He’d had one goal—to find a woman. He’d done just that in each bar, then wound up sending them away, staying on his own, coming home alone.
Hell, he couldn’t even get laid without screwing up. The story of his life.
The minutes audibly ticked by, even though he knew it was only in his head. The old clock tossed in a box of trash wasn’t working, and neither of them wore a watch, which couldn’t possibly sound that loud, anyway. His fingers tightened around the brush handle, and his nerves grew tauter with each passing moment. Feeling as if he just might explode, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Who were those women?”
Nolie didn’t look up but continued to paint long smooth strokes across the countertop. “The older one is named Gloria, and the younger is Sophy. I don’t know anything else about them, except that they did most of the cleaning in here. Oh, and they knew Hiram.” She hesitated. “You don’t remember them from when you lived here?”
“No.” He’d probably met Gloria at some point—she seemed the right age for his mother’s group of friends— but Sophy couldn’t have been more than a few years old when he left Bethlehem the first time.
There was a part of him that was seriously looking forward to leaving again, only this time he would never come back.
And a part that wondered, just for one brief instant, if leaving for the last time might not be harder than the first time. A foolish thought. There wasn’t anything here for him, and for damn sure not anyone.
As he assured himself of that, Nolie came around the counter, traded her roller for a brush, then knelt where the counter butted against the wall. With her lower lip caught between her teeth, she painstakingly painted a thin strip of blue along the edge of the cabinet, taking twice as long as he would have, but getting just as clean a line. A strand of hair that had worked loose from her ponytail brushed her cheek, and she absently wiped it away, leaving a thin smear of blue behind. The hair fell again, and she blew it, making it flutter before it settled once more against her cheek. It looked soft and silky, and when she was outside and the sunlight hit it, it gleamed a rich coppery hue and tempted him to touch it. To see for himself if it was really that soft. To feel the heat it absorbed from and reflected back to the sun. To smell the erotic, womanly scent it gave off.
Chase gradually became aware that his fingers were cramping, and looked down to see that he was gripping the brush as if it were a lifeline. If he were a different man, or even just a different kind of man, he would move down the ladder, cross to her, tangle his fingers into her hair, and tilt her mouth up to his. And then he would—
But he wasn’t a different man. He knew right from wrong, good from bad, harmless from dangerous, and at this point in his life, Nolie Harper was definitely dangerous.
Or was it him?
“Is Chase your first name or last?” she asked, completely unaware of the path his thoughts had taken.
“First.” When he realized what he’d done—answered a personal question—he turned the subject back to her. “What kind of name is Nolie?”
“It’s my name.”
“Uh-huh. Your parents actually named you Nolie—on your birth certificate and all? Your driver’s license and marriage license say Nolie?”
A tinge of pink spread across her cheeks. “Not exactly.”
“So what is Nolie a nickname for?”
She rolled paint on the cabinets in aW pattern, then began filling in. “Did I tell you my father was a farmer, too?”
“No.”
“Our house was smack dab in the middle of his land. There was a tiny yard, my mother’s garden, and acres and acres of flat land planted in corn, cotton, and soybeans. The only trees were the ones my parents planted around the house—a maple, some crape myrtles, two peach trees, and Mom’s pride and joy, a huge, beautiful, old”—she glanced at him over her shoulder, saw he was watching, then rolled her eyes—“magnolia tree.”
It took a moment for her meaning to sink in. When it did, Chase laughed out loud for the first time in more years than he could remember. “ Magnolia Harper? You’re named for a magnolia tree?”
Her gaze narrowed threateningly. “Which is just between you and me, right?”
“Jeez. And I grew up hating being named after my grandfather. Beats the hell out of a tree.”
She continued to scowl at him, unable or unwilling to share his humor. Of course, it was easy for him, since it wasn’t his name.
“It could have been worse,” he said at last.
“How is that?”
He thought of the other trees she’d listed—maple, crape myrtles, and peach—and innocently pointed out, “They could have named you Myrtle.”
