Love in Deed: A Silver Fox Small Town Romance (Green Valley Library Book 6)

by Smartypants Romance

  “Howard?” The deep masculine timbre, boisterous like a lumberjack bellowing, sends a shiver up my spine. Must be a bill collector as no one seeks out Howard. His gambling debtors. His philandering girlfriends. They’d called after his disappearance but had tapered off over the years.

  “Howard, you in there?” The man pauses another beat and then paces to the porch railing, staring out at the property. It’s October, and the front pasture needs mowing. His broad back to the bay window gives me better access to view him, and my head tips, drawing lines across a leather harness strapped over his shoulders and crisscrossing between his shoulder blades.

  Is that a holster? Is he carrying a gun? Have the Iron Wraiths come for their revenge? It’s been a decade of solitude without a glance from the motorcycle men living nearby.

  It was an accident.

  My eyes flick to the television set as Tripper and Virginia stand with their arms around one another, making some joke I can’t hear through the blood rushing in my ears.

  What does it take for a man to love a woman like he does?

  Abruptly, the stranger turns back toward the house, narrowing his eyes at the window even though the glass is thinly veiled by sheer curtains. My breath catches. For a moment, I wonder if he can feel my gaze. Does he know I’m looking at him? If I rock backward, the movement will give me away, and if I try to stand, I’ll definitely draw attention to myself, so I hold still like a deer in the forest sensing the approach of a threat. He can’t possibly see me because I’m too far back from the glass. Like an animal inside a cage at the zoo, I’m hiding in the shadows, hoping he’ll go away.

  Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

  He steps toward the window. One large stomp forward. Then he shields his eyes with a palm at his brow and rests the edge of his hand against the glass.

  “I see you,” he states.

  For some reason, my eyes leap to Tripper on the screen, about to reveal a finished kitchen. If only he could see me and help me out by getting rid of this poser on my porch. I’m ridiculous. What I should be is frightened. I should scream, but who would hear me? I’m alone in this big house with acres of distance to the next property.

  If a person screams with no one around to hear it, is there really a sound?

  “Go away,” I bellow toward the window. “Howard isn’t here.”

  A pause passes as he observes me, and I look back at him. If I were to romanticize the moment, I’d be certain our eyes lock, but they don’t, and I’m no romantic.

  “Beverly?”

  My throat clogs. How could he know my name? “What do you want?” My voice comes out a screech like an owl. Who are you?

  “I’m looking for Bev.” No one except family calls me Bev. Ever. Nicknames are stupid.

  “Then why did you ask for Howard?” I yell. He retracts his hand from the window and shakes his head.

  “I’m looking for Howard’s wife.” Howard’s wife. After all these years, it’s strange to hear the label, and it proves this man doesn’t really know me or us. Howard’s been gone for seventeen years. Disappeared.

  “Howard isn’t here, but…but I have a gun.” I reach for the nearest large object and hold it up, aiming it toward the window as though I intend to shoot.

  A deep chuckle ripples through the glass. “That’s the oddest shaped gun I’ve ever seen, and you’re holding it wrong.” He chuckles a second time. “It looks like a baseball bat.”

  Darn it. He’s observant albeit incorrect. The large needle used for chunky yarn knitting is one of Hannah’s attempts to find me a hobby. Chunky knit—it’s all the rage. Hannah’s encouraging me to make blankets. I’m not very good at it.

  “Bet my swing is better than yours.” He laughs at his baseball joke and holds up his left arm. Ignoring his guffawing, my eyes trace the outline of his appendage, thinner and leaner than the opposite one. A glint flashes from the metal in his hand.

  He has a gun.

  He definitely has a gun!

  “Go away,” I shout again, sitting up straighter, finding boldness I don’t feel. “If you’re with the Wraiths, I apologize. If you’re a bill collector, we don’t have any money.” My daughter has taken over our finances. I won’t consider selling. I don’t want to leave, but I can’t answer why.

  Waiting.

  So much waiting.

  “I don’t know who the Wraiths are, and I’m not here collecting on a debt.” He pauses again, lowering his hand with the gun and lifting his other hand to shield his eye for the window. “Well, not exactly.”

