Hawks Mountain - Mobi (16 page)

Becky seated herself on the sofa and looked around the room.

While the outside of the house needed work, the inside appeared clean, neat and well cared for. The sofa and two chairs clustered in front of the fieldstone fireplace, although not new, showed little wear and were as clean as the rest of the room. In the entire room a large yellow spot on the ceiling near the front window seemed to be the only flaw.
Probably the product of a leak caused by the missing shingles.

Pictures of Davy from infancy to his present age of ten adorned every table top. A large framed picture of him in his Little League uniform hung above the mantel. The boy was definitely the star of this household.

After a short time,
Lydia
joined Becky on the sofa.

“How have you been?” Becky watched the woman’s face, but
Lydia
kept her head bent slightly so the curtain of her hair hid her features. “Davy told Nick Hart that you got laid off.”

Lydia
’s laugh held no humor. She raised her head and looked directly at Becky. “Is that what they’re calling it? I was fired, Becky. After eight years as secretary to the Town Clerk, I was fired.”

“How?
Why?”

Lydia
shrugged. “They said I took too many days off, but I only took the days I had coming to me.” Tears clogged her voice. “I can’t prove it, but I’m sure George had something to do with it. He wants full custody of Davy, and if I don’t have any visible means of supporting him, I’m afraid I’ll lose my son.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “Since he never had time for Davy before, I can only surmise that he’s doing this to hurt me. Or maybe he needs a son to enhance his image for the upcoming election.” She collapsed in a torrent of tears.

Becky slipped her arm around
Lydia
’s slim shoulders and cradled her until the tears subsided. Though Becky’s anger made it hard to hold back, she managed to stifle the words that hovered on the tip of her tongue describing what she thought of George Collins.

Having been through this with some of her
Atlanta
clients, Becky knew it took a lot to separate a child from the biological mother. But she also knew that lacking a means to provide the basics of life for the child came close to topping the list, and she had a hunch George knew that, too.

“What about finding another job?’

Lydia
shook her head and dabbed at her eyes with a wrinkled tissue she’d pulled from her pocket. “No one in town’s hiring. The bad economy has them all cutting back.”

“What about
Charleston
? Couldn’t you find something there?”

“I’m going to look on Monday, but I’m not holding out much hope.”
Lydia
stood and walked to the window. She pulled back the curtain and stared blindly into the yard. “God, Becky, I messed up so bad. I was going to do so much with my life, go so many places. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to throw away my future and allow George to sweep me off my
feet .
 . . ” Large tears choked off her words and rolled down her cheeks.

Becky jumped to her feet and went to stand in front of
Lydia
. Grasping her upper arms firmly, she made
Lydia
look at her. “You’ll get no argument from me that George is a—well, he’s a Class A jerk for starters. But if you hadn’t married him you’d have lost out on something very precious.”

Lydia
frowned at her. “What?”

“Davy.”

That brought a smile. “Yes. Davy is the one good thing that George ever gave me. I wouldn’t give up Davy for anything, even that future I’d dreamed of having and certainly not to a man who’d use him as a trophy to win an election.”

Anger.
Good. Anger would be much more beneficial than feeling sorry for
herself
. Anger would make her fight for her son and that’s what she needed to be doing now.

Becky took her arm and led her back to the sofa. “Okay, now dry your eyes. Crying’s not going to solve the problem. Some good old fashioned planning is what we need.”

Becky and Lydia
spent the next hour mapping out a course of action. They’d laid out a strategy for her to search for employment starting with
Charleston
, a forty-five minute commute from
Carson
, and Becky would watch Davy while
Lydia
job hunted. Becky had assured
Lydia
that she’d ask around and see if she could get some leads on possible jobs for her. By the time Becky said goodbye,
Lydia
was feeling better and had started making dinner for Davy.

Not until Becky climbed into the car and drove away did she realize she’d slipped back into social worker mode. How? What had started out as a friend consoling another friend had suddenly turned into a
crusade.
Then she grinned and chuckled out loud. Thwarting George Collins’ plan for his son was going to be the most satisfying thing she’d done in months.

And thwart him she would. Although she hadn’t planned for this to happen, now that it had, she vowed to do everything in her power to help
Lydia
through this and above all, to make sure she kept her son. Becky flatly refused to watch another child being wrenched away from his mother.

First on her to-do
list .
 . . getting that roof fixed before the ceiling fell in on
Lydia
and Davy. She turned left at the end of
Main Street
and pointed the car up
Lower Mountain Road
toward the ridge.

Nick had just finished
editing the latest draft of chapter four of his novel when he heard the car pull into his yard. This had been the first day in weeks that he’d been able to sit down and write. What he didn’t need right now was company. Impatient with the interruption that had broken his concentration, he seriously considered not answering the door.

