by Christa Wick
The banking manager's overt interest had her rethinking the decision.
"Plumbing accident," she explained with a faulty smile. "Only hurt for a billion hours."
He ran a finger beneath Shane's signature. Velda figured it was impossible for the name to go unrecognized. Shane's company had appeared in the news almost weekly for the last year, especially after his company secured a huge encryption contract with the government.
Collier placed the check in a small letter holder in front of his keyboard and typed the remaining information, warning Velda as he did.
"The funds must be verified, of course."
"But you will release the first five thousand within one business day," she said. "Under the Expedited Funds Availability Act—"
Collier stopped typing and glared at her, a constipated look screwing the rest of his features around the nearly lipless mouth.
"The roofing company requires a deposit of three thousand dollars before beginning," she explained. "If the tropical storm currently forming in the West Indies smashes its way up the Atlantic seaboard, I'll lose the entire roof."
"This is such an unusual sum for your account," Collier pressed. "How much did you raise from other sources during this 'blitz' of yours?"
"Well…" Velda forced a smile that made the entire right half of her face ache. "Are we talking before or after you make your donation?"
He didn't answer, just stared blankly in her direction.
"About twelve hundred dollars promised." Her voice deflated with the answer. "Some of it coming in this Friday, some the Friday after, most of it first of the month."
"As I said, nickels and dimes in plastic jugs." He sounded pleased for the first time since she stepped into his office. "But I will verify the funds today and make sure we meet the statutory requirement of five thousand dollars available by close of business tomorrow. The remainder will actually need to deposit before you can access it."
Velda breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Mr. Collier."
He waved away the gratitude then hit return on his keyboard. The small printer next to him sputtered. When it finished, he extended the deposit slip toward Velda but didn't relinquish his hold.
"I expect the roof for a building that size will come in under thirty-thousand," he said, his gaze locked on the bruise. "Schedule a time with my secretary to discuss how you can best manage the remaining funds."
"Of course," She faked an enthusiastic smile so he would release the slip. "I'm breaking in a new volunteer this week, but I'll check my calendar for the week after."
Satisfied he had her on the hook for some investment product, Collier let go of the paper and folded both hands in his lap. Velda shoved the slip into her portfolio at the same time she rose from the chair, a hasty goodbye glossing her lips. Two minutes later, she was in her van, windows rolled up as she ranted at full volume about Collier's arrogance and uncaring attitude.
She could have continued for another hour or more before running out of material, but her phone chirped. She peeked at the number flashing across the screen then sighed with relief to see it was someone other than Shane.
Velda tapped the screen then pressed the phone to her ear.
"What's the news, Frankie?"
Frank Delvecchio, the retired Jacksonville police detective who ran background checks for the shelter, snorted at the question.
"Did you really think I could dig up more than the FBI on a guy like Wehr?" he shot back with a throaty laugh. "What's this all about, Vi?"
"Following protocol," she answered. "A fat check to fix the roof doesn't get anyone special privileges in my house. Gratitude, yes. But nothing takes precedence over the kids' safety."
"You're one of the good ones, Vi."
Accustomed to doling out praise instead of receiving it, Velda suppressed a sniffle before returning the compliment.
"So are you."
Frank popped his bottom lip, something he always did when he had an agenda.
"Tell my wife what a good guy I am over a nice dinner," he said. "She's adding broccoli to the conchiglie with clams and mussels now. Sounds weird, but it's a food orgasm for your mouth."
Velda sighed at the offer, half in regret, half in hunger. Connie Delvecchio was probably the best cook in all of Jacksonville, maybe the whole damn state. But Velda couldn't remember the last time she had taken more than a few hours off from the shelter for herself. If she left the building, it was for shelter errands or chauffeuring someone to an appointment.
"Maybe once Wehr's check clears that will finally be possible," she said after a few seconds. "I want to. Really"
"Then I'll make it happen," he said. "Now go do what you gotta do, kid."
She thanked Frank again and hung up. Starting the van, she turned on the air conditioning then thumbed through the contacts in her phone. Shane had insisted on exchanging numbers.
Reaching his phone number, Velda thumbed the icon to send a text, then typed a succinct message before quickly thumbing the phone off and pulling into traffic.
You are clear to start.
Chapter 4
Stefan greeted Velda in the parking lot, frantically waving one arm at the shelter door.
"The shower exploded, Miss Pace!"
She grabbed the excited teen by the shoulders, forced him to look at her.
"Is anyone hurt?"
He shook his head. "Not yet. But Reggie is trying to duct tape it."
"Men's room?"
He nodded vigorously, broke free, and ran into the building. Reaching the shower area half a minute after him, Velda clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back the laughter.
Clearly, Reggie had been showering when calamity struck. He stood in several inches of water, a towel around his waist, shower shoes on his feet. He tried to force a piece of duct tape over the end of the shower arm. Several more strips floated uselessly around his ankles.
"I told him to stop," Georgia Carter huffed. "But he said I wasn't you and I wasn't his momma."
