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He shook his head.
“But you could.”
The comment made his cheeks warm and made him feel…flattered. But hell, hadn’t he just acknowledged that to himself before Lucy had come in? And he had the expertise to make that determination. So what did it matter that she agreed with him?
It didn’t.
“How long have you been doing this?” she asked, stopping on the opposite side of the table where he worked.
“Thirteen years.”
“Since you were a kid.” She sounded impressed.
He didn’t argue that thirteen years ago he’d lived through more than most people did in their entire lives but merely shrugged.
“Mom, this is cold,” Lucy complained, shuffling forward as if the weight of the paper bag was almost more than she could bear.
“I told you to let me carry it.” Jayne took it from her, then set it on the table next to the newly sanded door. “We met your sister while we were in town. She asked us to bring you this.”
Tyler gave the bag a suspicious look. It wasn’t the contents that made him wary—Rebecca gave him food from the diner once or twice a week, as if he would starve if left on his own—but the fact that she had already managed to meet Jayne and roped her into playing errand girl. He would have seen Rebecca the next day or definitely the day after that. The handout could have waited until then, except that she hadn’t wanted to wait. She’d wanted to send Jayne Miller knocking on his door.
She wanted him to have a life.
“There’s a letter on it,” Lucy pointed out, stretching onto her toes to see over the top of the workbench. “Don’t’cha wanna read it?”
Not particularly, and not with an audience. If her mother had asked, he could have pointed out that letters were private. But she wasn’t her mother. She was a nosy little kid.
He unclipped the envelope, tore one end and slid out the paper inside. It was taken from a notepad advertising the annual fall Harvest Festival in Sweetwater from the previous year, and Rebecca’s loopy writing covered the sheet. She’s pretty, she’s smart and she has a nice laugh. Invite them to dinner. I’ve packed plenty to share.
Great. His sister was trying to fix him up. Just what he needed.
“Well? What does it say?” Lucy prompted, and Jayne hushed her. “But, Mom—”
Jayne began backing toward the door, pulling Lucy with her by the collar. “Sorry to have interrupted you. And sorry she’s so nosy. As you know, she comes by it naturally. Guess we’d better get back home and cleaning again. Thanks again for the firewood and the phone and—and everything.”
Tyler watched them go, then looked down at the note again. She has a nice laugh. Only Rebecca would find that a reason to try to hook someone up with her brother. But she was one up on him. He hadn’t heard Jayne laugh yet. Those few minutes when she’d been looking around the shop were the most relaxed he’d seen her. The rest of the time she seemed nervous and talked too much or not at all.
He tossed the note aside, then looked inside the bag. Usually she sent him servings for one or two, but not this time. There was a large pan of lasagna, ready for the oven, along with a frozen pie made with apples from his own trees, a container of vanilla ice cream and a loaf of Italian bread, no doubt already sliced and spread with garlic butter. She’d definitely packed plenty to share, and had even sent him someone to share it with.
As if it was that easy.
He took a break to carry the bag to the house. After putting away the food, he filled a glass with water from the tap, then stood near the kitchen island and listened. Except for the heavy breathing from the dogs asleep on the sofa, the house was quiet. Always quiet. He told himself he liked the peace. Fourteen years of screaming, angry shouts and sobs had given him a fine appreciation for silence.
But it was a little less fine lately than it used to be.
Invite them to dinner. It might not be the friendliest invitation, but he could do it. And then what? They would expect conversation—at least Jayne would. Lucy would be happy to talk all by herself. He wasn’t very good at making conversation and never had been. Maybe it was just his nature or maybe it came from all those warnings he’d been given as a kid. From his mother, usually whispered while smiling through tears: Promise you won’t tell anybody, Tyler. He didn’t mean nothin’. He never means nothin’. And from his father: You say one word to anyone, boy, and I’ll shut your mouth for good.
Tyler had believed him and kept his mouth shut. Until his father lay dead and his mother was taken away in handcuffs.
