“Do you need a few minutes?” Ivory’s voice startled him, and he looked up. He didn’t know when she had left, but she was walking in the barn door. He hadn’t even noticed she was gone.
“No. But I do need to talk to you. I know that things have been a little rough between us, but I need to ask for a favor.”
“Yes?” She didn’t seem like she was surprised or upset, and whatever anger she’d been harboring for him because of what he’d said all those years ago seemed to have ebbed, or at least she was hiding it better.
“I need to fly out to California and pick up my daughter.”
Her brows lifted, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t look particularly shocked. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he’d been married and had a child. His life was basically an open book with everything that he did announced through the news and regurgitated every time he had a movie come out.
“I need to go tomorrow, and I’ll be back the next day.”
She nodded, and her eyes dropped to his hands. “That might be good. Your hands could use a break.”
“I know that’s why you made up this baloney about the tractor, and all the other little odds and ends jobs that I’ve been doing, and that’s why you had me sleeping yesterday on the pretense of looking at clouds.”
She had the grace to grin guiltily. Yes, he’d thought so.
“I wasn’t expecting this. I know I owe you another three weeks of work, or whatever, but I really need to take care of RaeAnne.” He hated asking for favors, and his chest tightened while his feet fought to squirm.
“Your daughter comes first. And I appreciate you making sure of that. I certainly support it.”
He hadn’t realized her answer was something he was nervous about until his chest eased and his breathing evened out.
“Thank you.” He looked at the tractor. “I can finish this today.”
She nodded. “It’s up to you.”
He grabbed the filter wrench and picked up where he left off.
She came closer, and he said, “I know my mom can watch her some, but I might have her with me. She’s five and won’t get in the way. Much.”
“It’s okay. Whatever we have to do to make it work, we will. And if it’s too much, it’s fine.” She put a finger on the tractor fender and ran it along the smooth edge. “I...I bought you anyway, not really to help me, but because of my anger and bitterness at what you’d said. And after we talked, for this last week, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve realized how ridiculous it was I was still holding a grudge about something that you’d done years and years ago. It doesn’t matter. And I need to let it go. So if you’re here, that’s great.” She looked up, and her hand dropped back down to her side. “But if you’re not, it’s fine. Really. Taking care of your daughter is far more important anyway.”
Her eyes held steady, and they stared at each other. He didn’t know what he had expected. Since they’d talked last week, they kind of had a little bit of a truce maybe.
She’d managed to surprise him. Again.
“Thanks.” His hands had stilled around the wrench, and he had the oddest desire to move closer to her. He shook it off, recalling all too clearly how tempting she seemed to be to him. And he wasn’t sure why. She certainly shouldn’t be.
“I’ll assume you won’t be here until I hear from you.”
“It should only take me two days. After I get this oil changed, I’ll look at flights. But I plan to fly out tomorrow. And get her the next day and bring her back. I know my mom will want to watch her, and she’s the same age as Clark and Marlowe’s children, so I imagine she’ll spend some time with them. I don’t know exactly how it will work out, but I appreciate you working with me.”
“Sure.”
She backed up some and stepped away from the tractor. He wanted to reach his hand up and stop her. He wanted her to come closer, not back away. But he didn’t move. Just felt a little of the emptiness in the hollow beat of his heart.
“I have some other things to do. I’m going to go get started on them. When you’re done here, and you have your ticket, if you still have some time and want to do something, please come see me. If we continue to take care of your hands, they’ll heal faster. Two days away should really give you a good start on it.”
He nodded, unsure what brought it on but noting that there was a bit of a change in her. More of a distance. He didn’t like it.
Even if it was for the best.
Chapter 13
Ivory was working in her garden in the late afternoon two days later when she noted a cloud of dust coming up the driveway. It could be anyone, but her heart beat a little faster, and she looked for the red color to come into sight that would say it was Chandler.
She didn’t know why. They hadn’t even spent that much time together, but when he left, everything seemed still and quiet, and for the first time in her life, she almost felt...lonely.
She just needed a glimpse of the crimson before she tucked her head back down and kept on weeding the onions. She grew almost everything she ate, with the exception of flour for bread and a few spices and other things, and her garden was a big part of that. She couldn’t afford to neglect it.
What would Chandler’s daughter be like?
Even at five, she would probably be beautiful.
With genes like her dad, and the beautiful woman whom he’d been married to, she would have to have perfect bone structure and features.
Not that Ivory cared.
Her own genes weren’t exactly top-notch.
She almost snorted at that, but she’d gotten over it years ago. For the most part. Maybe she had a little chip on her shoulder. But there wasn’t anything anyone could do about their genes.
She had left a note at the house to say where she was going to be, since she’d been expecting him to possibly show up today, although she hadn’t talked to him since he’d left early in the morning the day after he talked to his ex.
He must have found her note, because barely five minutes after she’d seen his car, he came striding through the grass with a little girl skipping at his side, holding his hand and swinging it.
The girl’s hair was in pigtails which curled down her shoulders. She looked happy, and it seemed like she was chattering. Chandler, of course, looked amazing as always and even better with the little girl beside him.
