On Monday morning, Jade drove them to the company in her car. “We may as well start you with the early people. Come on, I’ll introduce you to our shipping guy.”
Wolf looked up from some paperwork and gave them a slight smile and a nod.
“Wolf Adams, meet Matt Dixon. He’s going to help us out for a couple months during our crazy season.”
Matt stuck his hand out to Wolf and Wolf responded, after a moment’s hesitation. “I understand you keep track of what goes in and out of this place. That sounds like a lot of responsibility.”
“It keeps me awake and pays the bills. What brings you to a little place like Mishap?”
“Jade. And a good place to work on a new process I’m developing.”
Wolf’s smile spread across his face and his eyebrows danced.
“He’s promised to fill in everywhere we need him. Could you use his help this morning? Brown promised a big shipment by today.” Jade put her clipboard on a stack of boxes and began to write on it.
“Sure. You got some gloves? Some of this stuff is in rough boxes and other stuff is slippery.”
“Right here.” Matt pulled a pair out of his jacket pocket and all of them turned toward the sound of a big truck engine.
“Speak of the devil. Here it is.” Wolf waved at the driver to pull back a little closer to the docking platform and they went to work.
At ten o’clock, Jade held a meeting in her office with Jack, Velma, Matt, and her shipping crew supervisor, Betty Shaunessy. Her first item was to introduce Matt and let each person introduce themselves.
Betty was last but not least. “I was wondering when she’d get around to introducing you to me. Old Wolf insisted on hogging you until now. Girl can’t get a word in with that man. He’s silent as one of them cigar store Indians like in the old pictures but he works his help into the ground. Any time you need easier work, honey, you come see Betty. I’ll come up with something.”
Her eyebrows did a couple of skips before Velma interrupted her. “Betty, for heaven’s sake! He’s Jade’s guy, in case you didn’t know.”
Jade stifled her laugh and Jack covered his grin with his hand.
“Oh, don’t get your panties in an uproar. A girl can dream, can’t she?” Betty gave Matt another once over, took a mug off the tray on Jade’s desk, and sat down to drink it.
Matt’s laugh was quiet and his face was a little red. He gave Jade a helpless shrug and drank his coffee. Velma huffed her disapproval and leaned back in her chair.
“Okay, everybody, starting next Friday we’re going to be shipping twice a week until the orders build up some more. I figure it will be five days a week before Thanksgiving week so get your friends lined up with Betty if they want to work.”
“The people I called all got back to me by this morning so we’re set for a couple weeks. With Handsome, here, joining us I’ll only need a few more and we’ll be set through to New Year’s.”
“Good. As far as the suppliers are concerned, Velma, I think we only have to worry through the usual foot draggers, Bolson and Rogers.”
Velma rolled her eyes before she wrote on her notepad. “Why can’t those guys get their act together? They know how it is this time of year and yet they do this every time.”
Jack put his hand on her shoulder. “Relax, Vel. They usually make it by the last minute and you getting all upset doesn’t seem to affect them any.”
Jade finished her coffee and stood up to stretch. “I’ll build a fire under them a little earlier this time. In fact, I’ll call them right after lunch. Maybe that will make your job a little easier. Plus, Wolf said their truckers are already nagging them for us. They’re tired of having to push themselves to the limit during the worst weather of the year because their bosses can’t get their crews to make their deadlines.”
That night, Jade could see that Matt was exhausted from working all day and then working in the shop after dinner. She kissed him good night and headed for her bedroom.
Tuesday night was a different story. She found herself too restless to work in her office after dinner and wandered out to the shop to see what he was doing. He looked up when he heard her step at the door. “Hello, beautiful, looking for something to do?”
Jade felt warm all over. His smile threatened to melt her knees. “That depends on what you have in mind.”
He pulled her into his arms and gave her several lingering kisses. “I thought I’d make it an early night. I suppose Tilly and Cedric are curled up in the living room.”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see them. They’re probably over at Tilly’s little house.”
“Race you for the shower.”
She giggled and dashed through the back door into the hall before he caught up to her. They ended up showering together and then sneaking down the hall to her room.
By Friday night Jade could feel them both getting tired of sneaking around. She decided to settle it before dinner. “Tilly, I hope this won’t upset you but I’ve decided to throw my renter out of the guest room and move him into my master bedroom. I just thought I’d warn you guys, in case you noticed his stuff is gone.”
Matt walked into the room and looked at Cedric and Tilly. They looked uncomfortable. “Should I go out and give you people some time to talk?”
Jade started to answer him but Tilly beat her to it. “Don’t be silly, Matthew. This is her house and she can do as she pleases. Should I start cleaning your bath and bedroom for you?”
“Not at all. We can take care of it. You do enough. Say something, Uncle, before you blow a piston.”
“Well, I mean, I know it’s none of my business but does this mean you people are serious?”
“Cedric Watson! It most certainly is none of our business. Of all the nerve--.”
Matt looked solemn but not embarrassed. “If you want to know if I’m going to ask Jade to marry me, the answer is yes, just as soon as I think she’ll say Yes.”
