Joe’s expenses had been for materials. The I beams for the roof and the crane to put them in place had nearly cleaned him out.
There were a dozen times when he thought he’d give it up and go home to fight Sheila for what was his. But that meant fighting his son and his grandchildren. What was Joe to do, go back to New Jersey and throw out Sheila’s curtain display? Would he try to take the hardware store back to what it was when his kids were little?
It was an absurd idea, but he would have done it, except for one thing: Lucy.
Lucy, he thought as he stared at the papers on the desk. His whole life was coming to revolve around her.
Jecca had met her when she’d rented an apartment in Mrs. Wingate’s house. The three women had hit it off so well that every e-mail Jecca sent him had been about those two women. Later Joe found out that Jecca was covering the fact that she’d met a man. She knew her father would ask a lot of questions, so she’d left him out of her correspondence.
Jecca didn’t realize that her letters—and photos—of Lucy, and Lucy, and, well, Lucy, had intrigued her father. Lucy Cooper had come to remind Joe of what he’d missed in life. Now that he’d lost his son, and was about to lose his daughter and his business, thoughts of Lucy filled the void.
When Joe drove down to Edilean to see the building Dr. Tris was offering, he’d reminded himself that Miss Cooper knew nothing about him. He couldn’t greet her as though he knew her from the hundred or so photos he’d seen of her and all that he’d conned Jecca into telling him. He had to be reserved, cool. Play James Bond, he told himself, not be the New Jersey guy who was so old-fashioned he refused to use an electric drill to put in screws.
By the time Joe got to Edilean, Jecca and Tris had had a big fight. She’d run off to New York and Dr. Tris was frantic that he was going to lose her.
Right away Joe saw that everyone was giving the young man lots of sympathy when what he needed was a kick in the pants. Joe gave it to him. He was astonished at the curse words that came out of the man’s mouth! And Joe changed his mind about a doctor being too prissy for his Jecca. Over the course of one long night, Joe gave the boy a piece of his mind and lots of advice about Jecca.
It took the boy three days to get over his hangover—Joe was up by nine the next morning—then he started doing what he’d been told he needed to do to get Jecca back.
After Joe got Tristan straightened out, he found Mrs. Wingate’s shop in Edilean and asked to rent a room in her house. She was a tall, elegant lady—not his type at all—who looked him up and down and said she didn’t have any vacancies.
When he told her he was Jecca’s father, she softened. She had some customers then, so he asked if he could go see the house. She hesitated. “I hear you need some repairs,” he said. “Maybe I could look at them.”
That had made her give in and she had quickly drawn a map. “I’ll call Lucy and tell her you’re comi
ng,” Mrs. Wingate said, again looking him up and down.
He knew that look. Ladies like her didn’t want to meet men like him in the dark.
He’d taken his time driving down Aldredge Road to Mrs. Wingate’s big old house. He was seriously afraid of meeting Lucy. He had a feeling that he could like her. But what if he’d misjudged what he’d heard about her and she was as snooty as that Mrs. Wingate? She’d looked at him as though he were a tradesman using the wrong entrance. If Lucy looked at him like that too . . .
“I’ll go to a motel,” he told himself.
The house was big, and as Jecca had said, it was set in a beautiful garden. The house needed a bit of work here and there, but it was in good shape.
He got his old suitcase out of the truck, took a deep breath, and went inside. The house was so girly inside he felt like he was entering a harem—and he sure as hell wasn’t the sheik.
He stood at the foot of the stairs a moment and listened. Just as Jecca had said, he could hear a sewing machine running. It was a sweet sound to a man like him whose whole life had been about tools.
He slowly climbed the stairs and when he got to the top a pretty woman with her arms full of what looked like dresses for baby angels ran smack into him. Hard. She would have bounced off his chest and landed on the floor if Joe hadn’t caught her arm and pulled her up. He was pleased to see that she had strength in her legs, good reflexes, and she was very flexible. She came up so fast her soft front was pressed against Joe’s wide, hard chest.
For a moment time stood still. They looked into each other’s eyes and they knew. Just plain knew.
“I assume you’re Joe and I need your help,” Lucy said as she stepped away from him. “Harry’s acting up and a table leg is wonky and I need help cutting. Put your suitcase there and follow me.”
She bent over to pick up the little white dresses, and he admired her lithe, firm figure. She stopped in the doorway. “Come on. We haven’t got all day.” She disappeared into the room.
Joe stood there for a moment and it struck him that he and his son might be more alike than he thought. “I love bossy women,” he said aloud, then followed Lucy into the sewing room.
Five
Kim was in her shop, showing some rings she’d made last summer to a young married couple. They were in town just for the day and couldn’t stop talking about how “quaint” Edilean was. The word always made Kim smile. Her cousin’s wife, Tess, said they should put up a sign on the road into town saying WE AIN’T QUAINT.
Kim tried to give her attention back to the couple, who she felt sure were going to buy an inexpensive piece.
“Which one do you like best?” the girl asked Kim as she gazed at the tray containing six rings.
She wanted to tell the truth, that she liked them all, since she had designed everything in the shop. “It all depends on what you like, but I think—”