When, suddenly he heard Mary’s voice in the garage, speaking in soothing tones to the baby, Luke realized she had forgotten to take the baby monitor with her. “Oh, Samantha, come here, baby,” she crooned. “It’s okay. Everything’s all right. Mommy’s going to take care of you. Always.”
Was it Luke’s imagination or did he detect an air of desperation in her voice?
SHANNON WAS IMPRESSED when Luke brought her a stack of the finished wood for the welcome signs at the end of the afternoon.
“This ought to get you started,” he said with a gruff smile that made her chest feel strangely tight as she opened the screen door to him. “I’ll do the letter boxes tomorrow.” His face was beaded with a fine film of perspiration, and his clothes were speckled with sawdust. And he looked sexier than a pinup boy in a tuxedo. Raw and elemental.
Shannon took a firm grip of her hormones and reached down to scoop up Samantha, who was chewing on a biscuit. She’d had a productive afternoon. She’d painted two-dozen crow plant pokes. Tonight she could start on the welcome signs. “You look hot, Luke. Could I offer you a cold drink? Iced tea? Soda?”
“Water will be fine, thank you.”
Shannon motioned toward her worktable. “You can put the signs there and have a seat at the counter. Feel free to wash your hands at the sink if you like.”
He nodded wordlessly. As he stepped into her cottage, what she had always considered an airy space seemed to shrink enough to barely encompass his shoulders. Shannon fought the ripples of panic swelling in her.
Forcing a bright smile, she marched to the refrigerator and yanked open the door, reaching inside for a pitcher of water. One-handed, she poured him a drink and circled to the other side of the counter before presenting it to him. She felt safer with the width of the counter between them. But as he sat down across from her and she met his gaze, she could have sworn he understood her actions. Shame seared her. Was she that transparent?
Luke noted Mary’s uneasiness and the emotions shifting in her eyes, as well as the pink tide of color that rose from her neck and seeped into her cheeks before she turned away from him to examine his work. With her head lowered and her body pressed against the table as she held her daughter protectively on her hip, she reminded him of a hunted animal burrowing into its surroundings to escape the notice of a passing predator.
Compassion squeezed his heart. Just what or who was she running from?
He took a sip of water and let his gaze travel around the room. It exuded the whimsical touches of Mary’s creativity. Wreaths, bouquets of dried flowers and dozens of decorative hand-painted crafts dangled from pegs. Pegged racks painted a country blue were mounted at eye level on the pine-paneled walls. On one wall a narrow shelf was installed above the rack and held an assembly line of crafts in various stages of completion. Pencils, markers and brushes were carefully arranged in glass canning jars on the cottage’s dining table—an antique harvest table waxed to a soft mellow gleam—that obviously served as her worktable. A pine cupboard wedged into a corner held small plastic bottles of acrylic paint and cans of stain and varnish.
On the other side of the table was a playpen filled with stuffed toys and activity sets. He couldn’t see any photos of family and friends. No deceased husband. Like him, had she put the photos away because the memories they evoked were too painful? The room perfectly summed up what he already knew of Mary’s life: work, motherhood and a blank past.
He watched her run a finger along the sanded edge of a sign. “These look great, Luke,” she said, glancing back at him over her shoulder. “Expertly cut. Perfectly sanded. I’ll be begging you to stay on permanently if you keep this up.”
Luke was oddly pleased by her compliment. It had felt good to see the shapes emerge from the wood. “Thanks, but don’t get your hopes up. We both agreed this was temporary. I took the liberty of looking at some of the other patterns. I like your designs. How long have you been doing this?”
She shrugged. “Oh, I’ve been designing and painting things for years. I finally decided to be brave and turn my hobby into a job.”
Her breezy reply was characteristically vague. Luke dug in his heels, determined to peel back a layer or two. “I admire your initiative. It must not be easy running a business and being a single mom.”
He saw the muscles in the arm that circled her daughter tighten perceptibly. Still hovering over the worktable, she plucked a paintbrush from a jar, examined the bristles as if checking to make sure it was clean, then tucked it back into the jar. “It hasn’t been easy,” she admitted faintly, her back still to him. “When I was a teenager complaining about homework and studying, my mother used to tell me that if it wasn’t hard, then it wasn’t worth doing.” She turned toward him fully, her eyes glowing with steely determination. “I didn’t understand what she meant until I started this business. Now I’m glad my mother made me pay attention to algebra and geometry.”
Luke laughed dryly. Samantha stopping chewing on her biscuit at the deep unfamiliar sound and looked at him in sudden interest, her delicate bow-shaped brows lifting as if questioning what her mother was doing conversing with this strange man in their home. Luke gave her an amused grin.
“She’s a cutie. How old is she?”
“Almost ten months.”
“She’s walking early. My brother’s kids were closer to a year old when they started walking. His son could crawl up bookcases and cabinets.”
“Thankfully Samantha isn’t that adventurous. She never quite got the hang of crawling, but I think her natural curiosity to touch things out of her arm’s reach propelled her into standing, then walking. She loves brightly colored objects, especially flowers. Right, baby?”
Eyes gleaming, Samantha gave her mother and Luke a coquettish smile.
Luke laughed. “I’ll bet she just likes mischief. With a smile like that, she’s going to break a lot of hearts when she hits high school,” he predicted.
“You think?” Mary laughed and playfully dabbed at a splotch of drool on her daughter’s chin. “I hope she has more teeth by the time she hits high school.”
Luke took a stab at shifting the conversation to the more personal. “Did you go to high school here in Blossom Valley? Place doesn’t look big enough to have a high school.”
“There’s a high school in one of the nearby towns.”
Luke kept his smile steady despite the way she’d sidestepped his question. Again. “I’ll bet you got all A’s in art class. Is that where you learned to paint—in high school? Or did you major in art at university?”
“Actually I taught myself to paint from books and magazines, then took a few craft classes. I was an administrative assistant before I decided to turn my hobby into a business. I have to say I much prefer being my own boss to being someone else’s gofer.”
“What kind of company did you work for?”
“The government,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand as if all government offices were the same. “It gave me a whole new perspective on office politics. Though I miss the regular paycheck. That’s one thing you might want to keep in mind if you’re going into business for yourself,” she said pointedly.
“There’s that,” he agreed. “I guess I’d miss my soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law and the rest of his crew. It must be isolating working for yourself.” Luke took a sip of water, deliberately waiting to see if Mary picked up the thread and carried the conversation. Perhaps mention the department where she’d worked or the names of co-workers she missed or still kept in touch with. Anything that might help him confirm her identity.
Usually if you waited long enough, people felt obligated to fill silences.
And Luke was vitally aware that this Mary might have the answers that would fill the yawning silence in his heart. His gaze settled on her