NOLIE SPENT THE NEXT FEW DAYS PAINTING, ORGANIZING, accepting deliveries for the store, and, in what little spare time she managed, looking for day care for Micahlyn. Though she enjoyed her daughter’s company, she knew too well that the child needed to be around other children. She found exactly what she was looking for—or so she hoped—in Angel Wings Day Care. It was located one street over from Main, on a block that was an old and comfortable mix of storefronts and residences.
Angel Wings occupied an old Victorian that was decorated with enough flourishes and frills for five such houses, and painted in soft colors—violet, blue, rust, and mossy green. The wood sign identifying it stood at the edge of the brick walk that led to the porch and was cut out in the shape of an angel, head bowed, wings extended.
That Thursday morning would begin Micahlyn’s first full day at the center. She eyed everything—the house, the toys and classrooms inside, the teachers, and the other kids—with suspicion. Clutching Nolie’s hand, she followed her mother, who was following one of the teachers, down a broad hallway, past a kitchen where fresh cookies were baking, and out the back door to the fenced-in yard where the children in her age group were playing.
“Hey, kids,” the teacher called from the top of the step. “Come and meet our new student. This is Micahlyn Harper, and her mother, Nolie Harper.”
Eight or ten children gathered at the foot of the stairs. Nolie watched Micahlyn watch them watch her, and her fingers tightened fractionally around Micahlyn’s hand. About three-fourths of the kids murmured “hello,” and in response, Micahlyn pushed her glasses back up on her nose, then gave Nolie an accusing look. “If we were home where we belong, I wouldn’t have to go to day care.”
Nolie was on the verge of offering to forget the idea, when a familiar face swept in, bending to hug her daughter.
“Why, you don’t have to come here, Martha Lyn,” Gloria said cheerfully. “You get to. There’s a difference, you know. Do you like to paint and play with modeling clay and bake cookies for a snack?”
Micahlyn nodded, and her glasses slipped.
“And wouldn’t you rather play on this wonderful playground than sit in a stinky feed store with nothing to do?”
What a coincidence, Nolie thought as Micahlyn nodded again, that Gloria just happened to pick up on her child’s most insistent complaint.
Gloria leaned close and lowered her voice. “Going to the feed store is work, you know. Staying here is play. Wouldn’t you rather stay here and play all day with me and the other kids than go to work?”
That coaxed one more nod out of Micahlyn, who finally let go of Nolie’s hand and took a few steps toward the yard. The teacher took her hand and introduced her to each of the kids while Gloria looked on, beaming. “You made a good choice.”
“I didn’t know you worked here,” Nolie said, then felt foolish. As she’d told Chase, she knew so little about Gloria and her friend as to qualify as nothing.
“Angel Wings. What better place for someone like me to work? I mean, for someone who loves kids and all.” Then Gloria squeezed her hand reassuringly. “You can go on about your business now. Michael Lyn will be fine.”
Already Micahlyn was sitting primly at a child-sized picnic table with three other little girls and a selection of dolls. As if she felt her mot
her’s gaze, she looked up and smiled when Nolie blew her a kiss, then waved. Then Nolie glanced at Gloria. “I’m sure she will. I’ll be back later.”
When she reached the sidewalk in front of the Victorian, Nolie stood there a moment. Leaving without Micahlyn seemed to make everything official. Her child was in day care, and she was off to work. She was an honest-to-goodness real single working mother.
Who didn’t have anything demanding her time or attention for at least a few hours. Turning away from her car, she strolled to the end of the block, turned the corner, and would have walked on if an outfit in the shop window hadn’t caught her eye. The sundress was child-sized, sunflowers on a dark green background, with a matching sash tied around the crown of a floppy straw hat. It was adorable, and that particular shade of green was most flattering for Micahlyn’s pale complexion. After hesitating only a moment, she went inside the store and headed for the rack of matching dresses.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Nolie glanced at the woman who’d approached, then did a double take. It was Leanne Wilson, whom she’d met at Alex Thomas’s office.
