“I love your mom.”
“Yeah, me, too. The way I see it, finding love with someone is a risk-reward scenario.”
She paused in the raking. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”
“Is it a risk to put yourself out there and possibly get no return? Or worse, humiliation? Yeah, of course it is. When I took my messed up ten-year-old self to live with my family, I risked everything. But so did they. Luckily, it worked, but even if it hadn’t, it was worth the risk because the reward was so great.”
She drew in a breath and leaned on the rake handle. “I really can’t stand you right now.”
Joe’s laugh burst out, a deep rolling chuckle. “I also almost lost Claire because I wasn’t willing to change my plans to make room for her in my life. Look at everything I would be missing if I hadn’t come to my senses.”
He walked closer, so close she could see herself in those mirrored sunglasses he wore all the time. “Ash is a good-looking man—or so I hear—but despite that, he’s one of the best people I know. I hope that you won’t treat him carelessly.”
“I’m not gonna—” She paused, frustrated with herself and Joe and a little mad and she couldn’t even put her finger on the why. “I gotta go. Thanks for your help with the watering.”
She stalked out of the ring and down the trail to the shed, tossing the rake in before stomping away. Who did he think he was? She made it about six paces before she turned around, picked up the rake and hung it in its place on the wall of the shed.
Still nursing the anger, or hurt, she wasn’t sure which, she rounded the corner by her house and stopped cold. There were three perfectly neat rows of bright-colored flowers—hot pink, orange, yellow—on either side of her porch steps.
Amelia was a few feet away with one of the younger kids, throwing rocks into the pond.
“Hey, Amelia, who planted these?”
Her niece glanced over. “Uncle Ash. He was here a while ago.”
“I know. I just didn’t know he... Never mind.” She’d been stewing over the fact that Claire had set up this whole thing and he’d been planting flowers in front of her house.
“He said he got them because he thought you’d like them. Ha! Mine skipped three times!”
“I do like them.” She said it to herself. And she liked Ash, too. Risk vs. reward; that was what Joe said. Her eyebrows drew together in a frown. She wasn’t risk averse. She’d moved here, hadn’t she?
Could she admit to herself that she was afraid of taking a chance on a relationship? Afraid of putting herself out there and getting rejected?
Ash was gorgeous and smart and—she looked at the zinnias—sweet, too. Last night had been magical, and by doubting it, she was dissing him and he didn’t deserve that.
She needed to make it right.
Chapter Twelve
Little by little, with Latham’s help, Ash was making progress on the house on the bluff. When he bought the property, he only had thoughts for the view. His plan had been to get anything salvageable out of it, tear the rest down and start over, eventually.
But then he’d found a photograph of the house when it was new, over a hundred years ago. A young couple sat on the porch steps with their child crawling in the grass in front of them. He’d decided right then to renovate the house. It had raised a family, had a history and real character, the kind you couldn’t get in a new build.
He hadn’t planned to work out here today, but he needed to burn off some energy after the conversation with Jordan and put it out of his mind for a little while. For that, he needed muscle straining, seriously sweaty work on the deck. It was the only place Latham would let him work without supervision.
He laid a pressure-treated board in place and hammered nails into it every twelve inches or so. The zing up his arm when the hammer hit the nail was extremely satisfying.
Wheels spinning on the dirt road leading to his place caught his attention. He was enough off the beaten path that people didn’t come here by accident. He grabbed a drink out of the mini cooler on the porch and walked around the corner of the house.
Jordan was pulling to a stop in her old farm truck. He didn’t smile. She’d gotten under his skin, made him feel things he never expected to feel and slammed the door on him with no warning.
No work-stained clothes this time, when she got out of the truck. She wore slim dark jeans and a loose-fitting scoop-neck T-shirt, her long auburn hair loose and lifting in the soft breeze off the river.
In contrast, he was sweaty and filthy from the construction work in the house, and the juxtaposition made him cranky. “Can I help you?”
Jordan slid Wayfarer sunglasses off her face. “I owe you an apology.”
He looked right into those sea-colored eyes and didn’t respond. “Okay.”
She glanced out at the river, where the sun still sparkled in the late-afternoon sun. “I don’t even have an excuse. Claire told me last night that she set all this up, that she asked you to hang out with me and help with Levi. I guess it made me wonder whether what happened was even real.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Whether what you felt was real.”
Ash shoved his fingers into his hair, and dirt and dust rained down. “I’m not sure what to say. I didn’t see it that way. Claire asked me to meet you at the hospital and check on Levi that first night because she couldn’t be there. I didn’t think she was trying to set us up.”
“She was, but it doesn’t matter.” She took a step toward him, her hand slightly outstretched. “It’s me that’s the problem, not Claire. Not you.”
He sighed. “Do you want to come sit down and have a drink?”
She nodded and he led her to the porch and two rusty metal porch chairs. Pulling another drink out of the cooler, he handed it to her. “Sorry it’s diet. It’s all I have.”