  I don’t have the slightest idea what he means. All I do know is I want him off my porch.

  “We don’t have anything of value,” I holler, finding it strangely comical that we are caterwauling at each other through double panes of glass. What I stated is the truth, though. All the pretty items women would have received from a wedding—china, crystal, silver—I don’t own. “Being pregnant out of wedlock does not garner a girl a trousseau,” my mother told me after I’d informed her of my impending nuptials and motherhood. Real love, I’d told my parents. A dream come true.

  What a nightmare in reality.

  “That isn’t true.” His voice is deep, sergeant worthy, and it takes me a moment to realize he means items of value and not my nightmare. He pulls back from the window, facing the front property, twisting his neck to survey the land with a slow sweeping crane of his head. Then he spins for the window, curling his forefinger and thumb around an eye like a monocular, observing me once again. “Everything of value is within my line of sight.”

  My skin prickles like a sleeping limb fighting to awaken, and I have so many dormant body parts left restless and yearning for too long. It’s longer than I care to remember since I’ve been with a man. And something in what he said and how he said it in that too-loud lumberjack voice makes me shiver.

  My eyes flick to the television set just as Tripper kisses his wife’s temple. Then my sight lowers to my left leg, thinner than the right, withered like a wilted tomato vine. No man is going to be interested in me. The thought pisses me off. Even my own husband wasn’t interested after the first few years.

  “You were never going to be enough for me, Beverly,” Howard had said.

  “Leave my porch,” I squawk, my ire growing. I hold the knitting needle higher as if I’ll javelin throw it at him if he comes closer, which is preposterous as he’s behind the barrier of the window.

  Or am I the one barred inside?

  “I think I’m getting off on the wrong foot here,” he mutters loud enough I can still make out the depth of his voice through the window.

  “Is that a joke?” I hiss. Wrong foot? Is he implying how I can’t effectively use mine?

  You’ll walk again.

  Doctors. All liars. I’d been vain enough back at thirty-five to consider a limp a weakness, but at almost forty-five, I couldn't care less. No one sees me anyway.

  My eyes narrow at the stranger as the weight of his glare presses back at me. He’s taking me in, assessing me. No one has really looked at me—seen me—in years. People either consider me old and senile or they feel sorry for me. Moreover, they pity Hannah—stuck with an invalid, homebound mother—as if her plight has been worse than mine. I snort.

  “Beverly, may I please come in? Or maybe you could step out?” he questions. “I have a proposal for you.”

  The man on the porch pulls back from the window once more and hangs his head when I don’t respond. A hand scrubs over his face while the other dangles at his side. My eyes squint, and when I twist my head for a better view, I realize he isn’t holding a gun. The metal glint coming from his hand, or rather where a hand should be, is a two-pronged claw like a small garden utensil used for raking. Some kind of material wraps up his arm and over his elbow, then tucks under the edge of his T-shirt. The straps I assumed were a gun holster are the supports for a prosthetic arm.

  My shoulders slump a bit. Oh my.

  While there’s nothing this man cou
ld propose that I want to hear, staring at his arm causes all kinds of sensations to conflict in me. My heart races behind my ribs in a way I’ve never felt. Maybe I’m having a heart attack. My stomach twirls like a whirligig. Lowering the knitting needle, I reach for my arm crutches and slowly raise myself from the rocker, pulled by an almost magnetic force to an unsuspecting metal object. Like attracts like, my father-in-law used to say, and even though I don’t know him and it’s preposterous, I sense a familiarity with the porch invader.

  After all this time, maneuvering around my living room is still awkward and clumsy at best, and ridiculously robotic. My crutches are the kind that cuff around my forearms; however, it’s been nearly ten years, and Hannah prefers to push me in a wheelchair. Her long strides are constantly in a rush compared to my slow hobble. Plus, I sit most of the day, so my legs don’t work the way they did before the accident. Not to mention, my left leg lags due to the hip injury.

