The Hero's Redemption

Damn it, there he went, being both tactful and kind again. Because he respected another man’s pride. She couldn’t imagine him ever putting someone else down to make himself feel better.

Her heart sped up as she acknowledged what she already knew.

CHAPTER NINE

ERIN HAD JUST pried open a can of paint the next morning when she heard a car in the driveway. Who on earth could it be? Somebody using her driveway to turn around? Certainly, nobody had dropped in for a visit since she’d moved to West Fork. She’d hoped that by judiciously responding to friends’ and her aunt’s emails, she’d head them off from tracking her down. Outside, she heard a car door slam. She straightened and went toward the front of the house.

A dark-haired man in a rumpled suit had climbed out of the blue sedan and was looking at the house. With a sinking feeling, Erin suspected she knew who he was.

She opened the front door and went out on the porch. “Can I help you?”

“Would you be Ms. Parrish?”

“I am.”

He mounted the steps. “I’m Enrique Ramirez, Cole Meacham’s parole officer. I should have visited before now, but I’ve been swamped.”

“How do you do?” she said politely, accepting his handshake. Cole would hate having the man show up here. Had he known parole officers did this? Seeing no option, she invited him in and offered him coffee, which he accepted with apparent pleasure. Just sugar, he said.

“Is Mr. Meacham here?” he asked.

Pouring from the carafe, she said, “He’s at a neighbors’. I still have some small jobs for him to do, but he’s currently building a wheelchair ramp for the elderly people across the street.”

“A wheelchair ramp?” He looked startled. “Has he ever done anything like that before?”

“I don’t think so, but he studied plans online and says he’s good at math.” She grimaced as she put a mug on the table in front of him, sitting down with her own. “Which I’m not, so I didn’t totally understand his calculations. The ramp can’t be too steep, for obvious reasons. His father is a contractor. Cole worked for him at one time and had some construction jobs later, too.” He’d barely mentioned those, but she had the impression he’d been trying to get out from under his father’s thumb.

“I see.” After dumping a couple of teaspoons of sugar in his coffee and stirring, he studied her from tired brown eyes. Gray threaded the dark hair, and the beginnings of seams in his face put him in his forties or early fifties. “Is he still living here?”

“Yes, as I told you, in the apartment over the garage.”

“You’ve had no problems with him?”

“None at all,” she said firmly. “He’s done wonders with this house. The front and back porches were rotting, and so was some of the siding. The staircase up to the apartment was rotting, too. My grandmother had really let things go. Cole’s done all the work on the exterior, including the paint job on both the house and the garage. His latest job was whacking the weeds and blackberries down.”

“And personally?”

Offended on Cole’s behalf by all these questions, Erin did understand that the man had to do his job. Would he leave without seeing Cole? She wished.

“He’s polite, a hard worker, patient and kind. I wouldn’t have offered him a place to stay if he hadn’t been. He started mowing the neighbors’ lawn across the street without asking for pay. Mr. Zatloka looks about ninety, and was still trying to do it himself. In fact, Cole was willing to build the ramp for nothing if the Zatlokas would cover the materials, but they insisted on paying him.”

A shrewdness and skepticism in his eyes made her uneasy. Did he suspect she was falling for Cole, and therefore didn’t believe what she was saying? Her annoyance was tinged with embarrassment, because, of course, Mr. Ramirez was right. She was falling—had fallen—for Cole, although she didn’t think she’d have been willing to lie for him. No, if she’d had to lie, he wouldn’t be the man she thought he was.

So she stubbornly kept her mouth shut instead of continuing to babble.