Amanda felt pretty darned desperate. She studied the ceiling. “How can you tell that the roof is weak?”
* * *
Jeb sighed and took another walk through the house. He pointed out to Amanda signs of a stovepipe fire on the ceiling. He discovered that only one burner on the range worked. The kitchen exhaust fan sounded like a jet engine taking off. The one toilet rocked back and forth when he nudged it, telling him the floor was so rotten that the commode could fall through at any moment.
“I cannot—” Jeb stopped and rephrased what he meant to say. “You and Chloe can’t live in a dump like this.” Jeb was glad the man couldn’t hear a word he said. He stood near them, acting as if they might steal anything not anchored down. “It’s unacceptable.”
“You’re not in charge of our lives. I make my own decisions, and I don’t need your blessing to do anything. Are you reading me loud and clear?”
Jeb nearly grinned. Amanda’s small chin had come up, and she looked ready to take him on. As browbeaten as he suspected she had been, she still had the mettle to stand up for herself. He felt both frustrated and proud of her.
“Let me put it differently. Please, with sugar on top, don’t rent this house. I’m not picking it apart to be difficult. It’s not safe. I won’t be able to rest at night knowing that you and Chloe are asleep in here with a fire going in that woodstove.”
Even under her down parka, he saw her shoulders slump. “Foul play. You’re trying to put a guilt trip on me.”
Jeb wished he could plant a kiss on her forehead instead. He settled for winking at her. “Is it working?”
She threw up her hands. “For rent this low, everything we look at may be a dump. You need to understand my financial situation. I can’t afford a palace.”
“Be patient. We’ll find something that is at least safe. Something, maybe, that I can work on to make better.”
“I can’t allow you to do that. You’ve done too much for us already.”
“You, Ms. Banning, are not in charge of my life. I make my own decisions. Are you reading me loud and clear?”
She burst out laughing, and it was a glorious sight to behold. Her eyes danced. Her face flushed and seemed to glow. Shit. He was falling head over heels for a woman who didn’t even like him much yet.
After they returned to the truck, Amanda said in a flat, toneless voice, “There aren’t any more I can afford.”
“Tomorrow always comes!” Jeb grinned at her. “Am I really so bad you can’t wait to get away from me?”
Chloe chimed in from the backseat. “I don’t want to get away from you, Mr. Jeb. I don’t think Mommy means it that way.”
Amanda’s lips quivered as she struggled to suppress a smile. “You are exactly right, Chloe. And Mr. Jeb knows that isn’t what I meant.” To Jeb, she said, “It isn’t about you. It’s about me. I need to make it on my own. Mark constantly told me I’d never survive if I left him, and believe me, I had a thousand good reasons to do so. Now I’ve done it, and I need to prove him wrong. Can you understand that?”
“Yep, I get it, honey.” He wished he could bite off his tongue. “Amanda, I mean. I get it, but is it necessary for you to manage with absolutely no help?”
“Yes.”
Thinking fast, Jeb said, “Over the last few days, I’ve spent a small fortune on supplies for my neighbors. Most of them offered to reimburse me, but I wouldn’t take their money. In years past, they helped others, expecting nothing in return. The men cut and chopped wood, then delivered it to people who could no longer do it themselves. The women baked and then delivered the goods to those in need. They cleaned homes for free. If a toilet plugged, the women showed up with plungers, and if that didn’t fix it, they called their husbands. Now, those who are ill or elderly are calling in their chips. They once did it for someone else, and now someone else is doing it for them. In Mystic Creek, that’s how things work.”
“You’re describing a town where everyone loves each other. That isn’t reality.”
“It isn’t the reality here, either,” Jeb confessed. “Do you think I like Lucy and Ethel?” Remembering his decision to create a list of hen names, Jeb almost said shit out loud. He’d forgotten to work on it this morning. “They’re bossy. They follow me around like supervisors. They do say thank you, but they haven’t offered to reimburse me for a dime. And they call me sonny. I keep expecting one of them to grab me by the ear.”
