Somebody's Hero

The diner was warm and filled with good smells. Jayne helped Lucy out of her jacket, then slipped off her own before sliding into a booth that fronted the plate-glass window. A twenty-something waitress brought menus and offered a cheery greeting and coffee before leaving again.

“I like Sweetwater,” Lucy announced. “It’s pretty.”

Pretty? Jayne’s gaze darted to the view outside the window. Pretty old. Pretty shabby. It was the sort of place where one of her heroines would end up when everything else in her life had gone to hell and she found herself at rock bottom.

But her life hadn’t gone to hell. It wasn’t as if she had no place else to go. She could have stayed in Chicago. She could have settled anywhere.

But Sweetwater had one advantage over those options—Edna’s house. With no rent or mortgage payments, she’d figured that the savings she’d secreted away would last about eighteen months, barring emergencies, in southeastern Tennessee. That meant no outside job, no trying to work full-time and be a mother full-time and write full-time. She was a fast writer when Greg wasn’t scaring her muse into hiding. In eighteen months she could finish her current book and write two, maybe even three books on a new contract. In eighteen months she could be on her way to getting her career back on track.

That same money wouldn’t carry her through the end of the year in Chicago.

Just that thought gave the town a little brighter gleam.

They ordered hamburgers, and Jayne was all but drooling over the crispy thick-cut fries that came with them when the bell over the door dinged with a new arrival. She looked up to see another young woman, in her early to midtwenties, wearing jeans, a turtleneck under a heavy flannel shirt and boots with thick ridged soles. Despite the lumberjack clothes, there was something amazingly feminine about her, and it had nothing to do with the stylish blond hair or the three pairs of hoops that graced her earlobes.

Sorting through the stack of mail she carried, she called, “I’m back, Carla.”

The waitress appeared in the pass-through window. “How’s your mom?”

“She’s fine.”

“How’s Tyler?”

“Not answering his phone, as usual.”

One of Jayne’s heroines might jump to the conclusion that this lovely woman and Tyler were involved. Truth was, Jayne didn’t care beyond the fact that it would answer her question whether Tyler was antisocial with everyone or just her. Curiosity—that was all it was.

“His new neighbor’s here,” the waitress said with a gesture, and the woman turned to give them a speculative look. After a moment, she started their way.

Jayne dropped her gaze back to her burger. Her sweatshirt was dusty and cobwebby, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup this morning, not when she was still wearing the remnants of yesterday’s application. The last thing she needed was to meet someone who would make her feel dowdy even all dressed up—especially someone who might or might not be romantically involved with her neighbor.

But the woman didn’t detour away. She didn’t stumble and fall flat on her face or disappear into thin air but glided to a stop at the end of their table. “You must be Jayne.”

Jayne smiled politely. “Yes, I am. This is my daughter, Lucy.”

“Hi, Lucy. I’m Rebecca Lewis. I understand you’ve met my brother Tyler.”

That made Jayne feel marginally better. Sisters were less intimidating than girlfriends—no matter that she had zero interest in the man in question.

“What do you think of Sweetwater?”

Jayne glanced out the window, then back at Rebecca. “It’s…different.”

Rebecca showed no offense. “It’s small but boring, which is not always a bad thing. We grew up in Nashville—at least, until Tyler was fourteen and I was nine, when we came here to live with my grandparents. I liked the change.” She pulled a chair from the nearest table and sat down. “I take it you’re…” With a glance at Lucy, she hesitated. “Do you use the D word?”

Lucy seemed preoccupied with driving the ketchup bottle around the table with one hand while eating fries with the other, but she was never really tuned out. She often repeated something overheard during her most oblivious act. For that reason, Jayne had been as honest with her as a five-year-old deserved.

“Yeah. Lucy’s dad and I are divorced.”

“Too bad,” Rebecca said, then shrugged. “Or maybe not. I’ve got a few ex-boyfriends that I was more than happy to see the last of. The rumor mill says you’re a writer.”

“Historical romances.” Jayne was never sure what response that news would bring. There were the inevitable snickers and insults about trashy sex books and bodice rippers—not that one of her characters had ripped a bodice ever in his life—along with polite disinterest. Some people wondered why she didn’t write real books, and some, bless their hearts, were fans of the genre who were tickled to meet a real-life author.

