Then he scowled hard at himself. Not once in his entire life had he ever gotten his hair cut, or not cut, to please a woman, and damned if he wasn’t too old to start now. He didn’t know whether Karen liked short hair, shaggy or ponytail long, and, more important, he didn’t care. He did know that she liked respectable men, like Evan the hero cop, like Smith Kendricks and Michael Bennett, who were as upright and straight-and-narrow as any Boy Scout. She liked family men, who made a commitment when they got married, when they had kids, who were good husbands and generous, loving fathers. She liked dreamers who were willing to support her dreams.
He missed out on all counts.
After shoving his feet into a pair of disreputable sneakers, he pocketed his keys and left the bar, stopping to secure the dead bolt behind him. Early mornings on Serenity weren’t so bad. The street was quiet because that was the way of nature. Everyone was either asleep or just getting up. It wasn’t the unnatural stillness that often settled over the neighborhood. Things were supposed to be quiet at dawn.
The first thing he noticed when he turned was the sign on Karen’s fence—the sign painted with the pretty rendition of her house, with the Kathy’s House name in a flourish across the bottom. It was covered with paint and bent around in such a way as to make removing it difficult. The fence had been painted, too, bright wavy lines of orange, lime green and white stretching from one end to the other, and garbage bags piled beside the driveway awaiting the next trash pickup had been torn open and scattered across the yard.
So it had started. Her uneventful days on Serenity had come to an end. This was probably the punks’ way of protesting the changes she was making in the park they considered their own personal property. They figured if she wanted to pick up trash, she could do it from her own yard; if she wanted to clean up paint, she could do it on her own fence, and leave their place alone.
And where was she? The mutt tied to the wrought iron fence three blocks down gave an easy answer: back in the park. I’m older and more stubborn, she had told him, and she was apparently trying to prove it.
He went that way, giving Jethro a scratch under his chin before walking through the open gate. She had brought a ladder with her this time and was standing close to the top of the swing set, patiently untangling the chains and unwinding them from the top bar. He moved to a place just inside the gate, leaned against the fence and watched while he waited for her to notice him.
She was wearing the baseball cap again—amazing that it could keep all that thick, long hair tucked up out of her way—and her usual shorts and tank. The work she’d done outside here and at her own place was starting to pay off in the hint of gold that colored her exposed skin. Too bad it wasn’t paying off anyplace else.
He was beginning to think she was lost in her own world, unaware of his presence and careless of her safety when she finally spoke. “Hey, Jamey, that fence you’re leaning against?”
“Yeah?”
“I just painted that section about forty-five minutes ago. I don’t think it’s dry yet.”
With a grimace, he moved away and twisted back to look. Sure enough, a loosely formed pattern of tacky black paint stretched across his T-shirt. Now who was unaware and careless?
She leaned way across to unwind the last chain, then climbed to the ground. “Checking up on me?”
“Yeah.”
“You saw my house.” Her voice was conversational, empty of any but the most casual emotion.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“You shouldn’t apologize. You didn’t do it.”
“That sign was too big a temptation.”
“That’s okay.” She picked up a can of spray paint and began repairing the damage he’d done to the fence. “I thought it might be. That’s why I have others.”
“If you put up a new sign, they’ll take it as a challenge.”
She smiled. “If they trash it, I’ll take that as a challenge.”
“You’re fighting a losing battle.”
As quickly as the smile had come, it disappeared, leaving her intensely serious. “Giving up is losing. Giving in, running away—that’s losing. As long as I don’t let them win, I haven’t lost. No matter what, Jamey, I don’t intend to let them win.”
Giving a shake of his head, he moved further into the park. He didn’t understand why she cared. The people down here were nobodies, losers. They meant nothing to anyone. They weren’t willing to help themselves. They weren’t willing to fight for themselves. Most of them weren’t even worth saving. Defacing a fence, vandalizing a car, burning down a house or killing a defenseless woman—it was all the same to the punks down here. Rights meant nothing to them. Life meant nothing to them. So why the hell did any of them matter to her?