Pulling the corner of the curtain back so he could see who his visitor was
,
Nick peered out at the car that he immediately recognized as belonging to Jo Hawks. His heart rate sped up. The door opened. Becky got out. Instantly his irritation with the interruption fled.

The novel forgotten, he watched her walk across the yard. With the sunset glowing behind her and the wind blowing her coppery hair around her face, she took his breath away. There couldn’t be another woman on the face of the earth as beautiful as Becky Hawks.

What was there about this woman that filled his soul with sunshine? Just her presence brought light to the dark corners of his heart and gave him hope that, one day, he’d be able to climb out of that black pit inside him and never return.

Of all the things he aspired to in life, he was finding that first and foremost, he wanted nothing more than to please Becky and see her beautiful smile. But as she drew closer to the house, he could see she wasn’t smiling. In fact, she
looked .
 . . worried, very worried.

He rushed to the front door and wrenched it open. Before she could say a word, he blurted, “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Granny?”

Becky pushed past him into the house. “No, Granny’s fine. It’s Davy’s mom.”

“Davy’s mom?
What’s wrong with her? Is she hurt?” Heart pounding wildly, he closed the door and hurried after her into the living room.

She rested her hand on his arm. “Nick, sit down, and I’ll explain.”

Little sparks skittered up his bicep as if he’d just gotten a brief jolt of electricity. Rubbing his arm, he followed her to the sofa and sat beside her.

“I just came from Lydia’s, and she told me that not only has she been fired from her job, something she’s sure George had a hand in, but also that George is going to try to get custody of Davy.” Becky wrung her hands so
hard,
they’d begun to turn an angry red.

Several expletives describing George whipped through Nick’s mind, expletives better left unsaid. He slipped his hands over hers to still them. “I feel for
Lydia
, but I don’t understand how that involves me.”

Becky looked into his eyes, hers filled with pleading. “I’m fairly certain that that blowhard doesn’t have a chance of getting Davy, but if
Lydia
doesn’t have a job, her chances of keeping full custody diminish dramatically.”

Nick still didn’t see how that concerned him. “I’m sorry, Becky, I’m not getting why you need my help.”

She turned her hands palm up and squeezed his. “It’s not the job I need your help for, although if you could help with that, too, it would be great. What I need your help with
is .
 . . well . . . ”

“Come on, spit it out.”

She took a deep breath. “
Lydia
’s roof needs repair.” The words tumbled out of her as though she had to say them quickly or she wouldn’t say them at all. “That’s where you come in. It won’t keep her from retaining custody, but every bit that shows Davy has a good home, a safe and warm house and is well taken care of will benefit her case.” She paused. “I don’t know who else to ask, and I know you can do it.” She pointed at the ceiling. “You did your roof.”

Nick didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His goal, when moving here, had been to isolate himself from the outside world, to not get attached to anyone again, but since Becky had entered the picture, he found himself being drawn not only to this mountain girl, but also into the lives of the people in Carson more and more. It had all started with him rescuing Jake, then the church social, then the three-legged race with Davy and now she wanted him to become even more involved by fixing
Lydia
’s roof.

Well, no matter how much compassion he had for
Lydia
’s plight and how enticing Ms. Becky Hawks was or how often she batted her long coppery lashes at him, he was not going to do it. He refused to be insinuated any deeper into the lives of the people around here. While his own problems plagued him, he just couldn’t invest in anyone else’s problems anymore. He was quite happy here in his cabin, writing his book and minding his own business. Becky would just have to find herself another roofer.

“I’m sorry, Becky. I can’t do it.”

Still unsure how Becky had managed to persuade him to do this, Nick grabbed the next bundle of shingles and inched his way up the ladder leaning against Lydia Collins’ house. When Becky had proposed this venture, he’d been quite adamant about not getting involved and then, the next thing he knew, he’d started gathering his tools, and he had no idea how or when his change of heart had occurred.

It was now official. Becky had magical powers of persuasion.

Balancing the shingles on a ladder rung and using his forearm, he wiped the sweat from his brow before continuing his ascent. As he neared the top of the ladder, he hoisted the bundle to shoulder height and maneuvered it onto the roof. A feminine hand with one broken nail shot out and grabbed the bundle, and then steadied it so it wouldn’t slide off.

Nick climbed up a couple more rungs and, as he cleared the roof’s edge, paused to gaze at Becky. She’d haphazardly caught her long hair up in a clip at the back of her head, but a few wispy strands had escaped and gotten plastered in the perspiration on her temples. Smudges of dirt clung to the tip of her nose and one heat-reddened cheek. Her once white T-shirt had acquired a few smears of shingle tar, and a hole in the knee of her jeans, a product of a misstep earlier, exposed an area of scraped flesh. And yet, she still managed to be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

She stared back at him. “What?”

He shook his head to clear away his thoughts. “Tell me again why we’re doing this.”