Cedric grinned in spite of himself and moved his head, side to side. “That’s all I wanted to know. After all, I’m the only male relative she has, in shouting distance.” He looked up and gave Tilly a stern look. She waved him away and sat down to join them.
Jade watched them all as if they were part of a dream. When she turned to look at Matt, she realized she was smiling. His face changed from solemn to a happy smile of his own.
“You still going to charge him rent?”
“Cedric!”
“Well, it don’t seem right somehow.”
Jade burst out laughing. “I think you’ve just been inducted into the family. Now Uncle’s protecting you from me. Look, I tried to get him to take his money back but he said he’s just investing it in this place and he refused to take it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Friday night at dinner, Jade announced that she and Matt were going to go to Woodland the next day to pick up his drawing table and desk from the storage company near Sari’s place of work. “I’ve decided to turn the guest room over to Matt for his office. He’s going to need a heated place for his free lance engineering projects when the winter gets really cold.”
“We’re also going to stop to see my mother for a bit so we’ll be gone tomorrow night.”
“Then, I want you to take one of my pies to her and her new boss. I’m hoping she’ll join us at Christmas. I’ve heard so much about her from the both of you that I would love to meet her.” Tilly beamed at them as if they were her own children.
The four of them had an early breakfast the next morning. “Cedric and I are going to do the shopping for Thanksgiving and the rest of the month before the prices shoot up so we’ll be in Eugene tonight. We’ll leave the light on in the living room and the radio and your car will be here so I think the house will be fine.”
Jade smiled at her conscientious housekeeper. “I’m sure Glory will do her usual fabulous job of barking, Tilly. Everything will be fine.”
Jade and Matt made it to Woodland by four o’clock in the afternoon. A
fter making sure Sari could get away to have dinner with them they went to the storage company and loaded up everything Matt had stored.
“If we can get it all in your truck then we may as well. Whatever won’t fit in the shop we can stack in the back porch.” Jade looked in the back of the pickup and wondered if her house was too small for three people.
“Oh, it’ll fit. It did when I brought it here. I got to thinking that this carport kit could be completed for a storage room at the end of the shop. The tarp should secure everything.” Matt pointed at a pile of blue plastic near a folding table and chair set plus a dresser and a bookcase.
After enjoying some delicious herb tea and lively conversation with Sari’s boss, they headed for dinner at a seafood house which overlooked Cache Creek and a wonderful little garden.
“Okay, Mom, you know I have to ask. Are you happy here?” Matt looked into her eyes as if he were ready for her to dodge his question.
“You mustn’t worry about me so much, Matthew. I can take care of myself. But to answer your question, yes. I’m happy here. Russell couldn’t be a kinder boss. He’s also the best patient I’ve ever had. He’s so cooperative with all his treatments. It just breaks my heart that he’s not doing better. I hope his doctor knows what he’s doing with all these drugs. He should be doing better than he is.” Sari dabbed a couple of tears away.
Jade felt her sympathy well up in her chest. “That must be so hard for you, being a nurse and not being able to help people as much as you want to.”
The feminine little woman nodded and tried to smile. “I kept hoping I would get tougher as the years went by. Some nurses I’ve known aren’t fazed by anything they have to do or the pain their patients are in. I’ve never been able to do that.”
“Mom, they’re just pretending. You, yourself, said they tend to drink too much. I don’t think you’d like yourself like that. I love you the way you are.” He took her hand and squeezed it.
“You’re a wonderful son, Matthew. You’re as soft hearted as I am. We both need to get tougher.”
“I don’t think it’s worth it, Sari. I like us the way we are. Maybe this isn’t really something you want to do after all.” Jade hoped she wasn’t butting in where she wasn’t welcome.
“No. I’m fine. And you’re both right. We have to be true to ourselves. To be anything else would hurt us more than our sympathy does.”
Matt changed the subject to his new shop, Jade’s company, and his hilarious attempts to learn about shipping and receiving. “I thought I could drive anything after five minutes practice but that old forklift really had me buffaloed. By the time Wolf got me straightened out on how to turn the thing and back up with a heavy load I had put a dent in one wall and had to repair the right front corner of the lift.”
Jade finally stopped laughing and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I got it secondhand and Wolf and Jack have had to replace almost everything on it, at one time or another. That will be my next big purchase.”
By the time they had taken Sari home and settled in at their motel room, Jade was beat. “How can I get tired when all we did today was drive and talk? Geez, I sound like a whiny old lady. Forget I said that.”
“Don’t worry. You prove to me you’re a young exciting woman every time we make love. Traveling doesn’t appeal to me much anymore either. I’d rather work all day at your company or in the shop. I don’t think people like you and I are much for being stuck in a car or living in motels. And I’ll take Tilly’s cooking any time over restaurant food.”
“Me, too. However, speaking of being young and exciting...” Jade ran her fingertips down his bare chest and slipped her arms around his neck before kissing him with all her might.
He returned the favor and pulled her shirt off of her. “Should we save water?”
She giggled, nodded, and raced him for the shower.
* * *
They joined Sari and her boss for breakfast, the next morning.
“These muffins are out of this world, Sari. What’s in them?” Jade took a second one and decided she did not want any eggs or jam. The muffins were a meal in themselves.
