Handyman Special

by Pamela Browning

  "Well," she replied ruefully, "so are you. I was counting on Kalmia Hill for a major part of my income this year. Now I'll have to find another property to restore."

  "So I've taken away your livelihood?"

  Sage nodded. There was no point in pitying herself, so she tried to sound matter-of-fact. "I'm afraid so. Part of it, anyway."

  "Why can't you buy the place and I'll rent it from you? You can work on the house while I'm living there." He was watching her carefully and intensely. He spoke easily, as though what he was offering wasn't particularly important.

  She recognized the generosity of his idea, although it hardly seemed possible. "You'd do that?"

  "Could you work on the house while I'm living there?"

  Sage thought about it. It was a big house, ten thousand square feet. Surely she could work around him. "There'd be hammering and the noise of power tools. A lot of dust raised. I don't know, Adam. I'm not sure it's a workable solution." She leaned back and traced a finger around the rim of her teacup, trying to think. Maybe, just maybe.

  "I'm going to be at the plant most of the time. I'll be working long hours. I wouldn't mind moving from one floor of the house to another if the dust and dirt bothered me. Come on, Sage. I think we can work it out. A good lawyer is what we need."

  "Mrs. Purdy's nephew is a lawyer. William Brinson. He lives in Columbia."

  "We'll talk to him. Agreed?"

  He looked so convinced, so hopeful, that she felt infused with new optimism. She grinned at him across the table, her aching sinuses almost forgotten. She was so accustomed to doing everything on her own that it seemed odd for someone to be taking her side and offering help. His idea might work. It just might.

  "Okay, Adam, I'll agree. Do you want to talk to Bill tonight?"

  Adam glanced at his watch. It was a Piaget. "Is Bill on good terms with his aunt?"

  "Oh, very. She practically brought him up. He lived with her at Kalmia Hill when he was a kid. I have his office phone number because Mrs. Purdy said he'd handle the closing." She consulted her phone contact list. "Here it is." She handed Adam her phone.

  Adam dialed, but the call didn't go through.

  "This is a dead zone," said the server when she stopped by to replenish Sage's hot water. "Cell phones work better in the parking lot." She angled her head toward a back door.

  "I'll use my phone. Be right back," Adam said before rising from the table.

  Sage, watching him head for the door, drained her cup and stared at the fresh ferns and the lemon-yellow chrysanthemum in the cut-glass vase on the table, musing over the energy force that was Adam Hracek.

  He certainly was a take-charge type. She wondered if he was just a big talker or if he could actually follow up with results. In the case of Mrs. Purdy and the problem with Kalmia Hill, she'd soon find out.

  When Adam returned, he wore a confident smile. "Bill Brinson was shocked that his aunt could have agreed to sell the house to you and also signed a year's lease on Kalmia Hill with me. He said she's getting progressively more forgetful these days, but he hadn't realized she'd do something like this."

  "I didn't either," Sage said ruefully.

  "Bill wants her to sell the house. A white elephant, he called it. If he can work it out with her, you'll be able to buy Kalmia Hill, and I'll lease it from you. It'll be our understanding that you're free to do the work while I'm living there." Dark eyes sparkled at her from across the table. It was all she could do not to be pulled down into their glowing black depths.

  "He'll talk to his aunt tonight and call you in the morning. Is that all right with you, Sage?"

  "Of course it is. Adam, you're amazing," Sage said, shaking her head. "I'm grateful for what you've done. Kalmia Hill is special to me." She was reluctant to tell him exactly how special it was, how the house and her remodeling of it would somehow prove to her once and for all that she'd outgrown and outstripped her former husband. With the finishing of the Kalmia Hill project, Sage would finally feel like her own woman, a grown woman, a capable woman. All the things she hadn't been with Gary.

  "Special in what way?" Adam's eyes remained on her face, his attention concentrated on her.

  "If I can handle the Kalmia Hill project, I should be able to handle anything."

  He grinned at her meaningfully. "I don't have any doubt about that," he said.

  She felt self-conscious under his scrutiny. "Since we're not driving on to Columbia tonight, we might as well head back to Willoree." She started to slide across the seat of the booth, but his eyes locked with hers.

