“I hope so,” teased Jace. “You might want to stop by and mark them with an X so we don’t mess this up.”
She looked like she wanted to smile.
She didn’t.
She gave a polite wave as she opened the car door. “I’ll see you two in a few hours. And don’t forget the garden stakes, okay?”
“In the bed of the truck as we speak.”
“Perfect.”
When he and Heath climbed into the truck, Heath laughed. “Man, have you got your work cut out for you.”
Jace deliberately misunderstood. “Getting the Hardaway roof done is buying me time. Once my reno is complete, I can move the girls home. Then I tackle the monster-sized project.” He waited until the women pulled away, then followed them up the long driveway.
“I was talking about your partner. The one tapping things into that notebook in the car up ahead. Does she ever stop working?”
She’d told him she was ambitious and nothing he’d seen so far negated that. “Doesn’t look like it.”
Heath studied the car ahead, then Jace, but he stayed quiet. And by the time they’d gotten the two walls down and the debris into the Dumpster, Jace was pretty sure he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life. His mother’s house—her lovely, historic home—was now filled with plaster dust and gaping holes where walls had been.
Sure, he knew they’d fix it. But it still felt wrong.
“You men are amazing!” Lizzie’s voice rang with approval as she stepped in the back door just after one o’clock.
“Oh, this will be a fine piece of work,” Corrie chimed in as she entered. Could they see beyond the mess to the finished product? Right now he couldn’t.
Melonie came in last. She didn’t look at what they’d demolished. The part of his past they’d just destroyed.
She looked at him. Just him. And when she gave him a nod of approval, it helped. She set a big bag on the counter and studied the newly opened layout. “With the support beam here.” She pointed up. “And the beautiful wainscoting, this will keep all the historic flavor we want but open things up for the girls to see and be seen.” She turned her attention up to him and the sincerity in her cloudy gray eyes did another number on his pulse. “You guys did a great job.”
Then she smiled. Not a flirting smile. A smile of such understanding that he wanted to hug her. Thank her. Because for a minute there, he was pretty sure he was wrecking something precious. He wasn’t. He was changing things for something precious. Two somethings. He moved to the wall nearest them. “I know you wanted a closet here, but what about if we move the closet there—” he pointed to the left “—and keep this wall for kid pictures?”
“Kid pictures?” she asked, puzzled. “Won’t you just put them all over?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. Rocked back on his heels. “I thought it might be cool to keep putting pics up there. As they grow. To show all the changes in what they do. Who they are and who they turn out to be.”
Her mouth formed a perfect O. “I love that idea. A wall-of-progress kind of thing—that’s brilliant, Jace. What made you think of it?”
He shrugged and pulled his hands out of his pockets, almost nervous. But he never got nervous, so why would he be anxious now? “Just something I’ve thought of. Having a family someday. Seeing kids grow. Having all that cool stuff up on a wall.”
“It is a wonderful idea, and it will be a beautiful balance of old and new,” offered Corrie.
“Are you all set here?” Lizzie asked Heath. “If you need to stay, I can come back for you later.”
“My part’s done.” Heath raised his hands in surrender. “The fixin’ part is up to Jace. What are you two doing for lunch, though?” he asked Melonie and Jace. “There’s no food here.”
Melonie pointed to the counter. “We stopped by Shy Simon’s in Council. I got us a Triple S pizza to share. I hope that’s all right.”
“A meat-lovin’ cowboy’s dream,” he told her as Heath, Lizzie and Corrie headed out. He didn’t want to smile at her, but he had to. She wasn’t afraid to take charge. To make decisions. To move forward. He wasn’t stupid, he knew that those same qualities would take her away next year, but what if she had reason to stay? What if staying became more important than leaving?
Dude. Been there. Done that. Disastrous results, remember?
She grabbed a bag and went upstairs quickly, the way she did most everything.
There was plenty to focus on without letting romantic nonsense mess him up. And there wasn’t a place on an Idaho ranch for a woman who feared dirt. Dirt and hard work formed the backbone of Idaho. They went hand in hand.
He’d just convinced himself that Melonie’s outfits put her completely out of the running when she dashed down the steps wearing loose capris, a faded T-shirt and a bandanna around the dark waves of her hair.
He stopped. Stared.
She looked at him, then herself, then back at him. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”
He gestured. “The outfit.”
She frowned. “Like it? Hate it? The yard won’t care,” she suggested with a quizzical expression. “I’m doing the front gardens today.”
“You’re doing them?” He couldn’t hide his surprise because that was about the last thing he expected to hear. “I thought you were working on the Hardaway project and I’d get to the gardens as I could.”
“I did work on the project,” she told him. “All the way to Boise and back.” The drawl crept back into her tone as she talked. The drawl that he found crazy attractive. “I wasn’t about to waste valuable hours when I could make some significant progress...which I did,” she added.
She walked over to the pizza, selected a slice and a paper towel, and went straight out that front door after she grabbed a hat that came right out of the pages of a Southern ladies magazine. Then ate her slice of pizza while surveying the yard.
He wanted to go talk to her.
