Micahlyn crossed her legs and bounced in place. “I really have to pee, Mama. Please . . .”
“The bathroom’s right through the storeroom. Just turn on the light inside the door, then—”
“Mamaaa!”
With a sigh, Nolie climbed down from the ladder. It was time to quit anyway. They still had to walk home, and those woods were bound to be darker than either of them would like. Moving stiffly, she walked into the storeroom, flipped on the lights that did a sorry job of illuminating it, then crossed to the tiny bathroom and turned that light on, too. Micahlyn went inside and primly closed the door on her.
After getting the power and water turned on and the plate-glass window fixed, scrubbing the bathroom had been Nolie’s first job at the store. Maybe Hiram had had a different notion of what constituted clean, or maybe men just didn’t care about such things the way women did, but the tiny room had been a disgrace. She hadn’t let Micahlyn set foot inside until it had been Chloroxed from top to bottom. Twice.
Then she’d started on the paint job. Cleaning. Spackling. Sanding. Cleaning again. Taping. Painting. Painting. And painting. She’d spent the past four days standing or kneeling on unforgiving concrete and climbing up and down the ladder until every joint in her body ached. Her reward was that the room looked a million times better. The bright white paint covered fifty years’ worth of stains, and transformed the store from a grimy, dirty place to a place filled with light and possibilities. This weekend she intended to drag the steel shelving outside and give it a fresh coat of gray, and to slap a few gallons on the trim, and by the middle of next week, she would be ready for her first delivery.
Then she could open.
Trying to ignore the anxiety bubbling inside her, Nolie picked at spots of paint dried on her hands. What if Hiram’s customers didn’t come back? What if they’d gotten used to driving to the next town, if they’d developed some loyalty to the store that had been there for them when this one had shut down? What if she couldn’t make a go of this place?
She could always sell it to someone more capable than she, then she could get a job in town. She didn’t have many skills, but she could wait tables or make beds at the hospital or the motel. And no matter what, she still had Jeff’s insurance money safe and sound in the bank to pay for Micahlyn’s education.
She took a deep breath that made her vertebrae protest. It would be all right. Everything would work out just fine. Even if she failed miserably with the feed store, she and Micahlyn would always have a home—and it wouldn’t be Obie and Marlene’s.
After a time, the bathroom door opened and Micahlyn came out, drying her hands on a paper towel. “I’m ready to go home now, Mama.”
Nolie was about to bargain for just a little more time when she walked back into the main room and saw how much darker it had gotten outside. She should have paid closer attention to the time, or driven the car down after lunch. “Okay, babe, just let me put everything up.”
Within five minutes, they were searching out the path behind the store. Micahlyn clung tightly to Nolie’s hand, darting anxious glances about. “I don’t want to walk in the woods at dark.”
“It’s not completely dark. You can see the path easily enough, can’t you?” Nolie’s reassuring words were for herself as much as her daughter. It was no surprise Micahlyn was timid about this darkness business, since her mother was a weenie about it herself. Logically, she knew they were likely as safe in the woods as they were in their own backyard. Rationally, she was 99 percent sure those rustling noises off in the shadows were just little forest creatures going about their business.
Realistically, the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end, her heart was beating faster and it had nothing to do with the exertion of climbing the uphill path, and she was getting jumpier with every passing moment.
“Sing a song, Mama,” Micahlyn requested, her voice quavering.
“ ‘In a cabin in the woods—’ ” Nolie sang, then asked, “Do you think I sing badly enough to scare away all the little field mice?”
Micahlyn huddled closer. “I don’t like mice!” “Honey, they’re more scared of you than you are of them.” At least, that was what Nolie’s mother used to tell her. She’d never believed it, though.
The deeper they hiked into the woods, the less light penetrated the heavy canopy of leaves overhead. Nolie’s feet and knees hurt, her back throbbed, and she was working on a stitch in her side, but still they scurried together along the path. She wished she had a flashlight, the high-intensity kind with a beam that could penetrate any darkness. And her dad’s old hunting rifle would be nice. She’d learned to shoot it when she was ten, though she’d never used it against anything deadlier than tin cans.
