by Mary McBride
Watson aimed a little nudge of his cap in her direction, mouthed a curt “Howdy, ma’am,” then stuck out one of his huge, hammy hands toward Dan.
“Heard you were back, Danny,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
“Gil,” Dan said. “Looks like you took over your old man’s business.”
Done shaking hands, the sheriff hooked his thumbs through his big black gun belt. “Dad retired five years ago. Just seemed natural then, me taking up where he left off. Folks were used to saying Sheriff Watson.”
“Hell, I know I was. Your daddy picked me up by the scruff of the neck and threw my butt in jail more times than I like to remember.”
There was a brittle edge to Dan’s laughter that was apparently lost on the lawman, but not on Molly. She swore she could feel static electricity coming from the handyman. It almost made the hair stand up on her arms.
The sheriff lifted a hand to run it across his jawline. “Been in town long?”
“Just got in today.”
“Doing some repair work on Miss Hansen’s house?”
“Yep.” Dan shifted his weight and took a long pull from his beer.
“Is that what you’ve been doing all these years?” Watson asked, shifting his considerable weight, too, and somehow looking down at Dan even though the two were roughly the same height. “Working as a handyman?”
“More or less.”
“In Texas?”
“Pretty much.”
“Plenty of work, I’d expect.”
“Enough.”
Molly could almost smell the testosterone. The evening air reeked of it. It was definitely time for a bit of feminine sweet talk.
“We were just having some dinner, Sheriff. Steak and Greek salad. Would you care to join us?”
Watson touched the brim of his hat again. “Oh, no, ma’am. I’ve got evening rounds to make. I just stopped by to say hi to Danny here.” He took a step back, adjusting his gun belt over his ample gut. “I’ll be going now. Nice seeing you, Miss Hansen. Danny, you, too. You keep your nose clean, you hear?”
My God. In all of her thirty-one years, Molly had never actually heard somebody seethe, but that was precisely what Dan Shackelford was doing at the moment. He was hot enough to cook a steak on. She could almost hear his temper crackle, so it surprised her when his voice emerged fairly level and calm.
“See you around, Gil.”
It was only after the cruiser had pulled out of the driveway and moved on down the street that Dan swore harshly and tossed his paper plate with all its contents into the glowing coals of the grill.
“I lost my appetite,” he said.
“Don’t mind him, Dan,” Molly said. “Big fish. Little pond. You know. Watson just likes to make waves. And there’s no shame in being a handyman. God knows we need more of those than self-important lawmen.”
He just looked at her then for the longest while, shaking his head kind of sadly, before he said, “Good night, Molly. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Then he disappeared into his trailer.
Chapter 2
The next morning Molly kept to her usual routine of waking early and getting to her desk by eight o’clock. The regular hours helped keep a sense of normalcy in her disrupted life. And that life promised to be even more disrupted now that Dan was going to be there, measuring, hammering, generally getting in her way, not to mention taking up more of her thoughts than she wanted to admit.
By nine o’clock, she had read and graded six essays entitled “My Favorite Season,” with summer the hands-down winner, in spite of the fact that she had spent half the time looking out the window for signs of life under the live oak.
By ten o’clock, she was worried in addition to being ticked off. Just when was all this measuring and hammering and getting in her way supposed to begin? She wasn’t running a trailer park or a campground, for heaven’s sake, and she certainly wasn’t running a retirement home for handymen, although that looked to be the case.
She poured a mug of coffee, then trudged across the yard and pounded on the Airstream’s door. She stood there, tapping her foot for what seemed like half an hour before the door finally swung open.
“You look terrible,” she said, offering the first words that came to mind when she saw the rumpled hair, the red eyes like flags at half-mast, the stained T-shirt and the ratty boxer shorts with their wrinkled happy faces.
“Is that coffee?”
Molly looked down at the mug she had almost forgotten was in her hand. “Coffee? Oh, yes. It is.”
“Is it for me?”
