Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Nicholson, Peggy

  It was just as well that poor Kat wasn’t here, helping him as she usually did on weekends. He welcomed her chatter when he didn’t need to concentrate, but today, it was just him and his tape measure and his architectural plans—and that was perfect.

  Absorbed in his task of marking the plate and cap for wall stud and window positions, Jack worked steadily till he realized he was squinting to make out his pencil lines. He glanced up and was startled to see the sun poised on the mountains to the west. He hurried to put his tools away before it set.

  By the time he came through the garden gate, it was full dark. Heading for the back door of Abby’s cottage, he paused when he noticed the small shape crouched on the front steps. “Abby?”

  She didn’t reply, but lifted a mug and sipped as she regarded him over its rim.

  Something wrong here. “Where are the kids?”

  “Making salad.” Her voice held none of its usual warmth, no inflection at all.

  She’d wrecked the car and didn’t want to tell him? Or he was late for the meal he hoped she planned to feed him? Or… “How did the shopping go?”

  “Oh-hh, just fine. And we met an old friend of yours at the market—Alec Fielding? He recognized Kat and stopped to introduce himself.”

  Uh-oh. “Did he.” You hound, Fielding. Unable to see her face clearly in the gloom, Jack sat beside her.

  She slid over a couple of feet and twisted around to bend her leg, clasping her shin as she leaned back against a porch post. The body language was clear. Keep off.

  “So how’s Alec?” he asked, carefully indifferent.

  “Seemed to be doing well, but I was wondering…is there a…woman shortage in these parts?”

  “Not so’s I’ve noticed,” Jack allowed, treading warily. Where was this going?

  “I see.” She drank again, eyes narrowed beyond the rising steam. “Then…by any chance did you tell him I’m…divorced?”

  You’re hamburger, Fielding! Dog food deluxe. “Um…” Jack scowled thoughtfully at the porch rafters overhead. “Can’t remember. I s’pose it…might have come up—or maybe not. Why?”

  She smacked her mug down on the deck and the liquid inside sloshed over. “Because, after we’d passed for the third time—right there in the frozen food aisle—he asked me out for a drink!

  “What is it with men and divorcées? Do you all think we can’t live a minute without you? I wasn’t divorced a week before Steven’s best friend, another pilot with a wife and two children, stopped over to see if I needed anything—and what he assumed I needed was my bones jumped! And my plumber, fat and balding and fifty. When the sink disposal jammed, I swear he thought I’d stopped it up on purpose, just to lure him in my door. Even my lawyer—my own lawyer—hit on me!”

  “Grossly unprofessional,” Jack agreed, though considering he’d met his own wife that way… “But maybe he meant it as a compliment?”

  “Who, your friend?”

  “No—your lawyer. The plumber. Those, er, other guys.” And Fielding, too, of course. Never should’ve let her shop alone, but who’d have thought…

  “I should be complimented that men think I’m easy? Available? Starving for sex?”

  “Well, in your place they would be, so…”

  “Well, newsflash! Men and women are different!” Abby snatched up her mug and bounced to her feet. “And if anybody else should happen to ask you, going on a date is the last thing on this woman’s mind!” She stomped over to the door, opened it, then paused and glanced back. “You’d better come in and collect your vegetable lasagna. It’s out of the oven, but it’s too hot for Kat to carry.”

  “I thought we’d—” Shut up, Kelton. Shut up.

  She shook her head. “I’m awfully tired tonight, I’m afraid, so I had the kids make two pans. And separate salads.”

  And that just about said it all. Driving home, he’d felt as if he were headed to a party. Now Saturday night looked flat as a blown-out tire. Just him and Kat at the supper table, and no doubt she’d want to watch her G.I. Jane video for dessert.

  For his own after-dinner treat, maybe he’d call Fielding.

  THIS PAST YEAR, Abby had taken up yoga, then Tai Chi, first as a way to shut out her pain and confusion, then more lately for the pure pleasure of the exercises.

  She’d let her early morning routine lapse during the drive across country, but as of yesterday, Saturday, she’d started again.