  Sweating and out of breath once I reach the entry, I fumble with the latch for the upper half of the old Dutch door. I struggle to hold the knitting needle in my other hand as a precautionary weapon in case I come to my senses about opening the door to a stranger.

  Only I drop the giant stick.

  Cheeseoncrackers.

  I bend at the waist, the foot of each arm brace slipping behind me on the hardwood flooring. If I don’t counterbalance myself somehow, I’ll fall over, and falling would be mortifying. I’ve slipped up enough in this life. I don’t need witnesses.

  “Are you all right in there? Do you need some help?” The concern in this stranger’s thunderous voice rattles me even more.

  “I don’t need anything,” I holler, but my voice cracks as I wiggle my fingers for the fallen knitting needle, before finally reaching it and slamming it on the floor one time in my irritation.

  I don’t need anything I reiterate, because I’ve always taken care of myself—myself and Hannah. Well, at least until the accident.

  My arm crutches slide free and clatter to the entryway wood, so I use the ledge in the middle of the door as leverage to right myself. My mobility is awkward as the large knitting utensil remains in one hand, bulky under my palm. I refuse to stand without this potential weapon even though the power of his voice suggests this man could do more harm to me than I’d ever do to him.

  Shakily stable against the door, I finally release the catch and swing the upper half inward. I nearly smack myself in the head with the wood barrier and snake around it, keeping my hand with the needle on the edge of the upper partition as my other hand reaches forward for the lower half. My body is weak, and I hate the sensation. I’m standing, but my legs tremble uncontrollably. A heavy exhale empties my lungs.

  “What do you want?” I growl, out of breath from the exertion.

  Then I look up.

  My breath hitches at the sight.

  Before me stands a man with the most scrutinizing brown eyes, like soil after a rainstorm, rich and earthy. His cheeks are molded clay, etched and chiseled, and his hair is solid silver cropped close to his skull. He appears shaven, but it’s not even noon and it’s already growing back to pepper his chin with sprinkles of chrome and ink coloring.

  Would he think it odd if I rubbed my hand over his jaw? Is it soft or prickly? Would it tickle or scratch?

  He’s tall, and while one bicep bulges with thick muscle and veins running up his forearm, the wrapped arm is mechanical with a metal claw on the end. It’s neither here nor there to me. He looks imposing, intense, and impossibly good looking.

  And that love at first sight thing—breathtaking, thigh-clenching, and blood-rushing—could be happening again, if only he was a television star instead of reality because I no longer believe in love.

  Chapter Two

  [Jedd]

  Before me stands a woman who looks years beyond her age.

  Beverly?

  If my quick calculations are correct, it has been twenty-five years since I’ve seen Beverly Townsen, and she shouldn’t look as old as she does, which makes me kind of an ass for judging her. If I was a gambling man, I’d place all my bets on her no-good husband, Howard, for her weary appearance. Howard Townsen and I were not friends. Let me repeat: we’d never been friends, and I’d felt sorry for his wife long before our first encounter.

  It had been right before I’d left Green Valley, and I’d seen her in the Piggly Wiggly with that asshat Howard.

  She was young and beautiful with light brown hair, sun bleached and streaked, and these incredibly sharp gray eyes. She was the kind of beauty you changed all your plans in life for. My airway clogged as she turned to smile at me; I was a stranger to her, but I was familiar with who she was—and I realized Howard Townsen had taken a bride much younger than him.

  “Quit lollygagging, woman. You don’t need ice cream. You’re fat enough as it is.” I should have taken him out right there between the ice cream and tator tots for speaking to her in such a manner. My eyes scanned down her slim body, and there wasn’t one ounce of fat on her. She was tall and lean. Actually, she looked too thin—all angles and bones. Then I noticed a small bump in her lower belly. A toddler already held her hand.

  “The ice cream isn’t for me,” she explained, her eyes shifting to me as she smoothed a hand over the slight swell of her abdomen. “My sister’s coming for dinner.”

  Howard stiffened. “We don’t need the likes of her at our table.”

  Beverly flinched as if Howard had struck her. I’d be worried for her physical safety if I didn’t already know Howard was a wimp. She swallowed and looked up at her husband. “Please don’t speak of her like that.”