“Oh. Sure. Here.” She pressed it into Dan’s not-so-steady hand, then watched him swallow at least half of it before she asked, “What time were you planning to start work? I’ve made a list.”
He winced. “A list?”
“Things that really need to be done.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt and withdrew the piece of paper she had scribbled on earlier. “The showerhead in the bathroom needs to be replaced. And the sink drips in there, too. You already know about the roof leaking, right?”
He nodded as he sipped the coffee.
“The wallpaper is peeling in the bedroom, too, but I wasn’t sure if you were just supposed to make structural repairs or—”
“Just give me the list.”
“You probably can’t read my writing. Number three looks like kitchen flower but it’s really floor. There’s a spot near the pantry where—”
“Just give me the goddamned list,” he barked, nearly ripping it out of her hand, then slapping the empty mug in her open palm while Molly stood there blinking.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately.
“You should be,” she snapped. “I was only trying to help.”
“I got up on the wrong side of the bed, that’s all.”
Molly snorted. “Yeah. The underside.”
“Okay. Look, give me a couple minutes to get cleaned up and then we’ll go over this list of yours and work up some kind of a plan. How does that sound?”
“All right, I guess. Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” Dan snarled into the mirror mounted over the Airstream’s minuscule bathroom sink where he’d just narrowly escaped slashing his carotid artery while he shaved. “Fine and dandy.”
Posing as a handyman had seemed like a good idea at the time, considering that his official presence was supposed to be kept under wraps. The Marshals Service couldn’t afford to create panic in several thousand witnesses, not to mention the agency’s devout wish to avoid bad publicity. But after installing the window and door locks, Dan realized he’d reached the limit of his do-it-yourself expertise. For somebody who could break down and reassemble just about any weapon ever made, he was at a loss when it came to domestic nuts and bolts. Molly was a smart woman. She’d have his number—zero!—before he could hammer a single nail.
She was a sweet woman, too. God bless her for trying to step between him and that no-neck, ham-handed Gil Watson last night, and then attempting to bolster his wounded handyman ego as if she weren’t some hotshot East Coast financial whiz. If she was miserable here in the armpit of Texas, she was much too gracious to let it show.
He’d been miserable here, but not because he’d been leading some secret, lesser life. He’d been miserable because he had to spend every waking minute proving himself to a couple hundred people to whom the name Shackelford was synonymous with white trash. Catching a last glimpse of his face in the mirror, Dan wasn’t at all sure they weren’t right.
He knocked on Molly’s back door and mumbled another apology when she finally let him in.
“I thought I’d run down to Cooley’s Hardware and pick up some of the things on your list,” he said, digging the paper out of his shirt pocket.
“Let me get my handbag and drag a quick brush through my hair.”
Dan started to tell her she didn’t need to come along, but as he watched the sway of her backside and the soft swing of her hai
r on her shoulders, he changed his mind. He didn’t even try to convince himself it was because his job was to protect her from unseen terrorists. Hell. As if he even could.
“I’m ready.” She was back, all blue-eyed and smiley, with a floppy straw hat on her head and a big straw bag hooked over one shoulder.
Dan slid his dark glasses in place, pushed his headache to the back of his brain, and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
Molly had only been in Cooley’s Hardware on Main Street once. Her brain became so overloaded from the narrow aisles with their crammed shelves that she’d left without purchasing what she’d gone there to get. She felt the same today, on the verge of short-circuiting as she wandered along behind Dan who was pitching odds and ends into a shopping cart.
“This place hasn’t changed a bit,” he said, reaching over her head for something on a shelf. “Almost feels as if I never left. Scary.” He feigned a shiver, then lobbed whatever he’d retrieved into the cart.
“How long ago did you leave?” Molly asked, continuing to trail along behind him.
“Nearly twenty years. Hell, a lifetime.”
“Hmm. That young man working at the cash register probably wasn’t even born then. Just think. In the time you’ve been gone, an entire generation has been born, graduated from high school, probably even gotten married and started families of their own.”