  Before Skyler rose she took this time for herself, using the ancient, ritualized movements as a form of meditation, the path on which she sought her still center. A way to set all worries aside, all regrets of the past or plans for the future, simply to be in the present moment.

  At least that was the theory.

  Today she was having trouble focusing, Abby admitted as she stared out at her upside-down world. It’s not my time of the month, so why did I flip out like that last night?

  Hush, she told herself, then repeated her mantra. All will be well. At least it would someday; she had to believe that.

  Don’t think about someday, think about now. This green, dew-spangled world. Green, everywhere she looked; she’d purposely faced away from her house and from Jack’s house, so that she gazed west across her yard. Grass getting rather high. Or so it appeared from this angle.

  Not her problem. In a week she’d be gone and somebody else could cut it. “Hush.” She spoke out loud this time, sternly.

  But her thoughts rambled on, flowing out from her still center to embrace the world, instead of spiraling inward as they ought. Alec Fielding. He’d been perfectly polite in his smiling invitation—and she’d wanted to smack him with the bag of frozen shrimp she’d just pulled from the cooler. Either he knows I’m divorced, which means somebody—Jack Somebody—told him. Or he thought I was married, since he met Sky, but he just didn’t care.

  No, Fielding had been too sure of himself, too sure she was datable, which meant—

  “Hush!”

  So maybe Jack had gossiped about her, so what? It might have been—no, doubtless had been—entirely innocent, something along the lines of “Guess who moved in next to me? A woman with a kid Kat’s age.”

  Then Fielding could have said, “Oh, where’s her husband?”

  So how could she blame Jack if he then said—

  “Oh, be quiet!” she snapped, and brought first one leg down, then the other. Sitting in a kneeling position, she faced Jack’s house, though a tree’s low-hanging branches blocked the view.

  Or most of the view. Her gaze zeroed in on a window up on the second floor, as something moved beyond its glass. Or maybe a bird had flown by and been reflected there for a second? Because now the glazed rectangle was a motionless mirror to leaves and sky.

  Abby planted her palms by her thighs, lifted her weight off her legs and pushed off into a backward somersault—her own embellishment to the exercises, included simply for the childish joyfulness of the move—then ended as she’d started, on her knees. Planting her palms again, she extended her legs behind her and arched her spine into the sun stretch. Held it, staring upward.

  So if it’s not fair to blame Jack for speaking to Fielding, why’d it bother me so much?

  Or perhaps more to the point, why did Fielding’s flirtation bother her, when Jack’s, these past few days, had…made her feel good?

  Her muscles were warming. This move stretched her from throat to thigh. A hot current of awareness rippled out from her pelvic muscles, swirled up into her stomach, eddied around her tightened hips…a delicious sensation stirring, awakening…

  Fielding was a wake-up call, that was why he’d bothered her. He’d made her realize on some subconscious level that she felt…taken. As if he sought to intrude on a relationship she valued.

  These past few days since the bus disaster, she’d been so needy, and Jack had made himself so easy to be with, so easy to lean on. She’d let herself be lulled into forgetting her resolutions. Into almost pretending that he and she were—

 
; No, I didn’t!

  Well, yes, to be honest, she had felt a little yearning.

  But no, she’d never thought, never dreamed, never wished that they were a couple—nothing like that! There’d simply been a warm and comforting feeling of…of comradeship, that was it. Two single parents coping with the ups and downs of preteen children, nothing more than that.

  Still, Fielding was a good and timely reminder that she’d been backsliding into old bad habits, starting to think like one half of a pair again. For a day or two she’d almost forgotten: she was on her own now.

  And so must stand alone.

  Depending on a man had been disastrous last time. It wasn’t a mistake she intended to repeat.

  With that reaffirmation, Abby was able to focus again on her routine, till halfway through the Tai Chi form called Part the Wild Horse’s Mane, Whitey’s truck came rolling into the backyard. “Drat!” she muttered as he grinned broadly and waved. Snatching up her exercise blanket, she whipped it around her skimpy nylon shorts, called, “Morning!” and retreated into the house.

