“She’s in the other room fixing her hair.” Opal’s voice carried into the dining room. “She put on her date-night earrings.”
Jamie stopped in the doorway and touched her right earlobe. What had possessed her to put on the sapphire earrings John had given her for their twelfth anniversary, the last they’d had together? She was going to spend the day insulating the attic.
Opal chattered on. “And mascara and the sweater we gave her for Christmas. It’s the first time she’s worn it.”
“Opal.”
The little girl jerked her head around. “What? I’m not bothering Mr. Payton about taking me to the dance. And Rose told me those were your date-night earrings. I was just telling Mr. Payton.”
Eli’s facial muscles worked, as if he was struggling to contain his grin.
“Go tell your brother Mr. Payton is here to start the attic. And you and Rose need to get ready.”
Opal dragged herself from the room.
“I’ll take your coat.” She took his ski jacket, ignoring the glint of humor in his eyes, and hung it in the closet. “Myles should be right down. I need to run Rose and Opal over to Rose’s scout leader’s house.”
Jamie turned to see the glint dim. It looked like her comment about leaving had quashed any idea he might have gotten from Opal that she’d dressed up for him, even if she subconsciously had.
“Rose’s troop is going to a program at Fort Ticonderoga as part of their history badge, and they’re letting Opal tag along.”
“So it’s just Myles and me.”
Did she detect a note of disappointment in his voice? No. They’d had a good time bowling last night, but that didn’t mean anything. Her mind drifted to the smooth, athletic way he bowled. Eli and Myles working together without her might not be a bad idea. It would give Myles some constructive male time. But what would she do all day?
And you wouldn’t be being honest with Eli if you let him think you have something else to do when you don’t.
Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Leviticus 19:11 played in her head. She mentally stored it back in the recesses of her mind where she’d banished all of her Bible learning when she’d stopped going to church.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily. I’ll be back in a half hour or so.”
“Take as long as you need. We should be able to hold down the fort until you get back.” He glanced over her shoulder.
“Hi, Mr. Payton.” Myles came down the stairs two at a time followed by Opal.
“Myles.”
“Want a cup of coffee or something?” Myles asked. “I haven’t had breakfast.” He glanced at her. “You did make coffee, didn’t you, Mom?”
“Yes, I made coffee.” He son had recently taken to drinking coffee in the morning. She didn’t know if he enjoyed it or thought it made him seem more grown-up.
“Coffee sounds good.” Eli shot her a warm smile before allowing Myles to lead him from the room.
“Mommy.” Opal tugged her hand, and Jamie realized she was staring at the empty doorway. “Are we going or what?”
“Yes. Go see what’s keeping your sister.”
“Go here. Go there. I already got Myles for you,” Opal complained as she went to get Rose.
“I’ll be outside warming the car up,” Jamie called after her.
An hour later, she let herself back in the house. Stopping at the Paradox Lake General Store on her way home had taken longer than she’d expected. She put the ham and cheese she’d bought for lunch in the refrigerator, pausing to listen to the heavy footsteps overhead. What was it that made boys so loud?
Jamie closed the refrigerator and headed up to join them. As she reached the top of the stairs, the strains of a song by Myles’s favorite band drifted down from the attic. She ducked into her room and exchanged her sweater for an old sweatshirt that was more appropriate for home repairs. She fingered one of her earrings before taking them out and putting them in her jewelry box.
It was foolish to have worn them in the first place. Jamie drew in a deep, pained breath. She’d never forgive herself if she’d lost one. They were John’s last gift to her. But they’d gone so well with her sweater. The sweater she’d worn to look nice for Eli. What had she been thinking? Jamie shook her head. She hadn’t been thinking, not with her head. She was a healthy thirty-four-year-old woman who’d wanted to look nice for a man. Her throat clogged. A man other than John. A man she wasn’t even sure she liked.
