by Heather Gray
Gideon’s shoulders slumped. “Number’s been disconnected. I tried information, too, but couldn’t find her.”
Sam contemplated his next words.
Gideon needed to know he had a place, a family.
“It’s time to increase your responsibility. That’s part of being in the leadership program. I’m putting you in charge of the learning center. Technology’s not your favorite thing, but you’re smart, and the men who are struggling with college classes could use someone to help them study. You can work out a schedule with some of the volunteers to cover the times you can’t be in there. That way you’re not completely tied down.”
Gideon’s eyes widened the tiniest bit before he averted them. “Part of me thinks it’s time to move on.”
“I’m not sure you’re ready to go, and I’d hate to see you leave here without having a job lined up somewhere.”
“I’ve been trying.”
Sam couldn’t argue that. “I’m not saying you haven’t been. The City Council seems to be going out of its way to make sure none of our men find jobs locally. They can’t put a stop to education, though, and I could use your help.”
Gideon crossed his arms. “I suppose I can give it a try. I’ve been considering changing my major.”
That gave Sam pause. “Oh? To what?”
“Business.”
“Two year, or four?”
Gideon shrugged. “Probably two.”
“What would you do with it?”
Gideon stared off to the side, not meeting Sam’s gaze. “Thought I might be of use here. Or someplace like it.”
That didn’t mesh with Gideon’s seconds-ago comment about moving on. The guy was torn, obviously, and his sister’s disconnected number hadn’t helped.
On the solid footing he had with the men, Sam pushed ahead. He knew Gideon well enough to be able to sidestep the confusion and get to the heart of things. “I might be able to track down your sister. If you want my help. Otherwise, say the word, and I’ll leave it be.”
Gideon’s sucked in a quick breath. “You won’t contact her?”
“Nope. I’ll try to find an address or phone number. The rest will be up to you. I can’t promise it’ll work, either.”
The other man blinked a couple of times before he agreed. “Give it a try. Can’t hurt, right?”
It could hurt a lot, depending on how things went.
CHAPTER 17
“You’re doing it all wrong.”
Skye peered over her shoulder at Alan, who was correcting her taping methods. “Nobody told me there was a right way or a wrong way.”
He huffed and took the painter’s tape from her. “Let me show you.”
She stepped back and watched as he deftly put tape into place, protecting the trim from the Robin’s Egg Blue that would shortly go up on the walls. She wasn’t convinced the blue was actually the shade of a robin’s egg. It still looked like a sunrise over the ocean to her. She’d never seen a real, live robin’s egg, though, so it wasn’t worth arguing the point.
“There, like that. See?”
The tape didn’t look any different to her. “Maybe you should do it? I’m not sure I’ll get the hang of it before this room’s done.”
Alan ignored her remark and went back to taping. “I was visiting with the lady over at employment services the other day.”
The Alan she’d met the first day at Samaritan’s Reach was gone. Maybe he’d had an attitude adjustment. Maybe he’d been cloned by aliens. Either way, the new Alan was proving to be a keeper. “Oh?”
“She told me about all you Rainbow Girls. Said there were Rainbow Guys, too, but they hate the name and don’t use it.”
Skye chuckled. “Yeah. The boys never much cared for being called Rainbow anything. Not enough testosterone in the title or something. What brings that up?”
“I looked at the paint you brought. A grey called Cloudy Sky on a Drizzling Day — whatever that means.”
It definitely looked like wet cement, but nobody had asked her what to name it.
“And Robin’s Egg Blue. Made me think how funny it would have been if you had a sister named Robin. Poor kid might’ve gotten stuck with a middle name like Egg.”
“Y’all need to quit your yammering and get back to work.” Jack groused from his ladder-top spot on the other side of the small office.
Franco poked his head in the foyer door. “How’s it goin’ in here, Miss Skye?”
Sam had given her a watchdog. She could live with that. “So far, so good. Who knows? We might even get some paint on the walls today.”
“Anything’s better than bloody-fur wallpaper.” Franco disappeared from view, and Skye went back to loosely supervising the other men’s work.
Her role was more like babysitting than supervising since she’d contributed nothing other than the color choices and the necessary supplies. Even then, Alan had informed her she’d bought the wrong brushes. Next time she needed to go to a hardware store for anything, she might need to make it a field trip and take some of the men with her.
“Lunch time, everyone. Jack, Alan, go grab your grub.” Sam stood aside as the two men exited the office. Then he stepped through the half-door and set two plates on the desk. “I made you a sandwich. I hope that’s all right.”
He stepped back around to the foyer, grabbed another chair, and brought it into the cramped space, leaving the more comfortable desk chair for her.
“Thank you.” Skye nodded to the food before she slipped into the office’s miniscule half-bathroom so she could wash her hands. “We’re almost done. Provided you don’t mind supervising them, Jack and Alan should be able to finish up tomorrow. If not, it can wait till Tuesday when I’m back.”
“Tomorrow should be fine, but we’ll see.”