Old habits were hard to break, and keeping to himself was his oldest habit of all.
Chapter 3
On Friday morning Jayne went outside, strolling to the edge of the road before turning back to face the house. It was barely seven o’clock, but she’d been up more than an hour and she’d finally done all she could to improve the inside of the house. Today, with its promise of sunshine and warm weather, she would work on the outside.
The grass in front needed mowing—after she’d dragged off those nasty rugs she’d tossed out the day before. Of course, she didn’t have a lawn mower, but she could buy one. She’d noticed some bulbs poking up their heads in what had once been flower beds, so she intended to weed around them to give them a better chance. And she hadn’t needed more than a look out the back windows to see that there was a small jungle there. She wanted to clear it before she lost Lucy in there.
Behind her a sharp whistle sounded. She watched as Cameron and Diaz came flying from the woods, leaped the fence and disappeared inside. She didn’t get even a glimpse of their master.
She returned her attention to the house, thinking about paint and shutters and repairs, and only vaguely noticed the closing of a door, the revving of an engine. As the old pickup drew nearer, though, she couldn’t help but wish she’d done more than drag her fingers through her hair. A little makeup would have been nice, along with a T-shirt that hadn’t seen better days long before Greg had tossed it her way. Not that she was looking to impress anyone.
Listening to the truck, she calculated when to turn and give a neighborly wave. Tyler didn’t return it. But fifty feet past, the truck lurched to a stop, and he backed up until he was beside her. Leaning across, he rolled down the window. “I can take those rugs to the county dump in the morning.” His tone was brusque, and his expression matched.
“Thanks. I was wondering what I’d do about them.” Not true. In her thoughts about the rugs, she’d gotten only so far as getting rid of them—not how.
The truck rolled forward a foot or so before stopping again. Tension rolled off him in waves, from his scowl to his clenched jaw to his fingers on a death grip around the steering wheel. “I can fix that bottom porch step, too.”
She wanted to tell him, thanks, but no thanks. She could hire someone to do that for her or get how-to instructions from the Internet and fix it herself. But fixing it herself was liable to lead to more extensive repairs, and anything she didn’t have to hire out was money that would last just a little bit longer. Without a steady income, that mattered.
“Thanks. I’d really appreciate that.” As long as he was being accommodating—more or less—she went on. “Is there a place in town where I can buy a lawn mower and a weed trimmer?”
For a long moment he was still, then with a rueful shake of his head he removed a key from the ring in the ignition and offered it to her. “This goes to the door around the corner from the workshop. Everything you need’s in there.”
She backed away a step. “I can’t—What if I break something?”
“You know how to use a lawn mower and a weed trimmer?”
“Yes, but—”
Impatiently he held the key a few inches closer.
With reluctance Jayne held out her hand, and he dropped the key in it. “Thanks.” She seemed to be saying that a lot. She wasn’t comfortable with being so beholden to someone, especially someone who was begrudging about his generosity.
“I’ll get the stuff for the step today.”
She nodded, and so did he, then shifted into gear and drove away.
In her line of work, heroes often had tortured pasts. What would Tyler’s be? An unhappy upbringing? If so, it didn’t seem to have had the same effect on his sister. A broken marriage and broken heart? When she’d asked if there was a Mrs. Lewis, his answer had been blunt, to the point, but all his answers were blunt and to the point. Some tragedy that had happened between his teen years and the time he’d isolated himself up here?
She rolled her eyes. If she wanted to fixate on a hero with a tortured past, there was one inside the house on her computer, just waiting for her to resolve the big conflict that was keeping him apart from his heroine. Tyler wasn’t a character and he wasn’t a hero—at least, not hers.
After finishing her coffee, she went inside to check on Lucy, still asleep in the smaller of the two bedrooms. Her daughter gave a soft sigh, then snuggled deeper into her covers as Jayne backed out of the room. She would probably sleep another hour, maybe two. She wouldn’t even know that Jayne had left her to go down the road to Tyler’s.
