Hot in Hellcat Canyon

by Julie Anne Long

  “Oh, the ‘I just had great sex smile,’ ” Sherrie said knowingly.

  Glenn was glad he had his wife to finish his sentences, because that kind of sentence was never not going to embarrass him.

  “Britt was walking around like that all day, too,” she added. “Bumping into the things at the Misty Cat. Smiling so wide it was like she had a coat hanger in her mouth. Worried me a little, too.”

  “But then,” Glenn added triumphantly, “he asked about a restaurant with white tablecloths. And when I left he was smiling a completely different smile. Know what I mean?”

  Sherrie thought about this. “I think I know the one,” Sherrie said. “See it on you every day.”

  Glenn gave her that smile now. He was a lucky, lucky man.

  Sherrie gave that smile right back to him.

  He slung an arm around Sherrie and she leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed.

  “Sherrie Lynn, I’ll be surprised if Britt doesn’t come in some time this week and tell us he fixed her porch.”

  They were both old enough to know that hot sex was one thing, and it was all well and good. Fixing a porch was something else altogether.

  If Britt had a shift at the Misty Cat, J. T. figured he had just enough time to do the work before she got home.

  Problem was, he knew that Britt’s house was yellow and had a red mailbox, but that was about it.

  After a wrong turn or two, he was finally confident he’d found the place.

  Mostly because it was the place that looked the most like her.

  He pulled up outside it, and got out to take a look in the full sunlight.

  It was a dollhouse of a cottage: tiny, wood-­framed, painted pale yellow, set back from the road in a sheltering horseshoe of pines. A fruitless little white picket fence circled a little yard—­fruitless, since a determined deer could yawn and stretch and just step over it to eat flowers and crap on the small green lawn if it so chose. But the fence seemed right; the house would seem incomplete without it. Poppies and wild lavender and irises and other cheerful, colorful wildflowers on long stalks peeked in and out of the slats in disarray. A neatly trimmed little flagstone path led to the porch, which wrapped around the front of the house.

  That big French-­paned window would let in sunlight during the late afternoon, if he had to guess. And it would be shady and cool the rest of the time.

  The raised porch was railed in white and the center step was the one that sagged. He could replace the boards in a couple of hours, and he could do the same with the railing, too, provided there wasn’t any dry rot.

  And then he was positive it was Britt’s place, because, flanking the window on the deck, pressed up against the wall, was that rescued ficus, already looking happier. It cheered him. Oddly, he felt somewhat personally responsible for its health. Alongside it, on a tall metal baker’s rack, were what looked like other little plant patients: a tomato, he was pretty sure. Some basil. A poinsettia, probably a Christmas orphan. An African violet. A coleus, at least that’s what he thought it was called. Some others he couldn’t identify.

  He smelled varnish, too, and located the source: an old chair that had clearly been stripped and repainted and antiqued in shades of cream and white. A skillful, elegant job. Another chair was lined up next to it, battered wood, with a shredded cane back, but it had good lines, simple, elegant, well made.

  Rehabilitation seemed to be a theme up here on Britt’s porch.

  He smiled. This was kinda funny, given that the porch itself needed a little rehab.

  Her neighbor’s house was similar: a little bigger, minus the picket fence, painted a sweet pale blue. They must have kids, or maybe they hadn’t put their Halloween decorations away yet: a big old rag doll with little stick legs was slumped in the wicker chair on the porch.

  J. T. whistled as he pulled his toolbox out of his truck, then lifted the latch on the little gate and headed up the flagstone path to Britt’s house.

  Cha-­chunk.

  He froze.

  Because that’s what anyone with any sense would do at the sound of a shotgun being cocked.

  A Remington, if he had to guess. Like his first gun. Absolutely unmistakable sound.

  He turned his head very, very slowly.

  I’ll be damned.

  The rag doll on the porch next door and had come to life and was aiming the shotgun right at him.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  He dropped his toolbox and slowly raised his hands.

  “You a praying man, mister?” she asked.

  “Isn’t everyone when they’re staring down the business end of a shotgun?”

  To his surprise, she chuckled.

  They spent a moment in a silent stalemate while she studied him. Her white hair was scraped back into a neat chignon. Her eyes were brilliant blue, even if her face was like a pale crumpled tissue. Her arms were as wiry as her legs, and her dress, floral and cheerful, hung from her spare frame.

  Finally she spoke. “You’re a little too handsome . . .”

  “Thank you?”

  “. . . for a housebreaker.”

  “I’m not a housebreaker,” he said soothingly. “Just here to fix Britt’s porch.”

  She took this in, apparently deciding whether or not she thought it was true.

  “You’re a bit hairier than I prefer, though,” she assessed.

  “Now, that’s a shame,” he said.

  Apparently he intended to go down flirting. Interesting what one learned about oneself in moments of desperation.

  She chuckled again, but the gun stayed pointed at him. “You’re quick. Like my Elwyn.”

  “Elwyn your husband?”

  “Was. Dead ten years.”

  “Sorry to hear that, too. I’m not a housebreaker. Did I mention that?”