"I'll deal with the attitude later." Velda stepped past Reggie to the exposed pipes beyond the last of the three showers. Using both hands, she turned the cut-off valve until water stopped shooting from the shower arm.
Reggie, oblivious to her arrival, stared up for a few seconds then looked around.
"Over here," she said, pointing at the valve.
Trudging through the water a second time, she noticed the teen's raw skin and body jerks.
"Dry off, get dressed, and get warm," she ordered. "Georgia, who absolutely was in charge of you as the designated resident-on-duty, will make you some hot cocoa or hot tea."
His head bobbed in shame. She gave the cold, bare shoulder a soft pat.
"They built this place more than eighty years ago. Unless you were swinging a sledgehammer in here, you didn't cause this," she soothed. "I'll teach you how the plumbing works and then you can teach others."
A smile raced across his face.
"First, though, you need to get dressed and dry and have something hot to drink."
Reggie stepped out of the water, took the fresh towel Georgia offered then dipped into one of the changing stalls.
Velda faced Stefan. "Can you fetch my toolbox?"
Flashing a thumbs-up, he took off at a sprint. Georgia stayed until Reggie emerged dressed and shivering more sharply than when he had battled the cold spray.
"Come on, Aquaman," she laughed, hands on his shoulders as she steered him into the hall.
Ninety minutes later, Velda balanced precariously on a stepladder. The water had finished draining while she visited the hardware store for a new shower head, shower arm, and Teflon tape.
She prayed that the sole defect had been in the shower arm where it threaded into the shower head. A three-inch crack cut through the pipe. The "explosion" also damaged the head, shearing the threading to the point of being useless.
To determine the wall pipe's condition, she had to remove the arm.
It wouldn't budge
.
Shoulders aching, she turned around and planted her butt on the top step of the ladder. She tossed her wrench into the toolbox, buried her face in her hands.
Nothing ever ended around the shelter—except for the happy faces. Those were quick to disappear and hard to get back. Everything else, everything challenging and bad, was on a spigot with no cut-off valve. Storm-damaged roof, rising utility costs, new faces showing signs of abuse in their eyes or on their skin, clogged sinks, geysers in the shower room…
Nonstop.
It all fell on Velda to handle. The mothers living with their children at the shelter had to assist, of course. They ran six-hour shifts with at least one designated resident-on-duty. All of the adults cooked group meals and ran clean-up schedules that included the teenagers.
But Velda wanted to give the women the skills needed to move up and out. She wanted them looking for work, studying for their GED if they didn't already have a diploma. She wanted them to learn new stuff in the computer lab, like common office systems and software. So, when something broke—which was always—she was the one to fix it. She also ran most of the classes, entirely managed the finances and purchasing, and raised most of the funds necessary to keep the place running.
All of that left her no time to sit at Frank's table, sip his excellent wine, or devour his wife's superlative cooking. It left her no time to soak in the private tub that was her sole luxury at the shelter.
"Hey," Shane softly rumbled from the doorway. "Need some help?"
Damn, why did he have to show up right at this moment!
She rolled off the stepladder toward the toolbox, grabbed the wrench she had tossed down. Hearing his footsteps across the tile, she raised a hand in warning.
He ignored the gesture. "No way you're fixing that on your own."
Thick, capable fingers wrapped around the wrench and took it from her.
"You’re too vertically challenged," he teased.
"And horizontally." The words slipped out before Velda could swallow them down.
Her cheeks burned with old insecurities fueled by the body-shaming co-eds who had chased after Shane in college. It didn't matter that he was at school on a scholarship and just as dirt poor as Velda. Nearly every co-ed she encountered wanted to crawl into bed with the man.
Or in the backseat of a borrowed car.
Maybe upright against a tree on a moonless night.
Judging by their expressions, it clearly didn't matter where Shane might fuck them so long as he fucked them. When those young women saw Velda—round, short, unsophisticated—the snickering and whispered insults would grow to an overwhelming volume.
But that wasn't why she had left. Even when Shane was present, sitting next to her, holding her hand, his mind was somewhere she couldn't follow. Algorithms, secret versus public keys, decryption calculations, symmetrical versus asymmetrical.
She doubted, in all their minutes, hours, and days together, that there was ever a moment when she was the only thing on his mind.
"Do you have a washcloth?" he asked.
She jerked at the question, remembered where she was and why Shane Wehr was standing next to her. She nodded numbly, walked over to the changing stalls, and grabbed a washcloth.
Shane took the fabric, wrapped it near where the shower arm disappeared into the wall then tightened the wrench down. His biceps bulged from the force he exerted on the tool's handle.
Grip and tug, grip and tug.
On the third attempt, the shower arm finally rotated. A few seconds later, it was out of the wall.
Without a word, he climbed up on the stepladder, inspected the hole, set about taping the end thread on the new shower arm, then screwed it in place.
Velda watched, her brain spinning with questions.
Like, when had he ever done any kind of plumbing?
More importantly, why was he helping her?
Chapter 5
Finished installing the arm and head, Shane moved the tools to safety. Finding the cut-off valve, he motioned Velda to stand outside the water's blast radius.