Amanda was clearly struggling not to laugh, and Jeb deliberately pushed her over the edge so he could see her face light up again. “The only nice thing about them is that they have Herman’s ashes on a shelf with candles lighted all around his urn.”
That did it. And this time when she laughed, she was so taken by surprise that she snorted. “Who was Herman? Not a husband. You said they never married.”
Jeb returned his attention to the road. “Herman is a long-since-deceased cat. They have pictures of him everywhere. He was a fat tuxedo with long white eyebrow hairs and whiskers. Their devotion to a pet is about all I can find to like about them.”
From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Amanda closing her eyes. “Do you think they ever made rounds during a storm to help their neighbors?”
“I doubt it,” Jeb replied. “But I helped them anyway, because in Mystic Creek that’s how things are done. Help with no paybacks.” He paused. “I work with saws. If I cut off all the fingers on my right hand and I need help, who will I call?”
“Your mother.”
He grinned. “Okay, you’ve got that right. The point is that I’m hoping I could call you instead, and that you’d show up to take care of me.”
Now he saw a tear slipping down her cheek. Damn. He almost drove into the ditch.
“I will,” she murmured. “If you ever need me and Chloe, we’ll be there. I promise.”
Jeb hadn’t intended to make her cry. “Bargain, sealed without a handshake. We all need help sometimes. I admire someone who’s proud. I think all of us need at least some pride. That said, too much pride can be a bad thing. I count you as a friend now.” That was good, another rabbit out of his hat. “I hope you count me as one of yours. Bottom line is, you’re in a mess right now. You were doing great until this storm struck, but now you do need a little help. It’s not like the storm was your fault, but it’s left you without a home. I care about you two. Are you reading me loud and clear?”
She nodded. “Like bold print.”
* * *
When they got home—and it worried Amanda that she’d fleetingly thought of it as home—they made their way over the treacherous ice to the front porch, with Jeb, wearing shoe chains, holding Chloe’s hand, and Amanda carrying the pillowcases filled with their belongings. She couldn’t wait to check the SD card to make sure that it had survived the storm. Without it she would have no proof of what Mark had done to her little girl.
But despite her concern about the pictures she’d taken of Chloe’s injuries, what loomed at the front of her mind was that Jeb, who would normally carry the bags, considered her daughter’s safety more important. He was even putting Amanda’s safety second.
Watching him hold Chloe steady on the ice, Amanda felt a lump lodge at the base of her throat. And it hurt. They had escaped Mark, who had inflicted harm on those he should have loved, and landed with Jeb, a man who had no reason to give a fig about either of them. And yet he did. Her thawing heart was in serious danger, but how could she steel it against him when all she sensed from him was goodness?
* * *
Jeb invited Chloe to go with him to tend to his animals. Amanda was left to prepare dinner. Her thoughts were so tangled that she couldn’t think what to fix. She definitely had to do a fast thaw of meat. She grabbed hamburger, found Jeb’s instruction book for his digital pressure cooker, and decided to give it a try. After browning the meat, she added rice, canned broth, cream of mushroom soup, spice
s, grated cheddar, and some diced veggies. She could think of no way to describe how nervous she felt about fixing a meal using an unfamiliar appliance. She only knew Jeb and Chloe would return soon and all of them were hungry.
Mark had detested one-pot meals, but when Jeb and Chloe arrived and they all sat down and ate, Jeb said he’d never tasted a better one. Amanda relaxed about the food, but other concerns kept her as tense as a freshly tuned guitar string.
* * *
Over the meal, Jeb could tell that Amanda was upset. He couldn’t blame her. She had little money and hadn’t earned a dime since Monday. She had a little girl to care for and needed to find a house to rent that she could afford. She would probably have to spend every cent she’d saved to get settled in a new place. Jeb planned to do a reverse search on the address of her former rental to get the name of the owner, who, in Jeb’s opinion, should at least reimburse her for the loss of her furniture.