Her rebellious heart scattered and skipped and started to clap.
Ivory tried to concentrate on the weeds, but her lips wanted to curve up, and her whole body wanted to jump up and start walking down the hill to meet them.
She stayed where she was, head down, pulling weeds, until they arrived at the edge of the tilled patch of ground, and she looked up, hoping her face had at least a modicum of decorum still on it.
“Hi.” Chandler’s eyes landed on hers, and they didn’t move. The little girl had stilled, too.
Ivory sat back, resting her hands on her knees.
She wore gloves today to protect her healing burn which was also wrapped. Normally she didn’t use gloves in the garden, preferring to be able to feel the soil.
For some reason, she felt a little self-conscious with them on. Not that it mattered. She was being silly.
“Hi.” Her eyes wanted to linger on Chandler, but she looked at the little girl. “Hey. You must be RaeAnne. I’m Ivory.”
The little girl stared at her. Then it seemed like Chandler shook her hand a little, and the girl remembered she’d been instructed to speak. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Ivory. Daddy said maybe I could play here some and that maybe you would have some jobs for me to do too.”
The little girl sounded older than five, almost like a little adult. Maybe that was because she had a lot of one-on-one time with her adult caregivers. Not that Ivory knew that much about children.
“Of course. I would love it if you would stay here and play. I always wanted to play in the creek when I was little. It’s nice and warm, and the creek will feel good after we work some. Maybe you can help me
in the kitchen a little too. Tomorrow I have to bake bread, and I could always use help with that.”
The little girl’s eyes had lit up, and Ivory wondered if she was used to being ignored. It almost seemed that way with the eager look that had crossed her face when she thought about working in the kitchen.
“Is that okay, Daddy?”
Chandler looked down at his little girl. Maybe it was just Ivory’s imagination, but he seemed to look a little softer or not quite as rough with his hand holding hers.
“Of course it is, baby. As long as we don’t bother Miss Ivory.”
“I’m sure she won’t be a bother.” Maybe it was the little girl’s curly hair that looked just like her sister’s, but RaeAnne reminded her of her baby sister, in a way she hadn’t thought of in years, and she almost wanted to stop weeding the onions and get up and go put her arms around her.
She shoved the thought aside, as well as the memories that wanted to well up in the back of her head. She had loved her sister so fiercely. It had been them against the world. And then God had taken her.
Ivory stood. “We didn’t really talk about it, and I wasn’t sure what you were thinking, but I assumed RaeAnne could sleep in the house with me.”
Chandler nodded, looking off at the sun that was slowly sinking down over the hill. “I’m sure that would work for tonight. I think my mom will want to have her stay there some as well, and she can play with her cousins. Particularly for this weekend.” He shifted on his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets.
Ivory’s eyes narrowed just a little. She brushed off her hands. Chandler seemed to have more to say, but he was uncharacteristically stalling.
He cleared his throat. “My brother Deacon’s always been pretty good at building things. It’s warm enough now that we could add a little lean-to in the back of the house and put a bed there. It would only take a day or two to throw that up. Nothing fancy. I just didn’t want to impose.”
Ivory blinked. She hadn’t been expecting this. Honestly, it’d only been about dinnertime today when she thought about trying to find a place for RaeAnne to stay. Probably because she’d been mooning over Chandler and hadn’t been thinking of much else lately.
She had to admit his idea was better than hers.
But she said, “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask me. I offered.”
“I couldn’t allow you to do that.” She didn’t want to owe him in that big of a way.
“It would be you doing me a favor. Without that, we’d have my daughter sleeping in the barn, because I couldn’t keep putting you out to have her in the house all the time.”
“You wouldn’t be putting me out. I offered.”
They shared a smile, as her words echoed his. Still, she wracked her brain, trying to come up with a good reason for him not to do it. She didn’t want him making such a drastic change on her property. The fact of the matter was she would owe him.
“Then you’re okay with it?”
She shook her head slowly back and forth. “That’s just too big of a thing for you to do. Normal people don’t add on to someone’s house. It’s just not done. I can’t accept that.”
She didn’t even know how to explain it. He was acting like it was no big deal. But it was a big deal.
A small gift, like a pair of gloves, maybe, wasn’t a big deal. Adding a room onto her house? A completely different story.
“You said ‘normal people.’” He spoke slowly and watched as his daughter walked around the garden, looking at the flowers and glancing down over the hill to the creek.
Ivory’s eyes followed the little girl’s gaze. When she was younger, and even now, it was a lot of fun to play in the water. RaeAnne would probably enjoy it.
The day was warm enough.
Chandler continued. “I’m not exactly normal. Not to rub it in or anything, but I am a kind of big-name movie star. Adding on to your house truly is no big deal for me.” He kicked a stone with his foot, almost like he was embarrassed. But his eyes didn’t leave hers.
She realized that was something that had shocked her over the week that they’d worked together. He wasn’t arrogant and full of himself like she expected a Hollywood actor to be.
She had to admit she liked it, his small-town humbleness. She hadn’t gotten that impression from him the night of the auction—he’d seemed cocky and full of himself then—but the more she was around him, the more she kind of thought that the way he’d been acting the night of the auction was the act and the way he was being right now was the real Chandler.