She found the door the key fit on the north side of the barn. It was wide and opened into a large, clean storage room. The lawn mower was pushed into a space apparently built for it, with a shelf above for the gas can and a few quarts of oil. The trimmer occupied a shelf nearby, with another gas can, more oil, extra line and the owner’s manual. Other shelves and nooks held a chain saw, an edger and a lightweight utility cart, and Peg-Board on the walls was filled with hand tools, work gloves and safety glasses. There was even one small shelf that held bug repellent.
Tyler Lewis was one seriously organized man.
She loaded a variety of tools into the cart, pushed it outside, then locked up again. With the key deep in her jeans pocket, she headed back to her own house. There, she checked on Lucy once more, then pushed the cart around to the edge of the overgrown backyard.
Clearing it was a daunting prospect. Where to begin?
The author in her answered: begin at the beginning. She revved up the trimmer and began clearing the tall weeds in an ever-widening arc, uncovering rocks, logs and a fifty-gallon drum Edna had apparently used for burning trash.
Despite the early-morning chill, sweat coated her skin, along with grass clippings clinging to every exposed surface, when she cut the engine.
“Well, she doesn’t look like a city girl today, does she?”
Jayne spun around to find Lucy, looking like a sleepy doll in her nightgown, and Rebecca standing next to the cart. “Good morning,” she said, shoving damp hair from her forehead, then brushing at the grass flecks that clung to her hand.
“You’re working bright and early,” Rebecca remarked. “I thought I’d bring you a treat from the diner. Our cook makes the best sticky buns in three counties and has the blue ribbons to prove it. Don’t tell me you’ve already eaten.”
Jayne’s stomach answered with a loud growl as she pulled off the safety glasses. “I’ve only had coffee. Sticky buns sound wonderful.”
“What’re you doing, Mom?” Lucy asked. “You woke me up with all that noise.”
“I’m cleaning up this mess.”
Lucy gave the slightly improved yard a doubtful look. “You’re gonna need help.”
“And you are help. Isn’t that lucky?”
“The three of us can have it clean in no time,” Rebecca said as she led the way back around the house.
Jayne was startled. They were talking about a lot of hard, dirty work. “I appreciate the offer, but you have your own work.”
Rebecca waved away her response as she sat on the top porch step, where a large bag waited. “I’m the boss. I can take off whenever I want. Besides, I’ve done this sort of thing before. I helped Tyler clear the land for his barn. When is he coming over to fix that step?”
Slowly taking a seat one step down, Jayne asked, “What makes you think he is?”
“Because I know my brother. He’ll tell you he’s not neighborly, but the only one he’s kidding is himself. If not for him, Edna never could have stayed out here until she died. He took care of everything she needed.”
She opened the bag and started setting out food. She added napkins, plastic forks and salt and pepper shakers, then smiled brightly. “Dig in.”
Jayne ate half a biscuit-egg-and-ham sandwich before finally murmuring, “Tomorrow morning.”
Mouth full, Rebecca raised her brows.
“Your brother’s coming over tomorrow morning to fix the step. And to haul those rugs to the county dump.”
The information didn’t seem to surprise Rebecca in the least.
Jayne watched Lucy sneak the egg from her sandwich, wrap it in a napkin, then slide it behind her on the step. When she looked back at Rebecca, she saw that she was watching, too, and smiling. “Are you married?”
Rebecca’s smile didn’t waver. “No. But I came close. I’ve been engaged four times. It’s just that when it comes time to say ‘I do,’ I don’t.”
What made a woman so skittish of marriage? Jayne wasn’t going to pry as to why. Maybe when she knew Rebecca better. When she was sure she wouldn’t also pry for information about Tyler.
They ate until the only thing Jayne wanted was a nap, but when Rebecca got to her feet, ready to work, Jayne pulled herself up, too. “You get dressed and brush your teeth,” she told Lucy. “Put on old clothes, okay? Then come on around back.”