Forget all that. She wished they were in her car, driving with locked doors up the winding lane to their cabin. Then they would be safe and secure and—
Before she could finish the comforting thought, they rounded a boulder and crashed into a tall, solid shadow on the other side. Micahlyn’s scream pierced through the woods, echoed by Nolie’s frightened shriek and, deeper, more subdued, a grunt from whatever—whoever—they’d impacted. Micahlyn leaped into Nolie’s arms, trembling and whimpering, and Nolie would have spun away and torn off back down the path if the shadow hadn’t grabbed both her arms.
“Jesus, the two of you make a lot of racket,” it said, and Nolie’s heart slowed its gallop. It was Chase, and instead of running away as if the Devil himself were after her, she would much rather throw herself into his arms.
She didn’t, of course. Instead, she opted for action almost as embarrassing—babbling. “Oh, my God! You scared— I didn’t expect— We thought you were—”
“The bogeyman?” he supplied dryly. Apparently convinced she was going to neither fall nor flee, he released her and stepped back into a narrow shaft of dappled light that had worked its way through the trees.
“N-no, not—” He had shaved, Nolie noticed numbly, and cut his hair, and he was much more handsome than she’d given him credit for.
Determinedly, she shook the thought away and tried to set Micahlyn on her feet, but her daughter was having none of it. She clung, arms around Nolie’s neck, legs twined around her hips. Leaning against the boulder for support, Nolie patted her. “It’s okay, babe. It’s just our neighbor, see?”
Micahlyn refused to raise her head. “I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I wanna go home,” she whispered in a tiny voice.
“What are you doing out here this late?” Chase asked.
“I was working at the store. I didn’t notice how late it had gotten.” Then, curiosity stirring, Nolie turned the question back on him. “What are you doing out here?”
“I, uh . . . I just . . .” He shifted, took a few steps back, then gestured toward the path.
Clearly he was waiting for her to go first, but she didn’t move. After the long day’s work and the scare he’d given her, to say nothing of her general out-of-shape condition, she needed a moment’s more rest. And an answer. “This trail doesn’t go anywhere but to the store.”
“I know.”
“So where were you going?”
Though he’d moved back into the shadows, hiding his expression, she knew he was scowling. She could feel it in the tension in the air between them. She half-expected him to turn around and stalk off without answering, but after a moment he gave a grudging reply.
“To see where you were.”
“Where we? . . .”
More grudging words. “When you walk, you’re always home well before dark. I thought . . .”
He had come looking for them to make sure they were all right. Warmth flowed through Nolie, easing her myriad aches, renewing the energy she’d thought gone for good.
“Thank you. That was very neighborly of you,” she said softly.
“No, it wasn’t. It was just . . . curiosity.”
“Uh-huh.” She untangled Micahlyn and set her down. Immediately, her daughter tried to climb
back up her body. “I can’t carry you, sweetie. You’re too heavy.”
“But, Mamaaa—”
“I’ll carry you,” Chase said, surprising Micahlyn into silence and catching Nolie off guard, too.
Micahlyn’s tears dried instantly, and she raised her head to send a haughty gaze in his direction. “I’ll walk.”
Of course, he’d known that would be her response when he offered, Nolie realized.
Grasping Nolie’s hand—the one away from Chase— Micahlyn began marching up the path. Nolie dragged along behind, and partly behind, partly to the side, Chase brought up the rear. Once she stumbled over an exposed root, and he reached out to steady her just as she caught her balance. Too bad.
“Why don’t you have a flashlight?” His voice was quiet, a deep rumble in the night, so different from her own and Micahlyn’s. It sounded like strength, security. Like a protector, she thought with a faint, foolish smile.
“Because I didn’t plan to be out after dark,” she replied cheerfully. “But I’ll take one from now on.”
“Look, Mama!” Micahlyn cried, pointing to the lights shining through the trees twenty yards ahead. “We’re home! We’re safe!”
