by Jennie Jones
You’re not right for each other.
He didn’t know why that prophesy bothered him the most. He shouldn’t care. What did Alice know about it, anyway? She was wrong—they’d be right for each other if Saul stayed and played the happy family man. But he wasn’t going to do that because it wasn’t what he wanted. That didn’t mean he and Molly couldn’t be right for each other, if they both wanted the same thing.
He needed to refocus and he wouldn’t be able to do that if he got close and romantically cozy with Molly.
Book a date with Through the Lens. You won’t regret it.
Was Saul going to regret it if he stayed and got that roof up? He wouldn’t. Not the roof part. He just wasn’t so sure about the other things he was going to get roped into.
He halted when he heard a rustling noise up ahead. It was dark but the moon was bright enough for him to see Molly.
She came stomping up the track, head down, arms swinging. The sight of her drew all sorts of tender things from his chest. He’d see this through. He’d build her roof. But nothing more. She was fine. She was smart enough and strong enough to get her business up and running. Nothing would kill her spirit. She didn’t need him to get all weird and sensitive, then mess her life up when he left.
“Evening,” he said when she got to the sign that said A. Mackillop. No Appointments Necessary. “Going to see Alice?”
She halted and smiled. “Hi. Been to see her yourself?”
“Just wanted to make sure she understood a few things.”
“Good luck with that.” Her smile widened, the sweet goodness in it almost busting his heart into a dozen pieces.
He firmed his expression, snapped his emotions back into place, and scowled. He would not be guided. He’d always found his own way out of a mess, whether he’d started the mess or just gotten caught up in it. He knew what he wanted and it couldn’t be Molly and everything she had here in Hopeless, whether he was right for her or not.
Molly lost her smile when Saul didn’t return it. His mouth had a clenched look, as though he was gritting his back teeth.
What had he said to Alice? Or what had Alice said to him?
“I won’t be long,” she said. “See you at home. I mean—back—see you when I get back.”
He didn’t answer so she walked past him.
“Molly?”
She stopped, and turned.
“All that romantic stuff—the sweet kisses. The near kisses. I think we ought to forget it.”
She clenched her hands at her side. “Good idea. My thoughts exactly.” Or they were now.
“So no more candles in the kitchen.”
“Another good idea.” Except they needed them. The temporary fluorescents were horrible. They showed every dark blond stubble on his chin, but he was a guy, he could get away with that and people called it sexy. She was a woman. She didn’t want him or any man to see clumped mascara or larger than normal open pores.
“Well, I’ll let you get on with it. You know your way back.”
He left her. Just like that. No following her to protect her cute little ass? Did this mean he was thinking about leaving? Leaving her without a roof?
She watched him go until he disappeared into the darkness, then turned her sorry, loveless and about to be homeless ass toward the willow clumps and Alice’s pit fire.
“Did you know your granddaughter is a sexual deviant?” Molly asked as she sat next to Alice, drawing her knees to her chest and hugging them. “What did you say to Saul? He’s in a bad mood. I think he might try to murder me when I get home—back. No—home.” It was home to Molly and back for him. “I got a notice from debt collectors in Colorado. The thing hasn’t been paying his bills. I got so mad. And a bit upset.” She picked up a stick by Alice’s side and poked at the fire. “But Saul came home—back—and he was nice. A bit stern, but nice, if you know what I mean.” She threw the stick down. “Anyway, we had dinner—I cooked your pork ribs recipe—and then he said I should go to bed and get some sleep. But I had to come and see you, and I just passed him on the track. He’s been here and now he’s mad.”
“Finished?”
“What’s going on now, Alice?”
“First,” Alice said, “you ought to have known your ex wouldn’t sell that sports car just because you asked him to.”
“He said he would. I’ve got it in writing. In a text message.” She frowned. “Is that a legal document? Anyway, I gave him two choices. I said I’d either make arrangements for him to take over the loan, or he could sell the car and send me the ten thousand to pay off the loan, and give me back the other ten thousand. I told the lease company what was happening. They acknowledged receipt of my letter and now—this!”
