Anna squeezed her shoulders. “Of course. Right away.” She stood and gave them a tiny shove. “Now, go play. But stay where you can see me, and not in any water or jungly stuff.”
“C’mon!” The more aggressive one grabbed her twin’s hand and they ran for an old playground, a little overgrown, but still featuring a couple of rubber riding horses and an old jungle gym.
She looked back at him and straightened her back. “Where do we start?”
“You’re confident they’ll behave?”
“Yes.” She met his eyes for a long few seconds.
He didn’t drop his gaze.
She sighed, looking over at the girls. “We can hope. They’re kids.”
As if to prove her point, Hayley nudged Hope off one of the rubber horses. Hope got right up in her twin’s face and scolded, pointing back at Anna.
Anna’s teeth worried her lip as she looked from the girls to him and back again.
Hayley rode the faded horse hard for a few seconds, then slid off and walked over to the other horse, slumping and huffing with an attitude evident even from this distance.
Sean chuckled. “They did pretty well. My brothers and I would have been rolling around on the ground punching each other.”
Her tight shoulders relaxed a little. “Just tell me what you want me to work on.”
He gestured toward the cabin before them. “We’ll start with this one. You clear brush—tools are in my truck—and I’ll fix the porch railing and then work on gutters. We’ll do this for each cabin and see how it goes, what’s next.”
She hustled over to his truck and pulled out a shovel and rake.
“Grab some work gloves, too,” he said. “In the toolbox.”
She hesitated, then did as he’d suggested.
She surveyed the area and started in while he took his time getting out boards and a saw and nails. Watching her, wanting to see how she worked but also curious about her.
Some people would have dithered, trying to figure out what brush to clear and what to leave. But she just studied the way the plants grew, glanced at the cabin for perspective and then started in clearing.
He liked that, someone who could work without a lot of direction.
Once, she glanced over and caught him looking. Straightened, and met his eyes with a cool gaze. “I saw you with your friend Tony by the library.”
“Yeah?” He measured a board, marked it and set it on the sawhorse.
“My girls saw it, too.” A muscle jumped in the side of her face and her eyebrows drew together.
She didn’t want her girls to see people fighting. He couldn’t blame her for that. Kids should be spared from grown-up misbehavior. They should be free to play, like Hope and Hayley were doing now.
Still, he didn’t want her to get the wrong impression of Tony. He picked up his saw. “Don’t make assumptions. It’s not always the man’s fault.”
“Right.” She turned back to her work, digging the rake into a heap of leaves and branches. “He only has a hundred or so pounds on her,” she threw over her shoulder.
Don’t get mad. This isn’t about Tony. Sean shook it off and got back to work, not answering, not keeping the argument going.
She looked out toward the little playground. “Excuse me a minute. I need to check on the girls. I’ll take any time I spend doing that off my hours.” She strode over toward the girls, back straight. Knelt and talked with them for a couple of minutes, and then walked them over to a puddled area just off the road. For the first time, he noticed she had a backpack with her, and from it, she pulled a couple of plastic bowls and cups and some big spoons. She showed them how to dig in the dirt, and both girls smiled and started in.
Pretty smart as a mom, finding ways to keep them occupied. Reminded him of how Ma Dixie had entertained the foster toddlers she’d had in the house when he’d lived there. Most evenings, while she cooked, kids were banging lids together and beating spoons on pots. The loud chaos had driven Sean and the other older boys crazy. But it had been heaven for the little kids.
Anna was a throwback, not having any fancy electronic toys for her kids. Of course, she probably couldn’t afford them. But she was making the best of it, like Ma Dixie had.
He inhaled the rich, tangy smell of the salt marsh and listened to the semiquiet world around him, punctuated by birdcalls and chittering squirrels, the rhythmic pounding of the surf audible even here, if you listened hard.
It sure beat the sirens and traffic noise of Knoxville.
He sawed his boards, soothed by the rhythmic motion, and tried not to pay attention to the sight of Anna, back working now, bending over to rake under a line of bushes.
She didn’t dress to flaunt her figure—the opposite, in fact—but she was a knockout. Pretty enough to be a Victoria’s Secret model, except she was petite. So it was only natural he’d notice, any man would. He just wasn’t going to act on it.
Anna moved over to the area surrounding the cabin, putting her in voice proximity, but she didn’t talk.
He liked the silence, and then felt compelled to break it. “You know,” he said, “you might be able to get benefits, health insurance and such, if you did a full application. Otherwise, it’s just contract work.”
She didn’t look at him. “Contract work is fine.”
Having run his own construction company since returning from overseas, he knew what that meant. “Avoiding something?” He didn’t know why he wanted to needle her.
She looked over at him and lifted her chin. “I haven’t worked much before.”
He frowned, puzzled by that. Especially since she seemed confident and self-assured in what she was doing now. How had she gotten by?
“I became a stay-at-home mom pretty young,” she added, pulling a tangle of wire out from beneath a juniper bush and adding it to the trash pile.
