by Jennie Jones
“Winnie!” Momma yelled over her shoulder.
Winifred Thomas scurried from the corridor that kept the takeout apart from the salon—health regulations—and smiled sweetly at Molly.
Molly blew a kiss to another of her favorite persons. Heck, she had so many favorite people in the valley she sometimes wondered why she hadn’t come back sooner.
Then she remembered why.
The problem with Jason Birling was that he was a smooth talker and good-looking to match. Tallish—five-foot-ten—which meant Molly at five-foot-five could wear heels and not worry, even when she teased her waist-length hair into an updo ponytail. A lot of women in Colorado Springs had wanted him, according to Jason. But Molly had gotten him.
Unfortunately.
She’d been in Colorado Springs four years and things were starting to go her way, then her daypack had been stolen, along with her cash and her credit cards. Once Jason discovered she was looking for employment to pay her motel bill he’d turned his chiseled jaw her way, his brown eyes narrowed and glowing with a desirous flame—they were actually beady but she hadn’t recognized that yet—and asked her to be his girl.
“Coffee and cake for our baby, please, Winnie,” Momma said.
“Not too big a slice,” Molly called after her adopted aunt. “And three sugars in the coffee, please.”
“That’s tit taking tat for a ride, isn’t it?” Momma said.
Molly held up her arm and squeezed hard to make her muscles bunch. “Need to keep my strength up for the renovations.” And for fending off the dangerous stranger.
“Sugar’s sugar, no matter which form you take it.” Momma combed through Molly’s hair, parting it into sections and sticking clips through each segment. “You’ll need mental strength to deal with the developers,” she said in a lowered tone.
Donaldson’s again. “They’re still pushing? I thought we’d gotten rid of them.”
“One little sponge cake isn’t going to work miracles.”
Molly was happy to try a second time. Two of them had arrived in town for an impromptu visit a couple weeks ago and she’d had the idea of putting a large pinch of senna into a special cake just for them. The grandmothers livened things up by following through with a threat to give them all cramps. They’d likely never forgive the Mackillops...
Donaldson’s Property Development had their business base in Austin. So far as anyone in the valley knew, there was no one called Donaldson “on the ground.” He was probably some swaggering, eternally tanned, jewelry-encrusted millionaire who lived overseas on the spoils of his successes. But the company was run by three men. Leonard D’Prichiatori was head developer and as nobody could pronounce his last name they called him Leo D’Pee.
Second in command of development was Ty “Slick” Wilson. No need for a new nickname there...
The third developer was Bob Smith. But nobody had ever met him, and as he sounded like a real boring guy with a paunch and a slack smile, they just referred to him as—Bob Smith.
“I just don’t know what their next move will be,” Momma said. “But Davie and I are on the lookout.”
Donaldson’s would flatten all three towns and build super exclusive resorts with luxurious cabins and stone houses. Each of them with their own spa and swimming pool. Each of them with a grand scenic view of Calamity land—and the canyon. That was why they wanted the valley, because of its proximity to that special place. They’d make millions from their private and elite resort-style “new” towns.
The valley was nestled on the western edge of the Palo Duro Canyon and there was only one road in—from Amarillo—but the valley edged the backcountry wilderness and there were a few beaten tracks to and from the canyon, which was how tourists got lost and found themselves here.
“I really need a roof,” Molly said to her mother’s reflection in the salon mirror. “But I can’t get the thing to return my money because he won’t answer my calls.”
“Forget about the money. Stop calling him. A man doesn’t like to be pestered by his ex.”
“He owes me twenty thousand dollars. I’ll pester him until I get it.” Plus the ring. He had her engagement ring and since she’d paid for it, she wanted it back.
Momma picked up small bandage-like rags and placed them on the four-tier trolley at her side. She chose one and wrapped a section of Molly’s hair in it.
“Ringlets?” Molly asked.
“They’ll drop overnight,” Momma assured as she expertly fastened sections of Molly’s hair into wrapped sausage shapes. “I need to practice a ringlet updo for an important client your cousin Lauren sent my way.”
Molly took a breath and broached the next subject. “You’re not really thinking about a Hopeless Herald, are you?”
Momma stopped working and dropped her hands to her sides. “You’ve been to see Alice.”
“I see her nearly every day.”
“I’m not speaking to her.”
“Again?” Momma hadn’t been dealt any spooky-genes so she and Alice occasionally had trouble understanding each other. Why Molly understood both of them, she had no idea. Maybe that was her gift.
“She told me to stop flirting with Leo D’Pee,” Momma said. “Said I’d come across as flighty. She can talk. As if any of us Mackillop women know who our fathers were.”
Molly doubted her mother would ever stop flirting—she enjoyed it—but it was true about the menfolk. Each male had fathered and run off, and the grandmothers refused to give their names over. “I don’t know mine, either,” Molly reminded her mother.
“That’s different, honey.”
It always was, but Molly didn’t know why, and she didn’t care. His loss, whoever her father was.
“D’Pee said I should have been a Hollywood star,” Momma pronounced with a toss of her head.
“Have you checked his social security number? He’s not even Italian!”