“Oh, a little of this and that, orange peel, cinnamon, whole wheat, yellow squash, and some vanilla, I think. And a couple of eggs, of course.”
“Amazing!”
“She is the best cook I’ve ever known and I’ve been to some expensive restaurants in exotic places.” Her boss gave her a fond look. His raspy voice made him sound much older than he looked or acted. “I feel wonderfully spoiled.”
Matt smiled at his mother and stood up. “Let me get the coffee this time, Mom. Relax. If I’m not being too nosy, Russell, what did you do for a living? You were obviously successful.”
The silver haired man smiled and chuckled before stifling a cough. “I enjoyed being a truck mechanic but I certainly didn’t make the kind of money you see here. My grandfather left me this house and a trust fund. No one was more surprised than me. He was very angry at me for training at a trade school instead of going to an ivy league college. He would have paid for it but I didn’t want to be obligated to him and I had no interest in a business degree or running his company for him. It was an investment firm. My father had already disappointed him by running off with his secretary when I was in high school. My mother had left us the year before. That didn’t matter except my father didn’t come back to the firm after the honeymoon. He took a job managing a resort in the Florida Keys and we never saw him again.”
“That was tough for you. I’m glad you did what you wanted for a living.” Jade felt foolish. Her comment seemed weak. She didn’t like to show pity in front of a wounded person.
“Oh, it wasn’t so tough. The person I missed was our housekeeper but she left to take care of her grandchildren while her daughter worked. We wrote as long as she lived.”
“You and I have something in common. I still write and call my folks’ first housekeeper. She is closer to me than my mother ever was.”
When Matt and Jade left for home Jade felt she had become much closer to Sari than she ever expected to be. It was a surprise to her that she now had a good friend in Delta and a feeling of family when she thought of Sari. She had never expected to be close to anybody after she left home. It was too risky, too easy to get hurt if a person let other people get close. Now she had her uncle, Tilly, Sari as family and Juani and Delta as friends. Amazing! Most of all, there was Matt. What was she going to do about Matt? She was going to lose some sleep over him.
When they got back to the house Matt went out to the shop while Jade checked her mail and her e-mails. A photo of Delta smiling next to her latest sculpture accompanied her latest e-mail. The image was one of a foamy waterfall cascading over wet, shiny rocks and dark green mosses. The foam was mother of pearl, the rocks were black, probably obsidian, with silver rivulets of water over them. The dark green mosses looked like dark jade.
Jade smiled when she read that Rafael was still thanking her for his whisper loafers from Hush Puppies. He had purchased two pair and made Jade promise to tell the supplier to never stop making them. The next line grabbed her attention and took her breath away. “Rafael says he’ll let you guys know when he’s going to come for a visit. It will be January or February, I think. He’s never seen a working cattle ranch up close and he’s curious to see one. I told him Henry would be glad to give him a tour. Did I do good?”
“Good! Delta, old girl, you are fantastic! Now if only old Alfred decides to sell it.” Jade tried to think of a way to make Winks want to avoid the Mishap area and then realized it was time for dinner and went to help Tilly.
For the next week she concentrated on getting her company set up for the wild month of December while she moved Betty and her crew along into high gear. They were up to three shipping days a week by the middle of November and the teenaged boys appeared to like Matt so everything seemed to be perfect. Except for one thing. While Matt played the mad chemist in the shop out back Jade worked in her of
fice and kept the door locked, saying that she was working on secret Christmas presents. She felt like a terrible liar. She was sure the others didn’t believe her. It felt so childish to be working on a wood carving in secret. She kept her new carving tools in the only locked drawer in her desk.
Jade had promised herself she would take a class and learn the conventional way but it was typical of her to balk at anything conventional. “I’ll probably be terrible at first and then I’ll get so embarrassed I won’t finish the class. No, I’ve got to do this my own way and in my own time.”
By Thanksgiving week she had to ask her shipping crew how many of them could give her four days which meant they would only have Thanksgiving Day and Sundays off. She was relieved when all of the adults promised to make it. Jade stood up at the end of the morning meeting, the Friday before Thanksgiving, and stretched. “Are you sure you want to work that much this week?” She looked at Matt.
He laughed and put his arm around her. “I need the money as much as any high school kid. If they can work Saturdays, I can put in a few extra days. Besides, if you’re down here I might as well join in the festivities. You know, I think you ought to let me provide the drinks the Saturday after. I know you always buy them pizza when they have to work on a holiday weekend.”
“If I let you pay for the crew I’ll have to give you some company stock. Are you sure you’re ready for that step? Being in charge can be heavy sometimes.”
“And you said I’m too generous. I just want to show my appreciation for the way these kids pitch in for me. They’re great. Besides, I really think I should be paying you for the use of that shed.”
“You are.” Jade whispered to him and then noticed that everyone else had left the room. She kissed him on the neck and traced his lips with one finger. “I’m just taking it out in trade.”
Thanksgiving Day was full of the usual temptations with Tilly’s pumpkin pie taking the place of the turkey and mashed potatoes for Jade. “Well, I can’t eat everything at one meal and you know I love squashes of any kind.”
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