“It’s okay.” She cracked it and took a drink and held it in her two hands. “Look, this is going to be embarrassing, but I have to say it. You’re handsome. I mean gorgeous, really, and smart. The whole package. I look at you and I get tongue-tied. At least I did, before I got to know you better. So in my mind, there was a huge gap between me and the kind of woman that you usually go for.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Airheads?”
She flushed, her cheeks turning pink. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
He laughed softly. “It’s okay. Can I talk now?”
“No. I’m not finished yet.” But her eyes warmed on his. “So when we started hanging out because of Levi, I started to see a different side of you, one I didn’t know was there behind all the shine, you know?”
He shrugged and thought, Not really. “I guess.”
This time, she rolled her eyes. “You have to know how people see you. All those moms don’t dress up to go to Dr. Harvey to get their teeth cleaned.”
“Ew.” Ash had a momentary image of his seventy-year-old dentist and a waiting room full of women in tennis skirts. He pushed the image out of his mind to focus on what was important: Jordan. “All that stuff doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“I know that. Now.” She looked away, shook her head as her eyes filled. “But when Claire told me last night that she set us up, my first thought was that you were seeing me as a favor to her. Today I woke up feeling hurt and I took it out on you and...I’m so sorry.”
He’d come over to the house to work off his frustration. The dirty, hot work had gone a long way to making him feel better. The apology and explanation from Jordan took him the rest of the way. He got to his feet, walked over to her slowly and stuck out a grimy hand, laughing when she didn’t hesitate.
“I’m gonna talk now, okay?” Pulling her to her feet, he eased her closer. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Jordan. You have me so besotted with you that I brought you flowers today because they reminded me of
you.” He tilted her face up toward his and kissed her gently on the lips. “Let’s just take it one day at a time.”
“Yes, okay.” She nodded. “Okay. The flowers are really beautiful.”
“I’m glad you like them.” The sun was starting to dip in the sky and Ash realized he hadn’t eaten in hours. His phone was in the house and the app connected to his glucose monitor was probably going nuts. He needed his test kit and to eat as soon as possible.
He hated to talk about being a diabetic and didn’t, as a rule, talk about it with women he was dating. Jordan was different. And if he wanted their whatever-this-was to work, maybe there should be different ground rules, like honesty, no matter what.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Hey, I just realized how late it is. I’d better go in and test my glucose.”
“Okay, I have to go, anyway. I’m paying Mrs. Matthews for an extra hour, but it’s time for me to pick Levi up.” She pressed a quick kiss to his lips and bounded down the stairs, before turning back. “I’ll see you later.”
As he walked into the house, he heard the old engine of the farm truck fire up and bump down the dirt lane. She wasn’t like anyone else he knew. Beautiful, yes. Smart, yes. But there was something else. Maybe it was the therapy work she did, or maybe it was her background.
He pulled out his test kit and cleaned his finger with an alcohol swab so he could prick it. He’d dated a lot of women casually, a lot of beautiful women even, but Jordan was special. She didn’t even blink when he’d told her he was going in to check his glucose level.
He drew in a breath as he programmed his insulin pump. He wasn’t a good bet for the long haul. He should probably tell her that.
But maybe not yet. Right now he didn’t want to be a cancer survivor or someone living with diabetes; he just wanted to be a man who was falling in love with a woman.
* * *
Jordan knocked on the back door at Red Hill Farm and felt like an idiot. She hadn’t ever knocked, not even once.
Claire pulled the door open, a small knife in her hand and Sweetness in a baby carrier strapped to her chest. Hurt hid in her eyes.
Before either of them could say anything, Levi, in a high chair at the island, said, “Mama! Hey, Mama!”
She crossed to her sweet little man and gave him a big kiss. “Hey, buddy, did you have fun today?”
He grinned up at her and pointed to his plate. “Happy.”
Jordan glanced up at Mrs. Matthews, who smiled. “He made a happy plate. He ate grapes and chicken nuggets and a few pieces of carrot.”
“Big boy.” Jordan sat on the bar stool next to Levi, across from Claire, who was chopping more carrots and not looking at her. “I owe you an apology, Claire.”
Mrs. Matthews dried her hands on a dish towel. “I’m going to make sure those twins are doing their homework. Half the time they end up wrestling on the floor.”
Jordan waited until Mrs. Matthews had gone before she said, “I was really upset with you last night, and I was wrong.”
Claire stopped chopping and met her eyes with a cool blue look. “Go on.”
“When I went to the awards dinner with Ash, I felt like a different person. I was wearing Wynn’s dress and Wynn’s makeup and my hair was all done. And those shoes.” She shook her head as she squirted more ketchup onto Levi’s plate. “And then there was the kissing.”
“That sounds promising.”
Jordan stared at her sister. “Seriously, stop. This is hard enough.”
Blue eyes dancing with laughter now, Claire tried and failed to keep a straight face. “Okay, really. I’m fine. Go on.”
“This is my deal, okay? It sounds like I’m jealous of you or mad at you or whatever, but I’m not.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m just making this worse. Okay, so I’ve always kind of felt like I held you back, that you were healthy and beautiful and perfect and I was just the tagalong twin.”
