“Okay, then.” He straightened and smiled. “Amy, whenever you’re ready.”
“Oh.” Suddenly she felt the need to wipe the dampness from her palms, but she had a four-year-old in her lap. She addressed herself to the girls. “Your dad thought you might like to know what things were like for your mom in Iraq.”
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
“Tell us.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “Is there anything in particular you want to know?”
“What did she do for fun?” Jasmine wanted to know.
“Hmm. Let’s see.” Amy thought a minute. “Okay, fun. The army has a place, like a big room, and it’s got computers so we can get online, treadmills for working out, video games, television. All that kind of stuff. One of the things your mom liked best was reading. Your nana and a lot of other people sent paperback books and we had this lending-library thing going where a big group of us swapped books with each other. Your mom loved to read those books. She said she could tune everything else out and live inside those stories and know that, in the end, everything was going to work out. And the room where she went to read, the one with the computers and everything, had air conditioning.”
Mention of air conditioning didn’t faze the girls, but Riley caught on, she noticed, and from there Amy moved on to tell the girls about the heat and the dust and sand of the desert. The girls made ugly faces and gagging noises at the idea of sand in their teeth, sand in their sheets, sand in their shoes. They laughed at the thought of having to stand in a bucket to take a bath, which any number of female military personnel had to do when away from better facilities for too long.
“One of the things your mom missed the most, along with her friends and family and air conditioning, was cottonwoods. They have all kinds of trees over there. Willows and alders and locust, and, of course, the date palms. Your mom really liked the date palms. But she used to talk about the cottonwoods that line a creek at the edge of town back home. The way she described them, with their bright green leaves, their particular scent, especially when they start turning yellow in the fall—if you closed your eyes and listened to her talk about them, you could swear you were sitting under one, hearing the rustle of the leaves, smelling that pungent tang, feeling the coolness of their shade.”
Lost in the memory of one of Brenda’s cottonwood descriptions, with her eyes closed, Amy inhaled and smelled the very scent she’d been describing and for a moment, forgot where she was.
Riley, too, felt himself getting lost. Bypassing the small screen on his camera, he looked through the lens and focused in on Amy’s face. It was as if a sudden connection formed between them, even though they were separated by eight feet of room and her closed eyes. Between his eyes and her face, nothing separated them but the camera lens.
“But the single thing she missed,” Amy said in a low, smooth voice that sounded to Riley like a woman seducing her lover, “more than any other thing, besides you and the rest of her family and friends, was green grass.”
“Grass won’t grow there because it’s a desert, right?” Jasmine guessed.
“Part of it’s a desert, that’s right, but a great big part of it is lush and green and can grow anything, when the irrigation is working. But we never got to see much of that part. She said she missed being able to take off her shoes and dig her bare toes into cool, green grass. She missed the smell of it when it was freshly mowed.”
Amy closed her eyes again while she spoke, and, seeing her face close-up in the lens, Riley could practically feel the cool grass, smell the fresh clippings.
With his attention centered on her, he saw her in a clear light, in a way he hadn’t before. No evasions, no ignoring. No comparing her to another. She wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t even Brenda’s best friend. There were no beautiful daughters, no in-laws, not even a late wife. For this one startling instant, in his vision, there was only Amy.
Chapter Four
The next afternoon, when Amy returned to her motel room from a long walk after lunch, a message awaited her. Riley had called and left a number and a request for her to call him back.
Amy sat on the side of her bed and stared at the phone. Last night something had happened. She’d been thinking about it all day and had yet to figure it out. One minute she’d been telling the girls about Brenda missing cottonwoods and grass, the next, Riley had been showing her to the door.
She could only assume that hearing so much about Brenda had stirred up old memories and grief, and he had suddenly needed to be alone.
Amy ached for him and prayed that the girls had not suffered the same reaction. They hadn’t seemed sad. They had seemed curious and interested in what she had to say about their mother. Of course, at their ages, Brenda wasn’t as real to them anymore as she was to Riley. His entire life with her must seem like yesterday.
He was surely calling to tell her he didn’t want her to tell any more stories to his girls. But she had to return his call despite the dread stirring in the pit of her stomach. To ignore his message would be rude.
Come on, soldier up, Galloway.
Squaring her shoulders, Amy reached for the phone and dialed the number.
A woman answered. “Sinclair Construction.” A frazzled woman, by the sound of her.
Just as Amy was about to speak she heard a loud crash over the line, followed by a low, male curse in the background and a moan and a tsk from the woman on the phone.
“Is everything okay?” Amy asked.
“What? Oh, yes, I’m sorry. Just a slight mishap. What can I do for you?”
“I’m returning Mr. Sinclair’s call.”
“Oh, dear, hold on.”
“If now’s not a good time—”
“No, no, just let me get him.”
Instead of using the hold button, the woman must have simply laid the phone on the desk. Amy heard papers rustling. The woman shouted for Riley to get the phone. He shouted something back. A door slammed.
Had he left?
He yelled something again. He hadn’t left.
“With any luck,” the woman said in a none-too-friendly tone, “it’s someone who wants to come to work here and clean up this mess.”
