Holding Her Hero

by Amy Lamont

  “That’s okay, Mitch. I’ll let Grandma know you’ll have to make it another time.” She hoped her disappointment didn’t come through in her voice. Time to put an end to this. “I have to run. Thanks for calling.”

  Mandy replaced the phone in its cradle. A moment later she pulled the business cards out of her pocket, squared her shoulders and picked the phone up again.

  * * *

  Mitch stared, eyes narrowed, at the phone in his hand. He’d planned on asking Mandy out for next weekend. He’d been sure when he left Miss Abigail’s on Saturday that Mandy was feeling the same attraction he was. Had he misread her? She seemed in a hurry to get off the phone just now.

  “What’s up, dude? You ready to head out?”

  Shit. Mitch’s head fell forward at the sound of Cal’s voice. The other man had been taking far too much pleasure in Mitch’s angst over the whole Mandy thing.

  “I’m all set,” Mitch said, turning warily toward his friend. Despite the blank face Mitch and most of his men perfected early on, Cal always seemed to know what he was feeling.

  “What’s going on, man?” Cal’s eyes narrowed on Mitch.

  “Nothing.” Mitch met his stare with a flat gaze.

  Cal stared at Mitch. “It’s definitely not nothing.”

  Mitch shook his head. He knew it was too much to hope that Cal would just drop it. “It really is nothing.”

  “My ass.” Hands on hips, Cal gave him one more hard look before a grin twisted his lips. “It’s the woman, isn’t it? She shoot you down?”

  “No, she didn’t shoot me down.” But Mitch knew the answer was too quick.

  “She didn’t shoot you down....” Now Cal was laughing outright. “She blew you off, didn’t she?”

  Mitch rubbed the spot between his brows with two fingers. Why did he even bother trying to hide things from Cal? “I called over there to let them know I wouldn’t be there tomorrow. Before I got two words out, Mandy hung up.” He shook his head. “Shit, I don’t even know what happened.”

  Cal’s shoulders shook. “Man, I never thought I’d see the day.” He gave Mitch a hard clap on the shoulder. “Usually it’s you running in the opposite direction from some woman. This one, you spend the whole week mooning over and she doesn’t give you the time of day.”

  “Laugh it up,” Mitch said. “Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe I should just let it drop.”

  “Oh, here we go again. Call her back, man. I can’t live through another week of this shit.”

  Mitch shook his head. “I just don’t want to do anything that would hurt Miss Abigail or make her feel like I betrayed her trust. Maybe this is a sign that I should just let it go.”

  “It’s a sign all right. A sign of the apocalypse the day you start looking for signs from the universe and letting a woman mess with your head.”

  Mitch couldn’t argue. It was a good reminder. Miss Abigail’s granddaughter or not, it wasn’t smart to let Mandy get under his skin. He straightened his shoulders and decided it was time to put thoughts of Mandy behind him. He gave Cal a slap on the back hard enough to make the other man stumble forward a step before catching himself.

  Now it was Mitch’s turn to grin. “Move out, Marine.”

  4

  Mandy closed the door behind the plumber with a sigh of satisfaction. She’d called the first two Hal recommended. Both sounded competent but had waiting lists that meant it would be several weeks for them to get to her.

  “We can come immediately if it’s an emergency,” the first plumber on her list told her, “but we charge time and a half for the labor.”

  The second plumber had said almost the same thing. With trepidation Mandy had dialed the third plumber. Hal didn’t know him personally, and had heard mixed reviews of his work. But, when Mandy spoke to him, he sounded polite and he said he could be there the next day.

  Okay, so he’d shown up an hour or so later than he said he would. Plumbers had to deal with a lot of emergencies. And maybe he wasn’t as fun to look at as Mitch was.

  Mandy barely held back a snort at that thought. Talk about an understatement. Honestly, was there a special store that sold pants for plumbers? Nobody needed to show off that much skin on that particular part of his anatomy. Although if Mitch wanted to show off the same view....