“Really. That’s cool. How many books have you sold?”

“Eight.” Four in the eighteen months before she’d married Greg, and only four more in the following six years. There was a depressing statistic.

“Do you write under your own name?”

“No, I write as…Rochelle Starr.” Jayne hated admitting to her pseudonym. It was so overblown, so fake.

But Rebecca didn’t even blink. Instead she teasingly asked, “So, after selling eight romance novels, do you have any special insight into men?”

She laughed. “Yeah. They’re alien life-forms.”

“Isn’t that truth? So you already know everything you need to get along just fine with my brother.”

Jayne didn’t want to get along with Tyler, other than in a neighborly fashion—and she meant big-city neighborly, where you smiled and waved when you passed, helped each other out in an emergency but otherwise lived separate lives. She wasn’t looking for a man to share her life. She wrote fantasy love stories, and fantasy was one thing she already knew a lot about. She didn’t need living, breathing inspiration.

“Speaking of Tyler, could you save me a trip and give him something for me when you go home?” Rebecca asked.

Jayne’s smile was fixed in place as she gave the only answer she could. “Sure.”

“I’ll get it now.” Rebecca left her seat and disappeared through the swinging door into the kitchen.

By the time she returned, Jayne and Lucy were finished with their meals and Jayne had pulled out a twenty to pay the check Carla had delivered. Rebecca brushed it away. “It’s on the house. Consider it our welcome to Sweetwater.”

“Thank you.”

Rebecca set a large brown bag on the table. The top was folded over, and an envelope with Tyler’s name on it was binder-clipped to the fold. A chill emanated from it, suggesting its contents were frozen. Food? Did Rebecca make it her duty to make sure her big brother had a good meal from time to time?

“Thanks for delivering this and, like I said, welcome to Sweetwater. I hope I see a lot of you.”

“I’m sure you will,” Jayne said as she left a tip for the waitress, then helped Lucy into her coat.

After all, the diner’s only competition in town was a hot dog at the gas station.

Country music played on the stereo, nothing but a distant hum until Tyler shut off the sander. While running his hand over the surface, he hummed a few bars, but humming was as far as it went. The last time he had sung a song, his mother had remarked that he sounded just like his father, then burst into tears. That had been the end of singing for him.

This piece was the final door to the entertainment armoire he’d been working on for the past few weeks. It was his own design, built of walnut and carved with a rising-sun pattern on the upper two doors. It had turned out better than he’d expected—good enough to offer to the same pricey shops that sold Daniel’s work. But it was going into his living room, where few people besides him would ever see it.

He’d begun working with Daniel when he was fifteen. Life had been tough then—his mother away, adjusting to Sweetwater after Nashville, trying to fit in when kids talked about his family both behind his back and to his face. All the adults had agreed that he needed something constructive to occupy his time. Since Zachary couldn’t train him in the legal trade, his good friend Daniel had offered to teach him carpentry. They’d meant to keep him busy and out of fights, but instead he’d found a career.

He might never get rich at it, but his house was paid for, he had money in the bank, and he liked going to work every day. That counted for a lot.

A shadow fell across the open door, catching his attention an instant before Lucy Miller stepped into sight. She was carrying a grocery bag, clutching it to her body with both arms, and her eyes were wide as she looked all around. Disappointment curved the corners of her mouth. “You can’t even tell it’s s’posed to be a barn. Where’s the hay? Where do the horses go? Where do the cows go?”

His muscles tightened as he picked up a tack cloth and began wiping down the door, removing the bits of dust that inevitably escaped the sander’s vacuum bag. He didn’t like interruptions, especially from a talkative neighbor whose mother was pretty and needful. “Where’s your—”

Before he could finish, Jayne appeared behind her daughter, her cheeks flushed. “Lucy, I told you—wow.” Stepping around Lucy, she came farther into the room, to the table where the finished door was lying. She reached out, almost touched the carving, then drew back. “Did you do this?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” she murmured again, then turned to look around. He didn’t have to look to know what she saw—neatness that bordered on compulsion. A place for everything and everything in its place. He’d learned at an early age that there was hell to pay for disorder—and usually someone else paid it. Now that he lived alone, there was no one to care whether he put something in the wrong place, but it was a hard habit to break.