They chose a place to start a burn pile, then began cutting the clumps of shrubs Jayne had trimmed around. For a time Rebecca offered advice—how to keep the shrubs under control; who to call for a new trash barrel; where to buy a window air conditioner.
Finally, though, when the pile of cut branches was as tall as they were, Rebecca’s conversation turned personal. “How long have you been divorced?”
Jayne stopped in the act of pulling at a branch from one of the fallen trees. Getting used to thinking of herself as divorced had been tough. But for so much of her marriage she hadn’t felt very married, either. She and Greg had become more like roommates—and not particularly friendly ones. They’d lived as if they were single long before it had become fact.
“Sore subject?” Rebecca asked softly.
Shaken from her thoughts, Jayne smiled. “No, not at all. we were married six years. We’ve been divorced five months.”
“Did he break your heart?”
Jayne glanced at Lucy, who’d given up on dragging smaller pieces of debris to the burn pile and was now crouched in the grass, watching ants march along an unseen trail. “No, no heartbreak. Just a lot of disappointment, in him and myself. I married a charming, irresponsible man and expected him to transform into husband-and father-of-the-year material. I knew better. I knew he was just six months of fun and fond memories. But—” she looked at Lucy again and smiled “—I got pregnant. I was old-fashioned enough to want to be married before the baby was born, and he swore he was ready to settle down. Unfortunately, he was just a kid himself.”
He was all about fun, games and living for the moment. What had appealed to her before Lucy was born had become frustrating after. She called him unreliable. He said she was rigid. He couldn’t act his age. She didn’t know how to have fun. He was careless. She was a bore.
Six years. Was that a testament to their commitment or their foolishness?
In a casual voice Rebecca said, “It’s funny, isn’t it? Your Greg is a kid in an adult’s body, and Tyler’s been grown up since he was about three. He’s the most responsible man you’ll come across.”
Responsible? Jayne wouldn’t argue that. Unfriendly, distant, aloof—those were true, too. But she kept that to herself when she answered just as casually, “How lucky for the women in his life.”
Rebecca snorted. “Right now that’s you, Lucy, my mom and me.”
Bending, Jayne took the clippers to the suckers growing around the trunk of one of the fallen trees. “Too bad I’m not looking for a relationship.”
Rebecca was undaunted. “Hey, sometimes you find the best things when you’re not looking. Like this.” She pulled back a layer of vines she’d cut to reveal a small statue. Cast of concrete, it was two feet tall—a small girl in pigtails carrying a bucket with a puppy sticking its head out.
Jayne admired it, then returned to work. Sometimes you find the best things when you’re not looking. That sounded like something her heroine Arabella’s sister would tell her. In fact, she was pretty sure one of her heroines’ friends had said exactly that.
The thing was, it was true in a romance novel. But life wasn’t a romance novel. Her years with Greg had proven that. She was the only one in control of her happily ever after. And she knew one thing for sure.
It wasn’t going to rely on a man.
Rather than haul his saw over to the Miller house, Tyler walked over early Saturday morning, took the necessary measurements and was on his way back to the shop when a small voice called, “Hey! Wait up!”
He grimaced, then wiped the expression off his face before turning to face Lucy, leaping from the steps to land flat-footed in the recently mowed grass. She wore red boots with a white-and-purple nightgown that left her arms bare, and her hair was standing up in all directions. She ran to meet him, flashing a grin. “What’re you doin’?”
Regretting this offer. “I’m going to fix that step.”
“Can I help?”
He glanced back at the house. The front door was open, but there was no sign of Jayne. “Where’s your mother?”
“Asleep. She was pooped last night.”
He’d seen the pile of branches when he’d come home the night before and been impressed. She’d made good use of his lawn mower, trimmer and chain saw and had a nice stack of firewood against the north side of the house. He wouldn’t have figured she’d even know how to start the chain saw.
“You’d better wait for her to get up.”