  Stop it. Mandy took a deep breath and tried to shake her thoughts from Mitch. The important thing to remember was he wouldn’t have to come fix the kitchen pipes now.

  Maybe she should call him so he didn’t go to the trouble of buying the elbow pipe? She chewed her lip for a minute before going to the phone in the hallway. She scrolled through the caller ID to find his number.

  He answered on the first ring.

  “Mitch?”

  A short pause followed. “Mandy? Is everything all right? Miss Abigail?”

  She felt a twinge of guilt. He sounded so worried, so she jumped in to reassure him. “She’s fine. That’s not why I’m calling.”

  A loud rush of breath came through the phone. Mandy held the receiver a little tighter as goose bumps broke over her skin.

  “Thank God. When I saw your grandmother’s number and then heard your voice....”

  Mandy’s heart jumped a little at yet another sign Mitch felt genuine affection for her grandmother. Her teeth toyed with her bottom lip. Had she done the right thing in calling in a plumber?

  She squared her shoulders. The plumber had come and gone. It was one less thing on her list. Mandy refused to second-guess herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to let you know I had a plumber come in and fix the kitchen sink so you won’t need to pick up the pipe.”

  Silence rang out over the line for several beats. “Was there a problem? Did the pipes start leaking again?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. I just happened to talk to the owner of the hardware store the other day, and she gave me the names of a few plumbers.” Mandy left out the part about asking for recommendations, not quite sure why she didn’t want to reveal that to him. “I figured with everything to do around here, one less item on the to-do list could only be a good thing.”

  “Okay.” Mitch’s tone was flat. Again silence reigned until he finally put an end to the awkwardness. “I guess I’ll see you Sunday. Since the kitchen is taken care of, I’ll start work on the front porch.”

  “Oh, okay,” Mandy squeaked out. She shouldn’t be surprised. Mitch knew how much work needed to be done, but part of her thought he might not come out this weekend if he knew the job he’d planned was taken care of. “Well, I…I guess I’ll see you then.”

  Mandy heard the distinct click from the other end of the line, but stood clutching the phone. Why did she feel as if she’d done something wrong? She was only trying to do what was best for everyone. But she couldn’t quite silence the little niggling voice in the back of her mind. Best for everyone or best for you?

  * * *

  Mandy sat up, startled from her sound sleep. She blinked blearily, searching the room. Growing up the way she had, she was used to waking up in new places, but usually her mom had filled her room with familiar things on the first day so she would feel at home no matter what. But the pink chenille bedspread and white eyelet curtains weren’t ringing any bells.

  A quick inventory of her surroundings cleared the cobwebs of sleep. She was in her grandmother’s guest room. A glance at the digital clock on the bedside table told her it was just past midnight. She’d been asleep for a little over an hour. What had pulled her from sleep?

  Listening carefully, a strange sound hit her ears. What was that? It sounded like…a stream? A waterfall? Weird. She hopped out of bed to investigate, hoping whatever it was hadn’t woken her grandmother. A woman her age didn’t need to be jarred awake in the middle of the night.

  Pushing her feet into her pink, fuzzy slippers, Mandy made her way into the hall. The sound came from downstairs. She flipped the light over the stairway on and made her way down
to the kitchen.

  The noise was louder now, and definitely coming from the kitchen. But with only the light from the hallway, she couldn't pinpoint the cause. She fumbled on the wall for the switch and gasped as cold water saturated her slippers. She finally located the switch, and as light filled the kitchen, her hand flew to cover her mouth.

  There was an inch of water on the kitchen floor. Still more shot from under the sink. She looked around in panic, but her mind drew a complete blank. She had no idea what to do to stop the flood of water.

  “Phone,” she told herself. “Call the plumber.”