“You didn’t check that the repayments were being met.”
“I had other things on my mind.”
“What about the ring?”
Molly took a breath. “He’s still got it. But you were right—I’m going to forget about it.”
“He hasn’t got it, Molly. Look for it.”
Alice focused on her. “You’ve got it.”
“I have not. I threw it at him.”
“You’ve got it, Molly. Look for it.”
Molly sighed. All right, she’d look. But she didn’t have it. “Did you know about the Hopeless Herald dot com?” she asked, getting onto the next conversation.
“Davie told me.”
“Momma stole my photos of hot-Saul.”
Alice chuckled.
“What? He is hot.”
“He is,” Alice agreed.
“And I’m hot. I’m really hot. I’ve got a cute ass.”
“So did your mother. So did I once, come to think of it.” Alice’s mouth crinkled in another smile.
Molly brushed the hair back from her face, slid a little further away from the warmth of the pit fire and studied her grandmother. Yes, she could see it. If she pictured Momma in her head, she could see it in Marie too. Very beautiful women, her Mackillops. Not in-your-face beautiful, apart from Momma’s bling look, but beautiful in stature and in intent. Beautiful from the inside.
“You’re also beautiful on the outside,” Alice said. “You’re a looker, Molly. You and your cousins.”
“We are?” They hadn’t been brought up to pamper themselves and simper over makeup and all that beauty stuff, although Lauren always enjoyed dressing up and pinching Momma’s lipsticks and eyeshadows. But even Momma never hassled them to be too girly-girly except when she was trying out new styles and ideas. She used them as test cases, but never minded when they scrubbed their faces clean of the makeup or dipped their heads into a sink of water to get rid of the hairspray and the curls and waves and kinks. Momma had always told them they didn’t need anything more than what they already had.
“We are kind of attractive actually, aren’t we?” Molly said, contemplating this seriously, which unfortunately only resulted in picturing Saul just now walking away from her and telling her not to light her candles and that he was going to quit with the kissing.
“What was I saying?” she asked Alice. The last thing she wanted was to start fluttering her eyelashes at Saul in a please-think-me-beautiful manner.
“You were talking about your mother’s tendency to overdo things.”
Overdo? Understatement. “She’s your daughter, Alice, you should talk to her.”
“She’s your mother, Molly, you talk to her.”
“The valley is getting more attention than ever before. I’m concerned about how Momma can cope.”
“She can cope.”
Could she? Calamity Valley was used to being forgotten. Used to being the butt of jokes, but notoriety was now getting worse when it was supposed to be getting better.
“Didn’t worry you while you were away,” Alice said calmly.
“It’s the entire reason I went away.” She sighed, and stared at the flames, Saul’s negativity to her internal or external beauty returning like a burden that couldn’t be shifted. �
�I like him, Alice,” she said, admitting defeat where this one was concerned.
“I like him too, Molly.”
“I like him in a different way to you.”
“He’s independent. Whether he was brought up that way or not, it’s currently the only way he sees the world.”
“He’s had big troubles, hasn’t he?” Molly asked quietly, wondering if she’d get an answer.
Alice nodded.
“He’s not bad though, is he? He’s not dangerous in that way.”
“No.”
Molly sighed again. “I think I might like him a lot.”
“You two—I told you, and now I’ve told him, you’re not right—”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.” Saul had his issues to deal with and Molly had hers. He lived wherever he walked, and she lived in the valley. Neither the twain was right for the other.
“Were you listening properly?” Alice asked. “Are you hearing what’s inside you?”
“I hear you. I just don’t want to believe it.”
“You do what you have to do, Molly.”
She tried to take her thoughts off what she wanted to do in case Alice caught on. She pushed hard at those thoughts of getting tangled with Saul in a hot embrace that ended with him shirtless and Molly panting.
“Remember the coyote?” Alice said.
“Yeah. I remember.”