Jayne walked around the room. A stranger in his workshop was even more disruptive than in his house. He wanted her to leave—even if some small part of him appreciated the way she trailed her hand along the counter. The way she sniffed the fresh lumber stacked against one wall. The pleasure she took in studying the few finished pieces.

“This is gorgeous,” she said, ending up back at the armoire door. “Are you going to sell it?”

He shook his head.

“But you could.”

The comment made his cheeks warm and made him feel…flattered. But hell, hadn’t he just acknowledged that to himself before Lucy had come in? And he had the expertise to make that determination. So what did it matter that she agreed with him?

It didn’t.

“How long have you been doing this?” she asked, stopping on the opposite side of the table where he worked.

“Thirteen years.”

“Since you were a kid.” She sounded impressed.

He didn’t argue that thirteen years ago he’d lived through more than most people did in their entire lives but merely shrugged.

“Mom, this is cold,” Lucy complained, shuffling forward as if the weight of the paper bag was almost more than she could bear.

“I told you to let me carry it.” Jayne took it from her, then set it on the table next to the newly sanded door. “We met your sister while we were in town. She asked us to bring you this.”

Tyler gave the bag a suspicious look. It wasn’t the contents that made him wary—Rebecca gave him food from the diner once or twice a week, as if he would starve if left on his own—but the fact that she had already managed to meet Jayne and roped her into playing errand girl. He would have seen Rebecca the next day or definitely the day after that. The handout could have waited until then, except that she hadn’t wanted to wait. She’d wanted to send Jayne Miller knocking on his door.

She wanted him to have a life.

“There’s a letter on it,” Lucy pointed out, stretching onto her toes to see over the top of the workbench. “Don’t’cha wanna read it?”

Not particularly, and not with an audience. If her mother had asked, he could have pointed out that letters were private. But she wasn’t her mother. She was a nosy little kid.

He unclipped the envelope, tore one end and slid out the paper inside. It was taken from a notepad advertising the annual fall Harvest Festival in Sweetwater from the previous year, and Rebecca’s loopy writing covered the sheet. She’s pretty, she’s smart and she has a nice laugh. Invite them to dinner. I’ve packed plenty to share.

Great. His sister was trying to fix him up. Just what he needed.

“Well? What does it say?” Lucy prompted, and Jayne hushed her. “But, Mom—”

Jayne began backing toward the door, pulling Lucy with her by the collar. “Sorry to have interrupted you. And sorry she’s so nosy. As you know, she comes by it naturally. Guess we’d better get back home and cleaning again. Thanks again for the firewood and the phone and—and everything.”

Tyler watched them go, then looked down at the note again. She has a nice laugh. Only Rebecca would find that a reason to try to hook someone up with her brother. But she was one up on him. He hadn’t heard Jayne laugh yet. Those few minutes when she’d been looking around the shop were the most relaxed he’d seen her. The rest of the time she seemed nervous and talked too much or not at all.

He tossed the note aside, then looked inside the bag. Usually she sent him servings for one or two, but not this time. There was a large pan of lasagna, ready for the oven, along with a frozen pie made with apples from his own trees, a container of vanilla ice cream and a loaf of Italian bread, no doubt already sliced and spread with garlic butter. She’d definitely packed plenty to share, and had even sent him someone to share it with.

As if it was that easy.

He took a break to carry the bag to the house. After putting away the food, he filled a glass with water from the tap, then stood near the kitchen island and listened. Except for the heavy breathing from the dogs asleep on the sofa, the house was quiet. Always quiet. He told himself he liked the peace. Fourteen years of screaming, angry shouts and sobs had given him a fine appreciation for silence.

But it was a little less fine lately than it used to be.

Invite them to dinner. It might not be the friendliest invitation, but he could do it. And then what? They would expect conversation—at least Jayne would. Lucy would be happy to talk all by herself. He wasn’t very good at making conversation and never had been. Maybe it was just his nature or maybe it came from all those warnings he’d been given as a kid. From his mother, usually whispered while smiling through tears: Promise you won’t tell anybody, Tyler. He didn’t mean nothin’. He never means nothin’. And from his father: You say one word to anyone, boy, and I’ll shut your mouth for good.