  Hurrying to the entryway, she wondered how much the plumber would charge for being called out in the middle of the night. If she could even get him to come out at this time. And how safe was it to have the man she’d only met once come into the house in the middle of the night? While he seemed only a little seedy in the light of day, the idea of having him here in the dead of night made her memory dwell on the details that made the plumber seem more menacing. Mandy wasn’t paranoid, but she’d been served a healthy dose of reality in the recent past. She was nothing if not realistic and careful. What if...?

  Before her last fear could fully form, she spotted the message board over the phone. Her grandmother had left a note pinned to the board. Call Mitch about dinner, she read.

  Call Mitch. He really was the last person on earth she wanted to ask for help. But he wasn’t a stranger, so there was a good chance he wouldn’t try to murder them in their beds. And he was obviously willing to help her grandmother so he wasn’t going to try to gouge them for the late night visit.

  Mandy sighed and stood another minute considering her best option. A loud pop came from below the sink and the waterfall got louder.

  Damn it! There was no choice to be made. Mandy picked up the phone and dialed his number.

  * * *

  “Here.”

  Mitch stopped putting his tools back in his toolbox and looked up. Mandy stood next to him, holding out a towel. He accepted it gratefully and did his best to mop the dripping water from his hair.

  He’d been sent on missions at all hours of day and night, so the phone ringing after midnight didn’t come as a huge surprise. What had surprised him was hearing Mandy’s voice on the other end of the line. He hadn’t been in bed long, and lying there with her soft voice in his ear made him think he was still asleep and dreaming.

  After her abrupt ending of their phone call the other day and her call earlier to tell him she’d hired a plumber, he’d gotten the picture—the attraction between them was all one-sided. She didn’t feel the same spark.

  He’d laughed at himself after she hung up this afternoon. All the soul searching he’d done about asking her out seemed to be a big waste of time. She was all business. So it was no wonder he hadn’t immediately realized she was really calling him.

  But her frantic tone had him jumping out of bed and into the jeans and T-shirt he’d recently discarded before running toward his car.

  It hadn’t taken him long to get the water turned off. The pipes would have to be replaced before Miss Abigail could use the kitchen sink again, but at least the water stopped rushing into the room. Together he and Mandy spent almost an hour pumping water out of the kitchen with a wet dry vac and mopping up the floor.

  “I can’t believe Grandma slept through all this,” Mandy said, shaking her head.

  Mitch’s gaze riveted on a long strand of dark, damp hair stuck to her cheek, and he fought the urge to reach out and push it off her face. Standing there in the pair of soft pink shorts and pale pink T-shirt she’d changed into after getting soaked, she looked like something straight from his fantasies. Damn sexy. And reminding himself she was Miss Abigail’s granddaughter wasn’t helping him forget just how kissable she looked. Tougher still to fight off those thoughts when he was so tired he could barely think straight.

  “Mitch?”

  He pulled himself from his mildly erotic musings and tried to focus on what she was saying.

  “Yeah, she’s gotten a little hard of hearing in the last year or so,” he agreed. He smiled affectionately and blew out a deep breath, grateful to have something to distract him from the thoughts he’d been entertaining about Miss Abigail’s granddaughter.

  “She has?”

  Mitch jerked his head up from his toolbox at her tone. His eyes narrowed as sadness invaded her dark eyes. She sat down hard in a kitchen chair, letting her own towel fall uselessly in her lap.

  “Nothing too bad.” He tried to reassure her. “Most of the time you don’t even notice. Just sometimes she has to crank up the television a little, and she can sleep through just about anything.”

  “Does she need a hearing aid?”

  “Nothing like that yet,” Mitch said, but Mandy’s eyes remained downcast, and her teeth were worrying her soft bottom lip. Obviously she wasn’t feeling very reassured.

  “Actually, one day I forgot she had gone in to take a nap and started running the table saw and hammering. I made enough noise to raise the dead. When I remembered Miss Abigail was sleeping, I stopped and went inside to make sure I hadn’t scared her. When I saw her lying there not disturbed in the least, my heart stopped for a second. I was about to shake her to see if I needed to call 911 when she let out a snore unlike anything I’ve ever heard. And I’ve lived in Marine barracks, so that’s saying something.”