"This may not work," he warned. "From your explanation, the uncontrollable flow should have been a problem with the shower valve."
Chewing at her bottom lip, she shrugged.
"I came in to a geyser and a half-naked teen in shower shoes trying to fix things with duct tape," she explained. "I went straight for the cut-off valve."
He nodded, suppressed the inquiry into which teen it was even as a picture arose in his mind of the boy who had brandished a flip-flop at him the day before.
"Still, the shower head you had before doesn't have its own flow control."
She shrugged again. "Electrical and plumbing are the two things I always try to scrounge up money for instead of doing it myself, but…just getting tarps up on the roof blew this month's budget for everything but food and electricity."
He scowled. The budget may have been decimated, but only before he gave her the check. That is, if she deposited it. He hoped Velda wouldn't stubbornly sit on the funds until the conclusion of his thirty days. He would no doubt piss her off before the period was through. In terms of his having leverage, it would be better if she spent the money quickly.
"You did cash the check?" he asked, straining to keep a level tone.
"Yes," she snapped. "But the bank doesn't have to give me any today and only five thousand tomorrow."
"Which bank?"
She frowned, her reticence visible by the way her brows knitted toward one another. After a few seconds of deliberation, she answered.
"Jacksonville City Trust."
Shane took out his phone, tapped a quick message, and hit send.
"My banker will sort your banker immediately." Returning his attention to the cut-off valve, he drew a deep breath. "Now for the moment of truth."
Water shot from the shower head. He closed the valve again, walked over to the offending shower and turned the temperature knobs as far as they would go in a clockwise direction. Returning to the cut-off valve, he opened the water flow once more.
Nothing came out.
"Oh, Lord," Velda laughed. "Please don't tell Reggie that's all it would have taken to turn the shower off."
"Reggie?"
"Mr. Dictionary," she answered.
Her head bounced, tears of mirth making her gaze shine.
Damn, he missed that. She had always been full of laughter. Grace shined through her. Even here, in this abysmal shelter, it cast its glorious light. But he imagined the laughter was something seldom triggered.
He had thirty days to change her disposition. He wouldn't waste a single minute.
Turning to the woman who had once crushed his heart, he smiled sheepishly and gave the toolbox a little jiggle.
"So what else needs fixing?”
Fifteen minutes later, his right hand jammed inside the token box of the shelter's pool table, Shane's phone buzzed in his back right pocket. Face turned away from Velda, he rolled his lips.
"Can you slide that out?" he asked. "I almost have the latch in place."
She looked at him, eyes as big as tennis balls.
He pulled a face. "First, I'm asking you to touch my phone, not my flesh. Second, it could be a million-dollar text."
Her expression deflated as she moved to retrieve the device. She placed it in his free hand and stepped back. He tapped the screen, the message visible without having to thumb through to the text app.
"Your banker is sorted," he said, placing the phone next to him on the floor.
"Oh, he is, is—"
Her phone rang. She pulled it out, read the display then hit answer before bringing the device to her ear.
"Hello, Mr. Collier."
Her features danced around her face, the brows knitting first, then jumping upward in conjunction with a double eye roll as her expressive mouth pulled wide.
"I assure you I didn't instigate that, Mr. Collier," she cut in after the caller continued railing on for a full min
ute. "The banking rules came up in the course of a conversation held while addressing a new emergency, this time with the plumbing."
She closed her eyes and shook her head, her nose flattening as she tried to control her temper.
"No, I am not saying he’s here," she snapped. "I said a conversation. Those don't have to happen in person, which should be clear to you by the magical object you hold that is capable of instantly teleporting sound waves across vast distances."
Velda sank to the floor, still shaking her head but no longer visibly irritated.
“I’m talking about a phone, Mr. Collier! Now I really must go. Thank you for informing me that we currently have full availability of the funds deposited today."
Ending the call, she returned the phone to her pocket with a groan. Lifting her gaze to catch Shane watching her, she laughed and pointed at where his hand remained buried in the token box.
"Just when and where did you learn to fix things?" she asked. "I remember you being handsy, not handy."
His cheeks warmed from the light pouring out of Velda. Trying to hide his reaction, he focused his attention on fixing the latch. It would have been simpler to disable the coin box than fix it, but the kids earned tokens by studying and performing chores around the shelter.
"Well," he started, pulling his hand out and wiping the grease from it. "After grad school, I needed someplace to rent and enough money to keep me in ramen noodles while I worked on my software."
She nodded, a little of the light leaving her. Just as quickly, he felt his cheeks cool.
"So," he continued. "For two years, I had an all-utilities-included, rent-free studio in the basement of an apartment building. All I had to do was collect the rent, mop up whatever messes made their way into the common area, and fix anything that went wrong that didn't involve electricity."
Brows perplexed, Velda sighed. "You could have had a job anywhere those two years, either at a tech firm or Wall Street. Double major in finance and computer sciences—I remember the recruiters romancing you during the first semester of grad school."
