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He lowered his hands cautiously, probably not sure she was really disarmed. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you were at the hospital.”
“I came back to check the house.”
He nodded toward the teddy bear that was clutched under her arm. “And to find something important, I guess.”
She held the bear a little tighter. “He’s important to Mandy. She likes to sleep with him.”
“How is she?” Ryan leaned against a sooty counter, hands braced against its edge, apparently not minding the dirt. He’d exchanged his uniform for jeans and a dark-blue knit shirt, and he’d picked up a streak of soot across the front of the shirt, presumably since he’d entered the house. The concentrated light of the torch cast his strong face into sharp relief.
She forced herself to concentrate, her wits still scattered after finding him here so unexpectedly. “She’s going to be all right. The doctor thought she should stay until tomorrow to be sure there aren’t any aftereffects from the smoke.”
“That’s good.” He studied her face. “You look as if they should have kept you, too.”
“I’m fine.” She was getting tired of saying that. “I don’t want to be rude, but what are you doing here?”
“Fixing the door.” He gestured toward the door that led onto the porch, and she realized belatedly that the powerful torch he’d set on the counter was trained on the opening. The door sagged on its hinges.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He shrugged. “I broke it. Seems like the least I can do is fix it.”
“I can take care of the door. I don’t need any help.” She had to sound strong, because she was unaccountably weepy at the thought that Ryan Flanagan had actually come back to do something for her.
“Not even from an old school friend?” He gave her the easy grin that charmed so readily.
She blinked, startled. “I thought you didn’t recognize me.”
“You’re Laura Jane Phillips. At least, it used to be Phillips. You were a year behind me at Suffolk High. Am I right?”
She nodded. So he had remembered her. Or perhaps someone had told him who she was.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were yesterday?” His eyebrows lifted. “Or didn’t you remember me?”
“No one could forget the Flanagans.” She answered the second question first, evading his eyes. “I just—didn’t think it was appropriate to get into old home week when you were here on business.”
He leaned casually against the filthy counter, as if ready to stay and chat all night. “It bugged me all day, trying to figure out why you looked so familiar to me. How are your folks?”
“They’ve retired to Arizona. My dad’s health isn’t very good.” The usual pang of concern gripped her heart at the thought of her father.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I guess otherwise he’d be here doing the renovation for you.”
She nodded. It wasn’t necessary to confide in Ryan that her father didn’t know she was doing the rehab herself, for that very reason. If Dad knew, he’d try to come and probably kill himself in the process.
As for her mother—well, she’d stopped trying to figure her mother out a long time ago. She just knew she couldn’t count on her for help with this or anything else.
Ryan relaxed his long frame against the counter, not seeming in any hurry to get on with the door-fixing. “Anyway, I didn’t know you’d come back to Suffolk. I thought you were living in Philadelphia.”
“How on earth would you know that?” She hadn’t imagined he’d remember who she was, let alone know where she’d gone after school.
He grinned. “You’re forgetting my mother, with her encyclopedic knowledge of anyone who’s ever attended our church. Once I mentioned you, she trotted out everything she knew, including the fact that you were married and living in Philly. She was surprised we haven’t seen you in church since you’ve been back.”
Siobhan Flanagan had taught her in church school twice—once in kindergarten, then again in junior high. She had a gentle manner, a warm smile and a love that extended to even the most rebellious of teens.
Still, however warm her memories of Ryan’s mother, she was not going to defend her failure to attend church to him. “Please greet her for me. And really, I can take care of the door.”
He shoved away from the counter in a smooth, even movement. “Tell you what. You hold the boards and I’ll pound. We’ll have it secure in no time.”
That was probably the fastest way to get him out of here, so she set the flashlight and teddy bear down and went to the door. The acrid scent of wet, burned wood from the back porch sent a wave of nausea through her, and she forced it down angrily.
Ryan had apparently brought a few two-by-fours with him, because the wood gleamed new. He put one of the boards against the door, and she braced it with both hands.
He used the hammer with quick, effective strokes. The board vibrated from his force, jolting her hands.
“So, after your husband’s death, you decided to come home and buy this place.” The pounding punctuated his words, and she felt the flex of his muscles where his arm brushed her shoulder.