Nolie had to admit the lights she’d left burning in the cabin were a welcome sight, glowing through the kitchen window—not because she was scared. She wasn’t, not now. But she was tired and thinking longingly about a comfortable chair with her bare feet propped up.
When they reached the front corner of the cabin, Chase angled to the left, toward his own cabin. Before he’d taken more than a few steps, she blurted out, “Would you like to stay for dinner?”
This time the pale light from the front-porch bulb allowed her to see his face, marked with indecision. When it appeared he was going to turn her down, she headed him off. “My grandmother always said never trust a skinny cook.” Holding her arms out to her sides to indicate her lushness, she smiled. “Obviously, you can trust me.”
His gaze shifted from her to Micahlyn, who’d run ahead to the porch and was leaning on the railing, watching them. Her alternately hostile and whiny behavior would probably scare him away . . . but no sooner had Nolie finished the thought, he spoke.
“Okay. Do you need time to clean up?”
She looked down at her paint-splattered clothes, then ran a hand through her hair, falling loose from its ponytail, and came across a chunk of dried paint. Embarrassment turned her face hot. “Yes, please. Why don’t you come over in half an hour?”
He glanced at Micahlyn again, then nodded, turned, and walked away.
“Good riddance,” Micahlyn muttered from the porch.
But he was coming back soon, Nolie thought.
And the prospect pleased her far more than was wise.
Chapter Four
HE SHOULD HAVE TURNED HER DOWN. HELL, he never should have gone looking for them in the first place. Nolie was a grown woman, perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and his tramping through the woods in the dark just because they were late had given her the idea that he was . . . What had she said? Neighborly. Such a lousy thing to say.
Chase scowled as he took the steps two at a time, hesitated at the door, then knocked. After a moment, the door swung open as if by magic, then Micahlyn peeked out from behind it. “You can come in.”
He pulled at the screen-door handle, but it didn’t budge. With a put-upon sigh, she eased closer, unhooked it, then darted back again. As he stepped inside, then closed the door behind him, she raced up the stairs, bellowing, “Mamaaa!”
No surprise, the cabin was homier than his. All the furnishings were beyond old, except for the curtains at the windows and the matching pillows tossed on the sofa and the easy chair. The bookcases on either side of the fireplace were filled with books—adult titles on top, brightly colored children’s books on the lower shelves. Hanging on the brown paneled walls were photographs—of Micahlyn from birth until sometime recently, Nolie in her wedding gown with a very young man at her side, and mother, father, and daughter together. They were a perfect little family, with no clue that disaster was going to strike before long. How much happier Micahlyn would have been if fate had spared her father’s life.
How much happier would Nolie have been?
As he crossed the wood floor to the sofa, he caught the faint hint of ancient cigar smoke overwhelmed by the cinnamon and spice candles burning wherever a flat surface offered support. It reminded him that he hadn’t had a cigarette since noon, when he’d had a smoke and a handful of dry cereal for lunch. He was trying to cut back, and not finding it so hard, but at the moment, he’d give a lot to have a pack in one hand and a lighter in the other.
Creaks on the stairs drew his attention that way. Nolie had showered and changed into an outfit identical, though cleaner, to the clothes she’d worn earlier—jeans that fitted probably a little more snugly than she’d like and a T-shirt that looked at least two sizes too big. Her hair was pulled back again, red where it was dry, deep copper where it wasn’t, and her face once again was free of makeup. Her feet were bare, and she looked young and fresh and smelled sweet. Feminine. Sensual.
Oh, hell.
“Hi,” she greeted him as she reached the bottom step, then continued toward the kitchen. “I probably should have warned you that in the Harper house, Friday night is hot-dog night. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine.” The best he could recall, he hadn’t had a hot dog since high school. They’d never been one of his favorite foods, and they certainly weren’t on the menu of the restaurants he’d frequented with Fiona in Boston.
But this wasn’t Boston, and Nolie damn sure wasn’t Fiona.