  After she’d showered, dressed, nudged Skyler awake, Abby fixed a couple of mugs of coffee and returned to the yard to give her mechanic a proper welcome.

  But he already had company. Elbow to elbow with the old man, Jack leaned into the engine compartment, nodding judiciously while Whitey expounded on this part or that. Surly as a moulting buzzard, Chang sat on Whitey’s left boot, his muzzle wrinkled in a toothless snarl as he studied Jack’s nearest ankle.

  “Gentlemen.” Abby handed each of them a mug, then gestured at her bus. “Any luck with parts yesterday?”

  Whitey had found a radiator that would do, apparently, and a new muffler that with some creative rerouting of exhaust pipes could replace the old, but as for the transmission… “Nothing useful at the three yards I tried. But Johnnie Tso seems t’recall his cousin told him there’s a bus like yours, a wrecker, over past Flagstaff. He’s gotta drive his grandma there to help with his niece’s comin’ young ’un next week, and he said he’d try to track it down. See if the transmission’d fit, and if nobody else has got to it first.”

  “Oh,” Abby said blankly, uncertain if this was good news or not. But a week’s delay, before they even knew if there was a transmission? “There’s no way to, um, expedite finding out?”

  Not unless she knew some way to expedite when Johnnie’s niece was going to drop her baby, there wasn’t, Whitey assured her with patient good humor. “Meantime, me and Chang are gonna whip out this hunk of rust.” He patted the leaky radiator. “Then we’ll look at your pipes.”

  “Er…great,” she said, ignoring Jack’s wide grin past Whitey’s shoulder. “If there’s anything you need…”

  “I’ll holler,” he assured her. “But a job like this’s mainly elbow grease and cussin’.”

  “And don’t forget prayer,” Abby muttered as she left Whitey to it.

  “Never hurts,” Jack agreed, sauntering along beside her.

  He handed her his empty mug as she turned to face him at the kitchen stairs. If she was going to stand alone, one way to do so was to prevent him from wandering in and out of her cottage four times a day at his slightest whim. “So I suppose you’re building today?” she asked briskly.

  Jack had cocked his head and was staring at her chest.

  She crossed her arms.

  “Yes,” he agreed—and reached out to finger the short sleeve of her T-shirt. “I’d forgotten this.”

  “This” was the T-shirt she’d been wearing the day they’d met. She’d done a load of hand-washing yesterday. Feeling the need to reassert her independence this morning, she’d chosen this one. “Yes, it was a graduation present,” she said coolly. “A friend of mine gave it to me the day I went to court for my divorce.”

  “Ah.” He cocked his head the other way. “Always wondered what kind of fish that’s supposed to be.”

  She glanced down at herself and shrugged. “Any fish. Figurative fishes.”

  “I always thought the real question was, not does a fish need a bicycle, but does he enjoy it once he’s got his hands—his fins—on one? How do you keep him down on the fish farm, after he’s popped his first wheelie?”

  She’d have teased back if the topic of debate hadn’t been plastered to her chest. And folding her arms had only made matters worse. “Beats me.” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you lat—”

  He tore his eyes away from her fish. “Actually, I came over to ask a favor.”

  “Oh?” Far be it from her to point out that she was already working off half a week of his favors.

  “Could I borrow Sky for most of the day? I’m framing my first wall, and Kat and I could use another set of hands.”

  “Take him. I’d love some time alone.” She was dying to pick up her sketchbook. Whitey and Chang presented a wealth of comic possibilities and she’d had another idea she wanted to explore.

  “Great. I’ll send Kat to fetch him in, say, half an hour.” Jack started to swing away, then turned back. “About tonight, were you planning a cooking lesson or anything?”

  “Only the lesson that leftovers are a woman’s best friend. If you could possibly deliver her half an hour before you want to eat?”

  “Will do.” He opened his mouth, then shut it again to give her a quizzical smile. “Later, Abby.”

  He’d been about to propose something about their eating together tonight and then he’d changed his mind. Message received, she told herself bleakly. Jack Kelton was hardly stupid.