Dan must have stopped the cart suddenly because Molly walked right into him, her breath whooshing out in an audible oof.
“Are you trying to make me feel old, Molly?” he asked irritably. “Trying to push me into some kind of midlife, male-menopausal crisis? ’Cause if you are, I can tell you right now you’re doing a bang-up job.”
“No. I wasn’t. For heaven’s sake, I was only…”
But before Molly got another word out, a shrill, very familiar voice called out, “Well, bless my stars and all the planets, if it isn’t Danny Shackelford.”
Raylene Earl was sidling toward them, wearing a pair of the tightest jeans Molly had ever seen, and an orange-and-white striped tank top that did amazing things to her chest. Her breasts sort of preceded her down the narrow aisle, then smushed into Dan when Raylene nearly hugged the life out of him.
“Danny. My Lord,” she exclaimed, stepping back on her spike-heeled sandals. “You haven’t changed one little bit. Not one teensy-weensy bit.”
“Neither have you, Raylene.” His grin wobbled somewhere between downright embarrassment and outright lust.
The hairdresser rolled her eyes in Molly’s direction. “Did you hear that, hon? What a sweet thing to say. But then you always did have a silver tongue, Danny. My Lord. I can’t believe you’re back. Molly said so, but it just didn’t seem to sink in until I laid my very own eyes on you five seconds ago.”
Dan just stood there, seemingly as hard-pressed for the proper response as Molly was. But that didn’t bother a single pink hair on Raylene’s head.
“Look at you,” she said, threading her Strawberry Frappé fingertips through Dan’s hair. “You always did tend toward that scruffy look, didn’t you? You have Molly bring you down to my shop and I’ll give you a trim. I do Buddy’s hair and he likes it well enough. Both my boys, too. ’Course, it’s free so they can’t really complain.”
“So, you and Buddy got married,” Dan said.
“Only ’cause you upped and disappeared.” Raylene giggled and gave a brisk wave of her hand. “I’m kidding. I knew I’d be Mrs. Buddy Earl from the time I was in kindergarten. It just took me till I was nineteen to really settle in to the idea.”
“Is he still the best mechanic in Moonglow?”
“You bet your buns he is. The best in the whole county. He’s got his own garage now and even works weekends on the NASCAR circuit.”
Raylene dragged in a breath and crossed her arms, a nearly impossible feat in Molly’s humble opinion. She shook her pink head in wonderment. “Danny Shackelford. My Lord. So, what’ve you been up to all these years?”
“Oh, nothing. This and that. You know.”
If his answer struck Molly as vague bordering on obscurity, it seemed to make complete sense to Raylene.
“This and that,” she echoed, flinging a long-lashed wink toward Molly. “Probably a little more of this than of that, if I know you. Molly, this man is the world’s greatest kisser. I’m telling you that right now. The best bar none.”
“Jeez, Raylene,” Dan muttered, donning his glasses again and turning up the collar of his shirt as if he wanted to disappear inside it.
“Well, honey, I’d be proud of that, if I were you. I don’t care what your other talents turned out to be. In the smooching department, you were El Numero Uno. Probably still are, too.” She cocked her head. “Is he, Molly? Come on. ’Fess up now.”
“Rrraaayleene.” Molly dragged the woman’s name out to at least four childish syllables.
“Okay. All right. I’m nosy. I admit it. I…”
A deep male voice on the store’s intercom cut her off as it boomed across the aisles, “Raylene, we got that hinge you were looking for up here at the counter.”
“Well, I’d best collect that and get it home while Buddy’s still in the mood to fix my kitchen cabinet. Now, you come into the shop for that trim, Danny. Molly, you bring him in, you hear me? See y’all later.”
“I feel like I’ve been picked up and put down by a tornado,” Dan said with a beleaguered sigh. “Let’s get out of here before she comes back.”
Molly laughed. “Raylene’s got a good heart.”
“I wonder how the hell I ever even managed to kiss a pair of lips that move ninety miles an hour.”