Aware of the kid hanging on the stair railing and watching him warily, Chase followed Nolie into the kitchen. It was larger than the kitchen in his cabin—cleaner, too— and smelled of sweets and spices. Though the walls were the same ugly brown as his, the yellow-and-white striped curtains at the windows brightened it, along with the lights overhead.
“When I moved into the cabin,” he said, half-surprised by his desire for conversation, “every single lightbulb there was forty watts.”
Nolie, chopping onions at the counter, smiled. “Here, too, and in the back room at the store. My great-grandfather was apparently quite thrifty. Did you know him—Hiram Legare?”
He’d heard the name, of course, and had passed Hiram’s Feed Store a thousand times on his way someplace else, but he’d never met the old man. He shook his head.
“Me, neither. So far, the nicest thing anyone’s had to say about him was that he was ill-tempered, hard, and mean. Not much of an epitaph, is it?”
“Unless it was the impression he was striving for.” He leaned against the counter a good eight or ten feet from where she worked. It occurred to him to offer to help, not that he was qualified to do anything in a kitchen besides open the refrigerator. Give him a knife and fire, and he was a disaster waiting to happen.
“If it was, then he succeeded admirably.” Setting the onions aside, she emptied a can of sauerkraut into a pan and set it on the stove, then scraped a can of chili into a second pan. After doctoring it with mustard, hot sauce, onions, and cheese, she put it on the stove, too, then glanced around. “Do you mind lighting the grill for me?”
Chase glanced out the window behind her, where a yellow patio light shone on a gas grill. He’d never gotten any closer than this to a gas grill in his life. His father had sworn by charcoal, and in Boston, when he’d wanted something grilled, he’d gone out for it.
Reading his reluctance, she started toward the back door. “Keep an eye on the chili and kraut, would you?”
He moved to the stove, where he had a clear view out the window over the sink as she bent to turn on the gas, pressed a button, then turned a couple knobs. Seemed easy enough. Even he could have figured it out . . . eventually.
“You haven’t cooked out much, have you?” she asked when she returned. Her tone was mild, curious, not at all critical.
“Nev
er.”
“Ever? Don’t you eat hamburgers, steaks, chicken, and ribs?”
“Of course. At steakhouses and barbecue joints, where someone else cooks and all I have to do is enjoy—and pay.”
She made a tsking sound. “My burgers were the best in Whiskey Creek, and my ribs are darn good, too. Aren’t they, Micahlyn?”
Chase looked over his shoulder and caught a flash of red hair and pale skin disappearing around the doorway where she’d been peeking. Strange child.
Nolie didn’t ask him to do anything else except sit down after she’d set the small corner table. She cooked the hot dogs, dished up the chili and sauerkraut, and poured their drinks, then called Micahlyn to the table.
Still looking at him as if he might grow horns and fangs at any moment, Micahlyn dragged into the room and studied the table before choosing the seat farthest from him.
That left her mother sitting closest to him.
“Would you say the blessing, please, Micahlyn?” Nolie asked as she settled in her chair. She automatically bowed her head. So did her daughter and, after a moment, so did Chase. But neither he nor the kid closed their eyes.
“God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food,” Micahlyn intoned. Then, her gaze narrowing on him, she added, “And please, please, let him take us back to Grandma and Grandpa, where we belong.”
Chase shifted his gaze in time to see the tightening of Nolie’s jaw, but after she murmured, “Amen,” and raised her head, she didn’t comment on the request.
The hot dogs were better than Chase expected. So was the company—at least, part of it. Nolie seemed satisfied to keep the conversation going, while Micahlyn did little but eat and watch him. He didn’t have to offer much, which was good, since he didn’t have much to offer.
“Did you get enough to eat?” Nolie asked once Micahlyn had disappeared upstairs to take a bath.
“More than enough.” That was the best meal he’d eaten since leaving Massachusetts, though he didn’t tell her so. It would only lead to questions he wasn’t about to answer, such as, What were you doing before you left?
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