Silver Thaw

by Catherine Anderson

  She grinned, dimpling both cheeks. Oh, how he loved those dimples. “He even got Momma to join us. And I drank brandy with him long before I was of age. Dad believed that kids need to experience the effects of alcohol in a supervised environment so they won’t go out and get stupid somewhere, followed by getting hurt.”

  He nodded. “My dad—his name is Jeremiah, by the way—felt the same way. He was always careful about how much he let us kids taste when we were young, but when we got to be teenagers, he allowed us to have enough to understand the effects.”

  Amanda’s gaze, which Jeb could have gotten lost in, clung to his. “He sounds like a really great dad.”

  “He is.” Jeb thought about his father. “He could be stern, but only when one of us was really messing up. And even then, we knew we had it coming.”

  “I think I’d really like your dad.”

  Jeb thought, Yes, you will. He fully intended to take this lady home to meet his parents, and in all his thirty years, he’d never done that.

  “So,” he ventured, “what do you think about my job offer?”

  “I have reservations.”

  “Are you nervous about living with me?”

  She studied him for a long moment and then smiled slightly. “I have every reason to distrust you, but Bozo is telling me and Chloe, with canine eloquence, that you are a kind man. It’s just that I need to make it on my own. Even if I can’t raise Chloe in grand style, just managing to do it will make me feel better, like a whole person.”

  Jeb understood that. She was one of the sweetest people he’d ever met. A wonderful mom, kind to animals, a hard worker. Mark Banning didn’t deserve to breathe the same air she did, and so far as Jeb was concerned, the marriage had been nothing more than writing on a form, the words never recorded in heaven.

  “I expect you to work for your wages and for the use of my home,” he said. “And just because I’ve made the offer doesn’t mean you have to accept it. I’ll be glad to take you out again tomorrow to look at more rentals.”

  Amanda gazed into her brandy. “I’ve already done some figuring in my head. If I keep the cafeteria job, the most I can give you during the week is four hours a day. I make twelve dollars an hour at the school and work only five-hour shifts. That is a grand total of three hundred a week, twelve hundred a month. And out of that, I must pay for taxes, rent, electricity, garbage collection, and food. Even if I work long hours for you on weekends, I can’t put in enough time to be worth what you’re offering to pay me.” She gestured at the house. “No charge for living here? I’m sorry, Jeb, but your offer means I won’t be doing it on my own.”

  “Okay.” Jeb moved forward with as much caution as he would have on cracking ice. “What do you think is a fair wage?”

  Her eyes went soft, like chocolate melting in a pot. “Five hundred a month is more reasonable.”

  Jeb wondered where she’d come up with that number, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. “Seven hundred a month then. You’ll be working weekends, remember. So I’m figuring in time and a half for overtime.”

  He knew that his offer of free room and board, plus the seven hundred, was worth far more than she could make for cooking and cleaning anywhere else, but he hoped that since she’d had limited work experience, she didn’t realize that.

  He did well with his business. He was by no means wealthy, but he had a nice cushion in the bank, and he really wanted to help this lady and her child. Amanda took another sip of brandy.

  “Cleaning people charge me fifteen an hour,” he elaborated. “Some want twenty, and they don’t cook for me.”

  “Just for cleaning?” Her eyes widened. “If I had a car, I’d go into business!”

  She finished her brandy, pushed up from the table, and said, “I’d like to sleep on it. Once I’ve done some figuring, I’ll know a fair wage. And I need to decide if I’m even interested.”

  Jeb had hoped they could come to an agreement tonight. But since he was asking her to live with a man she barely knew, he figured “maybe” was all he could expect. He’d give her time to mull it over and, he hoped, conclude that he was harmless.

