Skye

by Heather Gray

  “Okay, guys, listen up. The food bank is going to honor the vouchers you have, but they will not be issuing any new vouchers to our residents. This is a decision their board of directors made. It’s not a reflection on the people working at the food bank, so please don’t take your frustrations out on them.”

  The men grumbled. This was their food. Part of the promise of Samaritan’s Reach was that they would have a safe place to lay their head and they wouldn’t need to wonder where their next meal would come from.

  Sam couldn’t help it. He wanted to grumble with them. He wanted to rail against the injustice of the whole mess. What kind of example would that be, though? “I don’t believe in pointing out a problem without having at least some sort of a solution, though, so here’s the plan. We’re going to expand what we’re doing with the flea market, and the money raised from that will go into a grocery fund. We will work on a weekly voucher system similar to what you’re used to from the food bank, but it’ll all be done in-house.”

  “Flea market? We don’t make enough money there to feed one person for a week, let alone all of us.”

  Sam let the attitude slide. Calling the guys on it right then wouldn’t help any of them. “The flea market is expanding to include Wednesdays and Thursdays, and we’re going to grow our efforts to collect donations. We are undertaking some new fundraising, too, but the flea market is something we already have in place and know how to do. The learning curve will be short on this one, which is exactly what we need.”

  Half the men nodded their agreement while the other half stared wide-eyed or glared.

  “Having said that, I’m open to ideas about other ways that we can raise funds on a weekly basis. I’m happy to hear any thoughts you have, now or later. Find me, bounce your idea off me, and we’ll see what we can do. It’s to my benefit — and ultimately yours — if you take ownership of this shelter with me.”

  “What about woodworking?”

  Surely he’d misheard. “Woodworking?”

  The man shrugged. “I do some whittling. It’s not much, but I do it in my spare time and can donate whatever I carve for the flea market. Hiking sticks would probably sell well, especially if I carve a fancy something-or-other for the handhold. There might be someone here who knows how to make bigger stuff. Coffee tables, maybe, as long as they’re not ugly. We just need wood.”

  “I can sketch portraits of people if I have a sketchpad.”

  “I used to work with leather. I can make bracelets and belts. I just need a few tools.”

  “Hook me up with some paracord, and I can make chairs. They’re simple, not fancy for women, but men like them well enough.”

  “Take me to a salvage yard so I can get some hubcaps. I learned how to make yard art and picture frames with them. I used to do clocks, too, but I’m a little rusty.”

  Sam’s chest swelled. Pride didn’t even begin to touch what he felt for his men in that moment. “Alright then! If we’re going to put this plan into action, we need two things — space to make stuff, and space to store it. That means two ground floor residents need to volunteer to move upstairs.”

  Alan raised his hand. “I can go up.”

  “Count me in. It’s quieter up there anyway. Easier to study.” Alonzo followed Alan’s example. Besides his off-site job, the quiet man was working on a degree in accounting, so the ability to concentrate mattered.

  The motel had twenty-six rooms in all, but some of those were taken up with storage, the learning center, the kitchen, and more. Sam would need to expand if the flea market became a growing enterprise. Either that or risk not having enough room to take in new residents.

  He contemplated the field next to the motel. A storage area. A workshop. He could see the buildings where everyone else saw dirt and weeds. A gym with hanging boxing bags was a dream, too. For now, though, they needed to outlive the current year. Everything else was pure fantasy until he survived the City Council.

  Sam pointed to three of the men. “Help Alan and Alonzo move. We’ll meet back here in an hour to clean out the two rooms we’re going to convert for storage and a workshop.” He pointed to Franco. “Keep them on schedule.” Then to Gideon. “I need to speak with you.”

  Gideon followed Sam as he strode to the other end of the parking lot. “What’s up, Boss?”

  Sam tugged on his goatee. “Check in with Skye and see if she’s been able to renegotiate our contract with the flea market and ask if she needs help with anything. Offer to assist with calls or rounding up donations or whatever else she’s doing.”

  “Sure thing, Boss.” Gideon jogged off toward the office.

  Yes.

  Sam was a coward.

  He could admit it to himself if no one else.

  Being around Skye was more challenging with each passing day. If she joined him during his quiet time for the next month — something she’d only grudgingly agreed to — then he’d need to keep his distance the rest of the time.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Uh-huh… Yes, I understand… Of course… I’m sorry to have bothered you.” Skye hung up the phone and waved Gideon in. “What can I do for you?”

  “Boss sent me to ask if you talked to the flea market folks yet.”

  She nodded. “We had to commit to twelve months, but they gave us our same spot on Wednesday and Thursday that we have on Friday through Sunday.”

  “How much?”

  “Only ten dollars a week, and they get to say Proud Supporter of Samaritan’s Reach on their literature for one year.”

  Gideon’s eyes twinkled. “That’s going to give us as much publicity as it gives them, right?”

  “Which is why I was happy to let them think they won the negotiation.”

  He chuckled. “Do you need help making calls or anything?”

  “No, I’m good. I’m starting with the grocery stores to see if any would like to make donations of their expiring or damaged stock. Then I’m going to move on to the churches and ask for donations for the flea market.”