“Not exactly. My husband had bought the building a couple of years ago for some business venture he had in mind, but he never got around to doing anything with it. So I decided to fix it up.”
She wouldn’t add that this building was the only legacy Jason had left her and Mandy. That everything else he’d received from his father had been frittered away on one foolish scheme or another, until his father had finally cut him off, saying Jason would have to pay for his own mistakes. Apparently he’d put her and Mandy in the mistake category.
“You plan to live here?” Ryan propped another board across the door, and it gleamed palely against the blackened frame.
“I’m fixing it up to sell. I have a buyer who has an option, if I can get the renovation done before she loses interest or finds something better.”
Ryan paused, looking over his shoulder at her. Her pulse gave a little jump. Her hands were planted next to his on the board, and his face was only inches away.
“And then you’ll leave Suffolk again?” He looked at her as if he really wanted to know. As if it might matter to someone what she did.
Her mouth was dry. From the smoke, she assured herself. Not because Ryan Flanagan had any effect on her.
She moistened her lips. “I haven’t decided yet. Mandy is going to have a cochlear implant—at least I hope she is, if all the tests go well. I can’t plan beyond that right now.”
The implant could give Mandy a chance at a normal life. How could she think of anything else?
“At the hospital here?” His eyes lit with interest.
“That’d be Dr. Marsh, I guess.”
“You’ve heard of him.” She was faintly surprised. Franklin Marsh was well-known to parents of deaf children, but why would Ryan know of him?
“My sister-in-law, Gabe’s wife, trains animals to work with people who have disabilities. She introduced me to Dr. Marsh at a benefit. I understand he does good work.”
“He’s the best.” She wouldn’t trust her daughter’s hearing and her future to anyone who wasn’t. “If he decides Mandy will benefit from an implant, it will make all the difference in the world to us.”
And if he did accept Mandy for the procedure, she somehow had to come up with the over fifty thousand dollars the process would cost. The minimal insurance program she was able to afford would cover Mandy’s stay in the hospital, but it didn’t cover a cochlear implant.
As if he felt all the things she didn’t say, Ryan put his hand over hers where it rested on the board. “I hope it works out.”
“Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “I appreciate that. And really, I can finish up the door. I’m sure you have other things to do with your evening.”
“I’m free as a bird.” He pounded another nail in place. “And anyway, as far as I can see, it’s finished.”
He stood back, smiling at her. He was right. The door was secured.
He’d shaken off her protests and done exactly what he’d said he would. And he’d gotten more information from her than she’d confided in anyone in months.
She raised her eyebrows at him, dusting her hands off. “Do you always get your own way?”
His smile broadened into a grin. “If you remember my family, you ought to know that I grew up fighting a bunch of siblings to get what I wanted. I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“I remember that you used to charm the teachers into letting you get away with murder.”
Now why had she said that? The man would think she was flirting with him.
“Lies, spread by my brothers, no doubt.” His smile assumed an angelic aspect. “I was always a serious student.”
“Somehow I find that difficult to believe.” And she also found it difficult to believe that she was standing here smiling at him, after everything that had happened this day.
“Why is it no one will take me seriously?” He dropped the hammer into a duffel bag and picked up the flashlight.
“Maybe because you don’t take yourself seriously.”
“Ouch, that hurt. A woman who sees right through me. I’d better watch out.” He hefted the bag. “Anything else I can fix while I’m here?”
“Everything’s fine.” Well, it wasn’t, but he ought to know what she meant. “I guess we’d better go out the front door, since you’ve nailed up the back.”
He nodded, and then he unexpectedly clasped her hand in his. His face was very serious in the dim light. “I wish you and your daughter the best.”
“Thank you.”
Ryan’s words had been the kind of simple statement anybody might make. They shouldn’t make her throat go so tight.
She turned away quickly, feeling him behind her as she headed for the door to the living room. Ryan Flanagan had a way of slipping through her carefully prepared defenses as if they weren’t even there.
So it was a good thing she wouldn’t be seeing any more of him.
“Listen, Ryan, are you sure Laura McKay isn’t going to mind our breaking into her house this way?”