  She still didn’t lower the gun. “I’m ninety-­two,” she volunteered.

  “See, I would have guessed sixty at the most. Because that there Remington isn’t a lightweight gun, and you’re holding it as straight and true as someone a lot younger would. I know how to hold a shotgun. I can even identify what kind of gun it is from the sound it makes when you cock it. I’m from Tennessee.”

  Maybe he could bond with her over guns, was his thinking. He’d learned from his cop show that hostage negotiators try to find common ground with criminals that way.

  “It’s a Remington, all right. This was my daddy’s gun. And you sure say all the right things, son. But Britt didn’t mention anyone coming to fix her porch, and she would have, because we look out for each other. She’s got nothing in there worth stealing, so you can just take your pretty self off.”

  “Well, you see, I wanted to surprise her by doing something nice. If you take a look in my truck”—­he wasn’t going to make any sudden moves, so he didn’t turn his head—­“you can see the boards I plan to use. Britt is a . . . friend of mine. I helped her carry that there ficus plant down from that old cabin up the hill.”

  The woman turned toward the plants thoughtfully. She kept that gun aimed right at him, though.

  “And something tells me Britt would never ask anyone for help,” he added. “So I wanted to do this for him before she fell or tripped on it and got hurt.”

  As it turned out, this was the right thing to say. At least it was the thing that got her to lower the gun.

  A little.

  “Well, that does sound like Britt. And that porch of hers is a hazard. She’s got a good heart, that girl. She loves those plants up until they’re thriving and gives them away again. But she needs someone to look after her. And she needs something to look after that isn’t a plant or a cat.”

  “I kinda got that sense, too.”

  The gun lowered a little bit more.

  “You must be the neighbor who called the police when Britt was singi
ng in the shower,” he tried.

  He hoped Mrs. Morrison’s memory was still sharp.

  “I might be at that,” she hedged.

  They continued eyeing each other, though she was a bit more thoughtful now.

  “You like her quite a bit, don’t you, young man?” Mrs. Morrison shrewdly guessed.

  He hesitated. “I might just.”

  “I might be a might twitchy because you’re her first male visitor since she’s moved here.”

  He smiled at that. “You don’t know how happy that makes me.”

  She chuckled again.

  Finally she sighed, locked the gun and set it aside, leaning it up against the house as casually as if it were a cane. She brushed her hands off on her apron.

  “I’m Althea Morrison.”

  J. T. exhaled and wiped his own hands, admittedly a trifle damp, on his jeans. “Pleased to meet you Mrs. Morrison. I’m John Tennessee McCord.”

  “Huh. A man with three names is usually an assassin or a president.”

  “Believe it or not, I’m an actor.”

  “Well, that makes sense, too. That’s why I can see your teeth from here. You ought to be careful. You can blind someone with those things.”

  “It’s a job requirement, the white teeth. It’s like a uniform.”

  She chuckled again. “All right, no monkey business, Mr. John Tennessee McCord. You just fix her porch.”

  “I’ll be in and out of here right quick. I’ll try not to make too much noise. You need anything done around your house while I’m at it?”

  “I got some lightbulbs need changing. A few holes in the wall need patching. Sometimes this gun just goes off all by itself.”

  “I’ll just bet it does,” he said soothingly.

  “You want a Dr Pepper with a little rum on the rocks?” she called. “I’m about to fix myself one.”

  “Dr Pepper and rum, huh? That’s a new one on me. That drink have a name? You should call it a Visit to the Doctor.”

  She laughed merrily. “We might just get on, John Tennessee McCord.”

  “Make mine with whisky,” he suggested. “We’ll call it the House Call.”

  “House call!” she hooted, then disappeared into her house.

  J. T. watched her go with a smile on his face.

  And then he sighed and picked up his toolbox.

  A sane person who’d just been drawn upon by shotgun-­toting nonagenarian might feel a little put out, but perversely, he felt there was something right about neighbors caring about neighbors enough to pull a shotgun on a stranger. That of course could be the result of growing up in a place where shotguns got pulled for nearly every occasion, from weddings to poker games. But there was something unassailably right about this pocket-­sized house set among the trees and the youngish woman and the old woman who looked out for each other.

  He didn’t even know who lived on the opposite side of him in Los Angeles. He didn’t even fully understand his compulsion to fix the porch.

  But she’d known he’d needed a beat-­up old house.

  And he thought he might know what Britt needed, too.

  CHAPTER 11

  Britt gave Phillip his dinner, showered off the restaurant smells, threw on clean shorts and an old halter top, and then bolted out of the house. She halted in the doorway, then stepped deliberately, wonderingly on that brand-­new fixed step. Like Queen Elizabeth stepping on Walter Raleigh’s cloak spread out over a puddle. She and her sister used to take turns acting out that scene when they were little.

  She walked. She needed to move.

  Faster and faster, until she was almost running.

  She realized she was heading for her vista point, where she could look out at the huge wide open sky and the vast canyon. It seemed the only place that could accommodate the multitude of things she felt, from anger to panic to something too bright and too big to contain, the thing that had all but launched her from her house like a firework.