  Except that where emotions were concerned, he wasn’t sure he was harmless at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Bedding twisted around Amanda’s legs as she tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position. Nothing could switch off her racing thoughts. What was happening here? Jeb Sterling seemed like such a kind man. His home was warm, snug, and attractive. Chloe loved the animals, Bozo especially. As Amanda rolled over and punched her pillow for at least the twelfth time, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the child and dog, curled up together like two puppies in the womb. Except, of course, that the mastiff in no way resembled a puppy, and the beautiful little girl, cast in shadow yet gilded by the glow of the night-light, didn’t either.

  Mentally circling the job offer, Amanda tried to sort out the pros and cons. She wouldn’t necessarily have to accept Jeb’s loan of his older truck. She could still walk back and forth to her other job until she bought her own vehicle. And if Jeb was as kind and stable as he appeared, Amanda and Chloe would be safer here than they would be living alone.

  Mark could find them at any time. And he wouldn’t give up. He would never give up, not even if he entered into a relationship with another woman. The moment Amanda had married him, she’d become one of his possessions. How many times had he told her that he’d see her dead if she ever tried to leave him? Fear turned Mark on, and so did violence. She knew that now.

  What options did she have, if she looked at the situation dispassionately? Every rental within her price range would be a dump. She and Chloe could survive, but Jeb had offered Amanda an opportunity to give her child far more than the bare necessities. She had to think of Chloe’s welfare. And if Jeb turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, she could leave in a blink. She had so few possessions that packing and running wouldn’t take long.

  Possessions. Amanda remembered the two pillowcases she’d left downstairs. The SD card. What if it had been damaged, either during the storm or from being tossed around in a bag with shoes and picture frames? The very thought made her pulse skitter. Far worse, what if it had fallen out of the pillowcase during transport?

  Taking care not to wake her daughter, she slipped out of bed. Bozo opened one eye, regarded her sleepily, closed it again, and stretched. Amanda sneaked downstairs to dig through the pillowcases and find the photo storage device.

  With shaking fingers, she finally located the SD card and sneaked into Jeb’s office. Not wishing to wake him by turning on a light, she felt her way to his chair and computer. Once she’d booted up the system, light from the screen was all she needed in order to see. To open Windows, she needed his password. Hmm. She pursed her lips and typed in Bozo. Bingo. He loved that silly dog so much that of course he’d use that name.

  After plugging the card into the SD slot, she selected that drive and sighed with relief when a box flashed on the monitor screen. There was an option to save the photos to Jeb’s hard drive. She didn’t want to do that. Instead she selected “View files on this device.”

  In a blink, there they were, dozens of photographs, a sad and terrible testimony to Amanda and Chloe’s past. Toward the end of their time with Mark, Amanda had been diligent about documenting the abuse done to her and to her daughter. The dated pictures would show how Mark had escalated the violence, using only his fists on Chloe at first until more vicious acts were required to satisfy him. Amanda hoped the scars on Chloe’s body would vanish over time. They were already fading. But even if they were barely visible by the time Amanda could file for divorce, the photo documentation would provide proof to a judge that the child’s father was dangerous.

  A new screen popped up, asking Amanda if she wished to view the photos in a program called Chandelier. Amanda had never heard of it and guess
ed that Jeb had bypassed free online downloads in favor of purchasing a fancy photo app. So do I want to view them in there? She considered the risks—and the possible benefits. An expensive application might allow her to organize and tag the pictures, noting Mark’s absurd reasons for inflicting each injury. Viewing the pictures wasn’t the same as saving them onto Jeb’s hard drive. How would it be different from viewing them on an external storage device like an SD card?

  Gathering her courage, she selected “Yes,” and in an instant the images popped up in frames with the time and date when each picture had been taken displayed beneath it. Perfect. As Amanda had hoped, Chandelier also offered her the option to underscore each image with notes.

  As she typed, memories flashed through her mind. Each image drove home to her how maniacal Mark could be, and her skin felt as if it might turn inside out. What if Jeb awakened and caught her on his system? She should probably wait to do this when he was gone from the house. But if she did that, Chloe might see the photographs. Since coming here, the child hadn’t awakened screaming from nightmares, and Amanda wanted to keep it that way.