He didn’t.
He’d unloaded the tools from the bed of the truck and lined them up beneath the cluster of catalpa trees his grandmother planted over forty years before. His adoptive grandmother, he realized.
He hated the new adjectives in his life. He’d been fine without them. Fine without knowing a truth that was kept from him. And fine with the house the way it was.
His phone chimed a text from Rosie. He opened the message and the picture she’d sent widened his grumpy old heart.
Annie and Ava, both standing, laughing, clutching the edge of Rosie’s sofa and proud of their newfound freedom. The video clicked to life.
Annie shrieked in glee. Ava joined her. Then Annie released her death grip on the couch. She reached out and clutched her sister in a hug.
Ava hugged her back, and their faces...filled with laughter, the image of innocence, bright with joy.
He swallowed the lump of grouchiness that had taken hold a few days before. His parents weren’t here to explain their choices, but that shouldn’t matter. They were part of him. They’d raised him. Taught him. If they felt the need for privacy about the adoption, maybe it was for good reason.
“Jace? Do you have any old pictures of your mother’s garden? In color?”
He was the worst person on the planet when it came to finding old stuff. “Probably in a bin somewhere.”
She laughed.
His heart gentled. He strode forward and opened the door. “I could hunt them down,” he told her as he took the three steps down to her level. “But maybe it would be nice to plant some new stuff. Create some new memories for the girls.”
“A great idea.” She focused on the shovel, then paused. “Then you’re all right if I remove some things? I don’t want to get rid of something cherished.”
“We need to have a few roses,” he told her. “Mom loved her roses but they’d get nasty every time we go
t a rainy stretch.”
“We can plant a few disease-resistant varieties,” she told him. “They don’t get blighted easily. But I’d like to keep that climbing rose on the trellis,” she continued. “If it gets too spotty, we can replace it next spring.”
“Mom’s favorite. She loved that grayish pink. Said it reminded her of old British novels.” He reached over and lifted a shovel.
She turned, surprised. “I’ve got this. You’ve got inside work to do. I need to do something physical after being in the car. It clears my brain.”
“It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, so the more we get done out here today, the better. I’ll start over here.” He moved to one corner of the front garden. “How about you start at that end and we meet in the middle?”
“Sounds goods.”
As they tossed old plants into the wheelbarrow, the clean smell of fresh dirt motivated him.
She didn’t talk while she worked. Neither did he. He tried to ignore her, but when she started humming vintage dance tunes, she made it impossible.
Music.
He grabbed his phone and hit the music app.
She turned to him, surprised. “Nobody likes old music like that anymore. Except me.”
“And me.” He set the phone on the stack of black mulch chips. “Glenn Miller. Frank Sinatra. Nat King Cole.”
“I used to pick old songs for my dance routines growing up,” she told him as she worked his way. “The other kids thought I was crazy, but it got me two dance scholarships.”
He whistled lightly. “You must be good.”
“Well, it’s like kittens. Or a litter of puppies,” she continued. “If you have three orange kittens and one gray, the gray will get picked to go to a new home first. Because it’s distinctive. Not better. Not worse. Different.”
“Now you’re negating the merit of your efforts.” He frowned at her. “Don’t do that. Nobody hands out scholarships because the music stands out, Melonie. They hand them out because the dancer stands out.”
She looked at him.
He looked back. Suddenly Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight” started playing.
Jace put out his hand. She studied the hand, then him.
Then she laid hers in his.
It didn’t matter that their hands were dirty. It didn’t matter that hers were small and narrow and his were big and broad.
They fit.
And when he led her onto the short grass and spun her into a twirl...
She laughed, and it was about the prettiest sound he’d ever heard.
“You dance.” She smiled up at him as he drew her back in.
“I love to dance. With the right person, of course.” He slanted a knowing look her way.
She blushed and batted him on the shoulder. “No flirting allowed.”
“But dancing’s all right?” He laughed as he kept the moves in time with the music across the yard and around the thick-leafed catalpa trees. As the song drew to a close, he did a quick turn and dipped her. There she was, snug against his arm, head back. Her dark waves of hair cascaded over his arm.
“Dancing is always all right,” she whispered, gazing up at him.
His heart caught, midbeat, because the feel of her there, in his arms, was so right. “You are beautiful, woman.” He smiled down at her.
She smiled back.
Close. So close. Close enough to imagine leaning in for a kiss.
Was she wondering the same thing?
It didn’t matter. They both knew better. And they had work to do.
He drew her back up until she was steady on her feet. “Thank you for the dance.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
Her slight curtsy made his heart tumble a little more.
Just then, his phone rang.
He crossed to answer it, then frowned. “We’ve got to go. Zeke and Annie have both come down with some kind of illness and they can’t be around Rosie’s baby. We’ll have to keep the kids at the ranch house the next few days.”
“Let’s put the tools in the garage so they don’t get mucked up in the rain.”
Her suggestion surprised him. Why would a bunch of garden tools mean more than sick kids? He frowned. “No time. Let’s roll. Or I’ll send someone back here for you.”