  He huffed. “Woman, I’ll speak of her however I damn well please.” With that, he walked away, and her shoulders sank but not before she snagged a container of something-chunky-chocolate from the freezer and placed it in the shopping cart. Then she tilted her face in my direction and winked. Her eyes gleamed as if we shared a secret, and it took all my willpower not to walk up to her and ask her to run away with me.

  Oh, the foolish thoughts of a young man.

  The woman before me looked nothing like that girl. Her face was stitched with sorrow. The fine lines near her eyes were rivers of misery, and the fierce set of her mouth suggested discomfort. Her eyes, however, still held a spark of mischief. Whether she meant to set me passionately on fire or scorch me to smithereens, I had yet to determine.

  “What do you want?” she snaps through gritted teeth, holding the upper half of the door open while clutching her bat-like object. That was an assault weapon? If she thought she’d bludgeon me over the head or stab me in the eye with that thing, she had another thing coming. Not to mention, she didn’t look strong enough to hold herself upright, let alone strike someone with a thick stick.

  “That’s some serious weapon you have there,” I tease, nodding toward her hand.

  “I’ll have you know I can wield a mean blanket with this stick.” She was one hundred percent serious as she spoke, but then I looked at those eyes—that spark—and I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. She blinked, balking at the sound as if it was the strangest noise she’d ever heard. It might have been, as I’d lost some hearing in my ear from the accident and I couldn’t monitor the volume of my own guffawing.

  “Well, I imagine it’s the meanest blanket that’s ever been wielded.”

  When she continues to stare up at me, my chuckling slowly dies. I clear my throat, recollecting my mission.

  “So Vernon Grady—”

  “You don’t need to yell. I’m lame, not deaf.”

  Blinking at her abrupt interruption, I stare at her. She’s what? “I…I’m sorry. I can’t always hear myself.” I twirl the claw around my left ear. “I have severe hearing loss on this side.” I’m hoping the swirling metal contraption clarifies things without her thinking I’m crazy, but I look like I’m making the international sign for cuckoo. I feel a little nuts for what I’m about to propose.

  “What happened to you?” Sh
e juts her chin in the direction of my left half. There’s a certain tone to the way people ask this question. One is rude. Another is sympathetic. Beverly falls somewhere in between, and giving her the benefit of the doubt, I call her curious despite the edge to her acidic tone.

  “Accident.”

  She waits on more explanation, but that’s all she’s getting from me today.

  “So, as I was saying, Vernon Grady mentioned your land.” I pause, choking on the words. Your land. “Is that better?” I point at my lips, implying the volume, and her eyes fixate on them. As I continue to speak, she isn’t taking her gaze from the movement of my mouth, and it’s doing funny things to my chest. My heart’s skittering. My breath’s quickening. “I understand you own all this property, and I’m looking for land.”

  She blinks up at me. “We aren’t for sale,” she brusquely barks, defensive as a wild dog.

  “I’m not looking to buy. I’m looking to lease. I’m a horse breeder, and this looks like as good a place as any to raise them. You have space, and—”

  “Vernon sent you. Are you an investor? A gambler?”

  My mouth pops open, but I’m not ready for full disclosure. “No, ma’am,” I state instead.

  “I’ve told him time and again we aren’t selling. We don’t need his help.”

  Vernon warned me against using his name as a lead into my proposal, but I needed to start somewhere, and I can’t start with the truth. Being as he’s one of my oldest friends and one of only a few contacts in the area, I name dropped.

  I’m distracted for a moment by her flaring eyes, which break from my mouth to roam up and down my body. Those steely gray beauties stroke down my center like a thick paintbrush coating a fence, or maybe that’s her way of sizing me up before she cuts me open and dissects me—which is more so how she’s glaring at me. There’s an edge to her, and I sense it in both her body language and the sharpness of her tongue. Either way, a shiver slithers over my sternum. There’s a juxtaposition between the cutting bite of her tone and the hungry gleam in her eye, and it makes me wonder what her mouth tastes like. Acidic? Bitter? Sweet?