The ladder steps to the attic creaked as she climbed them. When she reached the top and poked her head through the trapdoor opening in the floor, she found Eli alone rolling insulation down the peaked ceiling.
“Hi.” She cleared her throat. “Where’s Myles?”
Eli stapled the insulation to the top joist. “Over at Hill’s.”
Jamie ground her teeth. He’d ditched his work to go tinker with that old car? And Eli had let him? That didn’t seem right.
Eli stepped back to the middle of the room where he could just barely stand straight. “Tom called. He needed help at the shop. Jack was supposed work today, but Suzy wasn’t feeling well and he took her to the birthing center.”
“Oh, no. I hope everything is okay.” She hauled herself up into the attic.
“Karen is in charge of the Community Church prayer chain, and she has the calls going out.”
Jamie studied her hands. “I suppose some people can take solace in that.” But not her. Not anymore.
“And more.” His voice was soft, but firm.
She ignored Eli’s implied reference to a higher power she no longer believed in. “Kelly and Autumn have appointments today. Suzy will be in good hands.”
“The best.”
Jamie knew he didn’t mean the two midwives. “What do you need me to do?” She motioned to the insulation.
“I’ll hold and feed you the roll, and you can staple the insulation to the joists.”
Halfway across the room, her phone chimed a text. “I need to check this. It could be the center, even though I’m not supposed to be on call.”
She looked at the lit screen. It wasn’t the center. It was from Myles. Did Mr. Payton talk to you? What do you think?
Her stomach tightened. Myles wasn’t still trying to get her to change her mind about the American Legion rifle class, was he?
She eyed Eli, hoping he wasn’t encouraging Myles. She’d been clear to both of them. “It’s from Myles. Something about your talking with me.”
His eyes darkened.
She might as well get it right out. “If this is about the rifle course at the American Legion, Myles is sorely mistaken if he thinks you can convince me to change my mind.”
Eli let the insulation drop and hang from the ceiling. “That’s not what we were talking about.” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Pastor Joel is starting a confirmation class. Some of the kids at youth group were talking about it. Myles asked me to talk to you about letting him sign up for it.”
Jamie curled her fingers until her nails dug into her palms. She had joined her parents’ church when she was Myles’s age. “I don’t…” She stopped. Maybe the best way to protect Myles from falling into the same dependency on faith that had failed her was for him to learn more about religious tenets so he could recognize the cold hard reality.
She breathed in the warm, dusty attic air. “I don’t see why not.”
Eli blinked away his stare. “That’s great. Joel has a super program worked out. I think Myles and the other kids will get a lot out of it. There’s even a parents’ module, so you can see what the kids are learning.”
“That’s probably good.” She was pleased that she was able to keep her words even and emotion free. “You wanted me to staple the insulation?”
“Yeah.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and looked over at the dangling insulation.
She took the opportunity to pick up the stapler while his gaze was elsewhere and he couldn’t see her hand shakin
g.
* * *
Eli pushed the insulation against the wall and held it as he watched Jamie bend to pick up the stapler. He ran his gaze over her unruly curls and down the straight line of her back. She’d changed from the pretty sweater she’d had on earlier to a baggy blue sweatshirt with a Buffalo Bills emblem on the front.
She looked up and caught him staring at her. He rubbed the back of his neck. “So, I don’t have to ask who you’ll be favoring in the game tomorrow.”
She blinked.
“The Bills-Patriots game.”
“The sweatshirt. My dad gave it to me years ago. I grew up in Western New York. There’s some kind of unwritten code that if you’re born there, you have to support the Bills for your whole life no matter where you live. It was tough at a couple of bases where we were posted.”
Posted. With her husband. Who’d probably been a Bills fan, too. Which for some reason bothered him.
“How about you? A Giants fan?” A lot of the people in Eastern New York were.
“Nope.”
“Not the Patriots?”