“Fancy meeting me here,” Leanne said with a laugh. “I should have told you when we met to come by. I’ve got great clothes for little girls.”
“I see.” Nolie gave the outfits another wistful look, then sighed. “But the only way I could get that hat on Micahlyn would be to hog-tie her. She thinks life has already been unfair in giving her red hair, freckles, and glasses.”
“Someday she’ll appreciate it—the red hair, at least. And she can always get contacts. As for the freckles . . .”
“She’ll just have to learn to live with them,” Nolie said ruefully. It was a lesson she’d had to learn herself, and she still occasionally wished for a creamily perfect complexion.
“I hope you’re getting settled in. I don’t think I’m going out too far on a limb to say you’ll love it here. I never met anyone who didn’t . . . well, except for my brother, and that’s a whole other story. Where’s Micahlyn?”
“I just dropped her off at Angel Wings. It’s her first time ever in day care.”
“She’ll survive—and so will you. I used to bring my son, Danny, to work with me every day. When he turned four, I put him in day care, and when I picked him up that first day, he had two black eyes. One four-year-old’s lesson to my only-child-who-always-got-what-he-wanted on the virtues of sharing.”
“You must have felt awful.”
Leanne laughed. “Oh, yeah, I was eaten up with guilt— How could I have let him get so spoiled? Why had I made him go there? Why wasn’t I a better mother? He, on the other hand, thought having two shiners was pretty cool.”
“I probably would have thought so, too, when I was a kid.”
The shop packed an amazing amount of goods in a relatively small space, and Nolie wandered around, looking at it all. There were racks of clothing ranging from the casual to the very-special-event, cribs and cradles, playpens and infant seats and high chairs, lamps, framed pictures, and miniature sculptures. “You’ve got some great stuff.”
“If you’re going to go into a retail business, you might as well sell great stuff.”
Nolie wrinkled her nose. “Not me. I get to sell feed and insecticide and tomato cages.”
“But you still get to be your own boss. That counts for a lot.”
It certainly did. And she owed it to Hiram and that stinky, boring feed store. She would learn to love the place for nothing more than that.
“Would you like a cup of tea? I just brewed a pot of Raspberry-Lemon Delight.”
The closest Nolie ever got to drinking hot tea was when the ice in her glass melted. But she accepted because Leanne was friendly enough to offer, and she had no place else to go, and it was nice to talk with a woman her age.
She followed Leanne to the back corner of the shop, where a wicker sofa and love seat shared space with an old-fashioned wicker serving cart. While Leanne poured the tea, Nolie took a seat on the sofa and looked out the window at the house across the street. “What a beautiful place.”
“It’s got nothing on the guy who lives there.” Leanne served them both, then curled up on the love seat. “He just moved here from California. You should see him. He gives new meaning to the word handsome.”
“Is he single?”
“Yeah, but he’s got a twelve-year-old son.” Then she laughed. “But as a single mother, I don’t think I’m allowed to complain about a single father.”
“You’re divorced?”
“Never married. When I told Danny’s father I was pregnant, he disappeared like that.” Leanne snapped her fingers. “To borrow a phrase from Melina Knight, he was a real rat bastard. Which comes as no surprise to everyone who knows me. My taste in men is so lousy as to be legendary.” After a moment’s silence, she cautiously said, “I heard your husband is dead.”
Nolie nodded.
“That’s tough. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s been a while.” A blush warmed Nolie’s cheeks as she looked out the window again. “Jeez, that sounds awful. It was a horrible thing and I wish to God it had never happened and I still miss him so much, but . . . it’s been three years. It’s time to—to—”
“Get on with your life?” Leanne supplied, her voice soft with sympathy. “You’re still awfully young. You can’t mourn forever. No one could expect that.”
“My in-laws could—and do. That’s part of the reason I’m here in Bethlehem while they’re in Arkansas.” With a wry smile, Nolie shifted the subject. “Does your family live here?”