“Mr. Jeb has a red hen named Lucy,” Chloe announced. “And a gray one named Ethel. We didn’t have time for him to tell me the names of the rest. He said it was too cold to stay outside.”
Amanda nodded. “Mr. Jeb is right.”
After eating, Jeb helped clean the kitchen, which went quickly because the pressure cooker made very little mess. While Amanda stowed the latex glove under the sink, Jeb put Bozo’s snow boots on him, grabbed his jacket, and took the dog out back for a final evening run. He had a hunch that Bozo would sleep with Chloe again.
Later, right after Chloe fell asleep, Jeb heard over the news that the predicted morning temperatures would still be so low that there would be no school again. Jeb suspected that the bus drivers were having trouble getting the engines to start. The roads were also still dangerous, and the classrooms might be too chilly to be safe for the children.
When Amanda came back downstairs, Jeb gave her the latest report. She shook her head. She wore a green sweatshirt, which looked almost as old as she was, over faded jeans. With her hair twisted up and caught with a clip, and her face bare of makeup, she still managed to look gorgeous.
“I can’t afford to miss this much work.”
“I guessed as much,” Jeb replied as he drew two snifters and a bottle of fine brandy from his liquor cabinet. Bozo had gone upstairs with Chloe, and Jeb missed the sound of his snoring, but he couldn’t fault the dog for falling in love when he was guilty, too. “I hope you’ll join me,” he said as he sat at the table. He had briefly considered adjourning to the living room where they’d be more comfortable, but he suspected Amanda felt more at ease with the table as a barrier between them. “Two fingers of good cheer and conversation after a wonderful dinner seems like a great way to end the evening.”
Amanda took a seat across from him. “It’s nice to enjoy the ritual of a nighttime brandy again. Mark got so mean when he imbibed that I came to detest spirits of any kind.”
“It sounds to me as if Mark got mean no matter what.”
“True,” she replied in a thin voice. “But he was especially vicious when he was drunk.”
Jeb measured out liquor into the two glasses. “I don’t get drunk. Mostly I enjoy one measure of brandy, sometimes two.”
She smiled. “In that way, you remind me of my dad. He loved his evening brandy.”
“You miss him,” Jeb observed, hoping she’d talk about her family. “Where is he now? Your father, I mean.”
Shadows darkened her eyes. “He passed away after a battle with cancer.” She cupped the snifter in her palms. “I still feel guilty because I couldn’t be there afterward to support my poor mom. She was an only child, just like me, and Dad grew up in foster homes. I was all she had.” She took a sip of the brandy, and at the taste, she closed her eyes and smiled. Lifting her dark, lush lashes, she added, “Mark allowed no phones in the house. Dad died right before Christmas. Mom sent me a letter, but with the backlog in post offices at that time of year, I didn’t get it until New Year’s Eve.”
“And I’m guessing Mark wouldn’t let you go to see your mom.”
“You’re a good guesser.” She toyed with a saltshaker. “I don’t contact Mom anymore. It’s safer for her not to know where I am. She’s a lousy liar, and if Mark thought she knew, he wouldn’t hesitate to beat it out of her.”
“It seems to me that it ought to be safe enough to call her on your cell—or mine. You could refuse to tell her where you are.”
Her gaze clung to his. “I worry about the cell phone call being traced.”
Jeb couldn’t argue the point. He wasn’t sure how all that worked. However, he did know that if his phone was lost or stolen, he could pinpoint its location easily with Find My iPhone. He had an iPad in his office, and the location app worked within seconds.
“Maybe for now it’s better to be safe than sorry,” he conceded. “So let’s change the subject. I lost my cleaning person a few weeks ago, and though I’ve managed to keep on top of it so far, this is a big house. I’m not busy now, but I will be soon, and any time I spend working indoors is time away from my shop, where I earn my income. I’ve also noticed that you’re beyond excellent as a cook.”
“Are you offering me a job?” she asked, her tone incredulous.
“I am. I’m not much of a cook. I’d really enjoy hot breakfasts and dinners. You could keep your cafeteria job as backup in case it doesn’t work well for you here. When your shift ends, you can do the household shopping in my truck or the older one out in my shop.”