“How old are you?” It wasn’t apparent, because she had a young face and figure, but old eyes.
“Twenty-three.”
His eyebrows lifted. She’d said the twins were five, so she must’ve had them at eighteen.
He bet there was a story there.
She was raking vigorously now, pulling out piles of debris from behind the bush, her face flushed with the exertion. When she turned to start on another section, she caught him looking at her. Again.
“You sure you didn’t work before?”
“I earned my keep,” she said, lifting her chin. “I did telemarketing and surveys from home. Stuff I could do with the girls around.”
“Makes sense.”
“Look,” she said, “is there a problem? Do you want to withdraw the offer?”
“Nope.” He gestured toward the pile she’d created. “I’m not judging.” Just curious. “You’re working hard. You’re allowed to take a break, you know.”
She looked at her rake as if she didn’t want to put it down, but then, to his surprise, she dropped it and perched on an old dried-out stump. She wiped her forehead on her sleeve.
Flushed and sweaty, she looked even more appealing. And in a way that made his imagination go wild, but he reined it in.
Anna obviously had a lot of issues on her plate right now. She didn’t need to add a man like him to the list.
As the oldest brother, he’d been close with his mom, her protector, her confidant. And then he’d watched his father shove her into his truck and take her away.
His biggest, deepest fear was that he was more like his dad than he wanted to be. And he never wanted other kids to suffer what he and his brother had suffered.
He’d tried to make a go of marriage with Gabby. When she’d changed her mind about having kids, he’d agreed to go to marriage counseling with her, had talked some about his feelings, figured some stuff out.
But when Gabby had admitted that her relationship with the marriage counselor
had changed, that she’d fallen in love with him... Well, any insights Sean had gotten during their counseling sessions were questionable to say the least.
Best to just remind himself that it was safer, all around, for him to be alone, to avoid any situation where his resemblance to his father might come out.
He ripped a rotting board away from the cottage’s foundation. Then another, shoving away the emotions that wanted to rise up when he remembered his foolish hopes of a happy marriage, a little house he’d build. Now he limited himself to women who wanted a good time, nothing serious. Women who helped him meet his physical needs because they had needs of their own. Women who didn’t kick up all his longings for things that, ultimately, he wasn’t likely to have.
A vulnerable woman on the run, with two cute special-needs kids under her wing—a woman who was superhot but didn’t show it off—that kind of woman was totally off-limits for him.
Way too appealing, but he wasn’t going to let himself be that vulnerable, ever again.
He looked over from his ruminations to find her looking at him, and hoped his thoughts hadn’t shown on his face.
“Is it the same kind of work for all of the cabins?” she asked.
He nodded. “They’re a mess. The owner wants to bring them back to life, but I have my doubts.”
“They used to be real nice.” She snapped her mouth shut and looked away.
A clue into her past. “You’ve been here before?”
She shrugged. “Long time ago.” Then she got up and got real busy with raking all her separate waste stacks into a pile. “Where do you want me to haul this stuff when I’m done piling it?”
“I’ll haul it.” He was curious about her reticence, but it wasn’t his business to know everything about her past, was it?
They’d both just turned back to their work when a familiar loud, croaking sound cut the silence.
The twins shrieked and ran from where they’d been playing into the little cabin’s yard and slammed into Anna, their faces frightened.
“What was that?” Anna sounded alarmed, too, kneeling to hold and comfort both girls.
“Nothing to be afraid of,” he said, trying to hold back laughter. “It’s just egrets. Type of waterbird.” He located the source of the sound, then went over to the trio, squatted down beside them and pointed through the trees and growth.
When the girls saw the stately white birds, they gasped.
“They’re so pretty!” Anna said, and the girls nodded, wide-eyed.
“Pretty?” Sean chuckled. “Nobody from around here would get excited about an egret, nor think it’s especially pretty.” But as he watched another one land beside the first, white wings spread wide as it skidded into the shallow water, he realized that there was beauty there. He’d just not noticed it before.
That was what kids did for you: made you see the world through their fresh, innocent eyes. A fist of longing clutched inside his chest.
The twins were tugging at Anna’s shirt now, trying to get her to take them over toward the birds. “You may go look as long as you can see me,” she said, “but take careful steps by the water.” She took the bolder twin’s face in her hands. “The water’s not deep, but I still don’t want you to wade in. Do you understand?”
Both little girls nodded vigorously.
They ran off and she watched for a few seconds, then turned back to her work with a barely audible sigh.
“Go take a look with them,” he urged her. “It’s not every day kids see an egret for the first time.”
“You’re sure?”
“Go on.” He watched her run like a kid over to her girls. And then he couldn’t resist walking a few steps closer and watching them, shielded by the trees and brush.
The twins were so excited that they weren’t remembering to be quiet. “It caught a fish!” the one was crowing, pointing at the bird, which, indeed, held a squirming fish in its mouth.
“That one’s neck is like an S!” The quieter twin squatted down, rapt.
Anna eased down onto the sandy beach, obviously unworried about her or the girls getting wet or dirty, laughing and talking to them and sharing their excitement.