  "Let's stay for dinner," he said impulsively. Suddenly he didn't want this time with her to be over.

  "Dinner? But my family expects me home for dinner."

  "You live with your family?" His glance flew to her third finger, left hand, to reassure himself that there was no ring of any kind.

  She nodded, caught off guard by his obvious interest in whether or not she wore a wedding ring.

  "Call home and tell them you're eating dinner with me," he said, and his voice held a compelling note. He turned to the waitress, who had ventured out of the kitchen at last. A few customers had come in and were waiting to be seated. "Dinner menus, please," he said.

  "Adam, I never said I was going to eat dinner with you," Sage said.

  He lifted his eyebrows. "You never said you wouldn't," he pointed out.

  "You didn't give me much of a chance." Surely she'd be able to hold her own with this benevolent dictator if she felt better. It wasn't exactly that she objected to his imposing his will on her. He did it so nicely, in such a mannerly and thoughtful way, that she scarcely noticed it.

  "I'll call home and tell them not to wait dinner," she said. "Time for a visit to the parking lot." She pushed her chair out.

  "Shall I order for you?" he asked. The server brought menus and lit the candle on their table. It flared to illuminate his features.

  Sage hadn't been the main focus of any man for what seemed like a long time, and the most she could manage was "I'll order for myself when I get back." She felt his gaze on her back as she traversed the room.

  When she got outside, she realized that she still felt disoriented. Part of it was due to the medicine, but certainly some portion of her confusion had to do with Adam's effect on her. Why did she feel as though she had no will of her own when she was near him, as though he could convince her to do anything he wanted?

  He was mild-mannered enough, surely. He wasn't at all intimidating, and she didn't sense that he was trying to come on to her too strongly the way men often did. She conceded his sexual attraction, but he was one of the few men she'd ever met who was fully aware of that attraction yet didn't try to bludgeon a woman over the head with it. Adam Hracek gave her the feeling that he was with her, not against her, and that in itself was a strange quality in a handsome and very virile man. Strange, but nice.

  She leaned against a convenient fence post as she dialed. Lights in nearby houses were winking on, much as they were doing in her own home. Gregory answered her call on the first ring.

  "Greg, please tell Irma that I won't be home for dinner," Sage said.

  "Why?" he wanted to know, in typical nine-year-old-boy fashion. She pictured him in his scout uniform, his dark hair tousled. He'd gained weight since he'd come to live with them, and now he filled out his uniform better than he had when he was living with his last foster family. He was outgoing now and seemed to benefit from the general camaraderie of family life.

  "Don't be so nosy, Greg," she said affectionately. "Just tell her. Has Hayley come in from that pep rally?"

  "Yeah. Want to talk with her?"

  "No, no, I'll catch up with her later." Sixteen-year-old Hayley would be eager to tell her all about the rally, and it could wait.

  "You know what happened at school today?" Gregory was snickering.

  "I can't imagine," said Sage. Something was always happening at school, especially since Gregory had become best buddies with the town terror,
Macon Burfield.

  "During lunch, Macon put banana pudding in Zoey Strayhorn's coat pocket. And when she stuck her hand in her pocket, she screeched."

  "I'll bet she did," said Sage. Zoey was often the butt of Gregory's and Macon's jokes. Fortunately Zoey could give as good as she got, and with some glee she'd managed to tie Greg and Macon's shoelaces together under the cafeteria table last week.

  Sage's voice became softer, gentler. "What's Joy doing?"

  "She's watching TV with Poppy."

  That was good. Whenever Sage was away from her only child, she always felt a niggling bit of unrest. She'd often wondered if other mothers were the same way, or if her worry was the result of Joy's being a special needs child and therefore the object of more concern.

  "Is everything okay?" She couldn't stop herself from asking.

  "Well..." Gregory sounded hesitant.

  "What? Is anything wrong?"

  "Joy's been sneezing and her eyes are real red around the edges." Bless his heart, Gregory knew how much she worried. He remembered the scare over Joy last year when they'd almost lost her.

  "Does she have a fever? A cough?"

  "I don't know. Want me to go get Poppy? He can tell you."