  No, this opportunity, while Jeb slept, was too good to pass up. She might not be able to afford a computer for months, and to do this elsewhere before she filed for divorce would be difficult. She could possibly use a library computer, but she doubted it would have a fancy album program similar to Chandelier. And in a public place Amanda would have little privacy. In most of the pictures, she and Chloe were either nude or wore little clothing. Amanda didn’t want passing strangers to see these images.

  She spent three hours tagging photos. Then she saved all the pictures back onto the SD card. Chandelier offered her several closing options. No, no, no. She didn’t want to save the files on the Web! Couldn’t anyone see them then?

  Just then, Amanda heard footsteps. Her heart felt as if it had leaped clear into her throat. In a split second, she jerked the SD card from the computer, shoved it into the pocket of her sweats, and minimized the program screen.

  Jeb appeared in the office doorway. By the dim, flickering light from the screensaver, she could see that his tawny hair was tousled from sleep. He, too, wore sweatpants, but he hadn’t bothered with a shirt. Amanda had known at first sight that Jeb was muscular and superbly fit, but nothing in her imagination had prepared her for the reality. Every bulge in his arms and shoulders was defined, his belly was ripped, and his golden chest hair shimmered in the shifting illumination. He leaned around to flip on an overhead light. His skin, she noted, was the color of caramel. Second to chocolate, caramel was her favorite sweet.

  Amanda’s stomach felt as if dozens of butterflies had taken flight inside her and were flapping their wings against her ribs. No, no, no! She would not allow herself to feel attracted to Jeb Sterling.

  “What on earth are you doing up at his hour?” he asked, his voice gruff with sleepiness.

  “I—um—couldn’t sleep.” She vacated the chair as if it might send jolts of electrical current through her at any moment. “I thought some computer time might relax me.”

  He passed a hand over his eyes and stifled a yawn. “You don’t need to come down in the middle of the night. I don’t mind if you use my system. Even if you accidentally erase my hard drive, all my business data is backed up on storage devices and kept in a fireproof lockbox, so no harm will be done.”

  Amanda pressed a palm over her pocket, where her own vital information was safely stowed. The card seemed to burn her skin through her worn knit pants. If only she could trust Jeb enough to respect her privacy, she’d ask to keep her own all-important records in his lockbox. During that roof cave-in, she could easily have lost the pictures that would protect Chloe from Mark in the future.

  Only she didn’t know Jeb well enough to trust him that much yet. She almost had that much faith in him, but even if she told him the SD card held very confidential information, he might get curious and look. The thought of him viewing dozens of nude photos of her made her cringe. She would just have to find a safe hiding place for her SD card, and in the event of an emergency, it would be the second thing she grabbed, after her daughter.

  Jeb turned from the doorway. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

  Amanda was afraid to stay in the office, which, given the hour, might look suspicious because he knew she had to get up with Chloe in the morning. She followed him through the dining room to the kitchen, where he stood at the sink getting a drink. Amanda still needed to close Chandelier, but she couldn’t do it now. If she went back into his office, he might wonder why. Still, she didn’t want him to see those pictures. Bleeding, bruised, and swollen, her body hadn’t been anything close to attractive, and for reasons she couldn’t bring herself to analyze, if and when she chose to let him see her naked, she wanted to look as good as possible.

  He turned the tap back on to refill the glass. “You want some? I think thirst is what woke me up.”

  “Um, no, thank you.”

  Beginning to feel like a stick of displaced furniture, she decided to head upstairs before he deemed her behavior peculiar. She could sit on the top riser and listen until he returned to bed. Then she could sneak back into his office to figure out how to get those horrible pictures off his monitor without saving them anywhere.

  “I think I’ll head back up,” she said. “Now that you’ve quenched your thirst, I hope you sleep well.”

  He lifted his glass to her. “G’night. Sleep tight.”

  Amanda ascended the stairs. At the landing, she sat on the top riser and waited. She waited, and waited.