  When she was in a leisurely mood, she could get to that vista point in about fifteen minutes. Today she took it at a near run, gulping great drafts of dusty, pine-­scented air.

  And she was almost there when she stopped abruptly.

  Her heart leaped like a kite jerked into an updraft.

  An unmistakable red truck was parked there.

  And J. T. was leaning against the hood, watching the canyon as avidly as if it were the Superbowl. She had told him about the view.

  She hung back. Breath lost.

  He was wearing faded jeans and apparently nothing else, unless it was boots. That smooth burnished gold of his shoulder and the eloquent wedge of his torso vanishing into the waistband of his jeans made her knees watery.

  He looked like every fantasy of every bad boy she’d ever had. Times a million.

  She gawked.

  “Out walking your mountain lion?” he called.

  She was pretty sure he hadn’t even looked up. But then maybe he had, and she’d been too busy feasting her eyes on his torso to notice.

  His torso disappeared a moment. She heard some rummaging and clinking and then the pop and hiss of a bottle being opened.

  His head popped back up and reappeared and held a beer out to her.

  She closed the distance between them, took the beer and tapped it lightly against his, and took a sip. Because he’d been right before. She did like a good beer.

  “So how did your day go, Britt Langley?”

  “Well, J. T., my day was pretty great. I got home from work at the Misty Cat today, and discovered that someone had fixed my porch. I couldn’t finagle who it was out of Mrs. Morrison. All she would tell me is that it was someone with three names. And that he took off his shirt to do it. And that he patched some holes and changed some high-­up lightbulbs for her and invented a new drink.”

  His eyes lit as he listened to this recitation.

  His mouth still sort of somber.

  “You mind?” he said, after a moment.

  The same thing she’d said to him when he’d turned the corner of his house and was stopped in his tracks by those blue-­eyed Mary’s.

  “That I missed the shirtless part? Heck yeah, I mind.”

  He didn’t reply. Just wrapped her in a slow smile.

  She could have said a million other things. That he had a lot of nerve. Because she could in fact take care of herself, and she would have gotten around to fixing that porch.

  And that it was the nicest thing she could remember anyone doing for her, let alone a man, because it wasn’t just about a porch, it was about her safety and the integrity of a little house she loved, and she knew damn well he knew it, too. But she struggled with surrender, because surrender felt like vulnerability and still carried with it a whiff of danger, just like the old sagging top step of her porch, for example. It could be a trap she fell right through.

  She supposed she knew in her heart that his little lecture of the night before was exactly right: sometimes it was okay to just let go and let someone fix your porch. Maybe it didn’t have to be anything more than that.

  But she kind of had the sense that allowing him to give to her was her way of giving to him too. And frankly, when she was standing next to him, she wanted him to have whatever he wanted, particularly if he wanted her body.

  “Thank you,” she said shyly. And somewhat stiffly.

  He just smiled at her. Like he knew everything she wasn’t saying.

  “I’ll paint it, if you want. Still got some downtime.”

  “If you want to.”

  “I want to,” he said easily.

  “Okay,” she said. It was getting easier to agree to stuff.

  He flashed her a smile. “Saw some of the old furniture you refinished up there, too. Nice job on those. You got yourself a little plant hospital, too. You like rescuing
things, Britt Langley?”

  It sounded a little innuendo-­y, that question.

  “Mmm . . . maybe I just think that everything should get a shot at being beautiful. Or . . . maybe I think something that’s a little battered and scarred can still be beautiful?”

  They locked eyes.

  Something in his expression, some light in his eyes, made her feel shy and restless. She found herself turning to walk to the edge of the canyon.

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  “You were right about this spot. The view is pretty spectacular,” he said.

  Given that he was currently watching the back of her, she was pretty sure this was a double entendre.

  She aimed a quick little smile over her shoulder at him then turned back around.

  “It’s different at every time of day. In different lights,” she told him. “With different clouds. In different seasons.”

  “I got good at guessing the quality of views and vistas back in Sorry, Tennessee. We didn’t have a TV, so that’s what we watched instead. ‘What color is the sunset tonight, Jeb? It’s purple and orange over at the ridge.’ ‘Yeah, but did you see that big cloud from McCarthy Peak? Looked like an angel.’ ”

  She laughed. “I can’t tell if you’re joking. I kind of want it to be true. And I kind of hate that it might be.”

  “Well,” he said easily enough, “we did have a TV once, then my dad sold it to get more money for booze, and then we got another one, and then he sold it to get more money for booze, and then we got another one, and we sold it to bail him out of jail . . .”

  “Jesus, J. T.”

  “The circle of life, right?” He flashed an ironic grin. “Yeah, Dad was worse after Mama left when I was eight. She died when I was ten.”

  She was speechless.

  “God, J. T., I’m sorry,” she finally said. Softly. Sorry sure didn’t cover it. He’d been about her nephew Will’s age then. He’d had his life kicked out from under him, and look what he’d become.

  She knew everyone was shaped by their past. Still, she wished she could go back and fix his for him. Take away the fear from that little boy and tell him he was going to be magnificent one day.