  Funny how she wanted to take that message back.

  Instead she clenched her fists in her pockets and chanted inwardly, I’m strong, I’m whole. I don’t need a man in my life.

  Or any more sorrow, thank you very much.

  Even so, as an artist and a woman, she couldn’t help but admire the view as he strode purposefully away. Body by Michelangelo on one of his best days—long of leg, with broad, brawny shoulders that made her palms itch.

  Pity she wasn’t in the market.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “YOU’RE SURE he’s not your cat?” demanded the older of the two cat rustlers.

  “Joey, I want you to listen to me ve-ery carefully,” Abby said as she closed the lid of a box containing a highly indignant black-and-white tomcat. “The cat I want is white, all white—no other color on him. And he’s very big. Even bigger than this guy, okay? Now you’ve got to take this kitty back precisely where you found him. And don’t bring me any more cats unless they’re all white.”

  This was Joey and Al Cooperman’s third presentation of the morning. The last one had been orange and white, and female.

  “Okay.” Eight-year-old Joey wasn’t one to hold a grudge. He had the dreamy look of someone already calculating where to find his next candidate.

  “Do we get another ice-cream cone?” his younger, more practical brother wanted to know.

  Seeing their disappointment after their first cat hadn’t won her hundred-dollar reward, Abby had given them a compensation prize—money for ice cream at Hansen’s. Big mistake. “No more ice cream till you bring me an all-white cat,” she said sternly. “And if you bring me another cat that isn’t white, Al, you have to buy me an ice-cream cone!”

  “That’s tellin’ ’em,” Whitey chuckled as the dejected entrepreneurs trudged down the drive.

  “But are they listening? And where are they finding their cats? I haven’t seen many strays around town.”

  “Well, that last one there generally lives ’cross the street from my sister Emma. Sits like a broody hen up on the Hendricks’s porch rail all day.”

  “Great! I’m inciting a couple of cat-nappers. At this rate I’m going to be popular around town.”

  “Leastways, pretty well known,” Whitey agreed, returning to his task of stringing extension cord from the house to the bus.

  The blissful Sunday morning of artistic endeavor that Abby had envisioned had been fractured r
oughly every half hour so far. She’d received two phone calls from perfect strangers—both of them elderly ladies by their voices—who’d been anxious to know if she’d found her kitty yet, and then welcomed her to Trueheart. Another caller had offered Abby her choice of a newborn litter of kittens he’d found in his barn if her own cat didn’t turn up.

  Still another wanted to know if the famous DC-3 had one black ear and a black spot on his chest? But thanks to the Cooperman brothers, Abby could reject that cat with assurance; she’d seen him already.

  When she wasn’t fielding phone calls, Abby had spent most of the morning viewing the latest offering of the Relentless Duo, who’d confided that they meant to buy a twenty-two rifle with the hundred-dollar reward.

  Well, if wishes were kitties, she’d have DC by nightfall and the Coopermans would be gunslingers.

  Between interruptions she’d sat in the backyard, sketching Whitey and Chang as they went about their business. And really she shouldn’t complain; working in snatches, she hadn’t had a chance to dawdle over her drawings or overwork them. They reminded her of her father’s style, fluid lines abstracting the very essence of a shape or a movement or the emotional relationship between man and dog. Several were good enough to serve as studies for more finished works.

  Tomorrow she’d find the box that held her watercolors and oil pastels and she’d drag her easel out of the bus. Perhaps she should also set up her drawing table? Because if Whitey didn’t locate a transmission before next Saturday, they were stuck here for the week after that, he’d explained. Replacing that part was apparently no easy job, and for good or ill, Whitey was a pains-taker.

  Abby gnawed on her lip. Which means another week’s rent for Maudie Harris. I’d better go see her.

  When the phone rang again, she lifted it to her ear with more resignation than hope. “Hello?”

  “Is this the mother of DC-3, world famous in Trueheart?” inquired a female voice on a note of wry humor.

  “The very same.”

  “Well, this is Michelle of Michelle’s Place. I may have seen your cat.”