His Small-Town Girl

by Arlene James

  As he’d strolled these aisles earlier he’d told himself that it was high time he actually experienced what the average shopper did, if only to better inform his business decisions. These shoppers, after all, made up his company’s market, too, but they had lives outside these stores, and understanding more about that would undoubtedly prove a huge asset. In that way, this unintended sojourn was turning out to be an invaluable learning tool. But something else kept him here, too, something personal.

  He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but for some reason that he didn’t really understand, he needed this time away from his own life. He needed to not be himself for a little while. Maybe he needed to do nothing for a time, to literally loaf around and just watch the world go by.

  He actually liked spending time with the Jefford family. Even Holt, as distrustful as he might be. Tyler had the feeling that they could give him a real, honest look at what a normal, healthy family should be. For a fellow who had never even known his own grandparents except in the most peripheral fashion, that suddenly seemed important.

  Perhaps that explained why the warm, patient goodness of Hap Jefford so compelled Tyler, but then so did the fierce but companionable protectiveness of a self-assured, much-adored big brother like Holt. It amazed Tyler that he should have so little in common with these folks and still find such welcome and acceptance in their company—and without the least bit of fawning. That went for everyone, including the good citizens of Eden and its environs, despite his fears on that score.

  Was it any wonder that he wanted to stay just a little longer?

  He located the correct aisle and spent all of three minutes choosing a cheap but adequate nylon suitcase on rollers, which he paid for with the credit card.

  After waiting several long minutes to get through the express checkout line, he jogged back out to the car, still idling next to the curb, and tossed the suitcase into the back while a trio of young men in ball caps, oversized jeans and tattered athletic shoes blatantly ogled the vehicle.

  “Nice ride,” one of them called.

  Tyler smiled as he closed the trunk. “Thanks.”

  “Yours?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who’s that chick driving?” another of them asked.

  “I wouldn’t let my girl drive a car like that,” the third declared at the same time.

  My girl, Tyler thought, surprised when a hole seemed to open up inside his chest. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d thought of a woman, or had wanted to think of a woman, as his girl. Neither could he recall a time when the woman in question hadn’t been angling for just that. Until now.

  On pure impulse, he headed to the passenger door, quipping, “You’re hanging out with the wrong kind of woman, then, son.”

  The guys laughed, elbowing each other, and Tyler dropped down into the passenger seat. Closing the door, he looked to Charlotte and reached back for the safety belt.

  “Let’s go.”

  She tilted her head, studying him for a moment as if he were some strange kind of new bug. He buckled the belt.

  “Come on. Move it. I have an early appointment in the morning.” He smiled to let her know that he really wanted her to drive.

  After a long moment, she faced forward again. “Okay.” She put the transmission in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  Tyler sat back and enjoyed the ride, noting with pleasure from the corner of his eye her little nods and shrugs of approval as she worked through the gears. By the time they’d made their way through numerous traffic lights along the bypass to the open road, Tyler’s grin stretched clear across his face.

  “What do you think?”

  “Drives like a hundred-thousand bucks,” she said.

  “One-forty, actually,” he corrected.

  She boggled her eyes at him. “You can buy a house for that, a nice house, not to mention all of the good you could do with that kind of money. Think of all the poor people in the world!”

  Disappointed, even a little wounded, he looked out the window. “So you think it’s wrong of me to spend that kind of money on a car, then?”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s just—”

  “What about the guy who sold me this car? The people who built it? The parts suppliers and their families? What about the immigrant worker who cleans the dealership’s building at night? By buying this car I keep them all in business.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” she conceded. “It’s not my place to judge you, anyway, and I’m not, truly.”

  “If you say so, but I’ll have you know that I give away something like a third of my income every year.”

  She glanced over at him then, shamefaced. “I’m sorry. It’s just…your kind of money is a foreign concept to people like me.”

  “That goes both ways, you know,” he said softly. “When I look at you—” He broke off, uncertain how to phrase it.

  “What?”

  He wouldn’t tell her that he envied her. She wouldn’t believe him. He wouldn’t tell her that he thought her beautiful, either. She would believe that even less, although it was the truth. Her beauty shone from the inside out with a purity that he admired in a way he couldn’t even describe. He didn’t want her to think that he was coming on to her, though, not after what that kid had said back there in the parking lot.

  “You and your family,” he said, choosing his words with honesty and care, “you’re happy together. You love one another. That’s something I’ve seen only rarely. I hope you know what it’s worth.”

  “I do,” she said, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Believe me, I do.”

  She drove on in silence. He rode beside her in quiet awareness, gradually relaxing as the miles fell away until delight somehow captured him again. He couldn’t say why he found this so pleasant, but part of it, he knew, had to do with the assumption and words of that young man back there in the parking lot.

  Charlotte was not his girl and she never would be. Looking at her softly lit profile against the night-blackened window, though, he had to admit that he’d been less than honest with himself about his decision to stay in Eden. He stayed because he couldn’t help himself.