Momma gave one of her butter-wouldn’t-melt smiles.
Molly grinned. Momma was playing Leo D’Pee. “Just be careful.”
“Oh, baby.” Momma paused in her task and squeezed Molly’s shoulders. “I’m so glad you’re home. Just think—if you’d become Mrs. Molly Birling, wife of a motel magnate, you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to create a thriving community for us back home.”
“Three crummy motel businesses does not a magnate make.” She knew. She’d kept Mr. Birling’s books.
Winnie came through from the takeout with a plate of cake and a fork.
Molly straightened in the hair-chair. “Thanks, Winnie.” She eyed the large wedge of Hopeless sponge and the creamy filling and piled-high topping. Mango cream with crushed sweet-chili-spiced nuts. Her favorite.
“What did you have for breakfast?” Momma asked.
“This.” Molly sank her fork into the feather-light sponge, the mango cream squishing through the seam of the cake.
“Perhaps you ought to move into town, baby. I’m worried about how you’re not taking care of yourself.”
“I’ve got running hot water, I’ve got a roof on the lodge house, and I’ve got a working kitchen. I’m fine.” The kitchen was in the hacienda’s single story—the section without a roof. But she’d strung thick waterproof canvas over the beams still in place, so everything was fairly rainproof.
“I don’t want you up on that roof when you’re there alone,” Momma said. “You need a man.”
“I need a builder.” Molly turned in her chair and looked at Winnie who was sweeping the already spotless salon tiled floor. “Did anyone answer my ad, Winnie?” Because that would be more natural than having some stranger turn up out of the blue.
Winnie shook her head, an apology in her smile. She’d wandered into Hopeless twenty years ago, looking for work. There wasn’t any to be had, but Momma had taken her under her wing anyway. Just as she’d done with Davie three decades ago when she’d taken him home to the house she’d lived in with Crazy Alice.
Momma’s strays. Molly’s family.
“Alice said her fire told her a stranger was on his way,” Molly said quietly, then waited to see what reaction she’d get before saying more.
Momma paused, and Winnie stopped sweeping.
“He’s not coming for me, is he?” Momma asked, worry creasing the creamy-toned canvas of her perfectly made-up face. “I don’t have time to spread my affections around. Is he coming for you?”
“I’m not right for him.”
“Alice said that?” Momma asked, deepening her frown and studying Molly intently. “When’s he coming?”
“Might be two months. Might be two hours.”
“It’ll be soon.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m just guessing.” Momma turned. “Winnie, go whip up some chocolate cream for the sponge I baked this morning. Sprinkle some candied violets on the frosting, but don’t make a fancy pattern. Men don’t care about the pattern, they care about the sugar.”
Winnie dropped the broom and scuttled through the corridor. Momma baked the cakes and made the fillings and the frostings, but Winnie’s little hands were decorating machines.
Momma swung the hair-chair around so that Molly faced her, and scrutinized her face. “We’re going to make you up.”
“Momma! I told you—he’s not coming for me. He’s going to build my roof, that’s all.” She didn’t want to worry Momma by adding “he’s dangerous and he’s going to change my life forever” in case that meant he pushed her off the roof. That would definitely change her life.
“What else did Alice say about him?”
“Um... not much. She said he’s got equipment, he’s on his way—that sort of thing.”
Could a person change their fate? She hoped so, given her circumstances. But no matter what, she was making a stand and she wasn’t going to let anything bad happen.
Momma peered into Molly’s eyes, making Molly squirm. Then she put her manicured hand, laden with rings, onto Molly’s shoulder. “You keep on your toes, baby.”
“That’s what Alice said.”
“Alice said the same? That’s it then.” Momma dragged her beautification trolley over, pushed the hairdressing trolley to one side. “Just remember, Molly, you don’t need a man to look after you. You need a man who’s prepared to watch out for you. Different qualities entirely.”
“He’s not coming for me! And I don’t need any man.” Especially one of the dangerous variety.
Momma chose her weapons and snapped open the lid of a foundation pot.
Molly closed her eyes as her mother swept a foundation sponge over her cheeks. “I swear to God,” she said beneath her breath, “one of these days I’m going to make a stand.”
Chapter Three
Molly stared at her reflection in the salon mirror. She normally only wore mascara and lipstick, but now her mother had finished beautifying, she was having trouble recognizing the Molly who had cycled into town three hours ago.
And her head!
“What time do I get out of these ringlet rags?” she called to Momma, who’d left her twenty minutes ago to bake another sponge. Once a day, Davie drove to Surrender and Reckless with a few cakes for the small stores in each town. They were always sold. No chance of a Hopeless sponge going stale.
“Ten minutes, baby. Sit tight.”
Molly stretched her arms above her head to get the kinks out of her back. The salon cloak crinkled, and so did the plastic blinds on the door.
She swiveled in the hair-chair, expecting to see Davie.
A man stood in the doorway, his shoulder halfway through the blinds as he shrugged off a huge backpack and put it on the ground.
Molly’s head swam as a million observations hit her at once. He was a stranger but was he the stranger?