“Yep.” He wasn’t a die-hard Patriots fan, but since the Bills and the Patriots were longtime rivals and he suspected she was more of a Bills fan than she was letting on, he couldn’t resist aligning himself with the Pats. To see her reaction if nothing else.
“And after bowling last night I thought we were finally starting to get along.” The light dancing in her eyes ruined the stern expression she was struggling to maintain.
“It would have been better if I’d said the Giants or Jets?”
“Minimally.”
“Hey, do you want to catch the game tomorrow? I have a sixty-inch-screen TV.”
She rubbed the palms of her hands down the front of her jeans and stared at the floor.
Swift. He’d said the wrong thing again, and she was trying to come up with a nice way of saying no.
“I promised Rose and Opal I’d take them shopping tomorrow afternoon.” The light danced in her eyes again. “I’m recording the game to watch when I get home.”
He knew it. He knew she wasn’t a casual fan.
“Myles is going over to Tanner’s to study. I’ve told him not to tell me anything about the game if they watch it.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“Explain what?” She held the stapler as if she were ready to defend herself.
He was suffering from a bad case of foot in mouth. She hadn’t told him where Myles would be while she was out with the girls because she was expecting him to ask. She was just making conversation. He should know better than to try to second-guess a woman’s thoughts and motivations. If he didn’t change his tactics fast, the collateral damage could prove insurmountable.
“Yourself. Anything. We should get to work if we’re going to finish this job today.” He breathed easier when Jamie chose to dismiss his comment with a sidelong glance.
She closed the space between them. He pressed the insulation against the wall, and she rose on her tiptoes between his arms and reached up to staple it. The fresh fragrance of her hair tickled his nose and cut through the mustiness that permeated the attic.
With a click from the stapler, she securely fastened the batting and ducked out from under his arms, leaving a cool emptiness between him and the slanted ceiling.
“I can finish this,” she said, “if you want to go ahead and measure and cut the next strip.”
“Sure.” Putting some space between them might be a good idea. The attic didn’t seem nearly as cavernous with Jamie helping as it had when he’d first come up with Myles.
He watched her neatly staple the insulation down the wall at four-inch intervals.
She stood. “You were going to cut the next strip.”
“Right.” He unhooked the measuring tape from his back pocket. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t need any help.”
Hands on hips, she smiled and shook her head.
“I was admiring your work.” And how cute you looked doing it.
“Better,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve installed insulation.”
“Duly noted. I’d better watch my work, or I might be out of a job.”
“I think you’re safe until Myles gets back. Did he say when he’d be done at the garage?”
“No.” Eli unrolled the next batt, knowing that Jamie was watching him, and expertly cut it to length. After her reluctance last night to accept his offer of help, he’d had second thoughts about coming over this morning. Obviously, she and Myles could have handled the job without him. But now he had a feeling the day might turn out to be enjoyable. He looked up at Jamie’s heart-shaped face. Very enjoyable.
* * *
Jamie wiped her forearm across her forehead. “What do you say we take a break and have some lunch? It must be time.” Her stomach growled in agreement.
“I’m with you there.” He looked around. “Not bad. We should be able to finish this afternoon.”
“What do you mean not bad? Myles and I would have never gotten this much done.”
“You’re right.” He grinned and motioned to the opening to the stair ladder. “After you.”
Jamie hesitated. “Could you go first? It’s silly. I’m fine coming up the steps, but I like to have someone hold the ladder when I go down.”
Eli raised an eyebrow. She should go ahead and climb down, but her feet didn’t seem to want to cooperate.
“It’s just that I fell off a ladder when I was little. Or more precisely, I fell with the ladder when it tipped over. I wasn’t supposed to be on it. Dad had looked away for a minute. I sprained my wrist and broke my leg.”
A sympathetic smile softened his features. “A little impetuous, were you?”
“Sort of like Opal.”
His eyes lit with amusement.
“Okay, a lot like Opal. So are you going to humor me and hold the ladder or not?”