  “Expired groceries, huh?”

  Skye wagged a finger at him. “I’m mostly going after their out-of-season items. You know, all the leftover stuffing after Christmas, ham after the Easter rush, those sorts of things. Expired foods are fine too, though. These days they really only put expiration dates on meat and dairy products. Most all nonperishables have a ‘best by’ date. You can still eat after that date without any danger. It just might not be as delicious.”

  “Well, don’t go trying to poison me with some nasty, old, expired milk.” He shuddered. “Now, is there anything I can do to help?”

  She waved him away. “I concentrate better when it’s quiet. Go do whatever you need to do out there, and I’ll work the phones in here until it’s time for me to head home.”

  “You should let us help. Teach us how so we can be useful, too.”

  Now that was an idea…

  The foyer door opened again, and a deliveryman stepped through. “I have several boxes for Samaritan’s Reach. Wanted to make sure someone was here before I loaded them all on my dolly.”

  Skye gave the man a small, welcoming wave. “We’re here. Can we assist?”

  “I’d love it, but company policy and all that. Gotta do it on my own.” He pivoted back toward the steep driveway and his truck idling at the bottom.

  If she was right, Samaritan’s Reach was about to receive an anonymous donation of shoes, a hundred pair in different sizes and colors. About time, too. She almost wished she’d forked out the money for the expedited shipping.

  Her grandfather would roll over in his grave if he knew she’d bought something online with a credit card. He’d always had such firm ideas about paying cash and keeping your account information private. Which was funny considering his customers had often paid online and with credit cards.

  “Whoa, what’s all this?” Sam approached from the left and eyed the four boxes as the deliveryman pulled away from the curb.

  Skye tapped one of the bo
xes with her toe. “He just said it was a delivery for Samaritan’s Reach. Guess you’ll have to open them if you want to find out what’s inside.”

  Sam slid a utility knife from his belt holster.

  Ha. They’d come a long way since that first day on the airplane. A butterfly knife, indeed. Time sure had changed the way she saw Sam Madison.

  Before he cut through the tape on the first box, she interrupted him. “Say. I was thinking about training a few of the men to make calls, too. For donations, at least. I’ll probably handle the grocery calls myself, but if you’re going to grow the flea market, donations will need to become an ongoing thing. So the guys might as well learn how.”

  Sam gave her a quick glance. “Grab two and train them. If you still have calls to make tomorrow, you can pull them back in or get two new guys.”

  She nodded and headed for the Learning Center. Maybe someone in there would want to help.

  Skye was fifteen feet away when Sam’s whoop caught up with her. Men came streaming out of various rooms to investigate the fuss. Pretty soon, the courtyard was filled with whooping and hollering as the men celebrated their windfall. She would have ordered them ages ago if she’d known something as simple as shoes could make so many people happy. She was at Samaritan’s Reach every week, but she still had a lot to learn about life, especially life for these men.

  One hour and four grocery stores later, Skye hung up the phone and dug her fingers into her forehead. She hadn’t had a tension headache like this since…

  Hm. She hadn’t had one since coming to Rainbow Falls.

  She fished a couple of ibuprofen out of the bottle in her purse and tossed them back without bothering to take a drink. Her coffee cup was empty, and whatever was left in the pot was likely burned beyond recognition.

  Skye got the pills down with only minor gagging as the foyer door opened and Sam entered.

  “You okay? You don’t look so great.”

  She grimaced. “Gee, thanks. Just what every woman wants to hear.”

  He slid his hands in his pockets and leaned a hip against the wall by the half-door. “How’d the calls go?”

  She let out a breath that turned into a yawn that she tried to cover it with her hand, but the laughter in his eyes told her he hadn’t missed a thing. “You could at least pretend not to notice when I’m being unladylike.”

  “Is ladylike so important?”

  “Not to me.” Matt, one of the men who’d been helping her make calls, stood and headed toward the foyer door. “Give me a holler if you need more help.”

  Jerald, the other one, rose to his feet, too. “I can do it again, too, if I have to, but I’d rather be outside than in here any day. No offense.”

  Skye waved both men off. “None taken. Thanks for all your work.”

  After the men cleared the office, Sam gave her an appraising look. “So? Is ladylike important?

  “It was to my grandparents.” Thoughts like that would have typically thrown a wet blanket over her mood, but it didn’t sting this time. Rainbow Falls had been good for her in more ways than one. Or maybe just Sam. Either way, she was a better person now than when she first boarded that plane and found herself seated next to a man she’d labeled as a criminal before they’d even left the tarmac.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Every girl should be encouraged to bait a hook and play in the mud now and then.”

  “My dad used to take me fishing before he died. He learned from his grandfather. I had my time in the mud. Who knows? I might make it back there someday. We’ll see.” She straightened the papers on the desk she shared with Sam. “So, for the damage… The flea market is letting us add Wednesday and Thursday for ten dollars each week, but we had to agree to a one-year contract, and during that year they can say on their promotional materials — or wherever they’d like — that they are a proud supporter of the shelter. It’s win-win as far as I can see. We get publicity, and they get to look charitable.”