He blew out a breath. “Please. Let me make a room for my daughter.”
She couldn’t tell him no. She nodded her head. “Okay.”
He waited a few beats, his eyes not moving, before he finally said, “That’s it? No specifications on how it has to look, or where it has to be, or how big you want it? Just ‘okay?’”
She nodded again. “I wasn’t expecting a room to begin with. It’s a gift. I’m not going to tell you how to do it.”
“But it’s your house.”
True. “Pretty much anything that you do to it will be an improvement. We’re agreed on that, correct?”
He laughed with her. “You said it. I think there’s something rustically appealing about it.”
“It’s only appealing if you want to ‘rough it.’ Or if you can’t afford anything else. It’s definitely more appealing than living in town behind the restaurant putting up with what someone else wants every night in order to be able to keep my home.”
Whoa. She hadn’t meant to say all that. Although that’s exactly how she felt. She’d rather live in a tent with no running water and cook over a campfire than be what her mother was. She didn’t think that made her a bad person, but she supposed it did make her look like a fanatic.
Chandler nodded. He seemed to understand and not judge her. “If you don’t mind, I’ve already talked to Deacon about it, and he said he can come out tonight and measure things off so we can figure out how much lumber we need and get started setting the footers on it first thing in the morning.”
Her mouth popped open, and she put her hands on her hips. “You’ve already talked to Deacon about it? You assumed I was gonna say yes?”
He had a sheepish look on his face, and he lifted his hands up like he was somehow innocent. “That was just me thinking positively. I didn’t know what you’d say. Although I really wasn’t thinking that you might reject the offer to improve your house. I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
She shook her head. What more was there to say?
“Come on, RaeAnne, let’s go down to the house so I can get a hold of Deacon and we can do some measuring before the sun sets and it gets too dark.”
“Do I have to, Daddy? I want to go down and explore the creek.” RaeAnne turned to her father but didn’t start walking toward him.
“Not today, honey. It’s not safe for you to be down there by yourself. And if I’m going to get a place for you to sleep, I need to get moving on it.”
“But I don’t want to go back to the house. I want to see the creek. Can’t we walk down there first?”
Of course the little girl was used to getting her way. Ivory couldn’t blame her. She’d much rather play in the creek than go stand around the house waiting for adults to get done with whatever work they were doing.
Ivory looked at the onion row. She had three quarters of it weeded.
“If RaeAnne can wait fifteen minutes, until I finish this row, I’ll take her to the creek. I wanted to wash the dirt off myself anyway.”
“You don’t mind?” Chandler asked, low but serious.
“No. Not at all. I was going down there anyway.”
He nodded. “Give Miss Ivory fifteen minutes to finish her work, RaeAnne. Then she’ll take you down. But I want you listen to her.” His voice was firm with an obvious command in it. Ivory wasn’t sure that would get RaeAnne to obey, especially if she hadn’t been taught that obedience was nec
essary, but RaeAnne nodded.
“Okay.”
“If you want to, RaeAnne, I’ll show you how to weed, and you can help me. We’ll get done faster with two people working.” Ivory didn’t think the little girl would take her up on it, but she walked over.
Chandler’s eyebrows went up too, like he was surprised as well. “Let me know if you need me to come get her or if she gets in your way.”
“I will. But I think we’ll be fine.” Ivory smiled at the little girl as she stopped beside her. RaeAnne gave her a tentative smile back. “If you kneel down here, you can see the difference between the onions which have spiky things sticking up like this,” she pointed to the onion tops, “versus the weeds which have kind of flat leaves.” Her fingers touched the leaves of some weeds between the onions. “Can you see the difference?”
RaeAnne nodded solemnly. Ivory smiled. The little girl truly did seem interested, as some children were. Gardening wasn’t for everyone, but from the time she could remember, she loved looking at the differences of plants and considering how they grew.
RaeAnne might not be as easily entertained as she was, but for now, it was new and interesting to her, and Ivory figured she could take advantage of it.
She taught RaeAnne to pull the weeds out carefully so she didn’t pull the onions out with them, and RaeAnne did pretty well for a five-year-old, only pulling out three onions in the fifteen minutes that they worked.
By that time, Ivory was more than ready to go to the creek and rinse off. And RaeAnne was excited about wading in it.
It surprised her when RaeAnne took her hand as they walked down the hill toward the creek. Ivory looked down, and RaeAnne grinned up at her. Their hands swung between them, and Ivory started singing a catchy song about horses and ponies. Before they reached the creek, RaeAnne was singing some with her.
No matter how hot the day got, the creek was always cold, coming as it did from a spring up the side of the mountain. After they took their shoes and socks off and set them aside, RaeAnne squealed when she put her feet in and jumped right back out.
“If you can stand to keep your feet in it, you get used to it eventually, and it won’t feel so cold.” Ivory stepped in, bracing herself against the icy water. She hadn’t exactly been planning on getting completely wet, but she’d worn shorts and a T-shirt, and she didn’t see any reason why not.
Sold! In the Show Me State Page 11