“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Ah, it was a weakness. She’d been fishing. But that’s what worms were for!
He lunged at her again, the worm wiggled between his fingers. He looked devilishly happy when she squealed.
Then, as if he caught himself in the sin of having fun, he abruptly dropped the worm, went back to work.
She hesitated. It was probably a good time to follow his lead and back off. But, oh, to see him smile had changed something in her. Made her willing to take a risk. With a sigh of surrender, she tossed a shovel of dirt on his shoes. And he picked up that worm.
“I warned you,” he said.
“You’d have to catch me first!”
Molly threw down her shovel and ran. He came right after her, she could hear his footfalls and his breathing. She glanced over her shoulder and saw he was chasing her, holding out the worm. She gave a little snicker, and put on a burst of speed. At one point, she was sure that horrible worm actually touched her neck, and she shrieked, heard his rumble of breathless laughter, ran harder.
She managed to put a wheelbarrow full of plants between them. She turned and faced him. “Be reasonable,” she pleaded breathlessly.
“The time for reason is done,” he told her sternly, but then that grin lit his face—boyish, devil-may-care, and he leaped the wheelbarrow with ease and the chase was back on.
The old people watched them indulgently as they chased through the garden. Finally the shoes betrayed her, and she went flying. She landed in a pile of soft but foul-smelling peat moss. He was immediately contrite. He dropped the worm and held out his hand—which she took with not a bit of hesitation. He pulled her to her feet with the same easy strength that he had shoveled with. Where did a man who crunched numbers get that kind of strength from? She had that feeling again, of something about him not adding up, but it was chased away by his laughter.
“You don’t laugh enough,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I’m not sure. I just do. You are way too serious, aren’t you?”
He held both her hands for a moment, reached out and touched a curl, brushed it back from out of her eyes.
“Maybe I am,” he admitted.
Something in her felt absolutely weak with what she wanted at that moment. To make him laugh, but more, to explore all the reasons he didn’t. To find out what, exactly, about him did not add up.
“Truce?” he said.
“Of course,” she panted. She meant for all of it, their different views of Second Chances. All of it.
He reached over, snared the camera out of her pocket and took a picture of her.
“Don’t,” she protested. She could feel her hair falling out, she was pretty sure there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and probably on her derriere, too!
But naturally he didn’t listen and so she stuck out her tongue at him and then struck a pose for him, and then called over some of the other gardeners. Arms over each other’s shoulders, they performed an impromptu can-can for the camera before it all fell apart, everyone dissolving into laughter.
Houston smiled, but that moment of spontaneity was fading. Molly was aware that he saw that moment of playfulness differently to her. Possibly as a failing. Because he was still faintly removing himself from them. She had been welcomed into the folds of the group, he stood outside it.
Lonely, she thought. There was something so lonely about him. And she felt that feeling, again, of wanting to explore.
And maybe to save. Just like she saved her strays. But somehow, looking at the handsome, remote cast of his face, she knew he would hate it that she had seen anything in him that needed saving. That needed, period.
They got back in the car, she waved to the old people. Molly was aware she was thrilled with how the morning had gone, by its unexpected surprises, and especially how he had unexpectedly revealed something of himself.
“How are your hands?” she asked him. He held one out to her. An hour on a shovel had done nothing to that hand.
“I would have thought you would have blisters,” she said.
“No, my hands are really tough.”
“From?”
“I box.”
“As in fight?”
He laughed. “Not really. It’s more the workout I like.”
So, her suspicions that he was not quite who he said were unfounded. He was a high-powered businessman who sought fitness at a high-powered level.
That showed in every beautiful, mesmerizing male inch of him!
“Wasn’t that a wonderful morning?” she asked, trying to solidify the camaraderie that had blossomed so briefly between them. “I promised I would show you the soul of Second Chances and that’s part of it! What a lovely sense of community, of reclaiming that lot, of bringing something beautiful to a place where there was ugliness.”
She became aware he was staring straight ahead. Her feeling of deflation was immediate. “You didn’t feel it?”
“Molly, it’s a nice project. The warm and fuzzy feel good kind.”
She heard the but in his voice, sensed it in the set of his shoulders. Naturally he would be immune to warm fuzzy feeling good.
“But it’s my job to ask if it makes good economic sense. Second Chances owns that lot, correct?”
She nodded reluctantly. Good economic sense after the magical hour they had just spent? “It was donated to us. Years ago. Before I came on board it was just an empty lot that no one did anything with.”
If she was expecting congratulations on her innovative thought she was sadly disappointed!
“Were there provisos on the donation?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’ll have to do some homework.”
“But why?”
“I have to ask these questions. Is that the best use of that lot? It provides a green space, about a dozen people seem to actually enjoy it. Could it be liquidated and the capital used to help more people? Could it be developed—a parking lot or a commercial building—providing a stream of income into perpetuity? Providing jobs and income for the neighborhood?”
“A parking lot?” she gasped. And then she saw exactly what he was doing. Distancing himself from the morning they had just shared—distancing himself from the satisfaction of hard work and the joy of laughter and the admiration of people who would love him.
Distancing himself from her. Did he know she had seen him? Did he suspect she had uncovered things about him he kept hidden?
He didn’t like feelings. She should know that firsthand. Chuck had had a way of rolling his eyes when she had asked him how he was feeling that had made her stop asking!
But, naive as it might be, she was pretty sure she had just glimpsed the real Houston Whitford, something shining under those layers of defenses.
And she wasn’t quite ready to let that go. It didn’t have to be personal. No, she could make it a mission, for the good of Second Chances, she told herself, she would get past all those defenses.
For the good of Second Chances she was going to rescue him from his lonely world.