She’d been five or six, walking with Alice in the early morning cool of a summer’s day with temperatures expected to reach one hundred minimum. Momma had been back at the house in town, squeezing juice from Mrs. Wynkoop’s fruit to make frozen lollipops for anyone who might wander through Hopeless, parched and dehydrated.
The coyote pup had wandered in front of them. She’d made a dash for the pup, but Alice had held her with a hand on her shoulder. “It isn’t yours, child.”
“It’s got no momma.”
“Watch.”
The coyote pup fell over its legs, seemingly unaware that it might be lost and in danger, and a pull of attraction in Molly’s stomach, so big it made her own spindly legs tremble and her heart pump, overwhelmed her. She’d wanted it. To pat and to cuddle, to talk to, to play with. To teach. To learn from, too. She even envisioned them running over Calamity land, tail up and hair flying. Laughing together with yaps and calls as they watched out for each other.
She almost felt the same way about Saul. The pull of attraction to his hard, muscled body and his strong, quiet mind filled a cavernous gap inside her. She wanted him around. To talk to. To play with. To work with. To be with.
“It’s not yours,” Alice had said again, giving the young Molly her first lesson in love and how it could hurt worse than the worst cut knee or grazed elbow.
She couldn’t take a coyote out of the desert. It wasn’t fair, regardless of how they’d adapted to living next to humans. They were still hunters. Still wary. Not meant to be tethered. The pup wasn’t in any danger, he’d been taught well. He wasn’t even frightened. He was on his own and that was what he wanted.
Like Saul.
Molly took a breath and stared beyond the pit fire. “It hurts, Alice.”
“Love always hurts.”
“Not if it’s meant to be.”
“What made you think about the pup?” Alice said.
“You asked.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
Molly blinked and angled her focus to her grandmother. “You said it.”
“I say lots of things, child, but I don’t always speak them out loud.”
Molly straightened. “I knew what was on your mind?”
“Think on what I’ve said about you and Saul, Molly. Then listen to what you didn’t hear.”
Chapter Seventeen
“So what’s up?” Lauren asked.
“Give her a second,” Pepper said. “She’s thinking about her hot contractor.”
“She’s been thinking for nearly a whole minute. Molly? What’s wrong? I’m getting a bad sense.”
“I’m still here,” Molly said, finding her voice.
She’d needed to hear her cousins’ voices but as soon as they’d come on the conference call, she’d stalled, wondering what it was she expected of them. She’d spent a sleepless night after getting back from seeing Alice, tossing and turning in her bed, unable to get comfortable because her mind was full of torment about never being somebody’s anybody, and her body had ached, ached, ached because she wasn’t right for the man who was sleeping at the other end of the lodge house. Saul had turned the broody cold shoulder on her. The only persons she could tell were her cousins, and she needed advice. Good, solid advice.
“I’ve got a bit of a problem,” she admitted.
“You’re racking them up.”
“Give,” Lauren said. “What’s happened now?”
“My hot contractor doesn’t want my cute little hands all over him, and he doesn’t want to put his hands on me.”
“Why not?”
Molly sniffed. “I don’t know. He went to see Alice and then suddenly he’s all cold shoulders and brooding frowns.”
“What did Alice say to him?”
“Apparently she told him the same thing she told me. That I’m not right for him. I think she scared him off.” Which probably meant that Alice was right and Molly wasn’t right for the dark blond, muscular builder.
“It’s got to run deeper than that,” Lauren said. “Do you think there’s something Alice isn’t saying?”
“She told me to think about what she wasn’t saying, but how can I know what she isn’t saying if she isn’t saying it? And now Saul doesn’t want to know me.”
“Men,” Lauren said on a frustrated sigh. “They think we’re the impossible ones. Look, Molly—I feel sure he does like you.”
“I feel sure the same way,” Pepper said. “Men are complicated. Talking about men,” she added. “I did some research on the thing after our telephone conversation last night. Nice looking creep, I can see why you were taken with him. What are his abs like?”