  Sage thought of Poppy, eighty years old and so patient with Joy. They'd be sitting cozily on the couch, the elderly man and her four-year-old daughter, perhaps watching "Sesame Street" as they often did at this hour while Irma cooked the evening meal. Sage knew she could be home before the program was over.

  "No," she said hastily. "I've changed my mind. I'll be there for dinner after all."

  After hanging up, she leaned dizzily against the fence for a moment. Her eyelids felt as though she were wearing them inside out, and her joints ached. But she summoned the strength to hurry back into the restaurant.

  "I've got to get home," she said rapidly to Adam. She didn't bother to sit down, and she could tell by the way he looked up at her in concern that she had conveyed her alarm.

  "Something wrong?" he said, his eyebrows raised.

  "My daughter," she replied urgently. "She's not feeling well. Really, I must go. Really." She added the extra "really" just in case she hadn't managed to get the point across.

  Adam stood. She was glad he didn't ask questions. "Come on, then," he said, sliding a proprietary arm around her shoulders. He quite easily accepted her need to go home, and he went along with it without a hassle.

  And then they were in the Lamborghini, whirling through the early evening darkness, Sage wrapping her arms around herself and shivering in the damp chill of night.

  "How old is your daughter?" Adam asked conversationally, trying to get a grip on what had happened to make Sage so nervous. Noticing her shivers, he flipped on the car's heater. Warm air wafted through the car, alleviating Sage's chills but not her apprehension.

  "Joy is four," she said, leaning her head back against the headrest and willing the sleek car to go even faster. She glanced at her watch, forgetting that it didn't work.

  "Is she your only child?"

  "Joy? Um, yes." She couldn't help being distracted. She knew Adam was only showing kindly interest, but it was hard to concentrate on his questions. All she could think of was getting home, and soon.

  "So you and Joy live with your parents?"

  She hesitated. Irma and Ralph were not her birth parents, but they had served her in the capacity of parents for the past three years. For all intents and purposes, they were her parents, just as Gregory and Hayley were her brother and sister and as Poppy was her grandfather. None of them related by blood, but all of them related by love. How to explain this to Adam? There wasn't any way, not the way she felt now, with her head aching so excruciatingly. So she simply answered, "Yes," and stared at the white line whipping past on the edge of the highway.

  Sage's physical symptoms had been intensified by her concern. Oh, what if Joy had caught her cold? She had tried so hard to minimize the risk, had even given up the nightly tucking-in ritual, had stayed as far away from Joy as it was possible for a loving mother to stay. Sage had become almost paranoid about cold germs after Joy's bout with pneumonia last year. But what could she do? She couldn't make life perfect for Joy, after all.

  Once upon a time she had thought she could. But that was in the beginning, before she had accepted Joy's Down syndrome. Three days after Joy's birth, Sage had looked down at the baby she held in her arms, the baby she and Gary had wanted so much. Joy had round, rosy cheeks and pale red-gold hair like peach fuzz, and she was utterly beautiful and, to Sage's eyes, perfectly normal. Sage honestly could not see anything wrong with Joy. She couldn't believe that Joy was a Down syndrome baby. She wouldn't believe it.

  "If it's her eyelids that are worrying you," she had told Dr. Hargraves in a falsely bright tone, "Gary's eyelids are a little heavy. She just takes after him, that's all." She couldn't imagine a child of hers having the tiny tip-tilted thick-lidded eyes and distinctive features of a Down syndrome child. She had pulled her own amber eyes away from that dear little face and stared defiantly at Dr. Hargraves.

  With a show of deliberate calm, the doctor had lifted Joy from her arms and gently placed her in the bassinet beside Sage's hospital bed. Then he clasped Sage's hands in his and spoke earnestly and with compassion.

  "Sage, normal children have forty-six chromosomes arranged in twenty-three pairs. Joy, like all Down syndrome babies, has forty-seven chromosomes. We've completed the tests. She'll be mentally challenged—we don't know yet how much. I'm very sorry, but she won't be like other children. She'll need all the love and understanding you can give her."

  "No," Sage had screamed. "No! She'll be all right! I know she will! I know she will!"

