Silver Thaw (9 page)

*   *   *

Amanda felt as nervous as a kitten in an overpopulated dog kennel. Because of the fabulous meal Jeb had thrown
together last night, she felt less than confident about preparing his lunch.
Ridiculous
. That voice in her brain whispering how stupid and ineffective she was at everything was Mark’s, not her own. She was a good cook. Mark had demanded tasty meals, forcing her to create great dishes on a limited budget. She could surely make Jeb Sterling a hot dish that would please him.

Her shoes had dried, so she put them on. When she looked out a window, she shivered even though the house was toasty.
Power lines thick with ice. Trees that looked frozen solid.
If she were out in that weather, she’d want a hot meal, too.

Chloe sat at the table drawing on paper filched from Jeb’s office trash as Amanda removed loaves of bread from the oven. Bozo, snoozing beside the girl, suddenly lifted his gigantic head and released a happy “Woof!” Amanda suspected Jeb had pulled up in his truck. Chloe cast her a panicked look.

“He’s going to see the bathroom, Mommy. I just know it.”

Amanda had laid out a towel and soap by the kitchen sink, hoping to keep Jeb out of there. She heard the front door open, followed by the clank of chains on the slate.

“I’m home!” he called, his deep voice reaching them in the kitchen.

Followed by Bozo and Chloe, Amanda went to meet him. Standing in the entry hall with a bulging black trash bag at his feet, he pulled a wet stocking cap off his head. His burnished face was red from the cold, and his tawny hair stood up in spikes. Amanda had never seen so handsome a man, not because he was
GQ
perfect, but because he looked good without trying. “Man, this house smells divine!” Indicating the garbage sack with a dip of
his head, he added, “That’s from Myrna across the road. She called me on my cell and asked me to drop by her place to pick it up.”

“Her kids left a bunch of outerwear at her house, and Tony asked her to get rid of it. She called to see if Chloe and I might want some of it, asked our sizes, and said she’d set aside whatever would fit us. The rest is going to Good as New.”

Jeb stripped off his soiled leather gloves and smoothed his hair. “I’ve still got houses to visit, so I’m short on time. Let me shed a few layers, wash up, and I’ll be ready to eat.”

Chloe, leaning against Amanda’s leg, stiffened. “I, um, laid out soap and a towel for you by the kitchen sink,” Amanda said, her voice wobbly with nervousness.

He laughed. “My hands are too filthy for that. Frozen traps, sewer lines, you name it. I don’t want all those germs in the kitchen. Be right in.”

Chloe made a soft bleating sound that made Amanda’s heart twist. “I can disinfect the kitchen sink,” she tried. “I have a towel and a bar of soap all laid out for you in there.”
Please, God, don’t let him go in that bathroom
. “It’ll be nicer. That way, you can fill us in on your day while you wash up.”

“I’ll fill you in over lunch,” he replied.

Jeb divested himself of his jacket, kicked off the chained boots, gave the growling Bozo a pat on the head, and then walked in stocking feet around Amanda and Chloe toward the bathroom. Chloe spun to follow him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jeb. I didn’t mean to do it!”

Jeb froze with his hand on the door handle. “Do what, honey?”

Amanda could see Chloe trembling and wished she
had a weapon. Her insides clenched tight, she took a step toward her daughter.

Jeb opened the bathroom door, stared at the disaster for a second, and then said, “Holy Toledo, what happened here?”

Chloe started to sob.

Jeb stared in amazement at his once-beautiful bathroom. The foam Chloe had sprayed on everything but the walls had gone watery and dripped, leaving pools of liquid white on the countertops and the slate floor. He’d dealt with some pretty awful messes in his day, which went with the territory when you raised livestock, but he had never witnessed a bathroom attack.

It wasn’t really funny, especially considering Chloe’s distress, but Jeb felt an urge to laugh swelling at the base of his throat. He kept a spray can of bubble cleaner in one of the vanity cupboards, which he used to clean the porcelain sinks, and he chose to use it for precisely the same reason that Chloe had, so the bubbles could do most of the work.

“This is a quite a disaster,” he found the presence of mind to say.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said in a tiny, choked voice.