Tyler had believed him and kept his mouth shut. Until his father lay dead and his mother was taken away in handcuffs.

Old habits were hard to break, and keeping to himself was his oldest habit of all.

Chapter 3

On Friday morning Jayne went outside, strolling to the edge of the road before turning back to face the house. It was barely seven o’clock, but she’d been up more than an hour and she’d finally done all she could to improve the inside of the house. Today, with its promise of sunshine and warm weather, she would work on the outside.

The grass in front needed mowing—after she’d dragged off those nasty rugs she’d tossed out the day before. Of course, she didn’t have a lawn mower, but she could buy one. She’d noticed some bulbs poking up their heads in what had once been flower beds, so she intended to weed around them to give them a better chance. And she hadn’t needed more than a look out the back windows to see that there was a small jungle there. She wanted to clear it before she lost Lucy in there.

Behind her a sharp whistle sounded. She watched as Cameron and Diaz came flying from the woods, leaped the fence and disappeared inside. She didn’t get even a glimpse of their master.

She returned her attention to the house, thinking about paint and shutters and repairs, and only vaguely noticed the closing of a door, the revving of an engine. As the old pickup drew nearer, though, she couldn’t help but wish she’d done more than drag her fingers through her hair. A little makeup would have been nice, along with a T-shirt that hadn’t seen better days long before Greg had tossed it her way. Not that she was looking to impress anyone.

Listening to the truck, she calculated when to turn and give a neighborly wave. Tyler didn’t return it. But fifty feet past, the truck lurched to a stop, and he backed up until he was beside her. Leaning across, he rolled down the window. “I can take those rugs to the county dump in the morning.” His tone was brusque, and his expression matched.

“Thanks. I was wondering what I’d do about them.” Not true. In her thoughts about the rugs, she’d gotten only so far as getting rid of them—not how.

The truck rolled forward a foot or so before stopping again. Tension rolled off him in waves, from his scowl to his clenched jaw to his fingers on a death grip around the steering wheel. “I can fix that bottom porch step, too.”

She wanted to tell him, thanks, but no thanks. She could hire someone to do that for her or get how-to instructions from the Internet and fix it herself. But fixing it herself was liable to lead to more extensive repairs, and anything she didn’t have to hire out was money that would last just a little bit longer. Without a steady income, that mattered.

“Thanks. I’d really appreciate that.” As long as he was being accommodating—more or less—she went on. “Is there a place in town where I can buy a lawn mower and a weed trimmer?”

For a long moment he was still, then with a rueful shake of his head he removed a key from the ring in the ignition and offered it to her. “This goes to the door around the corner from the workshop. Everything you need’s in there.”

She backed away a step. “I can’t—What if I break something?”

“You know how to use a lawn mower and a weed trimmer?”

“Yes, but—”

Impatiently he held the key a few inches closer.

With reluctance Jayne held out her hand, and he dropped the key in it. “Thanks.” She seemed to be saying that a lot. She wasn’t comfortable with being so beholden to someone, especially someone who was begrudging about his generosity.

“I’ll get the stuff for the step today.”

She nodded, and so did he, then shifted into gear and drove away.

In her line of work, heroes often had tortured pasts. What would Tyler’s be? An unhappy upbringing? If so, it didn’t seem to have had the same effect on his sister. A broken marriage and broken heart? When she’d asked if there was a Mrs. Lewis, his answer had been blunt, to the point, but all his answers were blunt and to the point. Some tragedy that had happened between his teen years and the time he’d isolated himself up here?

She rolled her eyes. If she wanted to fixate on a hero with a tortured past, there was one inside the house on her computer, just waiting for her to resolve the big conflict that was keeping him apart from his heroine. Tyler wasn’t a character and he wasn’t a hero—at least, not hers.

After finishing her coffee, she went inside to check on Lucy, still asleep in the smaller of the two bedrooms. Her daughter gave a soft sigh, then snuggled deeper into her covers as Jayne backed out of the room. She would probably sleep another hour, maybe two. She wouldn’t even know that Jayne had left her to go down the road to Tyler’s.