She searched his expression as if she were waiting for him to say one of her duties would be to service him in bed. He bit back a smile. “On weekdays when you work at the cafeteria, you wouldn’t need to do housework. You could do that on weekends. I’m pretty easy to please. A weekly pass is good enough for me. I’m offering room and board, plus a thousand a month. With no electricity, water, propane, or garbage collection services to pay for, you should be able to save enough for an older-model vehicle in only a few months. I know my way around cars, so I’ll be happy to help you find something dependable.”
Amanda shook her head. “I think you’re dreaming up a job because it’s the only way you can think of to help me.”
Guilty as charged. But Jeb wasn’t about to admit it. “I’ve been looking for a housekeeper and cook for what seems like forever. You can ask Tony across the road. It’s easy for me to find someone to clean, but finding someone to work split shifts during the week to cook me breakfast and dinner is another matter.”
She nodded, which eased the squeezing sensation in Jeb’s chest. “That would be difficult. The cost of gas alone to drive each way would make someone think twice.”
“And there’s the wear and tear on the vehicle. I understand that it isn’t ideal for most people, but if you lived here, it wouldn’t be so bad. You could work at the school and be back here in plenty of time to spend the afternoons with Chloe.”
She joined him in taking another sip of brandy. “What would the neighbors think?”
Jeb couldn’t stop himself; he barked with laughter. Then he sobered because he saw that Amanda was serious. “I guess it won’t be the most conventional arrangement, but in this day of people living together without getting married, why would we bother to lie about it?” He shook his head. “Hell, we could just say we’re living together, and no eyebrows would be raised.”
“I’m still married. Not because I want to be. I haven’t wanted to be for a long time. So a car isn’t all I’m saving for. I need money for a divorce, enough to hire an excellent attorney who can make sure Mark never gets unsupervised visitation with Chloe.” She broke off and swallowed. And then, in a whisper, she continued. “Mark can be difficult. I’m afraid he’ll hurt her.” Her face flushed. “You’ll think I’m a horrible mom when I tell you this, but he’s hurt her before. I can’t let that happen ever again.”
Jeb realized that he needed to tread cautiously. Amanda had just opened a door, and
he wanted to keep it open. “I don’t, for a second, think you’re a horrible mother. I’ve seen how much you love Chloe. It may have taken you longer to get her away from him than you wanted, but you managed it. And I know it hasn’t been easy for you. But you’re doing it. And you’re doing it without any help.”
“I won’t be if I take this job!”
“Sure you will. You’ll be getting fair wages for the work you do for me. That isn’t help; it’s earning a living.” He reached to replenish their snifters, noting that his was nearly gone. “Proof’s in the pudding. Am I acting mean yet?” He lifted his glass. “I say we need to make a toast to success at your new job.”
“I haven’t agreed to work for you yet.”
“True, but it’s an offer I don’t think you should refuse. You can save for an attorney to keep Chloe safe after the divorce and save for a car.” He toasted to the agreement. “Tell me, did your dad get mean when he drank his brandy at night?”
A soft, glowing smile curved her lips. “Dad never got mean. He was so sweet and such a hard worker. He treated my mother like a queen.”
Jeb had grown up in the same sort of atmosphere, one of the reasons he’d never been able to settle for a second-rate woman. He’d wanted what his parents had—true love. “So you grew up believing that all marriages are like that.”
She shrugged. “I was young when I got in trouble.”
“How young, exactly?”
“Seventeen, almost eighteen. Chloe will be seven right before Christmas, and I’ll turn twenty-six next spring.”
“So you were way too young to understand that all guys weren’t good of heart like your dad, that there are a lot of rotten apples in the barrel.”
“I’ve never really analyzed it. I only know I got one of the rottenest apples.”
She took another sip of brandy and murmured with pleasure. Jeb realized that she had tasted her share of fine brandy and missed it. “I’m thinking that your dad sometimes poured you a nip or two.”