His wandering took him to the back wall. There was a house, long ago abandoned, on the lot behind the park. The one-story wall separated the two yards and provided some measure of privacy, but the person who’d built it some hundred years ago hadn’t wanted to be cut off completely. He’d added a gate in one corner that allowed passage between the lots. Once the park had been put in, the gate had provided a shortcut to kids living on the next street or a convenient exit to anyone needing a quick getaway. Four years ago Nicky Carlucci had held a few private meetings down here with Jolie Kendricks, and the gate had been his way of getting in and out without being seen. If he’d been seen, it could have meant his death. Instead, he’d wound up in prison, placed there by his own guilty plea, because it was where he’d felt he belonged. Just as Jamey was here because it was where he belonged.
But Karen didn’t.
“As long as you’re here, you might as well help.”
He turned to see her watching him. She was holding two cans of spray paint, shaking them both, making the balls inside rattle. Satisfied that they were ready, she tossed one to him. Deliberately he didn’t catch it, but let it hit his arm and bounce to the ground. “I didn’t come to help,” he reminded her.
“I know. You came to tell me yet again that I can’t win down here. I can’t make a difference.” She walked to the first bit of new graffiti on the back wall and sprayed a thin coat of black paint over it.
“I don’t believe in what you’re doing.”
“You’ve made that clear.” She moved on to the next profanity.
“I’m not a part of it.”
Looking over her shoulder, she gave him an annoyed look. “I’m not asking for a commitment to the cause, Jamey. I’m asking you to spend five minutes of your time painting over a bunch of misspelled graffiti. If that’s too much, fine. Go back to O’Shea’s. Give up, give in, and get out. Let them win.”
He scowled at her, though she didn’t have the decency to notice as she turned her back on him and went back to work. Give up, give in, and let them win. In other words, be a loser, like everyone else on the street. He was—he knew he was—but he didn’t feel like admitting it this morning. He didn’t feel like giving in. Irritably he picked up the can, moved to the opposite end of the wall and followed her lead, spraying a light coat of paint first, then returning when it was slightly dry to go over it again. At this rate, in another few days, the entire wall would be covered with black paint—not a particularly appealing sight, but better than the obscenities that filled it now.
“Well, well. Isn’t this a sight? Jamey, I do believe the paint is supposed to go on the wall, not on your back.”
Jamey turned to see Shawntae Williams, dressed in shorts and an old stained shirt—as if she’d come to work—standing in the gateway. She had come to work, he realized as she came inside and pulled a pair of brown cotton gloves from her pocket. He watched as she picked up a garbage bag lying on the ground and started the job of trash pickup that Karen hadn’t yet finished, then murmured, “I’ll be damned.”
A few feet away, Karen gave him a faintly smug look. “Most likely,” she agreed, her voice just as soft. Louder, she said, “Shawntae told me Monday that if I was here today, she would help.”
“If I’d thought you really would last, I wouldn’t have said it,” the young woman remarked. She looked at the brick wall, liberally dotted with long black smudges and gave a shake of her head. “I admit, I like it better this way than having my son learning the kind of words from his bedroom window that get him a spanking. But don’t either of you have any artistic talent? Can’t you make it look like something more than a brick wall with dirty words painted over?”
“Something like a mural,” Karen suggested. It was a thought she’d obviously already had. “Maybe Serenity Street the way it used to be.”
“Well, if it’s going to be outside my bedroom window, I was thinking maybe something like Hawaii or Tahiti or a cruise ship to Paradise,” Shawntae retorted. “But yeah, Serenity would be an improvement over this.”
“I can’t even draw a straight line,” Karen said without hesitation, “and Jamey’s only doing this because he can’t back down from a challenge. Even if he could draw, he’d be too stubborn to do it.”
