he was even thinking sex. A man who lived in a junkyard with one good eye was no prize. Nope, Sonya had made that clear, and that was long before his junkyard phase.
No, it wasn’t the sex. It was the idea of this woman being out there alone. Jason might not be the biggest people-person in the world, but sometime people deserved better. Sometimes—rarely, but sometimes—Jason noticed.