“He hasn’t got any of value. But if you like beady eyes and fake tans, he’s your perfect good-looking creep without decent abs.”
“Since you’ve suddenly opened up,” Lauren said, “could you give us some notice before you call next time? I’m not stocked up on wine yet.”
“She’s been thinking about us,” Pepper said. “She needs to throw her problems around and talk about them. Don’t ask me how I know this—it’s got nothing to do with you-know-what, I can just tell. Want us to throw some spells his way, Molly?” Pepper added, with a heavy shot of derision. “Or text him something witchy? That would scare the shirt off the sorry ab-less creep.”
“You’re scaring me,” Lauren said. “Stop with the spell talk, would you? I’d rather have dinner with the sorry ab-less creep than talk about all that—stuff.”
“I may have found a bit of psychic ability, actually,” Molly interjected, thinking it might be the right time to mention it, since spells were being bounced around the conversation.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lauren said.
“Am shuddering at the very idea,” Pepper added, and Molly shut up about the spooky experience.
“So what am I going to do about my broody contractor?”
“Act normal,” Lauren said.
“Just be yourself,” Pepper added. “But since he’s ignoring you, totally ignore him right back.”
Since it was Wednesday and the crane wasn’t arriving until tomorrow, Saul would have to work alongside Molly all day. Which ought not to be any different to previous days.
But by ten a.m. he was thinking what he’d really like was to go for a walk. Anything to get his mind off making up and kissing Molly.
He’d sorted the tools he’d need. The large levels, nail gun, hammer, and his scaffolding poles and planks. Plus, he had a ladder longer than Molly’s, propped up on the wall. He’d already fixed and repointed the masonry section that had crashed at his feet the other nig
ht.
Although he’d nearly slipped off a rung of the ladder. Not once in his life had he slipped a foot off a rung. And if he believed in all the oracle, mystic stuff, he might have admitted he’d felt a hand on his back, pushing him.
It had sent a shiver down his spine.
Weird stuff aside, he’d taken triple precautions from then on.
He jabbed the end of his pencil onto the graph paper on the makeshift table he’d erected at the bottom of the exterior staircase of the hacienda. He’d calculated various setbacks, and where the rafters would tie together. He’d have to mark out and cut the hips and the valleys on the few rafters they’d reclaimed so that everything fit snugly. The way Molly’s mouth had fit snugly beneath his when he’d kissed her last Saturday.
He threw his pencil down. He would have managed getting on with the day if it hadn’t been for her sudden not-talking-to-him attitude. Which would be the result of what he’d said last night, of course. And this was what he wanted. Just get the roof up and get out.
But all he’d done while he was working was remember that kiss. He’d like to kiss her to shut her up—if she’d just speak to him. He’d like to kiss her to prove a point—point being that both of them liked the kissing, regardless of whether or not they were right for each other. Which of course, they weren’t. Any fool could see that. So where was the harm if he kept kissing her whenever he wanted to, just to prove that point.
I like a man who knows what he wants. So long as he doesn’t expect to get what he wants.
“Oh, shut up, Alice,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes and staring at the graph paper and his calculations. “She wanted it, too.” Alice knew it, otherwise she’d have told him to back off on the romantic stuff.
Not that he wanted to think of Molly in a romantic way, but Alice had put some sort of Molly spell on him. Fortunately, it hadn’t penetrated his heart, or he figured he’d be a goner. Sexy, cute, good, pretty—actually she was beautiful. How could that jerk have cheated on her?
She’d gone loose, warm, and inviting in Saul’s hold when he’d kissed her. Had she gone weak and tender in Birling’s arms? He didn’t want to picture it; didn’t want to think about it. But maybe he’d ask her. To put his mind at ease. Because if she went warm and inviting like that with every man who kissed her, he had an idea he might get jealous. He knew where jealousy would lead him. To her bedroom. To prove a point. Birling couldn’t possibly have lit her fire. The guy was an idiot.