She found the door the key fit on the north side of the barn. It was wide and opened into a large, clean storage room. The lawn mower was pushed into a space apparently built for it, with a shelf above for the gas can and a few quarts of oil. The trimmer occupied a shelf nearby, with another gas can, more oil, extra line and the owner’s manual. Other shelves and nooks held a chain saw, an edger and a lightweight utility cart, and Peg-Board on the walls was filled with hand tools, work gloves and safety glasses. There was even one small shelf that held bug repellent.

Tyler Lewis was one seriously organized man.

She loaded a variety of tools into the cart, pushed it outside, then locked up again. With the key deep in her jeans pocket, she headed back to her own house. There, she checked on Lucy once more, then pushed the cart around to the edge of the overgrown backyard.

Clearing it was a daunting prospect. Where to begin?

The author in her answered: begin at the beginning. She revved up the trimmer and began clearing the tall weeds in an ever-widening arc, uncovering rocks, logs and a fifty-gallon drum Edna had apparently used for burning trash.

Despite the early-morning chill, sweat coated her skin, along with grass clippings clinging to every exposed surface, when she cut the engine.

“Well, she doesn’t look like a city girl today, does she?”

Jayne spun around to find Lucy, looking like a sleepy doll in her nightgown, and Rebecca standing next to the cart. “Good morning,” she said, shoving damp hair from her forehead, then brushing at the grass flecks that clung to her hand.

“You’re working bright and early,” Rebecca remarked. “I thought I’d bring you a treat from the diner. Our cook makes the best sticky buns in three counties and has the blue ribbons to prove it. Don’t tell me you’ve already eaten.”

Jayne’s stomach answered with a loud growl as she pulled off the safety glasses. “I’ve only had coffee. Sticky buns sound wonderful.”

“What’re you doing, Mom?” Lucy asked. “You woke me up with all that noise.”

“I’m cleaning up this mess.”

Lucy gave the slightly improved yard a doubtful look. “You’re gonna need help.”

“And you are help. Isn’t that lucky?”

“The three of us can have it clean in no time,” Rebecca said as she led the way back around the house.

Jayne was startled. They were talking about a lot of hard, dirty work. “I appreciate the offer, but you have your own work.”

Rebecca waved away her response as she sat on the top porch step, where a large bag waited. “I’m the boss. I can take off whenever I want. Besides, I’ve done this sort of thing before. I helped Tyler clear the land for his barn. When is he coming over to fix that step?”

Slowly taking a seat one step down, Jayne asked, “What makes you think he is?”

“Because I know my brother. He’ll tell you he’s not neighborly, but the only one he’s kidding is himself. If not for him, Edna never could have stayed out here until she died. He took care of everything she needed.”

She opened the bag and started setting out food. She added napkins, plastic forks and salt and pepper shakers, then smiled brightly. “Dig in.”

Jayne ate half a biscuit-egg-and-ham sandwich before finally murmuring, “Tomorrow morning.”

Mouth full, Rebecca raised her brows.

“Your brother’s coming over tomorrow morning to fix the step. And to haul those rugs to the county dump.”

The information didn’t seem to surprise Rebecca in the least.

Jayne watched Lucy sneak the egg from her sandwich, wrap it in a napkin, then slide it behind her on the step. When she looked back at Rebecca, she saw that she was watching, too, and smiling. “Are you married?”

Rebecca’s smile didn’t waver. “No. But I came close. I’ve been engaged four times. It’s just that when it comes time to say ‘I do,’ I don’t.”

What made a woman so skittish of marriage? Jayne wasn’t going to pry as to why. Maybe when she knew Rebecca better. When she was sure she wouldn’t also pry for information about Tyler.

They ate until the only thing Jayne wanted was a nap, but when Rebecca got to her feet, ready to work, Jayne pulled herself up, too. “You get dressed and brush your teeth,” she told Lucy. “Put on old clothes, okay? Then come on around back.”

They chose a place to start a burn pile, then began cutting the clumps of shrubs Jayne had trimmed around. For a time Rebecca offered advice—how to keep the shrubs under control; who to call for a new trash barrel; where to buy a window air conditioner.