  Mitch felt like he won the lottery when Mandy’s soft laughter danced across the kitchen.

  “I don’t think that has anything to do with being hard of hearing,” Mandy confided. “That’s a family trait.”

  “The snoring?” he asked in feigned shock. He was rewarded with another giggle from the woman across from him.

  “No, the sleeping. We all sleep like the dead. My dad said it was one of the hardest things to overcome when he joined the Army. He would sleep through any noise, and running on so little sleep in boot camp only made it worse.”

  “It’s a good thing he’s not a Marine. They wouldn’t let him get away with that sh...stuff.”

  The grin Mandy flashed his way let him know she caught his slip.

  “They didn’t let him get away with it in the Army either. He said two days of being dumped out of bed by a screaming drill sergeant and having to run extra miles in the blazing heat cured him of being a deep sleeper for good.” She leaned a little closer over the table and confided, “One of the many reasons I’m happy I never joined up. Sleeping in is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”

  Mitch fought to keep from groaning out loud when she spoke about her greatest pleasures while leaning over, allowing him a tempting view of her cleavage. Did the woman have any clue the effect she had on him?

  No, he decided as she jumped up and carried her wet towel into the laundry room. She had no idea the thoughts going through his head. And why should she? He’d practically accused her of elder abuse within a few hours of meeting her. She couldn’t have a clue about his attraction.

  * * *

  Mandy pulled a load of wet towels out of the washer and transferred them to the dryer. This was the first batch they’d used to clean up. She threw several more towels, including the one she’d used to dry her hair, into the washer and started it, happy to have an excuse to escape the kitchen for a few minutes.

  She’d been remarkably comfortable sitting at the kitchen table talking with Mitch. Considering how defensive she’d felt during their earlier conversations, she was surprised at how normal it felt to sit and tell him about her dad.

  Until she started noticing things.

  Like the way his eyes turned more blue than gray when he laughed. And how he seemed less hard than he had at first, with his dark hair sticking up in messy wet spikes. She noticed the small lines around his eyes that crinkled when he smiled.

  When she found herself wondering if those were laugh lines or lines formed from squinting into the sun, she knew she was in trouble. She didn’t pay attention to how other men’s eyes changed colors or
how they crinkled when they laughed. She hadn’t noticed anyone that way in three years.

  And she especially didn’t pay attention to a Marine’s anything. She may never find someone to share her life with, but if she did, it certainly wouldn’t be with a military man. Talk about a surefire road to heartbreak.

  “Need some help?”

  Mandy’s eyes slid closed for a brief second at the sound of Mitch’s voice behind her. She inhaled deeply before turning to face him.

  Big mistake. He stood with two well-muscled arms braced on the doorway, leaning slightly forward. A small smile tilted up the corners of his mouth. With his hair wet and his eyes warmer than she’d ever seen them, he was way too appealing. She licked her suddenly dry lips.

  “Um, no.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She cleared her throat once, twice, and then tried again. “I think everything’s under control here.”

  You know, aside from my raging hormones. Mandy couldn’t pull her gaze from his. His expression was so open and warm, unlike anything she’d seen from him before.

  Mitch dropped his arms from the doorway and took two steps forward. He placed a large hand on her upper arm. “Looks like everything is under control in the kitchen, too. You caught it in time to prevent any lasting damage.”

  She was sure he meant to be reassuring. But the moment his hand made contact, warmth slid over her skin, moving out from the spot where they were connected to spots much further south.

  This was not reassuring. This was not comforting. It was the opposite of comforting. Disconcerting. Disconcerting enough to make her pulse pick up its pace and her toes to curl inside her old sneakers.

  Her gaze traveled from his face down to where his hand kept them connected. How could such a simple, friendly gesture throw her so off balance? She moved her attention back to his face.