* * *
Nobody bossed Melonie around. Not now. Not ever again.
She waved a hand. “I’ll stay here. You go tend the girls.”
He stood still for just a moment. Then he climbed into his truck, backed it around and left.
The jerk.
Not for leaving for a sick kid, but for the Jekyll-and-Hyde maneuver.
She kept working, pulling plants and tossing them. Then smoothing the ground with the thick-forked rake.
She tried to draw up mental images of the Hardaway house as she worked, but mental images of Jace came up instead. The way he moved. The way he talked. The slow smile.
She didn’t dare dwell on how the man danced, or that they loved the same old music.
A bedraggled clutch of coneflowers got to stay.
So did a daisylike flower near the porch, airy and pretty.
She deep-sixed almost everything else except for half-a-dozen primrose plants, long past flowering.
Once she’d laid and pinned the weed barrier, she sliced holes for the current plants, drawing them through. The bits of color popped now, as if they were happy.
A part of her wanted to call and see how the girls and Zeke were doing. Another part needed to maintain distance.
But that was already impossible. Spending a year here in Idaho, working with Jace, watching precious babies grow... That meant she’d have to try harder. When things fell apart, Melonie Fitzgerald simply tried harder. Besides, if something was seriously wrong, Lizzie would’ve contacted her.
An hour later, Melonie had just finished clearing the second small border garden when Corrie drove in.
“Child, you have your mother’s touch with gardens, that’s certain,” she said once she’d parked the SUV.
“You think?”
Corrie put a hand to her heart as she crossed the yard. “Your sweet mama and I spent a lot of time in the gardens together. We both loved digging in the dirt and growing things. You are the only one to have the eye for this, and that is straight from your mama. It does my heart good to see it.”
The thought that she was like the woman she couldn’t remember seemed right and wrong. “I’ve always wished I could remember her.”
“I know.”
“You’d think that there’d be something, wouldn’t you?”
“Memory is a funny thing.” Corrie reached down to stroke a daisy blossom. “You might not consciously remember her, but those kindly feelings you shared, when she’d sing you to sleep, or dozed off with you in her arms, made you feel safe and secure. That security is part of who you are today, darling girl. And it started back then. In your mama’s arms.”
“How’s Annie doing?”
“Fussy and feverish,” Corrie reported. “I thought I’d come this way and see if I could give you a hand, though. They’ve got things covered there.”
“But what if Ava gets it?”
“Well, that will make things busier.”
“Let’s not worry about this,” Melonie told her. She stripped off the garden gloves and tucked the tools into the garage. “I can work on designs back at the ranch and help with kids if needed.”
“You don’t want to be getting sick with this big project coming up,” Corrie said.
Right now that was the least of her worries. “I’ve got two weeks before the roofers get their part done, then nearly a year to see it through, Corrie.” She closed the garage and slung an arm around Corrie’s broad shoulders. “At this point I’ve got nothing but time, it seems. Let’s go check those lit
tle ones.”
“All right.”
Corrie backed the SUV around and headed out the driveway, and by the time they parked alongside Jace’s truck, Melonie’s phone chimed a text from Lizzie. “Seems Ava’s running a fever now, too.”
“Then it’s good we’ve got all hands on deck,” Corrie told her. “We’ll take turns rocking and singing, I expect.”
“Like you and my mother did for me. For all of us.”
Corrie blessed her with the smile she remembered growing up. The smile of a woman who loved her through thick and thin. “Just like that.”
When she got inside, Heath was holding Ava and Zeke was curled up on the far sofa, sound asleep, dark lashes fanning against his milk-chocolate-toned cheeks.
Ava reached for Melonie.
That sweet baby half leaped out of Heath’s big, strong arms the moment she spotted her, leaving her no choice.
“Hey, precious.” Melonie curled the fussy little girl into her left arm as if she’d been doing this forever instead of scant days. “Hey, hey. I’m so sorry you don’t feel good, darling.”
“She doesn’t want to rock. Or eat. And I just gave her medicine to bring the fever down,” Heath told her.
“Well, then maybe a walk outside would be nice? Let’s go breathe some lovely summer air, sweetness. I can walk with her out there just as easy as in here.”
“That’s a good idea. Jace is rocking Annie upstairs.”
She took Ava outside.
The change of scene seemed to brighten the baby’s mood. She stuck her pacifier into her mouth, scowled, pulled it out, then stuck it in again.
Then she laid her head against Melonie’s chest, subdued.
She walked back and forth, beneath the big spreading trees lining the driveway and around the ranch house, keeping the little one in the cool shade.
And when Jace came to get her a half hour later, she didn’t want to let the baby go.
“I’m fine holding her,” she whispered. Ava had finally dozed off against her shoulder. “I thought I’d sit in one of these porch rockers with her. If that’s all right?”
“It’s more than all right,” he told her. He followed her up the steps, then drew the teakwood rocker farther from the wall. And when she settled into one, he took a seat in the other. “I’m sorry I ran out on you back at the house.”
A Cowboy in Shepherd's Crossing Page 9