She settled into the desk chair. “I never knew taping to paint could take hours instead of minutes. Or that you had to wait such a long time in between colors so the paints wouldn’t blead into one another.”
“Letting one color dry before you do the other is pretty standard. The fastidious taping, though? I’m pretty sure that’s an Alan original.”
She reached for her sandwich.
“You mind if I bless the meal?”
“No. I mean, yes. Or no.”
His left eyebrow lifted the tiniest bit, drawing Skye’s gaze to the raised scar near his left ear.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, I don’t mind. Yes, go ahead and pray.”
Sam bowed his head and Skye studied him.
“Father above…”
He used the same voice with God as he used with her. Close, personal. Intimate. Personal, at the very least, but… Yeah, intimate was the word that came to mind.
“…Amen.”
Skye blinked. She’d completely missed his prayer. She’d been too absorbed with looking at this man who had made her think of a thug when she’d first met him, especially in the close confines of the airplane. How could someone who’d once seemed so frightening turn out to be so humble? How could someone covered in tattoos with skulls, and other images of death, be so meek?
“Is everything okay?”
She forced a smile and took a bite of her sandwich, hoping there was no mustard. When her mouth didn’t immediately start to burn, she sighed.
Thank you.
Whoa. Where had that come from?
“Skye?” Sam hadn’t taken a bite of his sandwich yet.
She nodded to him and reached for her napkin. Had she just prayed? Had she thanked God for not putting mustard in the first bite of a sandwich she’d forgotten to inspect? Where had that come from? It had been a long, long time since she’d talked to God.
Not that she’d been angry with him exactly. She’d allowed considerable distance to grow up between them, though. Skye had done a masterful job of holding God at arm’s length, much the way her stern grandfather had always kept her at bay.
She put her sandwich down. Where had that thought popped in from?
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Sam continued to watch her.
She had to say something so he wouldn’t pry. “Mustard. I’m allergic. I usually check first, but I forgot.”
The worry lines on his brow eased. “No mustard. Turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayo.”
“A club.”
He nodded.
“That was my dad’s favorite sandwich.”
Sam’s gaze remained riveted to her face.
He could probably see all the way to the toenail polish inside her new tennis shoes.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
She shot to her feet. “I just remembered that I need to be somewhere.”
Her purse was in hand before his voice penetrated the fog. “…the truth…”
Her heart raced, her breath came faster and faster, and her hands started to tingle. “Wh-what?”
“You can leave. I don’t mind. Tell me the truth first, though. Remember? I don’t care what you have to say, as long as you’re honest about it.”
Skye pulled her hands into tight fists. She would not let this panic overtake her.
In that moment, she might well have hated Sam. She wasn’t typically a hateful person, but how else could describe the burning heat ripping through her middle like cut glass? “You look at me as if you can see everything. Every hurt I’ve ever suffered, every moment of insecurity, all my confusion and uncertainty. And I wish you’d stop. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You need to stop acting like you do.”
Her hands crossed from tingling to numb. She pried her fingers apart by sheer power of will.
“Thank you for being honest.”
“Whatever.” She pushed her way into the foyer and out the glass door. She had to force herself not to run to her car at the curb.
Friday evening was upon her. But was Skye looking forward to it?
She’d had a busy day of teleconferences with the main office in Boise and was ready for some down time. The night wouldn’t be her own, though.
Jette had texted to say she’d pick her up on her way to Italita for dinner.
On a scale of one to ten…
She wasn’t as ambivalent as the week before, but neither was she thrilled at the idea.
A honk sounded in the driveway, and Skye picked up her purse and keys.
Deciding how ambivalent she was about the evening would have to wait.
Locking the door behind her, she walked to the passenger side of Jette’s sports car and climbed in. “Nice wheels. Suits you.”
Her long-ago friend smiled. “My brother wanted me to buy a truck the size of a small house, but I told him to take a hike. A girl ought to have a few luxuries in life, and this is mine.”
Ooh. A safe subject. “How’s Cole doing these days, anyway? What’s he up to?”
Jette tossed black hair over her shoulder before easing back onto the road and gunning it to the corner. “He’s up in Alaska doing something with the pipeline. I don’t ask, and he doesn’t try to explain.”
That didn’t sound like the Jette and Cole she’d spent time with in high school. “Aren’t you guys on speaking terms?”
Jette laughed. “I’d say he’s my best friend if I weren’t worried about offending the other Rainbow Girls. Nah, we’re great. It’s just that I went to law school and he became an engineer. When it comes to work, we don’t speak the same language. I use words, and he uses numbers.”
“I can believe that. Remember when you blackmailed Cole so he’d tutor me in Calculus?”
Jette took the next corner at warp speed. “That was priceless. He was almost done with college before he found out I didn’t actually have any pictures of him making out with Sienna.”
Skye braced herself against the door as Jette whipped the car into the parking lot. “Is he still the wild child, or did he finally outgrow that?”
Jette snorted. “Not only did he outgrow it, he went to seminary.”
“Seminary?”
