He couldn’t think of anything to say to her comment, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“You have any kids?” When he shook his head, she frowned, then wistfully asked, “Are there any kids around here?”
He knew everyone who lived along the road by sight, if not personally. He rarely had anything to do with them. He rarely had anything to do with anyone. He saw the Ryans—his boss Daniel, Sarah and their kids—every workday. He saw his own family on Sunday afternoons, and Zachary and Beth Adams and their kids maybe twice a month.
He wasn’t a real sociable person.
“The Trumbulls have some kids, but I don’t know how old they are,” he said at last. “They live about halfway back to town. And Sassie Whitlaw’s grandkids live with her part of the time. There’s a girl about your size.”
The wistfulness disappeared as she giggled again. “What kind of name is Sassie?”
Not much different from Lucy. It was an old name for a young girl.
A strand of hair fell forward to rest on her cheek, and she brushed it back with delicate fingers. “Do you have any animals besides puppies? Like maybe horses?”
“No.” There were cats in the barn, but they were no more sociable than he was. He kept their water dish full and supplemented their field-mouse diet with dry food, but that was the extent of their interaction.
“My dad said I could have a horse when we moved here. He said we’d have a barn and everything. He said we’d have trees filled with apples to give ’em for treats, and I could ride my horse to the store and to school.” Suspicion settled over her features, making her look years beyond five. “There’s no barn at our house. Daddy was little when he came here to see his grandma. I think he didn’t remember very well.”
Was there ever an orchard around here? her mother had asked that morning with the same sort of look, and just before that she’d all but snorted, A great old house. Clearly the Miller home had fallen far short of her expectations. Because her ex had a faulty memory—or a problem with the truth?
Lucy edged closer to the glass. “You have a barn,” she announced. “What’s in it?”
“The tractor. Some tools. A workshop.”
She tilted her head to look at him. “What kind of workshop?”
“You’re awfully nosy today.” Jayne came up to stand on the other side of the kid, combed the spiderwebs from her hair, then tried without success to remove them from her fingers. Her cheeks turned pink as she surreptitiously scrubbed them off on her sweatshirt.
“I’m bein’ neighborly,” Lucy disagreed. “That’s what Grandpa says people do in the country. Isn’t it, Tyler?”
Not me, he almost blurted out, but he just shrugged instead.
“They said we should have power by five,” Jayne said. With her gaze locked on something outside, it was hard to tell whether she was addressing the words to her daughter or him. “Do you think the roads are clear enough to go into town and pick up a few things?”
The snow had been melting steadily all day, leaving great patches of ground showing everywhere that wasn’t in the shade, and the temperature was warm enough for a lightweight jacket. How could the city girl not realize the roads would be clear? “Sure.”
“We’d be happy to give you a ride to your truck on the way.”
He’d be happy to say no. It wasn’t much of a walk, and he could use the exercise to clear his head. He couldn’t begin to guess at what made him say, “I’d appreciate it.” Maybe because then they would be even. She wouldn’t feel as if she was in his debt for the firewood and there wouldn’t be any reason for further contact between them.
Her smile was uneasy but relieved, too. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Tyler Lewis had less to say than any man Jayne had ever known.
Maybe she was just accustomed to talkative sorts. Her father could chat up anyone about anything, and Greg had never let a little thing like having nothing to say stop him from saying it. Tyler, it seemed, was just the opposite. While taking care of the electric, water and gas accounts, she’d listened to his conversation with Lucy with half an ear. Surely he had more than those brief little answers to offer.
But he wasn’t offering them to her. Without a word, she and Lucy had waited while he’d locked up, then the three of them had walked back to Edna’s house, where he and Lucy, still silent, waited while she locked up—laughable when practically every stick of furniture sat on the front porch—before loading into the Tahoe. Peripherally she watched him fasten his seat belt, then rub his long fingers over the leather armrest as if testing its texture. They stilled as his attention turned to the outside mirrors, automatically adjusting and lowering when she shifted into reverse, then returning to their preset position when she shifted into drive.
His mouth quirked slightly. Remembering that she’d told him Greg had taken everything of value? This truck was worth two, maybe three times the sorry little house and its one-acre setting. Knowing divorce was on the horizon, she’d had the sense to put it in her name only when she’d bought it.
Unable to bear the silence one moment longer, she asked, “Do you work in town?”
“No.”
She’d forgotten one of the rules she’d learned early in her career—no yes or no questions when conducting an interview. “Where do you work?”
He pressed the button that turned on the heater in the seat, then turned it off again before offering a halfhearted gesture to the west. “A few miles over that way.”
“Are you a farmer? A rancher? A housekeeper? A nanny?”
His mouth quirked again. With impatience? “A carpenter.”
“Do you frame houses, make cabinets, build decks?”
Finally he glanced at her and said in the softest of voices, “I see where your daughter gets her nosiness.”
Her face warming, Jayne slowed to a stop. They were at the bottom of the first hill, where a pickup old enough that its faded color could be one of any number was parked sideways across the road.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.” He opened the door, ignored the running board and slid to the ground. Then he looked back. “Furniture. Tables, chairs, entertainment centers, desks…if it’s wood, I build it.”
Not a carpenter but a craftsman—and a modest one at that. She didn’t meet many modest people in her business. Authors had to believe their work was good or they would never open themselves up to crushing rejection by trying to sell it.
With a nod that passed for goodbye, he closed the door, crossed to his truck with long strides and climbed inside. It might be ten years older than her Tahoe, but the engine started on the first try and revved powerfully, and it had no problem with the mud as he straightened it out, then drove past.
“I like him,” Lucy remarked from the backseat. “He doesn’t treat me like a kid.”
Jayne wasn’t sure he knew how to treat kids. As far as that went, she wasn’t sure he knew how to treat adults either. But maybe it wasn’t all people he had a problem with—just those who invaded his privacy.
Lucy amused herself with a movie on her portable DVD player for the drive into town, while Jayne amused herself with comparing Greg’s stories with reality. Virtually everything about the house was a lie, and based on what she was seeing today, so was everything about the town. A quaint little town, like Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show? Ha!
Sweetwater was a few blocks of shabby little buildings surrounded by a few more blocks of old houses and, on the outskirts