Jeb turned to look at the child and saw that she was trembling with apprehension. He swept her up in his arms. She shrieked with fear and pushed against Jeb’s chest, trying to escape his embrace. “Hey, hey, hey,” he crooned. “Don’t be scared, sweetie. I’m not mad.”

Chloe fixed a swimming brown gaze on his and stilled in his embrace. “You aren’t?”

Jeb noticed that Amanda stood as stiff as a board and had knotted her slender fists.
Fair enough
. She’d said in one of her breeze-delivered notes that she’d die before she ever let him—meaning her nameless husband—hurt this child again. So now she expected the worst from Jeb.

Ignoring the mother, Jeb focused on the little girl, whose body quivered against his chest. He stepped into the bathroom, talking as he bent to fetch the spray can of bubbly bathroom cleaner, which felt half empty. “Of course I’m not mad,” he assured Chloe. “It’s clear that you made a mistake, but I’m betting it was only because you’ve never cleaned a bathroom before.”

“Nope,” Chloe agreed, still shaking.

Jeb finally allowed his laughter to erupt. Giving the can a brisk shake, he commenced with spraying the mirror again with snowy white and then turned on a trickle of cold water. “Well, sometimes, the only thing to do when you mess up is to make the best of it. So I think we should have a little fun.”

“Fun?” Chloe squeaked, but Jeb felt the tension ease slightly from her frame.

“Fun,” he assured her. “Let’s draw pictures!” He started by drawing a small heart in the foam. Then he rinsed his fingertip in the water. “Your turn.”

Chloe stared up at him, her eyes still shadowy with fear. It occurred to Jeb that her father might have sometimes lulled her into believing he wasn’t angry, only to turn on her when she relaxed. The thought nearly broke his heart.

“It’s okay,” he said in a low voice. “Take your turn. I promise nothing bad will happen.”

With a still-shaky hand, Chloe drew an arrow through the heart.

“Cupid’s bow? Very good,” Jeb said. Next he drew a fair replica of his dog’s head, floppy ears included.

“Bozo!” Chloe giggled. “You forgot his melting lips!”

“You add them,” he encouraged. “But rinse off first or you’ll smear our picture.”

The little girl drew what Jeb could recognize as jowls by using his imagination, and then she added zigzag lines dripping from Bozo’s bottom lip.

“Drool!” Jeb said with a chuckle. “That tells me you’ve been treated to one of his string-slinging moments.”

Chloe nodded, looking up at Jeb with large, innocent brown eyes. Searching her expression, he saw wonder and incredulity that he wasn’t mad at her. In that moment, Jeb knew he was a goner. It was far too easy to lose one’s heart to a child, any child, but a little girl like Chloe, who’d been mistreated, didn’t merely worm her way into a man’s affections. She crashed right through all his defenses.

*   *   *

Amanda turned her back and walked away so Jeb and Chloe wouldn’t see her tears. She wasn’t sure what kind of reaction she’d been expecting from this man, but she’d never in her wildest dreams thought that he’d turn the bathroom debacle into a game to make her daughter laugh. In the kitchen, after grabbing a paper towel to wipe her face and blow her nose, Amanda washed and dried her hands, and then began slicing the still-warm bread. From the other room, she could hear Chloe giggling and Jeb laughing. Amanda knew Jeb had worked hard all morning, and she found it extraordinary that he
could muster the energy during his only break before dark to make a child feel better.

When man and girl entered the kitchen, Amanda had a platter of warm bread, plates, and a saucer of butter on the table. She was filling bowls with stew when Jeb nearly startled her out of her shoes with, “Holy smokes, homemade bread? Oh, man! That smells so good I could almost swallow my tongue. My machine-made stuff isn’t the same.”

“Mommy’s bread is the best!” Chloe exclaimed.

Amanda heard chairs scrape as they seated themselves. Then Jeb said, “Let’s pretend this is our appetizer. We can say the blessing before we eat our stew.”

“I like the heel,” Chloe said.

“No,” Jeb said with an exaggerated note of complaint, “I have dibs on
all
the heels.”

Amanda suspected that Jeb hoped for some verbal sparring from Chloe, but cowed as she’d been for most of her life, she quietly said, “Okay, you can have them.”