  Sam nodded. “That’s a pretty sizeable discount off their regular price. I can live with that.”

  “I talked to every grocery store in town. Two of them said they would put items aside as they clean out their inventory but that we have to come claim them immediately. You need to meet with the store managers to iron out the details of when and where, and a Samaritan’s Reach staff member must accompany any of our men who go to collect food. One of them indicated it would be a couple boxes each month, not a ton.”

  “Alright. Did you set up meetings, or am I supposed to schedule those?”

  “Your calendar’s on the computer, so I went ahead and scheduled the meeting with the couple-of-boxes store. I entered the appointment, but I also wrote it down for you.” She handed him a blue piece of notepaper with the relevant information on it before tapping her fingernail against a note that remained on her desktop. “This other one said it used to support the food bank. We’ll get the stuff that would have otherwise gone to them.”

  Sam’s eyebrow took flight. “I’m not sure I want to take away from the food bank.”

  “I got the impression they were expecting your call. It was kind of weird.” She passed him the blue paper that held the details. “He didn’t want to make an appointment, though. He just said you should stop in when you get a chance.”

  He scanned the paper and frowned. “They were expecting a call from us?”

  “Like I said — weird. When I introduced myself, he said he was glad I called and saved him the trouble.”

  Sam folded the papers and slipped them into his shirt pocket. “I’ll check it out when I meet with him. What else do you have for me?”

  “The men found three churches that are going to collect items from their members. One is going to announce it one Sunday and have people bring it in the next Sunday. Another is doing a couple weeks, I think, and the last one is going to do a month-long drive-type collection thing. I put follow-up dates in the calendar. The churches all said they’d give us a ring when the items are in, but I figure it can’t hurt for us to call them if we don’t hear back. We still have a few more churches on the list, too, so we’re not done yet. I was wondering, too, about contacting convenience stores.”

  “Convenience stores?”

  “Yeah, like they have at gas stations.”

  “What can they offer?”

  “They might have grocery items they need to get rid of. A lot of them serve breakfast sandwiches and things like that. If they don’t sell, do they just throw the food out? Why not donate it instead? I wanted to run it by you first, though, before I made those calls. There’s a coffee shop in town, too, that does pastries and fresh breads. I’m sure they have bread left over at the end of the day. I could line up some places like that, but you’d need to be able to send people out to make rounds pretty much every day to collect from various sites.”

  “Let’s hold off on that until we know what we’ll be getting from the grocery stores. I don’t want to end up with so much food that it ends up going to waste.”

  That made sense. “Fair enough. I don’t mind putting in the legwork to make it happen, but only if you can follow-through. The gas alone might make it cost-prohibitive.”

  The corner of his mouth tilted up in the most seductive way. “We wouldn’t use the van, don’t worry.”

  Wait a second. Seductive? Had she just had that thought? “Um, gotta run.”

  She grabbed her purse, pushed away from the chair, and started to leave. Only, to get from the office to the foyer, she had to pass by Sam. Sam, who was leaning against the wall between the two spaces and leaving her only about twelve inches through which to squeeze herself. Maybe if she sucked it in…

  Sam backed out of the way and held the half-door open for her. “Have a good afternoon, Skye, and thanks for coming in. For all your help on this, really. I’ve, uh, been a little more panicked about it than I want the men to know.”

  “Sure thing. No problem. Bye.” She made it all the way down to her car at the curb before she
stopped to breathe. Talk about an embarrassing exit. That might be her worst yet. Worse even than her sophomore homecoming when she ended up in the men’s restroom on accident. She’d blathered apologies as she’d tried to flee the room with one hand over her eyes. She’d bumped into the wall and at least two boys before she’d gotten out of there. Still, somehow, this was worse.

  Skye clicked her seatbelt into place, took a deep breath, and started her car. Tomorrow was a new day. It would be better. And she wouldn’t have to see Sam again until Thursday.

  Except.

  Oh yeah.

  She’d agreed to join him for his morning quiet time for the next month.

  She leaned forward and caught herself just shy of banging her head against the steering wheel. With her luck, she’d smack the horn with her face or make the airbag deploy. Instead, she hit the gas harder than she meant, peeled out into a U-turn, and headed for the safety of home.

  CHAPTER 30

  Sam opened his Bible and looked across the small desk to Skye. She’d been avoiding eye contact since arriving. Based on their discussion the previous morning, he might have been tempted to think it was because they were going to be reading scripture. After her abrupt and tire-squealing exit yesterday afternoon, though, who knew?

  Women were confusing, confounding, and contrary. Maybe contrary was too harsh. Complicated? Yeah. Complicated.

  “Are we going to start?”

  Sam blinked. “Of course. Sorry. Um… Ecclesiastes. I wanted to check out chapter three. Someone said something yesterday. I don’t remember who or what, but at the time, it made me think about these verses, so I wanted to go back and study them.” He ran his finger down the page in his Bible. Maybe what he wanted would jump out at him. “Aha. Here. Nine through twelve, but mostly eleven. Do you want me to read it, or do you want to?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”