“Well, I guess you used to be faster,” she said, “in the olden days.” Molly grinned in the face of Dan’s dark glare, then chuckled to herself as she again followed along behind him.
“Will that be all for you, sir?” the young man at the counter asked.
“That should do it,” Dan said, hoping his credit card still had a little play in it after he’d been on medical leave at reduced pay for so many months.
“Oh, wait,” Molly said, suddenly appearing with a roll of wallpaper. “We need this, too.”
“That’s just a sample roll,” the clerk said. “I’ll have to call in back for the real stuff. How many rolls do you want?”
Dan could feel himself breaking out in a thin, cold sweat.
“Did you measure?” Molly asked.
“The bedroom? Nah. Didn’t need to. I just eyeballed it.” He leaned casually on the big, ancient counter, trying to speed-read the label on the paper roll and translate centimeters into square feet. This morning’s headache sprang back, full blown. “Gimme twenty rolls,” he told the clerk.
“That’s a lot of paper,” the young man said. “You want a couple buckets of glue to go with that?”
“Sure,” Dan said, pulling his sunglasses down his nose and glowering menacingly over the rims. “And gimme the good stuff. Not that kindergarten paste you people are always trying to hustle. You hear?”
The young man swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
It took two trips to haul everything out to his car, and when Dan came out of Cooley’s door the second time, with his arms loaded with wallpaper rolls as heavy as cordwood, he wasn’t exactly astonished to see Gil Watson’s big, shiny black boot up on the BMW’s front bumper.
“This is a thirty-minute parking zone, Danny. ’Fraid I’m gonna have to write you a ticket.”
“That isn’t fair,” Molly called out.
“Sign’s right there.” Gil pointed his pen. “Nice Beamer, Danny. You got the registration slip?”
As a matter of fact, he did, but despite the Texas plates, the car was registered in D.C. and there was no way Dan was going to show it to Gil or anybody else in town. “It’s back at the trailer. Someplace. Hell, I don’t know.”
“But the car’s yours, right?”
Molly scraped her hat off and slapped it against her thigh. “Well, of all the…”
Dan
batted her with a roll of wallpaper to hush her up. “Yeah, it’s mine,” he said, opening the trunk, dumping the rolls inside, then slamming it closed. “I saved all my pocket change for a decade, Gil. Worth every damned penny, too.”
“Just checking.” The sheriff ripped a pink copy of the ticket out of his book. “Here. You can pay this any time in the next sixty days down at the city clerk’s office. I’m sure Anita will be right tickled to see you.”
Dan jammed the ticket in his pocket, glaring at Gil’s big backside as he lumbered down the sidewalk. “Fascist,” he muttered just under his breath.
Nearby, Molly looked as if she were about to take a bite out of her straw hat. “I’m going to write a letter to the Moonglow Weekly Press about this,” she said. “It’s just not right.”
“It’s personal, Molly.”
“I know,” she sputtered. “That’s what I mean.”
“Well, I appreciate your wanting to fight my battles for me, but it really isn’t necessary.” He grabbed her hat and plopped it on her head, then opened the passenger side door. “Get in, Rocky. I want to show you someplace special.”
“Where?”
“Just get in.”
Although she’d lived in Moonglow for nearly a year, Molly had never been east of First Street. In fact, she’d just assumed that the town didn’t exist beyond First, and when Dan’s car went flying over railroad tracks, she was even more surprised. She never knew they were there.
“This must be the proverbial other side of the tracks,” she said with a little laugh.
“Not proverbial, Molly, darlin’.” Dan turned the wheel and the car slid to a halt in a rock-strewn, weed-overgrown driveway. “This is the actual other side.”
The dilapidated house by the side of the driveway made Molly’s little bungalow look like a palace in comparison. Here the windows that weren’t boarded up were jaggedly broken. The front porch appeared out of synch with the rest of the house, canting east while everything else canted west. A daylily was growing right up through the porch boards.