Claire stopped laughing. “Jordan.”
“Even when I moved here—you had the idea for this place, the whole plan. I was the tagalong again.”
Her sister was shaking her head. “You inherited half of the property just like I did. This place is half yours.”
“I know. I do. But this is about how I felt, not what’s really true. You know what I mean?”
“Yes. I think so.”
Jordan picked up a paper towel, smoothed it. “So, fast-forward to last night and here I am after a night that seemed like it was out of a dream and then I found out that you set the whole thing up. So in my mind, I felt like the tagalong sister again.”
Claire had tears in her eyes now. “I never, ever meant for you to feel that way. I did think you and Ash would get along, but he didn’t hang out with you all this time because I asked him to.”
“I know that now. And if I had stopped to really think about it, I probably would have come to the same conclusion. I just had to work through it.” She picked up one of the pieces of carrot from Levi’s plate and put it down again. “I had to apologize to Ash, too. I was a real pain to everyone. I’m sorry.”
Levi looked at his ketchup-covered fingers and, instead of reaching for the paper towel she held out to him, dried them off in his hair. “Oh, yuck, Levi. Let’s wipe them off.”
Jordan grabbed a baby wipe from the box on the island and started to work on Levi’s sticky fingers.
Her sister came around the island and put her arms around Jordan. “I don’t know why you’re the only person who can’t see how amazing you are.”
“I don’t know. Maybe because that would be weird?”
Levi held up his arms and Jordan picked him up. “I have to get this little dude home and in the bath.”
“Bath?” His big brown eyes lit up.
“Yes, my man. You have ketchup in your hair.”
“Bath.” He wrapped his arms around her neck. “Mama.”
“Mama J,” she corrected automatically as she hugged him tight.
Claire smiled at him. “He’s picking up new words all the time. It won’t be long and he’ll be caught up with his peers. Hey, I almost forgot. Can you do me a favor? Joe has this regional chief of police thing tomorrow night and spouses are supposed to come. I wondered if you could help Mrs. Matthews out?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I figured she could handle it with Amelia and Kiera, but there’s a slight possibility that Penny’s older brother might be moving here tomorrow, so I want her to have some backup.”
“Is this the same brother they said might be coming a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yes.” Claire picked up the carrots and dumped them into a bowlful of lettuce. “I know they want them together, but I don’t know what the holdup is. Bureaucracy. Whatever. If he comes, there’s a bed open in the room next to the twins.”
“Okay, no problem. I think my last session of the day will be over at four thirty but I’ll check to be sure.”
“Thanks.”
Levi had melted into Jordan’s arms, his head heavy on her shoulder. “I better get this kid home and in the bath before he goes to sleep.”
Her hand was on the doorknob when her sister called her name. She turned around.
“Jordan, I love you. The work you do is important. And as for me, I couldn’t survive without you and that’s the truth.”
Something loosened inside and Jordan took a deep breath. “Thanks.”
She opened the door and stepped into the sunshine with Levi.
* * *
Thunder rocked the old house, but no less than the raucous voices of eight, no, make that nine, counting Levi, kids trapped inside by a late-evening thunderstorm.
The youngest baby was strapped into her high chair, but wailing. The six-year-old was bouncing down the stairs in a sleeping bag—on p
urpose.
Kiera was at the kitchen table with earphones in, trying to do homework. Her baby was asleep in the swing beside her—though Jordan couldn’t imagine sleeping through this racket—and Amelia was sick in bed with strep throat.
Jordan had taken one look at Mrs. Matthews’s glassy eyes and sent her home for the night after making her promise that she, too, would go to the doctor in the morning for some antibiotics.
Approximately thirty minutes after her arrival, she found the twins painting the downstairs bathroom with shaving cream. God only knew where they found it but every square inch of the bathroom was covered in it, including themselves.
So, what did a smart babysitter do? She called in reinforcements.
Ash arrived ten minutes later. He came through the back door, shaking water from his hair and rolling up his sleeves. “Where do you need me?”
She handed Levi to him and tried not to burst into tears of gratitude. “Tag team?”
“You got it.”
A handful of puffs dried the tears on Sweetness’s little face. She tapped Kiera on the shoulder. “Leaving Sweetness with you. I’ll be right back.”
Next up were the identical twins, Jamie and John, who were in the bathroom “cleaning” the mess they made earlier.
Ash grinned. “I got this one.”
He pushed opened the door to the bathroom and shouted over them. “Turn the shower on and get in it. Make sure you wash all the shaving cream off your body. Each of you get a towel and dry off and then upstairs for pajamas. Got it?”
“Water fight!” Jamie yelled. Or maybe John. To be honest, she wasn’t sure which.
She stepped up behind Ash. “If we catch you fighting in the shower, there will be no iPad time tomorrow.”
There was an “Aw, man,” and a reluctant “Yes, ma’am,” but she figured they would forget within about a minute.
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