Jeb chuckled. “I was teasing, Chloe. We’ll share the heels.” Silence. “Amanda, are you a heel lover, too? Chloe and I can divide them up into thirds.”

Amanda found herself smiling. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, “I prefer a center slice slathered with butter.”

“You’ve got it.” Jeb pulled a center slice from the platter and put it on Amanda’s bread plate. “The smell of that stew has my mouth watering. Ladle it up faster.”

Amanda almost switched gears to super speed, but then she realized Jeb hadn’t issued an order. He was teasing again. She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her muscles began to relax.

After she had set bowls of stew on the table, she took a chair across from Jeb, with Chloe sitting to her right.

“Chloe,” Jeb said softly, “would you like to say the blessing today?”

Chloe shot him a startled look. “I don’t know how. Daddy never let us pray.”

Jeb switched his gaze from Chloe to Amanda. “Are you against praying over food?”

Amanda said, “Heavens, no. I grew up in a household that prayed before every meal, only we held hands and my dad always did the honors.”

“Well,” Jeb replied, “in my family we take turns.” He extended his hand across the table to Amanda, and then each of them grasped one of Chloe’s. Feeling the warmth and strength of Jeb’s long, thick fingers around hers sent a shiver up Amanda’s spine. Jeb said, “You can say the blessing, Chloe. It doesn’t have to be a memorized prayer. You can just tell Jesus that our lunch looks good, and that we’re thankful for the gifts.”

Chloe stammered at first, but she finally got the words out, finishing with, “I’m so hungry my stomach is growling!”

Jeb laughed and said, “Amen.”

Amanda realized that she’d forgotten napkins and excused herself to fetch sections from the roll of paper towels.

“Don’t bother folding them,” Jeb told her. “We’ll only unfold them again.”

Amanda handed each of them a towel and kept one for herself. Her stomach knotted again as she watched Jeb take a huge bite of fresh bread. He murmured his pleasure as he chewed. One down. Now, if only he liked the stew.

After spooning some into his mouth, he said, “Fabulous. This is even better than Mom’s. Don’t tell her I said that. She’d never get over it.”

Amanda bent her head to hide a smile of sheer relief. As she tucked into her meal, she enjoyed the wondrous experience of dining with a man without feeling as if her stomach were tied in knots. Jeb excused himself and got up to serve himself a second helping. To Amanda’s surprise, Chloe said, “’Scuse me,” grabbed her own empty bowl, and raced after him. “May I have more, too?”

“Absolutely,” Jeb assured the child. “One ladle or two?”

The child’s smile wavered. “One. I get in bad trouble if I don’t eat all my food.”

“Hmm. Well, you won’t get in bad trouble around here,” Jeb told her. “So you get two ladles, and if you can’t eat all of it, we’ll pick out the chunks of meat and vegetables as treats for Bozo. The rest can go in the laundry room slop bucket.”

“How come Bozo can’t eat all of it?”

“Because onions and garlic make dogs sick. He can eat all the rest, though. My pig, Babe, will devour what’s left.”

When they got back to the table and resumed eating, Amanda couldn’t resist saying, “I had dogs growing up, and we fed them cooked onions and garlic all the time.”

Jeb shrugged. “Everyone in my family used to, too. But in recent years, they’ve discovered that onions and garlic, along with chocolate, grapes, and raisins, are very toxic to canines.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe cooked onions and garlic aren’t as harmful as raw. I’ve never researched it online.”

“What do onions and garlic do to them?” Amanda asked.

“It stops them from producing red blood cells, or something like that. It’s been a while since I read about it, so I can’t recall the particulars.”

Amanda picked a piece of tender beef from her bowl, cleaned the sauce away with her spoon, and fed it to the eager mastiff, who sat with his dripping jowls nearly touching her elbow. Since she’d tossed him bits of raw vegetables while she cooked, she’d apparently become his go-to person for the day’s treats.

After giving the dog a bite, she shot Jeb a questioning look. “I hope it’s all right to feed him at the table. I should have asked first.”

Jeb grinned. “He’s tall enough to rest his chin on the table, with a long enough tongue to wash all the dishes for me before I can get them to the sink. So I don’t allow him to touch the table, but I do toss him treats. You can give him more if you like.” He studied the dog, frowning slightly, and Amanda could have sworn she heard him whisper, “Traitor.”