  She drew him like a lodestone. Her honesty, her generosity, her simplicity, her contentment, they all called to him, along with some other indefinable quality that he couldn’t begin to name. Despite her rough clothing and almost corny hairstyle, her lack of cosmetics or adornment of any sort, she somehow seemed to grow more beautiful every time he looked at her. He wanted to know her, to really know her.

  Of course, nothing could or would come of it. Any fool knew that much. She was not the sort of woman he might escort to a business dinner or gala social occasion, and he didn’t have time or the inclination for routinely hanging out a hundred and fifty miles from home. But for now, just for now, he’d allow himself to admire and to enjoy and maybe even to imagine what it might be like if she were his girl.

  Unfortunately, he could never allow it to go further than that. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he knew instinctively that Charlotte was the sort of woman who would expect more than he could give her. And rightly so. He wouldn’t change that or anything else about her, but in all honesty she just didn’t fit into his world, which meant that she wouldn’t fit into his life, either, not after he left here.

  Nevertheless, they seemed to be forging a friendship, something personal and private that belonged wholly to just the two of them and this moment. He’d never had that before, not with anyone, and he wanted this time in Eden with her and her family—and away from his own.

  In an odd fashion that he didn’t really understand, something told him that he could go home again in a few days more whole than he’d been when he’d arrived. Surely, he could have that much before he returned to his life.

  Couldn’t he?

  Charlotte took a guilty pleasure in being behind the wheel of Tyler’s massively expensive sports car. Compared to this, Hap’s old diesel truck drove like
a horse and buggy. That was not what discomfited her, though.

  She’d never been so aware of anyone as she was of Tyler. She felt his gaze, felt his silent regard, and after she’d insulted him, too. Money had never meant beans to her, one way or another, and now suddenly she found herself judging him at every turn just because he’d been born into a wealthy family. It made her feel small and frightened in a manner that she didn’t want to examine too closely.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said into the velvety silence.

  “Sure.”

  “What’s it like to grow up with all that money?”

  She felt rather than heard his sigh. He turned his gaze out the window. After a moment he said, “It just is, like the color of your hair or the face you see in the mirror every morning. It’s not something you think about until someone else makes an issue of it.”

  She bit her lip at that. “I see. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Honest curiosity is one thing. Envy is something else altogether.” She felt his gaze on her again. “And you really don’t envy me, do you?”

  Unsure how best to answer that, she wrinkled her nose apologetically. “Not really.”

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  She had to think about that. “Well, it’s not as if a few extra bucks wouldn’t come in handy now and then,” she said carefully, “but we already have all we need and…I don’t know. I guess after your folks die you learn that what’s most important is family, the people you love.”

  Tyler studied her for a moment. “My father used to say that everyone had their own treasure. Identify that, he would say, and you’d know how to work them.”

  “Work them?”

  “You know, get the upper hand.”

  “Ah. Like in a business deal.”

  “Yeah, like in a business deal. Except I think he’d find you a tough nut to crack.”

  She let her eyes leave the roadway then and settle briefly on his face. “Why’s that?”

  “Because what you treasure most is unassailable,” he said softly. “If my family cared for me one fraction of what yours does for you…”

  You’d be a happy man, she thought. Stricken, she concentrated on the roadway again, wishing that she didn’t know half so much as she did.

  Chapter Eight

  “Nah, come on. We’ll all go together,” Holt insisted, holding open the back door to the double-cab truck. “The parking’s limited over at the church.”

  Shrugging, Tyler pocketed his car keys and started across the pavement.

  “Wouldn’t want to ding up that expensive mechanical wonder of yours,” Holt added as soon as Tyler stepped off.

  Tyler kept his tongue fixed firmly behind his teeth, partly because Holt was right and it embarrassed him, partly because the car would have drawn more unwanted attention his way. He already felt terribly out of place.

  His new clothing felt odd, too light and too big and too…textured, somehow. Compared to Holt, however, who stood there in dark, creased jeans, a plain white shirt open at the collar and a brown leather coat with a western cut, Tyler appeared overdressed. The leather jacket didn’t quite match Holt’s hat or boots, but Tyler had to admit that it fit the tall cowboy far better than his own tweedy sport coat fit him.

  Before Tyler reached the truck, Charlotte came through the kitchen door. To Tyler’s great delight, she’d left her hair loose. It hung halfway down her back in a sleek, satiny fall that put him in mind of a sunset in those glorious moments suspended between day and evening. The narrow black headband that held her vibrant hair back from her forehead emphasized the gentle widow’s peak that gave her smiling face the shape of a slender heart.

  Stopping in his tracks, he admired not only her hair and face but the slender length of her legs beneath her simple, straight gray skirt. He recognized her shoes with their rounded toes and delicate, modest heels, having noticed them on the shelves at the discount store. A pale peach twin set completed her ensemble. The whole of it probably cost her less than forty dollars, judging by what he’d seen last night, and he remarked fiercely to himself that she deserved better than that.

  In fact, he could give her better, the very best, and would enjoy doing so, if only she would let him, which he knew without a doubt she would not.