  She would make it all right for Joy. She could fix anything, couldn't she? Falling plaster and leaky faucets and machinery that was reluctant to run? And when Dr. Hargraves firmly made her face the reality that Joy was not like plaster or faucets or machinery, that she could never make Joy perfect, she had become so hysterical that Dr. Hargraves had sent Joy to the hospital nursery and injected Sage with a sedative.

  After learning about Joy, Sage had known that nothing could ever upset her to that extent or rock her world on its foundations again. Even when Gary left her less than a year later, his departure hadn't been that terrible, earth-shattering, mind-blowing agony that she'd gone through when she'd found out that Joy was not the perfect baby she'd expected to have. Was not perfect, nor ever would be. Nothing, nothing could ever hurt her that much again.

  Except, of course, the loss of Joy herself.

  "How are you feeling?"

  Adam's words penetrated the wall of worry. He reached over and rested his hand briefly on top of her hands, which were tightly clenched and resting on one knee. Even through the pain of her own headache and the anxiety over Joy, she felt the warmth of his concern. She allowed herself to feel a shred of puzzlement. Why did he care, this sophisticated, footloose-and-fancy-free bachelor who went around shaping the world to his wishes?

  "I'm feeling—" But why lie? She started over again, glad that he had removed his sinewy hand from hers and had placed it back on the leather-covered steering wheel where it belonged. His caring made her feel protected for the first time in what seemed like forever. It made her want to open up, something she found hard to do with people she didn't know very well. "Actually, I don't feel well at all," she admitted. "My head hurts and my joints ache. I think that accident shook me up more than I believed at the time."

  Adam glanced over at her, taking in her pale features and the fine translucence of her skin. With that coloring, all amber, it was hard to tell, but he thought the bright spots of color high on her cheeks looked out of place, and her eyes seemed glassy. Of course, she was on edge, visibly anxious about her daughter. That seemed a bit unnatural in itself. Still, he believed that she should go home and straight to bed.

  The thought of Sage in bed conjured up a vision of himself there beside her, and he had to mentally chastise hims
elf about that. Hold it, Hracek, he cautioned himself. She's not the kind of woman who tumbles carelessly into bed with strangers. He'd figured that out by the way she always drew instinctively away from his touch. He'd better take care not to overstep the bounds of propriety.

  He reached over and lightly touched the back of his hand to her forehead. Her soft skin felt hot and dry to his touch, and interestingly, this time she didn't pull away or object.

  "I think you have a bit of a fever," he told her. "Are you sure you're over that cold?"

  "I should be. It's been a week since I came down with the symptoms."

  By this time they were driving down the wide main street of Willoree. The street was almost deserted at six in the evening. Willoree was the kind of town where they rolled up the sidewalks at dusk. The biggest excitement was walking down to the intersection of Main Street and Highway 605 and watching the town's only traffic light change colors. A year here would be a quiet year, and Adam wondered if he could count on Sage McKenna to liven it up.

  "You'll have to tell me where you live," Adam reminded her.

  "Turn here on Calhoun Street," she directed. "Then take a right. Third house on the left."

  Fallen leaves crunched beneath the Lamborghini's wheels as Adam pulled the car into the indicated driveway. The house was shaded by a giant sycamore tree, its remaining leaves etching a delicate tracery against the dark sky. The tree had lost about half its foliage, judged Adam. Halfway to winter in Willoree, South Carolina. All at once he knew he wanted Sage to warm that winter for him.

  "I'll walk you to the door," he said as she moved to open the car door.

  "There's no need," she remonstrated, getting out.

  "You look a bit shaky," he told her. He walked around the front of the car and grasped Sage firmly by the elbow. He looked up at the house. "Nice digs," he told her.

  It was a big white-frame, two-story Victorian, complete with a wide front porch and an abundance of gingerbread trim. Inside, someone practiced the piano, haltingly picking out something by Dvorak, with a few false starts and a couple of wrong notes. Lights glowed in every window, and as they stepped onto the porch, footsteps came running down the stairs just inside the front door, ending in a thump as the unseen person jumped down the last steps. Sage eased the door open. A boy stood there. The little brother, no doubt.