“You know who’s got some real talent?” The woman looked from Karen to Jamey. “Reid Donovan. I’ve seen some pictures he’s done for J.T. He’s good.”
So Reid had artistic talent. That was news to Jamey. He certainly hadn’t gotten it from his parents. The only thing Meghan had ever drawn was a welfare check and the wrath of all the creditors she’d skipped out on over the years. Jamey was pretty good at drawing a beer, but give him a pencil, marker or paintbrush, and he didn’t have a clue.
He almost missed the cautious look Karen gave him before she spoke. “I thought J.T. wasn’t allowed to speak to Reid.”
“Well, he’s not supposed to, but J.T. spends so much time in his room and Reid spends so much time here. Sometimes they talk.”
Reid, whose favorite emotion was anger, whose reaction to everything was hostile, who should be kept away from small children, liked to talk to and draw pictures for an eight-year-old boy. The image didn’t jibe with the Reid he knew...but hadn’t he finally admitted that he didn’t really know his son at all? Wasn’t this just further proof?
“But if we paint a mural,” Karen was saying, “won’t they just paint over it?”
“There’s supposed to be this paint that’s, like, graffiti-proof,” Shawntae replied. “Besides, maybe if one of their own did it, they’d leave it alone.”
“What makes you think he would do it?” Jamey asked.
The young woman smiled. “Just have Karen ask him. I bet he’d do it for her.”
He turned back to the job he’d been given. Finally, something he and Reid had in common: the things they would do for Karen. His only hope was that painting was the extent of them. The last thing in the world he wanted was to find himself in competition with his own son for any woman’s affection.
Then, with a furtive long look at Karen, he rephrased that. The last thing he wanted was to compete for this woman’s affection. Not with the people on the street. Not with her dead hero husband. Certainly not with his own son.
Not anyone.
After spending the entire morning outside, first at the park, then in her own yard, Karen decided to devote the afternoon to patchwork inside. In the last week and a half she had painted the main rooms upstairs—her bedroom, the bathroom and the living room—from the ceiling all the way down to the baseboards. She had even, with the roller mounted on an extra-long extension pole, managed the twenty-foot walls in the entry, and all of those spaces, if she said so herself, were looking better than livable. The bathroom and the bedroom were downright pretty.
Now it was time to start the downstairs rooms, but not before the holes in the plaster were patched—and there were a ton of them. It seemed that either the previous owners or, more likely, the kids who’d hung out in the empty house before she bought it, the ones responsible for the same sort of trash she’d been collecting from the park, had had little regard for the plastered walls. Whether the cause had been accidents, fistfights, fits of anger or just plain boredom, the result was the same: holes in every wall, in all sizes and shapes, sometimes damaging the lath underneath and, in one case, going clear through to the next room.
She had gathered all the necessary tools and supplies, along with her how-to book, in the gentleman’s parlor and was in the process of scraping off her first effort to try again when a knock sounded at the door, then the screen swung open. “Hello?”
Darn, she’d forgotten to latch the screen door again. At least it was a woman’s voice. If it’d been Jamey, instead of a greeting, he would be lecturing her, and she’d had enough lectures lately.
She moved close enough to the big double door to see her guest. Trying to hide her surprise and pleasure, she offered a casual smile. “Hi, Alicia. Come on in.”
The young woman hesitated in the doorway. “Are you busy?”
“Not with anything important. Come in and have a...” She glanced around the big empty room. “Well, there’s not a seat to have, but you’re welcome to the floor.”
“No, thanks.” Alicia patted her stomach. “I might not get up again.” She gave the room a wide-eyed look. “This is a nice house.”
“It will be when I’m done.” Bending over the bucket of patching plaster, Karen made a face at her response. Even in its current sorry condition, this house was nice compared to the others on the street. It was an improvement over the substandard shelter offered by most of the apartment houses, with too little space, too few windows and too little comfort. At least she had plenty of light, air circulating through the open windows and room to move without bumping elbows with someone else.