Heavy bootsteps. He grumbled something that sounded like, “I should be so lucky.” More papers rattled. Then a harsh breath. “Hello?”
“Riley?”
“Amy?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Sounds like you’re busy.”
“Oh, just a little.” There was laughter in his voice. “What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know. You called me, asked me to call back?”
“Oh, hell. Sorry. I forgot.”
“Look, you’ve obviously got your hands full right now. Why don’t we touch base later when you’ve got more time?”
“If I don’t find someone to make sense out of the mess in my office, I may never have time. But I was calling to say thank you for last night.”
Amy heard a definite hoot of laughter followed by “Hallelujah!” from somewhere near Riley.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered.
Amy couldn’t help it. She laughed. “You stepped into that one, didn’t you?”
“Fanny, that’s not—”
“Good for you, Riley,” Fanny said with a laugh. “It’s about damn time.”
“Amy, I apologize for the static in the background.” He sounded as if he was grinding his teeth. “I wanted to thank you for the time you spent with my daughters last night, telling them those stories about their mother. After you left it took forever to get them to bed, they were so excited.”
Amy felt the muscles across her shoulders relax. He was thanking her. She hadn’t expected that. “You don’t need to thank me, Riley. I loved doing it. Your girls are terrific. I see why Brenda was so proud of them. She would be proud of you, too, for the way you’ve raised them without her here to help.”
He didn’t answer.
“Riley?”
“I’m sorry. You, ah, left me speechless.”
>
“Is that good or bad?”
“In this case, it’s good. Thank you. That was the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a long time. Most people tiptoe around Brenda when they talk to me. They act as if she never existed. Like if they mention her name I’m going to crumble.”
“Some people are uncomfortable with the idea that we all die, and don’t know how to talk about it. Or maybe they’re afraid you can’t handle the reminder so soon. Or something. Whatever, it’s a shame.”
“All the tap-dancing is what makes me uncomfortable. Thank you for not tap-dancing.”
“I wouldn’t look good in a tutu.”
“I bet you would, but I thought a tutu was for ballet.”
“Whichever. Soldiers don’t wear tutus. I’m sure there’s a rule.”
“Ah, but you’re not a soldier anymore.”
“Yeah.” She heaved a sigh. “I’m not.”
“Feeling a little lost, are you?”
“Not me. Until you fire me, I have meaningful work.”
“Beg pardon? You work for me?”
“I tell stories to your daughters.”
“Ah, I see. Listen. You’ve just given me a wild idea. Do you have time this afternoon to get together and talk?”
“Today?”
“Yeah, today, like in about twenty minutes.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Riley. Jamie is supposed to have her baby this afternoon, and Mick’s getting out of prison, but he doesn’t know the baby is his, and Erica is going to try to steal Marco’s sperm from the sperm bank. I’m not sure I can give all that up for you.”
“Uh…”
“Oh, what the heck. I’ll see you in twenty.”
“Okay, then. Twenty minutes.”
It was a crazy idea, Riley acknowledged, but he couldn’t get it out of his head, so he was going to run with it. All she could do was laugh in his face, and she probably wouldn’t do that. She would simply turn him down if she didn’t go for it. Or maybe she would think she wasn’t qualified, or overqualified, or—
Hell. He pulled into the motel parking lot. Too late now. There she stood, in her worn jeans and Go Guard sweatshirt, which was all the coverup she needed on this fifty-degree December day.
“Hi.” She climbed into his pickup.
“Hi. You sure you don’t mind missing what’s-her-name’s baby?”
She laughed. “I’d never even watched that soap until two days ago, so I guess I’ll live if I have to give it up.”
“What a trooper.”
“Not anymore. I’ve been discharged.”
“So you have.” He turned off onto the road to Wilson’s new place. “You don’t mind riding out to a job site with me, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. So now that you’re discharged, what do you want to do with yourself? Where are you going to live?”
“I haven’t decided. That’s the reason I’m still here.”
“Here?” Oh, yeah. “You’re thinking of living in Tribute?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
With his gaze on the road in front of him, he shrugged. “It’s just that few people actually move here. Most people move away.”
“If that were true, this would be a ghost town by now.”
“Okay, a slight exaggeration. But why pick Tribute? You could live anywhere.”
“The fact that I can live anywhere I want is why I’m here. I guess I’ve loved it here since those terrible, hot nights in the desert, when I begged Brenda to talk about something, anything. Brenda talked about Tribute and how much she loved it. I mentally adopted the town. I’ve never lived in one spot longer than a few months, always being shuffled from one relative to another while my mother took off for parts unknown.”
“What about your father?”
She shrugged. “Never met the man. I’m not sure my mother knows who he is. I never thought to myself, ‘I wish I had a dad, or a mom who stayed put.’ It wasn’t parents I always wanted, it was a home. A hometown. For more than a year I’ve held Tribute in my mind, and now, here I am.”
“Wow. That’s quite a lot for a little town like Tribute to live up to.”
“On the contrary. It’s everything I dreamed it would be.”