The sight of it gave him a melancholy twinge. His own mom had been a nature lover. She’d taken him and his brothers fishing, visited a nature reserve a few times, back in Alabama, where they’d lived before coming here.
Get to work. He set up an old ladder and climbed up to clear the cabin’s gutters.
“You need me to hold that ladder?” Anna asked a little later, her voice newly relaxed. “Looks kind of rickety.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be careful.” But when he reached over to tug out a broken piece of screening, the ladder lurched.
“I’m holding it,” she said firmly, and came to stand below him.
“If you want.” He started to climb down when a rung splintered under his foot.
He pulled back and jumped the few feet to the ground, unhurt, but knocking into Anna a little. She flinched and jerked away and started to fall, and instinctively he grabbed her shoulders to steady her.
Even through her T-shirt, she felt alive beneath his hands, warm and muscular. Which fit what he knew about her. She was warmhearted. And she was strong.
He should let go of her, and he did, after he was sure she was steady. But in the process his hand glided down her arm, over skin as soft as the petals of a peach blossom. Attraction stirred, deeper than what he’d felt in a long time.
Whoa. Cool it. He drew in a breath, going for calm, and smelled a fruity shampoo at odds with her no-nonsense attitude.
He fought the entirely inappropriate need to wrap his arms around her, to bury his face in that soft, fragrant hair.
She was looking up at him, her eyes wide, but not with fear. With something else, far more womanly and aware.
He liked that expression on her. He didn’t want to look away. Their gazes locked together, tangled, and then her eyes flicked down to his lips.
Oh, if things were different, he’d run with this, see where it led.
His hands tightened a little on her shoulders. But she twisted away from him, shaking her head like she was waking up from a dream. “I guess you can handle it yourself,” she said with a little laugh. “I’ll head over to start on the next cabin down.”
Before he could catch his breath and answer, she was gone.
He threw his energy into ripping off screens and hauling them to his truck. Working with Anna was going to be tough. He definitely needed to focus on the cottages and not on his coworker. No more touching, not even the accidental kind. Because even that felt sweet and hot and dangerous.
* * *
THEY KNOCKED OFF work for a long lunchtime, and Anna was glad. One, because it gave her time to fix the girls a real lunch and give them real attention. And two, because it got her away from Sean.
That moment when he’d jostled into her had been weird. She was jumpy around men—that was inevitable after Beau and didn’t surprise her.
What did surprise her was that, after the initial jolt, she’d actually liked being close to him. She’d felt safe, somehow. The man was just so big and muscular. And even falling off a ladder, he’d been careful not to hurt her, had steadied her and made sure she didn’t fall.
And he’d done so with a gentleness that made her feel protected, held by his strength and heat, supported.
The odd thing was, she’d gotten the feeling that he wanted to know her better, too. His eyes had held hers a little too long. His touch on her shoulders had lingered just a few seconds after she was steady on her feet.
It was a zing, an electricity, stronger than what she’d felt as a young girl flattered by Beau’s attention. It was a feeling that wanted to settle around her heart and mind, something more than just physical.
She blew out a sigh and focused o
n washing lunch dishes, scrubbing hard at the mac and cheese pan. No way, no way did she need to be imagining getting closer to Sean. It was a ridiculous thought when what she actually needed to do, when what she could handle, was to steer completely clear of men. Her experience with Beau had taught her that men were not for her. Some women had grown up seeing how adults navigated relationships and how good marriages looked; she hadn’t.
“Are we gonna go play, Mom?” Hayley’s voice rang above the beeps and bells of her handheld game.
“In a little bit,” Anna said. Truthfully, she wouldn’t have minded taking a little break, after a morning of physical work and anticipating a physical afternoon.
But she’d be fine. Getting tired would help her sleep better tonight. And what a blessing to be able to have her girls nearby while she worked, to actually have a job and a place to stay.
Her escape from Montana and Beau had turned out far, far better than she’d hoped. She knocked on wood, because she didn’t want to jinx it, and then sent a prayer of thanks upward.
There was a rhythmic knock on the door, and Hayley jumped up and ran toward it.
“Wait.” Anna said the word sharply and Hayley stopped. Then she turned and trudged back to the couch.
Anna looked at her daughter’s slumped shoulders, and her whole chest ached. If only she could have protected them better, let them think that the world was a safe place for kids.
Hayley had understood exactly why Anna was stopping her. Doors were dangerous. Their father might be on the other side, in a rage.
Was it Beau? Her heart picked up its pace. She’d been working hard enough to push her fears and the vandalism out of her mind, but now all of it came back to her in full force. Could he have found them? Was he here to try to take the girls from her?
She eased to the window and looked out.
Then let her breath out in a relieved sigh. Sean.
Relief made her trot happily over to the door and open it. “Hey,” she said, unable to restrain a smile.
He looked a little surprised, and then smiled back, and the transformation in his features shocked her.
Beneath the scowls and the scruff and the attitude, he was a really handsome guy.
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