“I saw what they did outside on my way to work this morning. Too bad.”
“Was that supposed to be some sort of message from Ryan?”
The girl shook her head. “I’m sure he thought it was funny, but I don’t think he did it. He was with me most of the night.” She shifted as if she were uncomfortable—probably tired, Karen thought. She had walked to work before six this morning, had put in a complete shift, then walked back again. Excusing herself, Karen went out to the veranda, picked up the rocker there and came back.
“Here, sit down. Get off your feet.”
“Thanks.” She sat carefully, bracing herself with one hand on the rocker’s arm, settling in awkwardly with a heavy sigh.
“When is your baby due?”
“Three weeks.”
Two months, maybe three, Reid had guessed, and Karen had placed her own guess at two. She wasn’t very big to be so close to delivery. Maybe that was normal for her—after all, she wasn’t very big herself—but it could mean a problem. Affordable prenatal care was unknown in neighborhoods like Serenity, and low birth weight was one of numerous unfortunate results.
“You must be excited. Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?”
“A pretty little girl,” Alicia replied with a dreamy smile.
“What about Ryan? What does he want?”
Just one mention of her baby’s father was enough to dim the light in her eyes. “For it to all be over with. He says I’m no fun when I’m pregnant. Yeah, well, let him carry around an extra fifteen or twenty pounds in the hottest months of the year, when he’s on his feet all morning, and see how much fun he is.” Folding her hands over her stomach, she set the chair in motion. “He thinks everything will go back to the way it was before. He’s such a typical man—so stupid. Before there was no baby. Now there is. Who does he think is going to take care of her, to feed her and change her and walk with her when she’s cranky and can’t sleep?”
“You are,” Karen answered matter-of-factly. Stepping back, she studied her second patch and decided it was good enough. Fortunately, with the textured surface of the plaster, she didn’t have to be perfect. “Of course, you’re also going to make her magically disappear when he wants to be alone with you. You’re going to take care of her all day and through half the night and still be pretty, fresh and eager whenever he comes around. You’re going to devote yourself to her except, of course, when you�
�re devoting yourself to him. Naturally, he’ll come first. She’ll come second, and you just might place a distant third.”
Alicia looked at her for a moment. “You had a man like that?”
“No. My husband was the sweetest, kindest, most loving man I’ve ever known.” Before the girl could ask the obvious question, she went on. “He died six years ago. He was shot by a man he was trying to arrest.”
“You were married to a cop?” She asked it with the same skeptical disapproval that most people on Serenity probably felt for cops, and who could blame them? The police department was failing to protect the good people, and, according to Jamey, all the others had troubles with the law. “From a cop to the owner of a seedy bar. That’s a change.”
Karen finished the second patch, then glanced at her. “Jamey and I are...” Exactly what were they? Not exactly friends, but a little more than acquaintances. But how much more? “Just neighbors,” she said at last.
Alicia’s laughter was easy and loud. “Yeah, right. He’s a very handsome man—”
“Who’s old enough to be your father.”
“And old enough to be your man. They tease Reid about it. They say that maybe one day you’ll be his stepmother.”
Be careful what you wish for, the saying went, for you might get it. All her life she’d wished to be a mother, but she’d been thinking along the lines of a sweet, innocent baby, not a twenty-six-year-old man with more troubles than anyone should ever bear. Not that it mattered. While she couldn’t figure out exactly what she and Jamey were, what they weren’t was certain. They weren’t involved. They weren’t sweethearts. They weren’t going to become lovers. They certainly weren’t going to get married someday, and even if hell froze over and they did, it wouldn’t mean a thing to Reid. He already had a mother somewhere. He didn’t need another.
“I haven’t seen Reid lately,” she said, eager to change the subject. “Is he okay?”
“He’s around. Sometimes no one sees much of him.”
Convincing Jamey Page 13