  For one thing, Charlotte wouldn’t want expensive clothing. He knew only too well how she viewed his costly goods. His things didn’t impress her at all, not his clothing, not his car. Instead, she made him feel a little ashamed about how he spent his money, even though he could easily afford to spend whatever he liked and gave generously to numerous charities.

  It hardly mattered that he could buy Charlotte the best of everything, anyway. Designer labels could do nothing to enhance her loveliness. Charlotte’s beauty came from inside and radiated outward with a purity that no amount of money could purchase.

  For a long moment, Tyler stood as if mesmerized. Then the screen door banged, drawing him back to himself. Ducking his head self-consciously, he started forward again. A moment later, he realized that Hap had joined them.

  Clad in shiny, threadbare brown dress slacks, a navy-blue shirt, loosely knotted gray tie, red suspenders and a dark red cardigan sweater, he parked a jaunty gray fedora on his head, cupping the brim downward in front with a slick, sweeping motion of one hand. Tyler laughed, finding an odd joy in just looking at the old fellow. He mentally shook his head as he spied the thin white socks worn with stiff black wingtips as Holt helped Hap up into the truck.

  Tyler moved to Charlotte’s side, asking conversationally, “Who’s minding the store?”

  “No one. We don’t staff the front desk on Sundays, but we don’t turn away guests when we’re here, either.”

  Tyler opened the front passenger door for her, noting that even as she thanked him she slid a loaded look her brother’s way. Holt’s mouth fixed in a straight line. After donning a pair of sunshades, he slipped behind the wheel. Tyler climbed into the backseat with Hap, wondering if he had become a bone of contention between brother and sister. The idea pinched a little.

  Overcome with the scent of cheap aftershave as soon as he shut the door, he glanced at Hap, realizing that he had never before seen the old man cleanly shaved. His expression must have shown his shock, for Hap grinned ear-to-ear.

  “Clean up good, don’t I?”

  “You sure do,” Tyler replied, marveling at the happiness that radiated off the old man. Thankfully, Holt cracked open the window up front and quickly got them moving, bringing enough breeze into the vehicle to freshen the air.

  Breathing easier, Tyler took time to study the elder Jefford. Crippled with arthritis and plagued with other ailments, he had lost his wife and only child while living a life of hard work that had apparently left him without two nickels to rub together. Given all that, Hap should have been the last man to live in such joy that it overflowed, making it a pleasure just to sit next to him. Tyler had to wonder how that could be.

  Mere minutes later, Holt pulled the long truck into the grass beside the park on Mesquite Street across from the small, white clapboard church that Tyler had noticed the day before. The sign above the door declared it to be simply, First Church of Eden.

  They all piled out and came together at the edge of the street. A relatively well-dressed, dark-haired man standing beneath an ancient hickory tree in front of the church waved in greeting and came to meet them as they crossed to the sidewalk. He clapped Holt on the shoulder, engulfed Charlotte in a hug, then did the same with Hap, kissing the old man on the cheek.

  “How’re you doing, Granddad? You look good.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he turned his attention to Tyler. Seeing only interest and welcome in the other man’s familiar hazel eyes, Tyler put out his hand while Charlotte made the introductions.

  “Ryan, this is Tyler Aldrich. He’s staying with us. Tyler, this is our brother, Ryan.”

  Though he stood a couple inches shorter than Holt, Ryan had maybe thirty pound
s on his brother, making him seem the larger of the two men. Fit and strong, with dark, chestnut-brown hair and dressed in a smart navy suit, dress shoes, striped shirt and tie, he might have been any executive anywhere.

  “Good to meet you, Ty,” he exclaimed, shaking Tyler’s hand with both of his. People rarely addressed Tyler as Ty, not even as a boy. His mother would have objected vociferously, but Tyler said nothing. It fit somehow in this setting.

  Obviously used to being in charge, Ryan moved behind the group and gently but firmly herded them toward the church, saying, “We’re going to need some extra space. Sis, you go in first. Granddad, I know you want to sit on the aisle because scooting across the pew hurts you, so you come in at the back here.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Jefford,” Holt teased. “Anything you say, Mr. Jefford.”

  “Now, don’t give me any of your lip,” Ryan scolded lightly, sounding more and more like the assistant principal he was. “I’m just trying to help.”

  While the brothers bickered good-naturedly, Tyler took the opportunity to slide into place behind Charlotte, feeling Holt fall in behind him, just like students in school. They stepped up onto the single, broad stoop and pushed into the crowded building as a group.

  Surprised to find that the sanctuary contained no foyer, Tyler spent the next fifteen minutes shaking hands and nodding at folks whose names he barely caught as the group worked their way toward the front pews. He followed Charlotte into the narrow space between the second and third pews and took a seat next to her on the unpadded bench. Holt folded himself up next to Tyler and parked the hat, which he had removed as soon as they’d entered the building, on one bent knee.

  Tyler took a moment to look around him. Talk about bare bones. Walls, floor, pews, all were constructed of pale wood finished with an oil rub that had to be decades old. Only the platform at the front boasted carpet in a bright peacock-blue, which contrasted sharply with the white painted lectern, altar and three armless chairs.