She rose to her feet and clutched the salon cape. Heck, would you take a look at that beef. His girlfriends could be five-foot-ten, wearing heels, and be closer to the ground than the top of his head.
While he unclipped a phone from his shirt pocket and stretched down to place it on top of his pack, she lowered her eyes and started at the base of him. Dark brown hiker’s boots, pants bunched at the top of the boots. The cuffs at the end of his charcoal shirt were turned back, showing capable hands with long tapered fingers. Hands that were wide enough to pick up fallen tree trunks on the trail. Or build a roof. Or kill someone.
He turned in the doorway and stepped through the blinds.
Molly trembled. She’d never seen anyone so powerfully attractive.
He’d looped a fringed scarf around his neck, the singed-orange and faded-blue tails resting on his wide, solid chest. He was tall, tanned, and dusty. Dark blond hair; even the few days’ growth on his chin. Even his eyebrows.
Beneath the ridge of those lowered brows his blazing blue eyes peered into Molly’s.
“Would you like to sit down?” she asked breathlessly as she indicated the hair-chair. She was getting a crick in her neck looking up at him.
“I’m looking for M. Mackillop.”
Heck, that was her. “Mo...Mol...” Five letters but it had never been so hard to string them together. “Molly.”
“Great name,” he said, with a heavenly smile that puckered her stomach muscles. “I had a horse named Moll. Best ride of my life.”
Her knees buckled. She reached out to grab the hair-chair and shook her ragged ringlets to get sense back beneath her skull.
“I take it you’re M. Mackillop the younger,” he said, walking forward and extending his hand.
She took it, and looked down to check that her fingers hadn’t scorched as much as her inner thighs had. Maybe this was how he murdered women. By caressing them into submission with his voice... It was deep and poetic enough to tan the leather off her lungs.
“Are you lost?” she asked, still unsure if this was the dangerous stranger or just a sexy one.
“Not exactly. Saul Solomon. Pleasure to meet you.”
Pleasure was still coursing through Molly, whether it ought to be or not. He didn’t look anywhere close to dangerous—apart from a possible heart attack she might have just from looking at him. “I take it you’re not here for an updo,”
“A what?”
“Haircut.”
“Oh, no.” He ran a tanned, toughened hand over his head. “Reckon I’m good.”
Wasn’t he! She was already envisaging one night of sultry passion with him. Or maybe a week. It was tempting. But if he was the stranger there was no way—no matter how delectable on the eye.
“Did you plan on coming to Hopeless?” she asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Did you make the decision early this morning?”
“Actually, I did.”
It was him! “So you’re here for the job?”
“Depends on the scope.”
“Spanish style roof renovation.”
“Flat roof or pitched?”
“Um...” No roof. “Tile. Pitched.” Or it would be, once he got the rafters back in place.
“I can do that.”
Something in his tone suggested he wasn’t about to leap at the offer. “Do you have a problem with your equipment?”
His blazing blue eyes narrowed. “Do I what?”
“I need a man with hefty equipment.”
His mouth firmed. “What is it you’re looking for, M. Mackillop?” He’d lowered his voice to threat-level which only made her thighs tremble again.
“I need to see the tools of your trade before I commit.”
“Afraid I’m not the committing type.” He turned.
“Wait!” Molly shook her ringlets. “You haven’t got a single tool on you.” All he had was the backpack.
“Oh, I’ve got a tool, Miss Mackillop, and I only get it out when it’s my decision, on my terms.”
One tool? What use was that going to be? What if it was a machete? “What are you running from?”
“What am I what?”
The words had come out of her mouth before she’d thought
, but since the subject was now open. “I got the impression you were running from something.”
“Takes one to know one,” he drawled. “How about you? What are you doing here? You don’t look like you fit in. Running from something yourself?”
“Yes, I am.”
Being truthful worked. He cocked an eyebrow in surprise “So what is it you’re running from?”
“I asked first. What are you running from?”
“Nothing,” he said, a little too vehemently.
The ever so slight deepening of the tan on his face suggested a flush.
“Are you dangerous?” she asked quietly.
He paused, focused on her. “Could be. In certain situations not to my liking.”
“I don’t want trouble.” Although the only trouble she had at the moment was the thumping of her heart, and the quivering inner thigh problem. Had Alice known he would look this good?
“I don’t want trouble, either,” he said slowly.
At least they agreed on one thing. “So how are you planning to renovate my hacienda roof if you’ve only got one tool and only you decide whether or not it can be used?”
“I was planning on using my hands. Plus, I’ve got a lot of building stuff stored in Lubbock. I could get it. If I take the job.”
If? “You’re having second thoughts?” Did she want him to have second thoughts? Tough call.
Saul admitted he was drawn to her fern-green eyes, wide, confused, and ever so shiny. Or maybe just glazed. But he couldn’t say he was comfortable about working for a woman who wore rags in her hair and spiced up her makeup with sugary-pink glittery stuff.
“How many guys have applied for the job?” he asked.
“Ten.”
“Did you ask them all to show you their equipment?” Just what he didn’t need—another Sally-Opal.
“Actually, nobody has applied. Yet.”