“Oh, yeah. As long as there’s been a Bethlehem, there have been Wilsons and Montgomerys—my mom’s family— living in it.” Leanne’s gaze drifted past Nolie to the window, and a smile warmed her face. “Look, there’s Mr. Tall, Blond, and Handsome.”
Nolie looked across the street as a man came down the steps of the old house. He wore navy trousers with a light blue polo shirt, and he was everything Leanne had said— probably a few inches over six feet, as blond and tanned as any California surfer boy, and handsome. He knew it, too, if his self-assurance was anything to judge by.
“Not bad for a neighbor, huh?” Leanne teased.
“Not bad.” But not as appealing to look at as her neighbor.
The blond crossed the street and rounded the corner. An instant later, the bell over the door dinged. Nolie caught Leanne smoothing her hand over her hair and smiled slyly. “I think I’ll leave you to take care of your customer.”
“Maybe we could get together for dinner some evening—you and your daughter, me and my son.”
“I’d like that.”
As Nolie approached the man, waiting near the cash register, he smiled at her in a way guaranteed to make any woman the least bit susceptible to male charm go weak. Fortunately, she wasn’t particularly susceptible, since she’d learned by the time she was twelve that she could never compete with most males’ ideas of the perfect woman.
Though a smile like that from Chase . . . that might make her forget every lesson she’d ever learned.
Chapter Six
“PRETTY WOMAN,” COLE SAID AFTER NOLIE HAD left, “if you don’t mind the red hair.”
“According to surveys, most men think red-heads are sexy.” Leanne stepped behind the counter as if she had something to do there but wound up resting her hands on the faux stone surface. “I was a redhead once, and I was pretty darn sexy.”
“But that had nothing to do with the color of your hair and everything to do with the woman you are.” He came to the counter, too, leaning his elbows on the higher of two shelves. “I was just on my way to the office and thought I’d see if the prettiest woman in town will have lunch with me.”
He was a sweet-talker, just like every man who’d ever broken her heart. Leanne realized that, but she was still regretful she had to turn him down. “I don’t go out for lunch. My part-time help doesn’t come in until school’s out, so I eat here.”
“Ok
ay. I’ll provide the meal, and you’ll provide the company. What time?”
She should tell him no. Hadn’t she sworn off men just last fall when the latest in a line of disappointments had turned out to be married with children? Hadn’t she decided the heartbreak was over, right then and there? No more men, no more charmers, no more picking up the pieces.
But did she follow her own advice? Oh, no. That would be too smart. Never let it be said that Leanne Wilson ever did the smart thing when it came to men. “Whatever time is best for you.”
His smile was even brighter and more pleased than before, as if he’d feared she would refuse. “Great. Is there anything I should know about your likes and dislikes?”
“No. I’m pretty easy to please.”
He held her gaze for a long, heavy moment, then the smile became intimate and his voice turned husky. “Good. Because I aim to please.” He touched his hand to hers—a casual brush if ever she’d felt one, but somehow it made her skin warm a few degrees and tingle. “I’ll see you at lunchtime.”
Without waiting for a response, he strode back down the main aisle to the door. After it closed behind him, she murmured, “Sure.” Then her mouth tightened in a grimace. She was not looking for romance, or sex, or even male friendship. She’d proven repeatedly that she was a loser at love—hell, she didn’t even do too well at the game of lust. She was perfectly happy with Danny, the shop, and her family and friends. She didn’t need a man. Especially one as handsome and charming as Cole Jackson.
But it was just lunch. Nothing intimate or disastrous— intimacy was disastrous, in her experience—could come of that, could it?
Maybe not for most people. But if anyone could turn one lunch into major trouble, it was Leanne—or, rather, the men she was attracted to.
But that was before she’d decided she didn’t need a man. Lunch with Cole Jackson? Nothing to it. Piece of cake. She would be fine.
Cabin Fever Page 11