“There’s nothing I’d rather do.” He lowered himself through the floor, filling the square cutout with his broad, T-shirt clad shoulders. Until now, she hadn’t realized how warm she’d gotten working. Maybe she should change into a T-shirt, too, before they came back up to finish.
“All clear.”
Jamie reached for the first step with her right foot and planted her hands firmly on the floor for balance. Her cheeks heated as she realized the view she must be giving Eli. Too late now. As her head cleared the ceiling, she looked over her shoulder into Eli’s smoky eyes. With his hands on either side of the stairs frame, he had her boxed in like he had upstairs before he’d backed off and let her staple the insulation by herself.
Her foot reached for the floor and Eli placed his hand on the small of her back for support.
She turned and smiled. “I’m down.”
Eli stood motionless, staring at her, his hand still on her back. Her stomach quivered.
“Right.” He shoved away and the quiver stilled to emptiness.
Jamie brushed an errant curl back from her face. “I’m fine with the regular stairs,” she said to fill the growing silence. “I mean I can go first.” She scuffed her sneaker against the hardwood floor. She was blathering.
“Hey, it’s okay. We all have our insecurities.”
“I guess.” Jamie took in his sympathetic yet take-charge manner and wondered what his could be.
“I’ll wash up and run out for sandwiches for us at the General Store.”
“You’ll need to clean up downstairs. There’s no bath up here. And I stopped and bought ham and cheese for sandwiches on my way back from dropping off Rose and Opal.”
“Great. I’m starved. Tell you what. In return, I’ll buy you the cheeseburger special at bowling next Friday.”
“You don’t have to.” The thought of him buying her dinner, even at the lanes, unsettled her. It wasn’t like he had to pay her back.
“I don’t have to… I want to.”
Eli’s correction revived the quiver in her stomach. It was silly. She’
d simply enjoyed working with someone who seemed to like home improvement work as much as she did. Someone who wasn’t in a rush to get it done and over with like Myles. Or, she had to admit it, like John had been. That’s all. There was no need to let herself be bothered about it.
“Okay.” She relented. “A cheeseburger special on Friday. Let’s get washed up. All of this talk of food has me starved now, too.”
Jamie led him down into the living room, catching her reflection in the mirror decorating the wall next to the open stairway. She ran her hand over her hair. The humidity in the attic had turned it into a tousled riot of curls.
“Hi, Mommy!” Opal greeted them from the front doorway.
Jamie stopped in mid-step and Eli almost crashed into her. Her gaze flew to the clock on the DVR. She hadn’t been keeping track of time. Her first thought was that she’d missed the girls’ pick-up time, which wasn’t like her. No, it was only one fifteen. She wasn’t supposed to pick them up for another hour. She placed her hand on her chest. She hadn’t given the girls a thought all morning.
“Hi, sweetie. Is everything okay?” Jamie descended the last three stairs. She looked past Opal for Rose, afraid her knee might have kicked out again. Rose had chaffed about taking it easy as the PA had instructed.
“Everything’s fine.” Charlotte Russell followed Opal in with her daughter, Katy, and Rose. “The presentation at the Fort was shorter than expected. Sonja called all of the parents but didn’t get an answer here.”
“She must have called the house phone. We were in the attic putting up insulation.”
“I see.” Charlotte’s gaze moved from Jamie to Eli.
Jamie’s heart dropped. Charlotte Russell was one of the biggest gossips in Essex County. She hated to think what the woman might be making of her not answering the phone and walking down the stairs with Eli looking somewhat disheveled. Jamie had always thought privately that Charlotte was unhappy in her life and wanted others to be as miserable as she was. Let Charlotte think whatever she wanted to think. Jamie looked up at the ceiling. But please don’t let her share it.
“Since you picked up Katy this morning when her father’s car wouldn’t start, I figured I’d bring the girls.” Charlotte’s reference to her estranged husband dripped with distaste.
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