  * * *

  Forehead creased in a frown, Jeb gazed after Amanda. She hadn’t shut down his computer or turned off the light, and he didn’t like to leave his Dell on when it wasn’t in use. That left his system vulnerable to unwanted updates that sometimes messed up Windows. Taking the fresh glass of water with him, he went to his bedroom to grab a shirt, then returned to his office and started to shut down the computer. A pop-up window warned him that the Chandelier program hadn’t been closed, and that he risked losing his data if he continued without saving. Jeb wasn’t sure what Amanda had been doing with Chandelier—possibly looking at his albums, which was harmless enough. But just in case she’d been doing something else and had created a file, he didn’t want to close down without saving her information.

  When he brought the exit screen back up, he was asked if he wanted to save his photos to the Web or to a file. He knew the program and could have selected not to save Amanda’s pictures at all, but he figured they must be important to her if she’d come downstairs in the dead of night to view or tag them. He decided to save her stuff into a picture file named Amanda. The file saved automatically to Chandelier and My Pictures on his system. And then the photos popped back up on the screen with another prompt to close.

  Jeb wasn’t ready for what he saw. He’d expected the kinds of pictures people normally took. Snaps of Chloe blowing out birthday cake candles. The two of them on vacation. Stuff like that. These images brought bile to his throat. Stupefied, he stared at an entire page of frames that displayed Amanda’s nude body, marked horribly with bruises, cuts, and abrasions. Sweet Christ. Jeb scrolled down, seeing more images that made his stomach roll. Abuse? The term didn’t come close to describing what he saw. Torture was more like it. Anger turned his blood hot. In the back of his mind, he knew that Amanda had never intended for him to see all this shit. And maybe his invasion of her privacy was unforgivable. But, damn, Jeb was glad she’d unintentionally left her pictures up. He could have talked with the woman for hours and never learned just how bad it had been during her marriage. Mark can be difficult? Mark was especially vicious when he was drunk? Those were understatements.

  Why, Jeb wondered, had she documented Mark’s abuse of her? If Jeb had gone through something so horrific, he’d want no reminders. Evidence? He tossed out that reason. He had several friends who’d gotten divorced,
and it was pretty much a no-brainer. Even if Mark contested, Amanda would have no problem dissolving the union, although it might be more costly. But it rarely got too complicated unless the custody of a child or children became an issue.

  Chloe. Amanda had said she needed a good lawyer to make sure Mark wasn’t granted unsupervised visitation. Of course. His brain, foggy with sleep, wasn’t tracking well. Using his mouse, Jeb bypassed the sections that featured only Amanda. Being beaten because she’d burned the toast? Or because she’d been a penny short when she returned what remained of the grocery money Mark had given her? As horrible as that was, he knew there had to be more, a lot more, or she wouldn’t have been so worried about the SD card.

  Then, bang. Pictures of Chloe.

  Jeb wasn’t a man to whom tears came easily, but as he perused photos of the child with nasty bruises, one on her cheek, another on her shoulder, a large one on her ribs, followed by pictures of her skinny, bruised thighs, his whole body snapped taut, and his eyes swam. Thank God for Bozo’s doggy eloquence about Jeb’s character. If not for the silly dog’s adoration of Jeb, the child might be hiding in a cupboard every time he entered a room. I’ll never let him hurt my baby again. He’d read that on one of Amanda’s strips of pink paper. He’d known that Mark had harmed Chloe, but never in his wildest imaginings had he thought of anything this bad or this frequent. He’d envisioned spankings that got out of hand or swats on the head that were uncalled for. If only Jeb could get ten minutes alone with Mark Banning, he’d teach the bastard to never lift a violent hand to a woman or child again.

  Now Jeb understood why Amanda had kept pictorial evidence. The dates under the photographs showed an escalation of Mark’s violent attacks. Normally, after a divorce, each parent was granted reasonable visitation with their children. With this proof, dated and tagged with explanations, no judge would ever grant Mark Banning visitation with his child unless the visits were supervised, and maybe not even then.