Lunch was so enjoyable that Amanda hated for it to end. When Jeb returned to the entry to pull on his storm gear, she followed. He was bent at the waist to put on his chained boots when she said, “Thank you for not getting angry about the bathroom. If the cleaner damaged the wood finishes, I’ll repair them.”

He glanced up. “I finish wood for a living. I doubt the cleaner hurt it any, but if it did, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about it. Okay?” He straightened. As he drew on his coat, he added, “I’m not given to frequent outbursts of temper, Amanda. That isn’t to say that I don’t get angry. I do. But it takes a lot to rile me.”

Gesturing toward the bathroom, Amanda said, “That was a lot.”

He flashed his sunny grin, warm enough to make a crocus bloom in the dead of winter. “That was an accident. Chloe just hoped to save time by letting the bubbles do the work. I like the way she’s thinking. I bought the damned stuff for the very same reason.” He winked. “I’m just old enough to read the fine print.”

“For a man with no children, you’re very understanding.”

“I was a kid once. When you meet my dad, ask him about the time my brother and I decided we wanted a yellow lab instead of a black one and spray-painted the dog.”

Amanda couldn’t stifle a giggle. “You didn’t!”

“Oh, yeah, and it wasn’t water-soluble paint. My dad had to call the vet to see what he could use to get it off. The vet said the usual solvents would burn the dog’s skin. They discussed shaving him, but it was the middle of summer, and the dog spent a lot of time outside with my father. The vet said the risk of a sunburn was more dangerous than any toxins in the dried paint. So Blackie went around wearing yellow patches for a while. Labs shed a lot, and Blackie’s fur, held together by the paint, hung off him like leaves about to fall from a tree limb.”

Amanda laughed again.

“And every time a chunk finally fell off, my dad made us pick it up and reminded us that we’d better never paint the dog again.”

“You didn’t get a spanking?”

Jeb shook his head. “My dad would give us a knuckle rub on our heads sometimes, but he didn’t believe in spanking.” He glanced at his watch. “I gotta go. There are a lot of old people on Elderberry.”

Amanda hugged her waist. “I know. We moved there
in August, and Chloe hoped to find kids to play with on our road. Instead she sat on the porch and watched ants crawl for the remainder of the summer.” She swallowed hard. She hated to ask him for a favor. “Um—will you be going near the end of Elderberry today?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I forgot a little SD card in my top bureau drawer. It’s extremely important to me.”

“No worry. I’ll grab it for you.” Turning toward the door, Jeb nearly tripped over the bag of clothing that Myrna had sent over. He handed it to Amanda. “I hope some of this stuff will come in handy.” He paused to glance back at her before exiting. “By any chance do you like chocolate chip cookies?”

Startled by the question, Amanda took a moment to reply. “They’re my favorite.”

He winked. “No special order, but it sure would be nice to come back home to some.”

“How do you like them, crisp or chewy?” she asked.

“Chewy, but then, I’ve never met a chocolate chip cookie I didn’t like, so either will make me happy.”

After the door closed behind him, Amanda carried the bag into the family room adjoining the kitchen. “Maybe you can see what Mrs. Bradley sent over to us while I do dishes,” she told her daughter.

Chloe was soon squealing with delight, which drew Amanda back to her.

“Look, Mommy,” she cried. “I got a brand-new pink jacket with white fur and snow pants to match.” She peered into the bag again. “And new pink boots!” Her face fell. “What if nothing fits?”

“Everything should,” Amanda assured her. “I gave Mrs. Bradley our sizes.”

Amanda picked up the pink parka. It looked and smelled brand-new—too new for a garment left inside a coat closet since last winter. Suspicious, she sat down on the brown love seat and started riffling through the bag with her daughter. Gloves, mufflers, a woman’s down-filled blue parka with a fur-lined hood. Women’s snow boots and ski pants. And most suspicious of all, a sturdy pair of low-rise winter shoes, made more like boots. An expert on secondhand clothing, Amanda searched the innersoles for an impression of someone else’s foot. These things weren’t secondhand. She sniffed the shoe, and all she smelled was fresh-from-the-box newness.