“So you’re sticking around?”
“I’m sticking. I need to put down roots. Do you realize that I lived in Iraq longer than I’ve lived anywhere in my life? That’s pitiful. Oh, yeah, I’m here and I’m sticking.”
“Okay, then. I don’t mean to get too personal, but how long can you hang around without needing a job?”
“If it was anybody but you asking, I wouldn’t answer that, but because it’s you…I can make it until the end of the year, but then I’ll need a job, no matter where I am.”
Riley turned into the drive and parked beside the roofer’s truck.
“Is this one of your jobs?” Amy asked, eyeing the house in progress.
“Yes. Three thousand square feet of living space, three-car garage, covered patio, in-ground pool, barn, tool shed, cross-fencing. He wants us to do it all. Or rather, his wife does. He keeps saying he’ll hire somebody to do the outdoor items, but his wife says no, I have to do them because Bob will never get around to it and she’ll be an old woman before she gets to swim in the pool.”
“Ah, a woman who knows her man.”
“That she does,” he said. “Maryann has known Bob as long as I knew Brenda—since around first grade.”
“So maybe not everybody leaves town?”
“I’d say about half go, half stay.”
“And some come from somewhere else,” she said. “Sounds about normal to me.”
“Could be. You want to be one of the ones who moves here from somewhere else.”
“Looks like it.”
“I’ve got to check on a couple of things here.” He reached for the door handle.
“May I come with you?”
He paused and looked at her, pleased by her request. “Sure, if you want.”
They climbed from his pickup and she followed him into the open garage of the new house, where the roofer was taking a break with a cold can of pop while he thumbed through a pile of wrinkled invoices.
“Hey, Red. This is a friend of mine, Amy Galloway. Amy, Red Conklin, my favorite roofer.”
“Ma’am.”
They talked for a few minutes, until Riley was satisfied that the roof would be finished by dark that evening. “All right, then. That’ll be great. I’ll hold you to it.”
Riley showed Amy around the inside of the house. Twice his cell phone rang, potential customers wanting estimates. That the calls were forwarded to his cell told him Fanny had closed up and gone home for the day.
What did people do without cell phones?
He finished the second call and glanced around inside the house. “With the roof finished and the doors installed, we can start putting in the drywall, then the woodwork, the fixtures, and before you know it, it’ll be a finished home. What are you smiling about?”
“You,” she said. “You enjoy your work. I like that.”
He shook his head and steered her back out to his pickup. “I like this part of my work.”
“This part?”
“Anything that’s done out of the office.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Not yet, but you will.”
Amy had yet to figure out why Riley had called her. He’d said he had something he wanted to talk to her about. But she didn’t ask him about it now as they turned back onto Main, because she was enjoying the ride, the sights of the town. The fresh air. Riley’s company.
Never mind the latter, she told herself. She didn’t trust her own emotions where Riley was concerned. She feared that her feelings for him were like her feelings for the town—virtually in place before she came to town because of Brenda’s stories. Half in love before first sight.
For a town, that was fine. For a man, it was disaster.
The man in question tu
rned into a driveway and parked before a small, neat, redbrick building attached to the front of a large metal warehouse. The sign on the front door and another stretched along the side of the warehouse read Sinclair Construction.
“Wow,” Amy said. “I thought you worked out of a trailer house.”
“I outgrew it shortly after Brenda shipped out.”
“Did she know about it?” Her husband moving into a larger space, and a location on Main Street, was the kind of news Brenda would have shared. She would have bragged about it to one and all.
“No. I didn’t move in here until after her funeral. I should have done it sooner, but I was waiting for her to come home that fall. I didn’t want to make a move like that without her being here.”
“But in the end, you had to.”
He killed the engine and looked at her. “I outgrew the old place. It was either move and grow, or strangle and suffocate.”
Amy’s heart gave a heavy thud behind her ribs. For a moment she thought she saw a hidden message in his eyes, but he blinked and whatever she thought she’d seen disappeared.
She looked away and studied the building. “What was here before you?”
“A drilling supply company.”
“Drilling, as in Texas tea?”
“Black gold,” he agreed. “The whole town was pleased when they outgrew this site and built a new, larger place at the edge of town. A good bit of our economy depends on the oil industry. They do good, the town does good. The town does good, Sinclair Construction does good. Come on. I’ll show you around.”
Why, she wondered. Why did he want her to see his office? But she wasn’t quite ready to ask. She figured he would explain himself soon enough. For now she would simply enjoy his company. Questions could come later.
The front door of the business was locked; Riley had to use his key to let them in. “You don’t have full-time office help?” she asked.
“Not yet. Fanny comes in a few hours a week and takes care of the bookkeeping. Sort of.”
Amy chuckled at his dire tone. “How’s that working for you?”
“Hmph. Not well. You want a job?”
She laughed. When he didn’t, she gave him a closer look. He didn’t appear to be kidding. In fact, he looked, if anything, hopeful. “Are you serious?”
Riley and His Girls (Mills & Boon Vintage Cherish) (Mills & Boon Cherish) Page 5