“Yep. He’s not a pastor or anything, but he went to seminary and got himself a Doctorate of Divinity. Go figure.”
“But he’s not a preacher?”
“Nope. I think he simply needed to understand God, you know? He’s always seen the world as a puzzle. That’s the way his mind works, but he wasn’t getting the kind of answers he wanted in church. So he took his pursuit for answers to the next level, and something he learned there changed him. He’s still the same Cole, but he’s different, too. He grew up good. Not everybody gets to say that about their big brother, but he’s turned into this man I’m proud to call family.”
Jette couldn’t realize how much those words hurt. Skye was all alone in the world. She’d never had any siblings, and everyone else was dead. “I’m glad.”
Jette climbed from the car before leaning back down to peer across at where Skye still sat. “You have family, too. Even when we didn’t know where you were, you were our family. We prayed for you, talked about you, remembered you, and loved you. Now that you’re back… We’re all a little afraid of smothering you and pushing you away. We’re trying to give you space. Because that’s what people do with family.”
Skye released her seat belt and got out of the low-slung car. She considered Jette over the roof, nodded, and headed toward the restaurant’s entrance.
Family.
The word sent a chill through her veins at the same time that it warmed her heart.
CHAPTER 18
Impotent.
It was an ugly feeling. Sam would rather be out-arm-wrestled by an Airman.
Sunday morning came, and he watched the sun lighten the sky. A little more sleep wouldn’t have gone amiss, but it hadn’t been possible, not with all his tossing and turning.
He’d confronted armed gunmen before. Why did facing Skye this morning have him tied up in knots?
He scrubbed a hand down his face. He needed to relax. Going muscle group by muscle group, he tightened and released each one in turn. As he reached his calves, the answer hit him in the solar plexus.
Sam owed her an apology.
Try as he might to be an approachable and humble guy, apologizing was near the bottom on his list of fun things to do. Hauling a guy off to the state hospital was right below it. Being wrong — about anything — was just above it.
The aroma of coffee reached him just before the tingle of the bells on the outer door.
“Decaf.” Skye set the cup on the counter.
She’d come. Good. That was a start.
“Thank you.”
“Hey, listen.”
“I’d like to say…” They both spoke at the same time.
Sam took a whiff of his coffee, and his lips curved into a smile. “I’d normally say ladies first, but I need to say something if that’s okay?”
Skye bit her bottom lip and nodded.
“I apologize for other day. And any other times I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m…” Words were easier with the men. “I’m more or less a social worker here. I help the men get back on their feet and out into the world. Most of them need to talk. They need counseling, but they don’t want to see a counselor. I’ve learned to build that into the way I interact with them. The things I say, the questions I ask, the way I react. Counseling kind of comes out of my pores now whether I want it to or not. It spilled over onto you, but you didn’t ask for it. You’re not in my care. You’re not one of the men here. I need to learn to do a better job of turning that part of myself off and not pushing in where I’m not wanted.”
Skye sipped her coffee. “I’m sorry, too. After I got over being upset, I realized I wasn’t angry so much as I was defensive.”
“Still, I’m sorry.”
She met his eyes, and her golden gaze was clear. “You are who you are, and the thing that sent me over the edge on Thursday is one of the things I most admire about you. You have a way with people, an approach that’s both soft and hard at the same time. It’s one of your strengths. So I won’t accept your apology. You can’t apologize
for being yourself. I’m not sure why I reacted the way I did. I…”
“I was poking at sore spots.”
“Maybe so.” She put her coffee down. “So, when do we leave and must I ride in that big, ugly van with you, or can I drive myself?”
He rolled with the change of subject. He’d had his say, and she wasn’t holding a grudge. “You can drive yourself, but it would mean a lot to the men if you rode with us.”
Her eyebrows scrunched together in silent question.
“Some of these men are used to being shunned and ignored, or worse. Riding separately sends a message to them whether you intend it to or not.”
Skye’s lips thinned as she reached for her coffee again. “There are all kinds of silent rules here I don’t know about or understand.”
Sam choked down his laughter. She’d pretty much just explained every single man’s first interaction with someone of the opposite sex.
“Hm.”
Sam looked over at Skye. “It’s not that bad.”
“It looks like it should have been in the van graveyard twenty years ago.”
“Load up, everyone!” The men wore their expectations on their faces. They were waiting for Skye to change her mind. He could almost taste it on the air. They were anticipating her rejection. Her comment about the van hadn’t helped, either.
She swung open the passenger door, though, and climbed up into the seat. “If it breaks down, I’m not getting out to push. Let’s just clarify that here.”
Franco called from the backseat. “That’s fine, Miss Skye. I can push enough for both of us.”
She wiped a hand across her brow. “Whew. Thank you, Franco. I knew you’d have my back.”
The tension in the van broke, and the men relaxed. Their smiles came easier, too, as Sam shifted into gear.
“This way, Miss Skye. They have doughnuts.”
“The coffee’s over here, Miss Skye.”
“You can’t take food into the sanctuary, Miss Skye, so you have to eat out here.”