Ryan’s brother Gabe paused, leaning on the shovel he’d been using to scrape soot and crumbled plaster from the ground floor of Laura’s building. Max, the yellow lab who was Gabe’s seizure-alert dog, sniffed at a pile of rubble, tail waving.
“Why would she? We’re only trying to help.”
Ryan suspected Laura wouldn’t see it that way, given her strong streak of independence. But no matter how much she might insist she didn’t need help, she was wrong. By the time she got home from the hospital with Mandy, he hoped they’d have much of the fire clean-up done.
A handful of Flanagans had offered to come along today along with several other firefighters. His cousin Brendan had used his clout as pastor to round up some more volunteers from the congregation.
All told, probably twenty or thirty people hustled around Laura’s property, sweeping, mopping, carting away fire rubbish. Now if he could just persuade Laura to accept the help they offered, everything would be fine.
Well, he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. He clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Come on, put your back into it. They’ll be home from the hospital soon.”
Gabe shrugged and went back to shoveling.
Their mother looked up from the broom she was wielding. “I’m sure Laura will be happy to see us.” Siobhan Flanagan smiled. “And I’ll be glad to see her. I remember her from church school, years ago. Laura was always such a sweet, shy little thing.”
“She’s changed since then, Mom.”
“Well, of course people change. Being the single mother of a deaf child would make someone grow up in a hurry, I’d think. Poor child.”
He wasn’t sure whether her sympathy was for Laura or Mandy, but it didn’t really matter. Mom had enough love to go around for any number of people.
If it came to pitting Laura’s stubborn independence against his mother’s determination to help, he wouldn’t want to guess at a winner.
Even as he thought it, the front door swung open, letting in a shaft of May sunshine. Laura stood there, clasping Mandy protectively against her.
For a moment she didn’t move. She just stood, looking around the room as if unable to believe what she was seeing. Then she turned toward him with what looked like an accusation in her dark eyes.
She probably intended to come straight for him, but his mother got to her first. “Laura, it’s so good to see you.” She swept Laura into a quick hug. “I’m Siobhan Flanagan. You remember me, don’t you?”
“Mrs. Flanagan.” Laura took a step back. “Yes, of course I do.” She darted a glance toward Ryan. “You’re Ryan’s mother.”
It sounded as if she wanted to follow that up with, Why are you here?
“We’re helping with the clean-up.” His mother wasn’t deterred by any reserve on Laura’s part. She waved toward the workers. “You remember Gabe, my oldest boy.”
“Mom, I’m not a boy,” Gabe protested automatically. He lifted his hand toward Laura. “Hi, Laura.”
“And that’s Brendan, my nephew. He’s pastor of our church now, you know.”
Laura nodded in Brendan’s direction, not committing herself to any knowledge of his pastorship of Grace Church. “It’s very nice of you to want to help out, but really, I can take care of this myself.”
Ryan had warned his mother that Laura would respond that way, and he waited to see how she’d handle it.
She did it with a smile and a gentle touch on Mandy’s hair. The little girl gave her a shy smile in return, and Laura put her down.
“You wouldn’t turn us away when we’re having so much fun, now would you? That wouldn’t be kind.”
Laura opened her mouth and closed it again. Clearly she didn’t want to be accused of being unkind by turning away kindness from others. He tried to hide his expression.
“No, I—well, thank you.”
She frowned at him, and he smiled blandly back. Maybe he ought to take lessons from his mother in how to approach someone as prickly as Laura was.
Nolie approached her. “Hi, I’m Nolie Flanagan. Gabe’s wife.” She bent toward Mandy, her hands signing fluently. “You must be Mandy.”
Mandy nodded, giving her that shy smile.
“Would you like to go upstairs and help me make sandwiches for lunch?” She patted the rounded bulge of baby under her sky-blue top as she glanced at Laura. “Gabe is getting nervous about every little thing I do, but he agrees that making sandwiches won’t hurt me.”
“I don’t know if Mandy will go with you,” Laura began, and then stopped. Mandy was already putting her hand in Nolie’s. “Well, I guess she will. Thank you.”
